"World War I's lasting bootprint" Topic

" 1917, the second largest British city, after London, wasn't in Britain at all. It was the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France. The same could be said of the French Army, and the German. Each force on Europe's Western Front was a metropolis requiring not just soldiers, guns, and ammunition, but every necessity of life, from toothbrushes to rubber stamps.

To service these vast cities of war, nations built new rail networks, roads, hospitals, food processing facilities, warehouses, and even brothels. In 1916, the British were supplying their troops with 2,925 cubic feet of tobacco a day – the volume of a semitrailer. Building just one mile of trenches required 900 miles of barbed wire, 6,000,000 sandbags, 1,000,000 cubic feet of timber, and 360,000 square feet of corrugated iron.

This is to say nothing of the munitions that were needed: At the height of the conflict, the BEF was going through 70,000 grenades a day…

Full article here.
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Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

I think that this issue -- the expenditure of money and materiel -- is one that was as pivotal in ending the age of imperialism as the loss of life and political changes. The great empires were so exhausted (indeed, "bled white", to put it in Falkenhayn's prose) by the war that they could no longer maintain their far-flung holdings.

Yet they were able to fight another world war and did not let go of their far flung colonies until 40+ years later. This adds depth to the meaning that "Amaturs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics!"

It takes a lot of "stuff" to sustain the fight! Just getting it all there is a great challenge. You win wars by breaking the will of your enemy by denying him the means to resist! Wonder how much space 900 miles of barbed wire and 6,000,000 sandbags takes up? How many rail-car loads that would be? ….and while in transit, how lucrative of a target that would be?