Where references to World War I like Caldwell’s really break down, however, is in the fact that combat during World War I was not, in its concluding phase, characterized by the human-wave assaults familiar to us from movies about the war. They have done so ever since.Įric Schlosser: The greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory The advent of long-range rifles in the mid-19th century quickly taught soldiers the imperative of digging in as soon as possible. Trench warfare was not an innovation of the Great War, as a walk through the Civil War battlefields of Cold Harbor and Petersburg would show. What is wrong with the analogy? To begin with, the fact that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers huddle in dugouts and have to worry about hypothermia (the Russians more than the better-equipped Ukrainians) is something they share in common with soldiers in many wars. Thus, and perversely, not bringing this futile war to an end by twisting Ukraine’s arm is America’s fault. In his view, both Russia and Ukraine will continue to fight a war characterized by hordes of mud-covered soldiers huddling in freezing trenches before perishing in their thousands in a hail of fire as they go over the top, and some shipments of Western battle tanks to Ukraine will not stop that. They not only often get it wrong, but they frequently get it backwards, construing that history into a case for Russia’s likely success.Ĭhristopher Caldwell, for example, writes that American aid is intended to “fast-forward history, from World War I’s battles of position to World War II’s battles of movement,” and that this enterprise is doomed to fail. ET on February 15, 2023.Ĭommentators on the Ukraine war who think that American support for Ukraine is pointless or dangerous commonly reach for references to military history.
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