Wars have existed since humans appeared. Their character has changed, concerning weapons, scale, objectives, means and tactics. Among the common reason for starting war are territory, political, ethnical, religious ideas, money and desire for power. Some countries wage a war to get independence, some to conquer others. However, what about the nature of a war? Has it changed, or is the cause of all conflicts in our innate nature?
If compare wars of the French Revolution and Napoleonic times to those of the twentieth century, having much in common their nature has changed a lot. First, actions of all were deployed on the territory of Europe, not somewhere in Asia, Africa or America; second, in all three cases (Napoleonic war and two World Wars)
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Soldiers of Napoleonic army and their opponents were using swords, bayonets, muskets, riffles, pikes, pistols, cannons, sabers and lances. All the kinds were murderous in close in and wide range, but far less dangerous if to compare to the 20th century means of battle. Though bayonets were still used during the World War I or the Great War as it is also called, such technique advances appeared as grenades, flamethrowers, machine guns, poison gases, tanks, trench mortars and others. The progress in weapons lead even to more terrifying consequences in the World War II, increasing the dimensions of battlefields and the number of the killed. Never before had people seen such a vast powerful use of weapons as during the Second World War, new examples of infantry, new tanks, aircraft, naval units and the culmination — nuclear …show more content…
Notwithstanding, French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic wars (1792-1814) had the first features of a total war due to the number of participants and the scale of the military actions, only the wars of the twentieth century became to be called World Wars. They are characterized by a great number of non-combat victims, strategic bombing and crucial role of propaganda. The entire world has to do everything nowadays never to repeat the terror of previous centuries. Moreover, with the advantages of time it is impossible to wage wars similar to Napoleonic time, the Second World War showed that we had come to a new level of war were a single press of the button may lead to irreparable