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Differences Of War And Religion In The Great War

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War and religion have never mixed well. In fact, religion is often the primary reason countries go to war. As John Terraine, the lead screenwriter for his documentary The Great War, states, "Wars of religion - like civil wars - are commonly considered to be the most merciless, the most cruel, the most destructive. Divine sanction or divine instruction has generally tended to increase this savagery, casting a holy glow over what might otherwise be looked on simply as barbaric deeds." (781). The Crusades of the medieval period exemplify this idea. But these Christmas truces across the Western front seem to do the opposite of what religion has done to wars in the past. While religion often gave soldiers a reason to kill, Christmas gave the soldiers of World War I a reason to stop killing. …show more content…

The Russian and German soldiers were never able to come to an agreement about a ceasefire because the Russians didn’t celebrate Christmas, and therefore had no reason to question why they were fighting. But the truce wasn’t all the soldiers’ idea. Pope Benedict XV had asked the countries for Christmas to be a day of peace, yet the countries decided against the idea. World War I was one of the first modern wars. It introduced larger vehicles and deadlier weapons like chemical warfare for the first time, and was also one of the first wars to utilize trenches. Trenches allowed enemies to have camps within half a mile of an enemy’s, which was a frightening idea, but it also sparked the curiosity of the soldiers. World War I was the first war that allowed enemy soldiers to hear each other, and was the first war that soldiers realized how similar their enemies were to

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“Fire; pause; barrel change; fetch ammunition; lay the dead on the floor of the crater,” Otto Lais explains in his personal memoir. The First World War was truly “the Great War.” Its scale and costs were vast, its military impact revolutionary, and its results leading to the next major war. Nations fought in two groups: the Allied Powers and the Central Powers. After months of deadlock on the Western Front (the area where Germany, Britain, and France fought) a joint British and French offensive was planned to break through the German lines north of the River Somme in mid-1916 It went down as one of the most famous events in British military history.

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Furthermore, trenches provided a safe place to shelter while on the defensive, one man with a gun in the trench could kill three men approaching and still be safe from fire as he was mostly hidden behind the trench. Additionally, trenches protected and sheltered the men from enemy fire and artillery. Trenches revamped the way wars were fought around the world for centuries and changed the outcome of many wars in the

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Who used trench warfare in ww1: Both sides of the war used the trenches during ww1 to protect them from random bullets flying towards them, and also to give them more protection. When was it used for and for many years they used it: Trench warfare was used during ww1 which started in 1914. The trench warfare ended in 1918. What was trench warfare: A small shelter the army/soldiers used to take cover in the war. Or little pathways in the ground to hide in.

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In order to analyze and answer the question, we must first understand the context of trench warfare. World War 1 was a time when advanced weapons and technology were invented. Weapons such as machine guns, artillery, tanks, and other long range military weapons were used at the opposing side. To defend against a wide use of artillery and other long range weapons, trench warfare was used by both the allied and central powers. Trench warfare was a very important factor in World War 1, not only because it would defend one’s own trench, but also attempt to attack the enemies at the same time.

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Seren Pisella 4/19/23 World War I was a life altering war that changed the way we lived and led to new periods in life. European tensions (the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand) really caused the war, and new advances in technology gave way to incredible combat and countless deaths. Most of these fights, however, didn’t really lead to anything, and just led to pointless fighting. But eventually the Allied Powers gained the upper hand, and the Central powers asked for a truce of sorts. This led the Allies to come together and try to craft something to make everyone happy.

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World War one was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918. The war involved two sides which were entitled the “Central Power” and “Allies”. The Western Front was quickly filled with trenches, with the introduction of the trenches it then bought many new then to war such as poison gas, hand grenades, tanks, and heavy mortar attacks. During World War One trench warfare had a significant effect on Soldiers during World War one. Trench warfare was not the nicest way to be living life, there were many diseases during World War One and what the trenches were when they first started to when they finished.

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The trenches were a significant change to this battle, not only in early 1914, in the first World War, but for the later wars and battles that would follow. The trench system stretched from the North coast of Belgium to the South of France. It stretched through French towns and even into Switzerland. If the trenches were laid end to end, they would stretch more than twenty five thousand miles.

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The Christmas Truce of 1914 Imagine you’re surrounded by the sounds of thundering cannons, explosives, and screaming of your fellow soldiers. You’re freezing in the mud of a trench, some of your fingers are missing, and you’re not certain you’re going to see another sunrise... Suddenly there’s silence, and by some miracle, you hear the familiar, joyful sound of a Christmas carol. One morning one hundred years ago, tons of British, Belgian, and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches, and spent Christmas day with their German enemies along the Western front.

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To some people religion was a way to convince people to do things. Furthermore, it encouraged war between different religions. An example of this, “It was widely believed that Peter carried with him a letter sent from heaven in which God exhorted all Christians to move quickly against the Turks so that he could take vengeance upon them. Peter’s preaching drew thousands into the crusade” .

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It was interesting to learn about how the Protestant religion during the time period of the Civil War was interpreted in numerous ways to create different meanings using the same sacred text. In the north the religion was used to promote the abolition of slavery, it was interpreted that the text upheld that slavery was a inhumane and a sin, while in the south it was interpreted that the text supported slavery and viewed it as essential, in both view-points there was an absolute certainty of the truth behind their positions and this fueled the war effort on both sides during the Civil War. In the same period, in the midst of all this, the south experienced another shift on this religion, as it was used to promote freedom through the story of

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“Imagine yourself in the pitch dark, after two or three days of wet, cold, hunger, sleeplessness, staggering down a trench, knee-deep in mud, carrying various burdens that almost equal your own body-weight” (Ellis, 48). This was the everyday life of the typical soldier involved in the World War I trench warfare. During WWI trench warfare was common. It began in September 1914 with the German army digging themselves in for a battle that would last what seemed like a life time for the soldiers involved. Soldiers on either side alike lived in deplorable conditions.

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All that people thought they could do was to look towards their religion for comfort. The attendance to sermons and prayer meeting made it feel like the people back home were helping. All the people on the home front wanted was to have their families return safely and for the war to come to an

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Out of this tension and search for answers in Christian thought, emerged the Just War Theory of St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine continued in the Christian tradition of believing all war to be intrinsically evil. He unequivocally condemned those who desired, sought, or enjoyed war, and made it clear that to engage in a just war is to engage in war by force of necessity. In Book 4, chapter 14 of his magnum opus, The City of God, he says “to carry on war and extend a kingdom over wholly subdued nations seems to bad men to be felicity, to good men necessity .”

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”(Twain,1905). A majority of Americans seem to have trouble understanding why some feel unsupportive of relating God to war; two very disturbing comparisons. We are still imperialistic in today’s world with the illusion that going to war is great when it is usually an unnecessary

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War on Religion There is a belief among people that declares religion as the main cause of wars worldwide, and it has been the main cause of violence throughout the history of humanity. While we cannot deny that, some battles such as the crusades and the Lebanese civil war were based on religious faith, it is totally illogical to consider religion as the main cause of wars. Moreover, although there is also no disagreement that some extremist in Islam were behind 9/11, it is considered a misjudgment to say that all individuals in this religion convey the concept of violence and cruelty. The fact is non-religious incentives take the responsibility for almost all of humans’ wars. Lives lost during religious wars are nothing compared to those lost during non-religious wars.so why people believe that religion is the cause of wars, why they are wrong and do the extremist represent religions?

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