likethebeer

This is really interesting.

It can clearly be challenging to convey the magnitude of loss after a tragedy, particularly when that number is in the tens of millions, yet that is precisely what The Fallen of World War II, a documentary (also available as an interactive graphic) that examines the human cost of second World War, sets out to do. Written, directed, and narrated by Neil Halloran, the elegantly animated data visualization lays out the human losses of the war, and it’s devastating.

The 15-minute video is divided into three sections: the first examines military deaths, while the second deals with those of civilians, including victims of the Holocaust. The third offers an illuminating, and ultimately uplifting, comparison between WWII and other world conflicts. One particularly striking moment: when Halloran depicts Soviet fatalities as a seemingly endless parade of tiny red soldiers.

The graphic that shows Soviet fatalities is mind blowing.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/06/05/interactive_documentary_the_fallen_of_world_war_ii_animates_devastating.html

From ThinkGeek:

A dog named Robot is pretty awesome. A dog named Robot in 1940 is crazy awesome. A dog named Robot in 1940 who goes down a hole and finds 17,000 year old cave paintings? That's Lascaux for you. Today's the 74th anniversary of the day 4 teenagers (and a dog named Robot) discovered the magnificent Paleolithic cave paintings. Best dog walk evar.

My local library puts out an "on this day" notice on facebook:

On this day ~ October 21
1917 - The first American troops saw action in France during World War I. The U.S. Army's First Division was assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France.

Just a little WWI interaction for the day.

"10 telling images selected from British Pathé's extensive WWI footage. 'The war to end all wars' was a war without parallel: over 70 million military personnel were involved and over 17 million people died."

http://www.britishpathe.com/gallery/ww1-telling-images

After The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman (about the lead up to the first world war & the first month or so), I'm reading A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918, by G.J. Meyer. The story of the entire war. It gives a good overview of everything (well, more than that at 700 p., but still an overview).

I took this on because, for years I have felt that WWI was "the biggest mistake we've ever made as a species" (there was the meat grinder, the gas, & the long-range effects over the 20th century), but realized that I knew it from history class in grade/high school, and knew things from my studies in art history, but didn't know the specifics. And reading a book is a tastier thing to do than wade through Wikipedia on it.

What I am learning is that the first world war was an even bigger screw up than I thought. There was the fact (from The Guns of August) that the major European powers had actually been planning for a war for over a decade; and, from A World Undone I'm seeing how, over and over again, the leaders are giving the ok to the generals to go again and again to battle in these places when they've proven to be a miserable failure. Like, Gallipoli - started, then lots of people killed, then holding off & doing it again. Or Italy - total failure in every battle. Or Romania - total mistake that they even entered the war. And of course there's Verdun & the Somme. And it wasn't just that they lost battles. Thousands upon thousands of people dying - thousands in a day. Bad coordination, bad communication, soldiers starving, soldiers arriving someplace with no enemy and bad events causing the explosion of the entire depot of weapons & grenades, soldiers going ahead on the line but b/c of bad communication the big cannons are blasting what they're trying to capture (and, instead, blasting them), soldiers being told to march forward when the enemy (who's got machine guns, just like they do) is there, & they're just mowed down.

Here's Meyer writing about the last advance on Verdun on Dec. 15 (near the last day of the battle of Verdun):

.... As [the French soldiers] moved forward to the trenches from which they would once again have to throw their flesh against the machine guns, the French troops began to bleat like sheep. The sound echoed all around. Baaaa, baaaa - the one pathetic form of protest available to men condemned to die [because they had been told that if they broke and ran away from the fighting they would be shot by their own commanders]. More than the fighting, more than any piece of ground won or lost, this was the sign of what was coming next.

One of the things that has horrified me about that war is the Battle of Verdun - between 700-900,000 men dead in 10 months. But I've begun to see that there were battles in which the carnage was thicker, in shorter spaces of time, than Verdun. In the Battle of the Frontiers (in August 1914), Barbara Tuchman describes how, in 3 days, there were about 160,000 French casualties.

Looking on it from this perspective, I've started to wonder why the entire world didn't crumble following this war. Not just the Russian empire (or the German, the Ottoman, Austria-Hungary). And about the art work that drew me into thinking about WWI in the first place.

Although, thinking about it, it totally makes the start of Dada that much more explainable.

I know I've posted this before, but can't find it:
http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/

This is the day in which I get flipped out by WWI. I think about other wars, too, on this day, but I think WWI demonstrates the idiocy of war to me better than any other.

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And, since it's Veteran's Day, I gave $ to the USO.