I thought 1917 was a pretty good representation of what it must have been like. If you remember, it was filmed as if it was a long, continuous shot, and the way the actors would walk from what was a (literal) “hellhole,” to a beautiful, green, field, was jarring.
The thing that struck me, was the quality of these trenches. It’s possible the photos were propaganda, so they only took pictures of the “good” trenches, but every picture you see of allied trenches looked like ditches.
That said, a quick shufti at the casualty figures[0] shows that the absolute worst place to be, during the war, was in a German trench.
> It’s possible the photos were propaganda, so they only took pictures of the “good” trenches, but every picture you see of allied trenches looked like ditches.
It's not really propaganda, German trenches were on average much better than allied ones. The reason was that the allied side considered itself on the offensive, and saw no reason to makes the trenches more livable since they expected to leave them as soon as possible to advance in newly reconquered territory.
> The reason was that the allied side considered itself on the offensive, and saw no reason to makes the trenches more livable since they expected to leave them as soon as possible to advance in newly reconquered territory.
There is a certain irony in that, considering that almost every Allied soldier who set foot on German soil – with a few minor exceptions – did so as prisoner of war.
There was a huge difference between the German and British trenches. The idea on the British side was that comfortable (read "liveable") trenches would suck the fight out of the men. Even the officers' dugouts were rather crude. The Germans, conversely, realised early on that aerial reconnaissance combined with poor mobility, unbelievable amounts of artillery and machine guns meant that the trenches were going to be a thing for a good long time, and you might as well settle in and be as safe as you can until the next spell of horror.
The Germans were also rather deep inside France, and thus more content to build systems of defensive fortifications. The British and French were of the mindset that the next offensive would have them making territorial gains, and so whichever trenches they currently occupied were only temporary.
Being in occupied territory also meant that the Germans had a huge supply of slave labor from Belgians and Frenchmen, which they weren't shy about using.[1]
Even to the extent that the Entente occupied hostile territory (which was much rarer), they had a much greater respect for human rights. The British, French and Americans had strong liberal democratic traditions, whereas Germany was a highly autocratic and militaristic society verging on totalitarianism by the time the war started.
> That said, a quick shufti at the casualty figures[0] shows that the absolute worst place to be, during the war, was in a German trench.
I am not sure how you reach that conclusion. If you add the British and French casualty numbers, you roughly get the German casualty numbers (the Germans also fought the Russians and the British and French also fought the Ottomans). According to the Wikipedia article on the western front [0], the entente had more casualties.
The Germans (just the Germans) lost two million dead, and many more wounded. If you add the other Axis powers, then it looks even worse.
Consider, also, that there were numerous fronts in the war. The Russians lost almost as many as the Germans, but they were on a totally different front from the European allies, so maybe we could say the Russian trenches were the worst, but I'll bet that they had a lot of Cossack cavalry; which, I suspect, didn't do so well against machine guns.
The Ottomans had a huge civilian death toll, but that included the "Armenian Issue," which people like to fight about (My wife actually had a neighbor that was a survivor of that "Issue," and he called it "genocide").
The short of it, was that no single nation suffered as many casualties as Germany. It's notable that they suffered so few direct civilian casualties (but look what happened from secondary causes). Boy, did that change in WWII.
The only nation that came close to Germany for total deaths was Russia.
Then, of course, we had the good ol' 1918 Pandemic, and everybody took that in the shorts.
"I'll bet that they had a lot of Cossack cavalry; which, I suspect, didn't do so well against machine guns."
From an article about calvary use in WW1 (on the same site as had the German front color photos):
"Generally the troops can retreat faster than they can advance, so in an age when "breakthrough" machines (tanks, armored cars) either did not exist or were even slower than walking men, cavalry was given the task or harassing a retreating army in an attempt to turn their retreat into a rout and prevent them forming a defensive position further back. So cavalry was not meant to be charging into the teeth of machine guns, but rather charging into groups of men as they fell back, hoping to break whatever discipline they had left.
"Throughout the Western Front of both sides had large bodies of cavalry on "standby" when they launched big offensives, in the hope that they could break the enemy line and the cavalry could turn a little tear in the line into a huge opening. However, from 1914-early 1917 the offensive strategy used on the Western Front undermined the ability of cavalry to fulfill this role - week-long artillery barrages gave the opposition time to prepare secondary lines of defenses and bring up reserves to fill those lines. So rather than charging into a disorganized mass of retreating men they found freshly build trenches and machine guns - exactly what they were meant to prevent. Therefore the cavalry had little use. However German lancer units were more usefully employed in the war against Russia because the battle was more fluid and less encumbered with barbed wire trenches that tied up the Western Front."
The thing that struck me, was the quality of these trenches. It’s possible the photos were propaganda, so they only took pictures of the “good” trenches, but every picture you see of allied trenches looked like ditches.
That said, a quick shufti at the casualty figures[0] shows that the absolute worst place to be, during the war, was in a German trench.
[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties