3 Interesting Facts of World War I
The world war was a horrible global disaster but as years have passed people have studied it scrutinously. Not a day goes by without a movie or a book about the world war coming out. The first world war was a tragic event but a lot of interesting and bizarre things happened during it that are not well known. Here are a few.
A man or a woman?
Without getting too much into the World War and it’s belligerents. The war was started by Germany against France but soon many allies, treaties were invoked and half of Europe was at war against each other. As the German Empire was concentrating their main attack on on the west of Europe, they got attacked at the East by the Russian Empire. Alright here is where the weird things started happening. Most of the Eastern front was left undefended by the Germans, so they could have their forces nearer to the capital. In one of the villages, a Russian officer was flirting with a women and tried to have intercourse with her, he found out that he couldn’t because it was a man. And the man was wearing German army shorts. This lead to a waste paranoia for the Russian forces, many officers after that would have mandatory skirt checks for the entire female population of the villages and towns.
In the early 1900s, news was easy to control and hard to spread. This made national propaganda a lot easier and even more powerful. Before the war even started, the German authorities needed a reason to start the war vs France, of course there was the huge animosity between them from an earlier conflict but to justify the lives of millions would need something more fresh and stronger. A few days before the declaration of war, German newspapers ran a the headline that a northern German city was bombed and that hundreds had died and thousands were injured. Of course the finger was pointed at France. People got out in the streets in Germany with hate and demand for retribution towards France. The Kaiser and his delegates were glad that they had given the people a reason to fight against this great evil. Unfortunately that bombing never happened, this fact never made it out until much later due the country being an empire and not a democracy.
There was also craziness in the western front. German forces had gone through Belgium like the wind and had already ended up on the northern border of France. Each time a German regiment passed through a Belgian village the officers would stay at the biggest mansions, eat and drink the most expensive stuff. When these accommodations weren’t provided their enemies, the Germans would give out punishments. Expecting such generosity was surprising to say the least.