It might not be revisionist, but some of these seem to be either confusing the issue or misleading:
About being the bloodiest war up to that point, it is true that it was certainly less bloody in terms of total death count or deaths as a percentage of the population compared to some previous conflicts like the Taiping Rebellion or the Thirty Years' War, but the main cause of deaths in these were due to indirect effects of the war on the civilian population like disease and famine while a vastly larger proportion of deaths in World War I were caused by direct military action. Also, all of these happened over a period of time several times longer than World War I.
As for military deaths, though, I can't really see how the percentage of British deaths compared to a previous war can change the fact that World War I had vastly more military casualties than any other war prior to it. Granted, more soldiers fought in it as well, but if the question was just how many died as a function of how many participated I could find any number of wars which had much higher casualty rates, like the War of the Sixth Coalition.
Beyond that, I can't see how the Treaty of Frankfurt that ended the Franco-Prussian War was in any way more harsh than the Treaty of Versailles. The only real effects of the former was the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany and reparations by Germany. Versailles not only had Germany pay reparations and give back Alsace-Lorraine, it also gave large territories of the German Empire to Poland, Czechoslovakia and so forth, stripped Germany of all its colonies and practically eliminated the German army as a fighting force, or at least as a threat to the Allies. Granted, I don't know how much value the land lost had to Germany compared to what France lost in the Franco-Prussian War or what the difference was between the reparations those two treaties called for (though I bet the amount at Versailles was much higher), but it still seems much "harsher" to me, for lack of a better term. What they say about the end of World War II doesn't seem to be comparable to me; World War II in Europe wasn't ended by a peace treaty, it was ended by the destruction of the previous regime in Germany and its complete occupation by several major powers. The situation is much different to the circumstances under which World War I ended, not to mention much more complicated, for it to be simply declared as "more harsh".
Besides that, I seriously doubt that just because British soldiers had some better conditions meant that they instantly liked the war, and that doesn't even get into other armies which operated under worse conditions. It's a bit hard to prove exactly how many people...err, "enjoyed" the war, though...
|