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by graymatters
847 days ago
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That’s simply a wrong set of assumptions that have no historical substantiation. Tolerance for casualties was at a different level during both WWs. It is only after the horrors of WW2 that the western world became fearful of casualties. And the Russians as well, who suffered the largest amount of casualties. That’s why the Cuban missile crisis did not turn into a nuclear war. This is why nuclear mutual deterrence worked. |
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That’s arguably not true at all. At the beginning of the war the allies were very reluctant to engage in major offensive operations (in hindsight it’s not inconceivable that the French could have won in 1939 while Hitler’s army was busy in Poland had they been more risk tolerant). The French especially were very fearful of casualties (in WW1 it lost a larger proportion of its male population than even Germany and France had relatively very low birth rates historically making them much harder to replace)
That makes sense considering that most of the people in charge were field officers in WW1 and knew the cost their decisions might have. Of course that changed over the next few years since it turned out that there were no other options.