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"Maxim was later knighted by Queen Victoria for his services to humanity -- it was thought that the machine gun would make wars shorter, hence more humane." Spe
by mzs 11y ago
"Maxim was later knighted by Queen Victoria for his services to humanity -- it was thought that the machine gun would make wars shorter, hence more humane." Spencer C. Tucker _A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East vol 6 1st ed_ pg 1198
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/maxims-machine-gun-slaughtered-hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-f9e068f5148 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/maxims-machine-gun-slaughte...
"Not even the evidence of the 1904 Russo-Japanese War, with its long sieges and trench warfare—an eerie predictor of World War I’s horrors to come—could persuade military observers of the Maxim gun’s lethality on the modern battlefield."
- nickff 11y agoArtillery caused ~60% of combat deaths and 75% of combat injuries in World War 1. The machine gun is definitely a terrifying weapon, and has the added impact of being directed at individuals, or aimed at groups, but was simply much less deadly. I would also add that indirect-fire artillery is much more likely to cause post traumatic stress disorder (shell-shock), as the randomness and lack of control is traumatic.
- sliverstorm 11y agoNot a wargames expert, but you could argue the threat of the machine gun kept people in trenches, which of course shaped the war and made artillery a cornerstone. Kind of like how the queen in chess may not take many pieces. She is easily the most powerful piece, and as a result a very credible threat. As a result she can be used to project threats rather than taking pieces.
- tedunangst 11y agoHave nuclear weapons succeeded where the machine gun failed?