Why were causualty death rates so high during the battle of world war 1?

Answer 1

There shouldn't have been! German, British, French, and US military observers had been present on the battlefields in Asia, and witnessed first hand the destructive firepower of RUSSIAN machineguns upon advancing Japanese Infantrymen during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. 10 years later, those very same nations repeated the process, and sent infantrymen straight into the muzzles of belt fed .30 caliber machineguns!

Answer 2

Use of newtechnology such as Machine guns, planes, poison gas, new kinds of artillery, and later tanks

Most countries were not prepared for the new style of warfare and things like metal helmets were not commonplace at the start of the war

tactics also had not evolved with the weapons so countries resorted to mass infantry charges into machine gun fire

Answer 3

There were a few reasons why the casualty rate was so high in WW1. the figure sits around 118 out of every 1000 mobilised. that's an overall rate of what 11.8%. considering that this includes auxillery personnel that is alot. in fact in the battle of amiens, the casualty rate was over 50%.

The reasons it hit this high was due to a large increase in effective technology to kill lots of people, such as machine guns, barb wire, gas and heavy artillery. As you can see these inventions all give advantage to the defender. hence as both sides wanted only to defend, it was inevitable that it would turn into a war of attrition, with heavy casualties. in fact the advent of the tank towards the end of the war was the turning point in giving sides an attacking advantage.

an interesting factor was that the walkie talkie was not invented then, so communication with the commanding staff and frontline was impossible. therefore every single offensive had to be planned literally to the minute and half minute. it meant that if even the slightest thing went wrong, no one could really do anything, and there are many cases of artillery firing on their own men.

the common preconception that the high casualty rate was caused by officers incompetence, and this is false. though there was a learning curve in the war, by 1917, the British staff had offensives down to an art form. another myth is that british officers were sitting miles behind the front line drinking champagne, however, british officers were pulled form the frontline because too many were being killed on the frontline, to the point the British army was running out of them!