Did the flu contribute to the end of WW1?

Answer 1

No, the war was already winding down when the flu began infecting soldiers in the fall of 1918. To the contrary, the Great War, with its mass movements of men in armies and aboard ships, probably aided in the rapid diffusion and attack of the flu virus.

Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse.

In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and the young.

An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus.