How much damage was caused in WW1?

Answer 1

World War I caused unprecedented damage to European and other nations in terms measurable by persons killed, property and livestock damaged and destroyed, and commercial/industrial disruption, among many other considerations. Less measurable, but easily recognizable, was its failure to heal national tensions such that, just over 20 years later, an even larger world war would break out with the same principal combatants involved.

Answer 2

A lot, but damage was nowhere nearly as widespread as compared to WWII. Aerial bombing was not yet the destructive activity it would be in the next war. There was some damage in the initial invasion by Germany, as they swept through Belgium into northern France. Famously, the Germans burned, on purpose, the ancient university city of Louvain, and engaged in other vandalisms. But once the war settled down to trench warfare, the damage was mostly in the area of the front line trenches, as far as the artillery could reach behind the lines on either side. This resulted in cities and villages within that area being reduced to rubble, completely, or basically erased, unrecognizable as ever having been a town. The trenches hardly moved much, excepting a few areas where the Germans pulled back to new lines they had prepared behind their existing trenches. When they did that they would destroy everything they were leaving behind - every building, poison every water well, a general "scorched earth" approach. But behind the lines damage was relatively slight. There were bombing raids on London by Zeppelins, and later by huge biplane Gotha bombers. The Gotha squadrons bombed other towns in Belgium and France as well, and toward the end of the war, in the last month or two, the British formed an aerial unit called the Independent Air Force, whose job was to be the strategic bombing of areas in the German rear, but, the war ended before they could really hit their stride and wreak much havoc. The Germans also used "the Paris Guns" ("Big Bertha") to bombard Paris, a huge railroad canon, firing from 75 miles away. The shells went up into the stratosphere, and took 2 1/2 minutes to arrive, and came supersonically, so there was no warning shriek of an incoming shell, just a sudden explosion. Really though this was mostly a nuisance, though probably several hundred people were killed by "Big Bertha", the worst hit being on a crowded church one morning.

But in the area of the active trenches the devastation was complete, the very soil poisoned. After the war, the area where the trenches had been was called "Le Zone Rouge" ("The Red Zone"), which still exists, though it gets a little smaller every year. No one can live there. It still peppered with "dud" artillery shells which failed to explode - millions of them. There is a department of the French government whose job it is to find and remove these still-deadly shells - two of their employees were atomized a few months ago by a shell they apparently mishandled. There are areas in France and Belgium where farmers are obliged to have armor plate fitted to the bottom of their tractors, to avoid being blown up by WWI shells working their way to the surface, like rocks do. At least a few people have been killed every year since the Armistice by these munitions, so the final tally for WWI is still incomplete. At the current rate it will take more than 900 years for the French government to find and remove all the estimated millions of shells in The Zone Rouge. See Related Link below.