Infinite Wisdom

"War has an undoubted capacity to bring about long-term as well as short-term historical change."

La Triviata

• Fully 85 percent of Red Cross parcels sent to Allied P/Ws in German hands during World War I reached the intended soldier.
• Beginning in January of 1915, Germany conducted 51 Zeppelin raids on Britain, for a total of 208 sorties, which dropped 196 tons of bombs, resulting in 557 deaths and 1,358 injuries, plus £1.5 million in damages, at a time when per capita income in the UK was about £75.
• Approximately 1.1 percent of all Russians – counting men, women, and children – perished during the Great War, as well as 1.6 percent of all Britons and of all Italians, 1.9 percent of Austro-Hungarians, 3 percent of all Germans, 3.4 percent of all Frenchmen, 3.7 percent of all Ottoman subject, and an extraordinary 7 percent of all Serbs.
• The first wife of Austrian World War I submarine ace Captain Georg von Trapp was Agathe Whitehead, the granddaughter of Robert Whitehead, the inventor of the "automotive torpedo", with whom he had the children who became the “Trapp Family Singers."
• From the start of World War I through the end of 1919, the German munitions firm Krupp went from a comfortable annual profit of 130 million marks to a cumulative loss of over 180 million marks.
• More than a third of the 350 physicians in Serbia died in military service during the Great
• Perhaps the earliest example of a regularly organized naval special operations force was the German Marine-Sturmabteilung, composed of 300 surplus naval personnel, which was formed in the two-division Marinekorps Flandern in June of 1916 to conduct high-risk missions, including defending the submarines bases on the Belgian coast, defending trench lines along the Yser, and conducting maritime security and special operations.
• The “Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company,” a London militia unit dating to 1537, sent five batteries and two infantry battalions to the front during World War I.

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