Image: A troop train in the First World War (cc) drakegoodman
@avschlieffen: Is anyone srsly suggesting trains caused the
biggest war of all time? WTF!?! Get over it, you trainspotters.
Rail isn’t everything. @billthekaiser: LOL It wasn’t me it was
the 11.24 to Gdansk that made me do it. ;) Train timetables
caused the biggest conflict the world had ever seen. 16 million
dead, 21 million wounded. Mechanised destruction and suffering,
literally on an industrial scale. That was the argument of AJP
Taylor, one of the most influential British historians of the
latter part of the 20th century (and the godfather of TV dons).
What he said was that the plans for troop movements a large
scale war against both France and Russia simultaneously by
German military planners depended on a sequence of trains
deploying troops quickly to both fronts. Once you pressed the
button, as it were, there was no turning back. If you paused you
would lose the advantage and then the war. So when they thought
they had to go to war, the log