iple Alliances when war started, and on the Eastern Front Russians were loosing their lands and over 750,000 soldiers were taken as prisoners. By the end of 1915 the whole society of Europe mobilized for war. This was to be the world's first Total War. Women were taking on the jobs, and most male population was sent to war. The total war started when Germans used their first gas attack:Gassing was the start of total war, because it broke all limits, the social taboos, the gentleman's etiquette of other wars. Sometimes the shot would miss the mark and kill innocent civilians. Before the introduction of gas bombing, soldiers found it easier to overlook the fact that they were fighting on opposite sides of the field, because they had no personal motivation to fight. In 1916 there 139 British and French Divisions were fighting against 117 German Divisions. Two sides were facing each other across the "no man's land" of mud, shell holes and barbed wires. Sometimes the distance between two fighting powers was so close that on first Christmas both sides were singing carols to each other. One can find a good description of trenches by reading Erich Remarque's novel "All Quite on the Western Front" were he gives the reader some insight and a look at a group of young German friends who are also fighting in World War I. It covers the horror of this war through the eyes of a young German solider, Paul Baumer. This book is not like other books and stories that glorify wars. It tells the horrors of war in detail. The story recalls the bloody details of bombing, gunfire, gas, hand-to-hand combat, barbed wire, trench warfare and etc. Remarque tells the story in the first person that makes the reader feel as if he or she is one of the soldiers, that makes the novel even more dramatic for the reader:We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see soldiers run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered stumps into the next shell-h...
