![]() The war’s impact on the land horrified university-educated soldiers groomed in the romantic appreciation for nature. Yet we must be careful with how we interpret contemporary descriptions of desolation. Scenes of utter devastation, ruined landscapes pitted and cracked with craters and trenches, quickly became a metaphor for the Great War’s waste. ![]() Familiar pictures of the Western Front tell the story. Nature bore the brunt of industrialized warfare. Yet only by taking the environment into account can we fully understand the trauma of the Great War and how this conflict shaped the most basic levels of human existence for years afterwards. Such is the paradox of the environment in times of war: nature is both omnipresent and invisible. History books typically regard the environment as the backdrop for battle or as collateral damage, if they consider the natural world at all. With ravaged farmlands, charred trees, and muddy quagmires as iconic images of the conflict, we have tended to take for granted the place and role of nature. ![]() While many contemporaries mourned the fate of blasted lands along the front lines, the natural world often remains a voiceless casualty of war in current scholarship. ![]()
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