From the first real industrial conflicts—the Crimean War of 1853–56, the American Civil War of 1861–65, and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866—it didn’t take but two generations for the Industrial Age to generate the most horrific carnage in history, resulting in some 100 million deaths in the two world wars. One of the many reasons why the wars were so catastrophic in human terms was that the technological builds of the Industrial Revolution didn’t simply make the weapons of war more destructive, they made the cultural fabric, technical expertise, economic vitality, and military relevance of
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