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The Technological Advancements Of World War II

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William Pollard once said, "Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient tomorrow." Maybe the generals of World War 1 (WW1) should have been told this when they used cavalry when they were outdated and rifles and machine guns were the weapons of this war. They found this out the hard way which sparked the time of technological innovations and changes that was WW1. The three technological innovations I will write about are machine guns, planes and tanks.
On the one hand, machine guns could be said to be significant because of the extra fire power they provided on a battlefield. It has been estimated that a machine gun creates the equivalent to anywhere between 60 to 100 rifles, depending on the source, in one weapon. This gave an army defending a position a huge advantage over the attacking side and almost certainly prolonged the stalemate as breaking enemy lines became so difficult as reaching the enemy trench was a near impossible thing to do with the machine gun firing at the advancing infantry. It has been estimated that around 20% of the casualties of world war 1 were caused by the machine gun. This figure is very high considering all the possible causes of death in the battlefields of WW1. What also made the machine gun of WW1 significant was how it affected the future. These early models were the basis of a weapon used in all areas of the world ever since these first guns were used in WW1.

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