How Has War Changed Over Time

War has changed greatly over time, especially in the area of developing strategies and tactics to make an army more powerful. The war has developed from using guns and having to physically shoot people to being able to drop a bomb and not really see the effect. This essay will discuss the change in what makes a countries army powerful, how the use of weapons and tactics has been used to dehumanise war and the variation in our reasons for war. It will also discuss the impact of these changes on society, for example the human toll of war.

The dehumanisation of war has been a great change. In World War I soldiers were stuck in trenches with guns in their hand waiting for orders to shoot the enemy. When given orders to advance, they would run
Reasons for war include things like wanting something the enemy has or even personal gain. A great example of a war that started because of personal reasons was World War II. This war was started by Hitler. He wanted to gain personal power and so he devised a plan to eliminate all Jews from Germany. He made a group of soldiers called the Nazi’s. They were instructed to find all Jews and kill them or take them to a concentration camp were they would die slowly. Many Jews hid from the Nazi’s but were soon found and shot. Hitler was self absorbed and only wanted to kill the Jews because he wanted power. Hitler and the Nazi’s killed 6 million Jews. Wars that are fought for personal gain have a big impact on society. Often the people caught up in the middle of these conflicts have no idea why people are fighting. This is really hard for the people of the society around the war because people are taking the lives of others in their country/city for no valid reason. The fighting in Syria at the moment is a good example of normal people being caught up in a war for no valid reason. There are thousands of refugees being deported from Syria daily. The dictionary definition of ‘refugee’ is “ a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to avoid war, persecution or a natural disaster.” The fact that this definition uses the word forced implies that it is happening against peoples will. Our reasons for war have not exactly changed but rather developed. Another major reason for conflict is religion. The Syrian war is quite strongly based around religion. It is based around Christians and Muslims opposing each other. Wars can also be started because someone wants to have power over more land than they currently have. World War II is also an example of this reason for war as well as personal gain. The same reasons for war have been used in two drastic examples and this has a huge impact on the