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Comment by redis_mlc | Hacker News Reader

You know, there were more than 100 tunnels dug in WW1. Most were used to insert explosives to blow up the trenches above them. The largest man-made explosion at the time was one of those.

Losing track of one of those tunnels isn't really noteworthy, and the French have no love for the Germans. On their retreat back to Germany, they destroyed the Alsace region "just because."

Most people today think of the Allies and Axis countries as equivalent, but even as early as WW1 the Axis had a reputation as mean and brutal.

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OTOH, this tunnel was a bit different. It went through a hill to supply front line trenches from the relative safety of the far side of the hill. It was much bigger than the mining and explosive tunnels dug into no-man's land. Eg the report says they found large amounts of equipment stored there, railway sleepers, machine guns, ammunition dumps, etc.

It would have had a lot more traffic and have been larger than other tunnels. Losing 2 companies of men in there is a not-insignificant war grave.

You're projecting post WW1 politics on pre axis Germany.

France hated Germany because of the loss of Alsace Lorraine, and the wreckage of 1871.

The animosities are even older. France has been depicted as "Erbfeind" (i.e. enemy for generations) in German school books since the Napoleonic wars.

And Waterloo, and...

Was it just because, or to prevent use by the enemy

Axis was WW2, not WW1.

For WW1, the reason I consider Allied and Central powers to be equivalent has more to do with the flaws of the Allies in that era than with the actions of the Central powers.

With WW2 and Axis/Allies, even though I’m not at all sure how to judge the relative behaviour of Stalin (Allied) vs Hitler (Axis) — there’s too much propaganda for me to filter though — the British and Americans were unambiguously more moral than the Axis powers.

In WW1, the rape of Belgium might have been used by propaganda and some parts fabricated, but was still pretty real. And it was not an isolated incident, but a policy.

Interesting — and, surprisingly, not covered in my UK history GCSE — but besides the point.

I’m emphatically not saying “yay Central powers!”, I’m saying “WW1 Allied powers (not WW2! Just WW1!) also bastards”.

I may have to reevaluate this belief — GCSEs aren’t good qualifications, they’re what UK pupils do at 16 — it’s just that my current belief is everyone looked bad in the first war.

I know you weren't, just providing some background information. If you were a local living in the colonies, any of the imperial powers were going to treat you rather poorly. But in continental Europe, the treatment of occupied Belgium/France would prefigure WW2 behavior of the German troops. In either cases putting entire villages and their inhabitants to the torch and sword was rather normal.

There is some truth in that, though I would not say both were equivalent. Western powers were also imperialistic and morally dubious (people like Joffre were straight up war criminals and utter bigots with no more consideration for their troops than for their enemies). Of course Belgians have a very different opinion.

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