Romanticism and Reality – Changes From the First World War

Sometimes, the idea of warfare is greatly distorted from the brutal truths behind the act of waging warfare – whether it be small-scale regional conflicts or the Clausewitzian “total war” that the Second World War became. This paper was inspired by the question of “what changed?” in the last two centuries in terms of how the blind idealism and romanticism of warfare may (or may not have) shifted in the public and political eye.