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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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Had the Holy Roman Empire and its enemies had access to machine guns and mustard gas during the Thirty Years’ War, we can be certain that the casualty figures in that war would have been even worse than the over 50% fatality rate suffered by many of the affected areas.

I see no reason to believe that this should be the case.

  • My understanding is that the 30 Years War was as lethal as it was because the fatality rate is measured by the population in the area the war was being fought in, not by the population of the belligerent states involved.

  • Technology shapes conflicts decisively. Had the Holy Roman Empire had machine guns and mustard gas, and presumably also telegraphs and railways and steam ships and modern farming, I see no reason to believe that the war would have played out the way it did only with increased lethality. It seems to me that what would actually happen is, essentially, something like World War 1 on the tactical level, higher lethality for the military forces and much, much lower mortality for the general population of non-combatants. You might even get significantly lower mortality for the soldiers; the Christmas Truce didn't emerge due to Materialist Rationality, after all.