Innocent People As The Twentieth Century example essay topic

Throughout the past, there have always been wars and murders that accompany the changing of the times and different views of how this should happen. War and killing was on an organized basis, such as old military battles. There were rules to war and any violation of these rules was considered morally unethical and cowardly. However, at the dawning of the twentieth century, the world was beginning to see rules of war that no one had ever seen before.

The first revolutionary step in the violence during the twentieth century was the invention of the multiple shot rifle. Also known as a machine gun, the capability of taking out far more than one target in a faster time allowed for more killing to happen before the outcome was decided. These weapons were capable of holding many rounds and firing all of them within a matter or seconds. It was this type of weapon that led to the end of many of the rules of war. It use to be that one side would fire and the casualties would be taken. Then the other side would return fire and which ever side had the most men and was more capable of placing a shot where it did the best was the victor.

The motorized gun, also known as the gatlin gun was also a very popular form of death in the twentieth century. The world saw a war like none other when the problems between Germany and Austria broke out. The Twentieth century saw more assassins and sniper type missions than in any era before it. This was the first time that the entire world had been involved in a war and the numbers of soldiers in the battles were extremely higher. World War One was one of the most traumatic events for the soldiers that managed to survive the war. New agents of killing such as mustard gas and mortars were in full effect.

Mustard gas had to be one of the most horrific inventions in the history of war. Imagining the sight of a yellow cloud of gas coming towards your face, knowing the whole time that if you were to breathe it in then a slow and painful death would fall upon you. Many men were not fortunate to get there gas mask on in time and felt the rather of this toxin. The first symptom in this death was the inability to get a full breath of air. The mustard gas ate away at the tissue in the lungs and eventually there was just nothing left but a man grasping for air, his eyes protruding from his head and the only sound that he could make was a gurgling from all of the fluid that had built up in his lungs.

This was also hard for the men around that were unaffected for there was nothing that they could do to save the man or help. In most of the cases the only way to stop the suffering was to shoot the man so he would not have to suffer the slow and agonizing death. If this torture was not enough on the soldier, the world began to engineer better machines for killing as well. The Germans were far ahead of any other nation in the world of new inventions and formed the first submarine attack vessel.

The ability for the German ships to go underwater and not be able to be detected allowed for these boats to go out, completely destroy and sink a vessel, and return back to their station before the world even knew what was happening. However, this power led to the sinking of the passenger ship the Lusitania which was one of the beginning factors to the Second World War. Naval power continued to increase and become more and more destructive with the creation of bigger and faster boats. The German Naval force was an unstoppable faction during the war. The misleading side to this new technology was that it was making some countries feel as if they were immortal if they could have the best weapons and the biggest army. Hitler Manage to gain the support of Germans who were tired of being punished in the out comes of the First World War.

Embarrassed and revengeful, Hitler had an easy time convincing the people that they were a superior race and that they could have there place in glory and control the world. Hitler spent all his time, resources and effort into increasing size of his army and the technology of his weapons Jews were treated worse than the rats in the factories during the Holocaust. In this time, men, women and children were nothing more than bullet catchers. There are pictures of corpses decorating the ground with no remorse accompanying them on the ground. If someone couldn't work, looked at a soldier the wrong way, or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were killed and disposed of. It is unbelievable that humans can persecute and kill other humans for no other reason than brainwashed hatred.

The sad part to the German aspect as that many of the Nazis didn't even know why they were killing all these innocent people As the twentieth century continued to role forward, the American people went into a time of peace. However, during this time of leisure and happiness, the technology was being applied into the feared nuclear weapons and atomic bombs. With vaporization radius of around a square mile and a destruction zone of about ten, followed by another twenty or so miles of radiation area, this single weapon was capable of taking out hundreds of thousands of people at a time. This was the beginning of the uneasy and stressful Cold War The Cuban missile crisis was a hard time for America. The public was told that at any moment of the day a nuclear missile could be launched at America and destroy an entire city in a matter or seconds. Bomb shelters were constructed and people were storing food and preparing for the worst.

Most American people don't realize just how close we were to having Russia push the button. We give the world the capability of causing an entire nation to live a life of fear just because the technology exists. "War is peace" is a great statement to prove just how gullible people are when it comes to death. Sometimes I wonder if the government has created all these new types of warfare as a way to keep control of the people and keep them from thinking for themselves. Ever sense death has been made as so easy as to just push a button or pull a trigger, a lot of people are finding that they are more comfortable and feel protected under a government that has control of numerous weapons of mass destruction. One of the most widespread statements that Americans will say during a time of war and crisis is, "we should just bomb them and get it over with".

It is truly terrifying how we can pass that off as being an acceptable statement when it translates into "we should just massacre thousands of people and not think a thing about it". Once again, chemicals were used in the Vietnam War. However, these chemicals were not use to kill; at least the government which put them into action didn't think they were. Agent Orange was a defoliate that help American soldier to be able to see and walk through the thick growth of Vietnam. The government had no clue that the chemical caused nerve damage to the soldier later in their lives. The governments of the world were in too big of a race with one another to look at the consequences and long term effects of some of the mass destruction weapons that they were choosing to live.

Vietnam was a complete and total waste of human life. Once again America jumped into a situation trying to play world police and fix a situation in which we had no reason to be involved in. There were too many men sent to an early grave for America to look at the situation when it is finished and say oops. The Vietnamese people had too great of advantage of the land and knew how to fight. Also adding to the confusion was the fact that some of the children were made into walking bombs and the American soldiers had no clue who was an enemy and who was a friend. Surprise massacres and attacks spread like brush fires and was the final fate for many American soldiers who couldn't tell which way the bullets were coming from.

The world is a really messed up place when you look at all there is to offer and some things on that list consist of training camps to learn how to kill and be stealth in the process. The twentieth century also saw more violence within domestic borders. In America, the outbreak of mafias and organized crimes became a popular way to make money and eliminate your enemies in the process. Violence was a very popular way to manipulate people into making them do what you want and then having them stay out of your way for life. Al Capone and other mafia leaders use the Tommy gun which was a high powered assault rifle. This was the first weapon of its kind.

With a circular hopper and the ability to hold numerous rounds of ammunition, it was a popular choice for mobster due to its light weight and ability to be concealed under a trench coat. A lot of the violence that America was plagued with was a result of stupid decisions. The prohibition of alcohol was one of the events that set a lot of the violence into motion. There were a lot of people who were alcoholics and would do or pay anything just to have their drink. This is where the mafia began to capitalize on the situation and traffic it for great sums of money.

If the government had never put a restriction on alcohol and other substances, there would have never been such a demand, increasing the willingness to do anything, including kill. Sadly the world has just become a very violent place. Every day there are thousands of domestic disputes, rapes, murders and other violent offenses from one person to another. This behavior is no longer seen as deviant, but as a norm that is wrong but will happen. Peace is no longer a reasonable goal. The world should just do its best to keep the violence under control and out of the public eye.

I think that America has produced a lot of her violence in the things that are allowed. As much as people deny the evidence, children are more likely to act like their favorite action character on television then they are to follow their parents at a young age. Television reinforces the behaviors of children because if they see it on television then they equate it to be acceptable and are more like to repeat the action again whether it is violence or another action. The news is an excellent example of how we take the horrors of the world a broadcast them, uncensored, to viewers of all ages, all over the world. Video games are another visual aspect that put messages into kid's minds that violence is seen as heroic and can be rewarded.

Just by observing a group of children that have grown up with play stations and X-boxes, these children tend to be more aggressive with one another and act out some of the things that they see happen in the games. Through the course of history, violence has been a key factor in the revolutions and major events in the world. However, it was not until the twentieth century that violence became a business. The twentieth century will always be the mile stone and remembered as the century in which we developed the technology to kill more people than we could ever imagined, faster than we could have dreamed. Why we choose to develop a life of fear and destruction is beyond me, but someone must have thought that the power of mass murder was one of the best inventions that we could have done.