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Lester_in_reno

World War 1. 100 years ago right now

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Germans in first days of the war- 1914.

"The photo shows German troops making their way through a Flanders field in an attempt to encircle Paris and capture France. The Belgian and French armies had a different agenda and put up a battle that waged for more than 4 years, but it all started with this march through these fields."

 

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How World War I Helped Popularize the Bra

Corsets dominated the undergarments of wealthier women in the Western world for centuries, until WWI. So how did the war help popularize the bra? In a word, or two words in this case: metal shortage. The making of corsets required quite a bit of metal. Thus, in 1917, the U.S. War Industries Board asked American women to help their “men win the war” by not wearing or buying corsets.

This may seem like it would only make a small difference, but, in fact, during the war it is estimated that they freed up around 28,000 tons of steel [a battleship or two] by this change. (Similar reasoning later led to the banning of pre-sliced bread in the U.S. during WWII, with much less success.)

Obviously This Would Be Tough to Do in a Corset

Besides conserving resources, other aspects of the war also contributed to the demise of the corset and the rise of the bra. For instance, during the war, American women found themselves working in factories, places where it simply wasn’t possible to function properly wearing an ultra-tight, ultra-restrictive corset. Women still needing some support in these active jobs, the bra became the most used alternative.

By the end of the war, fashion-conscious women in North America and Europe were now mostly wearing brassieres and soon mass production of bras ramped up, despite there no longer being metal shortages or as many women still working factories and the like. Women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America followed the trend.

The reason the switch was more or less made permanent was that corsets were designed to accentuate the curvy Victorian ideal of beauty by cinching the waist and boosting the breasts. In the process, this made it very difficult to breathe and squeezed women’s waists so much that it could even displace organs and cause certain internal problems, along with symptoms such as fainting, gynecological issues, flushing, and nausea, among others. With corsets out, women could move and breathe.

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February 23, 1916    Day Three of the Battle of Verdun, French Defense Disorganized but Still Unbroken

Pictured - A wave of Germans passes through a gap in their barbed wire during one of the first days of the Battle of Verdun. Not yet equipped with steel helmets, they have taken the spikes off of their leather pickelhaube hats

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Over 35,000 German university and technical college students volunteered for the Army when war broke out in August 1914. Pictured here are some of those students in Berlin walking down the Unter den Linden.

They experienced eight weeks of training by officers who fought in the Franco-Prussian War and knew little about modern combat. Instead of being split up and sent to units that experienced the carnage, these boys were sent to replenish the German Fourth Army at Yrpes in October 1914. Soon, these green volunteers were sent by Falkenhayn into the meat grinder against the BEF! Many attempts at a breakthrough netted only major losses of life by these student soldiers...

There is a memorial for the Kindermord at one of the German cemeteries in Yrpes.

One officer said of the losses, "The men were too young; the officers too old..."

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