The Spanish Flu effects on WWI

[Sunforged General]

Due to the unusually high mortality rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic (killing between 50-100 million people), and infecting 500 million people (~27% of the worlds population). Did this have any effect on WWI ending when it did, and would it have been impossible for the war to drag on longer than it did with this pandemic going on?

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

According to wiki the flu had no influence on the war. When the flu was noticed as a serious problem the War was as good as over anyways.
The War had an influence on the flu, though. Troops returning home from the European battelfields helped spreading the desease in their home countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave

 

[Sunforged General]

According to wiki the flu had no influence on the war. When the flu was noticed as a serious problem the War was as good as over anyways.
The War had an influence on the flu, though. Troops returning home from the European battelfields helped spreading the desease in their home countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Deadly_second_wave

Hmm, in other parts of the wiki it says "Academic Andrew Price-Smith has made the argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. He provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before the Allied powers and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.[27]"

I guess the Spanish Flu was on the allied side lol.

 

[Jopa79]

The expression - the Spanish Flu - is a little bit deceptive. Coming to exist in the US, the pandemic spread to Europe and also to Spain - the early ill-falling of the King of Spain is the cause for the pandemic's name.

 

[Yakman]

i remember reading somewhere that 10s of thousands of German soldiers were getting sick every week at the height of the Ludendorff offensive in 1918.

 

[Jopa79]

I don’t think that the Spanish flu had any affect to the outcome of the WWI, but at least the pandemic caused some serious actions in the military and fell under censorship after noticing how deadly the disease really was. It was considered highly damaging for the morale and benefitting the enemy if they publicly recognized the lethality of the pandemic...also if they would admit missing the cure for the disease.

 

[Kovax]

With the German population literally starving due to the blockades, the disease was quite likely to exact a higher death toll among the weakened Germans than in the better fed Allied countries.

 

[Sunforged General]

The expression - the Spanish Flu - is a little bit deceptive. Coming to exist in the US, the pandemic spread to Europe and also to Spain - the early ill-falling of the King of Spain is the cause for the pandemic's name.

I dont think it was ever confirmed that the disease came from the US. Other sources say it may have originated in eastern Asia.

 

[Holmes]

US had it many months before Europe war was over by Nov 1918, it effected the German army in summer of 1918.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/

http://www.kumc.edu/wwi/medicine/influenza.html

In January and February of 1918 Dr. Loring Miner of Haskell County, in the very southwestern corner of Kansas, reported and described the year’s first influenza cases of unusual severity. It is virtually certain that young men leaving Haskell County for military service at Camp Funston in eastern Kansas carried the virus with them. By early March there were hundreds of cases and many deaths at this very large - over 50,000 soldiers - induction and training camp. From Camp Funston soldiers departed by the thousands for assignment to military camps across the United States and eventually on to Europe.

 

[Jopa79]

Other sources say it may have originated in eastern Asia.

Which other sources exactly?

 

[Geriander]

Which other sources exactly?

An theory with some backing but it is hardly conclusive:

In the new report, Humphries finds archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the Spanish flu.

He also found medical records indicating that more than 3,000 of the 25,000 Chinese Labor Corps workers who were transported across Canada en route to Europe starting in 1917 ended up in medical quarantine, many with flu-like symptoms.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...u-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/

 

[Jopa79]

An theory with some backing but it is hardly conclusive:


https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...u-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/

Interesting. But it doesn’t make the Spanish flu spreading also from the US to Europe void, I pressume.

 

[Geriander]

Interesting. But it doesn’t make the Spanish flu spreading also from the US to Europe void, I pressume.

Well the theory has the infected Chinese laborers moving through Canada to Europe so it would explain outbreaks in the US prior to ones in Europe.

 

[Jopa79]

Well the theory has the infected Chinese laborers moving through Canada to Europe so it would explain outbreaks in the US prior to ones in Europe.

I see, okay.

 

[Holmes]

Well the theory has the infected Chinese laborers moving through Canada to Europe so it would explain outbreaks in the US prior to ones in Europe.

Thats still a theory and the science is against it atm.


https://international.thenewslens.com/article/93408

 

[demanvanwezel]

i remember reading somewhere that 10s of thousands of German soldiers were getting sick every week at the height of the Ludendorff offensive in 1918.

also prior to that the allied soldiers got sick on masse aiding the early days of the kaiserslacht, of course at the time of the 100 days offensive the epidemic had largely passed on the allied side while the germans were still sick