r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/ZirePhiinix 8h ago

WW1 was a real meat grinder. Literally blown to bits was how cannons worked. Those are the lucky ones. If there were trees then you get to eat a face full of splinters mixed in dirt and guts, and die from infections instead.

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u/Tim-oBedlam 7h ago

All wars are hell but I can't think of a more terrible place to be a soldier than the trenches of WW1 in the Western Front.

Stalingrad probably tops it for "most horrible" but not many other battles would.

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u/nolok 6h ago

It's also thé first time we learned how "modern" factories could produce weaponry, and the first time we tried all those cool chemicals stuff on an industrial war scale and... Eventually Hitler banned some stuff like chemicals weapon because what he saw in ww1 was not to ever be allowed again.

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u/oompaloompa465 4h ago

you don't even need to be in pieces..Explosions also kill from internal trauma. You are whole on the outside, but all your blood vessels bursted internally