The Snows of Kilimanjaro | Historical Context

The Snows of Kilimanjaro Historical Context

World War I

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" takes place in the decades between World Wars I and II. The first World War was a traumatic experience for Europe and America, for although it was fought largely in Europe it involved almost every European nation and, at the time, the European nations controlled vast areas of Africa and Asia. The war was remarkable for the sheer mass of killing it entailed. New technologies of war, including motorized vehicles, airplanes, and poison gas, were used for the first time. Probably most traumatic and senseless was the strategy of trench warfare, utilized largely in France and Belgium, in which each army dug a trench in the ground and attempted to advance to overtake the opposing army's trench by waves of soldiers going "over the top." Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in these waves, but trench warfare only brought the war to a bloody standstill.