Learn English – meaning of the phrase “as now” in context

It is from Crash Course World History. It is at 6 minute and 53 second. Here it goes:

Although soldiers lived then, as now, under conditions it is difficult to imagine, there was more then even the threat of death to distress them.

I cannot get whether speaker means by as now that the conditions were much horrible in the past, or that they are as horrible as in the past.