Armistice Day
by John Sickels on Nov 11, 2008 6:59 PM EST
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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
- John McCrae
If you want to understand the last 94 years of human history, why things turned out the way they did, you have to understand the First World War.
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Thanks for posting this
I was wondering if you were going to do it…
Just heard on NPR that, for the first time since the War, neither Germany nor France has any living veterans of WWI. Hearing that gave me chills.
Indeed
Particularly in the Middle East.
Unbelievable how many of the issues that exist today were set in motion during WWI. Israel… the Lebanese civil war… the kingdom of Jordan… the house of Saud… Kuwaiti independence and the first Gulf War… the Armenian-Turkish tensions… the Russian-Georgian conflict… Kurdish nationalism… Hashemite Iraq, which was overthrown and eventually replaced by the Baath party… the list just goes on and on.
Your 2008 Athletics: It's Nothing Personal.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime —-
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
— Wilfred Owen
There's also a great argument
That the second world war is a direct continuation of the first one. This includes the idea that everything in between was part of an almost inevitable chain of events. It really was an amazing stretch of time, in terms of how much the world changed.
yes
Yes, this is absolutely true. Without WW1 destroying the political structure of Europe, you would not have seen the rise of communism or the rise of fascism/Naziism. Just could not have happened in those forms.
That would be an interesting alternative history novel: what would the world be like if the Great Powers had avoided war in 1914?
by John Sickels on Nov 11, 2008 11:16 PM EST up reply actions
Oh ye historian
I’ve asked that question to myself and simply don’t know enough about either war yet to give my imagination a try.
Who's world is it? It's yours.
Well, in terms of what I was saying....
The short rundown of mine goes like this:
1) When Germany was defeated in WW1, they were never conquered. Since most of what they had been hearing from their government was about how they were winning, they felt like they had been betrayed (rather than actually losing).
2) Certain economic plans (that resemble Keynesian economics) were recommended to rebuild the European economies after the war. Instead no specific plan was used and it lead, in the long term, to a worldwide depression (this in itself requires at least half a book).
3) France and England had differing policies as to the terms of Germany’s surrender. France wanted harsh terms, and as a result, there was a strong bitterness in Germany about the way the war ended.
4) Due in part to these issues, people in Germany were looking for a drastic change. Initially there were two very powerful groups, the Communists (i think they were known as the Browns or something….my memory on this subject is somewhat vague because I haven’t studied it in over half a decade) and the National Socialists. This ended up turning into a wild political swing, first where Germany went Socialist, but eventually to fascism.
I could probably keep going and going….they’re all strands in this elaborate series of events that economically, politically, and socially lead every single country that was in WW1 to be drawn into WW2.
yeah
yes, that is basically it. The Communists were called Reds but otherwise this is a good summary. In a bit more detail, part of the problem in Germany was that the new democratic government, the Weimar Republic, was associated with defeat and surrender in the minds of many Germans. The military was never fully reconciled to democracy. You also had the huge industrial consortiums (IG Farben, Krupp, etc) looking for a conservative standard bearer to keep the socialists and communists properly suppressed. In the end the forces of the “moderate middle” were too weak to survive politically once the Depression hit in 1929-1930.
Now, if war had been averted in 1914, or if there had been a negotiated settlement in, say, 1916, I imagine the Kaiser’s government would have been able to survive. Perhaps this could have morphed into a more “constitutional monarchy” democracy type thing like in Britain over time. It was already showing signs of moving in that direction until the war hit.
Of course perhaps if war had been averted in 1914, it would have just broken out later instead.
by John Sickels on Nov 12, 2008 11:07 AM EST up reply actions
The Pity of War
Recommend you read that if you haven’t. Niall Ferguson. A lot of counter-factuals presented.
You beat me to Dulce et Decorum Est. That’s what i thought of after your initial post. Owen and Sasoon great poets of that war.
Ugh
I’m going to have to mildly counter this recommendation. Ferguson’s an interesting guy (well, as interesting as a guy whose chief research interests include war bonds can get, I guess), but there are like umpteen million problems with this book. His basic thesis is just horribly flawed and easy to tear apart, and much of the evidence he cites to prove his points (which are often reaches in and of themselves) is used in a misleading and overly biased manner.
That being said, it does cover a lot of different aspects of the war, many of which have gone untreated outside of academia for the most part. It’s also a nice change of pace from many other historical commentaries on the war, which tend to cling a little too fiercely to military narrative.
Also
Ferguson’s use of counter-factual concepts in this book is just reckless. It’s all just a bunch of unfounded revisionist crap.
Thanks for making me angry, wobatus!
Ferguson
Thanks for the reply. :)
I agree, ferguson’s extremely aggressive with his opinions and often downright wrong. he tries to be quite provocative.
Nevrtheless, I found it an extremely enjoyable read. And i like the stuff about bond prices, etc.
Also, I do think Britain’s course of action leading to the war was extremely erratic. And hard to see how things could have ended up much worse in the 20th century if it had just let France fall to the Germans early on in 1914.
The poor french, relentlessly bashed over here for being surrender monkeys, after being bled white in WWI, and basically its fate was sealed when Germany unified in the 19th century.
Indeed
I am interested in the first world war and the second world war ..
Read the book:
The Human Story: Our History, from the Stone Age to Today
I'll never understand
WWI, or WWII or any of them, though I know that’s not what you meant.
G G G E-flat_______ F F F D__________....
I can sort of understand WWII
While I also know what was meant, I can not understand WWI at all.
if you are ever in Kansas City
I would highly recommend visiting the Liberty Memorial and the National World War I museum. It does a very good job of telling about the war.
Thanks to all of those who have served.
I'll need to remember that the next time I make the drive down 35W to Kaufman
The Negro League Museum is there too and also very much worth the visit. Kaufman is beautiful of course as well.
by carverslacker on Nov 12, 2008 12:50 AM EST up reply actions
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