World War I was ghastly. The casualties
were said to run at "[s]even thousand two hundred deaths a day, 300 an hour, five a minute; for more than four and a half years.”
In other words, American dead in the Afghan/Iraq Wars over the course of the last 17 years equaled the slain of a single day in World War I.
In the years following the armistice of November 11, 1918, the event was known as The Great War or The War to End All Wars. These titles survived until an even greater conflict broke out 21 years later. (At least in Europe. World War II in the Pacific had been raging since the Japanese attacked the Chinese in 1937.)
The League of Nations was established in 1919 to provide a forum for international cooperation in the hopes of heading off any more Great Wars. Not only did it fail to stop World War II, but the league continued to exist, like any good bureaucracy, long after its purpose expired. The League of Nations dissolved in 1946.
Was the war fought to protect democracy?
Not according to George, a World War One veteran I worked with in my teenage years. George took part in raids across No Man's Land armed with a shotgun and a trench shovel. He claimed to be fighting for Luger pistols and highly-prized German wrist watches. George was built like a bull gnome with powerful arms and shoulders, even at his advanced age. Nothing in George's robust personality led me to doubt his stories.
Was the war fought to obtain a military discharge?
This idiosyncratic view was held by Jesse, a small wiry Great War veteran who shared the same Hollywood apartment building as I back during the first Reagan administration. A member of the 4th Infantry Division, Jesse would head off to reunions with his fellow dough boys, most in their 80s. Such memories of the war as he shared revolved around the indescribable joy of receiving his army discharge. A group of us were drinking heavily in my apartment one night. We decided to go upstairs, visit Jesse, and serenade him with all the World War One songs we knew. Our catalog consisted of the first two verses of "Over There." Jesse took it well.
1 comment:
I'm in the semi-happy place of not having lived through a war. I was born just before Viet Nam . Then...skip to 9/11. WAR is HECK (Betty Rubble) Then again, if someone hadn't stood up to guys like Hitler, God alone knows where we'd be today.
On the other hand, (and this is from a FICTIONAL source~ Poirot episodes) where some characters spoke of doing business with GERMANY. And I've heard that some real life companies in the U.S. and Britain DID play footsie with the Third Reich while sending men off to fight to defeat him and his ilk.
One must wonder what side of the war those businesses were on? Imagine doing business with a country that was systematically rounding up and murdering family you didn't know existed.
Admittedly, I'm better versed with WW2 than WW1. Keiser Wilhelm is all I know about it. Makes me wish I'd paid more attention in history class.
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