November 11, 2024
This week we observe the end of the `War to End All Wars,’ also known as World War I. The memorial week will be filled with the usual platitudes and patriotic guff designed to benefit the politicians who sent millions of young men to their deaths in this most stupid of all wars.
I consider World War I as the greatest tragedy to befall civilization. World War II killed more civilians but World War I killed or wounded more soldiers and it destroyed much of Europe after a century of glittering civilization.
We still feel the consequences of this brutal conflict today: the war in Ukraine, the butchery in Gaza, high tensions in the Balkans. WWI led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the advent of Communism that killed millions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This included six million Ukrainians starved or shot by the Soviets.
The rapacious Treaty of Versailles led directly to the rise of National Socialism in Germany and, in part, to fascism in Italy. Europe’s Jews became the main target of hatred after being blamed for the crimes and mass murder caused by Communism.
The destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy by France and Britain gave birth to many of today’s ethnic and political problems in the Mideast, North Africa and East Europe.
At least 17 million died in World War I, not counting China or India. This conflict was the direct result of Serbia’s efforts to draw Russia into war with Austria- Hungary, as well as Great Britain’s efforts to crush growing strategic rival Germany and France’s lust to reconquer Alsace Lorraine. Germany struck first in fear of being surrounded and crushed by Europe’s two leading military powers, France and Russia.
19h century Europe was the highwater mark of world civilization. Germany was the most socially progressive nation in Europe. Both Hitler and Stalin were determined to regain territories lost during World War I – not, as we are misinformed, to conquer the world. Highly effective British propaganda has convinced many that Germany was an aggressor that ignited the first world war. This untruth holds true even today.
Germany did terrible things, but so did the other allied powers. The horrors we are seeing today in Gaza and Lebanon resemble the fate of German and Japanese cities in WWII brought on by massive American and British firebombing of half of their cities. We still don’t know the truth about both world wars. They remain shrouded in propaganda. As is often said, history is the propaganda of the victors.
One major crime remains to be told: the deaths of millions of horses, donkeys and mules in both wars. In Britain, 128,800 horses were reported killed in the war. Millions of animals died in the world wars, beaten and lashed into hauling shells, guns and supplies or killed with ax-blows to their heads as easy food for the troops.
France’s cities and towns near the German border remain semi-ruins to this day. Plants barely grow in these poisoned border zones contaminated in the so-called ‘Great War’ between the murderous imperialist powers.
I have been a soldier and war correspondent. I have walked many of WWI’s battlefields and cemeteries. For me, there is nothing good to say about the ‘War to End All Wars.’ It was a vast butchery carried out by incompetent or stupid generals and even more loathsome politicians. Their successors are in office today. As the great Benjamin Franklin said, ‘no bad peace, no good wars.’
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2024
This post is in: World War I, World War II
“As the great Benjamin Franklin said, ‘no bad peace, no good wars.’ ”
Super smart Franklin must have been America’s first nerd. He was clearly the most intelligent man in the entire USA, but his admonition fell on deaf ears from the get go. Today the US has been at war for appx. 230 years of its 248 years of fooling the entire world.
This historical record could have been surpassed by the British Empire-UK. I’ll check it out and get back to you.
Remembrance Day may not be foremost a day to glorify war, but the remembering of war, the commemoration of war, the honouring of the vets and those military personnel who died in the wars, the airing of various war movies during the week leading up to Remembrance Day, it’s all about making war seem like a good thing, as long as you don’t get killed or disabled.
We’ve been hearing WW II was the “last good war”. Because the Nazis were so bad. That’s debatable. Like WW I, the stupid war, WW II could have been prevented had the British Empire, the French Empire and US Empire, wanted strongly enough to prevent it. But there have always been so many advantages for elites to instigate wars and wage wars. One thing for sure, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Gaza, are all bad wars, wars not to defend people and protect democracy, not for people, but for the rich and powerful.
Remembrance day is celebrated by a very small percentage of Canadians, maybe 15-20% wear a poppy, but the elites always force it on us, sometimes forcing their employees to wear a poppy.
Remembrance Day, if governments wanted peace (They don’t) and if Canadians want peace (Do they?), needs to be a day of repentance for the bad will and bad reasoning that led to wars. It should be a day of education about the stupidity and ill will that lead empires to wage war. It should be a day to celebrate peace and practice peace.
Good of you to point out the pivotal role of WWI in shaping the modern world. I like Mark Steyn’s observation that we are living in the rubble of the First World War.
It is worthwhile to speculate what the World would have been like if that monumentally stupid conflict had never happened. What would have been the inevitable ride to the Modern World? My alt reality daydream would be a scenario where the European Empires all morphed into copies of the British Commonwealth, communities of sovereign countries with the local historical monarch as a beloved Elizabeth II type constitutional monarch. Dreaming? Maybe, but it would be a far better hope than the foul mess of 20th Century totalitarianism that actually happened. In my humble layman view even the backward Czarist Russian Empire could have gone this way. There is this suck up Bolshevik fantasy about that Lenin and Stalin found Russia Medieval and left it Modern. B.S., from what I’ve heard. Form what I’ve heard economic modernisation was already in play before that year of Idiocracy that was 1914. Think about the possible alternative. A Czarina Elizabeth instead of a f”””ing Stalin. Just a thought.