Today marks the 90th anniversary of the end of the War to End All Wars. World War I was a horribly ambiguous affair that killed a lot of people for reasons that are hard to explain. When I was little, I kind of knew what wars were and had heard of World War I. I asked my grandpa why they were fighting. He said he thought they just kind of felt like fighting. In World War II, he told me, they were fighting over a girl.
Obviously World War II wasn’t fought over a girl, but I think he was mostly right about World War I. Mostly it seemed to be a dick-measuring contest between Germany, England, and France. (Apologies for the mild vulgarity, but a more civil description seems to add undeserved value to their respective motivations, near as I can tell.)
The Wikipedia article has this description:
The underlying causes of the war dated back in part to the unification of Germany and the changing balances of power among the European Great Powers in the early part of the 20th century. These causes included continuing French resentment over the loss of territory to Germany in the 19th century; the growing economic and military competition between Britain and Germany; and the German desire for a “place in the sun” equal to that of the more established countries of Europe.
The war itself was a mechanical affair that stripped the glory, to the extent it had ever been much of a reality, from war. Barbed wire, artillery, and trenches limited the ability of the opposing sides to advance on one another, and attempts to advance feet or yards were often met with heavy casualties.
I have never really thought that America had clear cause to favor one side over the other in this particular conflict.
After the British revealed the [Zimmerman] telegram to the United States [encouraging Mexico to go to war against the U.S. if the U.S. entered], President Wilson, who had won reelection on his keeping the country out of the war, released the captured telegram as a way of building support for U.S. entry into the war. He had previously claimed neutrality, while calling for the arming of U.S. merchant ships delivering munitions to combatant Britain and quietly supporting the British blockading of German ports and mining of international waters, preventing the shipment of food from America and elsewhere to combatant Germany. After submarines sank seven U.S. merchant ships and the publication of the Zimmerman telegram, Wilson called for war on Germany, which the U.S. Congress declared on 6 April 1917.
Crucial to U.S. participation was the massive domestic propaganda campaign executed by the Committee on Public Information overseen by George Creel. The campaign included tens of thousands of government-selected community leaders giving brief carefully scripted pro-war speeches at thousands of public gatherings. Along with other branches of government and private vigilante groups like the American Protective League, it also included the general repression and harassment of people either opposed to American entry into the war or of German heritage. Other forms of propaganda included newsreels, photos, large-print posters (designed by several well-known illustrators of the day, including Louis D. Fancher), magazine and newspaper articles, etc.
The Creel Committee was a piece of work, an arm of the government putting out raw propaganda designed to incite public opinion against the Germans, sometimes with complete fabrications.
Dozens of “patriotic organizations,” with names like the American Protective League and the American Defense Society, sprang up. These groups spied, tapped telephones, and opened mail in an effort to ferret out “spies and traitors.” The targets of these groups was anyone who called for peace, questioned the Allies’ progress, or criticized the government’s policies. They were particularly hard on German Americans, some of whom lost their jobs, and were publicly humiliated by being forced to kiss the American flag, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or buy war bonds.
Ultimately France, Britain, and the U.S. forced the Germans to surrender. The substantially vindictive peace settlement helped set the stage for the unrest in Germany that ultimately allowed the rise of fascism and Hitler.
In 1954, Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day in the U.S. to commemorate all veterans and not just those who served in World War I. So have a good Veteran’s Day everyone.
Update In Memoriam:
In Memoriam
by Ewart Alan Mackintosh (killed in action 21 November 1917 aged 24)
(Private D Sutherland killed in action in the German trenches, 16 May 1916, and the others who died.)
So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight –
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed ‘Don’t leave me, sir’,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.
A big cause of death in this war was illness-influenza and injury infectons being the biggest causes of death.
When I took “Epidemics in History” in college (which was a GREAT class!) I remember seeing a lot of pictures of “trench foot” from WWI. Also there were a lot of propoganda posters out that showed French whores as smoking skeletons; warning that any contact with them would give you syphillis. And in the background of the picture was the cute, innocent American girl you could end up bringing this “gift” home to.
Of course that is why Veterans’ Day is never abbreviated;-)
Just a related aside. All that anti-German sentiment (which was mainly British propaganda, btw) caused the loss of a multitude of thriving German cultural activities across the country.
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Indianapolis had at least one German language newspaper and the Athenaeum was known by its more German name (Das Deutsche Haus) and was partially designed by Kurt Vonnegut’s grandfather. Lockerbie Square was considered a “German” neighborhood, and an apartment building featuring the “sound mind in a sound body” philosophy of Friedrich Jahn was built on north Meridian (which is still there).
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Cincinnati is the largest city where I can still see the lingering influence of the German immigrant population, but it’s still a far cry from what was before 1917.
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Sad that such a rich cultural diversity was cast aside in fear. Just something to remember when Americans decry the rich cultural diversity provided by the burgeoning Hispanic populations in the US.
I started spending some time on genealogy, and found that my great-great grandfather was jailed during WWI. He was a pastor for a Lutheran church, and while praying for protection for this country (he was an American citizen, but born in Germany), he used the word “Fatherland”.
He was arrested for sedition.
I love my country, but sometimes we can be a deeply irrational people. Fortunately, we have demonstrated an ability to learn — even if, occasionally, very slowly.
One grandfather was trained as a truck driver/mechanic, worked that job for awhile until some officer found out he was a farm boy, and he was made the groom for said officer’s horse for the balance of the war. He also stayed on with the Army of Occupation, but all he would say was that he never learned to communicate with the German family he was billeted with. By the time he returned to the USA, the parades and the flu pandemics had passed. He rode a train to Terre Haute, changed to an interurban rail car that dropped him off several miles from the family farm, and he just walked on home from there. No flags, no parades, no family at the station. My grandmother made him relate some memories after he had retired that she faithfully wrote down, but it was pretty brief. Unlike me, he was a man of few words.
My other grandfather was just too young to enlist in WW1. Then, he was too old for WW2. He always complained about missing them both. He did teach pistol marksmanship to officer trainees before WW2 on the southside of Terre Haute. Unlike me, he was a pretty good shot with an old 1930s style .38 caliber revolver.
You reminded me of my one grandpa’s story. He was called up for service towards the end of the war. He lived in north central Missouri and reported to Ft. Leonard Wood. When he got there he was disqualified because he had flat feet. He then had to wait at the camp for a few weeks to get home because armistice had been declared and all the trains were filled up with young men returning from war.
My grandfather was in the same boat as the second one of your grandfathers. He was born in 1910, so I suppose he could have enlisted in WWII at age 31; but, in any event, he wasn’t drafted. He was a farm boy from Sandusky, Ohio who became a family doctor.
I don’t know much about my other grandfather. He was born in 1905 and died in a chemical accident at his company (the M.Ross Masson Co. for any of you in Indianapolis familiar with Highland Street) back in 1946 or so.
Generationally in the last 100 years, my immediate family has missed most major conflicts. The grandpa I mentioned was born in 1897, so he would have been just 21 when he was called up. My other garndfather was born in 1907, so was too young for WWI. Both were too old for WWII. (Two of my dad’s brothers did serve in WWII). My dad was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam; he just barely got out of the reserves when the Berlin Wall went up. My brother, T, was called up for Desert Storm; and his unit served out their time at Ft. Benning.
I hope this farce is over before my boys are old enough to have to make a choice.
I had a couple of great-uncles who were both paratroopers sent into France a day or so ahead of D-Day. One of them told the story of being lost from most of his group for several days. He and some others were crouched along the side of the road thinking that they were going to have to shoot whoever it was that was walking down the muddy road. My uncle recognized his brother’s walk and stopped them before a mistake was made.
That brother ended up getting severely injured and spending most of ’45 and ’46 in a a hospital because of it. He got home just in time to be killed by a tornado which hit the Kankakee River area by Demotte in 1947 .
I was touring the Bull Run battlefield a couple of days ago, when I recalled that mine and the Rev’s great-great-great (maybe there’s a fourth great) grandfather was there with the 38th Georgia Infantry Regiment for the second battle there. He was in all the major battles in the East from then through the Petersburg seige, when he deserted four months before the end of the war. Of the original 1200 in his unit, just over 100 were left at the surrender. So for our line, that was kind of the few years it almost got snuffed out, with him and his DNA dodging bullets at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, etc. I guess if it hadn’t worked out, I wouldn’t have known about it.
Sandusky, OH a short plop, skip and jump across from the Erie Proving Grounds where my mom worked during WWII. At the same time my dad served in the Navy. It wasn’t until shortly before his death, a few years ago, that I also learned that he served aboard the flagship USS Ancon. The Ancon was the flagship at the Omaha Beach landing during the Normandy invasion…