OT - 100th anniversary of the Somme
I'm not sure anybody really thinks of WWI like that. Most people understand that it was brutal, with trench warfare, chemical warfare, and modern weapons.
It tends to get lost in the shadow of WWII, but it was a trumatic and ultimately futile event.
I've never heard it described as "quaint." I automatically think of mustard gas making people literally cough up their lungs and hopeless waves of poor bastards flung against Galipoli and every other god-forsaken place. Pure savagery.
Tennyson was writing about Crimea, but this couldn't be more apropos of the so-called (scoff) "Great War":
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die
153rd of Gettysburg as well.
A good documentary video about the Somme:
link
Thanks. I'll be watching this some time this weekend.
Obviously the Great War was a meat grinder and a terrible waste. But the lesson learned from that war, and the subsequent one, is more likely that total defeat and humiliation of Germany was not necessary in 1918. Carrying on that war further to additionally beat down Germany would have been ill-advised, IMO.
Recall that Germany's struggles under the Versailles treaty gave fertile ground to Hitler's national socialism and all the evil that came with it. Versailles and the subsequent submission of Germany played right into the hands of a nationalist zealot like Hitler.
The Allies were much wiser after WWII, allowing Germany and Japan to become full partners and to rebuild quickly.
The treaty of Versailles wasn't really all that harsh, at least not in comparison to the total dismemberment that happened to Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, not to mention the peace Germany forced on Russia in 1918. Germany got off a lot easier than any of them did.
The reason it seemed so bad to the German people was that - as you correctly noted - they were deceived by their own political/military leadership, which claimed that they had battled the Allies to a stalemate, when in fact they were collapsing and in rapid retreat. They were on the verge of retreating back into Germany when the Allies accepted the armistice.
Hindsight is 20-20 and it's hard to fault the Allies for wanting to get peace as soon as possible, but it's quite conceivable that the post-war period would have been very different if the Allies had continued on into German territory and then made peace, destroying any illusion of Germany being "stabbed in the back" at the negotiating table.
A very Balkan point of view, Hatter. So where does it end? The Germans were pissed that the Sudentland was "taken" from them and it's hello, Adolph. Irish killed each other for a hundred years in a cycle of vengence. And don't get me started on the Middle East. If all we do is settle old scores, we live in perpetual hatred.
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you say this now, but the morgenthau plan may have prevented ww2, or at least ww3. Now that england has left the EU, i expect the 4th reich is imminent
Actually France wanted to impose a much harsher settlement on Germany than what it finally signed at Versailles. Clemenceau was not happy with the treaty. He said: "This is not a peace settlement. This is a truce for 20 years." Versailles gave Germany reason to complain but did not seriously harm its long-term prospects as a nation. It came out of the war still mostly intact territorially and population-wise.
It's worth comparing Germany's treatment with that of the other defeated Central Powers. Austria, which had been one of the great European powers for centuries, was totally neutered for good. With the stroke of a pen it lost something like 80% of its territory.
Turkey likewise lost over half its territory and went from being the guardian of all the Islamic holy sites to being reduced to only Anatolia and forced to accept quasi-colonization by Europeans (until Greece went insane and decided to invade for even more, leading to the Turks driving all the Europeans out).
Germany was a lot better off than those two. The problem, as noted above, was that the German people didn't see the treaty coming. They were misled by their own leadership into thinking that the war ended in stalemate, and thus they were shocked to find out the details of the treaty. If they had known the truth - that their country was on the verge of collapse, in retreat with no reserves left - presumably they would have accepted the treaty much more easily.
Whether it should have been harsher is debatable; I was just responding to the statement "the Allies essentially took everything they wanted from Germany."
The Allies weren't in agreement about what to do. France, having been bled dry, wanted to go further and probably partition Germany. The U.S. wanted to take a light approach. Britain was in between and the settlement largely reflected what it wanted.
Again, completely defeating the French in 1871, and handing them a treaty on par with Versailles, did not soften French attitudes a bit. I'm not sure why the Germans would be different.Keep in mind, the Franco-Prussian War was a much shorter conflict. World War I was so unbelievably horrific that everyone was calling it the "war to end all wars." If the Allies had penetrated into German territory and made it clear which side had prevailed, then there would have been no stab-in-the-back legend and maybe the German people could have moved on and accepted the peace. It's all hypothetical, obviously.
thought so.
And Snoopy.
That's about what most Americans know about World War I.
I'm OK with that bit.
The Somme was a horror show. There is nothing quite like it in US history.
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Modern Brits who are traumatized by Brexit should take heart. Their grandfathers fought off the Nazis and their great grandfathers fought at the Somme.
They just have to pay 10% more for brie.
WW I was a fucking slaughter--a terrible waste of life. One unit is shreaded by shells and machine guns, and the general responds by ordering another attack... and another... and another. All the young men in a town like Ann Arbor shot down--gone--in an instant. If only it could have been the war to end all wars. But we never learn.
In WWI Britain they had "Pals" brigades where you signed up for the army with all your friends and you were all sent off to fight together in the same brigade.
The result of this was that after the Somme, many towns and villages lost all of their young men in a single day.
It literally was like all the young men in Ann Arbor shot down--gone--in an instant.
This type of recruiting is why men hop out of the thrench knowing they probably will die. At that level it's not about fighting for your country. In the trenches you didn't let your people down. It's also why it's easier to understand Civil War amies marching elbow to eblow into deadly fire. You either go or if you make it home you live under a cowards banner for the rest of your life.
Newfoundland, for example. The men were wiped out.
WWI never fails to amaze me. It wasn't only the Generals that stuck hard to traditional battle strategies, the Admirals did, also. But the Admirals were at least willing to change things up when the old failed miserably. Marching straight into No Man's Land was something that American's had largely avoided since the Civil War. But the Brit's stuck to tradition, assuming that tradition would win the day.
Horrifying. Literally, a solider who'd lost both arms and legs and so needed to be carried around in a basket. Apparently common enough that they invented a term for it:
That's the scary part . . . it happened so often they needed a word for it.
"Shellshock" too
World War I colored every choice made for the following 30+ years. It was a tragic, awful event that scarred the consciousness of all of Europe. There's a reason that Neville Chamberlain was so eager to avoid war--the idea was horrifying. It turns out he was absolutely wrong, but his viewpoint was hardly unique.
Some guys above the thread are suggesting that further incursions into Berlin would have made worse the rise of Hitler. I disagree. For starters, every bit of resentment and hostility that they worry a march on Berlin would have provoked happened anyway.
And more to the point, the Allies were very clear at Yalta and Potsdam that WWII could only end with unconditional surrender. The idea was that Germany after WWI was an issue in large part because they felt they were NOT defeated, but treated like a defeated enemy anyway. This gave place to concepts like the "stabbed in the back" theory. The endgame of WWII was, in a sense, an overdue completion of the job not finished in 1918.
I don't know what would have happened in 1918 if they had continued to fight. Those involved could not have known what would come later. But the Armistice didn't solve what it needed to solve.
France was exceedingly bitter about this.
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