Earlier this month our country celebrated Armistice Day, when Allies and Entente forces signed the armistice in a train car, ending the first World War, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
Recently I read a book about World War I, “A World Undone,” by G.J. Meyer. Anyone who wants to understand the current situation in Europe should check it out.
Although World War II killed far more people, I consider its predecessor to be worse for several reasons. For one, the second war was, in many ways, just an extension of the first.
When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey remarked that ”the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” At that moment, England, France and Germany were at the forefront of the world in terms of banking, military strength, cultural achievements and the arts, with Russia attempting to finally remove the last vestige of Medieval serfdom and feudalism. A mere four years later, their wealth was drained, tens of millions had died and Russia was in the hands of the Bolsheviks. While the war brought leaps in military technology, it was a steep price to pay for their once proud armies, now reduced to shambles of their former selves, their finest troops buried by the millions around small French villages.
It can be extremely difficult for us to grasp just how horrific the costs were to these nations. The War Between the States, as appalling as the casualties were at battles like Antietam and Gettysburg, pale in comparison to the Siege of Verdun or the First Battle of the Somme, the latter of which cost the British Army around 20,000 men in the first day’s fighting – in comparison, America lost 58,000 men in the entire Vietnam War.
The war destroyed more than just buildings and lives. It also destroyed future generations; their potential contributions to the world can only be speculated. And for those who survived, the war shattered their faith in their respective cultures and left a bitter cynicism. The troops anguishing in the trenches, while their officers were barracked in better conditions, came to empathize with their fellow infantrymen on the side of No Man’s Land, and the first year of the war they even came out of the trenches to celebrate Christmas together, even playing soccer.
Adding to the tragedy was how the war became self-perpetuating, aided by modern propaganda campaigns portraying the enemy as barbarians unworthy of pity or compassion. By the time the nations’ leaders finally tried to negotiate, they realized they had lost too many men to merely return things back to the pre-war situation. Something had to be gained in order to justify the loss of so many of their countries’ men. Thus, it became a zero-sum game, neither side would capitulate, and young men continued to die by the thousands for a few meters of land.
Germany only surrendered when it was on the verge of starvation, and the Treaty of Versailles, which forced them to accept sole blame for starting the conflict when nearly all parties involved in the scene shared culpability, guaranteed that it would merely be “an armistice for 20 years,” as one diplomat called it.
Europe survived to fight another world war, but as Meyer demonstrates in his book, the “Great War” may have delivered a fatal wound to their civilizations.
TJ Martinell is a reporter for the Kirkland Reporter newspaper.
