Armistice Day
I think I wound up taking my first take on an Armistice Day post down a bit of a blind alley. What I should have said was something closer to Jacob Levy’s sentiments here:
A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake. Of course, no continuously-existing government (US, UK, Canada) is likely to create a day officially dedicated to pointing out that its predecessor contributed to the deaths of millions for no good cause. But we have the capacity to remember lessons other than the official ones.
John Quiggin says something similar here. Jim Henley notes that Armistice Day was originally “dedicated to the cause of world peace,” before being transformed into an additional day of celebration for the military.
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November 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
If a day devoted to the memory of and thanks for the numberless sacrifices made by our military forces strikes you as nothing more than “an additional day of celebration for the military” then you are even more fucked up than your average Leftie.
Perhaps you should go visit Walter Reed and ask some military there what this day means. You think they are just partyin’ hardy there?
November 11th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
If Jim Henly and Mathew Yglesias want to view Vetrans day as ” an additional day of celebration for the military” they have that right.I and most people that i know just try to remember the vetrans and the soldiers who died.And yes,i know it’s not Memorial day.But since when are there rules about who you can and can’t remember.
If MR Yglesias wants to spend this day ,or any other day, thinking about how futile war is, then i will join him.I also will remember our soldiers and the soldiers of our allies.That is not “celebrating the military”.And that is not how i ,or anyone else that i know sees it.There are no soviet style parades with tanks today.Just millions of people remembering our veterans and their service and remembering the fallen.Is it really that much of a problem if we honour our veterans ?
I can not believe that MR Henly is whining about haveing too many holidays for the veterans.The comments under his posts are even worse. MR Henley and some of his commenters are living carictures of liberals that couldn’t exist in Glenn Becks little mind even on his most parinoid days .
Most people liberal or conservative respect our veterans.Please don’t give the Rush Limbaughs of the world any more ammunittion.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
a day devoted to the memory of and thanks for the numberless sacrifices made by our military forces
is what I thought Memorial Day was for. Must Nov. 11 be about the same thing? It didn’t used to be. That’s been lost and that’s unfortunate.
It should, in theory, actually be easier for the U.S. to have distinct holidays with different purposes — easier than in, say, Canada where one holiday must do double-duty.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
From the wikipedia
November 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Growing up in Canada in the ’70s and ’80s, Nov. 11 (which we call Remembrance Day) was pretty much this — a day of remembering Canadian war dead, but also of hoping for peace. In school assemblies, we’d read “In Flanders Fields,” hear the Last Post, but then also talk about wars in Nicaragua and Lebanon and everywhere else that was at war at the time. The general message was the hope that the sacrifice of men and women of past generations might be redeemed through a world at peace.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Please don’t give the Rush Limbaughs of the world any more ammunittion.
What the hell does that mean? Fat Limbaughs will attack democrats for being too weak on defense until the end of the world, what does one post from Matt have to do with it?
If you don’t see the slippery slope from “You have to celebrate the veterans!” through “You have to support the troops!” to “You have to support the troops winning our never ending wars!”, you’re blind by now.
Matt is right: today is an occasion to remember how horrible and pointless war usually is, and think about those millions of people who died for nothing at all. In Belgium and in Iraq.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Fuck the military.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
The Remembrance Day (or Sunday) memorials at cenotaphs throughout Commonwealth countries do tend to reflect on the meaninglessness of war as it led to the dead (especially of WWI) that the day remembers– at least a lot more than the comparative ceremonies in the US.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I note that in England–where the practice originated–it’s still Armistice Day, not, as here and now, Veteran’s Day. In England, it was, originally, a memorial of loss and an expression of gratitude for the return of peace. Here, it’s become a time at which everyone seems compelled to express his/her devotion to all matters military.
I read Quiggin’s comments earlier today, and I found myself nodding in agreement.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Mr. Yglesias is totally correct on this. WWI was pointless and obscene and should always be acknowledged as such. It’s also time to face down the Limbaughs and Hannitys (and Obama) on their war-mongering.
How stupid to complain about obscene government spending while calling for more obscene government spending for pointless foreign wars that only create new terrorists while bankrupting us and our children.
Hey Rush, why do you support the Federal Government turning Afghanistan into another Detroit, eh?
Hey Sean (you moron), do you love terrorists? Why else would one support your war-mongering that only creates more terrorists?
November 11th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Funny, I thought Veterans’ Day was a day to celebrate a 40% off sale at Macy’s.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Agreed. WWI happened for no good reason, and spawned an unbelievable seventy years of European bloodbaths.
Today, in the college class I teach, I asked my students what anniversary today commemorates. Only half got it right (the rest mostly picked a made-up answer about Vietnam).
November 11th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Most people liberal or conservative respect our veterans.
As do I, and apparently a lot more than a Rush Limbaugh who appears to only like dead marines.
Please don’t give the Rush Limbaughs of the world any more ammunittion.
I am also capable of moral courage in the face of attempted intimidation. Fuck you and your lame-ass concern troll. (It doesn’t fucking matter whether you are a D or an R – in your case, you should get back to the kind of thing you’re good at and resume blowing Lush Rimjob every chance you get. Jesus, what a bunch of pathetic weasels you lot are.)
A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers.
If we want to talk calender reform, groovy! I saw we move Thanksgiving up to early November, specifically the Friday occuring on or before the 11th. The Thursday should be Veteran’s Day and the Wednesday before should be Armistance Day.
Then the sequence would run: Halloween – Day of the Dead/All Souls Day/Whatever – work week interlude – Armistance Day – Veteran’s Day (’Yay, you came home!’) – Thanksgiving (’Yay! We made it!’). Wearing a lot of black between Halloween and Veteran’s Day would be fine. And then, since we insist on a late Standard Time changeover, we can flip the clock back on the Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend.
That would open a much larger gap (six weeks or so) between Thanksgiving and Christmas which would make the merchants happy and help keep the kids and workers focused between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Compressing the thing together would also make a nice symbolic transition and give everyone a decent break between Labor Day and Christmas.
max
['So. There.']
November 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Reminds me of this passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle:
“Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.”
November 11th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Not to defend the instigators and perpetrators of WWI, but to call the war ’stupid’ and ‘pointless’ is a ridiculous statement – like calling evolution stupid or the Roman Empire pointless.
WWI was started for a number of reasons and it ended for a number of other reasons – both of which in the end are really irrelevant,. What id did as a consequence was bring about stark change both for Europe and the world.
The breakup of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires; the creation of Poland and Yugoslavia; the road towards the creation of Israel and the nations of Iraq, Syria and Jordan; the death of an entire strain of political thought in Europe and the rise of another; the Russian Revolution and all the consequences thereof; America’s ‘coming out’ as an official hegemonic world power; the progress of military technology (tanks, air combat; the beginning of the end of colonialism.
Most of these things can be called bad, some can be called good, but whatever you want to say about WWI, it was consequential. It brought change that would not have happened otherwise, as war often does. After all; if not for human beings starting and waging war, human beings would still be living in caves in a small corner of Africa.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
but to call the war ’stupid’ and ‘pointless’ is a ridiculous statement…the road towards the creation of Israel…the beginning of the end of colonialism
Nice try. The war was stupid and pointless.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
“Most of these things can be called bad, some can be called good, but whatever you want to say about WWI, it was consequential. It brought change that would not have happened otherwise, as war often does.”
How tautological can you get? I think your comment is even more stupid and pointless than World War I was.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
All wars seem stupid and pointless the farther into history they recede: being victorious in the end just buys you a generation or two. In my lifetime Korea’s gone from “noble struggle” to “pointless waste.” WW2 is somewhat resistant, but that will fade, too, and D-Day and the Battle of Britain will eventually join Arnhem, Hiroshima, Dieppe in the “pointless slaughter” column.
We can say WW1 was pointless now, because all the Belgians and Russians who would have lived a crueller life under German military occupation if there hadn’t been a war are long dead now anyway. But at the time, it mattered to people. Quiggin blaming a few leaders for giving their people what they said they would not live without is historical scapegoating.
In 1914-18, 650,000 Canadians went to war, volunteers all. They didn’t do so because of Poincare or Asquith. They thought their lives would be less rich if Germany won. Maybe they were wrong, but we shouldn’t deny it was their honest collective belief, however mass-hysterical it seems to be to us today.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I hate to agree with “N”, but it’s true: imperialism, war – at this stage of human civilization these things are natural, organic phenomena. It may be stupid from the point of view of individuals, but individuals have no control over it; societies evolve by themselves, and there’s nothing we can do about it; well, for the most part anyway.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
“All wars seem stupid and pointless the farther into history they recede”
Not at all. World War II was still worth fighting, despite some of the atrocities we committed. The Civil War was necessary, and the Revolutionary War was admirable. Hell, even the Greek victory at Salamis is still inspirational, and that was 2500 years ago. Wars tend to seem stupid and pointless to the degree that they were stupid and pointless.
Your comments about WWI specifically show great ignorance about the subject. Germany was not trying to conquer Belgium; it was trying to pass its troops through there to get to France. As for your last point:
“They thought their lives would be less rich if Germany won. Maybe they were wrong, but we shouldn’t deny it was their honest collective belief, however mass-hysterical it seems to be to us today.”
Every single war in history has been fought, at least in part, by soldiers who believed in what they were fighting for. If that fact is enough to justify war in your eyes, even if “maybe they were wrong” (or deceived), then no war could ever be described as unnecessary, which is probably the result you’ve wanted from the beginning. I recommend you listen to “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” a few dozen times, to gain some moral wisdom.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
World War II was still worth fighting
Not for Germany, Italy, and Japan. Or Finland. A war is worth fighting only as long as it’s a war of self-defense.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
In 1914-18, 650,000 Canadians went to war, volunteers all. They didn’t do so because of Poincare or Asquith. They thought their lives would be less rich if Germany won. Maybe they were wrong, but we shouldn’t deny it was their honest collective belief, however mass-hysterical it seems to be to us today.
They were wrong alright. This is what gets me about the “Nationalist” and “Patriotism” things. They are just a way of getting ordinary people into a war that rarely benefits them one way or another.
Make no mistake, war happens because it’s a profitable undertaking for somebody. Be it colonial enterprises, military-industrial complexes, ruling families, whatever.
In previous ages at least grunts were allowed to loot and rape and have a lot of fun when they won. Now they get a semi-holiday in their name.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
“World War II was still worth fighting.
Not for Germany, Italy, and Japan.”
I agree with that, obviously.
“A war is worth fighting only as long as it’s a war of self-defense.”
Well, I think it would have been beneficial for the United States to get involved before Pearl Harbor. Of course, by the same token, if we had “gotten involved” early enough, we could have forestalled the war entirely, so your general principle applies.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s through the prism of writers like the war poets such Wifred Owen. For most of the men who fought it, it was a great victory won against an agressive and brutal German regime, albeit at a terrible cost.Men like my Grandfather who was a stretcher bearer on the Somme at Mametz Wood.
WW1 is not quite as morally clearcut as WW2 but very few people at the time would doubt that that it was a war of national survival against a militeristic agressor.
A British/Welsh view!
November 11th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
“In 1914-18, 650,000 Canadians went to war, volunteers all. They didn’t do so because of Poincare or Asquith. They thought their lives would be less rich if Germany won. Maybe they were wrong, but we shouldn’t deny it was their honest collective belief, however mass-hysterical it seems to be to us today.”
Many of them were much less sure of the rightness of the cause by the time they returned home (to put it mildly). Perhaps it’s because we were on the winning side that it was possible after the fact to acknowledge that the greatness and nobility of the sacrifice made was out of all proportion to the benefits accrued.
“We can say WW1 was pointless now, because all the Belgians and Russians who would have lived a crueller life under German military occupation if there hadn’t been a war are long dead now anyway.”
Well, there would have had to be a war of some kind for them to be under German military occupation. And the Russians ended up under Soviet rule anyhow — another good example of how WWI was immensely consequential but completely pointless (in the sense that it almost completely failed to achieve most of the objectives of most of the participants, and in the sense that many of those objectives were questionable at best in the first place).
November 11th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
the progress of military technology (tanks, air combat)
They didn’t die in vain!
Most of these things can be called bad, some can be called good, but whatever you want to say about WWI, it was consequential. It brought change that would not have happened otherwise, as war often does.
So did the Black Death. And the Holocaust.
After all; if not for human beings starting and waging war, human beings would still be living in caves in a small corner of Africa.
What are you smoking?
November 11th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
“The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s”
umm…I think the Dadaists, T.S Eliot, and Fernand Leger (to name but a few off the top of my head) would disagree with you there.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
“The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s through the prism of writers like the war poets such Wifred Owen.”
Wha?? Owen didn’t write in the 1930s. He was killed in World War I, and it’s not like they only discovered his writings in the 30’s or something, so your claim is false on its face. As for other pre-30’s writers who took a similar view, are you familiar with the names Sassoon, Rosenberg, Woolf, Hemingway, Remarque, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Graves, Ford Madox Ford…?
November 11th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
another good example of how WWI was immensely consequential but completely pointless
It wasn’t pointless. It demonstrated that the socioeconomic system developed in the late 19th century was an evolutionary dead-end, and it had to change. And it did change.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s through the prism of writers like the war poets such Wifred Owen.
This is one of the stupidest, most easily debunked troll comments I’ve ever seen. Makes me wonder which brain-dead right-wing site is peddling this swill.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Neilt
Of course there were individuals and groups of various kinds against the war as indeed there were in WW2 , but that didnt reflect the vast majority of opinion. It was only in the 1930’s that these views started to become general currency until today the recieved opinion is that it was a huge and bloody mistake. That was not the view at the time and frankly it was not the reality . The Kaisers Germany was not Hitlers but it was a un democratic militerisitc power which already had plans to invade and subdue France.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
It wasn’t pointless. It demonstrated that the socioeconomic system developed in the late 19th century was an evolutionary dead-end, and it had to change. And it did change.
My argument is that that is pointless, since pointlessness (in my view at least, and you’re welcome to differ), is about intentionality. Certainly you point to one of the important consequences of the war — but equally certainly none of the European leaders who launched the war did so with the objective of destroying the existing socioeconomic system. Far from it!
In saying that the war was pointless, I’m saying that it failed to achieve the objectives (punishing Serbia, respecting the neutrality of Belgium, etc) that had ostensibly given rise to it. There was a complete mismatch, in other words, between intentions and outcomes.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
“The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s”–not exactly true.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
“Of course there were individuals and groups of various kinds against the war as indeed there were in WW2 , but that didnt reflect the vast majority of opinion.”
Maybe you’d like to give a single source to support this claim? The closest thing to a fact you’ve given was the claim that Wilfred Owen wrote in the 1930s, more than a decade after his death. That was obviously false, but at least it was something you could sink your teeth into. The rest of your argument is, as they say, not even wrong.
In any case, the question of whether a war was a good thing or not is probably not best settled by opinion polls, since the victors tend to overstate the importance of their accomplishments..
November 11th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
In any case you’re moving the goalposts. Your original claim was that “the idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s,” which is untrue. You didn’t say anything about majority support for that view.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
The War poets only begun to be published in the twenties , they were not for obvious reasons published at the time.
Er this isnt a right wing troll its where most modern histrorical analysis of WW1 is now at. A popular version (2003) is covered in Gordon Corrigans ‘Mud. Blood and Poppycock ‘
November 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
WW1 is not quite as morally clearcut as WW2 but very few people at the time would doubt that that it was a war of national survival against a militeristic agressor.
That’s plain rubbish. The British colonial enterprises had interest in fending of competition by Germany’s, which wanted a piece of the profits of looting and oppressing savages . So the RULERS, embarked in an arms race (Battleships were the big thing then), established alliances and made pigeonholed plans with hair triggers, and did plenty of trash talking.
So when AUSTRIA threatened SERBIA over a CROAT terrorist incident, Serbia got the support of RUSSIA, whom had an alliance with FRANCE. Since GERMANY had a pledge to defend Austria from the ruskies, and risked getting sandwiched on two fronts, they had to whack France quickly, and the fastest way was through BELGIUM, which the UK had promised to defend, but the UK was a little short of manpower so they got their lackies to convince farm boys in AUSTRALIA and CANADA that they were fighting for their freedom.
As to how my US grandfather wound up serving in TURKEY is still a mistery.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
“The War poets only begun to be published in the twenties , they were not for obvious reasons published at the time.”
Untrue. Some of Sassoon’s poetry was published during the war (1917). His War Poems was published in 1919. Wilfred Owen was published in 1920. Granted they weren’t published contemporaneously, but you won’t find one that wrote during the war and wasn’t published until the late twenties.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
@BruceR
“In 1914-18, 650,000 Canadians went to war, volunteers all.”
Not to quibble, but they weren’t all volunteers. Don’t forget Borden’s 1917 Union Government (formed solely to campaign on a pro-conscription platform) and the riots that Conscription caused in Montreal. As luck would have it, the great majority of the conscripted men never made it over in time to see fierce fighting…but the fact remains, there was a significant number of Canadians who were forced to serve.
cheers
November 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
It’s a good day to read Owen and Sassoon. I try to do it every year.
Rather than going and digging up some old Paddy Chayefsky, I’ll try to do it myself.
I think you love soldiers and veterans as humans best by rejecting their social role (even if self-chosen) as warriors.
It is a fine and subtle line, and you may fail and offend and be rejected, but the humanity of the fallen dead was not in uniform, and did not serve a cause.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
none of the European leaders who launched the war
My point is that the leaders and their alleged intentions are insignificant. Leaders don’t lead; they can steer a bit, but they don’t control much, IMO.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
The causes of WW1 are complex and as I said not morally clear cut. But from the perspective of Britain and France in 1914 it was a war of national survival. Germany was a clear aggressor and had just invaded France via Belgium. The vast majority of French and British forces thought they were engaged in a just war.
By the I love the poetry of Owen and I would add Edward Thomas and David Jones. WW1 was hell but the fact was that men fought it because they believed it was the right thing to do and by an objective histrorical analysis they were right
November 11th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Tomemos
I wouldnt argue about the date of publication but the reality was that their works ownly made their way into the general domain during the twenties ( How many ordinary people read poetry even between the wars?)The War produced some great poetry but I think seeing the War through poets eyes is a bit of a mistake
November 11th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
“but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, –
my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have
achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.”
Wilfred Owen, “Preface”, posthumous
I spent a lot of time on these lines, trying to find the meaning here of “Prussia”, when Andrew Olmsted was headed for Iraq. I studied the history of the Prussian General staff and general education system, which survives in America to this day.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
If only the U.S. Military was a bit more like the Soviet troops who invaded Hungary and murdered President Nagy, Mr. Abb1 would be throwing flower bouquets at them.
The thing that puzzles me is why other commenters on this blog still pay much attention to what Mr. Abb1 has to say.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
@tomemos:
I refer you to Bethmann-Hollwegg’s Septemberprogramm WRT Germany’s ultimate intentions in Belgium. Also, along with the Mitteleuropa plan and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk re Russia. You can call me names all you like, but I’m not the one showing “great ignorance” on this score.
I didn’t say all wars were worth fighting, merely all their veterans (less the cowards and criminals) equally worthy of remembrance. Different things. Your belief that WW2, or the Civil War, or the Revolution, will stand the test of time as justified seems entirely subjective: as a Canadian, I have particular doubts about the value of the last example. Your founding fathers were our terrorists at the time, but, hey, time heals all.
As for Salamis, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t consider the “inspirational” nature of any particular bloodbath to be a particularly relevant or useful metric. A lot of nameless Persians died so that we could be inspired, who undoubtedly would not have appreciated their sacrifices in those terms.
Thanks for the Pogues link. I always liked that song, but personal experience leaves me skeptical that long-term exposure to Shane McGowan really enhances anyone’s “moral wisdom.”
This is my first Remembrance Day as an Afghan “veteran” actually. Some of my friends couldn’t come home to see it. Their deaths were, taken individually, absolutely and wholly pointless. As people, however, they were absolutely worthy of remembrance, which is something I plan to do every Nov. 11 to come. I’m thinking that’s something of a universal in this regard. Maybe you had to be there.
In saner countries than yours, Remembrance Day has always had these multiple meanings: it’s had a complex set of inferences from the beginning. To some of its first participants it was “Peace Day,” sure, but to recent vets in 1920 or 1921 it was undoubtedly along the lines current vets might happen to see it now. Even the day’s poppy symbol itself is drawn from a nice Canadian war poem which, if you strip all the lyricism out of it, boils down to, “you’d better keep fighting the bastards, or we’re coming back from the dead after you.” Sort of a Zombie Apocalypse motif, really: I appreciate that on its merits. But John Lennon it ain’t.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
As poetry goes, I’m a big fan of William Butler Yeats and his poem of withering contempt for the modern age, entitled “The Second Coming”.
The American blogosphere today is a perfect example of his dictum, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
November 11th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
“Russians who would have lived a crueller life under German military occupation if there hadn’t been a war are long dead now anyway”
What a stupid offensive statement, Bruce. Did you think for a second about what you were saying? Crueller than living under the Bolsheviks, really? And of course, had the Russians not gone to war the only consequence would have been Serbs living under Austro-Hungarian rule. In retrospect that doesn’t look so bad, not even for the Serbs.
The idea that WW1 was a pointless and bloody waste of life is a view that only emerged in the 1930’s through the prism of writers like the war poets such Wifred Owen.
The millions of Russians, Poles, Ukrainias, etc. who supported the February Revolution would probably disagree on that point.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Vanya
A fair point I was only talking about the western front, which I admit is a very limited perspective. WW1 of course means different things to different people because of the huge and largely unintended consequences
November 11th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Neilt:
You’re right, that was the figure in the paper this morning, but that likely includes home service. I should have gone with the estimated 418,000 who served overseas, minus the 1918 conscripts.
Historians differ on how many Canadian conscripts actaully made it overseas in the last few months of the war. I’ve read estimates from 25,000 to nearly zero. So “400,000 volunteers all” would have been more accurate there.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Hector, do you know who Yeats was referring to in that passage you quote?
Bob Roddis: I wrote to Yad Vashem today to see if they will honour you for your “saving Jews via property rights” idea alongside Schindler and other righteous gentiles.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
If WWI was started for no good reason, so anybody that died on it died on vain. The conduct of the war itself was way past criminally inept. The British lost 60,000 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and the High Command still though it was a good idea to keep it up for a month. In Gallipoli they kept sending young men to the meat grinder, even when it was clear to everybody that the mission was a disaster and there were to be no benefits even if it succeeded (note to Obama on Afghanistan).
By the end of the war the armies were breaking, the russian army disolved (”voted with their feet”), the french army troops went on “strike”, and by the time of the armistice the entire german formations were deserting in masse.
These men were not heroes, they were expendable cannon fodder.
The US servicemen had it worse, not only they were drafted to fight a war that had nothing to do with them, but by the time they got back, they couldn’t even buy a beer.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
For most of the men who fought it, it was a great victory won against an agressive and brutal German regime,
If you add up the crimes against humanity committed by each nation as of 1914 I think there’s little argument that Great Britain was a much more brutal regime than Germany. Let’s see – repression in Ireland, destruction of Welsh culture, the Boer war, exploitation of India and Burma, vicious campaigns in Africa against indigenous peoples, destruction of indigenous peoples of Australia in the King’s name, I could go on. That’s balanced against the forced Germanization of Poles and some half hearted attempts at playing white man’s burden in Africa. I’ll take Germany’s moral scorecard any day. Not to mention the vicious crimes of Belgium in the Congo, France’s nasty colonial record, and of course the anti-Semitic and brutal regime in Tsarist Russia. Any objective person interested in human rights and decency would have to take Germany’s side given that line up of thugs. And of course, ironically, in 1914 Germany was by far the best European country to live in if you were a Jew. The society was less anti-Semitic than in France or Russia, and arguably better than class stratified, prejudiced Great Britain.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Henry
The ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ line
Its not actually true . WW1 commanders were grapling with a method of industrialised war no one had envisaged before 1914.
The attack on the Somme was organised to take the pressure off a French army that was close to collapse at Verdun.
Thats not so say that there were not terrible mistakes but its not all as simple as some would have us believe
November 11th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
@Vanya:
I suggest you read up on reactions in the West to the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Germany and the Bolsheviks. I’ve read some of the old papers, and they suggest the March treaty was seen by the general public in Canada and other countries as absolutely the last straw, that re-energized public support for the war in the final months. At the time they were clearly seen as two sides of the same evil coin.
“Had the Russians not gone to war?” Why not say, “Had the Austrians not gone to war with the Serbs?” Or “Had the Germans not?” After all, if the Germans had not gone to war after Russia all that would have happened was Austria would have been booted around Central Europe for a few months. Why is the *Russian* choice to go to war the more significant link in that chain?
November 11th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
“some half-hearted attempts at playing white man’s burden?”
I assume that’s meant to refer to the Herero genocide? Because if it doesn’t, you’re dissembling. And if you are, that’s kind of crass, isn’t it?
The only difference between German behaviour in their colonies and the British in theirs was the size of the opportunity, not intent. I agree the Belgians were in a league of their own in that regard.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
vanya
Speaking as a welshman! Very few countries in 1914 were without colonial sin and that includes the USA.
Britain and France however were almost democracies ( with the exception of womens votes ) As opposed to a militeristic undemocratic ( largely) Germany. German expansionism was clear cut and resulted in the invaision of France , not the other way around!
November 11th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
AJ2: “But from the perspective of Britain and France in 1914 it was a war of national survival.”
Then they were really deceived, because that’s ridiculous. Even Germany’s wildest dreams did not involve conquering France—harming it, yes, but not destroying it as a nation—and as for conquering Britain…it is to laugh; it’s been conclusively shown that Germany never had the slightest intention of invading Britain. France wasn’t worried about “survival” as much as getting revenge for 1870, which is why Versailles was so lopsided.
I agree that Germany was more responsible for starting the war than Britain or France, but the latter two certainly did their part to exacerbate tensions. When you compare the scale of the devastation of World War I to what it was fought for—which was by no means self-preservation for any of the belligerents—it’s clear that the game was not worth the candle.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
destruction of Welsh culture,
Well, ok, but the Prime Minister during WWI was a Welsh-speaking Welshman.
Pob hwyl!
November 11th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
“I didn’t say all wars were worth fighting, merely all their veterans (less the cowards and criminals) equally worthy of remembrance.”
Well, I’m not disagreeing with that. Show me where I am. It simply has never been true that condemning pointless wars for being pointless is a sign of disrespect for veterans. On the contrary, it is impossible to do any honor to veterans by lying about the wars for which they died.
In the other thread I noted that “In Flanders Fields” is a disgusting justification of perpetual war, and it’s no surprise that the Bush administration tried a similar line—”We’ve got to keep fighting in Iraq for the sake of those who already died there.” I agree that veterans should be honored regardless of the war, but the view that the value of the war is subjective, or irrelevant, is what leads one to the view that there’s something honorable in and of itself about sending people to die.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Why is the *Russian* choice to go to war the more significant link in that chain?
Because that is what turned a Balkan dust up into World War I. If Russia doesn’t come to Serbia’s defense than Austria bullies Serbia, no one in GB or France particularly cares to stop them, and that’s the end of it. Ferdinand’s assassination is just a footnote in history books. Germany was the aggressor, in terms of egging Austria on and trying to provoke the war, but there would have very simply been no war if the Russians had been smart enough not to take the bait.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Re: Hector, do you know who Yeats was referring to in that passage you quote?
The Bolshies, of course. I’m not one of them, so he certainly wasn’t referring to me.
Re: Let’s see – repression in Ireland, destruction of Welsh culture, the Boer war, exploitation of India and Burma, vicious campaigns in Africa against indigenous peoples, destruction of indigenous peoples of Australia in the King’s name, I could go on. That’s balanced against the forced Germanization of Poles and some half hearted attempts at playing white man’s burden in Africa.
You have GOT to be kidding me. The Germans wiped out 40% of the population of German Southwest Africa in a single year, driving the Herero and Nama into the desert and poisoning the wells so they would die of thirst. It’s a horrible, horrible death. The French were also horribly cruel on many occasions in Africa, but I’m not aware of anything the British did that comes NEAR the horrible record of Germany’s crimes against the people of modern-day Namibia.
Britain’s crimes against Ireland were of course horrendous, but the worst of them took place in the 17th and again in the 19th century, and were not ongoing in the period 1900-1914. As for India, give me a break. I’m Indian by descent, and I’m happy to say that British colonialism in India was a very necessary evil. British rule over India was tremendously mild- the occasional Amritsar Massacre notwithstanding- by comparison with the cruelties perpetrated on India by homegrown Hindu leaders and foreign Muslim invaders. The Sikhs, the Marathas, the Mughals, the Afghans, and the assorted Nawabs and Nizams were FAR more callous towards the lives of their subjects then the British were (even while many of them, notably the Sikhs, did have a lot of good points). And someone needed to end abominations like the caste system, the zamindari system, and the rule of effete playboy monarchs who smoked opium and cavorted with their concubines while the people starved. And the attempts to spread Christianity by the British were a half-hearted joke compared to the attempt by Aurangzeb, Muhammed of Ghazni, Tamerlane, and a whole sorry slew of foreign conquerors to spread Islam.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
AJ2,
Nope. In the summer of 1916 the germans had placed the western front of defensive mode, they had to deal with a very fluid situation on the eastern front, the Verdun offensive didn’t happen until december.
Either way, my point is that the High Command kept sending young men to their deaths, just because, err … they didn’t want to look “weak”. No real difference from today’s Kaplan and other neocons, that all they advocate is war, and they measure the “moral fiber” of a country by the willingness of their working class young men to die for the benefit of some plutocrats (or defense contractor) .
November 11th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Re: Hector, do you know who Yeats was referring to in that passage you quote?
The Bolshies, of course. I’m not one of them, so he certainly wasn’t referring to me.
Poor, poor Hector.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Why is the *Russian* choice to go to war the more significant link in that chain?
Because the Serbians has already decided to agree with Austrian demands, which was basically an investigation of the serbian intelligence service by austrians, they became defiant only when the russians committed to their defense.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Henry @65;
I think your analysis is inaccurate. As I understand it, WWI goes as follows:
A.: Serbian nationalists in Bosnia assassinate Arch Duke Ferdinand.
B.: Austria demands Serbia do a number of things as retribution, essentially demanding that they cede their sovereignty.
C.: Serbia makes a (by most everyone’s standards) fair offer but Austria says ‘no dice.’ Austria declares war and begins shelling Belgrade.
D.: Russia, which had an existing mutual protection pact, declares war on Austria.
E.: Germany, which had a mutual protection pact with Austria declares war on Russia.
F.: France, which had a mutual protection pact with Russia declares war with Germany and Austria and vice-versa.
G.: Britain, which had a mutual protection with France declares war on Germany and Austria and vice-versa.
F.: German sends a boat to Istanbul and through some shenanigans I don’t fully understand, gets the Ottomans to side with the Axis and vice-versa. Britain and France see a chance for a power grab of the sick man of Europe after the ’short little war.’
As to your point, there was basically no way the Austrian ruler Franz Joseph was going to not declare war on Serbia – for a variety of personal reasons and because they were losing their grip on the Balkan states. Russia, who could of all the European powers least afford to go to war, basically honored their mutual suicide pact with Serbia.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
The back and forth arguments about the causes of WW 1 generally miss the root cause, namely the desire of the Kaiser to challenge the British Navy on the high seas and thence the development of the great dreadnaught race with Great Britain and Germany racing to see who could build the most such ships. One of the dittys going the rounds in Great Britain in the 10 year period before 1914 was, “We want 8 and we won’t wait,” meaning that the public demanded that 8 dreadnaughts be ordered in that particular year. The German building program, which Bismarck warned the Kaiser against, only to be fired for his unwanted advice, forced Great Britain into alliance with France and Russia. Had the Kaiser not insisted on the dreadnaught building program, the alliance would not have occurred and France would have had to abstain from getting into a war with Germany over the actions in the Balkans (Bismarck was once quoted as saying that the next European war would be started by some damn fool incident in the Balkans). With France abstaining, Russia would also have abstained and the argument between Austria and Serbia would have undoubtedly petered out as both countries were economic basket cases at that time. Arms races have an unfortunate tendency to lead to wars. The fact that the nuclear arms race between the US and the former Soviet Union didn’t do so was because MAD caused both sides to abstain.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Tom Russell’s song “Veterans Day” sums up perfectly the way I feel when this day of remembrance comes each year. Find it at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA5HaUkeRoU or just do a YouTube search using Tom Russell Veterans Day.
If you don’t know the song, its well worth taking a couple of minutes to listen, especially today.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
N.
This is the ultimatum below , which is pretty humiliating but not national existence threatening. And as for chronology, all major belligerents went to war simultaneously at the beginning of August, the way the Schiffen Plan, and the French and Russians equivalent were set up, they didn’t allow for any wait and see. The mere thought that Russia was to mobilize (and consequently France) was enough to trigger the german mobilization, they couldn’t afford they rivals get a leg up on them.
The Royal Serbian Government shall further undertake:
(1) To suppress any publication which incites to hatred and contempt of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the general tendency of which is directed against its territorial integrity;
(2) To dissolve immediately the society styled “Narodna Odbrana,” to confiscate all its means of propaganda, and to proceed in the same manner against other societies and their branches in Serbia which engage in propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Royal Government shall take the necessary measures to prevent the societies dissolved from continuing their activity under another name and form;
(3) To eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, both as regards the teaching body and also as regards the methods of instruction, everything that serves, or might serve, to foment the propaganda against Austria-Hungary;
(4) To remove from the military service, and from the administration in general, all officers and functionaries guilty of propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy whose names and deeds the Austro-Hungarian Government reserve to themselves the right of communicating to the Royal Government;
(5) To accept the collaboration in Serbia of representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Government for the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the territorial integrity of the Monarchy;
(6) To take judicial proceedings against accessories to the plot of the 28th of June who are on Serbian territory; delegates of the Austro-Hungarian Government will take part in the investigation relating thereto;
(7) To proceed without delay to the arrest of Major Voija Tankositch and of the individual named Milan Ciganovitch, a Serbian State employee, who have been compromised by the results of the magisterial inquiry at Serajevo;
(8) To prevent by effective measures the cooperation of the Serbian authorities in the illicit traffic in arms and explosives across the frontier, to dismiss and punish severely the officials of the frontier service at Shabatz Loznica guilty of having assisted the perpetrators of the Serajevo crime by facilitating their passage across the frontier;
(9) To furnish the Imperial and Royal Government with explanations regarding the unjustifiable utterances of high Serbian officials, both in Serbia and abroad, who, notwithstanding their official position, have not hesitated since the crime of the 28th of June to express themselves in interviews in terms of hostility to the Austro-Hungarian Government; and, finally,
(10) To notify the Imperial and Royal Government without delay of the execution of the measures comprised under the preceding heads.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Henry,
i believe Article 4 was the the only term the Serbians could not concede to since the Austrian government effectively wanted the subjective right to remove members of the WS4bian government. Article 5 further allowed, basically Austrian handlers inside the Serbian government. Effectively, Serbia would have to cede sovereignty in all but name.
I think you cannot underestimate Franz Joseph’s psychology here. His wife was killed by an anarchist, his brother was killed by Mexico, he outlived his sons and he’d ruled Austria for 64 years watching German confiscate a third of their territory. The ‘empire’ had been teetering on the verge of collapse and watching with growing dread the unrest and wars in the Balkans.
They wanted a war and god knows they got one.
As for the dreadnaught issue, I really thing that was a sideshow. I read Mr. Massie’s (excelent if a little long) book about this episode as well as other books on the subject. I think England and German really got dragged down the sink hole. Once the war got started, they and France were in the drivers seat but WWI was really a war no one actually wanted. That was really the tragedy here. It was completely avoidable.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
What about ANZAC day, celebrating the contributions of Australia and New Zealand to WWI, where their armies were slaughtered almost to the man on the beaches of Gallipoli? It’s definitely not a chest-thumping, martial pride, drive the tanks around town sort of holiday over there.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
What a grand idea. Let’s turn Veteran’s Day into Left-Wing Foreign Policy Angst Day. That will really go over well in Flyover Country. The laughably stupid content of about a third of MY’s posts on any given day almost convinces me he hasn’t ventured much further than the U Street Corridor or Adams Morgan in about a decade….Well, apart from the sporadic trip to Scandinavian and Nordic countries that exemplify the post-materialist urban fantasies of his most vivid wet dreams.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Re N
I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with Mr. N relative to the importance of the dreadnaught race between Britain and Germany. Absent this arms race, it is highly doubtful that Britain would have gotten into bed with France and Russia, especially Russia which was considered a despotic and uncivilized nation by much of the British establishment. Given the German challenge, the British had no alternative. Without British support, France would not have challenged Germany. In this regard, the French government was undoubtedly correct as, absent the introduction of the BEF into the gap between von Klucks army and von Bulows’ army north of the Marne, the Germans would not have retreated and France would probably have lost the Battle of the Marne in September of 1914.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Re HAL
The saddest part of the entire Gallipoli debacle is that the British/Australian/New Zealand force actually had achieved surprise. The heights above the beaches were totally unguarded by the Turks and an aggressive move to occupy them might well have lead to an allied victory and ultimately forced Turkey out of the war. Unfortunately, as was the case with Anzio in WW 2, an incompetent general, Ian Hamilton, was placed in command and the opportunity was thrown away (one can only speculate as to what the outcome would have been at Anzio if George Patton had been in command instead of John Lucas).
November 11th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Personally, instead of taking a minute of silence or whatever, I usually recognize Remembrance Day by taking about 45 minutes to listen to Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. That usually brings the right sentiments to mind.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
“The back and forth arguments about the causes of WW 1 generally miss the root cause, namely the desire of the Kaiser to challenge the British Navy on the high seas and thence the development of the great dreadnaught race with Great Britain and Germany racing to see who could build the most such ships”
bullshit
The Entente Cordiale was 2 yrs b4 Dreadnaught was laid down, Britain had given up “Splendid Isolation” with its mutual defense pact with Japan, the reason for the Entente was that France would facilitate détente between Britain & Russia, British aid in destroying Germany was France’s price for this
In addition to a massive number of pre-Dreadnaughts, The Grand Fleet had a 3 to 2 advantage in Dreadnaughts over the High Seas Fleet in 1914. Germany in fact continued to build pre-Dreadnaughts until 1908 – 4 years after the Entente Cordiale
In contrast the US had parity with the Royal Navy yet Britain somehow managed to avoid declaring war on the US
““We want 8 and we won’t wait,” meaning that the public demanded that 8 dreadnaughts be ordered in that particular year”
4 Dreadnaughts + 4 Battlecruisers – ok that’s nit-picking
But equating BC’s with BB’s as “Capital Ships” was part of a political campaign slogan that lead to BC’s being used for jobs that they were not suited for, resulting in needless loss of blood and treasure on the 1st day of Jutland
November 11th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I wonder if we’ll ever have a V-GWOT Day?
November 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
SLC,
Your argument is prima facia. The dreadnaught arms race – itself a first as far as I know in world history whereby two great nations essentially engaged in cold war style peaceful military mobilization- was certainly destabalizing to European relations. Ironically, during the war these expensive bahemoths weren’t even used except for the Battle of Jutland (’cause they were too expensive to use). As Barbara Tuchman pointed out, Germany, a traditionally land based power – and great one at that – was a weaker country with a navy than they were without one. And certainly, German-Anglo relations were very good prior to the Kaiser Wilheim’s fantasies of German naval might formulated after reading Alfred Mahan’s book. These were two countries who’s general political and economic interests didn’t really conflict until they got into a competition over who could build more of these stupid, useless boats.
That said, I think England certainly and even Wilheim-ruled Germany had no real intention of actually going to war with one another had it been left up to them. Liberals ran England and after Wilheim’s panic attack in 1909, there seemed to be a little lessening of militaristic steam in Germany. And the arms race was bankrupting both countries. France and Russia undoubtedly didn’t want war because they were so poorly prepared for it.
I really think, if not for a lone gunman in Sarejevo happening to have coffee in a cafe where Ferdinand’s car happened to stall out in front of at just the right moment, WWI probably wouldn’t have happened. But it did, so it’s a moot point.
History is made of such tragedies.
November 11th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
[...] Filed under: Politics — by teofilo @ 9:35 pm Matthew Yglesias has two good posts on Armistice Day and its problematic transformation into Veterans’ Day. I think [...]
November 11th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
“Absent this arms race, it is highly doubtful that Britain would have gotten into bed with France and Russia, especially Russia which was considered a despotic and uncivilized nation by much of the British establishment”
Considering that Britain got into bed with France and Russia before the arms race, I’d say that this is disproved
1904 Entente Cordiale
1906 HMS Dreadnaught launched
1908 1st German dreadnaught launched
November 11th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
The saddest part of the entire Gallipoli debacle is that the British/Australian/New Zealand force actually had achieved surprise. The heights above the beaches were totally unguarded by the Turks and an aggressive move to occupy them might well have lead to an allied victory and ultimately forced Turkey out of the war.
Hamilton wasn’t *that* bad.
The problem was that he was on Britain’s B or C team.
A certain Mustafa Kemal, on the other hand, was arguably the best Turkish general since Alp Arslan.
And it should be pointed out that at Gallipoli, the Turks lost more men than the Empire forces. Which is staggering, considering that you could hold the peninsula with guys standing on the ridges pushing rocks down.
Nah, it had to do with the crazy performance of ANZAC (which Kemal Ataturk deeply respected) and the willingness of the Turks to fight like demons. It’s hard not to admire the two sides’ tenacity, in the way that I admire the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac at the Mule Shoe. But with the added benefit of not feeling uneasy at respecting slaveocrat racist fucks.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
[...] In that regard, I’m glad to see that others recognize the true cost of war as well: Atrios, Yglesias. [...]
November 12th, 2009 at 12:32 am
I’m with you on this.
The real effect of having three days a year where we venerate veterans is that no one cares about this one.
The Fourth of July is the big one. Its not technically for veterans, but the reality of how its celebrated, at least in my area of the country, is that its a day for celebrating veterans who are alive.
And Memorial Day is for celebrating veterans who are dead.
And Veterans Day is for being angry when you go to the bank because you forgot it was a federal holiday because your workplace doesn’t honor it and no one you know even notices it until some service they wanted isn’t available. Then you grumble about how government workers get it easy with all their cushy holidays no one else has.
I think duplication of holidays cheapens them.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:45 am
The real effect of having three days a year where we venerate veterans is that no one cares about this one.
You can blame Thanksgiving and Halloween for glutting the holiday schedule too.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Most of you fellas here are long on trivia and short on dialectics. But the trivia is just that: trivia, insignificant details.
It doesn’t matter what this or that politician (or even a monarch) said or (allegedly) wanted; even an absolute monarch can’t launch a war (of this scale anyway) on a whim. If the circumstances are not right – he’ll be disposed or assassinated, or his state will fall apart immediately. And the opposite is true too: politicians can’t stop wars unless the circumstances dictate that it should end.
It’s all driven by socioeconomic forces and the contradictions they produce.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Re Jeff452
1. Actually, the battleship competition between Great Britain and Germany began long before the dreadnaught race began. The Kaiser had decided to challenge Great Britain on the seas toward the end of the 19th century. This is what drove Britain into the Triple Entente. However, because the development of the dreadnaught battleship made all the pre-dreadnaughs obsolete, the competition between the two countries greatly intensified after 1905 because they were both essentially starting from scratch, thus negating the British advantage of having started construction first.
2. The Battle of Jutland has been fought and refought numerous times by any number of armchair strategists over the years. Tactically, it was a German victory but strategically, it was a British victory because the German High Seas Fleet retreated to Wilhelmshaven and never emerged again until after the Armistice when it was escorted into Scapa Flow and scuttled, thus proving Bismarck right.
3. In a fleet action, the pre-dreadnaughs had no fighting value, except as fat targets.
4. The 3 to 2 advantage of the British fleet at Jutland was even greater then the numbers indicated as the British fleet mounted heavier guns then did the German fleet (13.5 and 15 inch guns vs 11 and 12 inch guns). However, this was partly compensated for by the German ships being better protected ships, and having better optical range finders (as Holloway Frost has written, the German hit ratio was almost 3 times the British hit ratio, albeit both sides’ shooting was abysmal). In the case of the battlecruisers, the Germans were far superior in both accuracy and protection as three British battlecruisers were blown up by single shell hits while the only German battlecruiser to be lost required numerous hits to sink her. In addition, the British shells were defective in that they broke up when hitting at an oblique angle, instead of penetrating the German armor.
Re Greg
1. I think it is the considered opinion of most military historians (c.f. General Fuller for instance) that General Hamiltons’ failure to occupy the heights above Gallipoli before the arrival of Turk reinforcements was a mistake of monumental proportions. Had he done so, it is quite likely that the invading army could have defeated the Turk reinforcements on their arrival and quite possibly eventually forced Turkey out of the war. Forcing Turkey out of the war, which was the goal of the entire enterprise, would have opened the Dardanelles to Entente shipping, allowing them to resupply the Russians with munitions. In this regard, it should be noted that the Brusilov offensives were not stopped by German/Austrian forces but by their running out of ammunition as the Russian factories had insufficient capacity to supply their needs.
2. It is useful to compare General Hamiltons’ actions at Gallipoli with General Lucas’ actions at Anzio in WW 2. In both cases, timorous generals, who really didn’t believe in their missions, threw away an opportunity to shorten the wars because they were more concerned with not losing then they were with winning (or for that matter, Admiral Jellicos’ actions at Jutland as he too was more concerned with not losing then he was with winning).
November 12th, 2009 at 8:41 am
My understanding, heavily dependent on La Grande Illusion, has always been that The Great War was the last aristocratic territorial dalliance along the lines of the Franco-Prussian War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Louis XV wars, or the Hundred Years War.
That is to say, none of the Nations involved served to gain anything at all from the war, only the States had anything to gain–and l’Etat, c’etait lui!
Monarchs were fighting monarchs with peasants, hoping to gain wealth and prestige for the monarchy; the thinking was the Medieval motivation seen in The Tudors. However, the invention of much faster ways of killing people resulted in unprecedented deaths.
After the Armistice, there was a worldwide populist democratic movement based on the remembrance that war is bad for the Nation but good for the State; thus, it’s sad that in America the holiday that remembered that was renamed, and now we’ve completely forgotten it.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:42 am
If MR Yglesias wants to spend this day ,or any other day, thinking about how futile war is, then i will join him. I also will remember our soldiers and the soldiers of our allies.
Why not also the soldiers of our onetime enemies?
Why not the civilians who had no stake in violence?
Are they not also worthy of your respectful memory?
November 12th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Re: Poor, poor Hector.
Huh? Every commentary I’ve seen on “The Second Coming” says that he was referring to the Bolsheviks. Who do you think he was referring to?
Re: Well, apart from the sporadic trip to Scandinavian and Nordic countries that exemplify the post-materialist urban fantasies of his most vivid wet dreams.
The odd thing being that one of those Nordic countries, Finland, has quite a fighting spirit in them, as they demonstrated when they beat back a Russian invasion during WWII.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Kind of pointless to mention, but Holerweg turned out to be notably less evil in the further research (and not just the one by those right wing nobleman type historians) after Fischers early one.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:59 am
The odd thing being that one of those Nordic countries, Finland, has quite a fighting spirit in them, as they demonstrated when they beat back a Russian invasion during WWII.
Well, they managed to bloody the Red Army during its initial invasion in 1939. But eventually the Soviets managed to overwhelm the Finns despite horrendous losses and the Finns had to sue for peace and give up the land which the Soviets had demanded. And then the Finns hitched their wagons to Hitler and participated in Barbarossa and the siege of Leningrad. Once the Soviets went on the offensive they started to push the Finns back to their territory and the Finns again decided it wasn’t such a great idea and sued for peace a second time. So, I don’t think it was such a great victory for the Finns. They were just lucky they didn’t become a wholly owned Soviet satellite for the next 45 years.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Miles@87,
Your description of WWI as monarchs fighting monarchs using peasants is just flat wrong on the facts. Communists defined it that way but its utter nonsense.
For one, most of the soldiers fighting the war were not peasants. Maybe they were a generation removed from being so, but most young men who died in the war were literate, many were college educated and some came from upper class families. Many men were undoubtedly ‘peasants’, but many were not. Most were volunteers anyway and would have found such a description of them insulting. They fought for patriotism, not the divine right of kings.
Also, while Russia was ruled by an absolute monarch, the other combatants really weren’t. Germany had a monarch in the Kaiser, but he had to share power with a democratically elected body that controlled the treasury. two years into the war and the generals alone were running Germany, not the more or less deposed Kaiser. England was symbolically a monarchy, but otherwise a democracy. France had no royal family. Austria’s situation was complicated. Ultimately it didn’t matter. Once all out war begins, its the general’s show, not the politicians or kings. Same as it ever was.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I’m confused about the “World War I was pointless and obscene” talk here. There is, of course, the view that WWI was the result of events spinning out of control, spawning a war no one really wanted. I don’t think most scholars share that view. Rather, the war was one the kaiser and Germany military was intent on having, to cut France down to size and cement Germany’s dominance of continental Europe. British foreign policy had always been based on preventing a single power from acquiring continental dominence–that’s way there was a Waterloo. That France would defend its territory, and the Britain would intervene on France’s side was always inevitable. (I’ve completely bypassed the Eastern front here–that was a German war of agression, too.) You can say that the human toll from the war was so great that France would have been better off by quickly suing for peace, and the UK better off by not intervening: that’s what Niall Ferguson argues in The Pity of War. That view may well be right, but no imaginable Frech or British government would have taken it. Moreover, it’s deeply informed by hindsight bias. No one making decisions at the time knew how grim the war would be. No one could have known what the even grimmer (Hitler and Stalin) longer-term consequences would be.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Matt, Germany’s aim was to cut Russia down to size. WWI was really all about Germany vs. Russia. The Anglophone world is very myopic on that point. Just look at the casualty figures, they speak for themselves. Germany needed to weaken France and Great Britain because they were both trying to prevent Germany from dominating Eastern Europe. The Drang nach Osten was Germany’s primary motivation for starting the war though. France could have easily stayed out of the war by refusing to live up to her treaty obligations to Russia. That would have resulted in a smaller contained war that probably would have ended fairly quickly with Germany controlling the Baltics, most of the Ukraine and Russian Poland. And of course creating a Grossdeutschland with the resources to challenge the UK as a global power. Whether preventing that outcome was worth the blood that France and the UK spent is a different question.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The stone men on Water Street still cry for the day
When the pride of the city went marching away
A thousand men slaughtered, to hear the King say
Enlist ye Newfoundlanders and come follow me
November 12th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
SLC,
The reason I brought that up was that the real timid commanders were not wearing generals’ uniforms, it was the Admiralty and the leadership of the Mediterranean fleet units.
The absolute best time to have taken the straits was like two or three months earlier, when the Dardanelles were hopelessly unprepared, since most of the troops were no where near the capital. The Brits had whipped everything the Turks had sent out, and the Royal Navy could have steamed straight up to Constantinople, obliterating anything that tried to get in their way. That was what the old Royal Navy would have done.
However, the Admirals were far too worried about the likelihood of losing a few ships to mines, perhaps even one of the battleships.
This, frankly, was infuriatingly stupid, since the risk – losing part of the fleet – was far less than the potential reward – control of the Bosporus and thus the southern route to Russia.
Hell, if they felt like they needed more men after steaming up, they would have had no problem getting Russians to garrison Constantinople.
Instead they called it a day, steamed back to Alexandria, and then sat on their hands.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
“…the development of the dreadnaught battleship made all the pre-dreadnaughs obsolete…”
So sayeth Churchill, but then again, when he wanted to exaggerate the German threat, he counted German pre-dreadnoughts as part of their strength, while at the same time not counting British pre-dreads that were more recent
“The Kaiser had decided to challenge Great Britain on the seas toward the end of the 19th century”
The british launched a dozen battle ships between 1898 and 1900
The Germans launched 2
Between 1895 and 1900
The British launched 21
The Germans 4
November 12th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
jeff, it’s a hell of a lot easier to simply quote Blackadder.
“George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think we can we can be entirely absolved from blame on the imperialistic front.”
November 12th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Re Greg @ # 96
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Greg that a follow up invasion using British and French army troops in support of the battleship bombardment of the Turkish forts (by the way, it should be noted that the bombardment was quite successful as the guns in the forts were silenced) would have been even more effective then Hamilton occupying the heights above the invasion beaches on the Gallipoli peninsula. However, it was the high command of the British Army who refused to release any divisions to follow up the bombardment. It should be noted that the original plan devised by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, called for a military invasion with army troops after the guns of the forts had been silenced. The entire episode was an example of the incompetence of the high command of the British Army, only equaled by the incompetence of the French high command who devised the abortion known as Plan 17.
Re jeff452
1. It is the considered opinion of most naval historians and strategists that the predreadnaught battleships were useless in a fleet action as they carried only 4 guns in their main batteries as opposed to 8 or more carried by the dreadnaughts. They also had obsolete fire control systems rendering them less then useless, except as fat targets. That was the whole idea of Fisher ordering HMS Dreadnaught as it made the entire German fleet obsolete. Of course, it also made the entire British fleet obsolete. I would also point out that the dreadnaught battleships all had steam turbine systems while the pre-dreadnaught battleships all had reciprocating engines, giving the former 2 to 3 knot speed advantage, in addition to providing a gun platform with less engine vibration.
2. Do the figures for the number of German pre-dreadnaughts include those ordered in addition to those launched? A ship ordered in 1895 might not be put into service for 3 or 4 years, including construction time, crew training, working out the kinks, etc. Sometimes the kinks are never entirely worked out as evidenced by the King George V class battleships of WW 2 which had a quadruple 14 inch turret that never worked right, even on the last such ship, HMS Duke of York.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Re Jeff452
According to the web site linked to below, the German Navy ordered a total of 23 pre-dreadnaught battleships in 5 classes between 1890 and 1904. That would appear to be a significant effort on the part of the Kaiser to raise a challenge to British naval superiority and something that the British Admiralty had to consider. It should be recalled that many of the British warships were on foreign stations, while all the German ships were berthed in Germany (the German Navy was content to deploy smaller ships, such as von Spees’ squadron, on foreign station).
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/pre-dread.htm
November 12th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
“It is the considered opinion of most naval historians and strategists that the predreadnaught battleships were useless in a fleet action as they carried only 4 guns in their main batteries as opposed to 8 or more carried by the dreadnaughts”
Yet the Germans had pre-dreads in the battle line at Jutland
“…army troops in support of the battleship bombardment of the Turkish forts (by the way, it should be noted that the bombardment was quite successful as the guns in the forts were silenced)…”
Useless pre-dread battleships I might add
“Do the figures for the number of German pre-dreadnaughts include those ordered in addition to those launched? A ship ordered in 1895 might not be put into service for 3 or 4 years, including construction time, crew training, working out the kinks”
Launched – It should also be noted that although Japan, the US, and Italy all ordered Dreadnaught-type battleships before Britain did, Britain was able to easily launch and complete hers first. And American shipyards were faster then German ones
“According to the web site linked to below, the German Navy ordered a total of 23 pre-dreadnaught battleships in 5 classes between 1890 and 1904”
Oh hell! now I got to dig out my copy of Conway’s, give me a few hours – I could be wrong but 2 dozen sounds like its counting the old coast defense ships
And from the Majestic’s of 1895 to the London’s of 1900 the British launched about 2 dozen, not counting the post 1900 pre-dreads
November 12th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Per Conway’s 1860-1905
Britain
Royal Sovereign’s – 14000 t – 7 ships – launched 1891-92
Hood’s – 14000 t – 1 ship – launched 1891
Centurion’s – 10000 t – 2 ships – launched 1892
Renown’s – 12000 t – 1 ship – launched 1895
Majestic’s – 14000 t – 9 ships – 1894-96
Canopus’s – 13000 t – 6 ships – 1897-99
Formidable’s – 14000 t – 3 ships – 1898-99
London’s – 14000 t – 5 ships – 1899-02
Duncan’s – 13000 t – 6 ships – 1901
King Edward VII’s – 15000 t – 8 ships – 1903-05
Swiftshire’s – 12000 t – 2 ships 1903 (purchased from Chile to keep them out of Russian hands)
Lord Nelson’s – 16000 t – 2 ships – 1906
Total pre 1904 – 50
Germany
Brandenburg’s – 10000 t – 4 ships – 1891-2
Kaiser’s – 11000 t – 4 ships – 1896-1900
Wittelsbach’s – 12000 t – 5 ships – 1900-01
Braunschweig’s – 14000 t – 5 ships – 1902-4
Deutschland’s – 14000 t – 5 ships – 1905-06
Total pre 1904 – 18 and smaller ships then the British until the Braunschweig’s
i’ll follow with a ps a little later – sorry if I’m being a bore but im one of those “battleships are cool” guys
November 12th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
PS
Sorry to be beating a dead horse re: the naval arms race, my main argument is that the Great War was not a war between Britain and Germany – it was a war between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance
Russia did not declare war on Austria-Hungary to protect British sea-power, and France did not mobilize against Germany because of Tirpitz’s 1908 Naval Law, British participation in the Entente was an afterthought to the war plans of the continental powers
The naval arms race from the building of “The Great White Fleet” to the Washington Naval Treaty is an interesting topic with much to teach us. It has strong parallels to the nuclear arms race of our own time – both in the lack of practical usefulness in an actual war (Dreadnaughts were too expensive to risk being sunk by a torpedo, If Hippler & Scheer had won Jutland decisively situation on the western front wouldn’t have changed; the US couldn’t use its nuclear arsenal in Viet Nam without becoming an international pariah, Israel’s bombs don’t make the west bank a quiet & peaceful place) and in the 3rd world proliferation issue (Iran wants the bomb because big important countries that others take seriously have the bomb; Greece wanted battleships for the same reason, even if more cruisers & destroyers would have been far more effective in the Balkan War)
Of course Germany wanted to have a navy, and “having a navy” means being able to send it more then a few miles from your coast without asking British permission. As far as Britain “needing” a large navy because of its far flung empire when Germany didn’t “need” hers, well the Germans had to worry about the Tsars’ Baltic fleet (a respectable force before cousin Nicky sent it to be sunk on the far side of the world) shelling the east coast while the RN shelled the west
The Great White Fleet WAS built as a direct challenge to “Britannia rules the waves”, and the US didn’t “need” a huge navy any more then Germany did, but nobody blames Teddy Roosevelt for starting WWI
November 13th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Re Jeff452
1. I think that this subject has now been beaten to death. However, Mr. Jeff452s’ comment relative to the use of British and French pre-dreadnaughts in the bombardment of the Turkish Forts should be put in context. The pre-dreadnaughts were used for this purpose because they were expendable. In fact, many commentators have sharply criticized the British high command for deploying the Queen Elizabeth along with the pre-dreadnaughts for the bombardment, risking the most modern ship in the British Navy at a time when the balance of power vis a vis the German Navy was only moderately in the British favor (I would remind Mr. Jeff452 that First Sea Lord John Fisher took a calculated risk in sending two of his battlecruisers to the South Atlantic to engage von Spees’ squadron, a deployment that the aforementioned Jellicoe strongly objected to).
2. The notion that the ships the Russians sent to be sunk at Tsushima posed some kind of a credible threat to the German battle fleet is laughable. These ships were not only obsolete but were manned by untrained crews and were poorly maintained. One only has to read histories of their voyage to Tsushima and their totally inept performance against the Japanese battle fleet there to realize this.
3. I would note that Jellicoes’ Grand Fleet did not include any pre-dreadnaughts. The presence of this class of ships in the German fleet only bespoke the numerical inferiority relative to the British.
4. I have never claimed that WW 1 was a war solely between Great Britain and Germany; such a claim would be ludicrous. My claim is that if Germany had not engaged in a naval arms race with Great Britain, the latter would not have joined the Triple Entente and the war probably would not have occurred as France would not have challenged Germany sans British support and Russia would not have challenged Germany sans French support.
November 13th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
”I think that this subject has now been beaten to death”
Yeah, probably, but I have enjoyed this discussion, don’t get to talk about this stuff in “real life”
Does anybody mind if I continue?
“I would remind Mr. Jeff452 that First Sea Lord John Fisher took a calculated risk in sending two of his battlecruisers to the South Atlantic to engage von Spees’ squadron, a deployment that the aforementioned Jellicoe strongly objected to”
This was my original comment about “we want 8 & we wont wait”. The BC concept was not a lightly armored BB, but a very large cruiser with BB size – it was designed to run down enemy Armored Cruisers & commerce raiders and kill them. “speed=protection” meant that it could run from anything with BB size guns (the ex-Goben spent a lot of time running from Russian pre-dreads in the Black Sea while under Turkish colors) and it had stand-off range against anything with less then BB size guns
But it was sold to the public as a “capital ship” so they had to form a division in the battle fleet and slug it out toe to toe with their opposite numbers
“The notion that the ships the Russians sent to be sunk at Tsushima posed some kind of a credible threat to the German battle fleet is laughable.”
Sure, but you’re proposing that Germany was being provocative by building a battle fleet, the Russians would have made short work of the old Odin class coast defense ships
“One only has to read histories of their voyage to Tsushima and their totally inept performance against the Japanese battle fleet there to realize this”
Sending a fleet to charge from the Baltic all the way to the Sea of Japan with no resupply and repair facilities along the way was a very difficult thing to do. (the Japanese hoped that we would blindly charge across the Pacific after Pearl Harbor, but the lesson of 1905 was not lost on King). But of course from Riga to Stettin isn’t hard at all
“My claim is that if Germany had not engaged in a naval arms race with Great Britain, the latter would not have joined the Triple Entente and the war probably would not have occurred as France would not have challenged Germany sans British support and Russia would not have challenged Germany sans French support.”
French politicians wanted war with Germany the way the PNAC neo-cons wanted war with Iraq – if somehow prevented from war in 1914, then they would find an excuse for war in 1916
They didn’t think they needed Britain for victory, only that they would have to redraw their mobilization plans without the previously agreed upon 6 divisions that the British would supply
The French firmly believed that the Elan of the French soldier would guarantee victory because of his bayonet and snappy red trousers – no that wasn’t snark – when the General staff looked at the lessons of the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars and proposed a more practical Horizon-Bleu uniform in 1910, the National Assembly exploded with rage that taking away the bright red pants would weaken national security
PS
Thank you, I have enjoyed this discussion
November 13th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
”…but a very large cruiser with BB size – it was…”
Should read
”…but a very large cruiser with BB size guns – it was…”
November 13th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Re Jeff452
1. The German battlecruisers held up pretty well as they were better protected than even Beattys’ flagship, the Lion, that was much larger. It took a number of heavy shell hits to sink the one German battlecruiser that was lost.
2. I haven’t read Barbara Tuchmans’ book, “The Guns of August,” for a long time but I seem to recall that French mobilization began only after the French Government was assured of British backing. A French politician who was under the delusion that France could win a war against Germany absent British support belonged in a mental hospital. As it was, it was only the incompetence of von Moltke dispatching 5 divisions to the Eastern front, thus creating a gap between von Klucks’ and von Bulows’ armies that prevented a German victory in the West; if the BEF had not been available to march into that gap, the Germans might have won anyway. The irony was that the Battle of Tannenburg was fought and won by von Hindenberg and Ludendorf before the reinforcements arrived and the battle of the Marne was fought and lost while those divisions were still entrained.
November 14th, 2009 at 7:42 am
“The German battlecruisers held up pretty well as they were better protected than even Beattys’ flagship, the Lion, that was much larger”
But still not as well protected as the BBs
BCs were “all big gun” cruisers the way that the dreadnoughts were “all big gun” battleships. They were intentionally designed as “cruiser-killers” – sending BCs to deal with the threat von Spee’s ACs posed to the South American food convoys shouldn’t have been controversial, it should have been a no-brainer
“I seem to recall that French mobilization began only after the French Government was assured of British backing.”
Well not really, the Anglo-French mobilization plans required the French to pull back from the Belgian border to leave a space for the British. They did so and began badgering the British that they were now vulnerable without the BEF because they followed the plan saying “now you have to go to war” when the Germans crossed the Belgian border
But that’s really beside the point, mobilization was like a “launch on warning” policy, you cant change your plans in mid-crisis. Without Britain in the Entante, the French would have had a different mobilization plan
“A French politician who was under the delusion that France could win a war against Germany absent British support belonged in a mental hospital.”
Sure, but none the less they believed it. The world would have been better off if most of Europe’s leaders were locked away in rubber rooms in 1914