One hundred years ago today...
At 11 am on November 11, 1918, the guns went silent on the Western Front. Europe and the rest of the world started the war back in 1914 rooted in the traditions of the 19th century, with French cavalry wearing Napoleonic-era outfits, and merry bands of recruits traipsing into the August-September Battle of the Frontiers in scarlet-colored pantaloons and blue uniforms with marching bands following them. The war was expected on both sides to be over by Christmas and no one, especially the officers, could envision protracted battles, the dominance of machine guns, years of trench warfare, flamethrowers, poison gas, tanks, artillery barrages, rotting corpses of war horses and the like.
By 1918, the Old World was no more. Three major empires had disintegrated, and the war impacted six continents. The 20th century had fully arrived, with its brutal, mechanized, and horrifyingly efficient new ways of killing that were introduced over the four years of war. War was no longer glorious and the notion of individual honor and esprit d’guerre that drove so many to enlist early on was quickly replaced with scenes of anonymous, horrible, brutal, and, perhaps worst of all, largely uncontrollable and fortuitous, death.
I would argue that 1918 was the worst year for humanity of all of the 20th century. There was the large-scale death and casualty rate of the Great War itself in its last year, and also the Russian Civil War that was really ramping up now that Russia had left the war in 1917 and Lenin was in a precarious state of power. Civilians were also dying en masse as a result of starvation and deprivation. Overwhelming all of that bloodshed, however, was the Spanish Influenza, which started in January and quickly flared into a worldwide pandemic that killed about 5% of the entire world population before its end.
The Great War affected the current state of the geopolitical world in ways that very few people appreciate since it’s taught in schools today (if at all) as a footnote to World War 2, but the reality is that WW2 is really just the continuation of the Great War with, as Ferdinand Foch foresaw at Versailles in 1919, “a truce for 20 years.” Look to the 1917 Sykes-Picot agreement and the Middle East as a start to the modern-day consequences.
Perhaps the most unfortunate person in the whole conflict was George Ellison from Leeds, England, who had been in the earliest engagements of the war in August 1914, and had somehow survived four long years in the trenches until being killed by a sniper at 9:30 am on November 11. Surprisingly, he was not the last to die before the Armistice, and several thousand casualties happened that morning as fighting occurred right up until the end.
To learn more about the Great War, I recommend the Great War series on YouTube, and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast did a fantastic six-part series covering the entire war. Peter Hart’s book The Great War is the best place to start in written form, and I’m a fan of Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel as a look at the war from a soldier’s perspective.
Wherever you’re from, take a few moments this Armistice Day to think back upon the millions of soldiers who gave their all on both sides of the war.
By 1918, the Old World was no more. Three major empires had disintegrated, and the war impacted six continents. The 20th century had fully arrived, with its brutal, mechanized, and horrifyingly efficient new ways of killing that were introduced over the four years of war. War was no longer glorious and the notion of individual honor and esprit d’guerre that drove so many to enlist early on was quickly replaced with scenes of anonymous, horrible, brutal, and, perhaps worst of all, largely uncontrollable and fortuitous, death.
I would argue that 1918 was the worst year for humanity of all of the 20th century. There was the large-scale death and casualty rate of the Great War itself in its last year, and also the Russian Civil War that was really ramping up now that Russia had left the war in 1917 and Lenin was in a precarious state of power. Civilians were also dying en masse as a result of starvation and deprivation. Overwhelming all of that bloodshed, however, was the Spanish Influenza, which started in January and quickly flared into a worldwide pandemic that killed about 5% of the entire world population before its end.
The Great War affected the current state of the geopolitical world in ways that very few people appreciate since it’s taught in schools today (if at all) as a footnote to World War 2, but the reality is that WW2 is really just the continuation of the Great War with, as Ferdinand Foch foresaw at Versailles in 1919, “a truce for 20 years.” Look to the 1917 Sykes-Picot agreement and the Middle East as a start to the modern-day consequences.
Perhaps the most unfortunate person in the whole conflict was George Ellison from Leeds, England, who had been in the earliest engagements of the war in August 1914, and had somehow survived four long years in the trenches until being killed by a sniper at 9:30 am on November 11. Surprisingly, he was not the last to die before the Armistice, and several thousand casualties happened that morning as fighting occurred right up until the end.
To learn more about the Great War, I recommend the Great War series on YouTube, and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast did a fantastic six-part series covering the entire war. Peter Hart’s book The Great War is the best place to start in written form, and I’m a fan of Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel as a look at the war from a soldier’s perspective.
Wherever you’re from, take a few moments this Armistice Day to think back upon the millions of soldiers who gave their all on both sides of the war.
Comments
I went to the ceremony today. Hard to imagine how brutal conditions were for the soldiers in WW1, really puts things into perspective.
Yeah, exactly.
We went downtown as well. I wore a fall coat and it was a little chilly and didn't have a toque. All I was thinking was "Well fuck... imagine what it was like to be in a trench."
We have it so easy, the least we can do is stand in the cold for 10 minutes.
Didn't Trump refuse to go to a ceremony because of rain? Or was that a separate soldier related thing?
Yup.
Didn't Trump refuse to go to a ceremony because of rain? Or was that a separate soldier related thing?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-skips-ww-i-cemetery-visit-due-to-wet-weather-kicking-up-a-storm-of-its-own-2018-11-10
Blackadder finale addressed this beautifully.
Didn't Trump refuse to go to a ceremony because of rain? Or was that a separate soldier related thing?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story...
Yeah that doesn't really make sense...
I grew up in a family where many members were at some point in the military and most of them worked as civilians at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. I grew up around military life but even I am often jarred and shaken by new aspects of military service that I just can't grasp as a civilian whose never had to serve the people of country in this way.
Your service may not be fully understood by someone like myself, but it is remembered and appreciated.
It's showing on more time in the US, on the 27th.
Some of the stuff did look really good, but other parts not so much. The "storyboard" battle was a bit crap. I understand the limitations, but it seems like they could've done something else, especially with so much footage that they didn't use. Jackson's explanation of how they made that part was more interesting than the finished product itself, and I felt that he was mostly wrong about the effectiveness of recycling material that had already been shown. He even explained why he's wrong when he discussed the problem of the original film being a lot of shots of everybody just staring at the camera and smiling. So he knew it was a problem, and decided the best solution would be to shine a spotlight on it by constantly repeating those exact same shots, but in slow motion and zoomed in too far.
Did anyone happen to see Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old this evening? It was amazing to see how he restored WW1 footage and had lipreaders add actual words from the film.
It's showing on more time in the US, on the 27th.
Nice Artie Lange pic, that guy looks like absolute shit these days.
Apparently it's in theater for two days. TWO WHOLE DAYS!
December 17 and 27th. Sure, World War I claimed the lives of 40 milliom people, but why bother showing a documentary about that, when you can watch some stupid brain-numbing idiotic Hollywood superhero movie -which will remain in theaters for months.
Damn the idiots who are not giving the movie a proper release...
I went and it was ok. I got a little impatient with it showing so much unrestored footage in the beginning (and at the end). I want to see all of it with a new coat of paint.
Some of the stuff did look really good, but other parts not so much. The "storyboard" battle was a bit crap. I understand the limitations, but it seems like they could've done something else, especially with so much footage that they didn't use. Jackson's explanation of how they made that part was more interesting than the finished product itself, and I felt that he was mostly wrong about the effectiveness of recycling material that had already been shown. He even explained why he's wrong when he discussed the problem of the original film being a lot of shots of everybody just staring at the camera and smiling. So he knew it was a problem, and decided the best solution would be to shine a spotlight on it by constantly repeating those exact same shots, but in slow motion and zoomed in too far.
The museum that commissioned the film only gave a limited budget for colorization, so I think he did the best he could. As for the battle scene, no one was filming that close to the action, so he had to make some concessions on that. It would have been weird to not have any sort of reference to the bloodiness of the Somme in a British production. Unfortunately a lot of people were just grinning into the cameras since they probably had never been filmed before or even seen a video camera back in 1914.