The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, World War I ended. The long era of European “peace” and the European world order was shattered. The seeds were sewn for the rematch some 20 years later.
I agree with those who view World War I and World War II as simply chapters in the same war-with a 20 year intermission. A good over view f round 1 is presented below. Click on the image to see it better:
The end of the World War laid the seeds for many of the problems we live through today. Take the Middle East for example-Ottoman domination was replaced for a while by European colonial domination-but round two undermined the linchpins of that. As a result the Arabs were eventually left unto themselves to to try to make a governance. We’ve all seen how well that worked out, didn’t we?
World War I created the pre-conditions that brought the Slavic horde into the heart of “real Europe”. It took 50 years to undo that damage.
The weakening of Europe led to the rise of Japan in Asia. During the interwar years, Europe’s Asia colonies rested on the illusion of power-without the underpinnings of substance. Even America could not sustain its sole Asian colony-and so the current era of “exporting labor” for the Philippines gloomily dawned.
At the end of the First World War though, as Churchill said, ” We were so glutted with victory that we cast it away”.
Smart man.
And the cost was borne by 70 million dead, in rounds 1 &2, not to mention the soldiers who had to fight and die in the wars that came as an aftermath. Where might the globe be if it had never occured?
We’ll never know. The question for this century though is this: Will we walk down the same paths or will we choose to improve ourselves and our world?
The answer is TBA.
Sir John Keegan’s book on WW1 is a great primer for that horrific conflict.
And the OLD movie ‘Johnny Got His Gun’ (1971) was a reminder of the cost.
I’m back you loser. I’ve kept an eye on you. You’ve cheered up a bit and obviously one can get over that whole BDS when one breaths in the clean Bush free air of our new socialist overlords that is already permeating the politosphere.
As I got around to telling the immediate family on November 4 (California time), we are now all set for the interwar phase that followed 1918 and will enjoy a massive naval building holiday (sounds good doesn’t it?) and we will pare the Army and Marines to the bone and end up in just a few years with an Air Force so irrelevant that Hollywood will swallow its gorge and contract with Blackwater for pilots and realistic aircraft for its movie productions. You know, cost of modern weapon systems being what they are and will be. Not to mention the incompetence of NAVSEA who never found a $200million ship they couldn’t offer to the public for a billion.
If you look around the democrat lineup…. There are no Scoop Jackson’s or Sam Nun’s in the lineup. The single solitary one that might have the most tenuous connection to those old warhorses is Lieberman, who isn’t a democrat anymore anyway.
This seems to be an appropriate day to say that WWI was a horrific bloodletting launched by idiots, most of whom were the executives of monarchies. (I don’t make the mistake of thinking that monarchies are right-wing by our current definitions. There is no such thing as a monarchist “right wing” in America. Those referred to as “right wing” in America, merely want the country to abide by the Constitution. It represents individual liberty and did its best to restrict and confine the power of the state and thus is antithetical to everything the ism’s stand for).
So, after a huge bloodletting entered into by the president who RAN on an anti-war agenda and campaign we entered the depression…..Sound familiar? The president in office took every single step/measure to extend the depression and got away with it for 10 years. Billions invested in worthwhile projects but not in armaments, no sir, no guns, just butter. 1926 Naval Treaty was just the start of the naval building holiday. It got worse and those responsible ignored German rearmament, pirate submarines operating off the coast of Spain, reoccupation of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc. It pretty much took Pearl Harbor to begin to suggest to the democratic leadership that they’d been awfully stupid and shortsighted. Shades of Jamie Gorelick and the wall between counterintelligence and law enforcement or the idiotic toxic loan policy that Fannie Mae embraced under her leadership.
So anyway, we’ve hopscotched finding our way into WWII all unprepared and everything and find ourselves in Aden and NYC all unprepared and everything thanks to 8 years of another democratic regime that sends federal agents to burn 80 people to death in a religious cult compound and scores of other federal agents to rescue a boy from family in Florida in order that he be sent back to Cuba. Patently unamerican acts.
Well, you spent the last few years annoying me with your BDS fantasies. I may spend the odd moments after midnight offering you democratic follies to defend. You can probably start with offering any reason on earth to bail out the DETROIT auto industry. If those losers are allowed to go bust, they could at least void the union contracts that hold them hostage and force them to spend ~$7250/car just for union benefits. As a matter of fact, if the government does bail them out, I may decide that at some point in the past, maybe in the 1920s, they made cars with asbestos or lead based paint and file a class action law suit and deal with them as we dealt with WR Grace and Corning.
It is the TIME OF TRIAL LAWYERS! Bring it on.
Welcome back!
I’ve still got 72 days to pound Bush then it will be Obama’s turn. Diversity and all that.
By the way, I forgot to say: Thank you for serving your country.
To add to Richard’s comment above: Keegan’s book is probably the best and easiest to read history of WWI in print at the moment. Add to that ‘Complete Memoirs of George Sherston’ by Sigfried Sassoon.
From a naval perspective, ‘Castles of Steel’ by Robert K. Massie is an excellent (if not hefty tome) writing on the sea-based conflicts that are often overshadowed by the mud, trenches, and gore of Europe. I’m about halfway through it at the moment and it is shockingly well researched and detailed. Almost too much so, but the technical detail helps fill out why things went a certain way.
Skippy, strange place for the use of the word “diversity”?
Don’t forget that it was Founder’s Day…at VMI, that is!
And call your congressman and tell them to let GM declare bankruptcy. Every state east of the Mississippi will take a hit. Ford and Chrysler will soon follow. We will go into a depression. 2.5 million jobs lost in the first year. Maybe it will help folks focus on what is really important…
I guess this means you are putting in for ADSW soon?
Possibly. More layoffs (white-collar, 10%) in January, so we will see what the new year brings.
I need to see what long-term ADSW opportunities there are out there…