The Great War

We’re heading for the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice of the Great War. It is perhaps the most significant event in world history. There are several historians that claim, with some justification, that we’re still not over it. You only have to look at the sectarian struggles in the countries created after the dissolution of several previously extant empires, still going on today, to see the truth of that point.

If you look around social media today, you’ll see plenty of people arguing that our brave soldiers died so that we could live the life we do today, and in a sense, that’s true. The Great War saw the end of the British Empire as the world’s dominating power, even though it was at its territorial zenith thanks to possessions claimed from former empires. Though they would not achieve military dominance until 1945, the United States did achieve economic superiority and military parity with the British Empire after it was depleted during the four years of war, and stretched to breaking point managing its burgeoning empire thereafter.

I look at that war and see a multi-imperialist struggle for hegemony, and millions of men needlessly thrown into the grinders of places like Verdun. I look to the armistice and I see a pre-cursor to not only the Second World War, but problems that continue to exist today.

I’ll always have immense sympathy for the soldiers and civilians that were pawns for the slaughter demanded by Kings, Kaisers and Tsars, but I’m never going to see our participation in it as a good thing and I’m always going to be angry about so many lives I never knew cut short for reasons that seem positively venal in the present age.

What are your thoughts on The Great War, Sotonians?

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My Mother was 6 years old when her Father was killed at Arras in March 1918. He was 40…he was wounded at Gallipoli in 1915, patched up and sent back to the front with The Royal Hampshires. He has no known grave…just a name on a memorial.

His wife and 5 children in his absence, were brought up on his widow’s war pension of pennies and she worked in service to raise them on her own . My Mother always cherished her scant memories of her father and always felt somehow cheated. Were his surviving family valued, were they made to feel special, that their father’s sacrifice served a better good…FUCK NO!

I will remember my grandfather with respect but also as a pawn in the Imperial aspirations of bygone age. What a waste. :lou_sad:

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Very sad…imperialism has a lot to answer for. All developed nations have had their moments in fucking the world… ours tended to be in countries where the locals had spears and our guns meant a pretty rapid cessation to hostilities… the Germans being late to the game came up against more robust opposition… perhaps the worst was that the post war treaties fucked them so bad when combined with the 30s global depression created the perfect environment for fascism to gain traction… as they say winning the war is only part of the problem, the peace is a lot harder as Afghanistan illustrates very well…

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Imperialism is a part of the times we had back then, its lucky we were shit hot at it otherwise the luxury of a point of view or regret may be absent.

I agree.

My grandad on my mothers side lived with a bullet near his heart not removed and lived to father kids until the late 1940’s. I wouldn’t be here otherwise…

My grandfather got run over by a tank and spent over four years in hospital.

Lions led by donkeys still does it for me.

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We were shit hot at a certain type of imperialism, for a time, at least. We were never prepared for a land war in Europe, and that empire looked pretty fragile when it had to borrow billions through JP Morgan from private US investors, banking on an Entente victory.

The Battle of the Somme, Britain’s biggest defeat in terms of men, anywhere, on any battlefield, was done on the never never.

That is not true though (what people think anyway), I’ll explain tomorrow.

I refer to our mercantile Empire in India and other domains.

Empires are easy to do in peacetime. The odd uprising here or there can easily be handled by the combined might of the armed forces that protect it. They’re not as easy to do in a time of war, and this was a war like no other before it.

The early optimists thought it would be over by Christmas 1914. The reality was that we spent all our treasure and more in a war we were never prepared for, jumped into too quickly, and perhaps could have made much more of an impact once we knew what the game was.

The Germans were initially better armed and better disciplined. No-one anticipated weapons or destruction of this scale, or submarine warfare, a first. One of the more radical inventions to come out of the war was the tank. Imagine if we’d held back until we’d developed that technology. We might not have thrown 60,000 men away at the Somme.

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Thing is, war tends to be extraordinarily fertile for innovation. We may not have invented the tank had we not thrown so many men away on the front. At some point someone said this is not sustainable, there must be a better way.

In the same way, engines were developed for aircraft. There was a proper arms race to squeeze more power and speed from them to give pilots an advantage in dogfights. Less speed generally equalled death in the air.

If we had not invented the tank my grandfather would not have been run over by one then invalided out of the war which allowed him to marry my grandmother and procreate my father.

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The amount of death was caused by the old and new mixing, the machine gun ripped 100’s apart and it only took 2/3 people to operate, mustard gas was another.

The war may have been pointless but it wasn’t as pointless as a stalemate in a field where people died for no need.

When people say it was Lions led by Donkeys well there is some truth in that but the whole upper middle class were wiped out in 4 years, their families died and so did that huge knowledge base, we were left with Donkeys and the working class afterwards (the huge rise union membership after the war is for all to see), like the 13 year old bakers son who volunteered to die for King and Country (absolute ignorance but also the bravest of the brave and we should remember their sacrifice before bleating and whinging about war) the Etonians and Harrow boys joined up straight away and led the front line,.