11 November is significant for a number of reasons – the dismissal of the Whitlam government 35 years ago, the birthday of my dearest friend who left us in 1994, and of course the conclusion of World War One.
It is worth reminding ourselves – and doing the necessary reading and study to inform ourselves – that World War One was an unjust war on all sides, that the war became a catastrophe from which other catastrophes – fascist and Stalinist totalitarianism, the Holocaust, the ongoing misfortunes of the peoples of the Middle East, amongst them – ensued, and that the real heroes of World War One were those people in all the combatant countries who, whether for reasons of political conviction, moral conviction or religious faith, opposed the folly and criminality of their own governments, often at great cost to themselves.
It is also timely to renew our grief for the Willy McBrides and so many others whose lives were stolen from them, and who are remembered so beautifully by Eric Bogle in No Man’s Land.
June Tabor’s version of No Man’s Land with Flowers of the Forest is a beautiful version of this great song.
I disagree, quite strongly, that the First World War was unjust on all sides. All sides must take some of the blame, but the essential fact is that Germany launched a war of aggression against France and Belgium (and Austria-Hungary against Serbia). I’m not sure that those countries had much choice at that point but to resist. The rest doesn’t quite follow, but enough of it does.
This post of mine wasn’t intended as a Remembrance Day post, but by coincidence I published it today, and as it’s about Australia’s military relationship with Britain in the 1930s and 1940s, Anglophobia and historiography, and the republic question it’s kind of appropriate:
http://airminded.org/2010/11/11/a-dominion-of-the-air/
Oh, and I should have said that it’s quite long. Sorry!
yes WW1.
No-one thought it would happen.
Foreign Affairs experts in all countries too smart. ( dreadnought very good on this).
Globalisation meant too much to lose economiclaly for all countries involved.
The World had come close to war previously and in far worse circumstances but had successfully overcome the problem.
Mostly ‘left-wing’ Government would not surely fight in a war which would be so costly
You forgot that today is also the day Ned Kelly was hung – in a trivia quiz it’s the third important event in Australia’s history on this date.
But I take your point, I hadn’t really considered the arc of problems which beset the world all emanating from WW1. The European bits are obvious, but I’d failed to connect the Middle East’s problems with their genesis in the First World War.
Yes, what Brett said.
It should also be remembered that the defending coalition was centred around two parliamentary democracies: one with a Socialist government at the time (France), the other with a centrist Liberal government (Great Britain).
They, along with Russia, and the other smaller nations of the Allies, chose to resist the hegemony and domination of Europe by two autocratic powers (later joined by the genocidal Ottoman Empire).
I do not criticise the Allies for choosing to defend themselves, and I do not consider it an “unjust war” on their part. The Allies were not angels and some of their policies, particularly in the Middle East, can certainly be condemned. But this does not fundamentally alter the defensive and just nature of the war on their part.
@4 “Mostly ‘left-wing’ Government would not surely fight in a war which would be so costly”
So Armistice Day represents no more than just another opportunity for crude political point-scoring for you, does it?
No doubt I will be moderated for that remark, and no doubt rightly; what will be interesting though is whether it is deemed necessary to moderate the original sentiment also.
[Moderator's comment: Wozza, as you've already conceded, the third line of your original post was in breach of the comments policy and so I've deleted it.]
Paul Norton said:
WWI was certainly the primordial disaster for the Occident, from which most other of the 20thC disasters flowed – Communism, Nazism. And the conservative Establishment have no one to blame but themselves for blowing up their patrimony in an orgy of high explosive folly and knavery.
But it is false and defamatory to state that it was “unjust war on all sides”. The French, Belgians and Serbs were perfectly within their rights to defend themselves when they got monstered by the Wermacht et al. More generally the Allies were in their moral rights (and treaty obligations) to counter Prussian militarism.
Many on the Left (liberal relativists) and the Right (German nationalists) have been keen to let the Prussians off the hook for starting and driving the Great War. Pay no attention to that baloney: they are playing fast and loose with the historical truth and aiding and abetting war criminals.
Fritz Fischer has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Prussian military establishment, in cahoots with the Austrian militarists, had planned a war of aggression for almost a generation prior to the outbreak of general war. Primarily directed against Slavs (Russians and Serbs) but with a requirement that Franco-Anglo forces be knocked out of the game early in the piece.
But Teutonic militarism was an enormous existential threat which could not be ignored by mouthing liberal pieties. The proof is the fact that as soon as they got back on their feet they were up for starting it again.
The war to counter and defeat Teutonic militarism took more than 30 years to conclude. The Allies no doubt could have shown more political nous and been less bloody-minded, particularly as the stalemate deepened. And less vindictive and grasping in the peace negotiations.
Lest we Forget: at least from the outset, the Allies were in the right to fight.
Some brief points in response to Brett and Paulus:
1. It makes more sense to interpret the actions of the belligerent powers in WWI in terms of the unravelling of the “balance of power” and the fears on all sides of finding themselves worse off in BOP terms if military action against one of their allies by a power in the opposing bloc was not resisted or pre-empted (beginning with Russian fears about allowing Austria-Hungary to humiliate Serbia with impunity over the assassination of the Archduke, and cascading from there).
2. In his book The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson (who nobody could accuse of being a bleeding heart lefty pacifist) convincingly shows:
(a) that part of the rationale for Germany’s actions was fear that certain long-term trends were working to its detriment vis-a-vis the alliance of Russia and France;
(b) that there were prudent and feasible ways in which Great Britain (and its then Empire including Australia) could have avoided war with Germany and entanglement in a world war;
(c) that the historical consequences of the outcome of a purely continental war (i.e. a relatively swift German victory) would have been greatly preferable to the actual historical consequences of the actual war.
There is a folk song from the 1980s which goes:
He knew that I
Was about to attack him
So he had to attack me first in self-defence
And that’s why I knew that he
Was about to attack me
So I had to attack him first in self-defence
This pretty will sums up the thinking of governments in all the major European powers in 1914.
Talking of Niall Ferguson and Chimerica etc, wasn’t one of the ‘outcomes’ of WW1 and dissatisfaction with the Versailles Treaty the birth of Chinese 4th May Movement – the results of which we are yet to see played out.
July-August 1914.
There is no doubt that Austria wished to humiliate Serbia and that Germany was willing to provoke a world war by virtue of its efforts to enable Austria to humiliate Serbia.
August 1914 – 11 Nov 1918.
There is no doubt that this war metastasised into an existential struggle between ruling elites. Only victory could preserve one set of ruling elites.
11 Nov 1918 – 28 June 1919.
There is no doubt that the existing order of the victor nations could be preserved only by collective punishment of the entire German population, both living and yet to be born. The populations of the victor nations were complicit in this collective punishment. This was evil. The voters of those vaunted democracies came to the conclusion that it was preferable to punish all Germans rather than to endanger the institutions of the social, political and economic order that directed the Allied war effort.
“Lest we forget”.
We see these things from the point of view of the victor. But the Greater Thirty Years War of the twentieth century is apparently also about the Age of Imperialism, Jingoism, Industrialisation, High Capitalism and the breaking down of the old order over the prevous fifty years thru changes in global balance of wealth, power and influence.
What we actually see is the tangible evidence of the emergent “American century” and the peeling away of empires with access to resources, no longer able retain control of these, like the Spanish.
Also, the desperation of Prussia, the industrial giant of its day, encircled and beholden to the mercantile maritime empires for its resources; also Japan, over the the era.
What a thought provoking post.
“World War One was an unjust war on all sides”
Try telling that the Gerard Henderson.
#11 is interesting. Though I guess it’s more a poetic insight than a scholarly one, I’ve always been fascinated by the Pynchonian notion that the war was caused by vast interlocking systems of technology and production, searching impersonally for their logical endpoints.
It brings to mind one of those long weird group conversations that you have over a university dinner table back when you’re young and crazy. The subject shifted to the causes of WW I, and people floated the various accepted notions with the occasional tweak. Finally one feller said, “You’re all missing the point. The war was begun because the Machine Age stood up on its hind legs and roared, “I AM THE MACHINE AGE!! DO MY BIDDING, NOW!!!”
His demeanor was very convincing, I have to say.
Correct.
OK, but isn’t it a good thing that the parliamentary democracy variety of ‘ruling elites’ prevailed over the imperial autocrat variety?
I find it interesting how when we talk about WW1, people here feel so little sympathy for the Parti Radical government of France, fighting a war of defence deep inside their nation.
Oh, boo hoo. So the Allies were to bear the financial cost of the massive damage to northern France, and the massacre of merchant shipping by the U-boats?
If the Allies had borne that cost themselves, they would effectively have been imposing a ‘collective punishment’ upon their own economies. Unsurprisingly, they chose not to.
Oh, and that Ferguson book Paul N mentions makes a few salient points about Versailles:
(1) the Germans inflicted a higher financial penalty (in terms of % of GNP) upon France in the aftermath of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War,
(2) the Germans intended to inflict a huge financial penalty, much bigger than Versailles, on the Allies at the end of WW1, and
(3) the Krauts didn’t actually pay the majority of the Versailles obligation anyway: they inflated their way out of the early payments, and simply wrote off the remainder once Hitler came to power.
Paul Norton @ #9 said:
It would make more sense if you used punctuation in this paragraph. The tortured nature of your syntax betrays the underlying unsound thinking.
As to matters of substance: to state that “there was a balance of power and great powers feared adverse consequences of an unbalance” is to state nothing more than a truism.
The fact is that one power(s) upset the Continental balance of power, and went out of its way to establish European hegemony: that was Germany-Austria. There are smoking guns all over the place, from Germany’s Naval arms race to the von Schlieffen plan. All this is laid down in minute detail in Fischer’s work.
The Allies tried desperately to avert war, this is clear from Nicholas’s private correspondence and the minutes released by the British cabinet. (The French less so, they understandably longed for the return of their lost provinces, stolen by…fill in the blanks with the usual suspects.)
And look at the intermediate outcome of both WWI and WWII. Germany-Austria annexed half of European Russia in both cases. Kind of suspicious, don’t you think?
We have had half-century or more of what effectively amounts to apologetics for Prussian militarism coming out of the mouths of liberal relativists of all people. Its time that these baseless falsities were consigned to the Dustbin of History. Those trying to fudge the responsibility for starting the Great War should be called on it, loud and clear.
“Krauts,” Paulus? Are we straying into a Black Adder-style analysis of WW1, or just being unnecessarily rude?
Shorter Paulus: there was nothing to learn from this act of oppression.
Interestingly, the WWII allies did learn from the mistakes of 1871 and 1919. Or, at least the Americans did. Australia was dead keen to stick the boots into Japan in 1945. Fortunately, the US slapped us down.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Paulus,
Germany didn’t stop paying on their foreign debts until AFTER other countries did.
Inflation doesn’t make a debt go away. They usualy pay in a foreign currency so negating inflation.
If they were paying debt in German currency it merely made paying the debt easier. They still PAID.
And it was only this year the last of the WW1 repayments were paid.
I might add it is sometimes said the Versailles treaty brought Hitler to power. This is incorrect. HE only became a political player once the Depression set in.
It was the stupid economic policies of Bruning that led to Hitler
The Germans actually paid in gold Marks.
You can’t inflate gold.
You’re never too old to learn, Paulus.
Thanks Paul. I’ll commemorate the day by remembering my pacifist and non-conformist forebears. Lest we forget.
Agreeable sentiments aside Paul, I’m disturbed by current events and regard March 23, 2003, (“We have prevailed” -GWB) as another date of infamy with shades of 11.11.1918 and similar long term impacts.
Christians are now being targetted in Iraq by Al Qaeda and the ‘interim’ government seems powerless to provide security. The doctrine of preventive strike hasn’t been revoked as far as I know from the Bush/Howard era. (The ‘man of steel’ a footnote in GWB’s justification)
Now we have Gillard lining up behind Obama on currency disputes with China. Now I haven’t heard a peep from Mr Swan on this particularly new problem. The receding US empire appears set to lash out at interlopers and as a too loyal accolyte Australia is offering containment space with bases access. If China feels itself locked in, even by disputed provinces like Taiwan, then the lessons of WW1 will have again to be learned.
Another question which must be asked about Versailles is whether, irrespective of opinions about the Reich’s war guilt, it was at all smart to impose huge reparations and various humiliations on a fledgling democratic regime (the Weimar Republic) which needed a lot of TLC and which was beset by reactionaries from the ancien regime crying “stab in the back!”.
Paul Norton @ #9 said:
German-Austrian militarists are paranoid about “Russian steamroller” – situation normal. Hitler had the same fear. They launch an unprovoked attack on Serbia and then France. So the Great War was an “unjust war on all sides”.
I’m sorry, but this is a gigantic non-sequitur. If you believe that then logical validator has probably done a gasket and is badly in need of an over-haul.
Paul Norton said:
Its always possible to “avoid entanglement” with unpleasantness. That does not make it right. The British had treaty obligations to come to the aid of Belgium and France in the case of the attack. And AUS had mutual defence obligations to the UK. In those days leaders felt bound by their word.
Its not as if subsequent German behaviour would be re-assuring to the UK. (And Japanese behaviour likewise to the AUS.) The course of the Atlantic Battles in both Wars indicates that the Kriegsmarine’s control of the Channel ports could and did threaten the UK’s national survival. That was the strategic rationale for British involvement.
More generally it has always been British policy to prevent the rise of a hegemonic European power. Memories of Napolean were still fresh in the minds of most British leaders.
Paul Norton said:
Oh now he tells us. The wonders of hind-sight! And what time-traveler is going to visit Allied statesmen on the eve of the Great War bearing tidings of the “historic consequences…of a relatively swift German victory…in a purely continental war”?
Most statesmen on both sides thought it would be over by Christmas, one way or another. For sure we would have been better off if the Germans had won quickly in the Great War. But equally we would have been better off if the Allies had won quickly, which is what the British hoped to achieve by entering the war on France’s side. SO they all leaders acted in good faith by the Ferguson’s counter-factualism.
When the German-Austrians were up for round 2 those same Allied statesman now tried desperately to delay and avoid war. It was called “appeasement”. How did that work out?
If you really want to blame someone then blame Moltke (jnr) who fatally weakened the right-flank, against the explicit orders of the dying von Schliefen.
Paul Norton @ #9 said:
This “plague on both houses” notion is utter fabrication, not supported by one scintilla of documentary or material evidence.
Lets look at the implication as regards the Entente Cordiale: Was Serbia was planning a pre-emptive attack against Austria? Belgium? Even France’s posture was essentially defensive. And Britain, with its tiny Army of “Old Contemptibles”, how was that supposed to threaten the Wermacht?
To be sure Russia’s rearmament did look threatening. But it always does. Best not to poke a grizzly bear, but one can’t blame the Allies on that score.
By contrast there is massive documentary and material evidence that Germany-Austria were planning a war of aggression for the generation prior to WWI. It drawn up the von Schliefen plan, a strategy for two-front offensive war.
It had specifically designed aggressive weapons, in particular mobile heavy artillery and submarines, to achieve this object.
More generally, the notion that Balance of Power increases the risk of general war is not proven. Particularly when one has a rising power with a lust for dominance like Napoleanic France or Wilhelmine-Nazi Germany. The proof is the Cold War, a classic balance of power stand-off, which sucessfully averted general war on the European continent for two generations.
Can I make a suggestion: that Paul Norton lose his reliance on “80s folk singers” when it comes to historical analysis?
the Germans intended to inflict a huge financial penalty, much bigger than Versailles, on the Allies at the end of WW1
Not just intended; the Germans did impose a penalty much bigger than Versailles on the Soviet Union at the Treaty of Brest Litovsk.
Sort of.
After 1919, German finances were fragile, especially high interest rates, which were a product of the tax burden necessitated by the reparations regime.
As a result of the reparations regime, when the downturn arrived, the German economy was particularly vulnerable. Germany suffered higher unemployment than any other country.
Both Bruning and Muller made matters worse by making repayment of reparations priority number one in German financial management. Bruning’s strategy was to immiserate the German population in the hope that the Allies would relent on their reparations demands.
France told Bruning they would relent, on the condition that the German government suppress the Nazi Party. Bruning refused to do this. France refused to relent on reparations demands. Germany sunk into economic stagnation. Hitler prospered.
OK, I was being imprecise there. But there was a policy of deliberate inflation to pay off Germany’s total war debt. The non-Versailles component of that was denominated in paper marks.
It’s more instructive to view things in GNP terms. As Ferguson points out:
1) As a % of GNP, Versailles reparations cost between 4% to 8% in the early 1920s. In most of those years, German GNP grew by a higher annual rate than the reparations, which hardly suggests that Versailles was excessively harsh.
2) The total British debt burden from WW1 was actually slightly greater than the total German debt burden (Ferguson gives the figure of 165% of GNP for the Brits versus 160% for Germany as at 1921).
Given the huge debts that Britain and France came out of the war with — and remembering also the physical damage to France — why should Britain and France have shouldered the entire cost of a war they didn’t start?
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. (a) is true enough, but it chose a war of aggression as the answer to its perceived problems, instead of, say, seeking ‘prudent and and feasible ways’ of avoiding war with Russia and France. And sure, Britain made mistakes in the lead up to war, but once the July crisis had started it was unlikely it could have deterred Germany from starting a war. The Germans knew the risk they were running but egged Austria-Hungary on anyway.
In hindsight, maybe it would have been (though I’m not convinced of that at all). Hindsight was not available to the participants at the time.
This is also a hindsight question, and doesn’t go to the justness of the war as the desire to exact reparations was not the reason for war. The reparations were not as damaging as is commonly thought but they were unnecessarily humiliating and very badly handled. NB. I wrote about Australia’s role at Versailles last year:
http://airminded.org/2009/06/28/slap-the-jap-and-make-the-hun-pay/
Thanks, Paul, for Eric Bogle reminding us all to think of the Willy McBrides of our world. Watching those brave young Japanese soldiers in that 7.30 Report story about the continuous disposal of the thousands of still unexploded bombs around Okinawa I was wondering when their Remembrance Day might be for their war dead.
What a hat trick!
Execution of Ned Kelly.
End of World War One.
Dismissal of Whitlam Government.
A very auspicious date.
Personal disclosure: I’m partially of French extraction, and ancestors of mine fought for France in the trenches.
Although there were mutinies in the French army in 1917, against what were perceived as overly-aggressive generals, there has never been any widespread doubt in France that their fight was legitimate and just. I share that sentiment, and so I may be a little rude towards the other side.
But if it offends you, I’ll refrain from using the term ‘Krauts’. I’ll call them les sales Boches instead!
Just for historical accuracy the Germans imposed a moratorium on foreign debt repayment in 1934 however they did not repudiate debt as such indeed one historian believes the reason for no devaluation in 1933-4 was because of the implications it would have on foreign debt.
Shorter Strocchi: It matters who started a war, irrespective of the argy-bargy in the lead up (which in any case was whipped up by Austro-Germans).
But having said that the Allies were justified in joining the war to defend against Teutonic militarism, it does not follow that they were right to prosecute it to the bitter end. It was clear by late 1915 (post Gallipoli, post-Ypres) that a stalemate had set in. So sensible and decent statesmen should have been searching for a peaceful solution well before mid-1916.
Instead the Allies chose that moment to scale up the blood-bath to hitherto unimaginable proportions. At the Somme and Verdun, that was where the Allies fell down, both militarily and morally.
“I’ll call them les sales Boches instead!”
“Cabbage crates coming over the briney!”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“Cabbage crates. Coming over the briney.”
“No, sorry, don’t understand that banter at all…”
But it’s perfectly ordinary banter, j_p_z.
http://airminded.org/2009/02/06/cabbage-crates-coming-over-the-briny/
And there’s the hat-trick!
Here’s a mordantly interesting snippet from Wiki. I trust it is true:
It is interesting in that it explains the grim calculus of reparations. It appears that Napoleon set the gold standard and then everyone else simply followed suit.
“But it’s perfectly ordinary banter”
OK fair enough. It was the only part I could summon up from memory. But now that I’ve googled it, try this on…
Bovril
How was it?
Squadron Leader
Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how’s your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Bovril
Er, I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, squadron leader.
Squadron Leader
It’s perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry … pranged his kite right in the how’s yer father … hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Bovril
No, I’m just not understanding banter at all well today. Give us it slower.
Squadron Leader
Banter’s not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy.
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/rafbante.htm
Jack, just to be pedantic:
WeHrmacht
Von SchliefFen
Paulus, my grandfather also fought the Germans. I don’t see how this entitles me to refer to them as “krauts,” or in fact to inherit any form of silly historical animosity.
Is it a genetic right of some kind? How come I didn’t inherit it? And how come my Grandmother, whose house was destroyed by the Germans twice, has no problem with them, but you do?
Yes can someone explain to me who my grandfather fought for? He was an Italian Medic type on the Alps. I have no idea what side we were on in WWI. I do have a picture of him. He looks rather handsome and stuff. Still, I’d be pleased if someone can tell me who the frack Italy was with. But not Jack Strocchi thanks. I don’t want no scrubs. (What movie is that from?)
Casey, Italy was nominally part of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria Hungary, but eventually joined the war on the side of the Triple Entente (France/UK/Russia) in 1915.
sg, just for the record, I meet a lot of Germans on games sites I frequent. I call them Huns and Krauts; they respond with aspersions on Australian soccer. It’s all good-humoured juvenile banter and no one, least of all me, has any genuine animosity towards the other nationality. I sympathise with the Allied cause in both World Wars, but I have nothing against modern Germans. As the saying goes: chill out, dude.
It’s a generic rant, Paulus, sorry that it came out in an un-chilled way. I live in Japan and I occasionally see it from Australians about Japan but it doesn’t make any sense and, particularly when it comes out of nowhere it really pisses me off. I also saw it in spades in the UK – my German flatmate got heil hitler comments, but he’s 35 years old and like most Germans alive today has less interest in war than Casey has in half-track engineering (you’re not a secret half-track enthusiast are you Casey?)
I’ve had a few instances in the UK where, apropos of absolutely nothing, my interlocutor suddenly gave me a spittle-flecked rant about the war.
I don’t know how they can be casting aspersions on Australian soccer, though!
Casey, as Paul N mentioned, Italy joined the Allied powers in 1915. It was a rather impetuous decision; they were woefully unprepared for combat.
They ended up fighting their old adversaries the Austrians across the Alps. It was a brutal war in horrendous terrain, and almost half a million Italians died.
In 1917 the Austrians shattered the Italian front, and for a while it seemed that the north Italian plains might be overrun, but British and French reinforcements stabilised the situation. In 1918 the Austrians were pushed back to where they started.
Interestingly, despite their reputation as being easy-going, the Italians had ferocious discipline. They had more military executions than the Germans, French and British combined. Perhaps Jack Strocchi can explain this paradox?
Oh gosh, what fun talking about one’s forebears…
I had a grandfather who lost a lung “somewhere in France” fighting the bally Boche.
My other grandfather was German.
My uncles fought against the Japanese. I grew up among elderly Russian refugees who came to Australia to escape the Japanese 70 or so years ago.
And next year I will become the stepfather to a Japanese family.
People are strange…
It just makes these wars seem all the more tragic and pointless, doesn’t it Terangeree?
Casey @ #42 says:
Don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste my game on a scrubber floating in cyber-space.
Italy was not originally part of the Entente, indeed she was nominally part of the Alliance. But she stayed out of the War initially, not out of any moral fastidiousness but in order to coax a better offer from her Entente suitors.
Its really hard to think of a more cynical example of power politics. Yet Italy does not seem to attract much moral critcism, perhaps because people don’t expect anything better from the state that gave us Machiavelli.
I salute your grandfather. BTW my grandfather also was on the Italian side, decorated officer in the Alpini. He wasn’t what you call handsome, he looked alot like the hassassin in Godfather Two, only much crueler.
Those were different times.
I had a great-grandfather who fought the Elder Ones on the hideous Plateau of Leng, way back in 1912. It’s all been kept out of the history books, of course… lest the reader go mad from the telling.
Seriously, if it hadn’t been for that scrappy little band of scientists from Miskatonic University led by the indomitable Professor Thorndike Pierce, sealing up the Eldritch Pit of Yog-Shubburath in time, it would have been used as a porthole to transport unimaginable beings into our dimension, and you’d all be speaking R’lyeh-ese today.
You think I’m kidding, don’t you.
Paulus @ #46 said:
In 1918 the Italians came back from the Caporetto disaster and ultimately defeated the Austro-German army in the battle of Vitorio-Venetto, which more or less tipped the Austro-Hungarian empire into capitulation and revolution. Much celebrated in Italy since we don’t have a whole lot of military victories to crow about, at least in modern times.
Paulus said:
The Italian army imposed “ferocious discipline” because, not in spite, of the average Italians were “easy-going” nature, who was not all that into the war.
The dynamic parts of the Italian state were ultra-militarist – in fact they were the original futurists and fascists. They saw their world-historic role as awakening the Italian people out of their semi-rural slumbers. Mainly through the application of high-explosives to their neigbours.
The militarists were the minority in Italy, but when politics gets martial one counts the size of balls, not votes.
SG, were you perchance staying at Fawlty Towers?
were you perchance staying at Fawlty Towers?
For the uninitiated.
Basil: Listen, don’t mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right. [returns to the Germans] So! It’s all forgotten now, and let’s hear no more about it. So, that’s two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads.
Basil: Is there something wrong?
Elder Herr: Will you stop talking about the war?
Basil: Me! You started it!
Elder Herr: We did not start it!
Basil: Yes you did — you invaded Poland.
“It just makes these wars seem all the more tragic and pointless, doesn’t it Terangeree?”
O Lord, kum bay ya.
Coincidences, coincidences, coincidence: As I was involved in a government advisory body at the time, I was part of a small party invited to have afternoon tea with the Governor-General, Sir Ninian Stephen and his good lady at Gov House in 1986. As we were approaching, we saw a limo just leaving. One of a party observed that this was Sir Sydney Nolan and that he had obviously been invited there as some sort of recognition for his famous series of Ned Kelly paintings – Ned having been strung up in Nov 11,1880. As we were sipping our tea Lady Stephen drifted up to me and asked me what I did for a crust. When I replied that I was a lecturer in Psychology, she replied “Oh! I attended lectures in psychology at Melbourne University in about 1926. “Oh Yes” I replied, “I happen to know hose were given by a young Arts-Law student and tutor named John Kerr who, presumably, was the one who got his knickers in a knot, probably in this very room, exactly Eleven years ago.
The war against Japan most definitely had a point.
Isn’t “just war” an oxymoron?
How can the wholesale murder of men, women and children ever be justified?
And how will we ever solve problems without resorting to violence if we continue to celebrate the “heroism” of said murderers on days like today?
I don’t get it and I probably never will.
Apologies in advance if this causes a flame war, but this is a sincerely-held belief. I hate violence in all forms and don’t think an exception should be made when it comes to those we disagree with.
Anyway, I did end up knowing my grandfather fought the Austrians. Very intemperate word of mouth from my mother in my teenage years. Cause like, when I was at school you know they taught us Italy was in the Triple Alliance and that was it. There edethed the lesson. All the rest was about the glory of the Entente. So when I came home and announced loudly to my mother, liar, that the Italians and the Austrians were bros. in arms, oh, every one in the family agreed it was a good time all round that evening.
Chinda63, no need for a flame war, you just trot along to a precinct where soldiers get drunk, and be carrying a placard with comment #55 printed on it.
@52:
Kum is on the northern outskirts of the South Korean city of Daejeon.
As Daejeon is an inland city, I do not think there is a Kum Bay.
Maybe if it was in Louisiana, there would be a Kum Bayou.
Steve, I know quite a few soldiers who have been in battle, from the muddy,bloody Hell that was the Somme to the New Guinea Jungles (in both WW1 andWW2, as well as Korea, Vietnam, Timor Leste, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some of them are now dead, and others still live.
All of them would agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed in Comment 55.
Those who would disagree, I have found, tend to be those who never went to war or those who fought their war from the shelving units of the Quartermasters’ Store.
I’ve always preffered Boxheads or the Hun to Krauts.
And as an employer of young Germans I find they relish education about our shared modern military history. Seems to be glossed over in their education system.
Two World Wars and One world cup,
do da do da
@59 – see yours and raise you by ten fold.
And as a piece of public evidence I recommend you watch the two-part four corners piece on a few months ago about Aussies in Afghanistan to gauge the views of the diggers – they don’t see it as a waste or “just war” as an oxymoron and not one expressed a view that supports the view of comment #55
Chinda63, it seems you have nothing to fear at all.
Just so long as the drunk soldiers you wave your beliefs at are recently returned from/liable to return to Afghanistan/Iraq. Important safety tip Chinda: Don’t wave your “beliefs” at soldiers who haven’t yet had their trip to Afghanistan, it seems they may not be so in tune with your feelings.
Paulus said “They ended up fighting their old adversaries the Austrians across the Alps. It was a brutal war in horrendous terrain, and almost half a million Italians died. where they made the Via Ferrata. Iron way. It was too cold when we were there, but gee they looked good.
My Grandad grew hemp for the war effort, I’ve always been a bit proud of that. in the vein of things that WW1 started, it marked the beginning of drug prohibition in the UK starting with Cocaine, apparently it sapped the lads will to get back out there and do it again.
@61.
Four Corners, as vetted and approved by Defence PR?
Anyway, is a thread on Armistice Day really the place for micturating contests between people sitting in safety and comfort behind computer screens?
Why the defence of the Second Reich?
It was hardly a bastion of demoracy and equal rights.
Ahh grandfathers and WW1. Mine got the white feather treatment despite being considered part of the home front war effort as a guard on the railways. How times change.
Why the defence of the Second Reich?
It was hardly a bastion of democracy and equal rights.
Compared with Tsarist Russia (one third of the Triple Entente), the Second Reich was Sweden.
Chinda63, perhaps you’re not aware that Remembrance Day commemorates the end of the war.
(Despite the fact that Paul mentioned it in the post. P’raps you didn’t read the post.)
Calling people’s granpappies and great-granpappies ‘murderers’ would suggest that your expressed desire not to start a flame war is, how we say, a tad disingenuous.
A fabulous point, Pav. I could not agree more.
I wonder if any TV station tonight is broadcasting Oh! What A Lovely War?
Chinda63, there is such a thing as a just war. The Second World War certainly was (at least on the Allied side), and you could make out a pretty good case for our involvement in East Timor (although that wasn’t a war as such).
I agree that they’re thin on the ground, though.
Falklands???
The necessary corollary of this essential observation is that perhaps we should have a day set aside to commemorate the start of war.
Perhaps this day could be called he Government Lies Exciting Jingoistic Self-Righteousness Day.
In the Second Reich at near the start of the war the Social Democrats had the majority in Parliament and the Government for example had a much harder time getting expenditure on Battleships through parliament there than Churchill had with the Liberals in the UK ( dreadnought very good on this.)
@ 73
That would be 28 July, then.
Good luck with that, Katz.
Instead of the Last Post, “Oh, what a Lovely War.”
Instead of a minute’s silence, a tableau vivante of Mr Howard’s Dreaded Human Shredding Machine.
Instead of Reveille, “The Fish Cheer”
Group events — mass photo shoot and Facebook exhibition of pictures taken at the gates of the Intelligence Service facility of your own choice.