When I was very young I found a book in my grandmother’s home in Ligonier, it was entitled Freedom’s Triumph and told the story of World War One in pictures and words, stark black and white photos and artist renderings. On one page was a picture of hundreds of skulls, on another the image of an Englishman firing at Huns determinately from his disintegrating one-man tank. During that war over 1 million young men died in one battle, Verdun. At Paschendael over a hundred thousand men died, on both sides in a few short hours. It was the perfect translation of the German word for battle, Schlacht, slaughter. The book told the story in words as well and wherever possible culpability for the war was hurled upon the Bosch.
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Many years later my son and I stood in front of a World War One memorial in our ancestral home of Arzberg, Oberfranken, Bavaria, Germany. On the obolisk were the names of all of the young men from the village who had died in the war, more than 100 names, including Ludwig Sack. He died in France in 1914 and he was followed into the vortex of death by every young man in his village. The same story was repeated all over Germany, in France, England, Russia, Poland and the rest of Europe. More than two million young Germans died, the same or more in Russia, 1.3 million in France, Austria lost 1.2 million, the British Empire a million, the US 125,000 or so. Staggering numbers.
Fort Wayne was divided by the war. In 1914 the German Red Cross raised considerable money in Fort Wayne to care for the boys at the front. Many young men left Fort Wayne to fight at the front, as many on the German side as for the English. The papers were neutral, only our government pushed entry into the war on the English side and this caused animosity in Fort Wayne. Woodrow Wilson, the pro-English Democratic candidate for president promised to keep us out of the conflict, but prepared secretly to enter the war. In the fall election of 1916, the Republicans surprisingly carried elections in Fort Wayne, a normally Democratic stronghold. The Germans were voicing their anger at the ballot box.
Then, in 1917, America declared war on Germany and Fort Wayne became a target of federal government oppression of the city’s German majority. People of German ancestry and birth were finger-printed, photographed and registered as Alien Enemies. Their movements were restricted and the city was divided into zones in which Alien Enemies could be arrested should they be caught without papers. Germans here were harassed, jailed, imprisoned and lost property. War bond salesmen targeted German-Americans for their “fair” share of subscriptions, over and over again. A Committee of Defense was set up to keep an eye on Germans and to end the practice of speaking German in schools, churches and on the street.
When the war ended in 1918 America dictated the peace and joined the British and the French in heaping guilt for the war on the Germans. The result was a humiliated Germany that fell into depression before and deeper than the US over war reparations and the expropriation of German industry. French soldiers occupied the Rhineland, the industrial heart of Germany, and took the profits home to Paris. Germans starved. Wheel barrels of Deutschemarks were needed to buy a loaf of bread. The humiliation of the Germans left the nation sullen, in a low grade civil war, famished and humiliated. When it reached its nadir Hitler declared on his campaign posters he was Germany’s last hope.
The irony is that Germany was no more guilty of starting World War One than England or Italy. A war guilt commission in 1951, comprising eminent historians from Europe and America, concluded that: “The documents do not permit attributing a premeditated desire for a European War on the part of any government or people in 1914. Distrust was at a peak and ruling circles were dominated by the idea that war was inevitable. Each one accused the other of aggressive intentions; each accepted the risk of war and saw its hope of security in the alliance system and the development of armament.”
In Fort Wayne the result was also a sullen German population that had been slapped down by its own government and by the local ruling class or, as the News and Sentinel called them, “super patriots.” The Germans were overwhelmingly Democrats when the war began and carried election after election for the DP. But by the end of WWI the Germans had moved en mass to the Republican Party where they remain today.
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Jim:
And if I’m correct, we ONLY have a mere HANDFUL of surviving vets (fewer than 20) left living from “The war to end all wars”…
Good post!
Bob, I think the last one died earlier this year, an English trench vet. I remember when the last Frenchman died. There was no notice of the last German. I think all of our vets have also died. Perhaps you have better information, but I think the last one has died. Jim
Jim – Thank you very much for this post – you are correct in your comment about there being so few left that had first-hand knowledge of what transpired back in 1914 to 1920.
The shift from the Democrat to Republican parties was happening all through the midwest amoung those of German descent – it was happening in Michigam, Wisconsin and Minnesota also.
Do you think that we could possibly treat those of Muslum faith and extraction like the German and Japanese were treated during both of the World Wars? I doubt it could happen in this day and age.
Jim:
According to Reuters, the last BRITISH vet died (age 111) on 25 July 2009..
The last American vet is still alive (as of 10 Aug):
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/fredbrown/2009/08/frank_buckles_the_last_of_the.html
And there is a Canadian, Aussie, and a Polish vet that I know of, but can’t confirm.
BG
Thanks, Bob. It was a nasty, terrible war that the kings and prime ministers, not to mention at least one president, used young men as fodder. Two years, tens of thousands of Americans dead, hundreds of thousands wounded; we now worry, and rightfully, when two or three GIs are killed. The goal should be to minimize casualties to zero, to avoid war, but to be so well prepared that no one really wants to be our opponent.
John B.,
I hope that we will treat each person as an individuals, rather than lump them together. I think that is the point of America. I wrote about that concerning our schools: we are a nation that promotes individualism. We should then look at each person for his or her unique set of attributes rather than where his grandmother came from.
Jim
Jim, as always, thanks for your hard work, research, and insight.
Jim I truly enjoy your writing, keep it up..
Throughout history, up to the second half of the last century war was total. If we look at the slaughter of Crecy, and Agincourt, or Austerlitz and Waterloo the carnage was only governed by man’s technological ability to kill. Over the centuries that technological ability has improved as has our ability as wariors.
The U.S. civil war brought a glimpse of what was to come. Accurate and more technologically advanced artillary and the riffled barrel increased casualties exponencially, but few took note. By 1914 the world had the machine guns, accurate artillary, rifles, and poison gas. By 1916 affective aircraft. The world had never seen the number of troops engaged at close range with modern weaponry as it did at Verdun, and latter the Somme. France technically won the battle of Verdun in 1916 only because it still held the ground. Each side lost over 300,000 men. By 1917 French casualties exceeded 1 million. The total male population of France at the time was 20 million. By the end of the war France would lose just under 5% of it’s total population to military deaths and Germany just under 4%. The war would cost 37 million lives and thanks to the wonderful work done in 1919 at Versailles only lead to a worldwide depression and an even bigger war a generation later.
Today is the aniversery of the end of that war. Approximatly 116,000 American wariors never returned home from it. We owe our thanks to those men and women and all those before and after who “gave their last full measure” so we can be free.
Over the last 100 years we became very good wariors. I hope for my kids sake, the next 100 years we will become very good statesmen. Maybe someday our warriors will all die of old age. But…untill then we must settle for the best technology and peace through superior firepower.