part0013

Like many others, he'd realized that the war that would end war would actually become the major cause of another world war in the future.

Even when the warring nations were conducting peace negotiations in Paris 1919, their leaders knew that the peace they were making wasn't going to last. The French Supreme Commander dismissed the proceedings as a twenty-year ceasefire. The British Prime Minister Lloyd George said:

“We’ll still have to do this whole thing again in twenty-five years and at three times the cost.”

He was right. The second world war broke out nearly twenty years later and claimed four times as many lives. So, the most terrible war in human history had a fitting conclusion. It bred another that would be even worse.

The decision reached in Paris to make Germany pay was short-sighted. Germany was forced to make payments of billions of dollars known as reparations to the victorious nations. The American delegates never agreed to this idea, but France, in particular, insisted on prompt payment.

As the war ended, Germany was hovering on the brink of a communist revolution. The country suffered the shame of defeat, lost territory and their economy was ruined by war and reparations. The German population was outraged. They had won the war in the east, and the war in the West had ended before Allied soldiers invaded Germany.

How could it possibly be claimed that they had lost the war?

Their bewilderment was especially intense because German newspapers hadn't reported the full extent of the German army collapse. In the 30s, a former frontline soldier by the name of Adolf Hitler capitalized on this source of resentment. His Nazi Party came to power 1933 and set in motion the events that caused the Second World War.

For some, it was duty, patriotism, or the belief that they were fighting for a better world. For others. It was the simple fact that they'd be imprisoned or shot and a disgrace to their families if they did not.

Men who survived the war expected some reward for their efforts. Most were disappointed. The world left Russia with a Bolshevik government, which inflicted famine, murderous purges and severe oppression on its population for over 70 years.

France had won, but it was hardly worth the price. It never recovered its position in the world as a great power. The war left Britain and the British Empire with over 940,000 dead and an economy close to break down.

Only America had done well, emerging as the world's strongest and richest nation. In another twist of fate, just as the conflict ended a colossal influenza epidemic swept through the world. Weakened by the stress and deprivation of four years of war, over 10 million people died.

Those who survived the war suffered its consequences for the rest of their lives. Soldiers with lungs ruined by gas or missing three or even four limbs slowly faded away into nursing homes. All through Europe, asylums were full of men suffering from shell shock. Today this is a psychological condition and recognized in combat soldiers as PTSD. But in 1918, military tradition and society were only a couple of years from believing that such men should be shot for cowardice.

There's still men and women alive today whose fathers were shot during the war because they suffered mental breakdowns brought on by the strain of fighting in the trenches. Even those who suffered no apparent physical or psychological damage were tormented by what they had seen and done. One in eight men who fought in the war were killed. Most were under 30, and many still in their teens.

Hundreds of thousands of women around the same age were unable to marry because there simply weren't enough men to go around. The war is now part of our history and it is still part of living memory. In 1998, at the 18th anniversary of the armistice, there were 160 men still alive in Britain who had fought in the Great War. Perhaps similar numbers existed in Germany, France, America and Russia.

By now, in 2020, I'm sure all of them will have died. World War One is still a frequent topic of novels, films and television documentaries. It's difficult to find anything positive to say about it. But perhaps those of that luckless generation born at the end of the 19th century would take comfort from the fact that the slaughter they endured still haunts us today.