THE GREAT WAR

Set, do I sense cynicism in that, a war is maybe large but is war ever "great"?

What exactly constitutes a GREAT war?

I mean this question not insultingly but just curiously at to what you and others really think makes a great war.

I guess that I can see that when the greatest super powers ever known in the world at the time went to war it could conceivably be considered the “great” war.

They called it "the Great War" in the now somewhat archaic sense of "huge, immense, all-encompassing", like "Great Dane" or "Great Britain" (i.e. bigger than just Britain=England, but England plus Scotland plus Ireland plus Wales), rather than "wonderful, superb", because they thought it was the biggest war people had or could have. Then WWII came along and they had to rename it.

Interesting new word I learned just today:


Source:World Wide Words is copyright (c) Michael Quinion 2008. All rights
reserved. The Words Web site is at http://www.worldwidewords.org .

This thread reminded me of some war "souvenirs" but from an earlier war: the 70/71 war as it's called here, the Franco-Prussian War.

Since Prussia (Germany, so to say) 'won' that war, the remembrance of it was quite different than that of the Great War. And people were proud to have been there.


This was given by a great-grandmother to a great-grandfather (the photo and the officer's patent by Wilhelm II in the background are from a period some years later):



It's a French-made watch (bought, "found" or taken?), with a German inscrpture Reminding 1870 - 1871 inside the watch's lid:

I have neglected this thread.

Walter, thanks for that article on Japan in the Great War. Tsing Tao (pronounced Ching Dow) was a concession to the German Empire which they pressured the Chinese to make as they (the Germans) were rushing to set up an overseas empire, just like all the other big boys in Europe. To this day, the only decent beer made in the far east is Tsing Tao (the beer has the same name as the city)--i guess you couldn't do better than to have the Germans teach you how to make beer.

When England became concerned about a naval arms race with Germany, they made an agreement with Japan that the Japanese would take over their responsibilities on the "Asiatic station," as the navies of the "Great Powers" then called their operations in the Pacific. They signed that treaty in 1902. It was a natural, since the Japanese, angered that the United States had forced them to open their ports in 1853, had turned to the English to provide the expertise to bring them into the "modern" world. That included the establishment and building of a modern navy by the contemporary standards of the European navies. That was the Imperial Navy that handed the Russians their collective ass in the 1905 war. The Japanese Imperial Navy escorted ANZAC troops across the Indian Ocean, and participated in the hunt for SMS Emden. A Japanese squadron was also sent to participate in the hunt for von Spee's Asiatic Squadron, but in the event, the Royal Navy had disposed of von Spee's squadron before the Japanese could join. The Japanese Imperial Navy also provided a destroyer flotilla for patrol duty in the Mediterranean, commanded by the cruiser Izumo. So, in a sense, the western Allies helped to create the Japanese military machine which they were to face in the 1940s. The Great War also gave the Japanese the extensive system of naval bases in the Pacific which they established by taking over German island colonies and protectorates.

SMS Leipzig was stationed off the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1914 (German Imperial naval vessels had assisted the United States Navy in the evacuation of American nationals during the hooraw when the United States seized and occupied Veracruz on the Caribbean coast, and they sent ships both to Veracruz and to Alcapulco). The fledgling Royal Canadian Navy was not prepared to deal with even a light cruiser, and although HMCS Rainbow steamed from Esquimalt on the Canadian Pacific coast, she could never have survived a fight with either SMS Leipzig or SMS Nuremberg--the Canadians rather panicked, because they were expected to escort small royal navy armed sloops and British shipping in the Pacific to Esquimalt, but weren't up to the job. The Japanese dispatched the cruiser Izumo to deal with the threat of the German light cruisers, and HMCS Rainbow turned back after steaming a little way south, roughly to the coast of northern California.

It was probably that event which lead the Japanese to participate in the hunt for von Spee and for Emden, and to offer her services to escort Australian troop transports and shipping, and to patrol in the Mediterranean. The Great War presented heady opportunities for Japan to play with the "big boys," and for Japanese military men, and their sailors in particular, to gain valuable operational experience. The raid on Tsing Tao really wasn't much different than what she had done at Port Arthur in the 1905 war, but the escort duties she performed thereafter, and her patrols in the Med helped to give the Japanese Imperial Navy a sophisticated and modern view of the role of navies and various classes of warships. In particular, they learned a good deal about destroyer patrols, anti-submarine warfare and torpedoes. In 1941, the Japanese had the best destroyers in the world, the best torpedoes, and--arguably--the best submarines.

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Rex, as someone has already pointed out, it was called the "Great War" because it was big. Any perception of cynicism you may have experienced is but another product of your perfervid imagination.

set :

since we are already in china , i thought you might be interested in a german google site that deals with the "boxer rebellion" (the text in english is an automatic translation) .
the illustrations are actually of more interest to me than the text .
i have a tattered and torn postcard from a german soldier on the way to the "boxer aufstand" in my collection - unfortunately the picture side is completely gone - it's just a kind of piece of history .
there are a great number of links to all kinds of german historical sites .
hbg

http://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de%2Fboxeraufstand_zusammenfassung.htm&langpair=de|en

Thanks, Boss . . .

Instead of typing all the text ... (sorry)


Source: (London) Evening Standard, 21.11.08, 1st edition, page 27

Nice. However, if the fellow had half a brain it would be a work entitled: View from the Balconey of my House in Neutral Switzerland where I stayed from 1914 to 1918

Amid all the pathos and portrayals of the suffering and damage caused by the "Great war" there are also the questions of why and for what it was fought; whether the results obtained met the goals or hopes of any of the antagonists; and what were the consequences of the choices they made that led to this war.

It is pretty clear that, apart from Austria Hungary, which contributed most to the immediate (and historically least significant) causes of the war, the main antagonists, Britain, France, Germany and Russia were mainly motivated by the ambition to hold or expand their imperial positions with respect to colonies in Africa and Asia, and the specific desire to expand them into the remains of the Ottoman Empire, which each of the contending powers hoped to exploit and/or dismember. Other factors including mutual fear and rivalry, memories of the war of 1870, access to the newly important sources of petroleum in the Mideast, and the naval challenge to Britain posed by an ambitious Germany, all added to the momentum towards this war.

Each of the principal powers evidently calculated that they had more to win than to lose in advancing the polar alliances that propelled them toward war, and each in his own way was utterly confounded by the result of it. Indeed one can arguably maintain that the entire, lamentable 20th century was a series of destructive aftershocks from the catastrophe of WWI -- certainly the Bolshevik revolution in Russia; the rise of Facism in Italy and Germany; the militarization & pursuit of Empire of Japan; WWII; The Cold War; and even the militant resurgence of fundamentalist Islam are all directly tracable to forces aroused or unleashed in this awful conflict.

Though conventional history portrays the Central Powers as the aggressors in this conflict, it is worth remembering that the opening "defensive" campaign of the Allies was the largely unprovoked invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 - an action whose unhappy consequences persist even today.

I believe the United States made a great error in entering this war, and that both we and the world would likely have been better off had we stayed out -- the conclusion of the war in Europe would likely have involved the mutual exhaustion of the antagonists; while the Tsarist regime in Russia was finished, the Bolshevik revolution would likely have been avoided; and the peace arrangements would likely have been less perfectly suited to the emergence of a Nazi regime in Germany, bent on revenge and redress. Finally, relevant to today's world, the Allies would have been far less likely to complete their dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire (as America poured troops into the Western front in 1917, France & Britain transferred large numbers to the Mideast), and the subsequent unhappy history of that region might have been very different.

While America and the European powers shared the experiences of WWII, and the Cold War that followed, we each experienced and interpreted them differently. Europe emerged, exhausted by conflict and determined to avoid it in the future: America focused more on the challenges attendant to the emergence of dangerous, authoritarian powers and the costs associated with accomodation to them. As a result we talk at each other without much understanding.

It can be argued that The United States has, since WWII, fallen victim to the same ambition and hubris that led Europe to the catastrophe of WWI. It is at best difficult to balance the competing needs to husband one's resources, while dealing with emerging threats -- history offers numerous contradictory lessons in these areas. However, it seems clear that we made a great strategic error in 1991 by entering the first Gulf War. We owed nothing to Kuwait, and, however distasteful he was, Saddam Hussein was a useful antagonist to the revolutionary regime in Iran. Our experiment with the imposed creation of a modern, secular state in Iraq cannot be viewed as a success - either from the benefits achieved or the cost involved.

I suspect the emerging powers of China and India view the European obsession with a legalistic world order and America's more disorderly and somewhat imperialistic preoccupations with equal bemusement. While they must deal with both, I doubt that they seriously believe that either will long dominate their futures. That may well turn out to be the driver for the next synthesis to emerge on the world scene.

Thanks, George. Well written.




The 1870/71 war, WWI, WWII and especially the 'cold war' were PRESENT here.
You may call it "exhausted by conflict", but the normal women and men on the street just didn't (and doesn't) want another war.


I don't know for sure how the situation in other countries than Germany has been.
Actually, we, here in Germany, easily could have had the very same situation as it developped in Russia .... if we hadn't had some 'democratic' politicians.
Thanks to the 'strategy' of the Social Democrat member of parliament Günther Noske, the 1918 Kiel Mutinity [why is that named in English "Wilhelmshaven Mutinity"?] ended - differently, in the Weimar Republic.

In my personal opinion, the rise of the Nazis here was a lot backed by 'unemployed' former professional militaries: since Versailles limited Germany's army to a total 100,000 men, all these, now uncontend, former followers of orders were pleased to get a new uniform (police, SA, SS ... even Blockwart) and do what ordered without questioning.

(This neither shall belittle any responsibility of my parents, grandparents and others [though they didn't belong to any of those groups, the opposite was fact] nor is it a well-balanced theory. Just some thoughts I got during researches for an article [book?].)

Without necessarily endorsing, agreeing with, or disputing the statements you have made in your post, and with regard to this:



. . . i recommend to you Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan, New York: Random House, 2002.

Personally, i consider that idiot Kaiser Wilhelm to have been responsible for the war more than any other single individual. The assurances given the Austrian foreign minister, Berchtold, that Germany would back Austria, were predicated upon a German assumption that they could quickly knock out the French, and turn to confront the Russians. No matter what one alleges, Austria invaded Serbia, Germany invaded Luxembourg and Belgium, Turkey invaded Russia and Bulgaria invaded Serbia. Rather difficult to characterize any of that as defensive war.

Whether or not it is true that the Kaiser was at fault, the reparations question was responsible for the necessity of putting a clause in each treaty--with Germany, with the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy and with Bulgaria--requiring them to acknowledge culpability in regard to the war. This was to provide a legalistic basis for requiring the payment of reparations. In the event, Germany did not pay even 10% of their reparations, and most of what was paid was in-kind "payments" of assets seized by the Allies; Austria and Hungary were forgiven their reparations; and only little, impoverished Bulgaria actually paid their reparations bill.

Earlier, McTag told of some booklets from the Manchester Guardian which he would send me. Well, he sent them, and they are a wonderful set of booklets, and include many remarkable things. One of them is the story of Len "Smithie" Smith, who went to war at age 22, having been a commercial artist. He was a sniper, originally, and drew viewer elevations of the terrain at Vimy ridge for his own use, and later his drawings were used by staff officers to plan operations. He survived the war, but could not get a publisher for his war memoirs and his artwork--war memoirs were a dime a dozen after the war, and the cost of printing color plates was prohibitive. However, his great nephew has put it all up on the web. You can read Dave Mason's account of his great uncle and his art work by clicking here.

. . .

Len Smith at the time of his enlistment in 1914.



The hospital in Wimereux, where Smith convalesced in 1916, and met an Australian who became a close friend.



One of Smith's viewer elevation drawings of the German lines on Vimy ridge, in 1916. It is easy to see how valuable such work was to operations staff.



This is an enlargement of the detail inset from the drawing above.



Two more of Smith's viewer elevation drawings of the German lines.

According to the Guardian booklet, Smith would crawl out into "no-man's land" before the dawn, and stay under cover all day in shell holes or natural depressions, sketching the enemy lines, and returning after dark. He would then complete and perfect his drawings and color them with watercolor washes in lamp light at night in a bunker under the lines.

(Images from the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Mail)

Smith's drawing are online as well: various papers have some or more on their sides like the Telegraph.

The diariesof Smith are published as an ebook - some pages are free samples

Spiegel has a slide show online about soldier's every day life in WWI.




Source: spiegel-online (obviously most of those pics on Spiegel were taken from: An Officer's Manual of the Western Front 1914-1918 , edited by Dr Stephen Bull, Convay, September 2008 [ISBN: 978-1844860722])

War ships of the German Navy with the red flags of the sailor's mutiny.

(2nd) special edition of the "Vorwärts" (daily paper by the Socialdemocratic Party); First headline: 'The Emperor has resigned". Second headline: [Chancellor:] "No shooting by the military"

An auntie of mine gave me two booklets her father left her with photographs of war injuries in them. I burned them both. I wish she had.

And I don't burn books lightly.