Veteran’s Day today. I was surprised to find the library closed when MSU had been open, and so was unable to return the Great Lectures CDs. This series is on Mediterranean religion, and it’s okay. More appropriate to the holiday, the previous lecture I borrowed was on WWI, and that was pretty good.
As a kid, I largely passed over WWI, despite an interest in military strategy and history. The Great War was largely devoid of good generalship, and entirely devoid of the kind of sweeping back-and-forth that characterize instructive battles. The western front was infamous as a meat grinder offering no hope of a breakthrough, but WWI was stagnant almost everywhere: at Gallipoli and Italy and the naval standoff where the North Sea meets the Baltic. The idiocy of frontal assaults and the cult of the offensive did nothing to improve the situation. The sole theater of maneuver, the Russo-German front, was more a product of poorly trained and led Russians than clever Germans, and ultimately achieved nothing: German victory and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk didn’t prevent the ultimate German collapse before the western powers. WWI is worth studying as military strategy only as an extended demonstration of what not to do.
Now that I’m older, and I’ve rather had my fill of strategy—enough to understand the basic principles, and uninterested in the kind of minute study of hardware that a more detailed understanding would entail—I realize that studying WWI for strategy rather misses the point. WWI was enormously significant for the social ramifications. Probably more significant than WWII, at least for the issues the US faces today.
The vast increase of federal power in an unnecessary war. The nurturing of war hysteria. Germany’s “stabbed in the back†narrative, and how it grew out of a leadership misrepresenting the war’s progress to its citizenry. The industrialists’ and bankers’ influence over national policy in all countries, but most notably in the US. The concealment of those power-political interests behind idealistic protestations of nationalism and the rule of law. Wilson’s careful steering of his nation into war, despite campaigning on a promise to stay out of it. Wilhelm’s visions of being hailed as conqueror…and the seizure of real power by more cynical ministers. The demonization of minorities at home. Spy fever. Austria’s nationalistic collapse in a war intended to harden national unity among its disparate peoples. Russia’s collapse upon fighting a war it could not win. Lecture after lecture of creepy parallels to the recent invasion of Iraq.
Every Veteran’s Day, I pause to remember our veterans. Usually I end up vilifying war in the process, even as I thank the individual soldier. It’s a good reason for a national holiday, and we should keep it. But we should add a holiday for remembering war. Not celebrating war, mind you, but remembering how it goes wrong, and especially remembering how evil people will turn it to their profit.
Post a Comment