It's really been 90 years since the end of the Great War. Why do you think most Americans have forgotten this conflict? It shaped the rest of the 20th century, yet if you ask most people they don't have a clue it existed I imagine.
This isn't some holiday in Austria unofficially commerating the start of the republic? Or is there weeping over the glory days of big chinned emperors being the big dog in Europe?
I remember. Why, just last night, I dreamed that I was Pusher, right there with Alvin gobbling at Krauts.
WWII surpassed WWI in the histories. Had WWII not happened, it is likely WWI would be far better known. Also, don't forget media tech was very poor in WWI, so there is little in the way of visual tools to bring it to people's consciousness.
Nah, we're glad to be rid of them. National holiday here is October 26th - t'was when 1. the last allied soldier left the country in 1955 and 2. neutrality was codified the same day. Well, the allies haven't returned, but we have people in almost every war zone on the planet now It's a French holiday, tho. Incidentally I did just read about the battle of Verdun. 300 days, 300.000 dead, a battlefield that's called 'soil of steel' until today as there's up to four tons (sic!) of ordnance per square meter (!) still buried in it. Here's a few of the very first color photos ever taken, making WW1 more alive even today.
It seems to be a bigger deal in Canada than here in the States. I was in Nova Scotia a few years ago for "Remembrance Day" and it seemed everyone was wearing a poppy. You don't see much of that down here.
It was longer ago than WWII, and there ain't nobody left alive to remember it. It's all written history now, not living memory.
We have a whole law banning them from ever coming into power again... so no. As far as Austrians today are concerned, the county came into existence in 1920. Others will even say it's 1945/55, thus negating the country having any responsibility when it comes to WW2.
Yeah, and the cost wasn't as great for the US. We weren't at the Somme or Verdun. We came in at the end, overwhelmed the Huns with fresh troops, and headed back home to isolationism, to the point we didn't even support our own president in creating the league of nations. And it was trumped in the next generation by an even greater war against a more horrific ideology. No surprise it's not a common issue over here. In the British Commonwealth and France I'm sure that's different.
Yeah, its one thing I'm very proud of. Walking through town, over 90% of the people were wearing a poppy yesterday.
And I looked at this thread at precisely 11:00 a.m. my time. How Twilight Zone. I have to agree. The cost in money and lives for the United States simply wasn't as great as was the dire cost of World War II--so it doesn't remain in the public consciousness in the same way. The real twentieth century mindset didn't start until after World War I ended, IMO. That's another reason it faded from public consciousness. Most people don't even know that Teddy Roosevelt's youngest son died in WWI; his name was Quentin. He was only 20. Has a president or former president ever lost a son in a war except for Teddy Roosevelt? I don't believe so. I'll bet if you asked it as a trivia question, no one could answer. Quentin was shot down in his plane by the Germans. Very sad business, that. His fianceé had been denied permission to travel overseas and marry him. Quentin Roosevelt, age 20. Quentin Roosevelt, age 4 on the steps of the White House with playmate Rosewell Pinckney. Adorable.
Most people don't know that there was a first world war? It's not forgotten in Europe, of course. It really was shameful part of history.
My father was in Kaiserslaughter, Germany in the early 1950s. The Korean armistice was signed while he was in basic, so he lucked out. He said what really, really struck him was that he almost never saw any what he would called "middle aged men." There were younger 20ish and 30ish, maybe early 40ish....and he saw really old men with white hair, but that the local population seemed disproportionately skewed. He said you couldn't find any men in their late 40s and absolutely none in their 50s at all. They just weren't there. There was a shocking number of middle aged widows in the town. Apparently the first war had taken all their husbands. The body count in Germany and especially Russia from the first war was devastating from what I hear.
For our Aussie and Kiwi allies. I got a much better appreciation for WWI living in Australia than I ever would have if I had never lived there. Lest we forget, lest we forget.
^As Sunshine pointed out. IIRC, Harry Patch is the last man left alive who actually fought in the trenches, one of the others was Navy, I think, and I'm not sure about the other one. We had a two minute silence in the office, and everyone observed it.
There was a time when I had access to a university library and got really interested in WWII and read all kinds of books and pretty soon you realize that to fully undestand WWII, you have to read about WWI. The fallout from WWI was the direct cause of WWII without doubt. I thank god that we had brave men that fought WWI but it ended very badly with the victors revenge. The leaders of that time on the winning side were not honorable men at all IMHO.
Yea, think about that next time you call for 'glassing' whatever country you don't like at the moment.
You are right but I think we need to mean what we say and come down hard on countries to make them police themselves.
Like Demiurge said, World War I just didn't have the impact on the U.S. that World War II did. We were involved for 18 months instead of four years, and World War II resulted in nearly four times as many American deaths.
Well let's be honest here.... If the allies had glassed Germany back in WWI there wouldn't have been a WWII as there would have been no Germany. So 'glassing' is still an acceptable tactic for us war mongers.....
