Veterans Day; Armistice Day
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]
Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.
Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).
I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.
You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the link about it if you scroll down on the left sidebar). It’s not necessarily great poetry, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.
The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice—and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?
Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.
There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.
But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.
Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.
The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:
Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and
Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and
Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.
After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed—even if each peace was only a temporary one.
And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence—or have continually threatened to—ever since.
So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one—and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived—and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.
[NOTE: I’ve scheduled this post to be published at 11:11 AM on 11/11.]
when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.
It’s interesting when you look at the numbers of deaths due to warfare over time, it seems as if WWII could (sort of) be looked at as the “war to end all wars”. I mean, obviously there’s been plenty of warfare since WWII, but the scale has been much smaller and the number of deaths attributed to war has been generally on the decline. The great post war superpowers seem to have grokked that the real cost of engaging in large scale warfare against one another was just to high… so far anyway.
WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII
A lot of people say this. I’m far from sure. There were many decision points that could have avoided WWII; it would either not have happened at all, or been a much smaller scale conflict. Twenty years is a lot of time to pass over.
The other wars on Neo’s list were unresolved on purpose.
I think what causes these unresolved conflicts is the desire for stability, which is not in itself a bad one. It’s when stability becomes an end in itself, and things get patched with duct tape instead of fixed.
Of course they HAD to change the name…
After all, the war to end all wars didn’t end all wars…
In Flanders Fields by Major Dr. John McCrae, read by Linus @ 2:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VtGbJHXTQ8
@Frederick… Knowing what we know today, there was no way to avoid the war… Hitler saw himself as the Magyar in Engels predictive book (the magyar struggle), Hitler wrote his own book MY Struggle.. ie. if he is the Magyar, the two are the same… one predictive the other personal and actual (in at least his mind)…
you see, given engels book predicting the holocaust as the world storm which would sweep the world of all the hide bound Volkerfaille…
Given that this was almost religious in its being akin to a prophet out of engels, there was no way this was not going to happen…
remember, the reichstag fire was NOT Hitler – that was the result of the Trial created by willi munzenberg to absolve the anarchists and communists..
no… Knowing what we know today, there was no stopping that train…
one way or another… it was going to happen
In some respects, I sometimes think of WWI as the greater tragedy because of the mindless manner in which it developed, and the senseless nature of the slaughter. This, of course, is balanced by the fact that it was less of a total war than WWII, and did not impact the civilian population to the same extent.
I think it a reach to claim that it segued into WWII; if for no other reason the role of Japan in propelling us into war. On the other hand, the aftermath of WWI certainly provided a platform for Hitler and the Nazis in Germany; while the extreme war weariness of England and France inhibited their early response to aggression. I leave it to others to analyze it further.
I am fond of the series of books by Charles Todd (actually an American mother/son team) based on the post-WWI life and mysteries of Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge; with war vignettes sprinkled in. He is haunted and the stories can be haunting.
I had an Uncle who was a seventeen year old “doughboy” in MacArthur’s Rainbow Division in France. He was gassed, and suffered for a long time after returning home. He spoke once of the horrors–but only once.
oldflyer
I’m reminded of a series of books by Philip Kerr about a fictional Nazi era Berlin homicide detective. The first three relatively short stories are compiled into a trilogy called Berin Noir. The whole series is a fascinating glimpse into the madness of pre and post WWII Germany. The protagonist is a bit of a thug who despises Nazis and finds himself repeatedly drawn into lose lose situations by the Riech. Dark and compelling they’re not for the faint of heart. The next time I read them will be the third round.
Armistice Day does sound old-timey, genteel for the 21th C.
Let us adjourn to the verandah for lemonade!
My favorite quirky sixties name was “Verandah Porche” — a writer for the Liberation News Service in those bygone days. She helped found a commune, Total Loss Farm, where part of the LNS relocated, then feuded with the rest, and where she still lives. She is now a poet. You may think I’m making this up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verandah_Porche
Paul Simon wrote a fine small song:
____________________________________
On Armistice Day
The Philharmonic will play
But the songs that we sing
Will be sad
–Paul Simon, “Armistice Day”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvxSikmzQQw
____________________________________
Hard to say what the song is precisely about. It sounds like the narrator mildly regrets an easy relationship he fell into after something intense. Then it segues into a complaint about the government. He wants his Congressman and Congresswoman to do something.
It’s a fascinating question of how inevitable history is.
In retrospect WW I looks inevitable. The arms build-up and tricky alliances would eventually blow.
OTOH if any number of post-WW II crises — Berlin, Cuba, the dissolution of the USSR, plus several technical glitches, not to mention large wars — had gone seriously sideways and caused a nuclear war, who would have been surprised?
We still haven’t destroyed ourselves that way.
Damn if I know whether we’ve been lucky or deep down we have better sense than the horrible run of 20th C wars would indicate.
Yawrate —
I read the Berlin Noir compilation a few years ago and enjoyed it. I especially liked the term “beefsteak Nazi” (brown on the outside, Red on the inside) especially compared to our modern term “watermelon”.
Unfortunately, I was also reading Volker Kutscher’s “Bablyon Berlin” (and sequels) at the same time, and a lot of the historical characters are the same so I kept getting confused about which characterization/subplot went with which.
I’m also old enough to remember when November 11 was still referred to as Armistice Day in the States. The habit hung on for a while in popular usage after the official 1954 name change.
Yawrate: Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series. The early trilogy you referred to–March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem–is the best. The later novels are too long and smack of keeping the franchise going. Alan Furst’s novels set in pre-WWII Europe and occupied France are also good.
This Veterans Day, a number of us are remembering:
“Enemies both domestic and foreign” in our oath.
I was talking to a retired master sergeant here at work and she emphasized “domestic”.
I just sent this to my fellow veterans from the Navy squadron I was in during Vietnam.
“From 1966 through 1967 I was a recruiter in northern California. We went to colleges to recruit future Naval aviators. We were screamed at, demonstrated against, had our literature burned, had our vehicles defaced, and were even rapped at UC Berkeley for two days. It made me angry, (I wanted to fight back) but we were under strict orders not to react – the TV cameras were ever present waiting for us to retaliate, which would have been blown up into an “incident.” The Marxist students at those schools are now legislators, teachers, school board members, CEOs and more. These subversives have been hard at work eating away at out capitalist free markets and Republican form of government all these years.
They managed to turn American society against the war in Vietnam. We never lost militarily, it was the destruction of the will to win that defeated us. When the Democrat controlled Congress abandoned the South Vietnamese in 1974, which ed to the North overrunning the South In 1975, it was an unthinkable betrayal of the South Vietnamese and the sacrifice of lives and limbs by our military.
I lost four squadron mates and four other close friends over North Vietnam. I mourn them today, when the country honors veterans. We did our duty in spite of our fellow citizens who turned against us Vietnam Vets can hold their heads high. We kept the faith in the fight against Communism. Our Democrat politicians and closet Marxists have worked against that cause lo these many years. That battle has not been won. The Marxists are out of the closet now and we know who the traitors are.
All my best to my fellow veterans.”
The mix of events that fell into place to start WWI, with all of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren and great grand kids on every side a giant extended group of kinfolk who should have known better but the German’s decided to get a jump on the French to play a bit of chess and they all thought the August 1914 thing would not last but a month or two. They were still using tactics that had become obsolete in the late 1800’s, running gigantic offense actions against entrenched defense who had machine guns, artillery and lots of ammunition thanks to modern rail transportation. I think they killed off the better educated decent thinking people on each side and created openings for the commies, socialists and the super wealthy to set up the next war while working hard to being ‘peace in our time’. It’s complicated, was and still is.
…but the German’s decided to get a jump on the French to play a bit of chess and they all thought the August 1914 thing would not last but a month or two.
OldTexan:
You might find this amusing. After Monty Python’s television series closed, Michael Palin and Terry Jones teamed up to do a parody show called, “Ripping Yarns,” which was in the British schoolboy’s adventure story format. Though largely forgotten, the show was quite good.
One episode was based on a top British agent, Gerald Whinfrey, who stumbles across an insidious German plot to start WW I a year early…
Ripping Yarns Season 2 Episode 1-Winfrey’s Last Case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoHJtGtvWA
Neo, I, too, memorized “In Flanders Fields” when I was in grade school. But I was in 8th grade, somewhere around 1968. I can still recite it now, word for word.
Your mention of Yeats in another entry reminded me of this poem, which I somehow encountered at some point in my high school years and have never forgotten: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57311/an-irish-airman-foresees-his-death
Bertold Brecht/ Kurt Weil
“From Berlin to Broadway”
“In Flanders Fields” put to music.
I worked on a couple productions of it.
Trying to follow the origins of WW I is like trying to follow two soccer games with one field running north/south and another crossing it east/west and the jerseys are randomly assigned. Plus your binoculars have a built-in astigmatism.
Showalter goes into the decision making in his “Tannenberg”, about the first big fight on the Eastern Front. Highly recommended for breadth including military culture. At one point, he comes close to suggesting one of the bigs made a decision as he did due to a bowel obstruction, which would put anybody out of sorts.
It might have been Bismarck’s “damned foolishness in the Balkans”, with Austria Hungary getting beaten in Russia and the small fry generating more history than they can consume locally.
The Germans, apparently, looked into the file cabinet and discovered they were supposed to attack France.
Had they decided to stay home…..
Parenthetically, the Germans treated their POW and conquered civilians in a way notable for not being anywhere like their subsequent effort. Something like the Japanese in the Russo Japanese War.
Working on Sowell’s essay on Intellectuals and War. Have to take it in small doses.
I too have read the Charles Todd books. Yes, they bring a perspective to what some came back with. On a historical tour of WWI battlefields, from Ypres to Verdun we visited the battlefields, and the Cemeteries. You can get real perspective standing in a Cemetery with thousands of graves. Maybe ironically at the start of the tour as a “bonus” we visited Waterloo on the way to Ypres. We stopped at the Aid Station that Dr. McCrae was stationed. He died before the end of the war from pneumonia in Jan, 1918. This underscores that a great many died of illness.
WW! is supposedly the first war in which more guys died on combat than of disease.
Two reasons: One is that the medical people had gotten a handle on field sanitation and providing potable water. The other is that the logistics guys could shove men into the stump grinder 24/7 instead of every couple of months.
Another factor had to do with postwar society. The medicos had gotten a handle on sepsis. Now, guys whose wounds could be managed and not fatal–medically speaking–were not dying by shoals of sepsis. But cosmetic and reconstructive surgery were in their infancy if that.
The French built resortsts for guys who were so hideously mutilated they wouldn’t come out in public.
So the men not available for work or marriage were substantiallyl more than the total of dead.
All because the Germans chose not to stay home, which they could have done.
The decision makers in WWII were veterans of or had been adults during WWI, and were of an age to be…decision makers. And they were pissed that the Germans did it AGAIN only worse. And they had spent twenty years of youth into middle age, or older, among the detritus of WWI including their own memories.
And Italy, for some cockamamie reason, decided to fight the Axis for terrain suitable for travel posters. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
@Richard Aubrey:
As I’m sure you know, August/September 1914 was another Damned Close-run Thing. They very nearly pulled it off.
On the subject of European Grand Strategy in 2021. Can anyone explain to me in simple language why the various usual suspects are so against Nordstream 2. Is it because the Poles and Ukrainians don’t get a cut of the transit rights action (some of which gets slung back to Hunter and friends, of course) for gas that bypasses them? Or is there some higher idiocy at work here?
Just sent off/e-mailed a number of digitized photos from WWII to my niece of her Grandfather (my father) in the USCG and her Grand-uncle (his older brother) in the US Army in France and Germany.
Images of Alsace that winter of ’44, of the Brenner Pass, lines of German prisoners, a couple of Dachau photos, a Nazi jet in a field, a wrecked B-24 stripped and cannibalized for salvage.
She had never seen them and was astounded.
I guess we don’t think much about showing them these things which we virtually lived with, and cherished from our own youths.
I also recall the photographic history of the war in the Pacific, in multi-volume large format books … possibly three.
I don’t think you could publish the images in these hyper-sensitive times. The woke dictators of the current era, would pixelate the faces of the dead Japanese, and blur the arms and legs of the corpses. Corpses with limbs all akimbo and in seemingly impossible postures until you realized that these arms and legs were hanging on to the corpses by shreds of skin. The open mouths, the flies, and then that occasionally serene visage, which you came to realize was suspended from only half a head.
Those who would encourage the murder of Rittenhouse, would – I estimate – find these images too disturbing to tolerate.
Zaphod
According to John Keegan, Moltke, reviewing his plans for the Schlieffen Operation, asked his logistics guys about it.
They said everything–trucks, trains, roads, crossing points, everything was maxed out and he was still–if memory serves–short 50k guys and thus, according to prewar assessments, not able to take the Paris fortresses.
The Kaiser, upon hearing the news, said, “Your uncle would have had a different answer.” Thus abashed, the Lesser Moltke went back to his HQ, penciled in 50k guys he didn’t have and went ahead.
Suppose the Great General Staff had looked at that and said, “Oh, crap. Got to figure out something different.” Might have gotten that one right….
@RA:
I’m going by Tuchman and Miracle of the Marne. That 50K might have been enough to smash through — although upstream bottlenecks, etc. would not necessarily have been helped by trying to ram another 50K men and their supplies through the same pipes.
Would it have been absolutely necessary to take Paris? Certainly not in 1870 it wasn’t… but that time there was no need for a quick knockout and hop on the trains to Silesia to face the Bear.
I think you might be right then.
Still, there was a pretty sure certainty that French Revanchism would have precipitated a war on any pretext at a later date. Everyone knew each other’s demographics and size of upcoming call up cohorts. The Germans knew they only had a limited window to knock France out for a generation before they were demographically swamped.
Given all the sequelae, a quick German win in 1914 would have been less bad once the mobilisations kicked off. In which case, Meddling Englishmen and their Continental policies deserve a good chunk of the blame. Plus don’t get me started on Wilson at the other end!
Unintended consequences always kick in when folks take up arms, fog of war, all that stuff and what happens happens, but for a nail a war was lost. I don’t think any of those folk had any idea what they were really setting into motion and as for the plans of a fast quick maneuver to go around the outside through Belgium, well there was Belgium and they did like being gone through.
As for Wilson at the end your are correct, he published plans for ending with and Armistice and the Krauts bought into his plan. Wilson showed up and then did a Biden, took a few tours around Europe while the countries who thought it was Victory and not an Armistice kicked the Germans out and screwed them throughly to the wall and then invited them in to get the bill.
Unintended consequences.
Old Texan. As Sowell said, cultures vary and differences have consequences.
It wasn’t until 1870 that Germany became a nation state. Or, to put it another way, Germany became Prussia and Prussia became Germany. The Kaiser ca 1914 wasn’t from some alpine barony awaiting landscape painters.
It wasn’t “abstract countries”–a term used by Sowell in his “Intellectuals and War” essay in “Intellectuals and Society”. It was a particular country with particular views and particular ideas about what to do with various resources.
Balck, supposedly the best German general nobody ever heard of, mused during his second unsuccessful invasion of France that if Charlemagne’s reich had not been divided, things would have been much better in Europe. IOW if all of Europe had been German. And toward the end of his autobio, he lamented, poor Germany, always surrounded by stronger powers and always forced to strike first.
Thing is, in Germany, guys who thought like this were walking around loose.
And Manchester, in the prefix and suffix to his “Arms of Krupp”, refers to the “Aryan” crouching in the bushes, spear at the ready.
What worked–we have an experiment falsified so we know–is to not let the Germans run their own affairs. Smash flat, occupy, hang the big shots, remake society from dogcatcher on up and keep 300k troops there for more than half a century. And that’s been the longest peaceful period since the Battle of Tollense.
Back in 1970, I saw a couple of second lieutenants chance met trying to figure out where they’d met before. Turns out they’d played football against each other. One had gone to school at, iirc, Graf, the other maybe Vicenza. It was a post season playoff.
Had a fraternity brother who spoke pretty good French since his father had had two tours at Chateau Rouge–I think–before France left NATO. USAF, anyway.
Richard Aubrey: would that have been Graz and Vicenza? Part of the non-existent Cold War American empire. I lived on the fringes of that empire in Munich in the 1980s (I was civilian, not military) and saw parts of it throughout Bavaria. For example: by the time I got there, the old Nazi Party rally grounds on the outskirts of Nuremberg had been turned into a US Army rec center, with a baseball diamond in a corner of the Zeppelinfeld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_party_rally_grounds.
“Graf” short for Grafenwoeher–something like that. Big maneuver area in Germany. Vicenza is in Norther Italy, the 173d Airborne Brigade is there.
A woman I worked on a field project in 1968, I found decades later, has been in the DoD education establishment. Teaches high school English.
Our first Platoon tac at Benning had met his fiancee when he was a linebacker at a school in Okinawa and she was a cheerleader. Nice lady. Shouldn’t have gone for a soldier.
I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the Phil Silvers show where he was a platoon sergeant in some anonymous Fifties garrison. A comedy.
At one point, he’d bet he could go around the world in eighty hours–the movie was popular at the time except it was days. He knew noncoms all over, could hitch rides from here to there, deadheading it. One base to another. Point is, at the time the situation was such that you actually did the math to see if were at least plausible enough to be a premise in a comedy show. Not quite but, as I say, close enough that you thought about it.
Had a fraternity brother who’d spent time at a Thor base in northern Italy when his father was there.. Didn’t like Italians. The local kids would give the American kids a hard time until the Americans turned around, and then they’d split. Same thing happened to me under other circumstances.
Richard Aubrey: thanks for the correction. Graf = Grafenwoehr. Of course.
Not quite old enough to have seen the Phil Silvers series when it first aired. Caught some of the shows in reruns.
On the around-the-world-in-80-hours on military transport bet: I’m sure he could have.
Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII;
Disagree. All sorts of contingencies might have prevented a conflict, delayed a conflict, or given it a different character. Consider (1) Better electoral system in Germany; (2) different monetary policies in Germany (and elsewhere); (3) different heads of state after the armistice; (4) fewer humiliations in the Treaty of Versailles.
Art Deco. Something which seems to elude some is the Germans invaded everybody they could find on a map before Versailles. In 1914. You could look it up. Two wars against Denmark. Wars of unification. War against Austria. Franco-Prussian War.
That’s “before”. From which the conclusion might be drawn that those guys just like to do that stuff. So WW II doesn’t have to be the militarized lament of a victimized population.
And the other issues: better electoral system…? Who is supposed to impose that and why wouldn’t that be a further humiliation?
You can look up “friekorps” which will lead to all kinds of fighting along the Baltic and into Russia. Hardly a stop to change socks for a lot of the German troops.
Hitler said the worst 48 hours of WW II was waiting to see if the French would resist the militarization of the Rhineland. His generals, looking at relative combat power, figured they’d lose. Hitler, reading the French, figured they’d cave, and they did. Had they resisted, that would have been the end of the Nazis and Hitler. Some of the officers were talking about reinstalling the monarchy, if any could be found, I suppose.
But blaming the hideously wounded barely victorious Allies for being annoyed with the Germans doesn’t make much sense.
Art Deco. Something which seems to elude some is the Germans invaded everybody they could find on a map before Versailles. In 1914. You could look it up. Two wars against Denmark. Wars of unification. War against Austria. Franco-Prussian War. That’s “before”. From which the conclusion might be drawn that those guys just like to do that stuff. So WW II doesn’t have to be the militarized lament of a victimized population.
What are you talking about?
1. In absolute terms and relative to the population and productive capacity of the metropole, the German states were less invested in collecting overseas dependencies than Britain, France, the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, or Belgium. The Hapsburgs had a concession in China and nothing else. United Germany had concessions in China, three sets of Pacific islands, and four pieces of territory in Africa.
2. There was no unified Germany prior to 1871 and there were not military conflicts in Europe of note between 1871 and 1913. Prussia conquered a mess of territory between 1862 and 1871; with the exception of fragments of Alsace, Lorraine, and Schleswig, all of these conquests were at the expense of other German states (Nassau, Hesse-Kassel, Frankfurt, Hanover). As for the Franco-Prussian War, the French stance was belligerent.
3. In re the period running from 1815-62, the only conflicts of note in Europe were the Crimean War (in which the Hapsburgs were involved, not the other German states) and revolts in peripheral Ottoman provinces (from which Prussia gained no territory).
4. I’m somewhat puzzled as to how Prussia or the Hapsburgs can be regarded as more culpable than other European powers for the bloodshed during the Napoleonic Wars. It was France conquering much of continental Europe, not any German state.
5. You can repair to the 18th century and see Prussia and the Hapsburgs taking pieces off the board (e.g. Silesia, and slices of Poland). Other European powers were not adverse to such activity. (They did tend to operate overseas rather than on structurally feeble European states).
And the other issues: better electoral system…? Who is supposed to impose that and why wouldn’t that be a further humiliation?
The constituent assembly at Weimar might have made a better choice than national-list PR, a fairly unusual system and one not in use in Wilhelmine Germany. No clue why that’s a mystery to you.
You can look up “friekorps” which will lead to all kinds of fighting along the Baltic and into Russia. Hardly a stop to change socks for a lot of the German troops.
So what?
Hitler said the worst 48 hours of WW II was waiting to see if the French would resist the militarization of the Rhineland.
The event in question occurred in 1936, three years before the war.
Had they resisted, that would have been the end of the Nazis and Hitler.
Show your work.
But blaming the hideously wounded barely victorious Allies for being annoyed with the Germans doesn’t make much sense.
Why not try responding to things I actually said and not the voices in your head?
True. But Hitler had his ideas and….that was one. Although, perhaps the Anschluss could be called the start., Or it could be said that Hitler was more worried three years before the war than any time up to the siege of Berlin. But see Sowell, Intellectuals and War for the whole thing.
As to the officers in 36, easy enough to find out for the layman, such as me.
Whose fault was Versailles, that flawed treaty which humiliated the Germans and practically forced them to start another war? The Pope’s?
@RA:
To understand the Germans up until the point they were emasculated post 45, you have to get your head into the Napoleonic Space and *those* Freikorps. That changed everything. I’d argue far more than the Thirty Years War and Westphalia. Sprinkle a bit of 1848 seasoning and Bob’s yer Uncle. Wasn’t all Romberg’s Student Prince.
To grok Prussians, you have to know what it was like to have the Cossacks descend on you during the early part of Frederick the Great’s reign. That does things to one’s outlook on life. Ask Max Boot 😛
Anyway… now they’re gone. They don’t breed. And nor do the French. Or anyone else like us.
@Hubert: Indeed.. What American Empire? Show me the big American Empire Sign! 🙂
Perversely a large part of what stopped the Heer Officers from moving against Hitler during some of the more hair raising moments (e.g. Rhineland) was their personal loyalty oaths to him. The old officer class took oaths and personal honor very, very seriously.
And that, Dear Friends is a very hackable state of affairs. All you need is one dishonorable demagogue such as a Hitler or a Roosevelt and we’re off to the races.
Something for all the CivNat ‘Honorable’ and ‘That’s not Who We Are’ Folks to consider.
Bastardry has its place. Always and everywhere.
Hitler said the worst 48 hours of WW II was waiting to see if the French would resist the militarization of the Rhineland. His generals, looking at relative combat power, figured they’d lose. Hitler, reading the French, figured they’d cave, and they did. Had they resisted, that would have been the end of the Nazis and Hitler.
–Richard Aubrey
Art Deco’s usual pedantics aside, I’ve read other accounts in which this was a key event leading to WW II and it wouldn’t have taken much Allied resistance to have stopped Hitler cold.
Zaphod:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
–Shakespeare, “King Lear”
Huxley
It’s been said, “one French platoon”. That’s probably an exaggeration, but a battalion…. Point is, if even one platoon had resisted, it could be presumed they had backup coming and it would be in battalion(s) strength, then army.
That it didn’t happen meant the generals were convinced to believe Hitler’s judgment on other items–not necessarily the rivets and bolts of the next tank design–but his judgment of, say, Stalin’s purge. (Faked up by Gehlen for the notably paranoid Stalin? Heard that.)
Zaphod. Nobody likes Cossacks. I’ll be seeing “Fiddler on The Roof” shortly and imagine a reference therein. But…King Phillip’s War killed ten percent of the men of military age of the Massachusetts colony. Which means at least the same number were wounded and survived. Which means at least half were shot at.
No help from Mother England. But victorious. Could make the case that it militarized US society for centuries. See “Conquered Into Liberty” for, among other things, that subject.
My father’s division commander, Terry Allen, was a lifer’s kid and, as was said, grew up playing with the children of the hard old Indian fighting army. Connecting back maybe 275 years to King Phillip. His son was killed in Viet Nam.
That said, the US and Prussia have taken different paths, for nations annealed by foreign threats.