WORLD WAR I ARMISTICE OBSERVED

Insurance Journal, CA
Nov 12 2007

On Sunday, Nov. 11, a delegation led by the Queen honored Great
Britain’s "Glorious Dead" at the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies
around the Cenotaph in Whitehall. On Friday Nov. 9 Lloyd’s held its
annual remembrance service with an address by London’s Lord Mayor.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy led ceremonies at the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. In his radio address President
Bush said Veteran’s Day was " a day to give thanks for all those who
have worn the uniform of America’s armed forces."

Even as countries around the world marked the 89th anniversary of
the end of World War I, those with actual memories of that terrible
conflict have largely disappeared. There are only two "poilus"
in France of the 8.4 million who served in the conflict. However,
the legacy of the "Great War" is still very much with us.

It was the world’s first "total war," It opened the floodgates of
darkness and violence that were to become the hallmark of the 20th
century. Those gates have yet to be closed. World War I produced
injury and death on a scale the world had never seen, nor even
imagined. Although estimates vary, of the 65 million men and women
who served, over 8.5 million died, an additional 21 million were
wounded. 76.3 percent of French soldiers were killed or wounded;
65 percent for the Germans.

But the end of the war was in many ways only the beginning of the mass
killings that would mark the 20th century. The war deaths shattered
the 19th century’s belief in the inevitability of mankind’s progress
and a benevolent deity. It initiated an era in which human life was
so devalued that mass murder could become a political, social and
economic goal, where before it had been mostly a military, or in some
cases a religious, one.

Robert Kramer, an associate History Professor at Trinity College,
Dublin examines the legacy of World War I in a new book – "Dynamic of
Destruction – Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War." He
posits that the endless violence – particularly against civilians –
it unleashed was not inevitable. But the atrocities led to many of
the war’s participants becoming so inured to death that brutality
became an acceptable, perhaps even a "normal," way of life.

World War I unleashed the violent nationalism that resulted in mass
expulsions of civilians by the Germans, the Russians, the Austrians and
others. The deaths of over 1 million Armenians in 1915-16 – directly
or from starvation and disease – initiated by the Ottoman Empire,
is generally recognized as the first organized genocide. The mass
killings and deportation of civilians by all sides in the Balkans
started in 1912, continued during the First World War, and raised
its ugly head again in the 1990’s.

Could the Nazis have engineered the Holocaust had the excesses
of World War I not occurred? Could the Bolshevik revolution and
its deadly aftermath have succeeded in Russia? We will never know,
because the Great War did happen, and it left us a legacy that we
are still dealing with.

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