The most terrible war
Click to viewWorld War I is fading from public memory. World War II was, after all, so much more horrific, especially because of the slaughter perpetrated on civilians populations by the Nazis, the Japanese, and the Italians, and because of the way it ended, with the use of two atomic bombs on Japan and the dawn of the Atomic Age. 50-60 million people or more perished because of it, and the world was forever changed by it. But if World War I hadn't occurred, it is virtually certain World War II would not have, either, nor would a lot of the wars that followed it. World War I set the stage for everything that followed. Once it began, all the rest were sure to follow.
The irony was that it began for reasons that were in large part senseless. It started because of a huge number of treaties among European powers intended to prevent it, an early version of the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy that later actually did prevent World War III, keeping the Cold War from turning hot, which otherwise would have literally brought about the end of the world. Those treaties mandated that an attack upon any nation or representative of a nation participating in those treaties was to be retaliated upon by that nation's allies. There was, however, no provision in them for the limits on what should be construed as an "attack" -- so when the Archduke of Austria was murdered by a Yugoslav assassin, in a nation that didn't even take part in the carnage of World War I, an ultimatum was leveled by Habsburg ultimatum against Serbia. Several alliances that had been formed over the past decades were invoked, so within weeks the major powers were at war; as all had colonies, the conflict soon spread around the world. long-term causes, such as imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of Europe such as the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, France, and Italy played a major role, but without those treaties -- or with a hefty dose of common sense added when it was most needed -- it might have been avoided entirely.
15 million people died of causes directly related to the war. 20 million more died of the 1918 influenza pandemic that followed in its wake, as well. Some nations used the situation to engage in ethnic cleansing, a.k.a. genocide, against ancient enemies. War atrocities were commonplace. And a tremendous amount of the cream of the nations, the young men who should have become the leaders and movers and shakers in the decades to come, were either killed in the war or came back so wounded in body and spirit that they might as well have been killed.
World War I was the world's first industrial war, as well. The American Civil War depended heavily on technology -- railroads, the telegraph, a host of other new technological advances -- for its outcome, of course, but in World War I the use of technology reached heights that the generals of the Civil War could only have dreamed about -- or not imagined at all. Tanks. Mustard gas. The telephone, wireless communication, armored cars, aircraft. Everything that later became so much a part of our lives, these products of advanced technology were first introduced to the world during World War I. As always, war forced technological advance, in this case a leap forward unparalleled at any time in prior history. For better and worse, the 20th century -- and the one to follow -- started in the trenches and on the trampled fields and in the burning, bleeding skies of World War I. The ovens of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz and the Rape of Nanking and the mushroom clouds rising above Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conceived there -- as was the Space Age and the Information Superhighway. It took another world war and the Korean and Vietnamese wars to give birth to them and care for them in their infancy, but they were conceived at Sarajevo.
Never forget: without this war, our world as it is now would never have come into existence -- and, likely, neither would any of those of us alive now, save for a few remaining elders born before 1915. This was the true herald of the Age of Aquarius, uranium and the Space Age and mass murder and all. Bow your head and give a moment of silence for those who perished in or of this war: they are all your forefathers and foremothers now. Requiescat in pace.