Tag: World War 1

A Lesson To Be Learned

Welcome to Cinco De Mayo…..

Most of my long time regulars know that I am fascinated with World War One….the carnage and the dumbass decision made by leaders….one of the biggest bone head decisions was Churchill’s attack on the Dardanelles at  Gallipoli…

A little history to help with the understanding of where I am going….

The ongoing deadlock on the Western Front led the Allies to formulate plans to attack Turkey, an ally of the Central Powers. If the Turkish capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul) was attacked via the Dardanelles Straits, it might relieve the pressure on Britain’s ally Russia. It could also open a supply route to Russia through the Black Sea and at best knock Turkey out of the war altogether.

Plans were made for a naval expedition to seize the Dardanelles in February and March 1915. Given their strategic importance, the straits were well defended by minefields and fortifications. There were also many Turkish gun emplacements on the Gallipoli peninsula to the north and the Asian coast to the south.

When the naval attacks failed to destroy these defences, it became clear that troops would have to seize the peninsula and destroy the guns and minefields. Only then could the Royal Navy force the straits and push on to Constantinople.

However, the naval operation had alerted the Ottomans to the danger of an attack in the region. Any Allied landing had now lost the crucial element of surprise.

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/gallipoli

Just a little background because Donny is still thumping his chest about sending in ground troops in and around the Straight of Hormuz….but will that be the disaster that Gallipoli was?

The Iran war reminds us small strategic moves can mushroom into expanding military commitments. The United States decided to blockade Iranian ports by controlling access to and from the vital Strait of Hormuz, as a response to Iran’s asserting control over it – which it had long threatened to do if attacked.

In its list of conditions to end the war, Iran is for the first time demanding recognition of its sovereignty over the waterway – considered the world’s most critical energy corridor. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s key maritime choke points: strategic corridors where large volumes of global trade pass through extremely limited space.

A heavy price has often been paid for assuming this type of operation will be over quickly and easily.

America’s allies might wisely consider this history now – particularly as the April 25 anniversary of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which aimed to open the way to the Black Sea during World War I, approaches.

https://theconversation.com/gallipoli-has-4-lessons-for-the-strait-of-hormuz-crisis-280723

Just like Gallipoli the Straight is about the flow of trade and keeping the lanes open.

Gallipoli was a mind numbing disaster and I feel that the Straight and Kharg Island will meet the same fate.

Do we want such another failure on our all but stellar record of war?

I say screw it!  Time to end this stupid non-productive war and recall all our troops and ships and let diplomacy (if they remember what that is) do what it was designed top do.

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About Damn Time!

This Sunday I will forego my usual FYI of obscure info and write about something that has taken a very long time coming.

The Great War…..1914-1918….also known as World War One.

Hundred and Six years after the fact the US finally has a memorial to those souls that fought in that horrible war.

World War I casualties
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I, was around 40 million.
There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 5.7 million soldiers while the Central Powers lost about 4 million.

What was the US totals?

United States had sustained more than 320,000 casualties in the First World War, including over 53,000 killed in action, over 63,000 non-combat related deaths, mainly due to the influenza pandemic of 1918, and 204,000 wounded.

Think about this…those totals were for approximately 6 months of actual engagement with the enemy.

I bring all this up because there has been very little said these days about this war….it has slipped from memory since there is NO one left to keep the memories alive.

But that has changed (at least I hope it has)….

A 58-foot-long bronze sculpture was unveiled Friday evening as the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, blocks from the White House. “A Soldier’s Journey” follows an unnamed doughboy from the moment he takes his helmet from his daughter and ships out for duty. It traces him through scenes of war, with soldiers fighting alongside nurses tending their injuries, and culminates in a homecoming, the Washington Post reports. “It is a project that represents the everyman, the ones who make this country possible,” said Sabin Howard, the artist.

vents over the weekend will celebrate the unveiling, including musical performances, war reenactments, and displays of World War I vehicles, per NPR. The site, which was dedicated in 2021, incorporated an existing memorial to commanding Gen. John J. Pershing; the Army Band known as “Pershing’s Own” played the national anthem on Friday. The effort to get the memorial to this point took years, made more difficult by the length of time that has passed since the war. A volunteer commission tracked down troops’ family members, lined up donors, and signed up former presidents as honorary co-chairs.

The memorial, in a park at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, includes a peace fountain with an excerpt from Archibald MacLeish’s poem “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.” The World War I Centennial Commission said the sculpture, which Howard created over the course of a decade with architect Joe Weishaar, is the largest free-standing high-relief bronze in the Western Hemisphere.

As I said About time….this war has been ignored for way too long.

For anyone that is interested there is a documentary that is excellent…

“Haunting,” “heartbreaking,” and “honest,” are just a few words being used to describe They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s documentary compiled from century-old World War I footage. For 21st-century audiences, Jackson adds 3D technology, color, and soldiers’ voices to give the scenes new life.

This was the beginning of the wars they the US keeps fighting….

That is it for me for this Sunday.

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The Armenian Genocide?

One hundred and six years Armenians have been waiting.

During the night of 23–24 April 1915, at the orders of Talat Pasha, hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders—including many of Talat’s former political allies—were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This order, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, resulted in the torture and eventually murder of most of those arrested, who were forced to confess to a nonexistent Armenian conspiracy against the empire.

And so it began!

And some say 1.5 million Armenians died on this  removal.

Since the end of World War One the Armenians have been trying to get acknowledgement of the atrocities that were committed against the Armenian people…

For those that are scratching their heads over that statement…..https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/timestopics/topics_armeniangenocide.html

For a hundred years American presidents have given the situation lip service….appears the Pres. Biden is about to change from lip service to action…..

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to declare the slaughter of more than a million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire a genocide but failed to do so as president. President Biden made the same promise on the campaign trail, and sources tell the New York Times and CNN that he plans to keep it. The Times‘ sources say Biden plans to make the announcement on Saturday, when Armenians worldwide will mark the 106th anniversary of the beginning of a series of massacres and forced marches that killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, mostly in what is now Turkey. Measures recognizing the 1915-1923 killings as genocide passed the Senate unanimously and the House by a 405-11 vote in 2019.

If Biden does use the word genocide, it will be certain to anger Turkey, which maintains that the killings were not genocide and estimates the number of deaths at 300,000. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that “if the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs.” Insiders say that while Biden might still change his mind before Saturday’s declaration, he has apparently decided that demonstrating America’s commitment to human rights is worth potentially damaging ties with Turkey. Dozens of other countries, most of them in Europe, have already declared that what happened was genocide.

Turkey will get all butt hurt over this decision by Biden…..and how will that effect the situation in the Middle East….is the next question.

Biden wants to show that the US stands up for human rights….well except in Israel….I say stand up for human rights for all or sit the Hell down and shut up.

But will this acknowledgement by the US be enough?

Thoughts?

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The Day America Saved The World

Let me state in the onset that this is a propaganda piece to try and change the history of World War One…..Now I am not saying that this piece is wrong in its entirety….

The American role in the First World War is one of the great stories of the American Century, and yet it has largely vanished from view. Most historians tell us that the U.S. Army arrived too late on the Western Front to affect the war’s outcome, an outcome determined by Allied grit, better tactics, the British blockade of German ports, and, ultimately, German exhaustion and revolution.

The French and British were barely hanging on in 1918. By year-end 1917, France had lost 3 million men in the war, Britain 2 million. The French army actually mutinied in 1917, half of its demoralized combat divisions refusing to attack the Germans. The British fared little better in 1917, losing 800,000 casualties in the course of a year that climaxed with the notorious three-month assault on the muddy heights of Passchendaele, where 300,000 British infantry fell to gain just two miles of ground.

By 1918, French reserves of military-aged recruits were literally a state secret; there were so few of them still alive. France maintained its 110 divisions in 1918 not by infusing them with new manpower – there was none – but by reducing the number of regiments in a French division from four to three. The British, barely maintaining 62 divisions on the Western Front, planned, in the course of 1918 – had the Americans not appeared – to reduce their divisions to thirty or fewer and essentially to abandon the ground war in Europe.

https://time.com/5406235/everything-you-know-about-how-world-war-i-ended-is-wrong/

I kinda think that not all people will agree with this assessment…..only Americans may be the only ones that see it this way.

Please let me know what you think.

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The Christmas Truce of 1914

During the first year of the Great War on Christmas Day 1914 both sides of the trenches called an impromptu truce from the fighting.

Have you heard of this historic event?

No?

Let me educate you about this Tuce….

The Christmas Truce occurred on and around Christmas Day 1914, when the sounds of rifles firing and shells exploding faded in a number of places along the Western Front during World War I in favor of holiday celebrations. During the unofficial ceasefire, soldiers on both sides of the conflict emerged from the trenches and shared gestures of goodwill.

Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops fighting in World War I sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines, and at certain points the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.

At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man’s-land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. Some Germans lit Christmas trees around their trenches, and there was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer. 

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914

I bring this up because the question has been asked…what did the world learn from this action?

The answer is….not much.

I say thins by looking back since those days….

After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end.

The world had descended into a 77-Year War, incepting with the mobilization of the armies of old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the depredations that germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the march of history into World War II and the Cold War that followed inexorably thereupon.

Upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped out during that span. The toll encompassed the madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and Versailles; and then the carnage of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and Vietnam.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 – Why There Is Still No Peace On Earth

Truly sad that since that war humanity was only learned to make big, better and more lethality.

We could have learned so much from those brave individuals…..but instead we learned just how much profit there was in modern warfare.

Truly sad.

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04 August 1914–Guns Of August–Part One

On this day in history…….Germany invades Belgium causing Great Britain to declare war on Germany. Germany had declared war on France the day before.

This became known as the Guns Of August……

What could drive a world mad to the point of wasting so many lives?

We’ll start with the facts and work back: it may make it all the easier to understand how World War One actually happened.  The events of July and early August 1914 are a classic case of “one thing led to another” – otherwise known as the treaty alliance system.

The explosive that was World War One had been long in the stockpiling; the spark was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.  (Click here to view film footage of Ferdinand arriving at Sarajevo’s Town Hall on 28 June 1914.)

Ferdinand’s death at the hands of the Black Hand, a Serbian nationalist secret society, set in train a mindlessly mechanical series of events that culminated in the world’s first global war.

Austria-Hungary’s Reaction

Austria-Hungary’s reaction to the death of their heir (who was in any case not greatly beloved by the Emperor, Franz Josef, or his government) was three weeks in coming.  Arguing that the Serbian government was implicated in the machinations of the Black Hand (whether she was or not remains unclear, but it appears unlikely), the Austro-Hungarians opted to take the opportunity to stamp its authority upon the Serbians, crushing the nationalist movement there and cementing Austria-Hungary’s influence in the Balkans.

It did so by issuing an ultimatum to Serbia which, in the extent of its demand that the assassins be brought to justice effectively nullified Serbia’s sovereignty.  Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, was moved to comment that he had “never before seen one State address to another independent State a document of so formidable a character.”

Austria-Hungary’s expectation was that Serbia would reject the remarkably severe terms of the ultimatum, thereby giving her a pretext for launching a limited war against Serbia.

https://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm

A war that cost so many lives and accomplished very little in the end.

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Passchendaele: A Worthless Exercise

On this day over 100 years ago the Third Battle For Ypres was commencing…..the date is 31July1917……this battle will go down in history as a massive waste of human life.

A description of the battle from the BBC…….

Officially known as the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele became infamous not only for the scale of casualties, but also for the mud.

Ypres was the principal town within a salient (or bulge) in the British lines and the site of two previous battles: First Ypres (October-November 1914) and Second Ypres (April-May 1915). Haig had long wanted a British offensive in Flanders and, following a warning that the German blockade would soon cripple the British war effort, wanted to reach the Belgian coast to destroy the German submarine bases there. On top of this, the possibility of a Russian withdrawal from the war threatened German redeployment from the Eastern front to increase their reserve strength dramatically.

The British were further encouraged by the success of the attack on Messines Ridge on 7 June 1917. Nineteen huge mines were exploded simultaneously after they had been placed at the end of long tunnels under the German front lines. The capture of the ridge inflated Haig’s confidence and preparations began. Yet the flatness of the plain made stealth impossible: as with the Somme, the Germans knew an attack was imminent and the initial bombardment served as final warning. It lasted two weeks, with 4.5 million shells fired from 3,000 guns, but again failed to destroy the heavily fortified German positions.

The infantry attack began on 31 July. Constant shelling had churned the clay soil and smashed the drainage systems. The left wing of the attack achieved its objectives but the right wing failed completely. Within a few days, the heaviest rain for 30 years had turned the soil into a quagmire, producing thick mud that clogged up rifles and immobilised tanks. It eventually became so deep that men and horses drowned in it.

On 16 August the attack was resumed, to little effect. Stalemate reigned for another month until an improvement in the weather prompted another attack on 20 September. The Battle of Menin Road Ridge, along with the Battle of Polygon Wood on 26 September and the Battle of Broodseinde on 4 October, established British possession of the ridge east of Ypres.

Further attacks in October failed to make much progress. The eventual capture of what little remained of Passchendaele village by British and Canadian forces on 6 November finally gave Haig an excuse to call off the offensive and claim success.

However, Passchendaele village lay barely five miles beyond the starting point of his offensive. Having prophesied a decisive success, it had taken over three months, 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German casualties to do little more than make the bump of the Ypres salient somewhat larger. In Haig’s defence, the rationale for an offensive was clear and many agreed that the Germans could afford the casualties less than the Allies, who were being reinforced by America’s entry into the war. Yet Haig’s decision to continue into November remains deeply controversial and the arguments, like the battle, seem destined to go on and on.

(BBC)

If graphs and such do more to inform you then maybe this article will be more along the lines that you need……https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/happened-battle-passchendaele/

Then there are those that have given up the power to read for those I have a short video that could assist in their knowledge…..

As I stated earlier….a worthless loss of human life that accomplished NOTHING.

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On To Gallipoli

Not some movie about the event with Mel Gibson….but the actually event and what it meant in WW1…..

The bright idea from Winston Churchill was to inavde the peninsula of Gallipoli with the expressed purpose of defeating a weak Ottoman army and take them out of the war….this was in 1915……

gallipoli peninsula 1 - Welcome to Turkey Honeymoon Tours & Packages

The Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-16, also known as the Battle of Gallipoli or the Dardanelles Campaign, was an unsuccessful attempt by the Allied Powers to control the sea route from Europe to Russia during World War I. The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915 and continued with a major land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, involving British and French troops as well as divisions of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Lack of sufficient intelligence and knowledge of the terrain, along with a fierce Turkish resistance, hampered the success of the invasion. By mid-October, Allied forces had suffered heavy casualties and had made little headway from their initial landing sites. Evacuation began in December 1915, and was completed early the following January.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/battle-of-gallipoli-1

For those too lazy to read…a short video…..

This brilliant offensive ended in complete defeat and an utter failure…..

In 2015 during the 100 year anniversary of the military invasion….which had several “new” military techniques…like the amphibious invasion of the beaches…..

A team doing research of the military action has found something interesting….the Turks used alcohol to help their soldiers find their “will”…..

But the ongoing fieldwork by the joint Turkish-Anzac team doesn’t always bolster the official narrative. A few years ago, in the Ottoman trenches, the archaeologists discovered bottles of Bomonti beer, a popular wartime brand brewed in Constantinople. News of the find was published in Australian newspapers; the Turkish government reacted with dismay and denial. “They said, ‘Our soldiers didn’t drink beer. They drank tea,’” says Tony Sagona, a professor of archaeology at the University of Melbourne who leads the Australia-New Zealand team at Gallipoli. Turkish officials insisted that the bottles belonged to German officers who often fought alongside Turkish conscripts and put subtle pressure on the team leaders to back up that version of events. “I told them that the evidence is inconclusive,” says Mithat Atabay, leader of the project and a history professor at March 18 University in Canakkale, across the Dardanelles from Gallipoli. Drinking alcohol was a normal activity in the Ottoman Empire, he points out, “a way for young men to find their freedom.” It perhaps offered a small bit of comfort for men marooned in one of history’s bloodiest battlefields.    

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-view-battle-gallipoli-one-bloodiest-conflicts-world-war-i-180953975/

History is amazing……the things we can learn……

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The First Code Talkers

Today is the 5th of May….a day of celebration for those of Mexican descent…..

Not the only thing that occurred on this day.

History records that the first code talkers enlisted on this day in 1942…..but actually the very first code talkers were used in World War One…..1918 to be exact.

When US military codes kept being broken by the Germans in WW1 a Native American tribe came to the rescue. They just spoke their own language – which baffled the enemy – and paved the way for other Native American “code talkers” in WW2.

It’s an irony that probably didn’t go unnoticed by Choctaw soldiers fighting in World War One. While the tribe’s children were being whipped for speaking in their native tongue at schools back home in Oklahoma, on the battlefields of France the Native American language was the much-needed answer to a very big problem.

In the autumn of 1918, US troops were involved in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on the Western Front. It was one of the largest frontline commitments of American soldiers in WW1, but communications in the field were compromised. The Germans had successfully tapped telephone lines, were deciphering codes and repeatedly capturing runners sent out to deliver messages directly.

“It was a huge problem and they couldn’t figure out a way around it,” says Matt Reed, curator of American Indian Collections at the Oklahoma History Center, the headquarters of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

The solution was stumbled upon by chance, an overheard conversation between two Choctaw soldiers in the 142nd Infantry Regiment. The pair were chatting in camp when a captain walked by and asked what language they were speaking. Realising the potential for communication, he then asked if there were other speakers among the troops. The men knew of Choctaw soldiers at company headquarters. Using a field telephone the captain got the men to deliver a message in their native tongue which their colleagues quickly translated back into English. The Choctaw Telephone Squad was born and so was code talking.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26963624

I do not want to take anything away from the code talkers in World War Two….it is that they were just carrying on a fine tradition of their fellow NAs….that started in World War One.

On this day 05 May 1942……

On May 5, 1942, 29 men arrived at Recruit Depot San Diego for basic training in the Marine Corps. They would go on to develop and implement an unbreakable code that was used across the Pacific theater of World War II — one which helped mask the movements of American forces from Guadalcanal, to Tarawa, Peleliu, and onward to Iwo Jima. 

These men were the first of the Navajo Code Talkers.

However, according to a Facebook post by the Southern Navajo Nation News, it was on this day, 78 years ago that they swore the oath of enlistment.

https://taskandpurpose.com/history/navajo-code-talkers-enlistment-date

Our hats go off to these brave men and offer a well deserved ‘thank you’….

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World War One–How It Started

The war that most Americans seem to ignore most times is that of World War One…..

The most common and popular reason for the start of WW1 was the assassination of Archduke and his wife……but it all began many years before that event in 1905 and not in the Balkans but North Africa.

The major European powers began to flex their muscle……

The First Moroccan Crisis is seen as one of the long term causes of World War One as it led to a breakdown in trust between the major European powers. Morocco became the centre of the world’s attention between 1905 and 1906 and the crisis clearly indicated that Germany’s relation with France was at best fragile.

In 1905 Morocco was one of the few African states not occupied by a European power. It had been ruled by Sultan Moulay al Hasan from 1873 to 1894 and he had carefully played off one European power against another to such an extent that in 1880 Morocco had been given what amounted to a guarantee of independence by the Madrid Convention. The Sultan was succeeded by Abdul Aziz who proved to be a weak ruler. He lost control over the Berber people in the Atlas Mountains and they fought to assert what they believed to be their rights. The Berbers were so successful that by 1903, Fez, the capital, was under attack and Aziz controlled only a small part of the country.

The First Moroccan Crisis

And that was not the end of the muscle flexing exercises by the European powers……1911……was 1905 all over again….

The Morocco crisis of 1911 arose out of the dispatch of the German gunboat Panther to Agadir on July 1. The ostensible ground for this action was the request of German firms in Agadir for protection in the disordered state of the country. But inasmuch as there were no German subjects at Agadir and the port was not open to Europeans, it was clear that the real motive was a desire to reopen the whole question. The German Government resented the complete failure of the convention of 1899, and determined now, by a show of force, to prevent a further French penetration unless France would negotiate for a final settlement of the problem.

It is highly probable that Germany hoped to break up the Triple Entente. It is also probable that at the beginning of the affair Germany expected to obtain part of Morocco for itself, counting upon the known military weakness of France and the confusion in England produced by the struggle over the House of Lords to prevent serious opposition.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos137.htm

Further reading for those interested in this lesser known action as a prequel to WW1……https://www.britannica.com/event/Moroccan-crises

As a closing thought….why did the US enter into WW1?

In August, 1914 the United States declared its neutrality in the war then engulfing Europe. President Woodrow Wilson, reflecting the views of much of the nation, announced that his country would be “impartial in thought as well as in action”. But this stance soon came under pressure, as the impact of events across the Atlantic were felt in the US. By 1917 isolation had become untenable. In April, Wilson sought the approval of Congress to go to war. Several key factors played a part in this change of course.

5 Reasons the United States Entered the First World War

For me it was all about the money and the prestige once the war was finished.

War is always about the money….then as now!

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