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Many Americans have no idea why we celebrate Veterans Day on November 11. Those who know that the holiday began as Armistice Day typically think of it as a day of victory and peace. However, for those on the ground in Europe the last twenty-four hours before the cessation of hostilities on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, that day was nothing less than hell on earth.

A hundred years ago this week, a series of biggest battles that Europe were to witness between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 decided the fate of the continent as much as, if not more than, the Great War itself. In early August 1920, the newly resurrected, independent Poland saved the Eastern Europe, Germany and possibly the rest of the war-exhausted Europe from the triumphant Russian communism. As a result of a little known war in the distant corners of the continent, the status quo of the...

...I have long maintained – and the film 1917 brought it vividly back to mind – that one of the causes of the collapse of religion in Europe, and increasingly in the West generally, was the moral disaster of the First World War, which was essentially a crisis of Christian identity. Something broke in the Christian culture, and we’ve never recovered from it. ...For five awful years, an orgy of violence broke out among baptised people – English, French, Canadian, American, Russian and Belgian Christians slaughtering German, Austrian, Hungarian and Bulgarian Christians. And this butchery took place on a scale...

“God is dead,” proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882. While this is not meant to be taken in a literal sense, it is certainly a provocative observation to come from the reclusive philosopher. Nietzsche’s generation, one that would embrace ideas like Darwinism, Marxism, and Positivism, had revolutionized the intellectual landscape to a point that could not be reversed. It is often thought that Europe became a continent of atheists and agnostics after World War I, and that the spiritual fabric of Europeans resembled the French farmland that had been destroyed by four years of conflict. While this may not be a...

First Lady Melania Trump was all class in Paris, France, on Saturday as she and President Donald Trump visited French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, to commemorate the ending of World War I. Mrs. Trump arrived to meet Mrs. Macron in Paris wearing a sleek dark navy off-the-runway Bottega Veneta suit with black leather gloves, a French twist hairdo, and slick black snakeskin Christian Louboutin stilettos. The Bottega Veneta dress is from the Italian luxury brand’s Fall 2017 runway collection while the Louboutin snakeskin pumps are a favorite from the First Lady’s wardrobe. Mrs. Trump’s sleek look...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Poland is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its rebirth as an independent state on Sunday with a multitude of events across the country, including marches, Masses, and the national hymn being sung in more than 600 public places. The national white-and-red flag fluttered from buildings and buses, dignitaries and regular citizens placed flowers and wreaths at memorials to the father of Polish independence, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, and the historic Sigismund Bell, reserved only for the most important national events, rang out over Krakow. Poland regained its independence at the end of World War I in...

Heads of states and governments attend ceremonies to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice which brought the First World War to a close. Watch live Sunday, Nov. 11 at 4am ET.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on French soil, and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be in London at a ceremony in Westminster Abby with Queen Elizabeth II. But while the leaders visit the capitals of Germany's wartime enemies, at home there are no national commemorations planned for the centenary of the Nov. 11 armistice that brought an end to the four-year war that killed more than 2 million of its troops and left 4 million wounded. Next week, German parliament is holding a combined commemoration of the 100th anniversary...

World War I ended with the Ottoman Empire vanquished and facing imminent collapse, its doomed alliance with Imperial Germany costing hundreds of thousands of Ottoman lives and dealing a death blow to the already creaking empire. But 100 years after the surrender of the Ottomans to the Allied powers at Mudros on October 30, 1918, the Great War is in no way seen as a pointless waste or even a defeat by modern Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Rather than focusing on the four years of devastating conflict that ended in the capitulation and eventual dissolution of the empire,...

In the land of religious history, Philip Jenkins towers like a giant. Here, we discuss the religious dimension of World War I and his newest book, “The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade.” RNS: You say that World War I was “a religious crusade.” This sounds like a scandalous idea. Can you explain what you mean? PJ: If I myself believed that it was a crusade, that would indeed be scandalous. Actually, I am arguing that a great many people at the time saw it in those terms, which is also scandalous, in a...

He is the most pilloried military leader in British history, caricatured as a butcher and a bungler who sent hundreds of thousands of men over the top to their deaths. Now a new biography pins a further damning indictment on Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Late in the final year of the First World War, it argues, he was pushing for a peace that would have left Germany as the real winner of the war. According to Dr J. P. Harris, senior lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Haig was not quite the uncaring monster of...

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will be visiting Paris on November 11th in honour of the centenary of the end of WWI. Trump who had planned to organise a military parade in November in Washington announced Friday that he would travel to Paris for the commemoration of the end of the First World War. The US president made the announcement on Twitter (see below) on Friday afternoon at the same as criticizing local politicians in Washington who he said were asking for too much money for the parade. "Never let anyone take you hostage!" he wrote....

NEWBURY, England -- World War I began as most wars do with patriotic fervor and predictions of a quick end. It lasted four years. While the match igniting the "war to end all wars" was lit by the assassination of Austria's Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, formal declarations of war occurred 100 years ago on July 28 (Austria declares war on Serbia) and Aug. 1 (Germany declares war on Russia, and Russia on Germany). Aug. 1, 1914 will be commemorated Sunday at a charity event to benefit current British war veterans at Highclere Castle, the site of the...

History largely remembers him as Corp. Francis Pegahmagabow — the deadliest sniper and scout of the First World War, credited with 378 kills and 300 captures. And on Tuesday, National Aboriginal Day, a life-sized bronze monument of Pegahmagabow was unveiled in Parry Sound, Ont., almost 100 years after he earned his first medal for courage in battle. The monument: Pegahmagabow standing defiantly with an eagle perched on one arm; his right hand in a fist; a Ross rifle slung over his shoulder; a caribou at his feet to represent his clan.

After listening to one of my favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin & his Hardcore History, about the beginning of World War I, I would love to find out more about this time in history. I know that Freepers are a well read bunch and I am asking for any recommendations you may care to make in a good book covering this time in history.

A massive artillery bombardment on the morning of February 21st 1916 signalled the start of the German attack on Verdun, the longest single battle of the First World War. More than 1,200 guns opened fire before German troops began their assault on fortifications of major symbolic inportance to France. Even by the standards of the Great War, the Battle of Verdun was a particularly brutal campaign of attrition, fuelled by the determination of both sides not to give way as the struggle wore on. The battle was to last 300 days, almost until Christmas, on a narrow front stretching no...

The Queen was applauded today in an unprecedented mark of appreciation as she led millions of Britons in remembering the fallen. The monarch laid a wreath on the Cenotaph at the national Remembrance Day service alongside senior Royals, veterans and the Prime Minister despite heightened police checks, just days after officers thwarted an alleged terror plot. The spontaneous smattering of applause, as she left Whitehall in central London, was a rare sound for a remembrance service usually characterised by respectful silence, and may have been in tribute to her fortitude at turning out to the service despite terror fears. Hundreds...

This is pretty bizarre - even for the Balkans. Bosnian Serbs unveiled a statue yesterday honoring Gavrilo Princip, the teenager who pulled the trigger in Sarajevo 100 years ago today killing Archduke Ferdinand - heir to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire - and his wife. The event touched off a series of blunders, misjudgements, and misadventures that culminated in the great powers stumbling into a war that few of them wanted and none could foresee the consequences for. By the time the dust settled in November, 1918, the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires had disintegrated, Russia had gone Communist, and...

Norman Angell, the Paris editor of Britain’s Daily Mail, was a man who expected to be listened to. Yet even he was astonished by the success of his book “The Great Illusion,” in which he announced that war had put itself out of business. “The day for progress by force has passed,” he explained. From now on, “it will be progress by ideas or not at all.” He wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I. By 1918, they had killed 15 million...

Ten years ago, writer Richard Rubin set out to talk to every living American veteran of World War I he could find. It wasn't easy, but he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets, ages 101 to 113, collected their stories and put them in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the veterans he talked to, and the stories they shared. On how he found the veterans, after the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion came up short"In 1998, the government of France had started awarding the...