Posted on 12/28/2018 8:47:44 AM PST by rktman
Thank you, kind FRiend— I will look this up. I had no idea. See, that in the correct “backwards in time” tactical setting— a cavalry charge was just what was needed- whether it succeeded or not. The fighting withdrawal to Corregidor— my Lord what a horrendous fate they faced. Again, my thanks, and Blessings to those souls who gave their lives to protect the withdrawal.
Wonderful-— “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” has some extra marching tune lyrics in the entire song at the end.... quite racy- and very human for soldiers headed to the front— to wit:
“M from Armentieres, parles vous? x 2
When in the bed she was lots of fun
Worked her ‘arse like a Maxim gun”.....
Hinky dinky parles vous”
Racy stuff— a modern singing group performed acc. to the credits.
When I watched the YouTube video about the making of this film, I was taken by how closely the comments of the WWI veterans were so very like the remembrances of my time in Vietnam as a Marine infantryman. Times of fear & terror, sure, but also the times it was almost like a great wilderness camping adventure trip. We weren't getting shot at ALL the time!
bump
Sounds Great I want to see it. My Grandpa was wounded [gassed] in France and his Brother was Killed there in WWI. I remember as a kid playing war with my brothers and friends and wearing a German Pickletraub? Helmet that he had brought back from the war. Here is some of the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrabKK9Bhds
“And a progressive, Wilson, who campaigned on no American involvement, got thousands of boys killed.” [Sam Gamgee, post 45]
T Woodrow Wilson can be blamed for a lot of things. American involvement in World War One isn’t one of them. He described the situation in factual terms to Congress, then requested a declaration of war; the Senate voted 82-6 in favor, the House voted 373-50 in favor.
Any notion that Wilson behaved sneakily, or falsified any aspect of the situation is a fantasy. One that still attracts believers, oddly enough. More absurdly, many such believers say they are conservatives. Don’t we pride ourselves on facing unpleasant truths squarely, on learning “lessons of history” no matter how grim?
Wilson did campaign for re-election campaign on a slogan of keeping the nation out of war. But his actions in early 1917 were not deceptive: the strategic situation changed during 1916 and into 1917. The drift of events had not been favoring the Allies for some time, but the American public was not aware of most of it.
Or the public was indifferent - a serious mistake. Allied defeat and ensuing loss of trade would have wrecked the American economy.
Some have asserted that after an Allied defeat the United states could simply have resumed trade Central Powers. This was a false choice: after two and a half years of war, Germany, Austria, and Ottoman Turkey were in a poor position to trade much of worth. And it would have been a ticklish relationship at best, because as victors they would have dominated the continent. Not a strong position to be in - America would have been a client state at most.
And if by some twist the Allies had not collapsed while America stayed out of it, there was no possibility of re-establishing trade with the Central Powers: Britain’s Royal Navy enjoyed supremacy and had been blockading all along. In a direct clash, the US Navy would have been annihilated.
Here is a question: which was worse, President Wilson breaking a campaign pledge, or American neutrality in the face of economic collapse and national ruin?
“...in WW I, nothing really needed to be done. No great nation was out to destroy any other great nation...” [Leaning Right, post 14]
Inaccurately summarizes the strategic situation.
And falls prey to post-modernist presentism: Euro powers went to war for centuries, over less-than-dire situations. Wars of total annihilation were a 20th-century thing, postdating World War One at that.
Like many up-and-coming powers, Imperial Germany did not want to make war: it merely wanted to advance in any and every direction it liked. If someone chose to resist, it was their fault for starting hostilities. We conservatives ought to recognize that sort of totalitarian propaganda when we see it.
The Imperial German government looked on Czarist Russia as the real threat, but feared a two-front war; its planners and other staff officers thus decided that the lesser threat - France - had to be taken down first, before the slower-moving but much larger Russian forces could be mobilized and deployed. Thus the essence of the Schlieffen Plan crystallized.
But by 1914, the strategic situation had been transformed. The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne provided an excuse. No real proof was ever found that the Serbian government played any role, but - judging that they’d never get a better chance - the Germans jollied and goaded the Austrians into making impossible demands on Serbia, promising military assistance. German ambassadors around the Continent were explicitly instructed to publish false information about the location & activities of high government officials. To lie, in sum - specifically to lull the Allies and non-aligned nations into a false sense of security.
Up until the moment Austrian forces began their assault on Serbia, the sympathies of the public in almost all Euro nations were with the Austrians, and their aged Emperor Franz Joseph I.
Many Americans are pleased to vilify Kaiser William II as the “evil mastermind”, but by 1914 he was equal parts figurehead and warlord (for the deterioration of relations between William II and his own officials, look up “Daily Telegraph interview”). When it looked like the Russians weren’t backing down in July 1914, he got cold feet and scurried to mend fences, going as far as wiring Czar Nicholas direct, to dissipate the tensions: the exchange is now referred to as the “Nicky-Willy telegrams.”
William was stymied and undercut by his own civilian officials and military officers, who argued with him to the very last moment, pleading the impossibility of halting the invasion of France.
By 1914 Franco-German tensions were at their lowest ebb in decades, but the Germans unwisely chose to stick to their now-outdated plan. Accordingly, they invaded France through Belgium. As co-signatories (with France and Britain) to a treaty guaranteeing Belgian sovereignty and neutrality, the Germans were in immediate violation, but brushed off all criticism. They did not simply march through Belgium, they conquered it, terrorized and killed the populace, and confiscated everything they could.
But more than 100 years ago, nations took treaties more seriously. Britain informed the German ambassador that it would declare war, and did. Interestingly, intervention by British ground forces was not even discussed by the German government during the leadup - its small professional army was dismissed as of no consequence. So the accusations flung against the British concerning “war mongering” are insupportable.
When it comes to examining why battlefield success eluded the combatants, there are many more reasons. And if one attempts to unravel why no one foresaw why the conflict proved so difficult and costly, one must research much farther still.
Well, OK. Might have to disagree there. I miss from your post the benefit of US involvement. Maybe its the anti-British in me. Why did we go to war because the UK was jealous of German power? And Wilson like Theodore seemed to be a nation building progressive.
An Allied defeat would not have been grim. The UK would still be the UK, but France or part of it possibly would be under German control. Possibly who knows. Until US involvement the war was in stalemate.
“...I miss from your post the benefit of US involvement. Maybe its the anti-British in me. Why did we go to war because the UK was jealous of German power? And Wilson like Theodore seemed to be a nation building progressive.
An Allied defeat would not have been grim. The UK would still be the UK, but France or part of it possibly would be under German control. Possibly who knows. Until US involvement the war was in stalemate.” [Sam Gamgee, post 88]
Anyone who cannot make distinctions between the British Empire of 1914, and Imperial Germany of the same period, is mired in moral equivalizing - possibly not to the levels of the fools who couldn’t tell the difference between USA and USSR in, oh, 1960-1980, but getting there.
The Brits were nearly indifferent to the rise in German industrial output and the flowering of their commercial enterprises. By the final decade of the 19th century the British had set up coaling stations around the globe, and built up major ship repair & maintenance facilities in far-flung locations (Egypt, India, Singapore, Hong Kong etc). German civilian vessels used these as easily and as expeditiously as British vessels: when asked, German commercial shipping magnates and naval officers were unable to point to any specific instances when the British denied service, nor even rearranged overhaul/repair schedules to give British ships an edge.
Relations began to deteriorate after 1890, when William II induced Otto von Bismarck to resign. The young Kaiser greatly desired to build a naval fleet of his own, but cast about for a decade until he found a naval officer able to sell the program to the Reichstag. That man was Alfred Tirpitz. They did it by convincing the German public that the British Empire was blocking the path Germany had to tread, to find “its place in the sun” - and the public was more than willing to believe. It was a complete fabrication, but the Germans were making nearly every country on the Continent uneasy.
William added fuel to the fire by sundry immature outbursts - one of the first was the “Kruger Telegram,” a message of German support for the Transvaal, sent in January 1896 on the failure of an ill-advised covert move by the Cape Colony to take over Boer-dominated southern African states. Cecil Rhodes and his lackeys were about to be publicly rebuked and possibly indicted by Britain’s Colonial Secretary, but the telegram - sent out over the Kaiser’s signature but roundly approved by the German public - diverted international attention to the looming dark side of German expansionism.
Anti-British sentiment is common enough; many Americans wear theirs like a badge of honor. But it is singularly without foundation and was ill-advised within the international network of trade relations as they had evolved by the early 20th century. Any American citizen who points to past bad acts against their own ancestors by the ancestors of today’s UK people (or indeed those of the British Empire of 100-plus years ago) is missing the key point: their ancestors came to US shores to get away from age-old disputes and feuds, so they advance no one’s interests by clinging to them here. Ancillary points are: that such “antis” (1) cannot distinguish “then” from “now”; and (2) confuse national interests with personal peeves. People who let themselves be ruled by such low-order passions cannot make useful contributions to formulation of a workable foreign policy.
Have you read President Wilson’s address to Congress on 2 April 1917, requesting a declaration of war? He may have concluded with the phrase about “making the world safe for democracy,” but that did not speak to the substance at all.
The proximate reason to declare war was German prosecution of unrestricted submarine warfare, made public at the beginning of February 1917.
The context must also be emphasized: Germany had already committed several acts of war, including the sabotage at Black Tom Island in July 1916 which registered above 5.0 on the Richter Scale (waking people in Maryland), shattered thousands of windows in Manhattan, damaged a clock tower over a mile away, caused damage to the Statue of Liberty, and killed four to seven persons.
German attitudes were characteristically overbearing all along: in the crisis following the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, German Deputy Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann resorted to intimidation, reminding the US ambassador to Berlin that there were half a million German reservists in the United States, who would rise on command, so the United States should behave itself. That’s the same Zimmermann who later authored the Zimmermann Telegram, promising money and return of conquered territory if Mexico attacked the USA.
Anyone who believes that Allied defeat in 1917 (or 1918) would have meant little to the United States has failed to learn many of the historic details, and is refusing to think through the situation in its entirety.
Well I’m Canadian and we get the pro-British point of view spoon fed to us. My issues are:
1) The British sided with a Muslim nation of the Ottomans against the Christian Russia in the Crimean
2) I tend to side with the Boers in the Boer War
3) The United States saved gold outflows in 1930 for the Brits which served to create a Depression in the US while causing only a mild recession in the UK
4) British officers volunteered to join the Jordanian Army to kill Jews in 1948
5) The British were and still are notoriously anti-Semitic
6) The horrible treatment of Trump and their conspiracy to dethrone Trump through the Steele dossier
7) The OSS ran assassination operations on US soil in the run up to WWII
8) Don’t see them as completely the victims of WWI. They were alarmed that the Germans were building their naval operations and could have none of it.
With my anti-Brit rant aside, I can concede the Americans had just cause to react to Germany, although concluding World War I was not completely necessary. Also there is speculation the UK made sure to make the Lusitania a target for the Germans by not disclosing it was hiding armaments among the cargo.
The UK needed “Brexit” in 1914.
“Well I’m Canadian and we get the pro-British point of view spoon fed to us. My issues are:
1) The British sided with a Muslim nation of the Ottomans against the Christian Russia in the Crimean
2) I tend to side with the Boers in the Boer War
3) The United States saved gold outflows in 1930 for the Brits which served to create a Depression in the US while causing only a mild recession in the UK
4) British officers volunteered to join the Jordanian Army to kill Jews in 1948
5) The British were and still are notoriously anti-Semitic
6) The horrible treatment of Trump and their conspiracy to dethrone Trump through the Steele dossier
7) The OSS ran assassination operations on US soil in the run up to WWII
8) Don’t see them as completely the victims of WWI. They were alarmed that the Germans were building their naval operations and could have none of it.” [Sam Gamgee, post 90]
I can readily believe you Canadians get fed up with the mother country now & then.
To go point by point:
1) The Crimean War isn’t relevant to World War One. The Germans weren’t yet unified then and had no naval ambitions. And the Euro Powers had a long history of alignment & realignment, with this or that country switching sides to further the interests of the moment. Despite what a great many Freepers dogmatically believe, Britain siding with the Ottomans against Imperial Russia was just another twist of Great Power political maneuvering, not some unforgivable sin against Christian Civilization. Please recall that the French sided with the British and the Ottomans in Crimea.
2) Tending to side with the Boers makes this point important how? They were never much and their descendants aren’t all that praiseworthy. Their defeat at the hands of the British in 1902 doesn’t fill me with dismay.
3) Faulting the US government for attempting to influence economics and trade policies by routing gold reserves hither and thither implies might have importance to the international power politics of the moment, but the health of the domestic economy was a separate issue. New Dealers were mistaken to think they could fine-tune it in the 1930s, and today’s policy wonkers don’t know that much more (which doesn’t stop them from itching to interven all the time).
4) Since British officers volunteering for the Jordanian army postdated World War One, their actions could neither have caused World War One nor affected its outcome.
5) So what? In 1914 most of Europe had been anti-Semitic to varying degrees at varying points in time, for centuries. Meaningless unless you have a penchant for moral equivalizing. I’m not aware of the British murdering Jews - neither singly nor en masse - nor whipping up pogroms.
6) There is every possibility that during 2015-2017, the UK wasn’t in the mood to forgive the United States for voting the Democrats back into power in Congress in 2006, nor for putting the Obama Administration into office twice. They might not be as enthusiastic about the election of Donald Trump: was it truly the turnover of a new leaf, or merely another spin of the weathervane? The results of the US Congressional elections last November cannot increase their confidence. Like a number of older nations, the British can summon a bit more patience and maturity now and then, compared to Americans, who have trouble keeping their attention on some matters all the way to the end of a sentence.
7) You have something mixed up here. The US Office of Strategic Services did not exist until June 1942, so it could not have pursued any assassination operations on US soil or off it during any leadup to World War Two. It may have escaped your notice, but the United States was something of a latecomer to the action.
8) I’m not claiming the British were purely victims in 1914. But leaping from that to declaring them guilty in bringing on World War One for looking on the expansion of the German navy and experiencing feelings of unease is a pretty long leap. The land powers on the Continent did not consider British land forces to be anything to worry about, nor to hope for. The UK government had an “understanding” with the French regarding disposition of naval vessels, but there was in 1914 no treaty. Certainly the Central Powers did not bother to change anything in their power politics, diplomacy, or military plans based on the possibility of British intervention on land.
This is a good point to dispense with the myth that “international bankers” wanted war. The largest concentration of financial leaders resided in London in 1914; of all economically interested or aware subgroups, they were the most fearful of generalized European war, and the most vocal in opposing it. They knew that war would upend all trade relations, and disrupt their abilities to make loans and obtain repayment, which was the basic way they made money.
I guess the best thing is to address one point at a time. I don’t quite get what are you saying on point 1. Were the British so navel gazing they didn’t see the danger of siding with a Muslim nation? It wasn’t long before that that Islam almost conquered Europe, being stopped in Vienna. What possible beef could the UK have with some backward country like Russia to side with the religion of child brides?
FWIW, are you British?
The reason point 1 interests me is my theory or observation that there is a strong vein of Arabism among the British. From serving with the Jordanians, to Lawrence of Arabia, their alliance with the Ottomans, and their fascination currently with Palestinians.
“FWIW, are you British?” [Sam Gamgee, post 95]
No.
Grandparents migrated from England early in the 20th century, where they’d been dirt farmers & gardeners (recalling your screen name). Not lacking honor, not influential either.
Folks whose ancestors immigrated to Canada or the USA (or the national antecedents of those places), but who insist on clinging to the blood feuds & sordid national disputes that preoccupied the stay-at-homes, are missing the entire point. If they cannot avoid reviving the age-old fights on these shores, they should leave.
I maintain that it’s in the long-term strategic interest of the USA to maintain and improve ties with the UK (and with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, much of NATO, and Israel). “Blood ties” mean nothing to me, nor any tortured post-modern Biblical flights of fancy.
The people of the nations I mentioned are the only adults in the room. I worked with numbers of them during a long and varied military career and learned enough about them all, to judge. Are they perfect? No. Have they lost their way? Assuredly at times. Can they find their way back? We had better hope so. We owe it to them to try. And to ourselves. If we shrink from doing so, we must give up any claim we’ve made, to being civilized, or even human.
Neo-isolationists and like-minded folks who believe we have other choices are living in a fantasy land.
To call on the wisdom of the author of your screen name, we can fence ourselves in, but we cannot forever fence the world out.
“...Were the British so navel gazing they didn’t see the danger of siding with a Muslim nation? ... What possible beef could the UK have with some backward country like Russia to side with the religion of child brides?” [Sam Gamgee, post 94]
You’re assuming a degree of moral absolutism, and a degree of rigidity, that did not exist in the international sphere in the 19th century (I’ve doubts that those have ever existed, but absolutist moralizers flee from that conclusion).
“Once an enemy, always an enemy” may make the analysis easier, but there are precious few situations like that out in the real world, current or historical. By 1900, the Powers of Europe had been warring with each other for centuries, changing sides and re-scrambling coalitions as circumstances dictated, moment to moment. Imperial Russia had sided with the Allies in the Napoleonic Wars, as did Prussia (at least near the end).
In 1850, Muslim nations did not pose the threat they do now. Critiquing the British for lack of foresight - or lecturing them about moral failings, in siding with Ottoman Turkey in the Crimean War - is an ex post facto argument. The British and French went into Crimea on the Ottoman side because they were concerned about Imperial Russia - which was not a “backward country” in 1850.
The European powers had not forgotten abut Muslim incursions dating back to the 8th century or whenever, but the fact was the incursions had been beaten back, and the trends in the 19th century did not foreshadow any sudden Ottoman success.
Grousing about Muslim countries and child brides is more of a presentist gambit. In 1850, the Peace of Westphalia remained in national memories, granting as it did sovereignty to nations, including the untrammeled, uncontestable, absolute right to control internal affairs as seen fit.
“International law” and “universal human rights” are modernisms, not some moral code handed down from On High, with Divine orders laid on us to enforce them. They have been foisted on us by universalist devotees, from roots inside the evangelical sects who send missionaries around the globe and deem themselves mighty. They bring nothing useful to the table and should be ignored; all that stuff does is hand the Left, worldwide and domestic, another stick with which to beat us. even as the Right uses the notions to excuse isolationism.
I find it curious that any North American would fault the British for shortness of memory, in siding with Turkey in the Crimea. Especially Americans, whose memory is frequently too poor to keep our attention on any topic long enough to read to the end of a sentence.
Saw it tonight....Fantastic!
What struck me was the German prisoners and how they would help carry the wounded British soldiers on stretches. I still can’t understand why the two Anglo-Saxon peoples had to fight each other, it made no sense. And most tragically, it only set the stage for worse to come twenty years later.
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