Preview for next term. Seems appropriate today: If you pass through small towns in America, in what was once the city center you will find monuments with the names of battlefields we don’t remember and the roll call of men that fought in those far off places. The statutes often depict scenes of destruction, and frequently feature a beautiful but sad woman rising above the carnage: Liberty and righteousness preserved, valor and honor defended, yet sad and mournful as well. The names of the battlefields evoke little in today’s audiences – hallowed at the time, forgotten today: Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, St.Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne. At the Battle of the Marne, in September of 1914, boasting that the boys would be back home ‘before the leaves fall’ the British, French and Germans forces had lost more than half a million men. In the east, the Russians lost an entire army at Tannenberg. These battles were mere months after the war started. It would continue for four long years and consume the lives of over 10 million people. Almost four years had passed by the time we Americans arrived. What happened since those two battles that cost so much and achieved so little? It was known as the Great War in its time because no one then could imagine a more horrible war could occur. At the outset, it pulled millions of patriotic young men from their studies, their farms, and their careers, and plunged them into a fight to save Belgium or Paris, or to fight for the King, the Kaiser, the Tsar and their Country. Yet despite the huge armies – over 26 million men were in uniform over the course of the war – the Great War ended due to exhaustion, in a near collapse for both sides. Little ground had changed hands due to battle, but the face of Europe and the fate of the 20th century would be forever changed by this “war to end all wars.” At this, the hundredth anniversary of the terrible war that would spell the end of nations and monarchies, WIT looks back. These classes will examine the war as those living then saw it – not as a stepping stone to the next war, but as something participants struggled to understand - and to live through. We will look at the world war as it unfolded to participants – headline by headline, battle by battle. We will remember the sacrifices, the reasons for the war, and the impact on the countries that fought in the battle. This war, the first major confrontation of global powers, would upend the social structure of Europe, sweep aside empires that stretched back centuries, and destroy the lives of millions. The Great War would have unthinkable consequences and wrote the history of the 20th Century. Hear the story and see the hope and pain that forged those monuments in thousands of small towns. On the one hundredth anniversary, it is a story that should be heard.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 02:44:53 +0000
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