100 years ago today this was the scene across the fields of eastern Belgium as German soldiers began their invasion and attempt to execute the vaunted Schlieffen Plan.
It seems so long ago in these early years of the 21st century. But the events of 1914-18 and their far ranging impact echo right through to our digital age.
Perhaps it is personal for me because I heard stories of the Great War from people who were there. When I was 8 or 10 years of age, the veterans of the American Legion who led the Meuse-Argonne offensive still marched at the head of our town’s Memorial Day parade. One older gentleman, not yet 80, liked to show off his shrapnel scars. My grandmother, who turned 18 years old in 1916, went off to Washington to clerk at the War Department … a true feminist during a time when women’s suffrage was still a novelty.
If you think on it a bit, many of today’s headlines can draw a direct line back to the momentous experiences and outcomes of the First World War. Here is just a sampling of this legacy:
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Most of the problems of today’s Middle East can be traced to the Allies’ attempt to create order out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, drawing invisible border lines across the forever shifting Arabian and Mesopotamian sands.
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In the war’s aftermath, ‘ism’s of every stripe gained traction and were tried on a grand scale, shattering all the traditional limitations that had governed both monarchs and ministers before 1914. These ‘ism’s killed millions and marked the experience of every generation that followed until, perhaps, the millennials. (Sadly, millennials are largely ignorant of history and have little sense of how these ‘ism’s continue to pollute our thinking in business, culture and politics!)
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Relativism has steadily overcome religiously inspired restraint in civil society. In the West religion has declined steadily as the primary governor of personal behavior. In particular, intellectuals and taste makers largely abandoned God after witnessing the carnage of the trenches and never looked back. I’ll bet Miley Cyrus doesn’t understand the debt she owes to the First War experience.
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Air travel achieved take-off speed because of World War I. While the 1960’s marked the advent of the “jet age”, in truth the jet engine only consolidated and commoditized a business model that was essentially worked out with the advances in airframe design coming out of the First War. Yet even after 100 years of “progress”, a large passenger plane can vanish without a trace.
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Disease fighting took enormous steps forward because of the First War. Both the global flu pandemic of 1918 and the horrendous injuries and ailments experienced on the battlefield led to major advances in bacteriology, virology and public health that benefit us today. Because of these advances, the frightful headlines about Ebola will likely and happily fade into memory very quickly.
Feel free to add your own connection lines.
Summary
Good post. Easy adds are that World War 2 couldn’t have happened without World War 1. And poison gas -the first WMD- was developed and used in WWI. The most effective one -mustard gas- is still a threat.
Coal and horse power were eclipsed by oil. “Shell shock”, “Trench Coat” and “Ace” entered the language.