Huzzah, World War I finally ends

All, very good points.

 

Two World Wars and one World Cup, doo dah, doo dah.

 

Maybe my Weimar Republic Deutschmarks will make a comeback....

 

Especially for Britain. A few more steps had to be taken (Munich in 1938, trying to keep hold of unprofitable colonies) but it's amazing how world dominance was thrown away for nothing.

 

And what's nuts is that it almost didn't happen - at least as it went down, anyway. The assassination attempt as planned got botched. The shooter was headed home when ADF's car rounded the corner and gave him a second chance.

 

If you're ever in K.C., check out the National World War I museum. It is excellent.

World War I is a passion of mine.

 

I'm not sure there's another event that was so consequential and that so few people know anything about.

I guess the WWI generation didn't have Tom Brokaw to write books about it.

A couple of WWI history courses in college were among the most fascinating in which I enrolled.

 

Something else would have happened to spark the powder keg that was Europe in 1914. It was like a huge, juicy zit just waiting to pop.

By the way, the royal families of Europe were also connected through King Christian IX of Denmark. In 1914, five of his grandsons were on the thrones of England, Russia, Denmark, Norway and Greece.

Victoria's grandsons were monarchs in England and Germany and her granddaughters were consorts in Russia, Norway, Greece, Romania and Spain.

 

This isn't fair. World War 1 may be at the root of it all in a global sense, but World War 2 much more directly shaped America and our country's role in the last 65 years.

 

There's not a lot of goof=d World War II literature, Too black and white, not much dout about right and wrong (except for the Ocific theatre, which few read about. Really excellent stuff out oif there). So I'll take WWI for passion, despair and pure human feelings.

"Back," by Wilfred Gibson

They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.

 

Without WWI there is no WWII.

 

I would also challenge the idea that WWI was less important to us as a nation than WWII.
We were isolationists before WWI. We have been "nation-builders" ever thus.
Methinks that is of critical importance to us to this very day.