Huzzah, World War I finally ends

Anyone ever check out the series The First World War on the Military channel? It was put together a few years ago by the BBC and each episode is an hour long focusing on different aspects i.e. The Western Front, war in the Balkans, Russian Revolution, breakup of the Ottoman Empire.

I think most Americans think of only the Western Front as being the totality of the war when in fact there were other serious battles going on in Serbia, the Alps and elsewhere.

I have Johnny Got His Gun on my bookshelf....Will have to pick it up one of these days

 

Good pull, TV. I'm well-aware of the naval build-up, but it's a subject I've never done much extended reading about. I'll have to check that out.

My recommendation is this gem I picked up at the WWI Museum.



Nearly all of it is first-hand accounts of one of the worst meat-grinders in the history of man. It pulls no punches when it comes to the absolute hell men on both sides faced. Excellent, but harrowing, read.

One book I sadly can't recommend is considererd a classic. The Eastern Front by Norman Stone. There is precious little English language literature on the other theaters of WWI, so I was geeked when I picked it up at the same time I bought The Somme.

It is drier than stereo instructions. It's like reading a game story from the 1930s with the way he painstakingly, but tediously, explains the movements of the armies on the German, Austrian and Russian sides. There's really good information in it, but it is so damn hard to read. I bought it in January and still haven't had the stomach to finish it.

 

Hey, I read that book (The Somme).

It does paint a pretty astonishing picture of what the hell was like. I just remember, the first day of the Somme, months and months of planning, weeks of stocking up and days and days of shelling. They all go forward and the vast majority are slaughtered. Those that do make it across no-mans land are pinned there as the Germans put up a wall of shells behind them, meaning they couldn't go back or get reinforcements.

All that work and sacrifice and the British barely even put a scratch on the vast majority of their objectives.

 

Well before Brokaw capitalized on it, WWII's held the best talking-points hand. In addition to our significant involvement, WWII's key feature was
the greatest villain in modern history.

It's no accident that Spielberg hasn't made three good movies that DIDN'T
involve the Nazis. Depicting Hitler as scum sells, for the best reason of all . . . unlike a good many theatrical scum-depictions, it's impossible to
exaggerate the depravity of the party's leaders.

 

Not true. The BAR was used by the AEF in Europe during WWI.



Despite being introduced very late in the war, the BAR had made an impact disproportionate to its numbers; it was used extensively during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and made a significant impression on the Allies (France alone requested 15,000 automatic rifles to replace their notoriously unreliable Chauchat machine rifle).

 

Who doesn't like that?

 

Hey, just seems I read that somewhere ... maybe some whacked out message board on the intraweb ... I was not present to verify the validity of statement! Maybe they were referring to the French request and it was denied, knowing the Germans would surely get a new shipment of BARs that were never fired and dropped only once ;D

 

Any other books you guys suggest on WWI? I'd really be interested in something that deals with the Ottomans and the end of that empire.

 

Should have been more specific.

Wilhelm II liked the Herr's to provide the tongue more so than the Frauline's.

 

A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall Of The Ottoman Empire and the Creation Of The Modern Middle East by David Fromkin is definitive. Excellent, excellent work.

In fact, I probably need to get a new copy. My dad borrowed mine a few years ago and I never got it back.

Should be required reading because almost all of it resonates to the present.

Many of our own foreign policy dogmas might be a lot different if more people read it too. The idea of nation-building in Iraq and among the Iraqi people, when historically, there is no such thing, the nation was drawn up to appease Faisal, who was the big loser in the post WWI Middle East land grab, is among many things written about.

 

Hey, as long you're providing the bag and not the tongue, what do you care?
Don't be so picky.

 

If that tongue has a mustache attached to it scratching my balls, you better believe I'm going to be picky.

And chances are, in 1910s Germany, that tongue is going to have a mustache. Perhaps even a handlebar mustache that might hook around and distract my cock.

Plus, there's a better than even chance my cock is at risk of being cut by a Col. Klink-style monocle. They were all the rage back then in Germany.