World War I anyone else's interesr

[seasmee]

So some years ago WWI became my special interest. The library whee I live know has a decent collection and next month they are having a presentation on music during WWI. I find many aspects of it interesting and I think I'm partly intrigued because it's not talked about as much as WWII. And there was a lot of political and social upheaval before during and after. So anyone else interested?

 

[midlife aspie]

My interest in that conflict is mainly limited to technical aspects. Strategy, battles, leaders, etc. interest me less than aircraft, capital ships, U-boats, weapons, gas, and politics. Those idiots in Europe dismissed our Civil War as a mob action, instead of seeing it as the harbinger of the future that it was. In fact, I think that the Third Reich may never have been if not for Clemenceau!

 

[seasmee]

I find it interesting how all the leaders were connected but also a lot of the technical stuff and some that was just...dumb. the French refusing to change from red and blue basically out if pride. The weird issue of Russia having a different railroad gauge to deter invasion that slowed them down. I am only really digging deep into this because where I lived I could only get a few books at the library and I wasn't aware if how I'd larch on to this. If you have recommendations for resources please let me know

 

[Judge]

Imperialism gone wild...too many alliances...and two megalomaniac cousins whose egos wouldn't permit one to back down from the other. Setting the stage for stupid and needless conflict on a grand scale. A Greek Tragedy with many players.

Yet blame fell only on one nation, setting the stage for the next needless conflict on an even grander scale.

 

[midlife aspie]

I believe AHC airs a series called Apocalypse WWI. The story of Rasputin's murder is interesting.

 

[Judge]

The story of Rasputin's murder is interesting.

My Russian history professor once personally interviewed Prince Yusupov.

 

[midlife aspie]

Be careful, you are letting your ageless wisdom show......

 

[Judge]

Be careful, you are letting your ageless wisdom show......

LOL. Oh hell I'm a fossil and most folks here know it.

But of those particular years I found Russia's history the most interesting.

 

[midlife aspie]

You should charge folks for the honor of consulting with the world's oldest living Aspie.

 

[Judge]

You should charge folks for the honor of consulting with the world's oldest living Aspie.

I think that requires citizenship from places like Azerbaijan or Armenia.

 

[midlife aspie]

I think that requires citizenship from places like Azerbaijan or Armenia.

Figures. Two odd-ball countries, one with an exclave.

 

[Judge]

Figures. Two odd-ball countries, one with an exclave.

Well, people do tend to reach some pretty ripe old ages in those countries. Not sure if science ever came up with any common denominators as to why though. Hmmmm.

 

[Judge]

Prolonged trench-warfare and gas attacks. Made for a terrible life for most infantrymen. And all those officers ordering their men "over the top"...into a hail of machine gun fire. All wars are bad...but this one especially so.

 

[midlife aspie]

The gas attacks were brutal. There was one gas that was often delivered via artillery shell (I want to say it was mustard) that would solidify in freezing temperatures. Thus in winter, these shells would explode near troop positions, showering the soldiers with the gas, but given its solid state, they did not perceive the danger. These troops would later retire to warm 'bombproofs' were the gas would return to its deadly form, often killing all of the soldiers in these confined areas. Hitler himself was blinded by a gas attack, ironically leading him to shy away from the use of gas in WWII.

 

[Tom]

I dabble in all military history, with a few special periods myself. WWI is not a special interest but I have read on it, watched documentaries a bit.

I did get to visit the battlefield of Verdun twice. Very interesting. I've been on many battlefields but this place alone had a very noticeable physiological effect on me. Both visits put me in a mental state much like severe depression, but only lasting the day. They have this huge building and at one end a chapel/memorial. 'What is the rest of the building for?' I wondered and walked around it. Little windows along the bottom. Its filled with bones of thousands of unidentified soldiers. A place called 'Trench of the Bayonets'. Here a trench was filled in with dirt from an explosion. They found just a line of the men's bayonets still poking out of the ground. The fort of Douamont, the destroyed village, the earth still misshapen. Germanys attempt to bleed France white. 3/4s to 1 million casualties over the 9 month stalemate battle. I wish every general and statesman had to go there.

 

[ezcare]

LOL. Oh hell I'm a fossil and most folks here know it.

But of those particular years I found Russia's history the most interesting.

Have you read THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Alan Moorhead (c) 1960? It was required reading when I was in high school. Was the best and most objective history to that time. May be better accounts now that the USSR has gone away and much of the classified stuff has been released for public consumption, but having been written only 40 years after the event, it likely contains a lot more detail than later revisions of that era.

 

[ezcare]

My interest in WWI is mainly related to the battles my Grandfather fought in, and discovering which ones they were. He was discharged after being wounded, and served in three theaters of war. Two in France and one in Italy. I know that he was at the Somme and possibly at Ypres. All I really have are his medal cards, and an image of a log book in which he was awarded a silver star.

It took me five years to actually find that information as the family name was misspelled on his army registration. I have few clues, mostly hearsay, know that he survived a mustard gas attack that killed most of his battalion, that only four men survived. The medal cards are pretty much the only information I have, as the war records office was bombed and destroyed during the the first or second world war.

If you want to get some good background info on that era, check out WAR AND ANTI-WAR by Alvin Toffler. He not only explains how they got to that state of insanity but brings it forward to how and why we fight wars today.
BTW- Ancestry traces are a good way to mine the kind of information you are searching for. His immediate relatives may have gotten some artifacts that were passed along to their families on the tree. Some of them may still have those artifacts.

 

[Judge]

Have you read THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Alan Moorhead (c) 1960? It was required reading when I was in high school. Was the best and most objective history to that time. May be better accounts now that the USSR has gone away and much of the classified stuff has been released for public consumption, but having been written only 40 years after the event, it likely contains a lot more detail than later revisions of that era.

Heard of it, but no I haven't actually read it. The text used in one of my university's courses pertinent to the revolution was a book called "A Concise History of the USSR" by Basil Dmytryshyn 1971. For history pertinent to the Czarist era we also read a book called "The Twilight of Imperial Russia" by Richard Charques 1958.

Other books I enjoyed pertinent to Russia were Adam Ulam's "Expansion and Coexistence" (Soviet Foreign Policy 1917-1973), and Morton Schwartz's "Foreign Policy of the USSR: Domestic Factors", and Hedrick Smith's "The Russians".

 

[Aleksandar]

I came on AS recently, so let me to bring this thread alive again.
Especialy because I live in Belgrade, a capitol of Serbia, yesterday I was in Kalemegdan, it is wonderful park with a fortress and many historical monuments and sights
http://www.bascoagency.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/tvrdjava-960x420.jpg
This was a place where first campain in the WWI started after midnight on July 29th,2914.
It was a first line of Serbian defence and hundreeds of gun shells here fell down fired from Austro-Hungarian cannons.
This was a strict punishment toward Serbia, which is accused by Austro-Hungary for Sarajevo Assassination on June 28th, 1914.
If you ask me which words describe the best my people, my choise would be from a speech of August von Mackensen, a German feldmarshal to his soldiers:

You are not going to the Italian, or Russian, or the French front. You are going into a fight against a new enemy who is dangerous, tough, brave and sharp. You are going to the Serbian front, to Serbia, and Serbs are people who love their freedom and who are willing to fight for it to their last

Unfortunately, such love for freedom had a heavy and tragic price: over a million people of Serbia are WWI victims or over 30% of Serbian population.
WW1 has impact on my family too, looking my father and mother side, 10 of my grandparents gone. I got my name by my greatgrandfather, he survived WW1, but he was war prisoner more than 3 years.
There is different scopes on WW1, from viewpoint of big forces as it is UK, Germany, France,Russia, this war was for their prestige and for benefit of their ellite, while from viewpoint of small nations, this war was a chance for liberty.
Except Serbia, which defended its independence recognised on Berlin Congress 1878, first time in history many nations got their own states as it is Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Ireland, Finland and many.
Since WW1, it was started a huge wave of anticolonialism and social movements.
No matter of that, 17 million of deaths is tragic for a humanity.

 

[Judge]

Imagine being able to travel back in time and make infamous personalities like Gavrilo Prinzip and Adolf Hitler disappear.

Go back far enough and no one would have likely noticed they were missing.