The First Battle of the Marne

 

The First Battle of the Marne was fought in September 1914, early in World War I. German armies had advanced rapidly toward Paris, but French and British forces counterattacked when the German right wing became overstretched and exposed. The Germans withdrew, and the immediate bid to win the war quickly failed.

This battle mattered because it stopped the German drive on Paris and helped turn the war into a long trench stalemate. The “Miracle on the Marne” became one of the first major signs that the war would not be short or easy.

History's Ten Worst Generals

The Invasion of Canada 1933

The World's Last Combat Veteran of World War I

 

Claude Choules, the last surviving World War I combat veteran, witnessed the historic scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow, Scotland, in 1919. As a young Royal Navy sailor, he observed the dramatic event when German officers sank their own ships. Over 50 vessels, including battleships and cruisers, were deliberately sunk.

Claude Choules served with the Royal Navy from 1915 until 1926. After having emigrated to Australia he served with the Royal Australian Navy, from 1926 until 1956.  Claude Choules died on MAY 5, 2011 at the age of 110 years and 63 days.

Nuclear War 1962 (Alternate History)

Sneak Attack! (Four Alternative History Stories)

Last American World War I Veteran

 

Frank Buckles, born February 1, 1901, in Missouri, was the last surviving American World War I veteran, passing away on February 27, 2011, at age 110. Enlisting in the U.S. Army at 16 by lying about his age, he served as an ambulance driver in France. Later, during World War II, he endured three years as a civilian prisoner in the Philippines. Buckles advocated for a national World War I memorial in Washington, D.C., until his final years. His remarkable life symbolized the enduring legacy of the "doughboys."

American Domestic Propaganda in World War I

The First Great Anti-War Movie

It was not until All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) that the romantic view of war was cast aside, as movie goers were admonished that “Death is not an adventure”. Here German soldiers, all of whom look and act like wholesome “All American boy” types, are decimated by the war “with the impersonality of sausage going through a meat grinder.”  In this film the soldiers lose respect for authority after seeing the horrors of war and say such things as, “It is dirty and painful to die for your country”. The view of frontline romance is equally unsentimental, as French peasant girls give the German soldier-youths sex for food, and the men have sex with the women as a relief from the horrors of war. Ultimately, the protagonist is un-heroically killed by a sniper while huddling in a filthy trench one beautiful morning. In this film love does not conquer all. War conquers every decent impulse.

Although the leading characters in All Quiet on the Western Front are Germans, thus allowing the film to not directly condemn either the war aims or the war conduct of the United States in World War I, and although the film was both a box office hit and won the Academy Award for Best Picture (1930), there were many who saw the film as, “The most brazen propaganda film ever made in America. It undermines beliefs in the Army and in authority. Moscow could not have produced a more subversive film. Its continued uncensored exhibition especially before juveniles will go far to raise a race of yellow- streak slackers and dis-loyalists”.

All Quiet on the Western Front touched on one of the underlying problems of modern industrial society, the need for the individual to conform to industrial discipline, even if this requires that he march off into a senseless war created by competing economic elites. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s book of the same name, the film puts provocative language into the mouths of the characters, “Who wants wars? Emperors, generals, manufacturers...” This World War I film reveals a nation turning inward rather than one looking for an imperial “policeman of the world” role.

Wars and Invasions (Four alternative history stories)

General George S. Patton once said, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” Here are four stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.

History's Ten Worst Generals

Success leaves clues. So does failure. Some of history’s best known commanders are remembered not for their brilliant victories but for their catastrophic blunders.

Prada Shoes and Accessories

Machine Guns Wreathed in Roses: The Greatest World War I Silent Movie

The implicit historical evidence contained in a commercial film is useful to the historian in that popular films reflect the concerns of the common man rather than intellectual elites. Because studio executives seek to hit the dead center of the mass audience in order to maximize profits, common themes in movies often reflect the fears and desires of the mass audience for whom the films were created

King Vidor’s World War I epic, The Big Parade , opened at New York City’s Astor Theater on November 19, 1925, quickly became a box office smash, and is now widely regarded as the top grossing silent movie of all time (by 1930 it had grossed $15 million on production costs of $245,000).

The Big Parade chronicles the war time experiences of Jim Apperson, the son of a wealthy family. The hitherto feckless Apperson enlists in a burst of patriotic fervor brought on by marching bands, the enthusiasm of his hometown chums and the excited gushing of his girlfriend. Apperson is thrown into the army with working class men such as his new pals Slim (a steel construction worker) and Bull (a bar tender). Army life resembles a boy’s summer camp. Deployed to France, the idyll continues as Apperson falls in love with a French peasant girl, Melisande. Called to the front, the mood now shifts as Apperson is torn away from his new lady love. Now follow scenes of the horrors of No Man’s Land, the deaths of Apperson’s pals Slim and Bull, Apperson’s wounding, and his inability to find Melisande after the shelling of her village by the Germans. The war ends and Apperson returns home, having lost a leg. Apperson’s American girlfriend has taken up with his brother and Apperson is generally embittered. At the coaxing of his mother, Apperson returns to France to search for Melisande. The two lovers are re-united as the movie ends.

The Big Parade is the story of ordinary doughboys at war, and while the film is sometimes characterized as an anti-war movie, it is in fact even handed, being neither patriotic nor pacifist.  The film did not reflect a wholesale rejection of the martial virtues, but skepticism about the outcomes of policy. Here there was no Union to preserve as in the Civil War, just vague ideals betrayed at the Versailles Peace Conference. Vidor’s even handed treatment of the war coincided with the ambiguous attitudes of veterans who tried to find nobility in their personal sacrifices while confronting the futility of modem war.

The Big Parade was widely praised for its realism, and Vidor went to considerable lengths to insure visual authenticity, viewing some 8,000 feet of footage made by the Army Signal Corps during the war. Four thousand U.S. Army soldiers were actually used in the film. “Then there were men who had fought in the Argonne who re-enacted scenes for us, and while we owe the working out of the mass effects to the officers, it was often the private who suggested a telling idea, and even the German, now an American citizen, came forward and told his former foes the correct way his compatriots made a machine gun nest” (Interview with King Vidor, New York Times, November 8, 1925, Page X 5).

The War Department indicated that the movie looked just like France. “Maj .-Gen. Hines, commanding the Eighth Corps Area, issued orders that placed the entire Second Division of the Army at Fort Sam Houston, Tex. under the control of Vidor’ s megaphone for the screening of The Big Parade. That each unit of the 10,000 men comprising the infantry, the artillery, supply trains and other operational factors might be in exact position when the cameras began to crank, Brig.-Gen Malone. - . issued regulation field orders to all tactical troops” (Los Angeles Times, November 8, 1925, Page X 5). Soldiers and military groups were outspoken in praise of the films authenticity. Critics agreed, “John Gilbert’s portrayal of the American doughboy as he really was with his slang and naughty songs and devotion to comrade.., struck home with a reality that brought tears to many masculine eyes....”; and, “. . .the entrance of the soldiers into battle. It is one of the few- possibly the only — scene that has ever depicted tellingly the menace of actual battle and its effect on men” (Chicago Daily Tribune, November 15, 1925, Page 18); and “The Big Parade is great realism done in a great way. It indulges in virtually no hokum”(Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1925, Page J 6).

While a quantum leap forward from the stereotyped World War I melodramas reflecting the war fevered propaganda of lesser directors, The Big Parade, does not stand up well in terms of war “realism”. The movie presented war in terms of dramatic conventions. Individuals stood apart from the mass and were made special through devices of romantic action. The movie could not come to full grips with the anonymity of twentieth century warfare. Iris Barry, an English film critic, wrote in 1926, “No film dares show what (the war) resembled. (The Big Parade) wreathes machine-guns in roses”. 

Sneak Attack! (Four Alternative History Stories) 

Sun Tzu, the Master of War, once said, “Those who are skilled in producing surprises will win. In conflict, surprise will lead to victory. ” Here are four stories about the history of the world IF wars we know about happened differently or IF wars that never happened actually took place.

Including:
1.The Hostage, in which Abraham Lincoln is kidnapped by the rebels.
2.The German Invasion of America of 1889, in which Germany unexpectedly launches its might against the United States.
3.The Invasion of Canada 1933, in which the new American dictator launches a sneak attack on Canada.
4.Cherry Blossoms at Night: Japan Attacks the American Homeland (1942), in which Japan attacks the American homeland in a very surprising way.

Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia

Prada Shoes and Accessories

The Creation of Fort Belvoir, Virginia (1918)

     The federal government acquired the Belvoir Peninsula in 1910 with plans to develop the area into a reformatory.  Local citizens banded together with patriotic organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association in opposing the establishment of a reformatory so close to Mount Vernon.  The reformatory idea was scrapped and Congress transferred the property to the War Department in 1912, following a request by the U.S. Army's Engineer School to use the area as a training site.  The Army’s Engineer School, located in Washington, needed field training areas and rifle ranges.  The Belvoir Peninsula provided challenging terrain where soldiers could build pontoon bridges and conduct rifle practice.

     America entered World War I in April, 1917.  In January 1918, camp A.A. Humphreys, named after Union Civil War General and former Chief of Engineer Corps Andrew A. Humphreys, was established on the Belvoir Peninsula.  Within only four months of the start of construction, Camp A.A. Humphreys was in operation. Over the course of eleven months, extensive camp facilities were constructed, with most of the heavy labor being done by segregated African-American service battalions.  To accommodate the twenty thousand troops who were to use the camp, seven hundred and ninety temporary wood-frame buildings were constructed. A newly constructed dam across Accotink Creek and a water filtration plant assured a steady flow of fresh water.  Transportation systems and utilities were also improved.  The unpaved Washington-Richmond Highway was surfaced in concrete within six months and a plank road was built linking the camp to the Highway. Standard gauge and narrow gauge railways followed.  Building these transportation systems facilitated deliveries to the camp, and provided engineer training experience for troops being sent to Europe. During 1918, some sixty thousand troops received training in engineering, trench warfare, and gas warfare.  After the war Camp A.A. Humphreys became a permanent installation and was renamed Fort Belvoir in the 1930s.

Hidden History of Northern Virginia

The Creation of Quantico Marine Base (World War I)

     America entered World War I in April, 1917. Told to expand its training capabilities, the U.S. Marine Corps began inspecting promising sites in the spring of 1917.  Some five thousand acres along Quantico Creek in Prince William County, Virginia, were leased from an ailing development company which had been promoting the area for recreation.  The area was largely uninhabited.  There was an officially incorporated town, a shipyard, and a small hotel that had been built to attract tourists.  The first Marine contingent to arrive consisted of ninety one enlisted men and four officers.  Soon thousands would come pouring in for training.  There were not enough barracks, and the troops did their laundry in the river.  Troops unaccustomed to a Virginia summer complained, “Quantico was hotter than a pistol and muddier than a pigsty”.

   Aviation first arrived at Quantico in July 1918, when two kite balloons were flown to spot artillery fire. Soon four seaplanes were assigned to Quantico. Naval aviation actually began in 1911, only six years after the Wright brothers’ first successful flight, with a Congressional appropriation of $25,000.  This money went for the purchase of three aircraft, one from the Wright brothers themselves.  The first Marine aviator (he was the fifth Naval aviator) was 1^st Lt. Alfred A. Cunningham.  On December 7, 1917, the Marine aviators were ordered overseas to fight in France, and to take part in anti-submarine warfare.  In 1919, a flying field was laid out at Quantico and land leased to accommodate a squadron returning from combat in Europe. The facility was later named Brown Field, in memory of 2nd Lt Walter V. Brown, who lost his life in an early accident at that location. 

     By 1920 Quantico Marine Corps Base had become a permanent fixture in Northern Virginia, as Marine Corps schools were founded and the Corps embarked on the mission to, “make this post and the whole Marine Corps a great university."

Hidden History of Northern Virginia

U.S. History of Arresting Dangerous Immigrants

America entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Un-naturalized Germans and even first and second generation naturalized German immigrants were widely seen as the “enemy within”.

Surveillance operations, conducted by such government agencies as the Alien Enemy Bureau, led to over 10,000 arrests.  Some 8,500 arrests were conducted under presidential warrants. Most of those arrested were released after a brief period of investigation.  Almost twenty five per cent of those detained, however, were found to be “dangerous enemy aliens” and interned in two camps set up by the War Department.  In the spring of 1918, the government began interning female enemy aliens suspected of aiding the enemy.  Scores of women were arrested, but only fifteen were held indefinitely

German-speaking communities were largely erased by the war and the anti-German feeling it created.  This was done through aggressive assimilation by hitherto self-identifying German-speaking communities.

American Domestic Propaganda in World War I

A brief look at the changing historical views (1920 to the present) on the uses and abuses of American domestic propaganda during World War I. Was this a necessary evil or a gross infringement of civil liberties? How, when, and why has opinion changed?

The Tomb of the Unknowns

Installation of the Sarcophagus for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (from World War I) is seen here.  The Tomb sarcophagus was dedicated on April 9, 1932.  The marble sarcophagus weighs seventy nine tons and is inscribed, “Here Lies in Honored Glory – An American Soldier – Known But to God”. In 1958, Unknown American soldiers from World War II and the Korean War were interred with the Unknown Soldier of World War I.  On August 3, 1956, President Eisenhower signed a bill to select and pay tribute to the Unknowns of World War II and the Korean War. The selection ceremonies took place in 1958. The World War II Unknown was selected from remains exhumed from cemeteries in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.  The caskets of the World War II and Korean War Unknowns were interred beside their World War I comrade on May 30, 1958. The designation of the Vietnam Unknown has proven to be difficult. With improvements in DNA testing it is possible that the remains of every soldier killed in the Vietnam War and later conflicts will be identified.

Historic Cemeteries of Northern Virginia

ARifleman in Normandy

A first person account of the Normandy campaign from D-Day + 1 to the liberation of Paris. 

War from the perspective of the average citizen soldier.

American War Casualties

As America ponders its role as a superpower in the world, and the price this entails, a little historical perspective may illuminate the discussion. The following chart presents total military deaths (both combat & non-combat deaths) suffered in America’s wars.


The American Revolution (1775-1783): 25,000

The War of 1812 (1812-1815): 20,000

The Mexican American War (1846-1848) : 13,000

The Civil War (1861-1865): 600,000 (As a percentage of total population this would be equivalent to five million deaths in present day America)

The Spanish American War (1898): 2,500

World War I (1917-1918) : 116,000

World War II (1941-1945): 405,000

Korean War (1950-1953): 36,000

Vietnam War (1957-1973): 58,000

Post Vietnam (1973-2009): 6,500* / **
(This figure includes the twelve military involvements America has had since the end of the Vietnam war: (1) El Salvador,(2) Beirut, (3) Persian Gulf escorts, (4) Invasion of Grenada, (5) Invasion of Panama, (6) Gulf War, (7) Somalia, (8) Haiti, (9) Bosnia-Herzegovina, (10) Kosovo, (11) Afghanistan (approximately 1,000) , (12) Iraq (approximately 4,500)

* 2,740 Americans also died in the September 11, 2001 attack…these casualties are not included in the 6,500

** In the thirty six years since the end of the Vietnam War, approximately 3,600 uniformed police officers have died in the line of duty according to the “Officers Down Memorial Page” http://www.odmp.org/

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Domestic Propaganda in World War I

Amazon.com link to: Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen by Christopher Capozzola

In 1917 the United States government established the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to mobilize and sustain public opinion in favor of America’s war effort. Since that time, the historical treatment of American domestic propaganda efforts in World War I has evolved in three distinct phases, reflecting an evolution in thinking not only about the definition of propaganda but also about its impact on American life.

Christopher Capozzola, a scholar trained in the post-Cold War period, analyzes the past from a vantage point in which a “rights society”, diversity, and pluralism are the enshrined national norms. His book is compelling in that he shows us that such was not always the case.

The works of earlier historians bear out that American thought has undergone a significant change. In the 1940s, Lavine and Wechsler could write unblushingly “In the molding of public opinion, the miners and unskilled workers didn’t figure very decisively; ‘the Americans’ delivered the sermons and wrote the newspaper editorials.” Here was a top down driven society where historians wrote knowingly for a narrow and homogeneous elite. During the period 1950-1990s, we see the emergence of the voice of dissent, and increasing attention to previously excluded groups. The discourse revolves around the relationship of the individual to the state, with the balance shifting in the direction of historians giving the rights of individuals an increasing significance in relation to the needs of the state. The scholarship of this period clearly reflects the national security anxieties and domestic political battles of the Cold War.

Interestingly, with the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of historians trained after the fall of the Soviet Union, scholarship concerning World War I launches forth in a new direction, leading one to speculate if historians are inevitably prisoners of the political era in which they live. If so, then no one book can ever do justice to a subject, and the history book/web product of the future must incorporate the viewpoints of all prior historical schools/phases in order to provide the most skillful and useful analytical tool.


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The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.