Page 6 - Wish Stream Year of 2013 Digital Edition

kan countries formed a powder keg that only It looks as if education is indeed necessary
waited to be ignited. Of all the great powers, to move beyond an understanding of the
Britain was probably the least belligerent, First World War based on the war poets and

and the most honest broker in the July crisis Blackadder. It is here that the British govern-
which resulted in war in the summer of 1914, ment should spend the money set aside for
even though the role of Sir Edward Grey, Brit- the First World War commemorations. Simply
ain’s foreign secretary at the time, has been sending representatives from schools to the

questioned in recent research.
battleields of the Western Front will provide
welcomed school-trips, but it is doubtful if it
Some historians have argued that there were
will achieve a long-lasting, educational effect.
distinct continuities between the policy and
Historical and cultural education, framed by
strategy of imperial Germany and its Nazi
language teaching and exchanges with for-

successor. This is far too simplistic and does
mer allies and enemies could achieve this.
not do justice to German policy and society
International youth camps of the Deutsche
in the early 20th century and the changes
Kriegsgräberfürsorge – the German equiva-
these underwent between 1914 and 1945.
lent to the War Graves Commission – have

Germany before the First World War was a
proved a success over the years, and col-
torn country: The federal constitution offered
laboration between the two would achieve an
equal suffrage to every male over 25 which
educational effect where it matters – among
made it one of the most advanced and liberal
the young generations.

electoral systems in the world. On the other
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
hand, the biggest German state, Prussia,
It is also important to remember that the war
used a 3-class voting system which resembled more a feudal was what it says in the name: A world war. It was not only fought
state than a leading industrial nation. It was the country in which on the ields of Flanders and the Somme. With the exception of

an unemployed cobbler wearing a second-hand captain’s uni- some experts who in Britain has ever heard of the battle of Gorlice-
form was able to rob a town hall near Berlin, because nobody Tarnow in 1915, in which German and Austrian-Hungarian troops
dared to argue with an oficer (the famous Captain of Köpenick). broke through the Russian front-line and occupied most of Galicia
But it was also the country in which members of the bourgeoisie and the Polish salient? Who knows that in 1918 the Central Powers
in Hannover contemplated taking legal action against the local occupied vast areas in the East that almost equalled the territory

regiment, because they felt disturbed by marching music and occupied in the Second World War? Who has ever heard of the
shooting practice during the weekend. It was the country in which Carpathian Winter Campaign of 1914–1915, in which Habsburg
becoming a reserve oficer was seen as a social achievement, but forces fought in vain to rescue 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers
it was also the country in which fewer than 50%
trapped by Russian troops in the fortress Przemysl,

of the male population were drafted as conscripts, and which resulted in approximately 600,000 casu- It was the country
compared to approximately 80% in France.
alties? Who knows that the British forces were the
junior partner on the Western Front pretty much in which becoming
Germany was torn, but by no stretch of the imagi-
throughout the war? They never held more than
a reserve oficer
nation was it a wholly authoritarian, militarist, and
approximately a quarter of the Western Front – even was seen as a social
expansionist country or the pre-cursor of a fascist
though it has to be acknowledged that this was a
or Nazi state, neither in its internal structure nor
very important part of the front. One and a half million achievement.
its foreign policy. And deinitely, German war aims
volunteers from the Indian sub-continent served in

were not genocidal in nature, whether sub- or con-
the Great War, and 850,000 of these went overseas.
sciously. In the East the number of pogroms carried out by the Points like these add a European and global dimension to the com-
local population against Jews was considerably lower during the memoration of the First World War, which should not be overlooked.
German occupation than it had been under the Tsarist regime. It is
true that as the First World War progressed the German war aims However, one thing should be noted when thinking about interna-

became more radical and that the military exerted power over the tional commemoration. In Germany, Central and Eastern Europe
government which has left some people to argue that there was the war is remembered, but it is history. Here, ‘The Great War’ is
a dictatorship in Germany in the years 1916 to 1918. If Germany the Second World War. The casualties, horrors and pain that this
had won the war, the world would not have been a better place. war caused overshadow everything that had happened before. In

But it is debatable whether it would have sunk “into the abyss of 2014, Germany remembers the 75th anniversary of the outbreak
a new dark age”, as Churchill said after the German victory over of the Second World War in 1939, and the 70th anniversary of
France in the Second World War in 1940.
the 20 July 1944 bomb plot that tried to kill Hitler. These events
will feature higher on the oficial list of remembrance than the First

World War. Also, 2014 will bring the 25th anniversary of the fall of
the Berlin wall, one of the seemingly few happy events in German
history that are worth remembering.

It is right that Britain commemorates the First World War. The
horrible losses sustained in this horriic conlict should never be
forgotten. And yes, Britain can and should proudly remember that
it was part of a victorious alliance that defeated Germany and her

allies on the ield of battle. But it should also remember that the
First World War was a pan-European catastrophe that paved the
way for an even worse ordeal 25 years later.

Dr. Matthias Strohn is a Senior Lecturer in the War Studies

Department at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and
a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Insti-
tute at the University of Buckingham. He has advised both
German and British government bodies on the centenary

Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, Belgium
commemorations.

4 SANDHURST