Did you know that there are fewer than 100 World War I veterans still alive in the United States? And the average age for a surviving combatant in World War II is 89? Will we forget?
The origins of Veterans’ Day begin in 1918 when the guns from the first world war went silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. At the time it was called “the war to end all wars.” It was first called Armistice Day for the armistice signed to mark the final day of war and it was made a holiday in honor of its veterans.
WWI was truly the first epic demonstration of necessity, the mother of invention, fiercely colliding with the technology of the industrial revolution. A prelude to modern warfare with the machine gun, gas, planes, even camouflage being revolutionized.
Also transportation, communication and everything else leapt forward, creating a potential for abuse and carnage unimaginable in their time.
The turn of the century with cowboys still herding cattle in the west and Samurai still worshipping the art of war in the east, the stage of what was only 100 years earlier colonial Europe exploded in death.
They called it the war to end all wars because no one imagined anything could ever be as terrible and surely the eventual end and bloody fallout would ensure in people’s minds for generations never to indulge in the destructive human notion again. They were wrong.
In many ways World War II was World War I revisited. The Germans suffered the worst of the world depression, even more than the United States. The European victors of 15 years earlier wanted the defeated to pay for their losses both economically and symbolically. Germany didn’t start the first world war and it certainly was not more evil in that war than its counterparts Britain, France and definitely not Russia.
Germany was, however, the competitor since medieval times and colonial greed got the best of the most enlightened nations. So acting as they had for the last 700 years in Europe, the Powers That Be reached down with an iron hand like the kings of old and punished Germany severely. But in time, one good turn deserves another, truth be told. The fuel from the fire that engulfed the entire world came from many, Axis and Allied alike.
Desperate people in Germany suffering and feeling ostracized by the world and its European neighbors especially, grew vulnerable and bitter. A man and a party all too infamous came into focus at this unstable time. They spoke with pride, of better times and offered targets to cast the people’s burdens.
The Nazis showed people who to blame and who to follow and promised to return the glory of a very proud people no matter the cost.
They represented something many Germans had longed for since the end of WWI – a feeling highly magnified but similar to the longing many in America still have toward our own past prosperity.
For a time the regime made things better for many in Germany, relatively speaking of course, and the average depraved and shameful citizen felt a swell of dignity and strength again. A few years later down that dark road, there was no going back; so many blind eyes cast to the atrocities that continue to shake the world to this day.
