It's the centenary of Armistice Day today.

100 years since the War to End All Wars ended. 10% of New Zealand's population at the time served in the war, in the capture of German Samoa in 1914, the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915, and on both the Palestine and Western Fronts until the end of the war. 18,000 were lost, including my great-grandfather's best friend. I don't know the friend's name, but the two enlisted together in 1917, underage but still sent to the Western Front, serving from September/October 1917 until the end.

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allsfinebime2 · M

And sadly 100 years after the World War One armistice. Mankind still has not learned any lesson from that particular war. Nor from any of the others that came after it.

SW-User

@allsfinebime2 They learnt lessons. But really just the ones that allowed them to refine killing.

allsfinebime2 · M

@SW-User Exactly. 🙂

drymer · 56-60, M

@allsfinebime2 The lesson being...? After WW1 the world became obsessively (understandably) pacifist... That allowed Hitler to play on the western democracies fears of another war, as it was believed that a [i]second[/i] world war would undoubtedly mean the end of the human race... That resulted in appeasement, emboldening Hitler... By 1942 The Nazis almost managed to take over most of Europe, in good measure because the armed forces in the western democracies had been awfully unprepared for war...

Things are not that simple...

allsfinebime2 · M

@drymer And had the world not punished Germany so badly for World War One. Hitler might have never came to power in the first place. Have you ever seen the picture of a German citizen taking a wheelbarrow full of Deutsch Marks to the bakery for a loaf of bread?

drymer · 56-60, M

@allsfinebime2 Oh I know very well... Did you know that after WWI German children had to wear "clothing" made of paper because that's all they could afford...? I agree that the harshness on Germany after WW1 really threw Germany in the arms of fascism... But, interestingly enough, that was a lesson that WAS learned, as the post-war Marshall plan comes to show (and Japan did pretty well, too, post WW2)... So, lessons have been learned...

allsfinebime2 · M

@drymer I agree. Some lessons absorbed. But so many left unabsorbed.

drymer · 56-60, M

@allsfinebime2 It's a complicated world... Sometimes solutions are tried that backfire... Communism was supposed to create ideal societies of fairness and prosperity to all... Even the attempt to turn Germany into a "backward rural country" after WW1 was considered a "solution" to stop Germany from waging war ever again, a "solution" that also backfired... It's a slow process... The real problem nowadays is that is has become so easy and widespread to twist facts to the point that's hard to figure out what's true and what's not... makes learning lessons extra difficult...
😒

allsfinebime2 · M

@drymer Again, I agree. Then there's the factor that someone always profits while others don't.