Stunning photos of London's new WWI memorial

[Jacob]

Is WWI a reasonable marker for the rise of the US as the major super power? I'm no historian of the era (or any era, to be honest) but it seems to me that after WWI the US is a top tier power, and the period sets the stage for the US becoming a super power post WWII.

WW1 marked a huge change in the way government worked in the US; the consolidation of federal power in the name of waging a huge war, and the establishment of so many federal agencies to do so, created a new perception of what the federal government could and should do.  The end of the war saw the end of most of the agencies, but not the realization that so many problems could and should be solved by the federal government.  The post-WW1 government remained much larger than the pre-war government, and Roosevelt was able to do what he did because people were willing to let the government have that power again, when the problems of the Depression seemed to demand it.

WW2, and the lead-up to it, were probably more significant than WW1 in terms of the federalization of power in the US, but WW1 was very significant.

Interesting perspective - I really had no idea about that, but it makes sense.

[Habbaku]

I just finished reading Battle Tactics of The Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack 1916-1918.

Incredibly dry, and incredibly awesome. Goes into ridiculous detail about things that I am sure the vast, vast majority of people could not care less about, yet I find sacinating and largely missing from most military history.

Told you you'd like it.

[Warspite]

There was a huge class aspect to both wars which might be missed by countries where class is defined by largely financial criteria. Generally upper class people ordered lower class people to their deaths. But the largest percentage loss of life was among the middle class NCOs who were required to lead their men form the front.

Not so sure about that. Commissioned officers on the battlefield were required to lead from the front. The casualty rates for lieutenants, captains and majors are horrendous - and they were primarily from the upper and upper middle classes. The casualty rate for officers was proportionally higher than for ordinary soldiers.

The army of 1914 had an officer corps dominated by the upper classes but by 1916 the losses and the expansion of the British Army into an army of mass designed to fight a continental war meant that the social criteria had heavily loosened and the middle classes found a way in.

[mongers]

There was a huge class aspect to both wars which might be missed by countries where class is defined by largely financial criteria. Generally upper class people ordered lower class people to their deaths. But the largest percentage loss of life was among the middle class NCOs who were required to lead their men form the front.

Not so sure about that. Commissioned officers on the battlefield were required to lead from the front. The casualty rates for lieutenants, captains and majors are horrendous - and they were primarily from the upper and upper middle classes. The casualty rate for officers was proportionally higher than for ordinary soldiers.

The army of 1914 had an officer corps dominated by the upper classes but by 1916 the losses and the expansion of the British Army into an army of mass designed to fight a continental war meant that the social criteria had heavily loosened and the middle classes found a way in.

Yes, see my post above for less detail. 

I suspect the influence of Black Adder runs deeper than we think.

I wonder how widely held by the populous is the idea that British Army, far from being a machine dedicated solely for slaughter, was by 1918, along with it's Empire co-combatants, the most competent and combat ready army in Europe ? 

[Syt]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/16/wargaming-guilt/

Heavily Engaged: On Wargaming, Guilt And Remembrance

Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Tim Stone's piece on grognard guilt, originally published in 2011.

No battle reportage this week. Rather than confuse you with another tale of how Easy Company went east then north a bit then left a bit while Baker Company went west then south then right a bit, I thought I'd try to get to the bottom of a feeling that has gnawed at the edges of my wargaming pleasure for the best part of 30 years. That feeling could be described as unease, or perhaps, disquiet. At a stretch you might even call it guilt.

What on earth does a jaunty kitten-cuddling pragmatist like myself have to feel guilty about? Well, I guess you could start with:

Most of my favourite videogames simulate unspeakably ghastly events.

or

I get pleasure from re-enacting battles that were, for the vast majority of those involved, acutely miserable and disturbing affairs.

I find it hard to believe I'm the only wargamer that has ever slipped a bookmark into a moving combat memoir or watched the credits roll on a harrowing war documentary, and pondered whether an hour or two of Combat Mission or Close Combat is really an appropriate response to what they've just read or viewed.

And it's not just books and TV documentaries that can trigger uncomfortable introspection. I remember one occasion from a couple of years ago, particularly vividly. I was sitting at my PC engrossed in some WW2 diversion or another, when an unexpectedly loud and deep gun report echoed across the battlefield. It was few seconds before I realised that the sound hadn't actually emanated from my speakers. It had come from outside. Shotgun? Car crash? Terrorist bomb? My brain scurried through all the possibilities until it slammed full-tilt into the explanation. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Down at my local war memorial a cannon had been fired to mark the beginning of the Two Minute Silence. Embarrassed, I pressed pause.

If I thought there was an easy conscience-salving answer to the question: "Is it unseemly to use real suffering – real sacrifice – as the basis for breezy entertainment?" I wouldn't be writing this piece. Then again, if I felt that the genre was irredeemably sullied, I wouldn't be contemplating a contented afternoon with Combat Mission: Battle For Normandy. Like all thoughtful, practising grogs, I've mused on the question and found enough moral wriggle-room to justify continued pursuance of the pastime that I love.

If I ever found myself having to defend the morality of wargaming, I'd probably drag out the genetic argument at some point. I'd claim I was just doing what men have been doing for thousands of years: sitting in my cave/hut analysing old battles – old hunts. I'm hard-wired to wargame. Hard-wired to find tactical situations endlessly fascinating.

I'd probably also try to gloss over the wargame industry's frequent failure to acknowledge the dreadful emotional and physical consequences of war, by pointing-out that most grogs are well read, inquisitive people that gain such insights elsewhere. I'd hope my interlocutor didn't press too assiduously the point that ignoring war's least wholesome sights and sounds (while often obsessively modelling such tactical irrelevancies as flowers and birdsong) leads to representations of war that are grotesque in their lack of grotesqueness.

From Tank by Ken Tout (highly recommended)

We wargamers might be able to accept that our ludological heaven was some poor bastard's living hell, but when it comes to setting, we often draw complicated lines in the sand. For some, modern conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq are too fresh or ideologically charged. For others, WWI is too merciless, Vietnam too resonant. To claim, as I've seen done, that wargames exist in some sort of amoral bubble by dint of their tactical or strategic focus, is to ignore the evidence of myriad forum threads.

I confess my own qualms have rather selfish personal slants and rather illogical temporal ones. Knowing that my great-grandfather fell at Passchendaele means I couldn't throw myself into a wargame version of that battle with much enthusiasm. Not knowing whether my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather fought at the Battle of Hastings means I can choreograph that scrap with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I know others that are drawn to a particular theatre or battle precisely because a relative served there. As I said, the lines in the sand are complicated.

Will I ever play a wargame that doesn't make me feel like I'm picnicking on a war grave? I sincerely hope so, but looking around at the recent crop of groggy entertainments it's hard to imagine what that title will look like or who will fashion it. To have genuine power it would need to do a lot more than proffer the fig-leaf load screen aphorisms or cutscene Band of Brothers homages that pass for counterweights in other militarised genres. It would need to make me care more about men than materiel. Feel utterly wretched about casualties. Occasionally it would force me to put my reputation as a CO on the line and question my orders. At times it would probably need to be No Fun Whatsoever.

And there's the rub. All the Battlefronts and Matrix Games out there are trying to ensure I have a bally-good time, and I'm sitting here troubled by their success. Madness? I'd be genuinely fascinated to hear what you think.

Do you reckon the makers of wargames have any responsibility to the warriors they depict beyond ensuring uniforms, muzzle velocities and armour thicknesses are correct? Is there something morally dubious about finding relaxation and pleasure in simulations of situations in which relaxation and pleasure were impossible? Did the poor buggers whose names are engraved on our war memorials die so that we could re-enact the battles in which they perished over and over again?

Maybe I'll give it some thought as I play CM:BfN this afternoon.

Then again, maybe not.

[Razgovory]

WWI changed everything?

Not here in the States.  We largely missed the bullet.  I have a hard time distinguishing WWI and WWII.  To me they are all part of a piece.  I like the second thirty years war idea, though I would put the starting date to 1911 with the Italian conquest of Libya as it set off the Balkan wars and Balkan instability played a rather large part in the beginning of the WWI.

For Poland WWI was such an auspicious event, it is weird how it almost even did not register as a war at all in the popular consciousness despite us being essentially in the middle of it.

Obviously, the horrors of WWII eclisped it by far but even before that I think the war of 1920 was seen as more important/traumatic. It could be that the partition powers did not recruit that many soldiers here due to fears of a rebellion/mutiny. And of course, the war ended with an unlikely loss by all partition powers - despite them actually fighting each other.

Edit: actually, checking the stats, it seems half a million Poles died in armies of Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary during WWI. I don't know how this compares, percentage wise, with British losses but I suspect this is comparable. So no idea - except the euphoria of independence and then horror of WWII - why Poles barely remember WWI as a national trauma. Could be we are less histrionic than Brits.

Probably because Poland gain something very valuable from the war, self determination.  Britain gained very little of value, French gratitude and some mandates over unproductive territory filled with hostile natives.  All in all, the world wasn't any better off after the war from the British perspective.

[CountDeMoney]

Do you reckon the makers of wargames have any responsibility to the warriors they depict beyond ensuring uniforms, muzzle velocities and armour thicknesses are correct? Is there something morally dubious about finding relaxation and pleasure in simulations of situations in which relaxation and pleasure were impossible? Did the poor buggers whose names are engraved on our war memorials die so that we could re-enact the battles in which they perished over and over again?

Every once in a while this question pops up over at BGG, and there is much moralizing and gnashing of teeth.

I remember as a little boy, I would always hide my army men and toy soldiers when my grandfather came over;  born in Germany and whose brother fought for the Wehrmacht, I sort of felt embarrassed to have German soldiers around in his presence. Once, I actually screwed up the courage to ask him about it, things about German toy soldiers, war movies and the like; he said he didn't like them either, and that's why he came to America.  Never bothered me after that.

[The Minsky Moment]

Is WWI a reasonable marker for the rise of the US as the major super power? I'm no historian of the era (or any era, to be honest) but it seems to me that after WWI the US is a top tier power, and the period sets the stage for the US becoming a super power post WWII.

WW1 marked a huge change in the way government worked in the US; the consolidation of federal power in the name of waging a huge war, and the establishment of so many federal agencies to do so, created a new perception of what the federal government could and should do.  The end of the war saw the end of most of the agencies, but not the realization that so many problems could and should be solved by the federal government.  The post-WW1 government remained much larger than the pre-war government, and Roosevelt was able to do what he did because people were willing to let the government have that power again, when the problems of the Depression seemed to demand it.

WW2, and the lead-up to it, were probably more significant than WW1 in terms of the federalization of power in the US, but WW1 was very significant.

All true, but even before WWI, the trend was already to bolstering federal authority: the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the Taft Budget Commission were all put in place in years just preceding the war.

[KRonn]

There are currently a lot of people alive who remember people who fought in WWI - I remember my granddad even though I didn't find out about his role in the war until recently. Things might change in the next generation. He never talked about his experiences during his 12-year career as a soldier even to my dad.

Interesting point. My step-grandfather was in WW I. He was an Italian immigrant. I never really talked to him about it though, unfortunately, probably because I was still very young when I knew him, before he passed away. No idea on my actual grandfathers. Sadly I never knew them as they passed before I was born.

[Sheilbh]

There are currently a lot of people alive who remember people who fought in WWI - I remember my granddad even though I didn't find out about his role in the war until recently. Things might change in the next generation. He never talked about his experiences during his 12-year career as a soldier even to my dad.

Yeah. I think I'm of the last generation who actually remember WW1 soldiers leading the parade. It was always very poignant seeing the numbers dwindle until it's just a couple of men in wheelchairs (but there's no way they'd miss it). There's certainly a sense of them starting to step out of memory and into history though.

It's something I've started to notice with the various WW2 associations now as well.

[Valmy]

And of course, the war ended with an unlikely loss by all partition powers - despite them actually fighting each other.

I know.  The only hope Poland had was for Russia, Germany, and Austria to all lose a war at the same time.  And amazingly it happened...or perhaps not so amazingly given the idiots running those countries at the time.

But in the event Austria basically offered Poland the same deal they gave Hungary if the Poles rose up against the Russians.  In the event the Austrians raised two divisions of Polish volunteers from the Russian sphere but I think they were more thugs, looters, and opportunists than patriots.