Aftermath (WWI)

The Emergence of a New World Power (The New Republic, 1922)

Having studied the global power structure that came into place following the carnage of the First World War, British philosopher Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) was surprised to find that the most dominate nation left standing was not one of the European polities that had fought the war from start to finish – but rather the United States: a nation that had participated in only the last nineteen months of the war.

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The World After W.W. I (The Bookman, 1929)

The book review of Winston Churchill’s 1929 tome, The Aftermath:

All too frequently Mr. Churchill passes lightly over the story he alone can tell and repeats the stories that other men have told….[Yet] no one who wants to understand the world he lives in can afford to miss The Aftermath. Would that all contemporary statesmen were one-tenth as willing as Mr. Churchill to tell what they know.


More about Winston Churchill can be read here.


Read the thoughts of one W.W. I veteran who regrets having gone to war…

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‘Deutschland Unter Alles” (Current Opinion Magazine, 1921)

This is a brief editorial from 1921 that pointed out how amazing and promising pre-war Germany once was and then remarks how far off the mark the nation had fallen since the war ended:


• Her empire dismantled.


• Occupied by alien armies.


• Worthless currency.


• Widespread despair.


Click here to read about Anti-Semitism in W.W. I Germany.


Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.


You might also want to read about the inflated currency of post W.W. I Germany.

‘Deutschland Unter Alles” (Current Opinion Magazine, 1921) Read More »

How Canada’s Veterans are Fairing (American Legion Weekly, 1921)

Second only to the part played by Canada on the battlefields of Europe is the magnificent spirit in which the dominion has dealt with the returned soldier and with the fallen soldier and his dependents. From the time the war ended to the present, Canada has led the rest of the world in looking after ex-service men.


When the men of the Dominion returned from Europe they originally got three months’ post-discharge pay at their discharge rank. On second thought this was changed early in 1919 to a war gratuity basis, as follows: For one year’s overseas service or more, four months’ pay and allowances; for three years’ service or more, six months’ pay and allowances. From these amounts deducted any sum paid out under the post-discharge system which had earlier prevailed. The men who had seen service in Canada only were not forgotten and received checks for one month’s pay and allowances for each complete year of service in the army.

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The Return of the Coldstream Guards (The New Red Cross Magazine, 1919)

To-day was a great day in London. The Guards’ Division was inspected by the King at Buckingham Palace and had a triumphant march to welcome them home…East End and West End rubbed shoulders to-day and showed the same respect for each other that not so long ago they had shown in the trenches.


Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.

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The Political Crisis in Post-War Germany (Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

The Current Opinion foreign correspondent filed this short dispatch about the pandemonium unfolding in post-World War I Germany:

The great fact to the outside world is that a German parliament has actually precipitated a crisis. It threw out the Scheidemann cabinet. It presided over the birth of a Bauer one. It was the German parliament which dictated to the government regarding its composition, instead of meekly obeying the government, as had been the custom…


More about leftists in Weimar Germany can be read here.

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Post-War Germany Struggled Under the Versailles Treaty (The Independent, 1921)

A 1921 column that clearly pointed out all the hardships created for Germany as a result of the Versailles Treaty.


The framers of that agreement could never have envisioned that the post-war landscape they designed for Germany would be pock-marked with such a myriad of frustrations – such as the border skirmishes between Germany and Poland, inflation, famine, the Salzburg Plebiscite and such harsh reparation payments that, when combined with all the other afflictions, simply served to create the kind of Germany that made Hitler’s rise a reality.


Another article about the despondency in 1920s Germany can be read here…

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Post-W.W. I Society and the New Spirit of the Twenties (The Independent, 1920)

In 1920 there were many articles celebrating the three-hundredth anniversary of the Puritan’s arrival on Cape Cod. This one writer decried the lack of enthusiasm that marked the modern age following the end of the Great War – a world that stood in contrast to the Pilgrim spirit. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced during the war. Shell shocked and traumatized, the world seemed different: the old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The author of this column, Preston Slosson, was one of the observant souls to realize that the legacy of the First World War was disillusionment and cynicism.

Our stock of idealism has temporarily run low and a mood of cynicism has replaced the devoted enthusiasm of 1918…


Click here to read a 1916 article about life on the German home front.

Post-W.W. I Society and the New Spirit of the Twenties (The Independent, 1920) Read More »