Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.
In a letter to his family, a soldier from one of the Scottish territorial regiments gives an account of his experiences fighting in Belgium.
He was in the thick of the fighting that came as a result of the Kaiser’s desperate attempt to take Ypres, yet he indulges in no heroics. He writes as though reporting a cricket game or a boat race.
A Briton Writes From Ypres (Harper’s Weekly, 1915) Read More »
This is an opinion piece written at a time when the world stood at the doorstep of World War II. The writer went to some length to outline the fatal error made just one generation earlier and how the sins were to be paid for by their sons and daughters:
The world of today, an upheaval of antagonisms heading toward destructive war, was not inevitable. Russia need not have fallen to the Bolshevists, Germany to the Nazis, Italy to the Fascists. The United States need not have entered the Great War. Two million men slain in battle need not have died. These consequences resulted from a decision of a few men during the World War.
He argued that the Dardanelles Campaign is where the whole war went sideways.
Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.
Wrong Turn at Gallipoli (Ken Magazine, 1938) Read More »
Six years after the last shot was fired, war correspondent Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) typed up some sweet words of praise for the American W.W. I Commanding General John Pershing:
When the people at home were thinking in terms of thousands, Pershing planned for an army of a million men overseas…He was organizer and molder of the A.E.F.. The stamp of his character was upon it in so far as any one man can put his stamp upon a vast, modern army.
During that brief period of the war in which Pershing’s Doughboys were at bat against the Germans, Palmer worked under the general as the press liaison officer and censor for the entire A.E.F. (a job he hated). His bitter recollections of W.W. I were recorded in his 1921 memoir; click here to read the review.
Click here to read an article from 1927 by General Pershing regarding the American cemeteries in Europe.
A Tribute to General Pershing (American Legion Weekly, 1924) Read More »
The Navajo code-talkers in the Second World War are well-known, but not so terribly well known were their brothers the Sioux, and the similar contributions that they had made just twenty years earlier in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Sioux Code-Talkers of the Great War (The Stars and Stripes, 1919) Read More »
British fighter pilot in the Great War, Lieutenant E.M. Roberts, gave this account of the deadly game of Boche-hunting above the clouds:
I noticed he was going down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention; but the man was quick…he put five shots into my machine. But all of them missed me.
I maneuvered into an offensive position as Quickly as I could, and I had my machine gun pelting him…The Hun began to spin earthward.
Dogfight Over Hunland (Vanity Fair, 1918) Read More »
French hatred of Germany has been looked upon as something of a bugaboo, as being greatly exaggerated, and having little reality except in the writings of the sensationalists. That this hatred is a fact, a very serious fact…
The French Hatred of Germany (Literary Digest, 1894) Read More »
This report, filed from Switzerland, stood in stark contrast to hundreds of other articles previously published by the Allied presses that reported how regretful the Germans were for having provoked war and how economic privations were making them even more-so. This unnamed journalist insisted that the German home front that he saw in 1916 was composed of a proud and determined people who were fully prepared to see the war through to a German victory.
Grim Determination on the German Home Front (Literary Digest, 1916) Read More »
One of the most sinister results of the war has been a new wave of anti-Semitism in Europe. Recent dispatches from Berlin describe street demonstrations against Jews and speak of a veritable pogrom atmosphere in Munich and Budapest. In Poland, Jewish blood has flown freely, amid scenes of horror described by Herman Bernstein and other writers in American newspapers. In Ukraine the number of Jews massacred during the early part of the present year is estimated anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000.
Eastern European Jews Slaughtered (Current Opinion, 1920) Read More »
Ten years after Wilson’s declaration of war U.S. General John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948)wrote this article concerning the American W.W. I monuments and cemeteries scattered throughout France, Belgium, Italy and Britain.
In the attached magazine interview, Kaiser Wilhelm’s son and fellow exile, Crown Prince Wilhelm III (1882 – 1951, a.k.a. The Butcher of Verdun), catalogs his many discomforts as a refugee in Holland. At this point in his life, the former heir apparent was dictating his memoir (click here to read the book review) and following closely the goings-on at Versailles.
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
The Crown Prince in Exile (The Literary Digest, 1919) Read More »
