Aftermath (WWI)

‘Thanks, America”: French Gratitude (American Legion Monthly, 1936)

Almost twenty years after the First World War reached it’s bloody conclusion, Americans collectively wondered as they began to think about all the empty chairs assembled around so many family dinner tables, Do the French care at all that we sacrificed so much? Do they still remember that we were there? In response to this question, an American veteran who remained in France, submitted the attached article to The American Legion Monthly and answered those questions with a resounding YES.


Click here to read an article by a grateful Frenchman who was full of praise for the bold and forward-thinking manner in which America entered the First World War.

‘Thanks, America”: French Gratitude (American Legion Monthly, 1936)

Almost twenty years after the First World War reached it’s bloody conclusion, Americans collectively wondered as they began to think about all the empty chairs assembled around so many family dinner tables, Do the French care at all that we sacrificed so much? Do they still remember that we were there? In response to this question, an American veteran who remained in France, submitted the attached article to The American Legion Monthly and answered those questions with a resounding YES.


Click here to read an article by a grateful Frenchman who was full of praise for the bold and forward-thinking manner in which America entered the First World War.

Post-World War I France (The North American Review, 1920)

In the later years of the First World War, the American journalist Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) served as a writer for the Doughboy newspaper The Stars & Stripes. In this roll he was able to travel far afield all over the American sectors of the front where he saw a great deal of the war: flattened villages, ravaged farmland, factories reduced to ruble. In the attached article from 1920, Woollcott reported that the war-torn provinces of France looked much the same, even two years after the Armistice. He was surprised at the glacial speed with which France was making the urgent repairs, and in this article he presented a sort-of Doughboy’s-eye-view of post-war France.


More on this topic can be read here

Rampant Inflation in Post-War Germany (Click Magazine, 1944)

Author and radio commentator Emil Ludwig (1881 – 1948) recalled the economic catastrophe that devastated post-World War I Germany as a result of their inflated currency:

Inflation in Germany really started on the first day of the war in 1914 when the government voted a credit of five billion marks. This was not a loan…I saw the mark, the German monetary unit corresponding to the British shilling or the American quarter, tumble down and down until you paid as much for a loaf of bread as you would have paid for a limousine before inflation started.

Under-Nourished German Children (Magazine Advertisement, 1922-3)

Attached is a sad advertisement that ran on the pages of THE NATION for a number of years following the end of the war. Posted by a German charity, the ad pictures -what we can assume to be- a starving German child from one of the more impoverished regions of Saxony or Thuringia. All told, the photo and the accompanying text clearly illustrate the economic hardships that plagued post-World War I Germany.


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

Over 15,000 Suicides in 1928 Germany (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)

A short notice compiled from figures collected at the end of 1928 showed that Germany was the all-time global-champion when it came to suicide:

In that year 16,036 persons in Germany committed suicide. This is an average of 44 a day or 39 for each 100,000 persons in the country…

New Rules of Warfare (Time Magazine, 1923)

The International Commission of Jurists of the World Court under the Presidency of Professor John Bassett Moore of Columbia University, New York, drew up at The Hague new ‘rules of warfare’… Chief among the rules for aircraft in warfare are provisions against bombing private property not of a military character and against attacking non-combatants.

In the War’s Aftermath Came Spiritual Disillusion (Current Opinion Magazine, 1919)

At the thirty-fifth annual Church Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919), clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were needlessly complicitstyle=border:none concerning their support for the First World War and were guilty of substituting Christian principles for patriotism:


Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul.


If you would like to read about the spirit of disillusion that permeated post-war literature, click here.

1919: Franco-American Relationship Begin to Cool (The North American Review, 1919)

During the closing months of the American presence in France, one element can be found in the majority of the letters written to loved ones at home:

The French aren’t treating us as nice.

In the war’s aftermath, writer Alexander Woollcott (1887 – 1943) attempted to explain the situation to his readers; what follows were his observations.

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