World War One

Find old World War 1 articles here. Find information on uniforms, women, gas warfare, prisoners of war and more.

‘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.

Sergeant York (Literary Digest, 1919)

Sergeant Alvin York (1887 – 1964) of the 328th Infantry Regiment, Eighty-Second Division, was one of the great heroes of the First World War. The attached four page article recalled those deeds as well as his glorious trip to New York City where he was luxuriated at the Waldorf Astoria and feted by the swells of Gotham.

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War” (You Can’t Print That, 1929)



Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:


The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.


Read on…


Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War” (You Can’t Print That, 1929)



Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:


The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.


Read on…


Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

‘The Americans in the Argonne Won the War” (You Can’t Print That, 1929)



Here is a segment of the famous interview with General Paul von Hindenburg that was conducted just days after the close of hostilities in which the journalist George Seldes (1890 – 1995) posed the question as to which of the Allied Armies played the most decisive roll in defeating Germany; whereupon the General responded:


The American infantry in the Argonne won the war.


Read on…


Click here to read about sexually transmitted diseases among the American soldiers of the First World War…

They Used to Call It the Front (The Literary Digest, 1921)

Old Dame Nature abhors war as much as we do. When the troops left the battlefields, she covered them over with stuble, poppies and weeds… There were no trenches and certainly no shell holes… Two years have passed and now the battlefields are harvest lands once more.


A similar article about touring the old trench line can be read here.

Paris Exults After Four Years of War (The Stars and Stripes, 1918)

A very moving column from the front page of the November 15, 1918 Stars and Stripes describing the joyous pandemonium that characterized the city of Paris when World War I came to a close:


And all Paris laughed the laugh of happy children after a day’s glad play. And the next day, and the next night, Paris sallied forth to romp and play again.


Click here to read about the W.W. II liberation of Paris.

Sharp-Shooting on the Western Front (Cornhill Magazine, 1919)

The attached remembrance of sniping on the Western Front was written by Major H. Hesketh-Pritchard, D.S.O, M.C. (author of Sniping in France 1914-18) and recalls the development and changes of sharp-shooting on both sides during the war. Pritchard broke down the scouting and sniper involvement on the Western Front into four phases:


Phase I (1914 – 1915): German snipers weigh heavily on Allied soldiers (Clear German advantage)


Phase II (1915 – 1916): British sniping organized (Advantage even)


Phase III (1916 – 1918): British sniper program takes off (Slight British Advantage)


Phase IV (1918 through to the Armistice): Allied Offensive takes effect (Snipers began scouting)

‘Why I Live in Paris” by a Former American Soldier (American Legion Monthly, 1927)

This piece was penned by an anonymous expatriate, a former American soldier of the Great War who went into some detail comparing life in 1920s Paris to the life he knew in America, and he is quite funny about it. He described a Paris that Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald didn’t talk about.


Back in America I sincerely thought that my hometown had the worst telephone system in the world. This was a colossal error…


Click here to read about the fall of Paris…

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