100 years ago today both my grandfathers welcomed the silence after the gunfire. My mom's dad was on the American side, and my dad's dad was on the German side. I'm sure there are a few short stories to be writ about such a strange thing.

Peace. Through superior firepower. And kittens.

CDFingers

A most unnecessary war. Good video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJK7YHFIAqk

Kurt Vonnegut on the moment at 11:11am on 11-11-18:

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

I remember the first time I read this, in the preface to "Breakfast of Champions" back in the early 1970's, and how hard it hit me then and every time since then that I have read it. I may be Agnostic, but if there was ever a way to express what is the very, Very, VERY best about religion, it would be that moment.

I, too, have talked to WWI vets. I remember, as a little boy, at the Memorial Day celebrations, the Gold Star Mothers, who lost their sons in The Great War. And, in 1968, when we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Armistice, many WWI vets were still alive, including retired President Harry Truman. I was 13 then at the end of that TERRIBLE year when MLK and RFK were murdered, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was the scene of horrible riots, and RIchard Nixon had just been elected the 37th President.

French President Emmanuel Macron has urged world leaders marking the centenary of the World War One Armistice to reject nationalism. Addressing leaders in Paris - including US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin - he described it as a "betrayal of patriotism". "By saying 'our interests first and never mind the others' you stamp out the most precious thing a nation has - its moral values," he said.

Events are taking place worldwide. Some 9.7 million soldiers and 10 million civilians died in World War One from 1914 to 1918. Several world leaders also held bilateral meetings at the events. Mr Putin told journalists he had a brief conversation with Mr Trump and that it went well. However, the French organisers of the lunch event changed the lunchtime seating arrangement at the last minute so Mr Trump and Mr Putin would not be sitting next to each other, Russian media reported.

Mr Macron and dignitaries marched to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a memorial to France's fallen under the Arc de Triomphe, in the rain under black umbrellas as church bells tolled through the city. In a speech lasting nearly 20 minutes, the French leader called on fellow leaders to "fight for peace". "Ruining this hope with a fascination for withdrawal, violence or domination would be a mistake for which future generations would rightly find us responsible," he said.

The service ended with the bugle call that was played at 11:00 on 11 November 1918 to signal the end of hostilities. On Sunday afternoon Mr Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended a peace conference - the Paris Peace Forum - with leaders including Mr Putin and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On Saturday, Mr Macron and Mrs Merkel visited the town of Compiègne, north of Paris. They signed a book of remembrance in a railway carriage identical to the one in which the 1918 Armistice was sealed.President Trump, however, caused controversy by cancelling a trip to a cemetery for the war dead because of bad weather. He did visit another cemetery, Suresnes in western Paris, on Sunday. He said he had gone there "to pay tribute to brave Americans" who died in the war.

Earlier on Sunday, just before the leaders assembled, a topless female protester with the words "fake peacemaker" written on her chest came within a few metres of the US president's motorcade before being apprehended. Later in the day, a group of about 50 activist groups plan to hold a protest in Paris against his visit.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46168105

Both of my grandfathers and a great uncle were in the "Great War", probably more relatives.

The war to end all wars. Really? It's just a continuation of the butchery that began about 7000 years ago when societies in the fertile crescent and Persia realized that the stone and then copper and bronze tools they used to grow food and hunt game could be used to subjugate fellow humans. The rest is history.

Rather then be the war to end all wars it became the well spring from which all of our wars and problems today have flowed from. I think the people who protest wars need to be honored.

Blessings to all that have served and the families that sacrificed with them.

CDFingers

If ever there was a war that was bumbled into by total sheer incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, and greed (sound like a President we know?) it was World War I.
Germany, under the insecure, egotistical Kaiser, was seeking its "place in the Sun", jealous of the UK's and France's vast colonies, and Russia's vast "internal colonies". He had fired Bismarck, the genius who would have led him to a safer and more profitable path, in 1890, and by 1898, Bismarck was dead. 24 years of sycophant advisers made the situation explosive. Austria and Russia were ruled by similarly incompetent and ignorant leaders, and Turkey was no better.

France and the German states had been at each others throats since the time of Napoleon, climaxing in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 that Bismarck won (aided by Union General Phillip "Little Phil" Sheridan) convincingly, slicing off from France the Germanic (but still French) provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. 44 years later it was a gasoline-drenched situation that only needed a match.

The ONLY smart thing Germany did once the war started was do EVERYTHING they could to keep the USA out of it, despite Wilson being a hard-core Anglophile. Even the sinking of the Lusitania wasn't enough for Wilson to get us into the War, and he hypocritically ran in 1916 on the campaign that he kept us out of the war. That year, Germany rolled the dice, and lost. They bet that if they FINALLY started blockading and sinking American shipping to the Allies, they could starve them out enough to win, to force them to sue for peace, before the US could mobilize enough make the difference. It didn't work out and gave Wilson the ammunition he needed to get us into the War after all.

But the stupidity on all sides didn't end there. Versailles was a total shit-show where Wilson (and his nit-wit alter-ego, Colonel House) was SO eager to get the League of Nations started (in and of itself a better idea than it appears 100 years later), that he was totally played by France, Britain, Italy and the rest of the Allies that the seeds of WWII were sown right then and there. Germany, which had NOT surrendered, merely agreed to an Armistice, was not invited to Versailles, despite having tossed the Kaiser under the bus and created a new, fragile and creaky democracy. Instead they were given a humiliating take-it-or-be-invaded "diktat". Had Wilson been a better diplomat, he would never have allowed that to happen.

In fact, had Wilson REALLY understood, he would have realized that the USA WAS now the dominant power and COULD dictate to both France and Britain whatever we wanted--or call in all the loans we made to them and bankrupt both nations! France never repaid their debt and in the '60's LBJ used the threat of it to shut down De Gaulle's demand for all French dollars to be exchanged for gold (at $32/oz).

Yeah, it was a shit-show that fucked up much of the world to this very day.