Drawing parallels between today and the first world war provides nothing more helpful than another perspective
It is a salutary experience to get a taste of how some of the rest of the world views what was, for at least a generation of Anglophones, the "Great" war. As our reports today from the continent of Europe and beyond show, the difference in perspective is dramatic: in some countries, it hardly signifies. In others, like Poland, it was the moment of rebirth for a nation extinguished for 150 years by Europe's eastern powers. Across the Middle East, it is remembered as a moment of betrayal. In Germany, its significance lies more in what came afterwards: the Treaty of Versailles. In Canada and Australia, the battles of Vimy Ridge and Gallipoli have the status of national foundation myths, the moment when a modern identity was forged from sacrifice.
Only in Britain and France is it most often remembered as a futile exercise in industrialised brutality, a verdict that began not with a bunch of 60s lefties, Oh What a Lovely War and Blackadder, as Michael Gove argues, but with the first trench memoirs, like Undertones of War, or plays such as Journey's End, works that grew from first-hand experience and began to appear within a decade of the war ending. Whether or not it was futile as well as barbaric is the kind of subjective verdict that will vary with time. For those who believed they were taking part in a war to end all wars, it must have seemed very futile indeed. It was the world's tiny ruling class that came to see it as the terminal crisis for the powers who had shaped the 19th-century world. It was the explosive release of long-repressed political and social forces that transformed lives of ordinary people around the world – that and the brutal power of scientific and industrial acceleration that militarism underwrites.
Contested interpretations of history matter. They shape perceptions of our own times, part of that necessary interrogation of who we are, and why. But – as Christopher Clark elegantly puts it elsewhere – they can also be exploited to mobilise support for present-day political objectives. History, Cicero's great instructor, always has lessons, but they are lessons that are more likely to teach us how to understand, rather than what. There is no ledger of facts bearing only one interpretation. There are remarkable parallels between 1914 and now. Unsteady empires, an emerging power, and terrorism, along with an unpredictable interplay between interested parties who are too ready to fight, are all a part of the contemporary world and that of the early 20th century. But it is one thing to draw parallels, and quite another to suppose they provide anything more helpful than another perspective. All too often, misjudgments and assumptions from long ago mean there are only least-bad courses of action. Draw lessons from history, but do not treat them as a template for action. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.
It is a salutary experience to get a taste of how some of the rest of the world views what was, for at least a generation of Anglophones, the "Great" war. As our reports today from the continent of Europe and beyond show, the difference in perspective is dramatic: in some countries, it hardly signifies. In others, like Poland, it was the moment of rebirth for a nation extinguished for 150 years by Europe's eastern powers. Across the Middle East, it is remembered as a moment of betrayal. In Germany, its significance lies more in what came afterwards: the Treaty of Versailles. In Canada and Australia, the battles of Vimy Ridge and Gallipoli have the status of national foundation myths, the moment when a modern identity was forged from sacrifice.
Only in Britain and France is it most often remembered as a futile exercise in industrialised brutality, a verdict that began not with a bunch of 60s lefties, Oh What a Lovely War and Blackadder, as Michael Gove argues, but with the first trench memoirs, like Undertones of War, or plays such as Journey's End, works that grew from first-hand experience and began to appear within a decade of the war ending. Whether or not it was futile as well as barbaric is the kind of subjective verdict that will vary with time. For those who believed they were taking part in a war to end all wars, it must have seemed very futile indeed. It was the world's tiny ruling class that came to see it as the terminal crisis for the powers who had shaped the 19th-century world. It was the explosive release of long-repressed political and social forces that transformed lives of ordinary people around the world – that and the brutal power of scientific and industrial acceleration that militarism underwrites.
Contested interpretations of history matter. They shape perceptions of our own times, part of that necessary interrogation of who we are, and why. But – as Christopher Clark elegantly puts it elsewhere – they can also be exploited to mobilise support for present-day political objectives. History, Cicero's great instructor, always has lessons, but they are lessons that are more likely to teach us how to understand, rather than what. There is no ledger of facts bearing only one interpretation. There are remarkable parallels between 1914 and now. Unsteady empires, an emerging power, and terrorism, along with an unpredictable interplay between interested parties who are too ready to fight, are all a part of the contemporary world and that of the early 20th century. But it is one thing to draw parallels, and quite another to suppose they provide anything more helpful than another perspective. All too often, misjudgments and assumptions from long ago mean there are only least-bad courses of action. Draw lessons from history, but do not treat them as a template for action. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.