Archaeologists in France Discover Underground Remains of 21 German Soldiers from World War I

At Der Spiegel, "WWI Grave Find Tells Story Germans Want to Forget":

Archaeologists in northern France have unearthed the bodies of 21 German soldiers from World War One in an elaborate underground shelter that was destroyed in a French attack in March 1918, and hasn't been opened since.

Individual war casualties are still frequently found during construction work on the former Western front battlefields of France and Belgium, but the discovery of so many soldiers in one location is rare.
The tomb, poignant and grisly, sheds light on the lives of the soldiers who died in explosions from heavy shells that penetrated the tunnel.

"It's a bit like Pompeii," Michaël Landolt, the French archaeologist leading the dig, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Everything collapsed in seconds and is just the way it was at the time. This is an extraordinary find."

Fascinating. It turns out Germans don't really like digging up the past, so to speak. German newspapers buried the story on the inside pages.

RTWT.

Unseen Photographs Throw Light on First World War

At Independent UK, "Exclusive: The unseen photographs that throw new light on the First World War."

A treasure trove of First World War photographs was discovered recently in France. Published here for the first time, they show British soldiers on their way to the Somme. But who took them? And who were these Tommies marching off to die?

The slideshow display works pretty well. Scroll forward to picture #46 to see a black artillery soldier flanked by two white comrades. That's gotta be trippy for 1915.

Americans Cheer Death of Bin Laden!

Updating from my live blog earlier.

We still don't a lot of what happened. I've been communicating with Bruce Kesler and we were speculating on an abrupt U.S. withdrawal from Af-Pak as quid pro quo for Pakistani cooperation. More on that later as full details become available.

Meanwhile, at LAT, "Crowd celebrates bin Laden's death outside White House."

And check Patrick Ishmael's huge roundup at Hot Air.

More later ...

Ending the War to End All Wars

An essay from Margaret MacMillan, at New York Times:

NOT many people noticed at the time, but World War I ended this year. Well, in a sense it did: on Oct. 3, Germany finally paid off the interest on bonds that had been taken out by the shaky Weimar government in an effort to pay the war reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

While the amount, less than $100 million, was trivial by today’s standards, the payment brought to a close one of the most poisonous chapters of the 20th century. It also, unfortunately, brought back to life an insidious historical myth: that the reparations and other treaty measures were so odious that they made Adolf Hitler’s rise and World War II inevitable.

In truth, the reparations, as the name suggests, were not intended as a punishment. They were meant to repair the damage done, mainly to Belgium and France, by the German invasion and subsequent four years of fighting. They would also help the Allies pay off huge loans they had taken to finance the war, mainly from the United States. At the Paris peace talks of 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was very clear that there should be no punitive fines on the losers, only legitimate costs. The other major statesmen in Paris, Prime Ministers David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, reluctantly agreed, and Germany equally reluctantly signed the treaty.

In Weimar Germany, a society deeply divided by class and politics, hatred of the “dictated peace” was widespread, and there was no shame in trying to escape its provisions. The final sum for reparations was not mentioned in the treaty — itself a humiliation in German eyes — but was eventually set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks (about $442 billion in today’s terms). The fact is that Germany could have managed to pay, but for political reasons chose not to.

Some might recall that I wrote about this at the time: "Germany Pays Off Reparations Imposed at Versailles — 92 Years Later!"

Heritage of the Great War

An interesting historical collection, including what's said to be some of the very first color pictures from World War I. This one's titled, "Verdun - Synonym for Inhumanity":

French picture made in 1916 in a trench near Verdun, Northern France.



The Battle of Verdun was the longest and one of the bloodiest engagements of World War I. Two million men were engaged. The Germans began the battle on February 21, 1916. In December of that year the French had regained most of the ground lost.



The Germans intended a battle of attrition in which they hoped to bleed the French army white. In the end they sustained almost as many casualties as the French: an estimated 328,000 to the French 348,000. The real figures are unknown.

Nowadays Verdun stands for everything that is cruel and savage in warfare. Soldiers on both sides lost their sense of humanity.

Actually, the Holocaust is probably a more important example of man's inhumanity. Verdun, as horrible as it was, illustrates the folly of fighting mass 20th century industrial warfare using battlefield tactics of the 19th century. The First World War was mechanized trench warfare for the calvary ethos. Offensive military doctrines were made instantly obsolete by the advantages of machine gun cover. Entire generations of fighting men were wiped out. But it wasn't the war to end all wars. The origins of war are found in the structure of the system and in the hearts of men, unfortunately. Nations will continue to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best, or lest they fall by the wayside.



HAT TIP: Blazing Catfur, "Killed by Mustard Gas..."



BONUS: "French Army in the Great War."

Remembrance Sunday Pictures

At London's Telegraph: "In pictures: The Queen leads tributes to Britain's war dead on Remembrance Sunday."

Germany Pays Off Reparations Imposed at Versailles — 92 Years Later!

Fascinating piece, at the Times of London, "First World War Officially Ends" (at Memeorandum):

The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.

The initial sum agreed upon for war damages in 1919 was 226 billion Reichsmarks, a sum later reduced to 132 billion, £22 billion at the time.

The bill would have been settled much earlier had Adolf Hitler not reneged on reparations during his reign.

Hatred of the settlement agreed at Versailles, which crippled Germany as it tried to shape itself into a democracy following armistice, was of significant importance in propelling the Nazis to power.

"On Sunday the last bill is due and the First World War finally, financially at least, terminates for Germany," said Bild, the country's biggest selling newspaper.

Most of the money goes to private individuals, pension funds and corporations holding debenture bonds as agreed under the Treaty of Versailles, where Germany was made to sign the 'war guilt' clause, accepting blame for the war.

France, which had been ravaged by the war, pushed hardest for the steepest possible fiscal punishment for Germany.

The principal representative of the British Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference, John Maynard Keynes, resigned in June 1919 in protest at the scale of the demands.

"Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,' he warned.

When the Wall Street Crash came in 1929, the Weimar Republic spiralled into debt. Four years later, Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.

Yes, Keynes was right (see, The Economic Consequences of the Peace), but it's a much more complicated story. The United States was deeply implicated in the harsh settlement at Versailles. Americans would not agree to inter-Allied debt forgiveness for Britain and France, both of whom were facing financial collapse from the war, which in turn compelled them both, and especially France, to demand a punitive armistice with steep reparations. (And then there's the infamous "War Guilt Clause," Article 231, which made Weimar Germany responsible for damages caused by the war. There's a bit of historiographic controversy on this, discussed at Wikipedia. The word "guilt" appears nowhere in the article and it was actually designed to make Germany responsible only for the civilian costs of the war and not TOTAL costs. See William Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond. That said, historical memory imputes tremendous symbolism to the war guilt clause, and over time it has come to represent intense allied vindictiveness and short-sightedness. Note how the Times article above is sure to cite it.)

Versailles. A flawed peace. Paved the way for the Second World War.