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WW1 (1 bezoeker)

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Ben gek op foto's uit de Krimoorlog, Sleeswijk-Holstein oorlog en de Franco-Pruissische oorlog
 
Waar zijn die 4 en een half miljoen doden dan gevallen? :thinking: Russische burgeroorlog zal hij voornamelijk wel bedoelen
 
Gerwarth demonstrates with an impressive concentration of detail that in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe the carnage of the first world war by no means came to an end, as it did for the British and French, in late 1918. In the Bolshevik coup and ensuing Russian civil war, the far-left uprisings in Bavaria and Hungary, the Greek-Turkish war and similar events, Gerwarth traces a seamless flow of violence and political disorder set in motion by the near-simultaneous collapse of empires.

Polen kan ze ook niet op één hand tellen. Pas toen Pilsuksi aan de macht kwam in 1926 werd het rustig. Los van het feit dat ze ook hun graantje meepikten van Tsjecho-Slowakije.
 
Richard J Evans: Michael Gove shows his ignorance of history again (2014)
"Gove wants us all to celebrate the first world war as a "just war", a "noble cause", fought by men "committed to defending the western liberal order". He seems to forget that one of Britain's two main allies was the Russia of Tsar Nicholas II, a despotism of no mean order, far more authoritarian than the Kaiser's Germany. Until Russia left the war early in 1918, any talk of fighting to defend "western" values was misplaced. Britain wasn't a democracy at the time either: until the Fourth Reform Act of 1918, 40% of adult males didn't have the vote, in contrast to Germany, where every adult man had the right to go to the ballot box in national elections."

Dominic C. Sandbrook: The lesson our sabre rattling leaders can learn from the Great War carnage (2014)
When the lights went out last night to mark exactly 100 years since Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, there can be few people who did not feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow, gratitude and sheer awe.

Even though a century has passed since the outbreak of World War I, it remains the most unbearably moving moment in our modern history. And in an age when most of us spend our lives entirely remote from the brutal realities of war, it is profoundly humbling to reflect on the sacrifice of the nine million young men from Britain and its colonies who left home for the killing grounds of Flanders, the Middle East and the Balkans. Theirs was a generation tested as no other before, ripped from their ordinary lives and cast into an inferno of industrial slaughter. Yet their legacy endures to this day.

It is five years now since the death of the last fighting Tommy, Harry Patch, who had seen his comrades taken one by one by old age. Like many of his fellow Tommies, he hated to be called a hero. He always saw himself as an ordinary man, trying to do his best for his friends and his country in terrible circumstances. One extract from Harry Patch’s memoirs, which was read at his funeral, captures the horror of the war. In it, Patch remembered finding a fellow British lad, ‘ripped open from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel and lying in a pool of blood’. The boy begged to be put out of his misery, but before Patch could reach for his gun, he was dead.

‘And the final word he uttered,’ Patch wrote, decades later, ‘was “Mother.” I remember that lad in particular. It’s an image that has haunted me all my life, seared into my mind.’ The tragedy of World War I was that such stories were daily occasions. In Britain alone, almost 900,000 men never returned home. And today, when most of us are spoiled by comforts such as they could barely have imagined, it is almost impossible to grasp the scale of the emotional devastation.

In some quarters you currently hear talk of ‘First World War fatigue’, as though it is a subject that has outlived its sell-by date. But these are stories we must never stop telling. We must never stop thinking about the mud, the misery, the courage and the tragedy. And we must never, ever forget what those young men sacrificed for their country. Yet although I believe that we should always honour the men who gave their lives in the poppy fields of Flanders, I also believe World War I offers a tragic lesson in the dangers of military adventures overseas.

Some people think it is unpatriotic to question whether the war was worth it. Yet many of those who fought in the war believed it had all been for nothing; indeed, Harry Patch himself became a fierce critic of the decision to go to war.

Historians remain deeply divided about whether we were right to fight Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914. My own view, though, is very simple. I believe it was the greatest mistake in our history.

The Kaiser was not Hitler, and Imperial Germany was not the Third Reich. Indeed, far from being a threat to our democratic freedoms, Germany was actually more democratic than Britain: in 1900, 22 per cent of German men were entitled to vote, compared with only 18 per cent in Britain. By any standards, our allies in World War I were an unsavoury bunch. Serbia was a rogue terrorist state, having just sponsored the murder of the Austrian heir. France was seething with militaristic resentment after endless humiliations. And Tsarist Russia was one of the most violent, reactionary and repressive regimes in modern European history — and that is probably putting it mildly.

In truth, World War I was far from a moral crusade. To be blunt, we went to war because our Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, thought we could not afford to let our major Continental ally, France, be annihilated by the Germans. Even before the Germans invaded Belgium, Grey and his cohorts in the Cabinet had decided on war. As they saw it, this was the only way to maintain the balance of power in our favour, and thus ensure the survival of the British Empire. But Grey was wrong. In reality, the war was a catastrophe for Britain. We went from being the world’s biggest creditors to one of its greatest debtors, and lost forever our position as the greatest economic and financial superpower. Eventually, exhausted from fighting two world wars, we lost our colonies, too. And all that is before you even begin to consider the human cost in lost lives, broken bodies and shattered minds.

I can well understand why many people resist the idea that World War I was a dreadful mistake. Given the terrible sacrifice of so many ordinary British families, they prefer to believe that it was all somehow for the best. But I believe victory came at frankly too high a cost. I think we should have stayed on the sidelines, and let the Germans, French, Russians and Austrians fight it out. Even if, as most historians believe, the Kaiser had then won the war, the prospect of a German-dominated Europe would surely have been better than what actually happened — the Russian Revolution, the rise of Stalin, Hitler and the Holocaust.

Had the Germans had won a relatively quick victory, then there would probably have been no Communist takeover in Russia: although the monarchy might still have fallen, Tsar Nicholas II would probably have been replaced with a more moderate regime. And had Germany and Austria prevailed, their empires would never have broken up. There would have been no Versailles Treaty, Central Europe would have been spared the terrible chaos of the Twenties, and Hitler would have spent the rest of his days painting postcards in imperial Vienna. True, life in the Kaiser’s Europe would hardly have been a barrel of laughs. But it could hardly have been worse than what happened, could it?

The truly shameful thing, though, is that despite the bloodshed of Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme, our politicians have never learned the hard lessons of World War I. Instead, abandoning the judicious caution that marked British foreign policy during our Victorian heyday, our statesmen remain slaves to the principle of liberal interventionism. Suffused with hubris and mortally afraid of looking weak, our posturing politicians have never learned that sometimes it is braver to stay out. Indeed, whichever party has the keys to Downing Street, Conservative or Labour, it seems that they can barely wait to risk British lives in some far-off land.

So it is that from Tony Blair’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq to David Cameron’s reckless meddling in Libya, one disaster follows another. The situation in Libya could hardly be a timelier reminder of the dangers of foreign adventures. When civil war broke out there in 2011, Mr Cameron was quick to intervene, even though we had no business poking our noses into North African affairs. After Colonel Gaddafi’s fall, the Prime Minister even flew to Tripoli for a celebratory photo-opportunity. Yet only yesterday, with Libya collapsing into bloody anarchy, a Royal Navy ship had to evacuate British citizens to Malta. There could, I think, hardly be a better example of the misguided folly of liberal interventionism.

The tragedy, therefore, is that although we mourn those who fell in World War I, we still make the same mistakes. If we really want to pay homage to our fallen heroes, we could start by learning the lessons of their tragic sacrifice.
 
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Ik heb kaartjes voor Huis Doorn.

Zie ik eindelijk eens waar mijn held zn laatste jaren heeft versleten.

Zin an
 
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A German NCO muses over the message chalked onto the casing of an unexploded 38cm shell: "Ich habe den Krieg nicht gewollt" - Chemin des Dames 1917.

It's possible this 'offering' was thrown into the German lines during the 1917 Nivelle Offensive - the French plan to end the war within 48 hours. The offensive started with a massive artillery bombardment. Following the bombardment, French infantry and tanks advanced on the German defences. The unprotected infantry suffered heavy casualties, and French tanks were shot to pieces before they could have any effect.


Paris Gun was 21cm & 24cm :thinking:

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150 kilo 120 km ver schieten moet wel wat power achter zitten.

Hah! :thinking:
 
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"Beter één dag leven als een leeuw dan honderd jaar als een schaap"
 
Vanmiddag doc gekeken over last ww1 veterans. Mooie verhalen :thumbup:

Bedankt taaie rakkers!
 
De klimop aan de muren van Huis Doorn hebben plaats moeten maken

 
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