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World War One: The Centenary

Gaith

Gaith

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It's coming right up. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on June 28, 1914, and exactly one month later, following a failed process of negotiation, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. The Armistice of Compiègne began four horrible years later, on November 11, 1918.

Though I've got little patience for glorification of war, WWI especially, history is history, and I do hope someone/some organization makes some sort of broad historical project to chart the course of the war's centenary in four years of "real time" remembrance, as it were, ideally in the form of a weekly podcast or column or the like, but some rudimentary googling turns up no sustained effort of that sort. The ideal project would consider/touch on everything from the diplomacy to the battlefield strategies to the social upheavals and impact on future events/careers, etc.

Does anyone know of anything along those lines? Anyone have any plans/involvement with any remembrance projects? I admit that I totally lost track of a similar 50th anniversary of the Beatles project I started a thread on two years back, based on a (still going, though sporadically updated) Slate blog.

But surely someone, somewhere will do a running WWI remembrance, even if it's just a daily Twitter headline feed?
 
Australia's and New Zealand's big remembrance day won't be until Anzac Day (25 April) next year which will be the 100th anniversary of the Gallpoli Landing. Because the Turkish government has capped attendance of the services at 10,500 people both counties held ballots to award places.
 
I've committed myself to reading one book every month on the Great War as an extended remembrance. Most of my papers at uni were written on aspects of the war; it holds a fascination for me in presenting war at its most naked, as the horrifically stupid waste it was and almost always is. I think WW2's array of exciting tools of war (planes! ships! paratroopers! tanks!) and ease in telling as a Good vs. Evil story has made people think war in general is that way, when it almost never is.
 
I just purchased tickets earlier today to a show titled All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, performed by a cappella group Cantus. It will be held in December, and although it has been performed in past years, this year is special because of the centennial. Through music and reenacted radio broadcasts it will tell the true story of the Christmas Truce, when both sides laid down their arms and came together to celebrate the holiday.

Besides this, I haven't heard about any remembrances or planned activities. I had heard of something similar to what you describe for WWII, called D-Day: As It Happens, which had real time tweeting of the invasion created from actual accounts of the event.
 
Spot's Meow said:
Besides this, I haven't heard about any remembrances or planned activities. I had heard of something similar to what you describe for WWII, called D-Day: As It Happens, which had real time tweeting of the invasion created from actual accounts of the event.
Click to expand...

There's an account on Twitter which has been tweeting WW2 in real time for a couple of years now. Well, four. Wow, war's almost over. I should have followed it more regularly, now the winner's obvious.

https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII
 
My mate runs this blog:

http://historygeek.co.nz/

And knowing him I'm sure he'll be following it closely.

On a personal level I lost my great grandfather at the Battle of the Somme, only two months after the birth of my grandfather. He was only 24. I find it scary to think back what I was like aged 24 and how bloody awful it must've been.
 
There's at least one Twitter account that fits the description: https://twitter.com/RealTimeWW1

I also follow another one in German which does much the same and I take some delight in retweeting some of the tweets out of context, e.g. the German Emperor's visits to various places.

There are also a number of other multimedia projects that I've seen but do not really follow. They aren't in English, though.
 
It didn't have the scope of the Second World War, or the length of previous campaigns, like the so called Hunded Years War--but WWI to me was the worst war of them all.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

http://thawinedarksea.blogspot.com/2013/11/blood-shod.html

Poison gas, being forced to go "over the top" and march toward a machine gun nest (i.e a water cooled Browning in a pillbox) with a bolt action rifle...ugh

The words of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon still hold.
WWII did give us this, however http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/gunner/gunner.html
 
Like you, I agree that war has been glorified--especially European wars and wars of colonization. World War I seems to have been designed to overthrow traditional monarchies and ways of life.
Soldiers on the Western Front managed to achieve a temporary truce one year, at Christmas, but it was soon shattered, and those units were reassigned, to prevent any thoughts of peace from muddying their little plans for mass destruction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

If WWI had been concluded more diplomatically, we wouldn't have had to fight WWII and lose all those lives.
 
Out of curiosity, has anyone been watching History's "The World Wars" mini-series? It's not too bad so far IMO, though I did find it interesting that some elements are not mentioned. I know they have a lot of ground to cover in three days regarding both wars and the period between, but it's odd to me that they've mentioned Mussolini's rise to power and omitted the fact that Italy was originally an ally of Germany and Austria, its reluctance to fight because that alliance only required it to aid them in a defensive war (Austria had launched an offensive war against Serbia), and the Italian delegation at Versailles felt understandably cheated by the British and French, who had brought Italy onto their side with the promise of territory in the Treaty of London. I don't think any of these needs a huge explanation, but it would still have been cool to hear them mentioned.
 
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