By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 12, 2014 – It was called The Great War
even as it was going on. It engulfed the world, and the world is still feeling
its effects.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World
War I, and U.S. officials are gearing up to mark the centennial.
In his day job, Robert J. Dalessandro is the director of the
U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort Lesley J. McNair here. He also is
the acting chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission.
The Great War began in July 1914 with the assassination of
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This triggered an interconnecting network of
alliances to spark mobilization, bringing in the empires of Europe. England,
France and Russia lined up against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Ottoman Empire.
A generation of men died in battle on the fields of France.
The Somme, Verdun, Ypres and Meuse-Argonne became killing grounds. On the
Eastern Front, millions of Germans, Austrians and Russians battled. Overall,
about 16.5 million people were killed in the war.
At first, the United States stayed out of it. In fact, when
President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916, his campaign slogan was
“He kept us out of war.”
But on April 7, 1917, the United States declared war on
Germany and the other Central Powers and raised a military force of more than 4
million men. The United States lost 116,516 service members in World War I.
Another 205,690 were wounded.
While the United States didn’t enter the war until 1917, the
U.S. commemoration commission is beginning its mission of education now to
provide Americans some context for the epochal war.
“You can’t just drop into World War I in April of ’17
without understanding the road to war,” Dalessandro said in an interview. “It
was complex politically and internationally, and Americans today need to know
what Americans then thought about the war.”
This summer begins the centennial, Dalessandro said, calling
the archduke’s assassination “the Fort Sumter of World War I,” referring to the
site of the U.S. Civil War’s first engagement.
Congress chartered the commission to encourage private
organizations and state and local governments to organize activities
commemorating the centennial. The panel will coordinate activities throughout
the United States tied to the centennial and will serve as a clearinghouse for
the dissemination of plans and events, he said. While its charter covers the
United States, the commission also is looking at international events, and will
mark those appropriately, he added.
“We want to lead efforts that raise awareness, that
encourage a spectrum of organizations to plan programs and develop an education
program targeting America’s youth,” Dalessandro said.
The education aspect may be the commission’s most important challenge,
he added. “We need to wake up the interest of a new generation of Americans on
the effects of World War I,” he said.
Americans today need to know that World War I changed
everything for America, Dalessandro said. In the short term, he explained, the
experience of the slaughter of the Western Front turned America away from
entangling alliances in Europe. But the lesson for leaders, he added, was 180
degrees from that. “They learned we have to be engaged in Europe and involved
in business,” he said.
While the Civil War saw a draft, Dalessandro said, World War
I saw the first universal draft.
“The first question is if you have a universal draft for
men, what do you do with African-American men?” he said. African-American
leaders were determined that black men fight as combat soldiers and fight in
integrated units. They also pushed for black officers, Dalessandro said. “Part
of that happened,” he added.
For many African-Americans, he noted, the experience in
France was their first taste of an environment without Jim Crow laws. “There,
they are looked on as equals and that is a revelatory experience,” he said.
World War I was the first time masses of American women
entered the workforce, Dalessandro said. There were nurses, “yeomanettes,”
telephone operators, Red Cross workers, “Doughnut Dollies” and women working in
factories. And at the end of the war, women had the vote.
“In the Civil War, you have Irish and German immigrants in
great numbers in the Army,” Dalessandro said. “But in World War I, you have
Italian-Americans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, large numbers of Russians, Poles,
Czechs, Slovaks -- soldiers from ethnic groups that have emigrated, and it’s a
quick road to citizenship.”
The question was whether these men would fight together --
whether they would consider themselves Americans, he added. And the answer was
yes, he said.
Some historians call The Great War just Act 1 of a greater
war that includes World War II and the Cold War. Fascism grew out of the
experiences in the war. Revolution took hold in Russia, and the Soviet Union
was born. The Versailles Peace Treaty set the stage for Act 2 in 1939.
The Battle of Meuse-Argonne was the largest American battle
up to that point. More than 500,000 doughboys and Marines fought, and many
died, on the fields and forests of France. They faced not only bullets and
artillery, but also poison gas, tanks and planes. And yet, the American
impression of the war is “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” or movies such as “All
Quiet on the Western Front,” “Paths of Glory” or “Wings,” Dalessandro said.
“This is our biggest challenge,” he added, noting that a
scene at the end of a recent British movie shows two soldiers going over the
top in the Somme in 1916. “There isn’t a person in the United Kingdom who
doesn’t know these guys are not coming back,” he said. “We [in America] don’t
have a national consciousness like that.”
World War I set the stage for the rest of the 20th century.
It destroyed four empires: the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the
Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. It also set the stage for current
conditions in the Middle East by the Balfour Declaration, which called for a
Jewish homeland in the region and by the victors drawing the borders of new
countries.
One hundred years on, World War I continues to cast a
shadow, Dalessandro said. The nation needs to learn from it, he added, and the
commemoration is a place to start.
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