What We Learned From World War One | Critical Analysis |Axisoflogic.com

This article is adapted from the book Union Jackboot.

For the victors, the main lesson of the First World War is that violence pays.

Preparing for War
As the BBC reports on British Prime Minister May paying her respects to the dead of the Great War, the Bureau of Investigative Journalists reveals hundreds more US air strikes in Afghanistan. The British Ministry of Defence confirms more of its own air strikes in Syria. On this commemorative centenary, the BBC also reports that US President Trump is meeting French President Macron, in part to remember the fallen. Trump asks, “Is there anything better to celebrate than the end of a war, in particular that one, which was one of the bloodiest and worst of all time?”

Apparently there is, namely preparations for more war. The BBC notes without comment that the two self-professed leaders are “overseeing the formation of a European rapid reaction force ... backed by Germany and the UK.” The BBC also notes (again without comment) that Macron has boosted France’s “defence” (meaning military) spending to honour its 2% of GDP commitment to NATO. The increase in “defence” spending is a not-so-veiled threat against Russia.

While we remember that violence pays, the lesson that violence inspires violence has been forgotten.

How Britain Crushed Germany
From the onset of the Great War until 1919, Britain imposed a naval blockade on Germany, which destroyed much of the society. Winston Churchill described the blockade as intended “to starve the whole population … into submission.” The National Archives describe it as a “hunger blockade” and say the aim was to “strangle the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs.” Speaking of unintended consequences, they also note that Germany developed submarines – U-Boats – to counter the superior British Navy. Official British statistics (in Hew Strachan, The First World War) put the German death toll at 700,000 as a result of the blockade. These were civilians.

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) focused on German reparations (“the loser pays” principle, as it’s called in law) and helped create impossible conditions for Germans. The reindustrialisation of Germany was later aided by US businesses, which purchased German debts and established plants and factories in the ‘20s and ‘30s. US companies operating there included Ford Motors and General Electric (see Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler). Many middle-class Germans affected by the new industrial policies found their saviour in Hitler and his Nazi Party. The socioeconomic conditions helped to crumble moderate institutions and led the way for the Nazi far-right to fill the power vacuum, as centrists and left-wing parties split the vote. Sound familiar?

Comparison to Iraq
Britain has a historical record of imposing murderous blockades on others. In 1990, the US and Britain imposed sanctions on Iraq, which according to British government figures killed 200,000 Iraqis. Others put the figure at over a million.

The conditions established by the US and Britain, worsened by the invasion and occupation (2003-present), laid the foundations for the rise of another fascist organisation called Islamic State (or Daesh). Most Iraqis hate and fear Daesh, just as most Germans hated and feared the Nazis, as far as the limited available evidence suggests. Daesh was empowered not only from the appalling conditions imposed on the country by the US and Britain, also benefited from the vested interests of foreign players: Saudi money to spread the Wahhabi ideology (Saudi Arabia being a US-British ally); Turkish purchases of oil to fund Daesh’s anti-Kurdish operations (Turkey also a US-British ally); US-British-Jordanian training of people who defect to Daesh; and a money trail that links Daesh to Donald Trump’s advisors.

Violence Pays: Germany & Iraq
Having inadvertently contributed to the creation of the Nazis by laying the socioeconomic conditions that drove a significant number of Germans into the arms of the far-right, the US and Britain were two of the major actors in the Second World War.

Hitler annexed Sudetenland in 1938. Britain’s PM Chamberlain co-signed the Munich Agreement in the same year, effectively allowing the annexation. Hitler pretended that his invasion and theft of parts of Czechoslovakia was a “humanitarian intervention” designed to save German Czechs from the increasingly oppressive regime there. With regards to Poland, which Hitler invaded a year later, Britain had no intention of living up to its international obligations to defend the Danzig territory. There were secret negotiations between the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and an opponent of Hitler, but Churchill demoted Halifax when he took office, ensuring that the path to potential peace was blocked.

In 1946, a year after the war, Churchill stated:

Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again.

But Churchill also understood that violence pays. The principle continued. Having created the conditions in Iraq in which Daesh could thrive, the US and Britain initiated another round of Iraq’s torture, this time demolishing Kurdistan’s (northern Iraq’s) major city Mosul, with 500 bombs a week; a city which they had not managed to destroy during the invasion of 2003.

Conclusion
Although fewer people appear to die in war now compared to the First and Second World Wars, 90% of war casualties are now civilian, compared to 15% in the First World War. Not only this, but the violence pays principle of international relations has reached unprecedented levels of severity, with nine states now possessing nuclear weapons, and many (including the US and Britain) possessing the means to fire them across continents.

Still, as Trump asked, is there anything better to celebrate?

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