November 11, 2005
Armistice Day
It's Armistice Day. I noticed the 11th hour tick by [electronically] and paused momentarily to think of the First World War. I then also reflected—being in America—on how this anniversary passes by without much notice.
Here, by contrast, is the BBC news page for today
Still remembering World War I. Not a peep on any of the major American papers. But then the First World War barely touched America, the casualty rate was just 8%. In Australia and New Zealand the senselessness of war was brought home when 2/3 of men who went to a war that did not threaten their homes directly returned injured or did not return at all. The small towns of Australia and New Zealand are dotted with memorials to the men who paid the "ultimate sacrifice." Who died for King and Country. The social dislocation, the impact of half a generation missing, wounded or dead haunted both countries throughout the next twenty years.
As is the way with death and despair we are left with some great literature from the period, that probably captures better than any historian now could, the sense of loss. Indeed, the best history of New Zealand in that period is still Randal Burdon's The New Dominion because he'd lived through the period, and could sense what it meant to his contemporaries.
Whereas my impression of America in the inter-war period is a period of relative prosperity followed by a Depression, New Zealand between the wars was a place which struggled to get over the war, and may, just may have had a year or two (1925-1927) of normalcy, of a society that felt optimistic, before things headed south again. And the same goes, mutatis mutandis, for Australia.
Isolationism gets a bad name in the United States today, but a little bit of caution about rushing off to foreign wars is not a bad thing.
[late updateYes, yes, I know it's Veteran's Day. But really, that just proves my point that America is not really marking the end of World War I in the way that other combatant countries are.]
(Below the fold is a table of the casualty rates of major combatant countries)
| Casualties of the First World War | |||||
| Country | Mobilized | Killed | Wounded | Total | Casualties |
| French Empire | 7,500,000 | 1,385,000 | 4,266,000 | 5,651,000 | 75% |
| Austria-Hungary | 6,500,000 | 1,200,000 | 3,620,000 | 4,820,000 | 74% |
| New Zealand | 110,000 | 18,000 | 55,000 | 73,000 | 66% |
| Australia | 330,000 | 59,000 | 152,000 | 211,000 | 64% |
| Bulgaria | 400,000 | 101,000 | 153,000 | 254,000 | 64% |
| Russia | 12,000,000 | 1,700,000 | 4,950,000 | 6,650,000 | 55% |
| Germany | 11,000,000 | 1,718,000 | 4,234,000 | 5,952,000 | 54% |
| Turkey | 1,600,000 | 336,000 | 400,000 | 736,000 | 46% |
| Great Britain | 5,397,000 | 703,000 | 1,663,000 | 2,367,000 | 44% |
| Romania | 750,000 | 200,000 | 120,000 | 320,000 | 43% |
| Canada | 620,000 | 67,000 | 173,000 | 241,000 | 39% |
| Serbia | 707,000 | 128,000 | 133,000 | 261,000 | 37% |
| Belgium | 207,000 | 13,000 | 44,000 | 57,000 | 28% |
| Italy | 5,500,000 | 60,000 | 947,000 | 1,407,000 | 26% |
| Montenegro | 50,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 | 13,000 | 26% |
| Portugal | 100,000 | 7,000 | 15,000 | 22,000 | 22% |
| The Caribbean2 | 21,000 | 1,000 | 3,000 | 4,000 | 19% |
| South Africa | 149,000 | 7,000 | 12,000 | 19,000 | 13% |
| Greece | 230,000 | 5,000 | 21,000 | 26,000 | 11% |
| USA | 4,272,500 | 117,000 | 204,000 | 321,000 | 8% |
| India3 | 1,500,000 | 43,000 | 65,000 | 108,000 | 7% |
| Japan | 800,000 | 250 | 1,000 | 1,250 | 0.20% |
| Africa1 | 55,000 | 10,000 | unknown | unknown | - |
Great stats. If you want an Australian perspective of the social impact of the war then I highly recommend The Broken Years by Bill Gammage http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140033831/002-6369653-1763214?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance
Posted by: Dan Hill at November 11, 2005 04:09 PMAre there any separate figures for Newfoundland (not part of Canada until after WW2)? I read somewhere that proportionately it took more losses than even Oz and NZ and also the aftershock was a major contributory factor in the collapse of the Domininion during the Great Depression.
Posted by: jp at November 15, 2005 07:24 AMWell put and displayed. My thoughts exactly. Dulce Et Decorum Est. 1st day Somme. British dead = 20,000. The War to End all Wars. What a joke.
Posted by: Duncan at November 17, 2005 08:47 PMMemory says that Nial Ferguson's "The Pity of War" puts Serbia as the biggest loser of life as a proportion of population, and within the British Empire, Scotland.
Posted by: dearieme at November 17, 2005 08:53 PM