From the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, in Springfield – We speak with Historian Mark DePue, as the world notes the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I, which ended at 11 am, on November 11th, 1918.
It was a war that resulted in tens of millions dying, from nations around the world. It was the first War to widely use machine guns, the first to have airplanes, dog fights, the use of gas as a weapon, the first use of tanks, of wired communications. And yet, that military tactics of the war – despite all this new technology – more resembled the tactics used in the trench warfare of the American Civil War.
Mr DePue shares the horrors of war the soldiers faced in trenches that filled with water and caused “trench foot” from soliders always standing in water. The rats, poor food, sleepless nights of bombardment, all combined to create a living hell for soldiers on both sides.
But the war also caused the world’s political maps to be redrawn, for nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iran to have established borders.
And, through the folly of the Allies after the War’s end, lead to the tensions which caused these soldiers to later be witnessing their sons going off to war 20 years later, in WWII
