First World War Postcards #4: Bankrolling the Apocalypse
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Category: Reflections on History
Telling World War I Postcards
. . . And What They Tell [#1]
The Big Pond This postcard, printed in Germany, is captioned, in translation, “Friend and Enemy at the Big Pond.” The image shows children representative of the nations soon to be at war at the edge of a pond on which toy boats are being sailed. The card was issued before the war broke out, but […]
History Unlearned: Revisiting
Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers”
“Civilization—To Your Health! [A Great War-Era Postcard Featuring an Image by the Dutch Artist, Louis Raemaekers] World War One—the “Great War”—certainly counts as one of the major events in modern human history. Its effects were felt for decades after the guns fell silent—and in important respects (not least, the political borders of the […]
The Whirlwind Next Time:
First World War Postcards #3
As was recounted in previous posts in this series, the societies about to embark on the Great War, in 1914, were under a comprehensive set of delusions regarding the nature of that war and the course it would take. Famously, it was believed in the capitals of the principal belligerents that the war, […]
First World War Postcards #2
Propaganda Postcards and the German Invasion of Belgium “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” observed United States Senator Hiram Johnson in a 1918 speech. Coincidentally, his subject was the Great War—America’s involvement in which Johnson had opposed. “Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of […]
First World War Postcards #1
The images on picture postcards sent to and from soldiers on the First World War’s western front captured, in “real time,” the passions and prejudices (etc.) of the men who fought the war, and of the societies that sent them into the trenches. The postcards were rolled off the presses quickly, to serve needs of […]
The Past: an Appreciation
~ [sign me] Frequent Visitor Is there any one of us unfamiliar with the trenchant bits of wisdom that begin, “There are two kinds of people…”? Among the more familiar pearls from that string: There are two kinds of people: those who see the glass as being half empty, and those […]