W.J. Astore The year was 1915. Europe, indeed much of the world, was embroiled in the devastating Great (or World) War. Under President Woodrow Wilson, the United States was proud to have stayed out of the war, the massive bloodletting of which seemed peculiarly European, an “Old World” form of militarized madness that most Americans…
Daniel N. White Testament of Youth, based on Vera Brittain’s autobiography of the same title, was showing at the arthouse multiplex where I decided to spend the day in the HVAC out of the allergens. For all my complaints about Austin, at least it is a large enough market to have…
Dennis Showalter. Introduction by William Astore. Over the next four years, historians around the world will grapple with the meaning and legacies of the “Great War” fought one hundred years ago (1914-1918). An epochal event in world history, World War I has as many meanings as it has had historians. Among those historians, Dennis Showalter…
W.J. Astore. Also featured at Huffington Post. This August marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. That “Great War” was many things, but it was most certainly a war of machines, of dreadnought battleships and “Big Bertha” artillery, of newfangled airplanes and tortoise-like tanks. Industrial juggernauts like Great Britain, France, and…
W.J. Astore This summer marks the 100th anniversary of World War I. Today in my daily “alert” from The New York Times, there are five articles related to the war. Steven Erlanger writes about how the war brought fundamental changes to the world; Jim Yardley writes about the Yanks in the Second Battle of the…
W.J. Astore To mark the 100th anniversary of World War I, which began in the summer of 1914, I’m posting this essay, which I wrote as a graduate student in 1992. I’ve decided not to edit it since I believe my general conclusions remain sound. Germany may have had the best military during World War…
W.J. Astore A good friend of mine wrote to me about chemical weapons/poison gas in World War I, and it got me to thinking about why we’re so outraged by the recent use of poison gas in Syria. When you think about it (and who really wants to), there are so many bloody and awful…
The business of wars and weapons sales is booming, with the United States leading the pack as the world’s foremost “merchant of death,” as Michael Klare notes in this article on the global arms trade for TomDispatch.com. But why should we be surprised? War has always been a racket. And if you don’t believe me…
The Contrary Perspective 