The Centennial of the Great War is upon us. That War was one of the most significant events in European and world history. Millions died, empires fell, new states arose … and the foundations were laid for a future war.
To mark the centenary of the crisis, I’ve decided to start a thread: The Great War Centenary Thread: The Thread to End All Threads, which I hope will run for the course of the four years of the Great War itself.
That thread is meant to provide an ongoing mini-forum for interesting discussions about the War. Everyone is welcome to participate, to ask questions, to comment, to post about historical events during the course of the War. I’ve put it in MPSIMS because it’s a discussion thread. Certainly, I hope questions will be asked and debates will occur, but if the thread develops as I hope, it will be a sprawling, four-year long discussion that takes in all aspects of the War: not really Mundane, but some may argue certainly Pointless. So into MPSIMS it goes.
Here’s how I hope it will work. On the anniversary of significant dates relating to the War (battles, diplomacy, etc.) anyone who is interested can post a short summary of an historical event that occurred on that day. And, it doesn’t have to be exactly on the anniversary date; if you remember something that is of interest, please post a summary, even if the actual anniversary date for that event has gone by. But if we could keep it in rough chronological order, that would be appreciated. Part of the goal is to re-live the events of the War in the order that they happened for people at that time.
If you post an historical summary, please post it in italics, and keep it as factual as possible.
Once someone has posted a summary of an event, the floor is open for anyone who wants to then comment on that event, or on how that event relates to the general issues raised by the war, social consequences, military history, political implications, and so on.
I hope the thread will cover all aspects and all theatres of the War: the Western Front, the Eastern Front, the Italian-Austrian Front (an aspect of the War that I personally know little about, so I hope other, more informed Dopers will contribute.) Diplomacy, like the Brest-Litovsk Treaty; the mutiny in the French Army; the effect of the war on nationalism in the Commonwealth; conflicts outside of Europe, such as in Africa and naval battles in South America: all war-related events come within the scope of the thread.
Obviously, major dates like July 1, 1916 will get a lot of comment, as the artillery opened the Battle of the Somme. But I hope that posters will also post about lesser-known events during the War.
I’ve opened the thread with a summary of the “damn foolish thing in the Balkans” that was the flash point: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie by Gavrilo Princip. I’ve not added any commentary yet, since I want to throw the floor open for discussion by anyone who is interested. And, we don’t have to just go forward: anyone who wants to post about the back-story, the diplomatic and military manoeuvring which set the stage for that flash-point, please feel free to do so. As July goes on, we can post about the significant steps in the diplomatic debate which followed, leading to the declarations of war and the fall campaigns, and so on.
I hope that my fellow Dopers will find this thread informative, challenging and fun, and that we will keep it going for the next four years.
And finally, as we spend the next four years remembering and debating the War, let us not forget the human cost, as summarised by Wikipedia:
God rest their souls.