What does "The war to end all wars" mean?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

The war to end wars

In later years, the term became associated with Woodrow Wilson, despite the fact that Wilson only used it once

That statement is footnoted to *Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking *By Kathleen Hall Jamieson, but the appropriate page isn’t part of the Google Books preview.

[Little_Nemo]

@Exapno_Mapcase

The first world war changed everything. Every aspect of life changed. The world in 1890 is utterly unlike the world in 1930, even beside the technological changes. What’s fascinating is that the war is the only literal dividing line that we can pinpoint for eras of history. Before the war is the past. After the war is the modern era.

Americans don’t appreciate this as much because we were untouched by the war in any serious way. (Yes, many men died but a tiny number compared either to the Civil War or the losses of the other nations.) Yet the divide between the past and modernity was just as real here.

I feel that the Civil War served the same historical purpose for the United States that the Great War served for modern Europe. They both were the Big Divide in the relevant history.

Out of curiousity, do you feel that the dividing point occurred at the beginning or the ending of the war?

[A.Gwilliam]

@Little_Nemo

Out of curiousity, do you feel that the dividing point occurred at the beginning or the ending of the war?

At least in the UK, the beginning of the war is taken as the dividing point. It was the end of the so-called “long Edwardian summer”.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Little_Nemo

I feel that the Civil War served the same historical purpose for the United States that the Great War served for modern Europe. They both were the Big Divide in the relevant history.

Well, yes and no. It was a huge turning point, a stage that the country had to go through. But if you look at the country in 1851, ten years before the war, and in 1875, ten years after the war, society as whole looks pretty much the same.

Look at Europe in 1904 and Europe in 1928, you see two different worlds. Look at America in 1907 and America in 1928, you see two different worlds.

Out of curiousity, do you feel that the dividing point occurred at the beginning or the ending of the war?

Just being able to put a change of that magnitude to a few years is pretty amazing. I want to say neither, because it took time for the magnitude of the change to filter through society. As with the Civil War, nobody thought at the beginning that the war was going to last more than a few weeks so the actual dividing point can’t be at the beginning. We can say so in retrospect, certainly, but contemporaries would have vehemently denied it. They couldn’t after the war.

[Kobal2]

The war to end all wars was WW1, so called because it was so horrible, so destructive, so murderous that surely humanity would come out of it with a healthy and permanent distaste for that sort of thing. War had become so utterly horrendous, it could not be even dreamed of again.

Ha ha. insert insane slash desperated laugh here

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Kobal2

The war to end all wars was WW1, so called because it was so horrible, so destructive, so murderous that surely humanity would come out of it with a healthy and permanent distaste for that sort of thing. War had become so utterly horrendous, it could not be even dreamed of again.

Ha ha. insert insane slash desperated laugh here

As I said earlier, the sentiment that improved weaponry had made war too terrible to be waged was around for decades before WWI.

The war to end all wars as a slogan was entirely positive and meant to bolster morale by stressing how democracy would win out over tyranny.

The two are not the same thing and you’re wrong to conflate them. If people do that today, and you’re probably not alone, it’s because they’ve forgotten and misunderstood what actually occurred.