 think take away civil engagement lives here any of that you okay we're back we're live it's the five o'clock block and today is veteran's day in Hawaii and all over the country in fact all over Europe to the end of World War one hundred years ago really remarkable time and and Peter Haufenberg and I would like to ruminate on exactly what happened and what that means to us what that has meant to us over the past hundred years it's not without consequence welcome back to the show thank you very much I appreciate that thanks for asking me and I'll give you my my usual disclaimer okay right so I do not represent the University of Hawaii the history department members of my family my parents of blessed memory I only represent myself thank you thank you full chill that is I I've spent the morning with lawyers so thank you he's a history professor at UH Manoa and I'm happy to talk about anything you'd like about over what that and it always works out yeah I'm more than happy to schmooze mm-hmm okay so my big recollection about World War one is Daris I make that Barbara Tuckman in the guns of August right which concerned the lead-up the events in Europe that led up to to the war and it was so interesting how it was all a tripwire one thing led to another before you know it the war plans were called into effect even if people really didn't want to do that they were sort of obligated by virtue of the war plans to have a war and presto they had a war that was different from all of the wars up to that point you know the war the roses probably involved 500 people and not a whole lot of casualties and even if it was long it wasn't all that consequential this was different why was this war different from all other wars are very good tell me that question first of all to get back to Barbara Tuckman I think that's a good reference because in a way she's provided the the key argument about the idea that this war should not have happened and was somewhat of a tragedy or a folly now we continue to debate that but it's I think it's good to remind listeners and students that Tuckman followed that up with a study of four other wars of which she thought were follies so that you could take that as the argument that they either stumbled into war there's a recent book about sleepwalking into war it could have been avoided it should have been avoided and it was an unnecessary tragedy and I think probably not to get into the absolute historical accuracy or not that's probably even to this day still the dominant narrative or view right that all the soldiers went over the top with futility into no man's land for a quarter of a of an acre or a quarter of a mile and look what happened then we had World War two so I don't necessarily think that that's historically accurate but I would say that's the popular perception and even through this day I think when people go to the monuments and such and much of what we know about in the West what we know about the war is from the trench poets the very famous trench poets and they certainly provide us with a sense of futility often irony and certainly a kind of desperation when you peel back the facts of the time so if you're interested in how we view it now if we just stop for a second look back in 1914-1918 not surprisingly it's a lot more complex yeah and it's more complex as far as the steps taken to go to war it's more complex about each country's aims so for example everybody likes to cite the Versailles Treaty and blaming Germany and having Germany pay for the war well there's considerable evidence that Germany did have war aims now whether or not those war aims were worth the conflagration of 16 million that's a different kind of question 16 million probably with civilians and soldiers and I don't mean to give you an uncommitted answer but as you know the nature of the war tended to eviscerate the bodies so what we generally have are crosses Crescent Smogendavid's over spots in which that may not be anybody buried we have names so when it gets the absolute numbers it becomes a little more difficult and this is really the war that gave us the tomb of the unknown soldier right the idea that modern warfare was so horrific on all different fronts that you could and I don't mean to upset your audience so nobody's having dinner right now but you could get body parts and soil from different campaigns and put them into one tomb and that represented the entire conflict okay so in that sense we begin to see how devastating it was and it's very difficult sometimes to remember that in 1914 nobody thought it was going to last more than a couple of nobody saw nobody 60 million lives no and certainly they they thought that and it's interesting if we want to get into you know why they did not I think is a very interesting historical question what did they see in 1914 how did they you know it's like the beginning of the civil war nobody thought it was gonna last more than a couple weeks right well in 1914 and again you know we could have 10 historians here who would have 10 very good important points I'm just gonna give you you know my limited understanding but I think a couple of things there really had not been a major war in Europe since the time of Napoleon and one of the things we know particularly about European history is until after 1945 Europeans were not always good about sustaining peace over multiple generations so when they go off to 1914 most people and there were plenty of peace movements as well there are lots of anti-war movement many arrests a lot of the American and British descent anti-descent laws come from this period so it's not to say everybody went off okay but when they did go off I think at least two things to keep in mind actually three sorry three let me do three things keep in mind the intense militarization of almost every major European power and its colonies what I mean by intense militarization was that the desperate gamble to build battleships the increase in the military budgets for all of them so some historians and and you know not not without merit argue that there was militarization you know an impulse to use these without any kind of memory of what would result now having said that there was absolutely no memory of a machine gun but you know you could have looked at the Napoleonic Wars and many of you viewers have probably either seen their red warm peace or at least Woody Allen's love and death which has the battle of Borodino in it those battles had 304,000 troops so the idea of a large number of troops being cut down is not unusual but it was a hundred years before okay so one argument might be the militarization well and let me give you a third let me give you a third one though because I think a third one particularly for many people in this community I think would be of interest there actually were precedents so it's interesting as historian to ask for example in Africa in the 1890s there were a series of major battles where figures charged on horse or on foot into very well defended areas with maximum guns and they were mowed down butcher down the battle of Omderman probably after five or six hours there were three to four hundred Anglo-Egyptian casualties and most historians estimate between 10 and 11,000 dervishers if they had looked at the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 1905 they would have seen the horrors of trench warfare so there are a couple really interesting historical questions which I certainly would not you know sell my print Mickey Mantle saying this is the absolute right answer but there were precedents which could be seen so as historians were often asking why didn't those register because by 1915 1916 it was like Omderman right there were people charging over into well and trench trenches trenches being mowed right being mowed down on both sides right but as they headed off to war they marched they sang it was it was that old martial music kind of thing right and they had developed their their weapons and their military militarism and all that and it strikes me that part of this must be again Barbara Tuckman is if you build a huge military enterprise you're more likely to use it because you built it as a level of commitment involved in building it absolutely and I think Barbara Tuckman and others have pointed out it's a very old topic but it's a very important topic that the diplomatic relations required them to go and assist their ally even if they were not attacked right and that had a deep impact on appeasement in the 20s and 30s when Western countries were very reluctant to repeat that kind of what was known as the alliance system and the alliance system was certainly held in part for political reasons such as Germany did not want to fight a two front war the Russians and the French both wanted to demolish Germany so there were practical political reasons and there's also an old-fashioned idea that a diplomatic agreement was a contract and you had to abide by it that's why it's a great degree it's both comic and tragic when Neville Chamberlain returns with this piece of paper from Hitler right because they're still locked into the mindset that if you write it on a piece of paper it's a contract and it's a commitment and of course part of fascism was to mock and to use diplomacy for eventual expansionary military reasons and use diplomacy kind of as a timeout we still have that don't we there are a lot of echoes of the First World War most certainly I mean you could look at probably if we were to have a high challenging introductory history course of the 20th century almost every major development we can think of came from 1914 to 1919 it didn't make them inevitable right it's not necessarily where it was headed but you could go back and see some of the grander narratives being implications yeah and being unleashed during that war you know Woodrow Wilson and mixed bag and I sure like your thoughts about him why he took us there and what he had in mind when he said a war to end all wars and when he created at least or try to set up the League of Nations right after it I where does he fit in this because the United States was not of a single mind in those days no and as he found out and you you and your again your viewers well know the senators and the Senate destroyed that and he essentially killed himself by campaigning and got very ill campaign no most certainly and it reminds us that not everybody you know in 1917 was also for the war in the US I mean there was resistance most historians would say that the reaction to Wilson was an isolationist reaction but I think that you know revisionism has a bad word because revisionism is sometimes equated with denial so I want to give you a slightly revisionist view which is not a denial I think most people and certainly key figures in the US during the 20s and 30s were not particularly isolationist they were tended to be towards Europe but this has appeared where the US got involved in China where the US was deeply involved in Central America so the isolation is selective what I talked to my students is elective isolationism and those are also areas where Wilson doesn't get a lot of flowery points I mean Wilson as we know had certainly strong racist views and it's hard to celebrate him on Veterans Day isn't it it's hard to celebrate him I think though if we just stop for a minute and try to look at people realistically all right and don't go you know in Judaism if you're afraid of Hitler you lose the argument so don't don't call Wilson Hitler but if you look at him for his time as deeply racist Southerner racist towards Asians racist towards African Americans deeply racist doesn't speak well of Princeton either no no and I won't get into that I want to get into trouble but okay but I think his understanding of Europe was different and that may be racist as well looking at Europeans ethnically as a different race that's quite possible I'm not a Wilson expert but the way to not to save him by any means at all but the way to try to understand him right is I think from a social Darwinist view right that there are hierarchies of ethnicities and groups which most of us fortunately find detestable these days but was certainly very much in vogue in the US very very much and Europe was a place where he firmly believed that his views of ethnic nationalism and his views of diplomacy should apply so that Europe could settle down to a series of nations that would respect their borders but that would include ethnically determined borders but he had no sympathy towards Central America right the Costa Rica or such no great simply towards Japanese or Chinese about that so I think what we want to probably try to do is understand him and his racial views in the very common hierarchical view of the time birth of a nation of course was screened in in his in the White House and he loved that film he said it was like writing history with lightning he certainly had a lot of the lost cause southern ideas right which had very limited of any compassion right it doesn't mean he would have supported slavery but he certainly didn't support racial equality so no he's no he's no better but but I think though that the idea of the League of Nations just the idea of that is a pair powerful idea and you saw over the past couple of days the European leaders getting together and marching under their umbrellas yeah that is a League of Nations except Trump would well well but please remember at least remember the United States did not join the League of Nations thank you right it is a European Union yeah so one of the I mean Japan wasn't a member Germany was a member of a very brief time Soviets were not members the US was not a member that's why the UN is very different if you want to talk about it it's why the UN very self-consciously is very different so UN has a Security Council and some people complain about that but they forget that if the League of Nations had had such a Security Council it might have been able to restrain okay possibly potentially the League of Nations really had no military force I was guided by a it was a loose association well it had very significant developments and things we just don't appreciate big campaign against human slavery big campaign for labor rights but those of course are all overshadowed by the imagery of Haley Salassie going and appealing for help against the Italians or China appealing for help against Japan or Sudan land it did not it did not prevent war okay that's true sure but as a European Union for the 20s and 30s it was unprecedented and it also did it did make constructive developments to a better life for a considerable number of people but if the litmus test is there shouldn't be war again by September 1st 1939 there's a major European war again surely Wilson did not believe that this war would end all wars I haven't again I'm not a Wilson scholar so I haven't read his correspondence I don't think anybody would say that this was absolutely the war to end all wars but I think they might approach it and again maybe perhaps your your listeners will appreciate this you know there's war I like war there is I like peace and there is I like wars that are manageable and controlled it's like drones you kill a lot of people drones and you kill a lot of people are not combatants but it seems it has the parents of being manageable or really an embargo is an act of war but we seem to think that that's a manageable okay so I think if you sat down with Wilson the understanding was that this would be the massive war to end other massive wars and we just learned how to manage right right manage conflict like the United Nations I know the war the world does not seem very peaceful now but the United Nations has had many successes like the UN you know you negotiate you would debate etc but again as I just mentioned without an army so the UN has an army what is really horrible is that it wasn't what 20 years from the time that Wilson said this is a war to end all wars until we had a war that was way worse it was if you look at a calendar it's what Robert Gray is called the long weekend English poet I would say that it was probably if you if you want to be very precise which I hate to be but let's say it was 1919 to 1941 because in 1941 the horrible war became a global war so before 1941 right you had conflict in all the regions but until Pearl Harbor right and the Germans declaring war on the US and the Soviets invading I'm sorry the Germans and their allies invading the Soviet Union you had three very lethal regional wars a 1941 some historians argue and I agree with her well you look at what happened in 41 I mean look at those events 41 was also Bobby R the one of the first large-scale murderers of Jews just by weapons not you didn't need a camp or anything you just shot you just dug a ditch and he killed them completely so yeah by 41 France had fallen so Vichy France so all these things were in place right to make 41 to 45 I think again every pretty much every historian would agree the most lethal war more lethal more lethal even even than World War one including civilians so not the the ways in which soldiers died in the Second World War were horrific horrific I mean the heat of New Guinea right the cold of of Stalingrad were horrific and there were trenches I think what's happened and again it there's nothing wrong with this it's just kind of popular perception World War one was a soldier's war World War two was a civilian war but we want to remind ourselves probably six million civilians died in the First World War and you would have to say lots more than yeah I think if you included all the acts of repression and maybe somebody's listing him correct me you know 18 to 20 there was a morality issue too if you're gonna fight somebody in and shoot a machine gun at him that's one thing it's war it's soldier against so right what if you're gonna go after civilians and torture them and do all kinds of head trips on them that's that's a different morality it is but and we see that in the First World War we see that it's not as well thought out fortunately right the technology is there but of course the the official Turkish murder or genocide depending upon I mean most most of us agree it was a genocide the Turkish government doesn't agree with that that's clearly the kind of precedent for the Holocaust and other issues where civilians really there's no strategic value that's that's really what I wanted to get to here in the last few minutes anyway and that is what kind of shadow did this this place this this initiate over the 20th century what how did it change the world so now we had technology used for war that was pretty bad we had poison gas we had airplanes that dropped bombs we had medicine that we hadn't had before we had tanks that was new and I could go on but there was a lot of technology that came into play that might not have come into play without World War One so that's a mixed bag but then we had other things like like the morality questions and the human rights questions that evolved and it strikes me that what happened World War One sort of sent a message that you could do these horrendous things you could have these horrendous wars and get away with it and and I think that that that drew a shadow over the whole century didn't it well I would say that was a lesson that Japan Italy and Germany drew but they drew it in part because the effort to prevent that was such a failure right it wasn't just the war experience but the outcome of the war and I think we also want to remember that if you were a French Prime Minister or an English Prime Minister you're asking to go to war again after having hundreds of thousands if not millions dead I don't know if you've seen the most recent Churchill film it's essentially about 40 that the great hour the grand hour or something but anyhow yeah the greatest hour the greatest hour yeah so Chamberlain is a very interesting character I mean he's clearly driven by power but he also clearly understands that England's not itching to go back to war their people coffin dying as a professor at HPU professor goff who has I think five or six family members who either killed or wounded in that war so we have to remember that in a sense it was the expansionary powers challenging but often challenging without the weaponry they would later develop it's kind of like a poker game with the highest stakes imaginable and so would Chamberlain respond well you could say Chamberlain should have responded because the German Air Force wasn't the way they would be a year later okay but it's also true that the English did not have the high altitude oxygen systems for the hurricane and the Spitfire so that's why we need to go back and kind of peel away these very powerful terms like Munich right which still has still resonates appeasement George Herbert Walker Bush actually referred to Munich with the first Iraq war if you read his memoirs he said one of the reasons he went in to fight Saddam Hussein who had invaded Kuwait was his impression of Munich so these these big wars have have begot begot other wars I mean it's sort of a proof of concepts sort of thing that you can have a war get away with it humanity survives so you learn a lot of things you learn how to conduct the next war you learn how to get on top of the situation militarily you learn about weapons and threats and sort of the negotiation to pre-war negotiation techniques and all that and before you know what you have another one what what have we learned since World War one that would have straightened us out on these things I we've in better shape now a worse well let me cheat a little bit by saying since World War two if that's okay if that's okay if that's okay I mean just not it's better instead well in both well because I would contend that we had a chance in the 20s and 30s but for various reasons it was not contained but after 1945 and this gets back to your point a lot of the lessons were very poorly learned so lessons among imperial powers that it proved successful against the Axis did not prove successful against indigenous nationalist movements Vietnam Algeria etc right so you could say in the 20s and 30s they played around with what to do with tanks and planes and in many ways it was still a relatively conventional war battles mattered right but then you fast-forward to the crucial decolonization wars of the late 40s 50s and 60s and a lot of the West was still trying to fight conventional battles or overwhelm with technology LeMay who of course helped fire bomb Tokyo also helped fire bomb Southeast Asia okay so you're right that you know you could learn but you could also not learn and you could also take the imprint and the template of a previous conflict and not understand that the next one is really not the same British historians usually say the British High Command fights the last war there always one war behind you know they used to when they fought some of the battles in late 1870s 1880s they'd have red and blue uniforms marching across so of course and they fought the Afrikaners they had blue and red uniforms and the Afrikaners pick them off one by one you see them behind the tree right right so now just get back before our break you mentioned sort of things that overshadow the 20th century I also want us to remember that there are certain things I think we might agree are good things that came out of these total wars in other words women's suffrage clearly the participation of women in the major industries of war munitions etc clearly now it's it's not the birth of the suffrage movement that was born 40 years before elevated them but it clearly they were they were really I mean clearly if you look at the United States and if you look at political participation of women in the Weimar Republic if you look in Britain I that's I mean good is not a word that historians often use but let's say that there was social change which led to a more participatory society it's too bad that this couldn't happen without of course that city of war absolutely and I want to offer this start to you Peter is that we study this period and then we look back look forward crank in nuclear weapons and all the process crank in all the wars that still happen which we read about every day it seems to me that from the point of view of a history professor of history in general war is a central thread of history it is a central thread but as I talk with my students it's not an inevitable threat and sometimes because of the persistence of war and the way in many cases war is glorified commemorated I mean there's a debate about what we should be doing today and yesterday whether we should be commemorating war and commemorating nations or whether we should choose a really more international approach all these things are open so I tend to ask my students to not look at things as inevitable one of the things that strikes me is two years ago my wife and I went on a trip to France around the periphery of it and we stopped at the American Cemetery in Normandy and it blew me away as few experiences in my life to stand there and see the the archway this the structures they built to see all those graves American graves to see how beautifully manicured it is and you know to see it come come alive if you will and it's very powerful experience Americans buried in France a very powerful experience and that's why I'm you know troubled by the fact that Trump didn't want to go to the American Cemetery 55 kilometers north of Paris the other day there's a certain an important statement there Reagan gave one of his most famous speeches at Normandy yeah but you know the most I think the most you can agree or not the most important thing about Veterans Day and maybe Veterans Day isn't the only holiday that deals with this is to remember all those troops that were killed all those people that were killed young boys mostly in those graves and to think gee that that wasn't a great way to end can't we avoid the that loss of of humanity in the future that that really speaks against war as powerfully as anything I can think of what do you think I could not disagree with you I the only way I would disagree with you is I would like as much attention to be paid to the soldiers who survive we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about graves and sacrifice etc there are a lot of veterans who need our attention and I'm going to say something else which is probably a contrarian if if war is an act of patriotism and sacrifice so is peace activism so we should remember also the peace activists who are rested the peace activists who are beaten up they're both I think Macron was trying to work on this yesterday that true patriotism is the higher value and that higher value if you oppose a war is not to denigrate the soldiers it's to denigrate war and sometimes those soldiers don't have a choice but to go to war so I would agree with you it's overwhelming unfortunately sometimes it's overwhelming by romanticizing war or they you could see how some politicians they did this and look we're not being paid back properly right as if there were some debt I think the debt we owe them is to ensure that their children are treated properly and that we try not to have war that we try to you know take those swords and break them into plowshares as much as possible 20 is Daniel elements here about about armistice day and about veterans day and all that is to remember and it strikes me that we don't remember we don't people are not conscious of you know of of armistice day the end of World War one or for that matter the end of World War two and they forget so quickly and at the moment with these wars and we have a great moral upswell people who say no more war this was too hard let's make peace let's everyone make peace but you look 20 years later they forgot that already so it really behooves us to celebrate a hundred years later right I think so and and just like you please remember not everybody forgot right the 20s and 30s was also filled for example 1928 a significant number of countries including the US signed the Kellogg-Briand pact to outlaw war as a political instrument I mean the lesson I to the 20s and 30s is about American participation in international peacekeeping and American and Western participation in confronting military expansion and fascism preferably some other way than war but there are a lot of the different lessons of 20s and 30s and there was really a great deal of hope that you know 1939 would be limited there was never the enthusiasm of 1914 but you know 1939 quickly became 1941 and then there was no sense that there was really a limit to this war one other last point I can't resist asking you one more question of course if you wanted to avoid war you need national leaders global leaders who who tell you not to do that who make it part of their platform to say no don't do that and the more lofty they are the more respected they are the better the pulpit and you know it seems to me that one way to avoid war going forward is to have leaders who run on that promise and who can execute on that promise we don't have that now but at least theoretically don't you agree that you have a significant control a minimization of the possibility of war if you have leaders especially from the US who work on that issue I think leadership is important but so is civil society us getting together rubbing elbows working with other people where society not necessarily the state of the four leaders are strong where society is strong and equal where society spreads the benefits you're much less likely now my great concern and this is nothing profound is certainly with climate change and questions of water I'm even more and more worried now about inequality and particularly natural resources places like Africa and such and I and I see that he leads to war I think that I think this kind of inequality is is going to it's gonna lead to expansion it's gonna lead to famine if yes and I don't want to make a political claim as in a particular leader but it seems that some of the key leaders of today's world have actually gone back to pre-1914 in the sense that they've decided there are regions in the world Russia gets to do it at once in its region China gets to do it at once in its region the US gets to do it at once and that's kind of a big power these be a game called diplomacy Avalon Hill it's and that worries me a bit and more actually more than a bit that essentially what happens in each region is okay as long as the regions don't come to battle yeah and I think I think a lot of ethnicities and groups are potentially going to be horribly damaged by that and again I'm not talking about any particular leader I'm it just seems to be the scheme of the way people look at the world rather than internationalism you know wars tend to clear that up because at the end of a war you say gee that was a big mistake we're not gonna do that again I hope so we can get to that kind of mentality without having a war that'd be nice that'd be very nice thank you very much to talk to you as always thank you as always