Armistice of Destruction

"I fought the Germans in France. And I fought 'em in the trenches. And I pray to God no one ever has to see the things that I saw."
--Danny Walker's father (Pearl Harbor)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of armistice between the Allies and the Germans that ended the fighting in World War I. The war propaganda that still clouds historical memory paints WWI as an unavoidable conflict perpetrated by Imperial Germany.

Intelligent studies of the times suggest otherwise. The primary instigators were Britain and France. The British Empire, who controlled nearly one quarter of the world's surface, feared German commercial and naval competition. France sought revenge for its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War more than 40 years prior.

The Germans feared being crushed between two hostile powers--France and Russia. Germany began to sense that the longer they waited to respond to their border threats, the higher the military odds became stacked against them.

The ensuing bloodbath and its aftermath changed the course of history, ushering in dictators, economic depressions, and further wars that claimed multiples of the nearly 40 million lives lost in WWI.

In many ways the armistice struck one hundred years ago today merely signifies a momentary pause and redirection of a building wave of destruction.