War never changes(?)

100 years ago, Kaiser Franz-Joseph I. of Austria-Hungaria declared war against Serbia. World War I had started...

War, such the impression if we watch movies, writes stories of heroes. Stories of people who do the impossible.

There is only one story of heroes in World War I, but it is the most moving story a war might ever have brought. In a bloody war where young men were sent into a senseless death in artillery fire, the other soldiers hoping and praying to survive the very next day, it might have been the logical outcome to end this war as soon as possible. H.G. Wells called it the War That Ends All Wars, but for the wrong reasons. If war would have ended soon, maybe peace could have been in Europe. But as history showed us, no cruelty is big enough to prevent war, so maybe it would only have postponed the inevitable...

It was christmas. We have the year 1914, a day in a war that waged on without any visible results other than not only shattering the dreams of a generation but shattering the generation itself. The civilized Europe has fallen into barbarism, bloody menace waged on the battlefields of an endless slaughter.

For the first time the air became the place of battles, Manfred von Richthofen, the "Red Baron", is a name well-known as a synonym for the pilots of that era. Soon enough, tanks would roll, although very few, and artillery was the main enemy of about everyone. It might have been the last war that was not aimed against the civilians, a war that as clean as it is on this side, was dirty against the foot soldiers who never stood any chance to survive. A single mistake - or just bad luck - would mean their death.

But it was christmas. Somewhere in Europe soldiers were tired of being murdered for their Vaterland. Somewhere on the battlefields of this inhuman place, humanity broke its way. It isn't clear how it started, or how big its impact really was in the end. Maybe it was some soldier starting to sing a christmas song and the enemy tuning in. On that evening, the men who minutes ago were the fiercest enemies now were as close as brothers. Something big had happened. Something beautiful. It was christmas.

The truce lasted for days, in some places for weeks, but then the commanders, most likely people who were not directly involved in the war, forced it to go on. For a last time, humanity had spoken up, for a last time humans were brothers.

Then war took over again. The coming years saw 10 million dead soldiers, and almost as many civil victims of diseases. Eventually the peace treaty of Versailles would lead to a nail in the heart of the German people's soul, and - by Hitler, but it could have been everyone else since essentially the will for genocide was already planted even before World War I - would lead to World War II only two decades later, a war that knew heroes because it was even more inhuman. A war lead against civilians, enabling everyone to be a hero at the risk of his own life. A war that eventually would become the second biggest catastrophe and the biggest crime of the twentieth century.

But that is another cruel story...


If there is anyone who is a winner of World War I, it is the generation of today. Only in the late 1990s has Europe truly united. But as can be seen by the many conflicts that go on, war still is not far away. With the technology of today, another world war could indeed end all wars by our total destruction, or at the least it could be a calamity much bigger than anything seen before.

Humanity faces challenges that can only be overcome if we all work together - and maybe not even then. Will we learn from our history or will we be doomed?


Let it not happen again!