Why the First World War Failed to End

I went to a panel discussion tonight featuring three history professors. One, Robert Gerwarth, was so handsome as to be distracting.

Gerwarth authored a book called The Vanquished, which looks at the civil wars and revolutions that followed the end of the Great War in 1918. The war saw the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German empire, the tsarist Russian empire, and the Ottoman empire. As nations formed, boundaries were disputed and minorities were relocated in violent spasms. He said 16 million people died during World War I; four million died in its aftermath leading up to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

The other two professors focused on Ireland’s civil war, which began with the Easter Rising in 1916--an opportunistic attack on the British army while it was fighting in the Great War. Much of the conversation centred on the Black and Tans, sent in to quell the rebellion after WWI had ended. The Irish history professor said every Irish child was taught that the vicious, hated Black and Tans were assembled by clearing out English jails. Rather, she said, they were WWI veterans traumatised by war and unable to fold back into society. Offered princely sums to defend the Royal Irish Constabulary, they went to Ireland. As their men were picked off by Irish rebels, who melted back into their communities, the Black and Tan soldiers were furious. She painted a more sympathetic portrait of Black & Tan fighters than I’ve heard before. She said they weren’t welcome back in England after they retreated from Ireland. They also weren’t welcome in the colonial police forces in Australia or Canada. Some ended up in British-controlled Palestine.

It was an interesting night, highlighting some of the many gaps in my knowledge of, say, Greece’s failed attempt to take land from Turkey and the massive relocations that followed.
10-27