So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Like others I found the recording profound at first. The birds at the end cheapened the experience for me because they made me question the authenticity of the sounds heard and whether this was leaning closer to an actual representation or an artistic interpretation. Perhaps somewhere in between.
Assuming that this is leaning closer to an actual representation of the sounds heard on that morning (with the dubious addition of some birds for "dramatic effect") one thing that I found particularly interesting is the noise/buzz that can be heard immediately after the guns are silenced. Could it be that this noise represents the people cheering for the end of war captured by the crude recording device of oil drums + film?
> The birds at the end cheapened the experience for me...
I agree. There is no way that the microphone were that sensitive. I understand what the artists were trying to "say" but yes it did distract from the power of the quiet
My first thought was that perhaps some of these last minute explosions were like celebratory gunfire[0]. But no, it seems that people were still desperately trying to kill each other knowing full well they only had hours, minutes or even seconds left to do so: "the cease-fire would not come into effect for a further six hours - at 11am ... the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties, more than those killed, wounded or missing on D-Day ... Just minutes before 11am, to the north around Mons, the 25-year-old Canadian Private George Lawrence Price was on the trail of retreating German soldiers ... But Pte Price's death at 10.58 was not the last. Further south in the Argonne region of France, US soldier Henry Gunther was involved in a final charge against astonished German troops who knew the Armistice was about to occur. What could they do? He too was shot ... It was 10.59."[0] Madness.
I will post this at the risk of being downvoted because I am all but a pacifist and it is not a popular position. This is not surprising at all for two reasons.
Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do not generally begrudgingly respect each other. They hate eachother in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute. The grudging respect you see discussed in documentaries comes decades later. After the continual trauma and memories of dead friends have time to fade.
War beaurocracies transform people into rational psychopaths. They create an order in which a letter of the law is utmost and that letter is laid by your betters. If your betters find some purpose in ordering you to kill pointlessly, you will. We all like to think we could find the courage or clarity to disobey an unethical order. But history is much more full of compliant atrocities than righteous mutinies. Soldiers kept firing because that is the perogative that came out of the leadership black box.
>They hate each other in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute.
That really isn't true, which is largely why the First World War was characterised by immobile trench warfare. A group of experienced and highly motivated soldiers were perfectly capable of breaking the lines and holding territory, as demonstrated by Stoßtruppen and Arditi, but most soldiers weren't experienced and highly motivated - they were barely-trained civilians who just wanted to go home in one piece. They might have occasionally fired a few shots over the barricades to show willing, they might have chosen to risk death in a charge over the lines rather than face certain death by firing squad, but they really didn't want to be fighting and certainly didn't want to risk death or live with the consequences of having killed.
Snipers can achieve remarkable combat effectiveness, partly because of their marksmanship and fieldcraft skills but mainly because they're actually shooting to kill, due to an innate or acquired psychological difference from ordinary infantrymen. Most infantrymen weren't really trying to kill anyone, which is why the overwhelming majority of combat casualties were inflicted by artillery - it is psychologically far easier to fire an artillery piece at a grid coordinate than to fire a rifle at a human being.
The burden of sustained combat or psychologically-informed training can increase the propensity of people to kill, but it's not a natural psychological state. Ordinary men under prolonged stress sometimes become hardened killers, but they're more likely to become disaffected and depressed.
Modern military strategy is based on this reality - a small proportion of elite infantrymen at the tip of the spear, supported by vast numbers of men in support and indirect combat roles. Tanks, aircraft and drones provide firepower, but just as crucially they provide psychological distance from the act of killing. The significance of psychological distance is a crucial but often overlooked aspect of the Milgram experiments.
> The burden of sustained combat or psychologically-informed training can increase the propensity of people to kill, but it's not a natural psychological state.
I believe observational studies of pre-industrial people's contradict this notion. There was a somewhat recent book (10-12 years old) that aggregated many studies and favored a Hobbesian outlook on this subject. I cannot remember the author or book though. Written by a Dane or a German I think. The topic is still in some debate.
Regardless I specifically indicated that it is produced state not a natural one.
I think it would be very hard to deduce how much a lack of combat efectiveness is due to fear of killing vs. fear of being killed. As a sniper or artilleryman you may take your time to fire. As a frontline soldier the longer you aim the longer you expose yourself.
If you haven't seen it yet, this is the basis of the blackmirror episode "men against fire". [spoiler] in the very near future, the military uses neural implants so that soilders see grotesque mutants instead of humans on the battlefield. The episode presents itself as a zombie horror type thing until we find out the truth at the end. Most of the missions were actually against civilians and the dehumanization tech is being used to make genocide palpable.
It’s surprisingly difficult to train civilians to kill each other, but governments have discovered how. You don’t do it on the front lines, you do it before they get to the battle field.
December 1914 was a very different world upon the front lines of WWI from Movember 1918. People still thought that war would looks something like the Franco-Prussian War.
> You don’t do it on the front lines, you do it before they get to the battle field.
I think you do it by exposing people to years of misery and loss. But a boatload of propaganda doesn't hurt.
You still had truces breaking our on December 1915 which was 17 months or 1/3 of the length of the war, but officers where fighting them much more effectively.
What’s important from my perspective is they required large percentages of both sides willing to abide by a truce. You don’t get a truce if even 10% of each side keeps firing.
Simple. March them to the front lines and say "If you don't kill them, they'll try to kill you. Go get em!" And lo and behold! they were told the same thing, so everybody starts shooting.
It works mainly because the audience was 'educated', and part of this process lets the power instill its 'values' into youngsters' brains.
In most of the Western World and a not-so-distant past some Christian Church was in charge of this, and we had Crusades, clerics baptizing guns...
The main cause may be the will to 'enhance' the populace by using education in order to inoculate values. We may escape by only teaching fundamentals (either politically neutral or boosting a critical mindset). Letting a central power mix proper education with its messages leads to total war.
A group of men have to react instantly in order to survive. This is the point of your training. You learn to follow orders, instantly. There is no time to discuss the issue. It is a case of kill or be killed.
That’s often closer to propaganda than reality. Militaries want soldiers to put their own lives at risk if it’s a net gain in the war. A soldier maximizing their own odds of survival is rarely that effective.
For example a sniper firing from ambush may kill their target, but it also makes them a giant target. It’s a useful strategy specifically because people are willing to take that risk.
And war is full of atrocities because people just cannot being themselves to do bad things to eachother?
I am not making a basic argument for the goodness or lack thereof in people. Only that war changes the rationale and emotional stability of people. It makes the illogical or unthinkable into the next logical step.
Wars are opportunistically encouraged and joined by psychopaths, of course, though armies often don't want those people because they aren't mission oriented. When they rise in the ranks it can be terrible.
My point is that the majority of people don't "join the dark side"
My dad fought in WW2 and I have overhead quite a few conversations about the war. Most soldiers just wanted to go home in one piece and did whatever it took to do so.
My father fought in Vietnam and that is how he began. By the time he left he wanted to kill as many VC as possible or leave or whatever but that is one man's experience.
Are you so sure that if you had been able to ask your father immediately after his return what he thought of the Germans or the Japanese he'd tell the same story?
I sometime forget the international nature of the folks on this site. Rephrase that question but about his feelings toward Americans, Englishs or Russians.
To answer your question, yes he did. He was racist amd embittered for many years. Sometime before I was born he began to soften that hate. He is different now but sometimes I still see it beneath the surface.
I have heard this hate only from people who fought the partisans in Yugoslavia. I can imagine Vietnam was a similar kind of war which is even more brutal and disturbing than regular warfare.
I have never heard any of them having ill will against the brits, French or Russians. They especially liked the Americans because they treated POWs and civilians by far the best.
I think I overgenerlized this specific point of my OP. Have a look at my response below. How much this is a factor probably depends a lot on the length and intensity of conflict, which is what you allude to here.
Desire to kill may be a bit strong but I distinctly remember sitting with my WWII veteran grandfather in November 1989 (US Thankgiving to be exact) and watching the stories of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the obvious prospect of a united Germany in the near future.
My grandfather and I watched CNN silently and after a while he got up, and as he left the room he remarked "We'll be fighting the bastards within 50 years."
Being Norwegian (occupied by the Nazis during WW2) I'd like to chime in with my anecdata - my grandfather served as occupation police in Germany for a couple of years after the war; when the Berlin Wall came down, I was eleven years old and visiting my grandparents. I had been put to bed, but then my grandfather comes and tells me to come to the living room with this weird, strained look on his face; I duly followed him, expecting bad news - some death in the family or whatever.
He nods to the television and tells me that tonight, I'll stay up until the newscast is over - because tonight, the war finally comes to a close.
My grandfather didn't do feelings very well - but for most of that night, he wept with relief and joy. It is to this day the most powerful experience of my life - seeing the impact this event had on my otherwise stoic, accept-anything-in-its-stride grandfather.
And instead of the "bastards" starting another WW, they're treating French and Italian people sick with the coronavirus [1]. Wouldn't surprise me if in one month or so Germany were to lend a hand to the US too.
To anyone having doubts about this: this has been an active field of research by the military for the last 70 years, when it was found that the efficiency of the average conscripted soldier was lacking due to non- or mis-firing soldiers.
Henry Gunther's story is particularly sad. He was a sergeant who got demoted due to private after writing a friend a letter containing some antiwar comments that were perceived as cowardice. He was obsessed with regaining what he perceived as his lost honor, which is why he led a futile charge in the final moments of the war. IIRC the Germans he was charging were reluctant to actually shoot at him
I think that the kind of brainwash that we typically think about evaporates very quickly at front lines. But the actual fighting -- trying not to get killed, seeing your comrades killed, killing in return -- is a 'brainwash' of its own.
It wasn't so much plain brainwashing as it was a total lack of modern communication on the battlefield. Especially in 1918.
Back then, communication happened via carrier pigeon, runners, telegram, telephone or telegraph. In extremely hostile conditions. Trench newspapers were the only alternate source soldiers and availability depended entirely on the situation on the ground.
In fact, fighting didn't necessarily seize at 11AM all over the world because communication was hard:
As for the Western front in particular, it didn't help that some generals disapproved of the ceasefire and armistice:
> General John Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Force, did not approve of the armistice. Consequently he gave no instructions to his commanders to suspend any new offensive action during the remaining hours until 11am. This gave individual commanders latitude to determine their actions in the last few hours and in some quarters there was fierce fighting up to 11am which was difficult to stop. On 11 November alone were nearly 11,000 casualties, dead, missing and injured, exceeding those on D-Day in 1944. Over 3,500 of these were American. Pershing had to face a Congressional hearing to explain why there were so many deaths when the hour of the armistice was known in advance.
Officers at the front at that time pretty much were left to their own devices. With an absolute minimum of orders or context, the 'safe' approach was to assume that the enemy might have ignored the cease fire and overwhelmed those who would have let their guard down. Being partly blind, many of them doubled down on the fighting "just in case".
Let's not forget. 4 years of atrocious fighting had passed by. By then, soldiers new perfectly well that life on the front carried little value. They could only hope for a break as refusing to fight or dodging orders meant martial punishment. Plus, it wouldn't have done them any good anyway since there was little to no practical way out of that theater anyway.
There are many historical examples of generals and frontline troops continuing conflict after the fact for multiple reasons.
Some as innocuous as communication issues.
Some as numbing as military bureaucratics.
Some as terrible as hatred.
My point was never to attribute all such instances to hate or a desire to kill. But I see that all demonstrate well why war should be avoided at all costs.
>Despite what films will depict, people fighting on the front lines in a war do not have a begrudgingly respect for each other. They hate eachother in a way most people probably cannot understand. Many would not pass up the opportunity to rid the world of what they see as the most evil upon its face unto the very last minute.
So... either you're some kind of omniscient telepath, or you're making this insight of yours up because you believe it should be true.
No. I have read a lot of history books which delve into diaries and correspondence of individuals fighting in front line situations. The respectful weighing of the other side's reasons for fighting is overwhelmed by a desire to kill them in graphic and brutal ways.
This is a product of putting people under the pressure of fear of death for hours, days or weeks at a time, propagandizing the enemy as less than human and trauma from the loss of loved ones at the hands of what in modern war is an unknown enemy.
This understanding escapes us in popular culture. It isn't often that HBO series or history books focus on the enmity that abides long after conflict has ceased. Those who return from war with hate still in them are our 'Taxi Driver' type villains or freaks. We don't reckon that to a certain extent everyone we send into combat has hate in them.
> I have read a lot of history books which delve into diaries and correspondence of individuals fighting in front line situations. The respectful weighing of the other side's reasons for fighting is overwhelmed by a desire to kill them in graphic and brutal ways.
Odd. I've read a lot of war correspondence and history as well, being kind of addicted to that stuff on Youtube, and I haven't encountered the sort of overwhelming pathological hatred and programming you describe be mentioned often enough to assume that it applies as a near-universal constant.
Are you sure you're not just taking one or two instances from, say, World War 2 and the Vietnam War and assuming all war is like Full Metal Jacket or something? It certainly seems like you're projecting.
I've never seen, "Full Metal Jacket" so I could not say.
To be very specific, I am talking only about combatants. I am not generally talking about the kind people that get interviewed for documentaries or whonwrite their own books. Leadership often has the luxury of cool detachment.
I think I did speak to generally in my OP and then bit down on the argument. I was answering the question of why some batteries continued to fire until amrasitice. It wasn't my intention to indicate this was primarily due to hate.
The truest answer is that they were ordered to. People follow those orders for a collection of reasons. The general obedience developed by being part of war machine is probably paramount.
I should reorder my points. Primarily that war machines like modern militaries and the conflicts they participate in create their own rationale. And you should never be surprised to find irrational violence in war because that rationale is not of your peacetime world.
Beyond those that are simply following orders there area many whom the propaganda and trauma of war has made enthusiastic about inflicting every last bit of punishment possible upon the enemy. You are correct that we cannot number these and it probably changes depending on the violence and desperation of the conflict. But I think they are more than we like to admit. And this is a further cause of seemingly irrational violence and particularly atrocities.
Nothing better reflects the insanity of WW1 than 11/11/18. The sheer ridiculousness of needless slaughter to allow a few old men the vanity of stopping a war at 11 is the most WW1 thing ever.
The sounds of guns were recreated. The sounds of birds chirping were clearly added for dramatic effect, and was completely unnecessary -- just silence would have sufficed.
The birds were added at the end; the article specifies that there was no actual audio recorded and this is a reconstruction based on a series of proto-seismograph records.
I don't understand why. No birds would still be present in an environment where you have so many bombs and guns going off, they would be far away by then and take long time before they are brave enough to come back.
> ...no man’s land was, effectively, a bird reserve with a barbed wire perimeter: ‘If it weren’t for the birds, what a hell it would be’ says one soldier. Experiences with birds, especially when they were singing in the lulls, lifted their spirits: “They offered a touch of Heaven in Hell.”
Partly related, the book "Where poppies blow" is most likely (didn't read it) named after the Poem "In Flanders Fields" of which this is kind of a line.Or at least it reminds me of it so I'll share it:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
EDIT: And actually the poem mentions the "larks" (birds) that were still singing. So the poem also confirms that birds could be heard.
Although they are indeed added to the audio afterwards.
Haven't heard about that book before, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a bit hesitant to read a book to confirm if birds are scared off bombs and how long time it'll take for them to come back after setting off artillery and other explosions, could you share the section from the book where it's confirmed that birds didn't care about this and stayed where they were?
The description of the book says "At the most basic level, animals and birds provided interest to fill the blank hours in the trenches and billets" which makes sense. When nothing is happening, the birds will come back after a while. But seconds after fighting? Not so sure about that. My experience with birds are that if you make the slightest movement and they see you, they will be gone for a while.
I'd imagine that'll happen the first time. When there's as much going on as in WW1 though with them having no idea where to go to avoid artillery, with potentially less competition for food, established nests and fewer people around in no man's land than elsewhere, I can well imagine over time they'd get relatively used to it.
I don't have the Lewis-Stempel book at hand to go digging for quotes, but this is from an eyewitness account of the Somme:
> "It was the birdsong," he said, "the birdsong in that short gap when the artillery barrage stopped and before the whistles blew for us to get out of the trench and start running - it was beautiful."
I understand that this is an interpretation, but fascinating nonetheless. Are there other examples (or archives) of this type of historical recordings?
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions"