“The Unknown Soldier of World War I returned to the United States on cruiser USS Olympia on 9 November 1921. He was laid out in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol until 11 November 1921, when he was interred at Arlington National Cemetery. A new tomb for the Unknown was put in place by Congress in 1931. Unknown Soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam have since been interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Since 2 July 1937, the tomb has been guarded by a military sentinel every moment of every day.”
Ninety-nine years ago, in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the armistice was proclaimed that ended the terrible fighting in World War I. A war that had erupted in large part because Europe’s political leaders, a century on from the Napoleonic conflicts, were accustomed to war remaining limited, produced some of the bloodiest battles ever fought. The six-month battle of the Somme in 1916 took the lives of an unimaginable 1.5 million French, German, and British soldiers – without either side achieving sustainable penetration of the line of confrontation, or any operational victory. WWI was the most tactically and politically frustrating of wars, admitting little maneuver, little jockeying for advantage, and no enduring significance to victory.
But it marked the debut of the United States on the stage long occupied by the great powers of Europe, as American soldiers boarded troop ships to head “Over There,” and with their numbers and supplies, along with improving mobile tactics in the battles of 1918, turned the tide in favor of the Western alliance. We remember WWI now – as we should – for its excruciating trench battles and horrific death toll. But it also inaugurated, in cataclysm and blood, the defining trends of the 20th century.
American geopolitical significance was one; of all the major political players in WWI, Woodrow Wilson was the one to put his name on an enduring international idea. Another was the rapid mechanization of warfare, in three dimensions. WWI saw the first use of the armored tank, the debut of the first aircraft carrier prototype, the use of aircraft for bombardment, the rise of the submarine to effectiveness and tactical primacy in naval combat, and the fulfillment for ground warfare of the promise of indirect artillery fire, which pinned down troops in trench lines hundreds of miles long for years until military planners could figure out how to maneuver against it. The trend toward breaking up empires in favor of nation-states and popular sovereignty lurched forward at the end of WWI, which started with six major empires governing parts of Europe – British, French, German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman – and ended with only two intact. Indeed, out of the break-up of empires in WWI came the eventual fractious, uneasy statehood of most of the Middle East, with whose consequences we live today.
by J.E. Dyer
