The Slaughter of the Yanks in 1918


The biggest battle in US Army history was the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive. This World War I battle is rarely mentioned in our media and school history books. Once a million American draftees were assembled for combat in France, they were ordered to charge into the strongest German positions, resulting in 26,277 American soldiers slaughtered in just 47 days. My grandfather, Eden C. Burris, Sr., after serving with General John J. Pershing in his campaign in Mexico after the bandit Pancho Villa, later accompanied Pershing to France where he fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive described above. I well remember his regaling me with his World War I exploits when I was a young adolescent.

Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psXYM…

This scene from the great film “Paths of Glory” depicts a typical World War I suicidal attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gyyG…

“The Role of J.P. Morgan in Providing Loans to England and France in World War I”; Peter Palms: https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/25…

“Germany’s Peace-Proposals”, Literary Digest, Dec. 23, 1916: http://www.unz.com/print/LiteraryDige…

Related Tale: “The 1914 American Invasion of Mexico”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZQGt…

“Winston Churchill was responsible for tragic Lusitania sinking”; John Spain: https://www.irishcentral.com/news/iri…

“World War I: Wasted Lives on Armistice Day”; History Net; https://www.historynet.com/world-war-…

“Meuse-Argonne Offensive”; video from the National Archives; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhKk…

Episode 1: A House Divided

Examines what impact the relationships between cousins Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and George V of the United Kingdom had on the outbreak of the First World War. This episode focuses on the story of the emerging divisions and rivalries between the inter-related royal houses of Europe during the 19th century.

Episode 2: Into the Abyss

The realignment of the European powers and the emergence of the alliance system in the years following the death of Queen Victoria, played a significant role for the three monarchs in the frantic, desperate days of July and August 1914.

Cousins at War  — Article

In May 1910, the monarchies of Europe came together in London, in an opulent show of strength, for the funeral of Edward VII. War and revolution in the ensuing decade heaped assassination, defeat and exile upon them. Author Theo Aronson portrays the European Royal Families at War.

The WWI Conspiracy – Part One: To Start A War — Documentary

The WWI Conspiracy – Part Two: The American Front — Documentary

The WWI Conspiracy – Part Three: A New World Order — Documentary

History Is Written By The Winners — Documentary

People’s Century: 1914 Killing Fields — Documentary

They Shall Not Grow Old — Documentary

I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier — Popular Song Before American Intervention In World War I

World War I: The American Legacy — Documentary

Trench Warfare — Documentary

World War I: Tactics And Strategy — Documentary

The Christmas Truce of 1914 — Documentaries

World War I (The Great War) — Amazon book/DVD list

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 1: Explosion — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 2: Stalemate — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 3: Total War — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 4: Slaughter — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 5: Mutiny — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 6: Collapse — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 7: Hunger and Hatred — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 8: War Without End – Documentary

Who Was Edward M. House?  — Article by Robert Higgs

Phillip Dru, Administrator — Anonymous (Edward Mandel House)

The Intimate Papers of Colonel House — Book by Charles Seymour (editor)

Triumphant Plutocracy; the Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920, Book by Richard Franklin Pettigrew

Your Country At War and What happens To You After A War, Book by Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

The United States and World War I — Article by John J. Dwyer

Heritage of the Great WarComprehensive WWI Website

Woodrow Wilson and World War I,  — Murray N. Rothbard (audio lecture)

World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals — Murray N. Rothbard article

War Collectivism in World War I  — Book by Murray N. Rothbard

More than any other single period, World War I was the critical watershed for the American business system. It was a “war collectivism,” a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the inspiration for state corporate capitalism for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry — Book by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen

Here is the archetype of all post–World War I revisionism of a particular variety: the hunt for the people who made the big bucks off the killing machine. The Merchants of Death was, in many ways, the manifesto of a generation of people who swore there would not be and could not be another such war.

But here is the kicker: it was co-authored by the founder of Human Events, the conservative weekly. So this is no left-wing screed against profiteering. It is a careful and subtle, but still passionate, attack on those who would use government to profit themselves at the expense of other people’s lives and property.

Here is a sample of the ideological orientation: “The arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.… All constitutions in the world vest the war-making power in the government or in the representatives of the people. The root of the trouble, therefore, goes far deeper than the arms industry. It lies in the prevailing temper of peoples toward nationalism, militarism, and war, in the civilization which forms this temper and prevents any drastic and radical change. Only when this underlying basis of the war system is altered, will war and its concomitant, the arms industry, pass out of existence.”

This book is a wonderful example of what Rothbard called the “Old Right” in its best form. The book not only makes the case against the war machine; it provides a scintillating history of war profiteering, one authoritative enough for citation and academic study. One can see how this book had such a powerful effect.

Why re-release this book now? The war profiteers are making money as never before. They are benefiting from conflict as never before. Everything in this book has not only come to pass but as been made worse by a million times. So this treatise is more necessary than ever.

This is the real heritage of the American Right.

Merchants of Death Revisited: Armaments, Bankers, and the First World War — T. Hunt Tooley article

The year 2004 marked the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Engelbrecht and Hanighen’s Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry, a book that made it into the general consciousness of most thinking Americans by the mid-twentieth century. The stark language of the title no doubt contributed to its fame. Moreover, the theme of arms merchants pushing for war is both easily understood and easily discussed, even by those who have not read it.

The World at War (Ralph Raico) — Video Lecture

The late Ralph Raico was a specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He learned economics under Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek, and was professor emeritus of history at Buffalo State College.

In this lecture, Raico teaches a Cato Summer Seminar group the history of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. He offers an in-depth look at the conditions which led to both wars and the ways in which governments throughout the 20th century have used war powers to justify and fuel their expansion.

Aftermath of the Great War — documentaries

Paris 1919, Part 1 — Feature Film

Paris 1919, Part 2 — Feature Film

 

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1:34 pm on November 30, 2020