REMEMBERING the fallen on 100th anniversary of the U.S. entering The First World War ...

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After nearly three years of horrific, industrialized war raging across Europe… On April 6, 1917, two days after the U.S. Senate votes 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the decision by a vote of 373 to 50 the United States Entered the War to end all Wars…

In February 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany; the same day, the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms-appropriations bill intended to ready the United States for war. In late March, Germany sank four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2, President Wilson went before Congress to deliver his famous war message. Within four days, both houses of Congress had voted in favor of a declaration of war.

No one could have foreseen the savagery unleashed by the world’s first industrialized war, where the efficiency of modern killing machines surpassed anything imagined in past European conflicts. On the battlefield, 19th-century tactics soon proved useless against 20th-century weapons. Terrorizing the ground, machine guns had a firepower that equaled 80 rifles. Advances in artillery rained down explosives on soldiers in the trenches. Armored cars and tanks first rolled their way into battle in World War I. Chemical warfare, in the form of chlorine, mustard gas, and phosgene, poisoned hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

The Germans attacked Verdun in late February 1916, and for eight interminable, inhumane months, the siege dragged on. Always intent on perfecting its chemical warfare techniques, Germany had lobbed phosgene gas at the Allies during the siege; once in the lungs, the deadly compound turned to hydrochloric acid, burning men from the inside.

Meanwhile, the British had developed their own new weapon—the tank. And in early summer, during their tragic and misbegotten Somme offensive, tanks rolled onto the battlefield for the first time—to little avail. It took the British and French until November to advance seven miles along the northwestern front, and it cost them more than 620,000 casualties. By the time the French finally broke through at Verdun a month later, they had suffered close to 400,000 casualties and the Germans 350,000.

The Battle of the Somme revealed the horrific nature of modern warfare: immovable trenches, heavy artillery, and massive casualties. The United States was unprepared for the kind of war that its allies had been fighting for nearly three years.

July 1, 1916, west of the Somme River, northern France: In the dawn light, British and French artillery opened up, firing nearly a quarter million shells on the enemy’s entrenched positions—the final barrage before the “Big Push.” At 7:30, the first Allied officers, the great majority British Expeditionary Force, led their men out of the trenches and “over the top.” After eight days of bombarding German forward positions, they expected to advance across no-man’s-land virtually unopposed, so they were surprised to see German barbed wire still in place. Still, they kept moving forward. Then, a hundred yards from the enemy line, they were mowed down by the Germans, whose deep concrete bunkers and machine guns had remained virtually unscathed. The day remains the single bloodiest in the history of the British Army: almost 60,000 men killed or wounded, many officers in the first hour. The battle continued for another 140 days along a 15-mile front and claimed some 1.3 million casualties.

Hervey Allen, a junior infantry officer serving on the western front later wrote. Before the year was out, some two million of these brave American soldiers would be fighting in the United States’ first major international war—to its bloody end.

The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925.

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is an arms control treaty which outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors.

There was a reason why gas attacks were banned so long ago...

The brutality of this war on mankind was supposed to be the war to end all wars...

Never forget what mankind has already gone through...

We can all do better...

Don't give up on #PeaceforallMankind ...

Germany prepared to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers

The story of A Century of November takes place in a time where Germany prepared to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sighted in war-zone waters.

This was one of the components that pushed the United States of America to call for a declaration of war against Germany.

On this day 100 years ago…

Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare…

This began in part with pressure from neutral countries and out of fear the U.S. would enter the war on the side of the Allies.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted blockade of the British isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines and, in February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American merchant vessel that was transporting grain to England when it disappeared. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized, calling the attack an unfortunate mistake.

The Germans’ most formidable naval weapon was the U-boat, a submarine far more sophisticated than those built by other nations at the time. The typical U-boat was 214 feet long, carried 35 men and 12 torpedoes, and could travel underwater for two hours at a time. In the first few years of World War I, the U-boats took a terrible toll on Allied shipping.

In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement for the imminent sailing of the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool. On May 7, the Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans.

The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August 1915, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sank an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

At the end of January 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare. Three days later, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany; just hours after that, the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. None of the 25 Americans on board were killed and they were picked up later by a British steamer.

On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms-appropriations bill intended to ready the United States for war. Two days later, British authorities gave the U.S. ambassador to Britain a copy of what has become known as the “Zimmermann Note,” a coded message from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence, Zimmermann stated that, in the event of war with the United States, Mexico should be asked to enter the conflict as a German ally. In return, Germany would promise to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. On March 1, the U.S. State Department published the note and America was galvanized against Germany once and for all.

In late March, Germany sank four more U.S. merchant ships and, on April 2, President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted 82 to six to declare war against Germany. Two days later, the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50 and America formally entered World War I.

By 2013 41 sunken German World War One U-boats were discovered off the coast of England. They were found at a depth of about 50 feet (15.24 meters).

History is part of our lives… We need to remember, always… Who we are and where we have come from…

Because on a global scale so many human beings have sacrificed their lives fighting conflict after conflict…
so that we may live…

100 years later… after the end of THE GREAT WAR… The war that was suppose to end all wars...

PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND!

The Great War... Woodrow Wilson on this day 100 years ago...

A Century of November will always have a deep connection with The Great War. Though this day in history 100 years ago isn’t referenced in the story… it will always and forever be remembered…

On January 22nd 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s peace note from December had largely been dismissed by both sides.  

President Wilson’s could once more turn his thoughts to Europe, where he hoped, as a powerful neutral actor, to be able to arrange peace on the continent.  Hoping for some sign that the Allies were willing to negotiate, he waited several weeks; in the meantime, the Germans made their own piece offer.

On December 18 1916, Wilson issued his note to the belligerent powers.  He announced himself as “the friend of all nations engaged in the present struggle.” In order to aid further negotiations, he asked all of the powers for a statement of their war aims, and hoped after that to bring them to the negotiating table–though he pointedly did not offer to serve as a mediator.  He stated that future peace could be secured by “the formation of a league of nations to insure peace and justice throughout the world.”

He made his neutrality quite clear, dismissing the grand language that the Allies often used to describe their cause: “The objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own peoples and the world.”  This line struck a nerve with many Allied leaders, even leaving King George in tears.

Although high-minded, Wilson’s note served to exasperate many, even in his own government.  The State Department and even Col. House opposed the move, and tried to downplay its importance in their own discussions with European leaders.  Allied governments were annoyed with the move, while the German government, with its own peace initiative, was divided.  Only the neutral countries, eager for an end to the war at this point, were truly receptive.

As a result, Wilson decided that he would attempt to address “the people of the countries now at war,” in the form of a highly-publicized speech to the US Senate on January 22nd 1917.  

...It must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this… Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last…

No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property… 

There should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland… So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now struggling toward a full development of its resources and of its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea.

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development–unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entangling alliances which would draw them into competitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection. 

Wilson proposed that America would help to arrange peace now and to guarantee it in the future.  To deflect isolationist criticism, Wilson framed the language in terms of the founders, saying it is merely an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, and that participation in his proposed “League of Peace” would not be an “entangling alliance” of the sort Washington had warned against in his farewell address.

Wilson’s speech was cheered worldwide by peace advocates, and even by some parties that had largely been committed to the war effort (such as the French Socialists).  In the United States, Democrats hailed the speech, while most Republicans thought that Wilson’s speech was too idealistic, too interventionist, or (in the case of Teddy Roosevelt) outright traitorous.  There was a small coterie of midwestern pacifist Republicans, however, who joined Robert LaFollette in praising it as “the greatest message of a century.”

German Ambassador Bernstorff welcomed the speech, and tried to use it as evidence of American good intentions; he sent desperate pleas back to Berlin to try to postpone the German U-boat offensive that he knew would wreck any chance for an American diplomatic solution.

and then...

and finally Peace Begins...

In Honor of USS Midway CV-41 Part 2 of 2…

A Century of November will always maintain a heartfelt connection to the Men and Women who have supported and sacrificed for their families, communities and country.

Once again, the development of the feature film  A Century of November is put into perspective and yet again it seems to pale in comparison, when stepping foot onto a legendary aircraft carrier that has provided air support, withstood and survived countless encounters, once again, standing the test of time as one of the only remaining U.S. aircraft carriers of the World War II Era that is not of Essex-class.

Recently, producer Nicolas Awde had the opportunity and the honor of walking in the footsteps of the navy on board the USS Midway CV-41 Aircraft Carrier.

Learning and feeling the history, he walked through with great appreciation and respect, every corridor, hallway, room, quarters, offices and again too many other place to name. He continued through every nook and cranny on the entire aircraft carrier below deck.

Above Deck was another story…

The planes, fighter jets and choppers were “amazing” he said. "You were able to get into most of them and sit down and feel what it was like to be encapsulated inside" he continued.

The great minds and back breaking hard work that it took to design, build and deploy this marvel upon the sea to serve, support and protect many countries and nations around the world is a tribute to the enduring spirit of mankind.

The USS Midway CV-41 Aircraft Carrier and the USS Iowa BB-61 Battleship are massive upgrades since the end of The Great War on November 11^th, 1918.

Thank you… Once again, it was an honor to walk on, listen and learn about the USS Midway CV-41 Aircraft Carrier he stated.