Veterans Day: The History Behind November 11th

November 11th is Veterans Day. A day where we honor and pay respect to all those who served our nation in the Armed Forces (Memorial Day is set aside to remember and pay respect to those who were killed in the service of this country), but do you know the significance or history of that date?

Officially, World War I, known as the "Great War" and the "War to End All Wars" went into effect on November 11, 1918 at 11:11 AM even through a tentative ceasefire had been agreed to earlier. The reason picked for that date had nothing to do with the war itself. It was actually chosen by French Marshal Foch as sounding more "poetic". As a result, there were 10,944 casualties on the last day of the war, and 2,738 unnecessary deaths. but there's still more to the story.

Most people assume the war ended on November 11th, 1918 with the signing of the armistice. In fact, the war between the British Empire and Imperial Germany didn't formally end until January 20, 1920.   It was July 16th 1920 that it ended with Austria. August 9th with Bulgaria. July 26, 1921 for Hungary and August 6, 1924 with the Ottoman Empire!

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles took place on June 28, 1919, although the treaty wasn't formally ratified in the United States until the passage of the Knox-Porter Resolution on July 2, 1921. The armistice represented a ceasefire between all belligerent nations, and not a surrender by Germany or the other Central Powers.

Nevertheless, the war resulted in the deaths of approximately 9.4 million service members, 23 million wounded or missing, plus the deaths of 5 million civilians. It brought about the destruction of 8,000 square miles of farm land (mostly in France, Belgium, and Holland), as well as 1,857 square miles of forests.  

Some 300,000 homes were plus 6000 factories, 1,200 churches and synagogues, and 1,600 schools. 1,300,000 head of livestock were destroyed as well, and around 4 million were made homeless. The Central Power nations of Germany and Austro-Hungary sank 6000 Allied and neutral ships totaling 14,200,000 tons. While some were sunk due to mines, the majority were sunk by German U-boats.

The deadliest battle for American Expeditionary Forces was the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The seven week long engagement began on September 26, 1918 and involved 1.2 million American troops under the command of General John "Blackjack" Pershing against 450,000 Germans. The offensive was aimed at stopping Germany's last "going for broke" advance through the Verdun region of France and forcing a overall retreat of German forces. 

It resulted in the deaths of 26,000 Americans with 216,000 wounded or injured. Sadly ,there never was closure for the families and friends of 914 men whose remains were never found or identified. German losses were 28,000 men and over 350,000 causalities. The battle, which ended on November 11th, broke the back of the German advance and brought about the signing of the armistice.

As an aside, the deadliest battler of World War 1 was the Battle of Somme. The carnage began on July 1 and continued to November 18, 1916. The battle resulted in 1 million casualties and 310,459 dead. On the first day alone, the British had more than 57,000 casualties and close to 20,000 dead. The Germans lost close to 12,000 while the French suffered loses of just over 1500 men. 

With the war's end in 1918, all Europe had changed. Empires were irrevocably  changed geographically and politically. One was the Constitutional Duel Monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which stretched from Austria's border with Switzerland in west to almost the Black Sea in the east. 

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the largest countries in Europe, covering 621,538 million square miles and a population of 52 million. 16 languages were commonly spoken there. 76% of the population was Roman Catholic with just 8.9% being Protestant (mainly Lutheran). 8.7% were Eastern Orthodox with the remainder being comprised of Jewish and Muslim. 

The "Great War" started in 1914 with the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Hapsburg throne and one of the more liberal leaning members of the royal court, and his wife, Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg.  Both were murdered by a 19 year old Bosnian Serbian and member of the Black Hand anarchist group by the name of Gavrilo Princip.  The murder, which was more of a dark comedy of errors than a serious plot, set off a ever escalating chain of events which would lead to one of the worse wars in history.  

The war marked the end of the Hapsburg rule and dissolution of the duel monarchy with the abdication of Emperor Karl, successor of the Emperor, Franz Joseph. The Habsburgs had ruled Austria from 1282 to 1918 and Hungary from 1526 until 1918.

The dissolving of the Austro-Hungarian Empire created a new Austria and Hungary. Czechoslovakia (a merger of two differing ethnic groups, the Czechs and the Slovaks) was formed as was Yugoslavia ("Greater Slavia"), a independent Romania, and enlarged the existing countries of Italy, Poland, and the Ukraine. However, it did not result in the creation of a Greater Serbia as hoped by the Black Hand. 

The second empire to fall was the Ottomans. The Ottomans had ruled Turkey, Southeastern Europe, and much of the Middle East for over 600 years under the leadership of a sultan (or essentially an emperor). The Ottomans had long been a regional power, noted for their military prowess and brutality, culture and support of the arts as well as education, and tolerance of religions. But its inability to modernize, poverty and endless internal chaos all but ensured its end as a major power, and nickname as "the sick man of Europe".

At the time of the Armistice of Mudros, signed between the Allies Powers and the Ottoman Empire on October 30, 1918, out of an army of three million, mostly underequipped, undertrained, and poorly led, the Ottomans lost approximately 325,000 men. Some 400,000 were wounded and 202,000 were made POWs, mainly by the British and Russians. Another one million had deserted, leaving a fighting force (if you can call it that) of just 323,000 men.

The armistice also established an Allied military government in Istanbul, which broke up much of the empire, although it was mostly a shell by this point. The final sultan, Medmeh VI abdicated in November 17, 1922. The empire would be divided between the Greeks, Russians, French, and British. Turkey would experience turmoil and the emergence of its greatest leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to restore order and establish a Turkish republic. 

I would be amiss if I failed to mention Turkey's role in the Armenian genocide during the war and the deliberate murder of 1.5 million Christian Armenians. The genocide had two phases.  First the arrest of all able bodied males who were cosigned to brutal forced labor camps. The second phase was the deportation of everyone else---women, children, the sick, handicapped and the elderly deep into the desert without any provisions, including water.

Aside from the 1.5 million Christian Armenians murdered, the Seyfo Genocide (1915 -1923) by the Ottomans resulted in 250,000 dead, which was half of their entire population. The Greek Genocide (which lasted until 1923) resulted in approximately 900,000 dead. The Government of Turkey continues to this day to dispute the claims of "genocide" while 29 other countries officially disagree.

Perhaps the country most impacted was Imperial Germany. Prior to the war, Imperial Germany was the intellectual and scientific light of Europe. It was the second largest economic powerhouse in Europe behind Great Britain. It's military was the largest, most modern, and best trained on the continent. Its colonial empire, comprising 22 countries, was small compared to the other imperial powers, was still noteworthy for its mineral wealth.

By the end of the war, the German economy was utterly exhausted. The British naval blockade of Germany during the war resulted in the deliberate deaths of 763,000 civilians from starvation. Half of all newborns in Berlin died of malnutrition. Germany's imperial monarchy also collapsed  with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9th following a mutiny by the Imperial German Navy and subsequent establishment of a democratic government known as the Weimar Republic.

Germany had previously accepted a ceasefire (armistice) and subsequent peace talks at Versailles as an equal partner. Representatives of the Allied powers, however, surprised the German delegation the threats of renewed hostilities (which the German economy and political situation could not endure) unless Germany assumed full guilt for the war despite it haven been started by a Serbian anarchist!

The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to surrender some 27, 000 square miles or 13% of its territory, resulting in displacing 9 million Germans. It also lost all of its colonies, which were divided between a greedy France and Great Britain, both of which were exhausted and faced economic instability. The British still speak of having lost an entire generation of its youth in the war. Nevertheless, the war broke their mutual mortal enemy---Germany.

 This amounted to roughly 2.4% of Germany's gross national product. It was estimated to have taken Germany from 1919 until the mid 1980's to pay off the debt (Germany had to borrow money from the U.S. to service the debt payments).

Germany was forbidden an air force and it standing army was reduced to the size of 100,000 strong militia, and payment of 67.8 billion gold marks (adjusted for inflation, that would be about $760 billion U.S. dollars today).

Germany also experienced social unrest, a revolution, 322% hyperinflation, and occupation of its industrial heart, the Ruhr, by French and Belgian troops.  It struggled through the Roaring Twenties and was hit hardest of any industrial nation following the 1929 Crash. Chained to the Versailles Treaty, it all but ensured a second great war, which in fact occurred barely 20 year later.

Imperial Russia, led by Czar Nicholas II, reluctantly came to the defense of Serbia after it was threatened by the Hapsburg monarchy based on a all but forgotten treaty. The Czar, cousins of Kaiser Wilhelm II and King George V through Queen Victoria, was intellectually to naive for a war of this scale.

The Russian economy was regarded as backwards. It relied on heavily subsistence farming and a still developing industry. There was little political freedom in this last remaining autocratic empire with power resting in the hands of the very wealthy elite, the church, and the Czar. The discrepancy between those at the bottom economically and those at the top was as stark as it was wide with a small middle class in between.

The military was poorly trained and ill equipped, relying on conscripted peasants with no interest in war. Many of its troops lacked guns, often having to obtain weapons needed to fight from fallen comrades. They even lacked adequate ammunition. It had no air force to speak of, very little heavy artillery, and a well worn navy (it had been decisively defeated by the Japanese in the war of 1904/05). As a result, it was defeated at nearly every turn. Desertions  were rampant.

In February 1917, the Czarist Government was overthrown by a Provisional Government consisting of various leftwing factions. The result was a temporary withdrawal from the war. When it was proposed to resume fighting, support for the new government evaporated. In October, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, staged more of a coup than a revolution and the Provincial Government fell without much of a fight. The result was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the permanent exit from the war.

In the end, the "Great War" or the more euphemistically named "War to End All Wars" achieved very little. It gave a greedy and exhausted England and France territory it couldn't control. It laid the seeds of resentment in Austria and Germany, though it did remove the monarchy and allowed for a brief and ill fated democratic Weimar Republic. Russia underwent a civil war and following Lenin's death in 1923, Joseph Stalin soon seize control. Ataturk established order in a modernized and now secular Turkey.

The United States perhaps benefited most of all. Although we were in Europe barely over a year, we emerged a global power to be taken seriously. Following the war, a decade long attempt to regulate public morality known as Prohibition failed but it ushered in one hell of decade long party which ended in a helluva a hangover in October 1929 and the stock market crash. Nevertheless, the war represented our coming out to the world.

World War I introduced airplanes into war, tanks, the importance of submarines, the deadly machine guns as well as the horrors of mustard and chlorine gas warfare and flamethrowers. It demonstrated the obsolescence of 19th century tactics amid 20th century weapons which bordered on the criminal. It introduced terms like "Yank", "doughboy", "ace", "dogfight", "tank", and "no man's land" along with "shell shock" and the "thousand yard stare".   

The "Great War" resulted in 40 million causalities with roughly 22 million military deaths and 23 million injured and wounded. The U.S. lost some 4.3 million. Every participating nation established a memorial to its war dead. It's returning soldiers, especially those wounded, were proudly called " war heroes". As an aside, the Spanish Flu followed on the heels of the Great War, resulting in the deaths over 100 million men, women, and children; roughly one third  of the world's population. Some 675,000 of these were Americans.

A League of Nations was established to help ensure that there would be no more wars of this scale and to finds ways nations could work together. Although the League lasted 26 years, it was successful in one important way. Many of the nations who participated in the "Great War" adopted a national day to remember and honor its fallen. In 1957, in the shadow of World War II and the Korean War, which cost the lives of 418,800 and 36,000 American service men and women respectively, President Eisenhower signed a bill to honor all veterans, living and dead, and all active duty personnel. We call it "Veterans Day".

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Veterans Administration: The History of Veterans Day

 

Veterans Day

Armistice of 11 November 1918

World War One Causalities

Gavrilo Princip

Russian Revolution

Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic

Veterans Day: What Lays Behind the Day We Honor Those Who Served?

 

November 11th is Veterans Day.  However, it was not always known as such. It was originally called "Armistice Day" or "Remembrance Day" to honor of the day when the guns of World War One officially fell silent on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour(WWI was also known as "the Great War" and "war to end all wars"). In truth of course, the Treaty of Versailles which officially ended the war set the stage for the Second World War barely 27 years later.

The fuse which lit the carnage known as World War One began on June 28, 1914 following the assassination of the Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Bosnian Serb anarchist Gavrilo Princip. Ferdinand's father, the Emperor Franz Joseph held the Serbians responsible and despite (or perhaps because of) a broken heart and halfhearted demands for justice failed, war declared 30 days later on July 28th and the carnage which claimed  20 million lives while wounding 21 million others began.

I always found it ironic that the warring parties had actually agreed to a ceasefire weeks earlier, but apparently thought it poetic to chose the 11th hour, 11th day, and 11th month to formally stop shooting each other. Obviously no one bothered to ask the soldiers stuck in the mud and muck of the trenches, suffering from dysentery and trench foot or forced into eating rats for their opinion. If they had, I suspect they'd would have been quite willing to forgo the turn of a phrase and just go home.  

But Veteran's Day doesn't just mark the end of World War One.  It is also intended to honor the men and women who've served in our armed forces. As of 2023, just 6% of the U.S. population or about 16 million individuals, can call themselves veterans, and that number is declining.  In 1980, 18% of Americans were veterans.

Meanwhile,  veterans are twice as likely to be homeless as the average American. Some 67,000 veterans---10% of the homeless population---are chronically homeless. 76% have some form of substance abuse or untreated mental illness. Almost one million live near or below the poverty level and about 30% between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed.

Fewer and fewer of our elected representatives have served in the military. The last President to do so was George W Bush who served in the Texas Air National Guard, although he never saw combat.  The last president who did see combat was George's dad, George H.W. Bush, who served in the Navy during WWII.

America was still recovering from a severe economic depression when it was attacked on December 7, 1941 by the Japanese surprise at Pearl Harbor. The following day, the U.S. declared war. Eventually some 16 million men were to serve in uniform. Their average age was 26. One million of those would actually see combat.  405,399 of them would die. That's one death for every 58 soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine.

Just over 400,000 women volunteered (they weren't drafted) to serve in various military auxiliary units known as the WACs, WAVEs, Coast Guard SPARs, Marine Corp Women's Reserve, and the Navy and Army Nursing Corps.  While they didn't serve in combat, they still served in every theater of war and provided invaluable support to the war effort.

It's worth noting that of those who served, 38.8% were volunteers. They mostly enlisted at the start of the war. 61.2% were drafted. 73% of them served overseas, with an average of 16 months abroad.  The average term of enlistment was 33 months. And they did all this for just an average of $71.33 per month. If you were an officer, you earned $203.50 per month.

According to the Veteran Administration, of those nearly 17 million brave men and women of the greatest generation", there are just 120,000 World War II veterans still alive today. That comprises just 1% of all veterans today.

The Korean War came on the heels of WWII, which begun on June 27, 1950 and continued through January 31, 1955 (technically, the war is still considered to be "hot" since only a cease fire or armistice was signed by the various warring parties). 6.8 million men and women were to serve during the Korean War. Of those, there are 767,000 veterans of the Korean War alive today, which comprises about 4% of all veterans.  

The Vietnam War was arguably the most contentious war in recent U.S. history. The Vietnam War in truth a civil war which was between the Communist factions most situated in the north and the nominally "democratic" factions in the south following the defeat of the French in 1954 at Diem Bien Phu.  The war initially had begun as an attempt to oust the colonial French from Vietnam, which was interrupted by the invading Japanese during WWII, and resumed following the defeat of Imperial Japan.  

U.S. involvement began in earnest in early 1961 and continued through May 1975. During that time, more than 2.7 men and women served in Vietnam, which represented about 9.7% of their generation. The average age of GI in Vietnam was just 19 years old.  7,484 women served in Vietnam as well. 85.5% or 6,250 of them served as nurses.  58,148 of those who served in Vietnam lost their lives. Of those killed, 61% were under 21 years of age with the average age of those killed was 23. 11 years old. 1,611 servicemen are still missing.

The Vietnam war also produced tens of thousands of wounded and disabled. 303,704 individuals were wounded in action. 75,000 were listed as severely disabled. 23,214 are rated as 100% disabled. 5,283 lost a limb while 1,081 lost multiple limbs, and yet while those numbers are high, the number of amputations in WWII were 300% higher. However, because of the use of booby-traps, multiple amputations occurred at a rate of 18.4% of injuries compare to 5.4% in WWII.

It's worth pointing out that 88.4% of those who served in Vietnam were classified as white (which included Hispanics). 12.5% were black, and 1.2% were Asian or of another or mixed race. Of those who were killed, 86.8% were white. 12.4% were black and 1.1 belonged to another race. 14.6% of blacks killed were no-combat related. 34% of blacks volunteered for combat duty.  

76% of the men who served in Vietnam were from poor or working class backgrounds. 75% had family incomes below the poverty level while 23% came from upper middle or better economic backgrounds. Almost 80% had a high school degree or better. 91% of those who served regardless of race or economic background said they were glad they did and 74% said they'd do it again knowing the same outcome.

It's also worth noting that 97% of Vietnam veterans received a honorable discharge. 240 earned the Medal of Honor. Today, there are 5.6 million veterans of the Vietnam War still alive. That's about 30% of all veterans.

43% of all veterans today served in the Gulf War Era. That's about 7.8 million men and women who served from 1990 to present according to the Veterans Administration. Operation Desert Shield, which ran from August 2, 1990 to January 17, 1991.Operation Desert Shield was from January 17, 1991 through February 28, 1991 resulted in the deaths of 148  U.S. service personnel (including deaths by so-called "friendly fire").  Another 235 died of non-combat related injuries while 1,565 died in what the military termed "non-theater" related action while 467 individuals were wounded.  

Meanwhile, the euphemistically named "Enduring Freedom", which was the U.S. war in Afghanistan lasted from October 1, 2001 until December 28, 2014 saw 2,402 military personnel killed along with 10 CIA operatives. 1.5 million men and women served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which saw the deaths of 4,492 U.S. military personnel, of which 3,481 were killed in action.  Operation Iraqi Freedom ran from 2003 until 2011.

Serving in the military isn't for everyone. It takes courage and commitment. Many say the rewards are worth it and far outweigh the risks, but believe me, as a disabled veteran, the sacrifices are real. However, the military is our first and last line of defense against those who wish us harm. 

While we may disagree with the political policies which, intentionally or not, put our military in harm's way for the sake of material gain or power, we should never allow that to affect our respect for those men and women who stand ready to defend this nation at a moment's notice.

Finally, remember that when someone joins the U.S. military, regardless of age, race, ethnic group, or any other factor, they take an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. That oath doesn't come with an expiration date. We are all the more safer as a nation thanks to our veteran-citizens. So, be sure to thank a veteran or active duty military member, not just on Veteran's Day, but any time you happen to meet one. 

 

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Research Starters: US Military by the Numbers

VVA Chapter 310: Vietnam War Statistics

The Changing Face of America's veteran population