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For One Man, Down Millions (2)

Feature Article For One Man, Down Millions 2
JAN 15, 2023 LISTEN

Once again, welcome to 2023. Before we formally begin the year, I would like to report that days before 25th December 2022, this great television station called CAFDIL was out here showing the story of the crucifixion of Christ.

For Every Death, A Birth
The world having been way too eventful than we could ever care for in the past years—having experienced a pandemic and a supposed almost-global war—the good people of CAFDIL thought it best to get this largely publicised, dreadfully feared, yet highly anticipated event over and done with—to show the ending even before it all began. So, without particularly intending to spoil this whole earth experience for the Messiah, they thought it best to inform Him, right from the outset, that thirty-three years from the date of his impending birth there was going to be His impending death. That true to His particular brand of Messiahship, He was going to die for a crime He did not commit. I, for one, think it was a step in the right direction—the choice this TV station made—for we have absolutely no right to tease the Saviour; especially when, from all accounts, He pretty much has been in the loop of all that is to ensue in His life—even before His very existence on earth begins.

But I must say that this well-meaning error on the part of this TV station gives us here at ‘Attempted Prophecies’ some sort of reassurance—a reassurance that we, by talking about gore and bloodshed at a time when preparation was being made for the much-anticipated birth of the Messiah, weren’t committing a blunder after all. After seeing this TV station show Jesus go through the bloodiest experience of His earth life during a time when He was supposed to be gearing up to pass through a birth canal into what was supposed to be the joyous occasion of His birth, we are encouraged to carry on with the bloody path we have chosen to traverse. So, we will pick up right from where we ended last year: USA joins the war.

A Recap
In articles such as ‘The Scattering, The Gathering—The Diaspora’, ‘Made Gods’, ‘Never Say Coup’, and ‘To Each Their Own Journeys’ we have given brief glimpses into the founding of this nations called the United States of America—one of the world’s most recognised modern-age nation of immigrants. Indeed, this was a nation formed from the mass voluntary emigration of Europeans such as the British, Scottish, Irish, Germans, French, etc. (and subsequently, the involuntary mass emigration of Africans) beginning in the 17th century. This was a group of people who had taken leave of their respective home nations out of, among others, dissatisfaction with the effects spawned by the raging monarchical, imperialistic, or class systems of these European nations of theirs. These were groups of people who wanted change—who wanted to build for themselves a nation where they could actually be free citizens, free to determine their own destinies. So, what do they do? They step onto North American territories, commit often-times gruesome acts upon its natives—the often-styled ‘Native Americans’—and start for themselves, the process of nation building. Just like that, the United States of America was formed—the land of the free! (Well, the land of the free European, not free Native American, or free African. But as we like to say here, this is a story for another day.)

Having escaped imperialistic and hierarchical Europe—after having successfully attained the much-desired severance—it made sense for this new nation to adopt for themselves a philosophy of ‘let’s mind our own business’, ‘di wo fie as3m’—a philosophy of isolationism.

So ‘di wo fie as3m’ it purportedly was for the Americans when WWI began in 1914. [NB: We will look into our use of the word ‘purported’ in this sentence in the near future]. The new nation, United States of America had avowed unto itself the guiding philosophy of ‘di wo fie as3m’, but during the latter part of 1917, things changed. The Americans, hesitant to war, finally joined the Allies in war against the Central Powers. To understand USA’s 1917 decision, we must first understand the events that transpired, starting from around 1915—one year into the war.

Di Wo Fie As3m
So far in the war, the warring parties had been having turns at ‘the upper hand’. The Central Powers—comprising Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, after one year of fighting against the Allies consisting of France, Russia, Serbia, and Britain—were not precisely having the instantaneous showdown the Germans had anticipated when they retaliated to Austria-Hungary’s bombing of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, by declaring war on France in August 1914.

The war had been plagued, from an early start, with a series of stalemates—on the Western Front particularly. Trench warfare had become a leading military tactic. And this had been necessitated by the clash experienced, right on the battlefields, between the old ways of warring and the new—between the industrialisation of the 18th to19th century and the advanced industrial movement of the 20th century. Imagine being used to going to the battlefield, faced with an enemy having a rifle in hand, able to fire out two to three rounds of bullets per minute at you, just to find yourself a few years later once again on yet another battlefield, this time around faced with an enemy armed with a machine gun, churning out about twenty rounds of bullet at you per minute. Jarring, isn’t it? Surely, you wouldn’t wantonly advance towards such an enemy every chance you get, would you? I mean, no matter how reciprocally armed in these technologically advanced munitions and ammunitions you are, you wouldn’t just hop right into this line of merciless fire. You would want to find a place to hide, wouldn’t you? You would want to find a place to hide in defense even while you strategically plan your advance towards the enemy. And it is this commonsense right here that began the era of trench warfare.

Indeed, the real-time technological innovations experienced during World War I were to necessitate this new type of warfare which could have easily been viewed as cowardly during the old militaristic days of the rifle, horses, and the likes. Basically, trench warfare went like this: to escape the endless bombardments from enemy artillery and machine guns, you, in defense, dig for yourself a large gutter and reinforce it with barbed wire. That’s your trench, ladies and gentlemen. And in offense, you strategically place above ground, your own line-up of artillery and machine guns with which to hurl out shells at the enemy. Trench warfare became one principal tactic of war, especially on the Western Front. With the enemy in hiding, eluding quick and painful death from powerful weaponry, the war was to drag on longer than both opposing parties could ever care for. By 1917, both parties were rightfully at their wits’ end. And that is when the United States of America joined the war.

Let me quickly say that this whole matter of old war technologies and their resulting accompanying strategies, versus the new-age technological advancement that ensued real-time as WWI progressed and the resulting effect that had on industrialisation and the economic advancement of certain nations, is to form the crust of this series of articles we have embarked on. Particularly, this is to form the central theme of our discussions next week.

But for now, let us go back to recounting the events that took place—particularly those that led to isolationist USA joining the war in the year 1917.

“Hell, We Just Got Here!”, The Late Paul

There must be a debate ongoing in heaven between our late President, Atta Mills and America’s late President, Woodrow Wilson as to who had the highest penchant for peace—and who broadcasted the most, this love for peace during their terms of presidencies. Indeed, Mills had no real external war nor threats of external wars to fight during his era. That was unfortunately not the case for Wilson. Because there was the matter of the First World War. Granted, a number of cancerous internal battles still festered within his nation—there was that which existed between the North and South, Blacks and Whites, and the looming spill-over effects of the Mexican Revolution. But the Great War, that was the ‘peaceable’ Wilson’s biggest philosophical headache.

As noted earlier, 20th-century America was a nation ‘purportedly’ still steeped in its philosophy of isolationism. This American isolationism made perfect sense especially during this war—not only ideological sense, but an economic one too. Because the budding nation had, right from the inception of the war, been a huge beneficiary of this war. American industry flourished famously during WWI, because American industry was in the busy business of supplying munitions, ammunitions, and goods to both parties to the war—Allies and Central Powers alike. Its business with the Central Powers was to consequently diminish, however—not on its own accord, but due to a series of effective blockades effected by the Allies (Britain in particular), against the Central Powers (Germany in particular).

So, you ask: what could cause a nation to sacrifice its peace and prosperity to join a war which by all indications, was the very definition of an ‘endless abyss’? Well, let’s just say that it all began on May 7, 1915 when a German submarine sank the British vessel the RMS Lusitania.

Starving into Defeat; Stepping on Toes
It was one year into the war, the Western Front, as noted, was festering in stalemates necessitated by trench warfare. Both sides of the war were desperate for a quick win, because advancements in military technology were causing, on the battlefields, the loss of an unprecedentedly high number of lives. Each battle was averaging hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths. That was extreme. Both sides were rightfully desperate for a quick win. To ensure this, they resorted to the strategy of ‘attrition’. The strategy of attrition was a tactic founded on the age-old fact known as ‘hunger kills’—that if you starved the enemy long enough, they were sure to give up and give in; and just like that, the war would end. So, these warring parties, throughout the entirety of this four-year war, were to, at various points, adopt this strategy. They were to ruthlessly adopt various versions of this strategy—an attrition of human lives, an attrition of armaments and goods, an attrition of national resources, etc.

It was this strategy of attrition that led the British, then the world’s leading naval superpower, to effect a series of blockades on the Germans in the North Sea—restricting, as already mentioned, German imports of goods and munitions. Germany saw Britain’s grand naval blockade and responded with submarines. The Imperial German Navy knew its High Seas Fleet was no match for the British Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet in an open combat, so the Germans, they decided to attack clandestinely. On the 5th of September, 1914, the Germans launched a new war technology on the British—the submarine. With these submarines, Germany launched a series of retaliatory naval attacks against Britain, sinking British ships every chance they got. And one of those chances happened to be the British cruise ship, the RMS Lusitania—a civilian vessel which had onboard not only British nationals, but Americans too. 128 American civilian lives were lost that day. The people of the United States of America were livid. There they were, supposed neutrals to a war, yet made casualties of said war. Calls began mounting on the peace-loving President, Woodrow Wilson to join the Allies in the war against the Central Powers—particularly the Germans.

We will delve deeper into this whole matter of the overt and covert reasons that led to America’s involvement in WWI in subsequent articles. But for now, let’s make do with these overt reasons—reasons such as, as mentioned, the sinking of the Lusitania.

The Lusitania was an insult to injury for the Americans, because prior to the war, German-Americans, being immigrant co-pioneers of this relatively new nation called USA, were not regarded in the most positive of lights by their fellow Americans. It did not help matters that reports of their exploits in Belgium right at the beginning of the war were often-times inflated by anti-German propaganda—propaganda that had hopes of inciting support for the Allies. So really, the sinking of Lusitania was an insult to injury. But it wasn’t ‘insult’ enough to immediately insight the peace-crusading President, Wilson into declaring war against the Germans. Also, it did not help matters for the pro-war faction of America that Germany issued a promise to the US, saying that it would be desisting from attacking all passenger ships.

Their submarine counterattacks, suffering restrictions following this promise made to America, the Germans, they found another way of beating the British to their own game. If Britain would remain unmoved in its blockade over Germany, Germany, instead of counterattacking with their submarines—the U-boats—and risking stepping on ‘neutral’ America’s toes, was going to instead effect their own version of ‘blockade’ on Britain. A blockade not on the high seas, but right where these goods and munitions were being manufactured for the Brits—in the United States of America, at a place in Philadelphia called Black Tom Island. There, American factories worked tirelessly to supply the Brits with munitions. If the Germans could stop American production, they could stop the export of materiel to Britain. Germany's own version of attrition against Britain was a go! So, on the 30th of July, 1916, German agents set on fire 20 million dollars’ worth of ammunitions and munitions, causing enormous destruction and economic loss to this American territory. At this point, Americans were fuming.

The Final Blow and the Crumbling of Empires

Calls for war heightened, but it was still not enough to push President Wilson to declare war on the Germans. Neither did Wilson budge when the Germans decided that they had had enough tiptoeing around the Americans, and in 1917, reverted back to launching unrestricted submarine attacks on British ships—Americans aboard or not. This seeming ruthlessness on the part of the Germans was due to the fact that by this time in the war, the Allies were, just like the Central Powers, quickly disintegrating. The Russian Empire had crumbled from within. The Russian people, sick of the devastation caused them and their economy by their warring Czar, Nicholas II, successfully overthrew him in a revolution—a revolution which was in itself overthrown by yet another revolution.

Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks took power in unstable Russia, and signed a treaty declaring themselves out of the hopeless war, with hopes of focusing on fighting their own internal war. Fellow Allies—British and French troops, coming to the realisation of the endless abyss that was the war, were quickly losing morale, and threats of mutinies were ever-increasing.

At this point, the Germans were the only Central Power still powering on. The Ottoman Empire had begun crumbling from within with the Arab Revolt—just like their enemy, Russia. The Austria-Hungarians had crumbled under, among others, an Influenza pandemic, and had finally successfully forced its Emperor into renouncing his claim to the throne, resulting in this vast empire, a division of its enormous territories into smaller national councils. It is safe to say that a large chunk of the nations within both the Central Powers and the Allies camps had fallen under the weight of the war. It was at this point that Germany decided to orchestrate its final blow to crush the British—and end the war once and for all. That it why it decided to break its promise to the USA, and reverted to launching unrestricted submarine offensives against the Brits. If anything at all, Germany could end the war by putting an end to Britain—and do so even before the Americans could think of mobilising and retaliating by joining the war. That was the plan. All was indeed set for a German win.

So far, neither a loss of and threats to American lives, nor a loss to American economic life had proven enough to provoke the war-profiteering nation into declaring war. It took a threat to American territory to finally provoke the then sitting President, Woodrow Wilson, to kowtow to the demands of the increasing number of American voices. On 16th January, 1917, the British intercepted a telegram sent by the German Foreign Office to the Mexicans proposing a military alliance between these two nations—an alliance with an age-old promise of territorial gains. If the Mexicans would join the Germans and declare war against the Americans, Germany would assist Mexico in recovering its territories of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona—all lost during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. That was the terms of the offer. This offer from Germany to Mexico was the gold Britain needed to provoke America into joining them in war against the Germans. So, they forwarded this now styled ‘Zimmerman Telegram’ to the Americans—and it worked! On the 6th of April, 1917 US Congress voted to declare war on the Germans. In 1918, American troops began arriving on the Western Front in respectable numbers.

Paul Amba Nt3m…
This is all so interesting—the part America played in ending the war. Because this was a nation so steeped in its ideology of isolationism, in ‘purportedly’ minding its own business that it had, for years, exerted little resources in developing its military. After all, it had no plans, in the near future, of fighting any major external wars. But here it was, being looked on as a crucial link in ending an endless war.

At this point in the war, both parties (the Allies and Central Powers) had exhausted their energies, their men, their resources—both sides were really at their wits’ end. Both were in dire need of a final external blow with which to defeat the enemy. Germany tried getting it in Mexico, but failed because its message got into the enemy’s hands. And Britain, also desperate for a final blow (and finding this blow possible with the US) got just what it wanted with this intercepted message. Of course, they wasted no time forwarding this message to the Americans.

America was no military power—far, far from it. It was no military power, neither in troops, skill, nor military tech and tactics. All it was, was a necessary final blow—new blood—that ended up helping end this bloody 4-year war.

On the 9th of November, 1918, Germany’s Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, finding final defeat with the arrival of new blood (America), finally abdicated his throne. The German forces had had enough—a long-due mutiny had ensued. Demands by Germans for the outing of the emperor had grown deafening. This had all successfully come to a head with the arrival of the Americans. Two days after the emperor’s abdication, the new civilian government signed the peace treaty ending the war. The four-year war which began on the morning of 28th June, 1914 was to end on the morning of 11th November, 1918.

Outro
The war has ended, but our inquisition into the matter has only begun. Let’s talk next week.

[Published in the Business & Financial Times (B&FT) - Wednesday, 11th January 2023]

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