11/11

On this day in 1918, World War I ended after almost 10,000,000 young men had died. It was to have been The War to End All Wars.

As promised, in exchange for massive efforts to support the allies against the Ottomans, the Arabs and most of the Kurds were freed of Ottoman domination. Of course, the British and French had their fingers crossed, so Kurdistan was divided between Turkey (the remnant of the Ottoman Empire), Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and the entire Arabian peninsula was placed under an Anglo-Gallic Mandate. So, having divested themselves of Muslim imperialists, the Arabs got European imperialists, and the Kurds got nothing.

I asked my father what happened, how, after four years of stalemate, the Allied (minus Russia) were suddenly able to overrun the Axis. My father said, 'British tanks.'

That was the standard answer in the English-speaking world until around 1950. Then, in an effort to get published, an author translated from the French, and wrote that British tanks had been introduced in 1914, but were easily stopped by German anti-tank defences. Then, in 1918, French artillery improved to the point that it could demolish the German defences deep within the trenches.

A later book, by an American author, said that the Axis and Allies were perfectly matched, and neither could do anything against the other. Both sides were desperate, since both had exhausted their National treasuries and their supplies of materiel. The German Navy promised that they could blockade the Allies and cut off their supplies. The British Navy easily overcame the Blockade, the US entered the war, and Germany knew it was defeated, finally surrendering effective 11/11. The US contribution was minuscule, but it tipped the scales that had, formerly, been perfectly balanced between Allies and Axis.

In short, no one knows how the war ended, only that it ended badly for the Arabs and Kurds, and, given what happened in 1939, for the Europeans as well.