I was chatting to Phil in Waitrose today. After explaining where I’d been since January, I asked him what was new with him. He told me that he wanted to travel and, to that end, had decided to take a two-year apprenticeship in butchery and fish mongering. Obviously, he already knows what he’s doing, but he needs a piece of paper to prove it. This would enable him to work virtually anywhere in the world. In meat and fish, anyway. He’s changed a lot in the short time I’ve known him.
After suggesting I was starting a new chapter of my life and explaining his plans, he claimed he’d jumped straight to chapter six.
As I’ve told him before, he should grab life while he can and do what he really wants to before it’s too late. He’s unattached, has few commitments, his life is his own. Live, Phil, live.
He was very upbeat and positive, which is something that tonight’s webinar with the WFA certainly was not. Mind you, the content certainly was, given the subject, The Road to 11 November: War and Politics in 1918 by Prof David Stevenson. And I found out a lot of stuff I didn’t know but, when the first person to ask a question during the Q&A said it was the best webinar he’d ever attended, it was a good job I didn’t have a mouthful of coffee because it would have been spat out.
The problem wasn’t the content. That was excellent. And the slides were very good as well. Prof Stevenson loves a good map, believing it’s easier to see what was happening on the ground with maps. I agree, as, I’m sure, lots of other historians do as well. However, he also had quite a few excellent photographs of the principal characters involved in WWI.
Sorry about the quality but it was taken from my laptop screen. Anyway, this is Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, of the German High Command.
Ludendorff wasn’t happy with the Armistice, and Kaiser Wilhelm II sacked him. That didn’t stop him stirring up trouble and, by the second world war, he was helping the Nazis achieve their evil aims. Hindenburg, on the other hand, was opposed to the Nazi dreams but, because of politics, managed to enable Hitler and his cronies. But that was all after the war.
In 1918, things were not good. All sides were pouring money into death and losing more and more of their population. Munitions factories were run by women and young men were still dying to die. It was not good from all sides. Even US Democrat president Woodrow Wilson knew he had to try and end the war or let the Republicans win the next election. To that end, he and the Germans exchanged a bunch of secret notes.
As far as the Germans were concerned, the tipping point was the German Revolution, something I’d not heard about. According to the good professor, it all started when the German Imperial Navy was ordered to sail to the UK, go up the Thames and attack London. The German sailors had had enough of such nonsense, so they downed tools, turned the engines off and marched on the Naval base at Wilhelmshaven.
Very quickly, lots of other people joined the mutineers and, finally, Kaiser Wilhelm II, like the true hero he was, ran away to the Netherlands, abdicating on the way. Germany went from a monarchy to the Weimar Republic overnight. Incidentally, Wilhelm died shortly after the Nazis arrived in 1940.
Anyway, there were a number of reasons for the Armistice on November 11, 1918, but happen, it did and everyone was happy. Even all the German POWs, as seen in this photograph.
As a side note: Another reason the Armistice was signed was because of Bulgaria. It was where the Germans got all their petrol from, so when the allies defeated them, the German machines stopped working. Sounds a bit like global sanctions against Russia. It’s a pity they don’t work quite as well.
All in all, a fun fact packed webinar, given in as dull a fashion as possible. I found it difficult to keep my eyes open, a number of times, and I wasn’t even tired. A shame. Also, where is David Tattershall? He’s so much better than Luke Godber.
