History Channel - this is how you do history.

I have really enjoyed The History Channel. It has produced many excellent multi-episode shows about The French Revolution, Man: The Story of Us, The Men Who Built America, and a series on all American Presidents, to now American Pickers, Pawn Stars, American Restoration. They're all good show, but come on, is Big Hoss getting a sweet deal on Clark Gable's condom box really history? Steve McQueen is the coolest guy of ever-all time, but Rick Harris's man-boner for all things McQueen is getting old, and I don't care if Frank gets the goddamn enamel Standard Oil sign for a good price either. History Channel has become another piece that celebrates consumerism. It just focused on history and pop culture.

If you want good history, you need to go to the American Heroes Channel. I know, what a dumbass name for a channel, but it's history programming is aces. The latest piece of history-wood inducing programming is the multi episode Apocalypse WWI.

It's 4 one hour episodes did an excellent job of going beyond the conventional narrative. Each episode is built around one year. The first episode centers on 1914, and focused mainly on the politics of the period in regards to the interrelations of the English, Russian, and German monarchies. It touches on the shaky nature of the Austrian Empire regarding the various slavic ethnicities. Lastly the heavy role of nationalism throughout European nations goes a long way toward explaining how the assassination of an heir would spiral from regional political quarrel to a full blown global conflict. If the lesson of WWII is the folly of appeasement, then the lesson of WWI is its contrary, the rush to fight for national pride.

The final episode is excellent in its exposition of the nationalism, and need to punish the Central belligerents, that pollutes the conditions Treaty of Versailles, and other peace accords, as a harbinger of what is to come. In the century since WWI we have emphasized the lessons of WWII, and lost sight of the lessons of WWI.

Santayana was right - over and over.

It's been 100 years

June 28, 1914 the first domino was tipped. Dominoes from that that first historical domino, and the imperceptibly long domino chain that followed are still toppling today. Arch Duke Ferdinand was shot by Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo triggering World War I. It's history we've heard over and over, but unlike World War II, World War I is comparatively under studied, under discussed, and under investigated. Consider what would not have happened without World War I.

Without World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles is the rise of Hitler, and the Nazis in post war Europe possible?
If the Nazis don't ascend, does WWII become less likely?
Without WWI does Germany return the exiled Lenin to Russia to threaten the already weak Czar?
If Lenin does not return to Russia is there a Bolshevik Revolution?
With no Bolshevik Revolution, is there a different end to the Russian Czar?
Without WWI and the treaties defining its end, do Japan, and to a lesser extent, Italy, get the shaft as victors with no spoils?
Without hurt national pride to Italy and Japan begin their quest for empire?
Again, does this make WWII less likely?
Without WWI how does the end of the Ottoman Empire come about? Do the Ottomans crumble organically, as they had been, and then what does the Middle East look like if its borders are the result of its own regional political dynamics as opposed to the benefit of France and England as they drew them at the end of WWI?

None of this is to say WWI would never have happened. Europe in the early 20th Century was a tinder box of nationalism, competition among royals, as well as regional and ethnic strife. But we don't study the "War to end all wars" the way we study World War II. World War I was the beginning of the end of monarchies as a heads of state. It saw the end of the Russian Czar, German Kaiser, Ottoman Sultan, Austrian Emperor, as well as the dwindling importance of the English Crown.

Where are the movies about the soldiers, and generals that fought WWI? It's been easy to romanticize WWII. Villains are obvious, making the heroes just as obvious. WWI is not so easy to romanticize into conventional stories. The bad guys are not so obviously bad. The Arch-Duke whose assassination sparked it all was not a loved royal figure whose assassination was unforeseen. The Kaiser wasn't particularly evil and tyrannical. If we spent more time learning the lessons of WWI, and less time over learning, and misapplying the lessons of WWII we'd be in a better spot.