Dear Reader,
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, WWI officially came to an end.
By the time the "War to End All Wars" was over, 20 million people had lost their lives.
But fighting continued for nearly six hours after German, British, and French bureaucrats spilled their ink on the armistice.
Nearly 3,000 men died on the final day of the Great War, surpassing the daily average deaths.
American forces, in particular a regiment known as "Baltimore's Own," as most of the men hailed from Baltimore, were ordered to continue fighting right up to the last minute.
The last "official" recorded American death was Private Henry Gunther, who charged a German machine gun nest just minutes before 11 a.m. Perhaps blinded by rage over a demotion and his fiancé calling off their marriage, he ignored the pleas from Americans and Germans telling him to stop. As he charged the Germans with a bayonet, he was struck down — with his official death recorded at 11:59 a.m.
All the senseless fighting to gain just inches of ground...
The orders to kill from on high...
The false narratives and propaganda pushed on the public to convince them the war was necessary...
It'll behoove us all to take some lessons from the Great War, especially with the Russia-Ukraine war in full swing.
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Western Ghosts
I finally watched the Netflix special All Quiet on the Western Front, which should be required watching for the entire world right now.
The anti-war message was so powerful that it made me go back and dust off my old copy of the namesake 1928 novel by Erich Remarque.
At first criticized as anti-war propaganda — it was banned by the Nazis in the 1930s — it's since become the best-selling German book of all time, selling over 20 million copies worldwide.
It touches on three important themes.
First, in order to survive war, men must become animals. The training and demoralization of the soldier creates an instinctual, animalistic man, as killing becomes second nature. When protagonist Paul Bäumer and his best friend, Kat, are discussing the war, Kat explains, "For instance, if you train a dog to eat potatoes and then afterward put a piece of meat in front of him, he'll snap at it. It's his nature." Kat goes on to say that they've been given too much power as soldiers. Back home, civilians can't kill or demoralize others so freely as they can on the Western Front.
Second, even those who survive the war return home as mere shells of their former selves. Paul comes to realize that even if he survives the war, his life is over. After Paul's comrades discuss what they'll do after the war, Paul is overcome with melancholy and thinks, "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were 18 and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer; we believe in the war." War destroys everything, and we see this theme play out again when Paul kills a French soldier in a foxhole and watches as he slowly dies. He finds a photograph of the dead soldier's family in his pocket and sees the collateral damage that war creates.
Finally, in war, only a few power-hungry men decide the fate of millions. We see this theme clearly in the Netflix movie. While men die muddy, cold, and hungry in the trenches, the German general sits high in his castle, eating fatty meats and drinking wine, a roaring fire crackling in the background. In the novel, when the Kaiser visits the front lines, the men are disenchanted by his meek demeanor and realize that they've all been sacrificed only so a few old men could have their names written in the history books.
One key takeaway from this story is that human life should be cherished, not carelessly thrown around like pieces in a game of Risk.
War is not the answer, which is why it's so hard to watch what's playing out in Ukraine today.
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Narrative Matters
Just like Paul and his teenage classmates were told a false narrative by their leaders about the war to drum up patriotic fervor, today the mainstream media peddle a narrative filled with half-truths.
That's why many people have come out recently to clarify what's really going on with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including American economist Jeffrey Sachs. He says that NATO expansion over the last three decades along with a militarized foreign policy have contributed to the war. He explained an alternative narrative in an interview with actor and podcaster Russel Brand this week:
Basically the neocons took over U.S. foreign policy 30 years ago, and it hasn't really mattered whether it was Democrats or Republicans... The mainstream of the political system in both parties is militarized, and our foreign policy is largely based on secrecy... We don't see what our government's doing, nothing is explained, nothing is debated anymore.
Now we're in a war in Ukraine, and this is absolutely a war between the United States and Russia. It's extraordinarily dangerous. We're told every day in the mainstream media [that it was] an unprovoked war that started on February 24, 2022, which is false. There's a history to this. There was a way to avoid this war. But none of it is properly debated at all.
In 1990, Gorbachev wanted to end the Cold War. He wanted to end the Soviet military alliance, the so-called Warsaw Pact alliance. Germany wanted to reunify. The U.S. and Germany told Gorbachev that if he dissolved the Warsaw pact and ended the cold war and Germany reunifies, NATO would not move one inch eastward. Then in the '90s, the U.S. started the NATO expansion. Bush wanted to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia.
He then explains the odd circumstances surrounding an agreement that was almost signed early this year to end the war.
In mid-March, the Ukrainians put forward a number of terms, handed it to the Russians... sent it to Putin. Putin said yeah, these are grounds on which we can negotiate. Turkey was the intermediary... The Ukrainian spokesman, the Russian spokesman, and the Turkish spokesman said we're very close to a deal... Then Ukraine walked away from the negotiating table... It's never been explained. It's never been acknowledged.
There are thoeries floating around that Boris Johnson intervened at the last minute. Whatever happened, something went wrong at the exact moment a negotiation could have been concluded.
Hopefully peace comes soon.
For now, the U.S. has armed Ukraine to the teeth.
And as we speak, the U.S. is developing the most advanced rocket system the world has ever known.
It could change the tide of the war forever.
Our aerospace and defense expert Jason Simpkins has the full story here.
Stay free,
Alexander Boulden
Editor, Wealth Daily
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After Alexander's passion for economics and investing drew him to one of the largest financial publishers in the world, where he rubbed elbows with former Chicago Board Options Exchange floor traders, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and International Monetary Fund analysts, he decided to take up the pen and guide others through this new age of investing.
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