The loom of youth

Trechos de The Loom Of Youth (1917), de Alec Waugh.

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Hardly a week later a great nation forgot its greatness, and Europe trembled on the brink of war. During those days of awful suspense, when it was uncertain whether England would enter into the contest or not, Gordon could hardly keep still with nervous excitement.

- - -
It was an expensive day. They rushed from one thing to another. The strain was intolerable. After supper they went to the West End Cinema, and there, just before closing-time, a film, in which everyone was falling into a dirty duck-pond for no ostensible reason, was suddenly stopped, and there appeared across the screen the flaming notice:

ENGLAND HAS DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY

GOD SAVE THE KING!

There was dead silence for a moment. Then cheer upon cheer convulsed the house. The band struck up the National Anthem. The sequel to the tragedy of the duck-pond was never known.

"Glorious! Glorious!" said Ferrers, as they staggered out into the cool night air. "A war is what we want. It will wake us up from sleeping; stir us into life; inflame our literature. There's a real chance now of sweeping away the old outworn traditions. In a great fire they will all be burnt. Then we can build afresh. I wish I could go and fight. Damn my heart! To think of all the running it stood at Oxford; and then suddenly to give way. My doctor always tells me to be careful. If I could go, by God, I would have my shot at the bloody Germans; but still I'll do something at Fernhurst. Stoics, you know; Army class English. How old are you? Sixteen! We shall have you for two years yet. This war is going to save England and everything! Glorious!"

The flaring lights of Leicester Square, the tawdry brilliance of Piccadilly seemed to burst into one volcano of red splendour; a thousand cannons spitting flame; a thousand eyes bright with love of England. The swaying Tube swept Gordon home in a state of subconscious delirium to the starlit calm of Hampstead.

Throughout the long summer holidays this feeling of rejoicing sustained Gordon's heart. He saw an age rising out of these purging fires that would rival the Elizabethan. He saw a second Marlowe and a second Webster. His soul was aflame with hope. He had no doubt as to the result. Even the long retreat from Mons, with its bitter list of casualties, failed to terrorise him. Half the holidays he spent in Wychtown, a little Somersetshire village, and his enthusiasm at one time took the form of buying bundles of newspapers, which he distributed at the cottages, so as to keep everyone in touch with the state of affairs. At one time he thought of going round discussing the war with some of the villagers; but he soon abandoned this project. He began with an aged man who had fought at Majuba.

"Well, Mr Cavendish, and what do you think of the war this morning."

"Lor' bless you, things beant what they were in my young days. At Majuba, now, we did things a bit different-like. But these 'ere Germans, now, they be getting on right well. Be they for us?"

After this Gordon decided that the natural simplicity of the yokel was proof against anything he might have to say. He pitied electioneering agents.

- - -
October went by with its red-gold leaves and amber sunlight. November swept in bringing a procession of long evenings and flickering lights. The first boom of the war fever died down.

- - -
"You know," he was saying, "I do get so sick of these masters who go about with the theory of 'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,' and in war-time, too! With all these men falling, and no advance being made from day to day."

- - -
"Yes, I suppose you have seen a good many ideals go tumbling down. All our generation has been sacrificed; of course it is inevitable. But it is rather hard. The older men have seen some of their hopes realised; we shall see none. I don't know when this war will end; not just yet, I think. But whenever it does, just as far as we are concerned the days of roses will be over. For the time being art and literature are dead. Look at the rotten stuff that's being written to-day. At the beginning we were deceived by the tinsel of war; Romance dies hard. But we know now. We've done with fairy tales. There is nothing glorious in war, no good can come of it. It's bloody, utterly bloody. I know it's inevitable, but that's no excuse. So are rape, theft, murder. It's a bloody business. Oh, Caruthers, my boy, the world will be jolly Philistine the next few years. Commercialism will be made a god."

"Do you mean there is going to be nothing for us after the war?" said Gordon.

"Not for you or me; for the masses, perhaps. No one can go through this without having his senses dulled, his individuality knocked out of him. It will take at least twenty years to recover what we have lost, and there won't be much fire left in you and me by then. Oh, I can tell you I am frightened of what's coming after. I can't face it. Of course there may be a great revival some day. Do you remember what Rupert Brooke said in Second Best about there waiting for the 'great unborn some white tremendous daybreak'? That's what may happen. But our generation will have been sacrificed for it. I suppose we should not grumble."

- - -
Early on the Sunday morning he went back to his regiment. Gordon walked down to the station with him.

"I am going to the front in about a week, you know," said Tester, as they were standing on the platform.

"Good Lord! man, why didn't you tell us before?"

"Oh, I don't know. I didn't want them all unburdening themselves to me... Here's the train. Well, good-bye, Caruthers. Good luck."

"Thanks awfully; and mind you come back all right."

Tester smiled at him rather sadly.

"I am not coming back," he said.

- - -
Gordon had almost ceased to expect anything. Day followed day. Everyone was discontented; even Ferrers began to doubt whether the war was having such a good effect on the Public Schools after all. He said as much in an article in The Country. He was always saying things in The Country. It was his clearing ground.

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Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIVW5sX2tFSldpZm8
Evelyn Waugh (1)
Evelyn Waugh (2)

Consuming the future

Trechos de A World Undone: The Story Of The Great War (2006), de G.J. Meyer.

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Consuming the future

A rather elemental question: where did the money come from? How did Germany and Austria-Hungary and Turkey and Bulgaria on one hand, Britain and France and Russia and Italy on the other, pay for such an immense and protracted struggle?

The answer, in a nutshell, is that they didn't. None of them even tried. In addition to being the greatest bloodbath in the history of western Europe and the greatest in eastern Europe until the Second World War, the Great War was a process by which all the great powers, victors and vanquished alike, transformed themselves from bastions of prosperity into sinkholes of poverty and debt. Financially as in so many other ways, the war was a road to ruin.

This development was not unforeseen. As technological progress accelerated in the nineteenth century and fueled tremendous military expansion, the question of how much a general war would cost became one of the great imponderables facing the governments of Europe. In 1898 a Russian named Ivan Bloch produced a six-volume study, Future War, in which he postulated that armed conflict between the great powers would mean "not fighting, but famine, not the slaying of men but the bankruptcy of nations and the break-up of the whole social organization." He predicted that any such war would be short because financially insupportable. Twelve years later a book titled The Great Illusion, by the Englishman Norman Angell, became an international best-seller by predicting that not even the winners could possibly benefit from a major war. Military power, Angell said, had become "socially and economically futile, and can have no relationship to the prosperity of the people exercising it." Such a warning seemed credible: when Angell's book appeared, all the great powers were spending scores and even hundreds of millions of dollars annually on their armies and navies. Such spending continued to increase through the last four years of peace, and much of the increase was made possible by borrowing. Only Britain, wealthiest of the European powers and the one with the smallest army, was balancing its budget.

What was not foreseen was the ability of the industrialized nations to go on fighting year after year even while devouring themselves financially. As astute an economist as John Maynard Keynes was a year into the Great War before he understood that total war would not cause total financial collapse. "As long as there are goods and labor in the country the government can buy them with banknotes," he wrote in September 1915, "and if the people try to spend the notes, an increase in their real consumption is immediately checked by a corresponding rise of prices." The truth, he concluded, was that bankruptcy would never force the great powers to stop fighting. They could be stopped only by the exhaustion of their manpower, their physical resources, or their will to continue. The next few years showed him to be entirely right.

With the start of the war, every one of the nations involved cast aside any semblance of financial restraint. As early as October 1914 Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George was admonishing the British war office not to come to him for approval before ordering whatever it thought it needed. It was the same in every capital: governments worried not about how much they were spending but about whether their military leaders were doing everything possible (which often meant buying everything possible) to outmatch the enemy. Budgets ceased to matter.

Great nations found themselves unable not only to pay their bills but even, in some cases, to pay the interest on what they were borrowing. By 1917 the German government's expenditures amounted to 76 percent of net national product; they had been 18 percent just before the war. Tax revenues were covering only 8 percent of the spending. That same year Britain's military spending was 70 percent of national output, and revenues were about a fourth of expenses. France's military budget, thanks to heavy borrowing, was equal to or even more than total output.

The strategies adopted by the various countries for maintaining sources of credit varied greatly and were almost indescribably complicated. The problems were greatest for the least developed nations, Russia and Austria-Hungary in particular. The solution in both cases was reliance on stronger senior partners. Russia began borrowing from its allies as early as October 1914. Eventually it borrowed £568 million from London and three and a half billion francs from Paris - colossal sums for the time, equivalent to billions of dollars. Germany found it necessary to be similarly generous to Austria-Hungary, and later to Turkey and Bulgaria as well. The Russians had compounded their difficulties by shutting down the state monopoly on alcohol early in the war as a gesture of austerity, patriotism, and willingness to sacrifice. This accomplished nothing except cutting off a fourth of Petrograd's revenues, creating a huge black market in vodka, and worsening inflation.

Not one country attempted to meet its expenses or even reduce its deficits through increased taxes. Where taxes were increased, the purpose was either to inhibit inflation by soaking up some of the wages flowing to workers or to maintain a flow of revenue sufficient to satisfy the credit markets. New taxes were sometimes imposed on profiteers, but more to maintain public morale (damaged everywhere by the spectacle of tycoons reaping fortunes while everyone else suffered) than to increase revenue. Tax systems became less rather than more progressive. Governments tried to limit the amounts of money available to working people for the pursuit of increasingly scarce goods while simultaneously helping the wealthy to retain their assets for investment in postwar rebuilding.

The situation first became serious for the Central Powers, which virtually from the first day of the war had lost their merchant fleets and access both to their own overseas investments and to global sources of credit. They had to do nearly all their borrowing internally, through loans from domestic financial institutions and the sale of bonds. They were surprisingly successful. Germany issued war bonds twice annually. The many marks raised in this way covered two-thirds of its war costs.

The British and French were far more able than the Germans to repatriate money they had invested overseas, and because of the naval blockade only the Entente was able to buy and borrow from the United States. But gradually, inexorably, their treasuries were depleted. Questions arose in New York and Washington about their ability to make good on their debt. In November 1916 the U.S. Federal Reserve Board warned its member banks against continuing to buy foreign - which meant British and French - treasury bills. The result was a near-panic in which London retaliated by briefly ceasing to place orders in the United States and urged France to do likewise. By April 1917 the British were spending $75 million a week in the United States, were overdrawn on their American accounts by $358 million, and had only $490 million in securities and $87 million in gold to draw on to make good their debt. In short, they were only weeks away from insolvency.

But this was a crisis for the United States too. American manufacturers and farmers had become dependent on sales to the Entente, and American banks were owed immense amounts. A British and French financial collapse - never mind the outright defeat of the two nations - would have been a disaster for the U.S. economy. Thus the German submarines were not Washington's only reason for wanting to save the Entente. In purely practical business terms, it became dangerous for the United States not to enter the war.

It is estimated that the war ultimately cost $208 billion - this at a time when skilled workers were paid a few dollars a day. The final bill was $43.8 billion for Britain, $28.2 billion for France, and $47 billion for Germany. In each case, the result was the same. The wealth of all the belligerent countries was drastically reduced.

The ultimate result is expressed in the word disinvestment. All the European powers stopped making the kinds of investments required for real economic growth. Everything, even the future, went into the flaming cauldron of the war. Britain, that paragon of affluence and commercial success in 1914, ended the war sunk in debt, its civil infrastructure a shambles. The Europeans had begun the war at the pinnacle of the world's economic and financial hierarchy, and they ended it as wrecks. Ivan Bloch had been wrong about the feasibility of keeping such a war going. About the consequences, however, he had turned out to be dead right.

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Mais:
http://www.econtrader.com/economics/explain/how-gold-standard-works.htm
http://docs.google.com/file/d/1Q59hMJFPzMsUOtKaV_3rpUNo26GYAO36

Anzacs

WAR IS ANNOUNCED

The coming of war, declared on 4 August 1914, caught most Australians by surprise even though there had been a climate for war for many years. An expectation had arisen of a clash between Europe’s two major trading nations, Britain and Germany.

Australia was in the middle of an election campaign when war came. Both leaders, Joseph Cook, Prime Minister, and Andrew Fisher, leader of the Labor Party, promised Australian support to Britain.

Labor won the Federal Election and became an enthusiastic 'win-the-war' party in government. Supporting the initial pledge of 20,000 men, the new Government watched an extraordinary rush to enlist all around the country and soon promised an increase in the expeditionary force to take the total to 50,000 men.

FIRST RECRUITS

The recruits were wildly popular in their various marches and parades in each of the capital cities and as the first troopships departed Australian shores in late October 1914 there were large crowds on hand to say farewell.

Instead of going to Britain, which everyone had expected, the troops were diverted to Egypt, largely because it was feared the Australians would not withstand the terrible English winter in makeshift camps on Salisbury Plain. It was tough in Egypt too, with basic facilities, and not much in the way of training beyond marching up and down the sand dunes and deserts.

Although some Australians misbehaved and were sent home, the vast majority accepted that a soldier's life can be pretty tough. There were rumours throughout the camp about where they would fight and in April it was confirmed that the Australians, alongside their New Zealand comrades, would attempt an invasion of Turkey to open the Black Sea to the Allies as a supply route for beleaguered Russia.

LANDING AT ANZAC

Sending troops to land from the sea on hostile territory against a well-prepared enemy has rarely been attempted in all the annals of military history. That the Anzacs (as they soon began to be called) gained a toehold at all on the Gallipoli Peninsula was considered remarkable and that they repelled all Turkish attempts to drive them back into the sea was an indication of their bravery and determination.

The Landing at Gallipoli captured the imagination of the Australian public as no other event in Australian history has ever done. The news provoked a rush of Australian recruits to the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and eventually 320,000 Australians would serve overseas in the war - an extraordinary contribution from a nation of just over four million people.

Enthusiasm for the war continued even though the Anzacs were evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, leaving more than 8,000 Australians in lonely graves dotted around Gallipoli.

THE WESTERN FRONT

After re-training and refreshment in Egypt, and with the expansion of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) to accommodate the huge number of new recruits, the Australians set off for France and the Western Front. Arriving in late May they received an enthusiastic reception from the French people, who were amazed men would travel from the ends of the earth to help France in its greatest crisis.

1916 and 1917 were years of unrelenting and horrible fighting for the Australians and they suffered huge losses which dwarfed the casualties experienced at Gallipoli. At Fromelles on 19-20 July 1916, the Australians suffered 5,500 casualties overnight on what was described as the worst day ever in Australian history. In seven weeks fighting at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm from 23 July 1916 onwards, the Australians suffered 21,000 casualties. In 1917 the deaths continued at places such as Bullecourt and Passchendaele in Belgium.

CONSCRIPTION

The numbers of recruits dwindled in Australia from early 1917 onwards, possibly because there were few men with the capacity to enlist. The work of the nation, in its factories, offices, schools and shops, and on its farms, had to be continued somehow. Yet war patriots began to think that every man in the right age group should be at the war. They demanded that the government introduce conscription. Two referenda were held in Australia in October 1916 and December 1917 to see if the people would support conscription as a method of reinforcing the AIF. The campaigns caused enormous division in the community and both were lost by very narrow margins.

VICTORY

By 1918 the AIF was at the height of its fighting powers: experienced, grimly determined, and well led by its own Australian commanders, at last, to the great satisfaction of all Australian soldiers. (Victorian John Monash became commander of the Australian Corps in June 1918). Though savagely reduced in numbers, the AIF battalions won some remarkable victories in 1918, at Villers-Bretonneux, in the Battle of Amiens, at Hamel, Mont St Quentin and Peronne. Exhausted, the Australians were withdrawn from the line in October, after months of continuous fighting, and the war ended on 11 November 1918 when the Germans submitted to the signing of an Armistice.

The war had cost Australians dearly. It had damaged political and social harmony at home because of the bitterness of the conscription campaigns, and introduced deep religious and social divisions. 60,000 Australians had been killed in the war, many of them because of the might of the artillery, lay buried, in unknown graves. As many as 150,000 men returned home badly wounded in mind or body.

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Fonte:
http://anzaccentenary.vic.gov.au/history/australias-contribution-wwi

Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HEKJ4a2z0I

Audacia

IL POPOLO D'ITALIA
15 novembre 1914

Audacia

(Benito Mussolini)

In un'epoca di liquidazione generale come la presente, non solo i morti vanno in fretta come pretendeva il poeta, ma i vivi vanno ancor più in fretta dei morti. Attendere, può significare giungere in ritardo e trovarsi dinnanzi all'inesorabile fatto compiuto, che lamentazioni inutili non valgono a cancellare. Se si fosse trattato e si trattasse di una questione di secondaria importanza, non avrei sentito il bisogno, meglio, il "dovere", di creare un giornale: ma, ora, checché si dica dai neutralisti del socialismo conservatore, una questione formidabile sta per essere risolta: i destini del socialismo europeo sono in relazione strettissima coi possibili risultati di questa guerra; disinteressarsene significa staccarsi dalla storia e dalla vita, lavorare per la reazione e non per la Rivoluzione Sociale. Ah no! I socialisti rivoluzionari italiani - sian essi guidati dal raziocinio o sospinti da oscure, ma infallibili intuizioni sentimentali sanno qual è il grido che conviene lanciare al proletariato italiano. La neutralità non può essere un dogma del socialismo. Esisterebbero dunque solo nel socialismo e per giunta, nel socialismo italiano, delle verità "assolute" che possono sfidare impunemente le ingiurie del tempo e le limitazioni dello spazio, come le verità indiscutibili e eterne della rivelazione divina? Ma la verità assoluta attorno alla quale non si può più discutere, che non si può più negare o rinnegare, è la verità morta; peggio, è la verità che uccide. Noi non siamo, noi non vogliamo esser mummie perennemente immobili con la faccia rivolta allo stesso orizzonte, o rinchiuderci tra le siepi anguste della beghinità sovversiva, dove si biascicano meccanicamente le formule corrispondenti alle preci delle religioni professate; ma siamo uomini e uomini vivi che vogliamo dare il nostro contributo, sia pure modesto, alla creazione della storia. Incoerenza? Apostasia? Diserzione? Mai più. Resta a vedersi da quale parte stiano gli incoerenti, gli apostati, i disertori. Lo dirà la storia domani, ma la previsione rientra nell'ambito delle nostre possibilità divinatorie. Se domani ci sarà un po' più di libertà in Europa, un ambiente, quindi, politicamente più adatto allo sviluppo del socialismo, alla formazione delle capacità di classe del proletariato, disertori ed apostati saranno stati tutti coloro che al momento in cui si trattava di agire, si sono neghittosamente tratti in disparte: se domani - invece - la reazione prussiana trionferà sull'Europa e - dopo alla distruzione del Belgio, - col progettato annientamento della Francia - abbasserà il livello della civiltà umana, disertori ed apostati saranno stati tutti coloro che nulla hanno tentato per impedire la catastrofe.

Da questo ferreo dilemma non si esce, ricorrendo alle sottili elucubrazioni degli avvocati d'ufficio della neutralità assoluta o ripetendo un grido di "abbasso" che prima della guerra poteva avere un contenuto e un significato, ma oggi non lo ha più.

Oggi - io lo grido forte - la propaganda antiguerresca è la propaganda della vigliaccheria. Ha fortuna perché vellica ed esaspera l'istinto della conservazione individuale. Ma per ciò stesso è una propaganda anti-rivoluzionaria. La facciano i preti temporalisti e i gesuiti che hanno un interesse materiale e spirituale alla conservazione dell'impero austriaco; la facciano i borghesi, contrabbandieri o meno, che - specie in Italia dimostrano la loro pietosa insufficienza politica e morale; la facciano i monarchici che, specie se insigniti del laticlavio, non sanno rassegnarsi a stracciare il trattato della Triplice che garantiva - oltre alla pace (nel modo che abbiamo visto) - l'esistenza dei troni; codesta coalizione di pacifisti sa bene quello che vuole e noi ci spieghiamo ormai facilmente i motivi che inspirano il suo atteggiamento. Ma noi, socialisti, abbiamo rappresentato - salvo nelle epoche basse del riformismo mercatore e giolittiano - una delle forze "vive" della nuova Italia: vogliamo ora legare il nostro destino a queste forze "morte" in nome di una "pace" che non ci salva oggi dai disastri della guerra e non ci salverà domani da pericoli infinitamente maggiori e in ogni caso non ci salverà dalla vergogna e dallo scherno universale dei popoli che hanno vissuto questa grande tragedia della storia? Vogliamo trascinare la nostra miserabile esistenza alla giornata - beati nello statu quo monarchico e borghese - o vogliamo invece spezzare questa compagine sorda e torbida di intrighi e di viltà? Non potrebbe essere questa la nostra ora? Invece di prepararci a "subire" gli avvenimenti preordinando un alibi scandaloso, non è meglio tentare di dominarli? Il compito di socialisti rivoluzionari non potrebbe essere quello di svegliare le coscienze addormentate delle moltitudini e di gettare palate di calce viva nella faccia ai morti - e son tanti in Italia! - che si ostinano nell'illusione di vivere? Gridare: noi vogliamo la guerra! non potrebbe essere - allo stato dei fatti - molto più rivoluzionario che gridare "abbasso"? Questi interrogativi inquietanti, ai quali, per mio conto, ho risposto, spiegano l'origine e gli scopi del giornale. Questo ch'io compio è un atto d'audacia e non mi nascondo le difficoltà dell'impresa. Sono molte e complesse, ma ho la ferma fiducia di superarle. Non sono solo. Non tutti i miei amici di ieri mi seguiranno; ma molti altri spiriti ribelli si raccoglieranno attorno a me. Farò un giornale indipendente, liberissimo, personale, mio. Ne risponderò solo alla mia coscienza e a nessun altro. Non ho intenzioni aggressive contro il Partito Socialista, o contro gli organi del Partito nel quale intendo di restare, ma sono disposto a battermi contro chiunque tentasse di impedirmi la libera critica di un atteggiamento che ritengo per varie ragioni esiziale agli interessi nazionali e internazionali del Proletariato.

Dei malvagi e degli idioti non mi curo. Restino nel loro fango i primi, crepino nella loro nullità intellettuale gli ultimi. lo cammino! E riprendendo la marcia - dopo la sosta che fu breve - è a voi, giovani d'Italia; giovani delle officine e degli atenei; giovani d'anni e giovani di spirito; giovani che appartenete alla generazione cui il destino ha commesso di "fare" la storia; è a voi che io lancio il mio grido augurale, sicuro che avrà nelle vostre file una vasta risonanza di echi e di simpatie.

Il grido è una parola che io non avrei mai pronunciato in tempi normali, e che innalzo invece forte, a voce spiegata, senza infingimenti, con sicura fede, oggi: una parola paurosa e fascinatrice: guerra!

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Fonte:
http://ilpopoloditalia.blogspot.com.br/p/parola-di-mussolini-gli-articoli.html

Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnISmlMOTBjOWYwTXM
http://docs.google.com/file/d/11sy6H00WdwnQXxSjIc0cQzErflFAVteK

Atatürk

Mustafa Atatürk, nasceu em 1881 (provavelmente durante a primavera) em Salonica, então, uma cidade otomana, atualmente localizada na Grécia. Seu pai, Ali Riza, fiscal de alfândega e mais tarde um negociante no setor madeireiro, morreu quando Mustafa era ainda um garoto. Sua mãe, Zubeyde, uma mulher forte e determinada, criou os filhos sozinha.

Inicialmente matriculado em uma escola religiosa, ele rapidamente conseguiu mudar para uma escola moderna. Em 1893, ele entrou para a escola militar onde seu professor de matemática deu a ele o segundo nome de Kemal (que quer dizer perfeição), em reconhecimento à habilidade do jovem Mustafa com os números. Desde então, ele tornou-se conhecido como Mustafa Kemal.

Em 1905, graduou-se na Academia de Guerra em Istambul como capitão. Em seu posto de comando em Damasco, ele, juntamente com outros colegas, fundou uma sociedade clandestina conhecida como "Pátria e Liberdade", com o objetivo de combater o despotismo do sultão. Sua carreira floresceu com suas vitórias em terras distantes durante o império otomano, incluindo a Albânia e Tripoli.

Em 1915, quando a luta de Dardanelos começou, ele tornou-se um herói nacional conquistando sucessivas vitórias e finalmente repelindo os invasores. Promovido a general em 1916, com apenas 35 anos, ele libertou duas províncias importantes no este da Turquia. Nos dois anos seguintes, ele serviu como comandante de vários exércitos na Palestina, Aleppo e outros lugares, conquistando outras importantes vitórias e bloqueando o avanço das forças inimigas em Aleppo.

Em 19 de maio de 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pacha, desembarcou no porto de Samsun no Mar Negro, começando então a Guerra da Independência. Desafiando o governo do sultão, ele reuniu o exército da liberação da Anatólia e convocou o congresso de Erzurum e Sivas e estabeleceu a base para o novo esforço nacional sob o seu comando. Em 23 de abril de 1920, a Grande Assembleia Nacional foi estabelecida. Mustafa Kemal Pacha foi eleito seu presidente.

Lutando em muitas frentes, ele guiou suas forças para a vitória contra os rebeldes e exércitos invasores. Seguindo-se ao triunfo turco obtido em duas grandes batalhas em Inonu na parte oeste, a Grande Assembleia Nacional conferiu a ele o título de Comandante e Chefe com a ordem de marechal. No final de agosto de 1922, os exércitos turcos conquistaram sua derradeira vitória. Em poucas semanas, o país estava completamente livre, o armistício assinado e a dinastia otomana abolida.

Em julho de 1923, o governo nacional assinou o Tratado de Lausanne com a Grã-Bretanha, França, Grécia, Itália e outros países. Em outubro, Ancara tornou-se a capital da nova Turquia. Em 29 de outubro, a República foi proclamada e Mustafa Kemal Pacha eleito seu presidente.

A avaliação de quinze anos de presidência de Atatürk é uma verdadeira saga de uma dramática modernização. Com incansável determinação, ele criou uma nova política e um sistema judiciário, aboliu o califado e tornou ambos, o governo e a educação seculares, concedeu igualdade de direito as mulheres, mudou o alfabeto, a indumentária e deu um novo e importante impulso às artes e à ciência, à agricultura e à indústria.

Em 1934, quando a lei do sobrenome foi instaurada, o parlamento nacional deu a ele o nome de "Atatürk" (pai dos turcos).

Atatürk casou-se em 1923 com Latife Usakligil e divorciou-se em 1925.

Em 10 de novembro de 1938, seguindo-se a um período de enfermidade, o libertador nacional e pai da moderna Turquia veio a falecer, mas seu legado permanece tanto para o povo turco, quanto para o mundo.

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"Esta nação jamais viveu sem independência. Nós não podemos e não devemos viver sem ela. Independência ou morte."

Mustafa Kemal Pacha surgiu como o libertador nacional dos turcos quando o império otomano encontrava-se já agonizante. Reconhecido como herói na batalha de Dardanelos e em outras frentes de batalha, ele tornou-se em 1919, o líder da emancipação turca. Com um pequeno e mal equipado exército, ele repeliu os inimigos invasores nos lados leste, sul e oeste. Ele liderou até mesmo o combate contra as tropas dos sultões e rebeldes locais antes de obter completo controle do território turco. Em setembro de 1922, ele conseguiu um dos mais difíceis triunfos históricos contra a oposição interna e poderosos inimigos externos.

Atatürk está entre os maiores estrategistas do mundo, mantendo um recorde militar perfeito que consiste somente de vitórias e nenhuma derrota.

Quando a luta nacional terminou, o líder heroico proclamou: "Seguindo o completo triunfo militar das baionetas, armas e sangue, nós devemos nos esforçar para obter vitórias em outros campos como o cultural, educacional, científico e econômico", acrescentando que "a duração dos benefícios conquistados dependem exclusivamente da existência de um exército da educação".

Por suas vitórias e suas reformas cultural, social e política, as quais proporcionaram à Turquia uma nova vida, é que a nação turca conserva uma grande gratidão e reverência por Atatürk.

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"A soberania pertence incondicionalmente ao povo."

29 de Outubro de 1923 é uma data crucial para a história da Turquia. Nesse dia, Mustafa Kemal Pacha, o libertador do país, proclamou a República da Turquia. A nova e homogênea nação contrastou profundamente com o sistema do império otomano. A dinastia e teocracia do regime otomano, com o seu sultanato e califado, veio a sucumbir.

A Turquia de Atatürk dedicou-se à soberania nacional; à criação de, nas palavras do presidente, "o estado do povo".

A República rapidamente tratou de pôr fim aos chamados "Acordos": direitos especiais e privilégios que os otomanos tinham concedido a algumas nações europeias.

A ideologia da Nova Turquia ficou conhecida como "kemalismo" e mais tarde como "ataturkismo". Seus princípios básicos reforçam a forma republicana de governo representante do poder do eleitorado, administração secular, nacionalismo, economia mista com a participação do Estado em muitos setores vitais e modernização. "Ataturkismo" introduziu na Turquia, o processo parlamentar e uma democracia participatória.

Primeira nação muçulmana a tornar-se República, a Turquia tem servido desde 1920 como um modelo para nações muçulmanas e não muçulmanas.

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Fonte:
http://www.turquiaviagens.com/avida.html

Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeX1DZqrl8uDQozQ4g16xnjW

Gorlice-Tarnow

Despite its early date, the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, 2-10 May 1915, was in many ways the decisive battle on the Eastern Front during the First World War. At the outbreak of the war, the most Eastern Front had been dominated by the Polish Salient. Russian occupied Poland jutted west towards Germany. To both sides it represented an opportunity and a danger. It gave the Russians the chance to attack west into industrial Silesia or towards Berlin, north into East Prussia or south towards the Carpathians and the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However the salient was also vulnerable to German and Austro-Hungarian attack, with a risk that every Russian soldier in Poland could be trapped in the west.

The war began with Russian invasions of East Prussia, and of Galicia (the Austro-Hungarian province to the south of Poland and north of the Carpathian Mountains). The Germans had defeated the invasion of East Prussia, but the Austrians had been forced back to the Carpathians after the disastrous battles of Lemberg. A German attack on Warsaw in the autumn of 1914 had briefly allowed the Austrians to restore the situation, but by the spring of 1915 they were once again fighting in the Carpathians and faced a real danger that the Russians might break through into Hungary.

The Chief of the General Staff, General Conrad von Hötzendorf, devised the plan that would retrieve the situation, but it would require German troops. He called for four German divisions to be moved to the quiet western end of the Carpathian Front, where the front line turned north. This German force would break through the Russian lines and advance east behind the Russian armies in the Carpathians, forcing them to retreat or risk surrender.

The Austrian plan was accepted by the German High Command. General Falkenhayn decided to move an entire German Army (four corps, or eight divisions), to the sector of the front line that ran north from Gorlice, at the edge of the Carpathians, to Tarnow.

This was the Eleventh Army, under General von Mackensen. He was given the Guards, X, XLI and a Composite Corps, all moved in secrecy from the Western Front. The gas attack that led to the second battle of Ypres was one of a series of diversions launched to hide this movement. Mackensen was also given command of the Austrian troops allocated to the offensive, the VI corps and a Hungarian cavalry division. This army took up position behind the line of the Austrian Fourth Army, which then moved north to let the Germans take over the line. On 28 April the Germans were in place.

The Russians were massively outnumbered between Tarnow and Gorlice. Von Mackensen had 170,000 men, with 702 field guns and nearly 300 heavy guns. In the area to be attacked, the Russians had two divisions from General Radko-Dmitriev's Third Army.

The German plan was for a simple frontal assault, supported by a heavy artillery bombardment. It was thus very different from the more ambitious plans for envelopments and double envelopments that had previously dominated German thinking. It was a type of attack that would have failed on the western front, but the Russian lines between Gorlice and Tarnow were much weaker than the French or British lines in the west.

At 6 am on 2 May a four hour bombardment began. This was the heaviest yet seen on the Eastern Front, and destroyed the Russian defences. At 10 a.m. the first wave of 30,000 German and Austrian infantry attacked, and by the end of the day had captured the Russian first and second lines.

On 4 May a Russian counterattack, by III Caucasian Corps, failed, and the Germans broke out into open country. They made rapid progress to the east, threatening the entire Russian Carpathian Front. By the end of the first week of the offensive, the Germans had captured 140,000 prisoners and 100 guns, and the Russian Third Army had been destroyed. Most of its divisions were down to 1,000 men, less than 10% of their full strength. On 10 May the Austrians advancing on the German right forced their way across the river San at Sanok, and began to advance towards the fortress of Przemysl.

The German and Austrians continued to advance throughout the summer. The three Russian armies on the Carpathians were forced to retreat towards Lemberg, which itself fell on 22 June. Przemysl had been evacuated on 1 June, after an attempt to defend the San at Jaroslaw failed. The Germans then turned north, and began an advance to the east of Warsaw, while a second German attack (Twelfth Army), from the north, forced the Russians to abandon Warsaw on 5 August. On 25 August Brest-Litovsk fell to the Germans.

By the middle of September the Russians had been forced back to a line that ran from Lithuania south to the Pripet Marshes and the Rumanian border. Russian Poland had been lost, and any direct threat to German or to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was gone. The Russian commander in chief in the west, the Grand Duke Nicholas, had conducted a skilful retreat and had preserved a large part of the Russian army, but on 21 August Tsar Nicholas II transferred the Grand Duke to the Caucasus Front and took direct command of the armies. This established a link between the Tsar and the progress of the war that would play a significant role in reducing his popularity over the next two years.

The only negative element of the campaign from the German point of view was the increasing weakness of their Austro-Hungarian allies. They had lost over one million men since the start of 1915, and were becoming increasingly dependent on German aid to maintain their war effort. The process that saw the Austro-Hungarian Empire go from being Germany's almost equal ally to being their costly dependent was well under way.

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Fonte:
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_gorlice_tarnow.html

Rome: Total War

When we wrote the book [Rome The Second Time] we knew much less about Italy's role in the Great War, now known as World War I, partly because that war took place nearly a century ago, but also because the war didn't pass through Rome; fighting was restricted to northern and northeastern Italy, to the Trentino, Veneto, Friuli, and a section of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that included the Carso Plateau (close to Trieste), the Bainsizza Plateau, and the hills and mountains on both sides the River Isonzo. Italy was fighting with the Allies (France, Great Britain, Russia, and later the US) and against Austria-Hungary and Germany, but it was in the war only because it hoped to acquire territory, especially the coastal city of Trieste (where there were many Italians) but also the seaboard of the Eastern Adriatic (where the people were mostly Slavic). Italy was the aggressor, led to war by patriotic demagogues - the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio and Mussolini among them - who called it "the fourth war for independence." It was nothing of the sort.

We know something about this conflict now because we've just finished Mark Thompson's remarkable book, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2008); the title best reflects the fighting that took place to the north and east of Lake Garda in the Dolomite Mountains, actually a minor theater.

Oddly, Italy got just about everything it wanted, territorially, from the war. But the methods by which it was fought, the rhythm of the conflict, and Italian demands at the end of the war, made it seem to many like a humiliating defeat, and that perception fueled the rise of Fascism.

The methods? Under its arrogant, thoughtless and stubborn commander, General Luigi Cadorna, the hardly-trained, badly-equipped Italian infantrymen were sent up one steep mountainside after another, into the machine guns of the Austrian army, waiting in trenches behind barbed wire that the Italians had great difficulty cutting or blowing up. The result, concludes Thompson, was a bloodbath even worse than that on the storied Western Front. In the Italian theater - and nowhere else in the entire war - the carnage was so extreme that more than once Austrian defenders, horrified at the slaughter, implored the oncoming Italians to stop and save themselves: "Italians! Go back! We don't want to massacre you!" By war's end, some 900,000 Italians had been killed or wounded.

When soldiers questioned their orders, Cadorna met threats to military discipline, even minor ones, with his own version of military justice, urging his officers to employ the Roman practice of decimation, in which 1 in 10 members of a unit were killed at random, by names drawn out of a hat. No other army did this.

The war went badly for Italy, horrific assault after horrific assault along the Isonzo - eleven by October 1917 - but minimal gains in territory. A deadly stalemate. Then things changed. Exploiting a weakness in the Italian defenses and a distracted and inept Cadorna, an Austro-German force poured through a gap in the mountains at the small town of Caporetto (the Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda was serving nearby) and from there out onto the plains of Friuli, the Italian army in a nightmarish retreat - many soldiers throwing away their guns and heading home - that would not end until the River Piave, 70 kilometers to the west and only 25 kilometers from Venice. "No single defeat in battle," writes Thompson, "had placed Italy in such peril since Hannibal destroyed the Roman legions at Cannae, more than two thousand years before." The Fascists would spin this defeat their own way, insisting on the integrity and honor of the army while indicting the liberal government in Rome for tolerating defeatists (not unlike the approach the right would take in the 1970s to the Vietnam war). Nonetheless, to this day the word "Caporetto" is a metaphor for scandal, corruption, and defeat; Italian red tape, notes Thompson, might be referred to as an "administrative Caporetto." Similarly, the phrase "another Vietnam" means another humiliating defeat, or another quagmire.

The rest of the story, briefly told: The Austro-German force failed to exploit its advantage, and the Italian line at the Piave held. French and British troops moved in to assist the hapless Italians and the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary. A new Italian commander, General Armando Diaz, restored order, discipline and morale to the Italian ranks. On the other side, the Germans removed their divisions to the Western Front and the remaining Austrian armies began to suffer shortages of food and military supplies.

Because Italy was keeping a lot of Austrian troops away from the all-important Western Front, the Allies were willing to support most of Italy's war aims. In June 1918, a desperate, failed Austrian army attack at the Piave ended in disaster and retreat, and the Italian army, now bolstered by French and British forces, went on the offensive. By November 4, when the Armistice went into effect, the Austrians were again at the Isonzo, this time in full flight - a "Caporetto in reverse," as Diaz wrote to his wife. An Italian destroyer had staked the Italian claim to Trieste. "Just when we learned to fight," went a joke going around the infantry, "the war is over!"

In the negotiations over territory that followed, the Italians overreached, demanding territory to the east, lands occupied by 750,000 Slovenes and Croats; the Dalmatian Islands; and Fiume on the Adriatic, the only port that would have provided the new state of Yugoslavia essential access to the sea and merchant shipping. When Italy did not get all that it wanted - Fiume became a free state, and most of the Dalmatians went to Yugoslavia - right-wing zealots cast the result as a great humiliation and defeat, perpetrated by a soft liberal state. D'Annunzio's spoke of a "mutilated victory," and Mussolini's followers promised revenge for the Great Betrayal. The stage was set for the March on Rome.

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Fonte:
http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com.br/2011/02/italy-and-great-war.html

Mais:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/1BMLX-AoELzZOjHn01uAQwmrMa0ev9j-z
http://www.centenario1914-1918.it