The entire First World War was a betrayal of ordinary people by their political leaders. The young men who died at Passchendaele were mostly volunteers. They had volunteered because their leaders had persuaded them that they were serving their God and their country. Well, God has no interest in this war. And our country did not benefit either.
No country benefited from the First World War. The entire war was a competition between the political leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Britain to see who has the biggest ego. The American politicians joined in at the end to prove that their ego was bigger still.
The politicians always try to put a good spin on the war by saying that those who died are heroes. If dying bravely on the other side of the world in a pointless war makes you a hero, I suppose they were. However they were heroes that died for nothing; not for God, not for their country, not even for their comrades. These heroes were really fools because they trusted the lies of their political leaders. Passchendaele proves the lies of the politicians.
Then there were the generals. Their decisions during the First World War were abysmal. They wasted the lives of thousands, maybe millions, of soldiers. They were often made to climb up out of their trenches through the mud and the rain straight into the teeth of enemy machine guns. Over an over again the generals decided on assaults that were doomed to fail. The waste of lives was enormous.
Now the generals turn up at memorial services and bask in the glory of those they call heroes. The soldiers might have been heroes, but they were also fools to have trusted in such foolish and incompetent leaders.
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