Because we do not forget and because we do not want to forget, we are republishing this text, first written and published in 1998 in “Epohi,” with the introduction that accompanied it in 2016. At a time when, before the eyes of the whole world, Ukrainian cities are being savagely bombed and a massacre that is the very definition of genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza, words are superfluous to describe “the unbearable relevance of the First World War”…

Yorgos Mitralias

We are republishing the text “The unbearable relevance of the first global carnage” for at least three reasons:

 1. Because the enormous score to settle with the “eminent figures” responsible for the butschery and the moral obligation to the tens of millions of their victims cannot be exhausted in a simple commemorative reminder such as “1914-2014, a century ago, World War I,” as happened two or three years ago. That is why, not only in 2017, but also in 2018, then in 2019, and the following year… until there is a great final catharsis of social justice, we will continue to remember and recall the great crime of “those from above” and the great massacre of “those from below,” which definitively plunged us into the contemporary era of human bestiality and, at the same time, into all the existential dilemmas of humanity.

2. Because never before, unfortunately, has “the relevance of the first global butchery been as unbearable as it is today, at a time when the bloodbaths of countless “local” wars around us are multiplying, when the far right, Neo-fascism and the most ferocious racism are once again sweeping across Europe, and on the opposite shore of the Atlantic, a contemporary far-right Caligula named Donald Trump is preparing to lead the American superpower.

 3. Because only awareness and a deeper understanding of this “unbearable reality of the first global slaughter” on the part of “those at the bottom”—and their leaders—can realistically and effectively guide their political and other choices and define their immediate tasks at this critical moment in human history.

1914-2025:
The unbearable revelance of the first world butchery

by Yorgos Mitralias

Why does Epohi devote a page to the First World War? The question is not correctly posed. Why only one page on the First World War, and only in Epohi?*

Exaggeration, the reader will say. All that is now in the past, pure nostalgia in the era of a united Europe. Moreover, such trench warfare would be inconceivable today, even if it resembles the (very European) massacre in Bosnia like two drops of water.

If only that were the case. But unfortunately, it is not. If only for one reason: we are all, even if we don’t know it, the true children of that first great four-year horror that haunted the century. And because we are the descendants of those 10,000,000 teenagers who died before reaching adulthood and the 20,000,000 maimed who survived, that is why we will never manage to “emerge from the prehistory of humanity” if we do not first settle our accounts with the murderers, bequeathed to us first and foremost by the unprecedented carnage of 1914-1918.

So let’s not kid ourselves. This war is still relevant today because it remains the “mother of all wars,” those of yesterday, those of today and, unfortunately, those of tomorrow. For impartial researchers, it is the matrix from which the modern world emerged, with its new superpowers and revolutionary new technologies, with its advantages but also its flaws. A kind of baptism of fire into which humanity had to plunge in order to enter the era of its great conquests.

Empty words, even if they contain a grain of truth. Above all, 1914-1918 marks humanity’s brutal entry into our current barbarism. Into “industrialized” war. In the great stress of the 20th century. It was the first encounter with the nightmare that leads directly to Rosa’s (and humanity’s) still relevant existential dilemma: “socialism or barbarism.” Before that, we were innocent and naive. But after that, no one can pretend to be unaware that “those at the top” are capable of anything! Even to lead to the senseless massacre of millions of peasants and proletarians for an “insignificant reason” that no one remembers anymore. Yesterday, Sarajevo; today, “our” Boukephalas and MegAlexandros (1)! And tomorrow, what?

But beyond history, there are also ordinary people, in flesh and blood. The simple soldiers. Dear reader, take the trouble to imagine them pissing in their pants while their leader (French, German, Italian, English, American, or Greek) orders them to leave their trenches and commit suicide by throwing themselves at the enemy machine guns that mow them down. Take the trouble to put yourself in their shoes, even if only for a few seconds. Feel all their despair in the thick mud that was one with the successive layers of corpses. Their horror when they were hit by a “quarter,” that is, a head with a shoulder and an arm. Their rage when they realized that their lives were cut short before they had even had sex for the first time. Take the trouble to identify with the thousands of beardless “muins” as they are executed by their generals “to set an example”… and remember that these crimes are bound to be repeated as long as the breed of murderers remains unpunished.

We would like to “illustrate” this page with one of those photos of monstrously disfigured soldiers that the anti-war movement between the two world wars used to ensure that “there would never be another war.” But we were told that the sight would be unbearable, and they are probably right. That is why we are using a page from the masterful album that the great French cartoonist Tardi devoted to the “trench warfare” that his grandfather (a veteran and anti-militarist) told him about. With Tardi, we conclude with the last lines of his brief introduction: “Every year, on November 11, we medal an ‘old man’ (how many are left?). He too was twenty years old in 1915 and was robbed of his youth and his future. So don’t mock…”

* The above text was first published in “Epohi” in November 1998, on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War I. We believe that its republication today, 16 years later, is justified by the fact that it is just as relevant, if not more so, than it was at the time.