Reevaluating the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli

Churchill's dismal failure at Gallipoli and the Turk's own view of the "victory" are reviewed in an excellent article in The Smithsonian magazine.

Montana's Sedition Law Silenced All Dissent During WWI

Some 200 people were arrested, and approximately 125 people went to trial under the Montana Sedition Law, which criminalized nearly everything said or written against the American government and its conduct when it passed in February 1918. 

The penalties--a maximum of 10-to-20 years in prison and up to a $20,000 fine--were tough, and the pressure on “disloyal” citizens was relentless. The vast majority of people were rounded up for casual statements, off-the-cuff remarks deemed pro-German or anti-American. Citizens turned against one another, joining “patriotic” organizations like the Montana Loyalty League with its stated goal of keeping the Treasure State from “going over body and soul to the Kaiser.

Montana’s law fortified the restrictions in the Espionage Act, which Congress passed with the full support of the Woodrow Wilson administration in June 1917, two months after America entered World War I. It was intended to root out saboteurs, making it a crime to interfere with U.S. war efforts or to promote the country’s enemies, but that wasn’t enough for Montana. Paranoia rippled across the state, fueled by newspapers like the Billings Gazettefeaturing an October column asking: Are the Germans about the bomb the capital of Montana? Have they spies in the mountain fastnesses equipped with wireless stations and aeroplanes? Do our enemies fly around our high mountains where formerly only the shadow of the eagle swept?

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/year-montana-rounded-citizens-shooting-their-mouths-180953876/#svl7x09QtBR0ctqr.99

Why did Germany lose in World War I?

Stephen Tempest, a "qualified amateur historian," provides a very nice summary of the topic in this post on Quora.

The Christmas Truce

The NPR program Humandkind is offering a CD or MP3 file about The Christmas Truce on Dec. 25, 1914. Click here for details.

World War I Pearltree

I don't know how many of you use Pearltrees (a Web aggregation/exploration site), but here's an interesting Pearltree for World War I. 

The Most Decorated Dog in US History

"Nearly seventy miles northeast of Paris, there are over twenty cemeteries where the bodies of mostly unidentified German, British, and Italian soldiers are buried from the first World War. There is also Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, the final resting place for over six thousand Americans that lost their lives during the Great War, many of whom fell upon the very ground where their last earthly remains lay during the Third Battle of the Aisne. It was during that bloody battle that a stray dog became the most decorated canine in American military history."

Read the full story in Lapham's Quarterly.

"An armistace for 20 years"

From the Telegraph (UK): "Marshal Ferdinand Foch was the author of one of history’s most accurate predictions. Surveying the Treaty of Versailles and the humiliating terms imposed on Germany in 1919, the former “Generalissimo” of Allied Forces declared: 'This is not peace – it is an armistice for 20 years.'

"And so it proved. The triumphalism of the victors of the First World War laid the foundations for another cataclysm. When Europe had to be rebuilt again in 1945, Churchill and Truman, haunted by the mistakes of Versailles, ensured that a new Germany was resurrected and included rather than cast out."