How the top brass undermined WWI soldiers' attempts to 'live and let live'

Barry Healy writes How the top brass undermined WWI soldiers' attempts to 'live and let live'.

In the final months of the war, half of all German reserves failed to report for duty. Deserting German soldiers commandeered trains to take them home. The Kaiser and his upper officers considered bombing them, but the lower officers refused to do it.

Finally, in November 1918 German sailors in Hamburg mutinied and established a soviet in the city. The Kaiser fled the country and the war was over.

After the November 11, 1918 armistice, desertions and mutinies spread to the British soldiers who wanted to go home immediately. That stopped then-prime minister David Lloyd George from sending troops to occupy Germany.

Lloyd George said: “Germany was like a cholera area infected with the virus of Bolshevism.”

WWI ended because millions of workers pressed into uniform refused to fight any longer. Between now and 2018, the corporate media will tell us that glorious battles were fought and stalwart Diggers won great victories. Those will be falsehoods.

We must remember and honour those brave people who were lied to and manipulated by cynical imperialists and sent to the madness of WWI.

The memorial we must build them is an anti-war movement that says that never again will we allow working-class people to be sent to the slaughter in the service of their enemies at home.

Emphasis Mine

Yet this did not stop the Imperialists sending Australian, American, Japanese, Canadian, and other troops into Russia to fight the Bolsheviks.