They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
Revelation 6.10 (ESV).
On the 11th of November in the year A.D. 1918, the German Empire signed an armistice near the city of Compiègne. This armistice formally ended the ongoing Great War – later known as the First World War – that raged for four years (though it would officially end a year later (28 Jun. 1919) with the Treaty of Versailles). Fighting would end on the 11th hour (11:00 a.m.) of the 11th day of the 11th month of that year.
Several countries (including, but not limited to, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and Hong Kong) solemnly observe the 11th of November as Remembrance Day, also called Armistice Day. The United States of America observes Veterans Day at the same time.
Today – as in, the day I am posting this – is Remembrance Day.
Today I attended a memorial service with my fellow-believers in the community. We sang the national anthem along with various Christian hymns, we read from Scripture (from Micah 5.1-5 and Revelation 24.1-4 to be exact), and a couple men talked about veterans that they knew growing up. One man talked about two veterans he knew: one who served the Crown in Italy and the Netherlands during the Second World War, and the other fought in the German Wehrmacht on the eastern front of the same war. The Allied soldier was a volunteer, the Axis one a conscript. The man didn’t talk about if the Axis veteran ever harmed civillians (or the Allied one for that matter), but as the Axis veteran was released from the Soviet POW camp and could find refuge in western territory, I assume he didn’t partake in the slaughter of non-combatants. The German conscript was able to settle down in an Allied country, even becoming friends with the aforementioned Allied soldier.
This story had me thinking. Those of us living in countries once part of the Allied powers of the Second World War can generally say our soldiers fought for what’s right. The actual situation may be less pretty – you can find instances of warcrimes Allied forces did, and those same nations would later fight each other in the Cold War – but generally the narrative of fighting Hitler’s tyranny works. The German Reich was quite bluntly the aggressor. But when Germany lost, their nation was humiliated, and still today many Germans believe their wartime sins need to be atoned for. Yet many Germans didn’t choose to be the aggressors. The Wehrmacht soldier I heard the story about was conscripted after the war began. Even many of those who supported Adolf Hitler were often unaware of what the SS and the higher-ups had planned. This is what makes that story so interesting to me; a Wehrmacht soldier could settle down in an Allied country, make friends with a soldier he would have been on the opposite side of (though I doubt the two fought directly), and even be remembered on Remembrence Day as a veteran that we prayed for.
But the 11th of November commemorates the end of the First World War, not the Second, though we remember veterans of all wars. This also got me thinking; the Central Powers were not the Axis, and the Entente was just the predecessor to the Allies. Entente soldiers were not fighting Hitler’s totalitarianism, but the German Empire, a constitutional monarchy similar (but not identical) to that of Great Britain. Germany only went to war with Russia to defend Austria-Hungary, which led to it being attacked by France. They only invaded Belgium for a quicker route to France, and for this reason the British Empire went to war with Germany. This web of alliances led to the mass slaughter seen from 1914 to 1918. The First World war is not remembered as a righteous liberation, but as a great tragedy.
To add, many of those involved professed to be Christians. Most Britons were Anglicans or Evangelicals; most Frenchmen, Italians, & Austro-Hungarian citizens were Roman Catholics, most Germans either Evangelical Lutherans or Roman Catholics, and most Russians, Bulgarians, & Serbs were Eastern Orthodox. Contrast this with the Second World War, where fascism was explicitly a rejection of God (see “Benito the Christian?”, Time Magazine, 25 Aug. 1924) and Hitler a mangled syncretist (see “Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?” (14 Jul. 2021) by Tim O’Neill at History for Atheists). This is not so for the Great War; the only major nations involved that weren’t led by self-professed Christians were the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) and the Japanese (pagans/Shintoists). Countless young men and women who professed a God who declared “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5.9 KJV) found themselves butchering each other in trenches – and for what? Nations were not “liberated”, but rather pushed into the conditions that would later spark an even more brutal conflict.
The world wars in general serve as a reminder of the fallenness of the world, and of how men in their sin created an image of hell on earth. Yet Remembrance Day serves as a reminder of the blessed hope given to us by our Lord. God saw all of the suffering that his creations had inflicted upon each other, and he took that suffering upon himself – “even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2.8 KJV) – so that he may lift us out of hit. The fallen dead of the war did not endure it alone, not only because they had each other, but also because of the Lord God who took the pain of sin on himself. To us today, should we hear of “wars and rumours of wars” (Matthew 24.6 KJV) like those happening in Ukraine or Syria at the moment, know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel – the promise of grace.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
Paul the Apostle. II Corinthians 1.3-5 (ESV).
Nikaea 325 