Remembrance Day is on Wednesday. For this week’s history segment, Karen Bachmann looks back to why – as Armistice Day – November 11th began to be marked in 1919. That’s a year after the First World War ended.
Bachmann says during the four-year war, millions of soldiers were mobilized and millions of people affected.
FIRST WORLD WAR BY THE NUMBERS
- 65-million soldiers mobilized for both Allied and Central forces
- 8.5-million soldiers killed; 37-million injured
- 13-million civilians died of starvation, disease, military encounters and massacres
- Bachmann says the world was transformed in other ways. Russia underwent a revolution; Germany became a republic; the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismantled; and the Middle East and Europe were both restructured.
“It’s difficult for us to understand today just how completely destructive this war had been,” she observes. “Cities were destroyed, villages were obliterated, the economy was in a shambles, the environment was totally damaged.”
On the day the war ended, the imminent ceasefire was known at the front. Fighting, however, continued until the final hour.
“At 11:00am on November 11th, 1918 both sides stopped shooting and some spontaneous fraternizing happened between the two sides,” says Bachmann. “A British corporal reported that the Germans came up from the trenches, bowed to us and then just walked away.”
Armistice Day began the following year. In 1931, a British Columbia MP presented a bill moving the observance from the Monday of the week of November 11th. That’s also the year it became Remembrance Day.
