Litarature Durring The War

It can be said that no great book about WWI was published during the war. The most famous were published postwar. Some of these were All Quiet On The Western Front (1929), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and The Guns of August (1962).

The war also had a large affect on British literature. Many political and social changes happened because of the war, and those changes sparked new opinions and view points.The war also brought about the subject of individual faith in the effectiveness of governments and their militia. This was a heavily critiqued subject after the war. There is a drastic change in prewar and postwar literature because of these recent topics. England also had a great interest in war literature during the 1920s and '30s. This interest died down because of the Second World War, but was rekindled in the 1960s when there was renewed interest in WWI around its fiftieth anniversary.   

As for reading material in the trenches, soldiers read anything they could. This usually consisted of dime store novels, magazines, or even, if they were lucky, plays by Shakespeare or other classic literature. Sometimes magazines were printed at the front (this depended on if the trench was lucky enough to have acquired a printing press), but for the most part books had to be brought in.

 

German soldiers reading in trench

In Remembrance of the End of WWI

Cheering soldiers after hearing cease fire

On the 11 hour of November 11, 1918 World War One ended. All nations had agreed to stop fighting while the peace terms were decided. The war came formally to a close on June 28, 1919. One hundred years later the countries that participated in The Great War are remembering those who died. In England the 888,246 ceramic poppies that were made to commemorate every British casualty during the war will be on display and will remain so for the rest of the month. In France a ring with hundreds of thousands of names engraved on it was placed on a hillside that used to be a battleground. In Germany there is no celebration, but there is remembrance of the 9.6 million soldiers that died in the war. In America Veterans Day is not only about the close of The War to End All Wars, but it is also a day to honor our current service members and those who have served.

Even though the whole world remembers the end of WWI, those European countries that were first to fight remember it the most. While in America it is a holiday, in England, France, Russia, and Germany it is more than just a holiday, for they began it.

Poppies in tower of London's mote, photo by Getty Images

 

British sailors marching.