Nous étions jeunes et insouciants...

Sleater-Kinney - Entertain (Live)

Solid performance. 

I mean, does this ever not need repeating?

Shermans of the British XXX Corps cross the road bridge at Nijmegen during its capture.

January 1, 1916 - Looking Forward to 1916

Pictured - Victory on the horizon?

Flares, rockets, and artillery shells lit up New Year’s Eve on the Western Front as soldiers celebrated the end of 1915.  But would the dawning new year give them any cause to celebrate?

1915 had seen an immense growth in the power of the state as the governments of the warring powers exerted more and more control over their citizens, with drafts and rations, in the hopes of winning a long and destructive war.  1916 would see these new resources employed on the battlefield in immense battles of attrition.  It was to be the year of total war.

The Central Powers began 1916 as the dominant side, their ascendancy on the battlefield reflected by confidence at home, such as how the Hapsburg Empire treated its national minorities.  In January 1916 the Austro-Hungarian government declared that German was the only official language in Bohemia.  Viennese police used their truncheons to beat up pedestrians they heard speaking Czech. On the battlefront, Austria’s nemesis Serbia had finally been defeated.  On the 8th of January the Central Powers invaded and defeated Montenegro, Serbia’s ally.  German troops defended positions far into the French interior and in the heart of Poland, deep in the Russian Empire.  The Turks, meanwhile, had won an astonishing victory at Gallipoli and had the British on the backfoot in Iraq.

Yet for all this, Germany and its allies had the sense that they were playing against the clock.  “There can be no question of destroying the Russian war machine,” pessimistically warned Austrian General Conrad to Count Tisza on January 4, “England cannot be defeated; peace must be made in not too short a space, or we shall be fatally weakened, if not destroyed.”  To that end, Germany was planning the masterstroke to defeat France: a spectacular battle at Verdun to “bleed France white”.

Britain and France were planning their own next move - a summer offensive on the Somme River.  It would be Germany that would strike first at Verdun in late February, dragging France into a horrid battle of attrition that lasted until the end of the year, in which almost every single infantryman in the French Army would participate.  The British attack on the Somme commenced in July to help the French.  Both battles would be among the worst bloodbaths of world history.  The Russians would make their own, surprisingly effective, contribution with the Brusilov Offensive in June.

Final word: ‘Ah, I remember you: you’re the guy who lost the Tour by eight seconds,’ a cycling fan once asked Fignon. The Frenchman, responded with the acerbic line: ‘No monsieur, I’m the guy who won it twice’

Two nude women dance on stage with a ‘robot’ in a show at London Casino, 1937