First world war

Monday

November 12, 2018

Trump had an opportunity to redefine American foreign policy. He blew it

Donald J. Trump is home from his whirlwind weekend trip to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War’s end. Even by The Donald’s formidable china-breaking standards, this was a doozy which will be discussed with opprobrium by the Transatlantic smart set for some time. President Trump seemed to go out of his way to upset his French counterpart and host Emmanuel Macron, who’s hit a political rough patch and needed some brotherly love. That bromance is dead and buried, however, and Trump fired off a mocking tweet at Macron as he boarded Air Force One for Paris that denounced the French president’s backing of a European army as ‘very insulting.

Sunday

November 11, 2018

Glenn Skwerer

Hitler, a hundred years ago

When World War One ended at 11 in the morning of November 11, 1918, Winston Churchill was in his ministerial office near Trafalgar Square. At the first stroke of the chime, ‘from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street’ as the bells of London pealed. ‘Around me, in our very headquarters, disorder had broken out – doors banged; feet clattered down corridors; everyone rose from the desk; all bounds were broken. The tumult grew, it grew like a gale, but from all sides simultaneously. The street was now a seething mass of humanity. Flags appeared as if by magic, streams of men and women flowed from the embankment. They mingled with torrents pouring down the Strand.