“Surrounded by masked men during a phosgene attack at Verdun, Pierre de Mazenod was reminded of a ‘carnival of death.’ For many, gas took the war into the realm of the unreal, the make-believe. When men donned their masks they lost all sign of humanity, and with their long snouts, large glass eyes, and slow movements, they became figures of fantasy, closer in their angular features to the creations of Picasso and Braque than to soldiers of tradition. Dorgelès called the gas mask ‘this pig snout which represented the war’s true face.’ British comment on the German gas attacks included the following: ‘With used by the Germans of poison gas the war took a more bitter turn and horror followed horror until the soldier of civilization had to rise to a height of courage putting altogether in the shade that of the Knights of old, who went out to fight loathly dragons which breathed fire and mephitic vapours. In this mortal struggle with a race of scientific orang-outans, it requires a shutting of the eyes to externals and a looking inward to see the nimbus shining from the brow of the soldier... But how much more splendid than that of any beplumed, caparisoned soldier of old, is his courage as he rides, or squats in mud or dust, swathed in his chemical bandages so that all human likenesses is lost, awaiting not only shot and shell and steel, but flammenwerfer, asphyxiating gas, lachrymatory gas, stink gas, and other instruments of German warfare!’”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“Henry James referred in January 1915 to the ‘baseness of demonism’ that lay behind the destruction of Ypres, but the first systematic use of asphyxiating gas on the Western Front by the Germans, on April 22nd, 1915, at Langemarck near Ypres, against French and Canadian troops, removed any doubts in the Allied populations about the satanic nature of the German threat and about German ‘guilt’. That event in the spring of 1915 was the most spectacular act in what Pierre Miquel has called ‘the terrorist war.’”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“The young, talented, and already greatly respected historian Friedrich Meinecke wrote in the early months of the [First World] war that what the foreigner calls brutality in German behavior, the German himself must call simply honesty. After all, if the cathedral at Rheims was being used by French observers, it had to be bombed. It was as simple as that. For the French and British to call the German a barbarian in these circumstances was pure hypocrisy. Meinecke was relatively moderate. Another German historian expressed similar ideas in shriller tones: ‘Better than a thousand church towers fall than that one German soldier should fall as a result of these towers. Let’s not have any whining from humanists and aesthetes among ourselves. We have to assert ourselves. Those are such simple truths that it becomes tedious to have to repeat them to people who don't wish to hear.’ Rather than such unequivocal assertions about the pre-eminence of life force over history, one might have expected from Meinecke and his confrère, given their professions, a greater respect for the dependence of the individual and the nation on their historical context. Yet the emphasis in their comments is on the Dionysian act of self-assertion. In the course of the war, thirty-five of forty-three holders of chairs in history in German universities were to aver that Germany had become involved in the war only because she had been attacked.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“The climax of The Lord of the Rings [he refers to the siege of Minas Tirith] palpably echoed the momentous events of 955: the attack on Augsburg and the battle of the Lech. A wise and battle-seasoned scholar, consecrated in his mission by a supernatural power, standing in the gateway of a breached city and blocking the enemy’s advance. An army of mail-clad horsemen arriving to contend the battlefield just as the invaders seemed to have victory in their grasp. A king armed with a sacred weapon, laying claim to an empty imperial throne. In 2003, a film of The Lord of the Rings had brought Aragorn's victory over the snarling hordes of Mordor to millions who had never heard of the battle of the Lech. Burnished and repackaged for the twenty-first century, Otto’s defense of Christendom still possessed a spectral glamour. Its legacy, though, that summer of 2014, was shaded by multiple ironies. Otto’s mantle was taken up not by the chancellor of Germany, but by the Prime Minister of Hungary. Viktor Orbán had until recently been a self-avowed atheist; but this did not prevent him from doubting – much as Otto might have done – whether unbaptized migrants could ever truly be integrated. ‘This is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots.’”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“While the differences between Anglo-French and German motivations, which we stressed earlier, remained distinct for soldiers and civilians during the entire war, the sensibilities of the British and French had moved toward the German [particularly regarding abandoning restraint with regard to methods.... The Western nations moved in the course of the war toward stronger social control but also toward a new spiritual liberality. Within this paradox, as the social and cultural welds seemed to split away from each other, would lie the essence of the modern experience.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“Dorgelès called the [World War I] trenches ‘this huge confessional’”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“Although barely literate, he [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] had received a formidable education from one of the most influential of all Muslim radicals. In 1994, arrested for planning terrorist offences and Jordan, al-Zarqawi had stood trial alongside a Palestinian scholar named Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. For five years, while serving his prison term, he had been tutored by al-Maqdisi in the crisis that was facing Islam. Muslims, despite God's gift to them of a perfect and eternal law, had been seduced into obeying laws offered by men. They had become, al-Maqdisi warned, like Christians: infidels who took legislators as their lords ‘instead of God’. Governments across the Muslim world had adopted constitutions that directly contradicted the Sunna. Worse, they had signed up to international bodies that, despite their claims to neutrality, served to foist on Muslims alien law codes. Most menacing of all was the United Nations. Established in the aftermath of the Second World War, its delegates had proclaimed a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To be a Muslim, though, was to know that humans did not have rights. There was no natural law in Islam. There were only laws authored by God. Muslim countries, by joining the United Nations, had signed up to a host of commitments that derived, not from the Qur’an or the Sunna, but from law codes devised in Christian countries: that there should be equality between men and women; equality between Muslims and non-Muslims; a ban on slavery; a ban on offensive warfare. Such doctrines, al-Maqdisi sternly ruled, had no place in Islam. To accept them was to become an apostate. Al-Zarqawi, released from prison in 1999, did not forget al-Maqdisi's warnings. In 2003, launching his campaign in Iraq, he went for a soft and telling target. On 19 August, a car bomb blew up the United Nations headquarters in the country. The UN special representative was crushed to death in his office. Twenty-two others were also killed. Over 100 were left maimed and wounded. Shortly afterwards, the United Nations withdrew from Iraq. ‘Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith.’ President Bush’s reassurance, offered before the invasion of Iraq, was not one that al-Zarqawi was remotely prepared to accept.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

On the 9th Hour podcast I joined theatre artist Breanna Doyle and host Charley to discuss heroes and villains in history, finding truth among shifting interpretations, and what it means for us today.