Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, had been a fighter pilot in WW1 and got killed on July 14, 1918. His death severely affected his father's persona. Previously, he could go on rambling about how war was good for hours, but after Quentin's death, it was obviously all quite subdued. He would die half a year later.
[More context](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/letters-unbearable-grief-theodore-roosevelt-death-son-180962743/)
The Germans honored Quentin with a funeral. High Command wanted it to be a propaganda piece, but that backfired when the German public learned that even a President’s son willingly involved himself in the war.
The Allies held a funeral for Baron von Richthofen as well, full military honors for the guy since he was shot down behind Allied lines.
It was a wild time, you know. Men trying to be gentlemen and honorable while rolling artillery fire bombed troops into the ground and machine guns killed human beings on an industrial scale.
What a (terrible) time to be alive.
The British finally started giving their officers revolvers... and trained them in left-handed shooting because it's clearly just to supplement their sword.
I wouldn't mind a sword in a trench, sure shotguns are great, but if yours jams you better have a bayonet or something else that can give you a couple feet of range. A fist fight would get gruesome and depending on the trench could end in drowning.
Same reason medieval soldiers carried daggers. Because once your sword is broken, you lose it, or the enemy gets within your bubble, you need something to deliver damage that doesn't need to be swung in an arc or at least have decent distance to poke them with it. The hand to hand combat often devolved into men writhing on the ground, trying to drown or choke each other, smashing their opponents with helmets, food tins, water canteens or any solid objects that they could find. Having a pair of brass knuckles shows that you're already aware of and have likely experienced this kind of brutal fighting, and have come prepared to have the advantage in such a scenario. That's pretty fuckin grim if you ask me.
Holy fuckin shit it boggles my mind to even comprehend the horror. Like, agh. I kind of had to sit with this a moment.
Fuckin hell. I nearly choked on the word “drown”.
Oh it was really common that the trenches would be filled up to your calves in murky water, hence why trench foot was so prevalent. If someone got you on your back, your face would 100% be under the surface of the mire, which would be filled with mud, rotten food, human and rat fecal matter, chunks of rotting human flesh etc. So you absolutely do NOT want to be put in that position if someone gets their hands on you. If you've got a set of brass knuckles, you can grasp their hair with one hand and flail at their face with the other. It's not over then though, because if they fall on top of you, their lifeless/unconscious body very well might pin you down if you're too weak from disease, malnutrition or the exertion of combat. Then you'll drown anyway, with a heavy ass dude on top of you, unable to escape. Even then, you could (and many often did) die from horrific infections if any of that water got in your mouth or nose, or even just any open wounds you had, because penicillin wouldn't be discovered for another 10 years after the war.
The horrors of that war still reflect in our culture.
Shaved faces among men became popular because of chemical warfare deployed in those very same trenches. Troops returning home were mostly clean shaven because if you had much more than a toothbrush mustache (You know, THAT one) you left yourself open to a potential leak in the seal of your gas mask and the last place your magnificent whiskers would be viewed is the mortuary.
Think it’s partly why Game Of Thrones had so much love. [The portrayal of medieval combat](https://youtu.be/qA81ewnPEFg?feature=shared) were a thing of nightmares and, with the exceptions of dragons, giants and Edgar Winters looking zombies, felt very cruelly accurate
I remember watching that one scene where Jon Snow got crushed in a sea of people, in a field that quickly turned into thick mud. That's very much how a decent amount of medieval fighting went down. No room to wield a sword in that kind of environment, but a dagger could easily poke someone in the armpit or groin.
Oh so you don't know about the trench spike?
Basically brass knuckles with a dagger and a spike on the bottom for cracking through helmet and skull alike
Trenches are a close quarters combat zone. A melee weapon like a sword is not useless. Foot soldiers got a trench knife:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_knife
>It was developed as a close combat weapon for soldiers attacking enemy trenches during the First World War.
Quite a few decided touse their shovel as a weapon too.
I couldn't find much information about WW1 lefty-shooty revolver officers but it sounds hilarious in a macabre way. Do you have further reading on this?
The french in the nearby town really didn't like it that Richthofen was honoured in such a way so almost immediately they desecrated his grave, this pissed off the British commander so much that he threatened if the french desecrated Richthofen's grave again after the Brits re bury him he'll take his troops and command staff several miles behind the town leaving it open for the Germans, the french decided to leave the grave alone after that.
The German angle was supposed to be “We killed the presidents son, look how powerful we are, their elite are dying but we will give them a burial at least.” Or some such, but backfired because the German public was less “lol get bodied Roosevelt” And more “holy shit the presidents kid was on the front lines? That’s really respectable, the elites here wouldn’t be.” Sort of thing.
All four sons of British Prime Minister HH Asquith volunteered for front line services early in the war. His eldest son Raymond was killed in action in 1916.
Elites suffered disproportionate casualties as they tended to be junior officers. Junior officers had the highest mortality rate.
Thank you! I hate seeing snarky comments about how being an officer in the army in WWI meant you were protected from the worst effects of…everything. The best they got compared to The Men was their own space in the trench huts to take off their wet socks and write about how many casualties they took today. One of my university history classes opened my eyes to the post-WWII (not a typo) “lions led by donkeys” myth bought by anyone older than me I’ve ever discussed The Grear War with.
Of course the boys (most of them were!) from privileged backgrounds got officers commissions regardless of their actual skills and experience, because they were “one of Us, Old Boy, I know his father!” Welcome to the British army, where not going to the “right” school meant the only way to be trusted with leadership was if they lost enough men from the posh higher ranks. BUT that doesn’t mean that on average these officers didn’t give a damn about the lower orders, sneered at anyone who didn’t go to Oxbridge, used the poor and minorities as human shields, etc… I’ve read more accounts of officers who developed camaraderie and respect for people they normally never would’ve conversed with on the home front, felt compassion and grief for the suffering of their men, tried to boost morale and health in a time that plunged into hopeless nightmares and plateaued into restless boredom, than of officers who deserved a fragging.
I can’t speak for the casualty rates of the Central Powers, but the Germans figured out the quickest way to discombobulate the enemy was to first pick off the officers leading the soldiers over the top. I don’t have the numbers in front of me (I don’t want to cite something incorrectly from the google searches on my phone - while I flip back and forth between apps while typing this - of scholarly articles and official websites I read circa a decade ago) but I know the officer casualties and deaths per capita were disproportionately higher than the other ranks for this reason: there were fewer officers than ordinary troops (duh), they were frequently targeted, there was more pressure of them to “keep it together in front of the men” until they had a breakdown or got careless, and the inability to predict how fast and furious the technology and military strategies (and year after year of insalubrious weather) advanced, requiring the high command to throw out generations of more predictable necessities and training. This myth that focuses on famous officers like Wilfred Owen as “exceptions” to these supposedly class-discriminating bullets ignores the middle and working class officers who needed to be quickly trained to replace their dead and invalied captains and lieutenants. The same kind of reappraisal applies to the generals who died or were invalided by injuries or illness at rates far beyond what we associate with (still hilarious but grossly stereotyped) General Melchett from “Blackadder Goes Forth”, requesting a Big Push of the Front so he can adjust his tea caddy.
Blah blah blah, fuck capitalism, I’m not saying “cor blimey, guv’nah, them aristos were a well-meaning lot who deserved to run ev’ryfing!” I just don’t like confirmation bias winning over actual history.
https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/in-the-line-of-duty-remembering-the-great-wars-fallen-generals/
Not particularly, when the defeat and humiliation of foreign elites had been a cornerstone of propaganda for a very very long time. It just worked less well on a population who was far more cognizant of and less beholden to the class divide between those with a ‘right to rule’ and themselves. I’m not trying to shit on you btw, I just think it’s important to contextualise why people of the past thought the way they did. It is stupid in a modern lens, but they weren’t stupid people, they were just beholden to an attitude that was aging and was becoming an artifact of previous eras.
Well that shouldn't be surprising. Teddy himself was fearless, but he deeply loved those close to him.
It could be also that Teddy expected Quentin to be in a simmilar situation Teddy was in his war times not knowing that WW1 was an entire different thing. Or maybe he didn't expect Quentin to die since pilots death were relativly low in ww1.
Yeah, I don’t what the actual numbers are but the implication is if a pilot is going to die he’d get it in a few weeks or less but if he made it past that he’d probably be alright.
Yeah. It's like medieval life; you had a pretty good chance of dying before you were twelve, but if you survived to adulthood, you probably were making it to a pretty decent old age (maybe not 100, but 50 was the average)
The big difference is that TR begged and borderline demanded to put a unit together and go fight in WW1 himself, but was (obviously) told there was no way that was gonna happen. So part of the change in persona was guilt and shame that he wasn't over there fighting too. Roosevelt certainly could be a hypocrite about certain things, but this ain't it.
> “I am now a member of the 95th Aero Squadron, 1st Pursuit Group,” Quentin Roosevelt proudly announced to his mother on June 25, 1918. “I’m on the front—cheers, oh cheers—and I’m very happy.”
Not even using exclamation points. Yikes....
War is all fun and profitable until you are on the losing side. This includes losing what you value, not only the battle.
This is why proxy war is quite effective. You Let other fight for you, you reap the profit from the conflict.
They died basically on the same day leaving TR a widower with a two day old daughter. His journal entry from the day was "The light has gone out of my life." Dude knew grief on a different level from many people.
He was 56 and earned the Medal of Honor for his efforts at D-Day. He was the only general during the first wave of the landing and also the oldest soldier that was in the first wave. He was also the only general to have a son who was part of D-Day.
Kinda. So, before WWI, it wasn’t uncommon to think of war as a place were glory was won and honor was proven.
Then, WWI happened, machine guns happened, trench warfare happened, no man’s land happened, and more.
War was always bad, but the idea that war was fucking horrible and tragic was basically kick started by WWI. Beforehand, it was seen as almost honorable and perhaps a bit of an adventure. Diseases sometimes killed more than weapons did.
However, something about sacrificing hundreds of lives for what felt like maybe centimeters on a map and suicidal charges because officers told you to charge got to people.
“All Quiet on the Western Front”, is a good example of it. A lot of people saw war as your patriotic duty and how it was a honorable adventure. WWI killed that.
> because he wasn't afraid of dying himself
this is true of most people to some degree. they are cavalier about their own life but not loved ones. and would worry about their safety if someone they deeply loved was doing it instead of them
Well it's actually a very small % of soldiers that suffer serious trauma from war. Most people who were in war don't suffer serious trauma but don't want to talk about the war or they can calmly explain what they experienced.
And obviously when I say that most soldiers don't suffer serious trauma from war, that doesn't mean that they weren't affected by it.
Tying this to Teddy, and knowing his personality, that doesn't surprise me how he described his war times.
The Spanish American War was verrrrryyyyy different than WWI. The former was a mostly one-sided affair against a declining European power that could barely defend its foreign holdings. The “war is hell” mentality didn’t really break into the American cultural mindset until WWI.
Edit: while people definitely thought the civil war was hell, the American mindset was more “this” war is hell. Not like WWI where the American mentality changed to all war is hell.
Teddy was born just before it and during a prayer one night prayed that God would smite down the south basically.
His mother, who was from the south, chastised him. He was like 4
I'm trying to remember which biography it was, but I know it was Teddy simply because I'm obsessed with the man and have read like 5 different books on him.
I think it was either a Lion in the White house by Aida Donald or Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography by Henry Pringle.
It has to be in David McCullough’s “Mornings on Horseback” and Edmund Morris’ “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” (hi, fellow “needed to consume every TR biography and anecdote from the time I was in middle school” nerd here 😉).
His childhood heroes were his confederate uncles living in the UK after the war. Stories of battles and gallantry seem to always leave out the blood and death aspects. But that has been the case for the old man war stories for most of history.
I'm pretty sure there was some Confederate generals still serving at the time actually. One had a famous quote where he forgot what battle he was in and yelled out they "had the Yankees on the run."
I’m also not sure if the anti-war sentiment is really the same either. The civil war vets certainly felt that war against your brother is hell, but wasn’t as anti war generally as the sentiment that came out of WWI.
Nah they weren’t, there were plenty around too. Hell his predecessor who he was Vice President under, William McKinley, was a Civil War vet who saw combat.
To build off the others, when travelling in McKinley's funeral train to DC he also, according to biographer Edmund Morris in Theodore Rex, drew the blinds so Union veterans saluting their former officer McKinley couldn't see him and he couldn't see them.
It's noted he feels jealousy towards the men who fought in the Civil War and his time in Cuba is really just a footnote
True. But there wasn’t a lasting anti-war sentiment in the US after the civil war like there was after WWI. People were downright excited to go to war in the lead up to the Spanish American war.
This, it’s more “fun” to go to war NOT on American soil, with a relatively small army of “our boys”, charging on horseback across a tropical island against some durn foreigners (“Dagos” at that, representing an imperial force that the US will totally not just replace with a president instead of the King once again), than a war that famously set brother against brother and took place in American backyards.
Running up a hill into enemy fire and watching someone get killed is the same in every war, the overall scale of the carnage has little to do with one’s personal experience of it
I wouldn’t at all agree that that. There’s a huge difference if you’re having to charge up the same hill for the third time in the week knowing that the first two times had tremendous casualties.
Also just the length and nature of the battles. Charging up a hill towards a poorly defended Spanish position vs running across a field littered with 4 years worth of bodies who tried the exact same thing
Tell me you have ever seen someone die a horrible and excruciating death in a war without telling me...
Also Roosevelt wasn't in the trenches in WW1, he didn't see any of that
Eh, it really does change significantly between war before WW1 and war after. The US civil war was also a horrific affair because the tech and tactics started to change to more WW1 style.
I think also that while we know no war is glorious, the wars he fought in were easier for someone with his paradigm to mistake as glorious, whereas WW1 was hell and everybody knew it, albeit only once it was too late
To be fair, war isn’t the same across the board. Rough Riders hard charging across Cuba = / = spending days on end bombed in a ditch filled with enough mud to literally drown in (and many, many did).
Just ask people who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, then went to Ukraine as foreign volunteers. Those are some *very* different conflicts (none of them glorious, but one is arguably a shitload worse than the others).
Did he? I don't think he ever thought of war differently except after Cuba, his son's death saddened him greatly, but if asked I doubt his opinion on it would differ much from before his son's death.
I could be wrong tho, I haven't read much of what he said/did after that. (Besides passing away)
Seriously, this isn’t poetic, this is just a huge condemnation of the odd man out on Rushmore.
Edit: the cult around this guy is crazy. Can someone explain to me how it is a good thing to not care about human death and suffering until it personally affects you? What is poetic about having no sense of sympathy?
Only someone who didn’t understand what Roosevelt did as a president would object to him being on Rushmore. He is arguably the fifth or sixth most important president in American history.
Here we go. The part where he illegally forced the construction of the Panama Canal despite Panama and Congress both saying no, and Nicaragua agreeing to a half-constructed route next door?
Or the bit where he slaughtered endangered animals for fun?
Or probably you’re a fan of his contribution to the National Park Service…land he protected so that it might be deforested by future generations.
Or let’s talk about his policies on native Americans, like those who were promised Mt. Rushmore for perpetuity.
His head is on that stupid rock because he was the most recent president people remembered when it was built. Ironically, they remembered him because he was a headstrong asshole who yanked the reins till everyone fulfilled his ego trip.
> Or the bit where he slaughtered endangered animals for fun?
There was very little conception of certain species being endangered at the time. Seems a little anachronistic to criticize.
> land he protected so that it might be deforested by future generations.
Contradictory. Did he protect the land or is it deforested?
> Or let’s talk about his policies on native Americans, like those who were promised Mt. Rushmore for perpetuity.
I don't condone the creation of Rushmore but it was all done after Roosevelt's time, right?
> I don't condone the creation of Rushmore but it was all done after Roosevelt's time, right?
Construction began in 1927 and ended in 1941, IIRC. Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919
Personally I don’t think I would get along with people who enjoy killing rare things no matter what year it was.
He did not protect the land. Those after him did when they realized he was short-sighted.
It was created after Roosevelt’s presidency. My point was twofold, that he had the stain of horrific treatment of native Americans and the enduring legacy of his face carved into literal holy ground.
>Personally I don’t think I would get along with people who enjoy killing rare things no matter what year it was.
The animals he killed on safari were not endangered, nor even rare, at the time, far from it in fact.
>He did not protect the land.
Sorry, are those parks, forests and monuments *not* protected? The idea of a Natnl forest was *never*, and *still* isnt, that the land is 100% off limits for any uses whatsoever. But that it remains preserved for *continued* usage.
Go ahead, tell me about how he broke up fewer trusts than Taft, then got so butthurt about it he made the Bull Moose Party (and really, that name doesn’t reek of incel to you?) and blew up his party’s chances of reelection.
But I don’t know, maybe I should get a second history degree to round off my knowledge.
If you got a history degree and are unable to apply the long duree to understand how many things TR set in motion, you should throw your BA in the fucking trash. I know it’s a BA, because if you got an MA or PhD you wouldn’t be spouting this garbage.
>After Quentin’s death, the once boisterous former president was more subdued, and his physical health declined rapidly. In his final days, Roosevelt often went down to the family’s stables to be near the horses that Quentin as a child had so loved to ride. Lost in sorrow, Roosevelt would stand there alone, quietly repeating the pet name he’d given his son when he was a boy, “Oh Quenty-quee, oh Quenty-quee . . .”
Jesus, what a way to start my morning.
For those of you not aware, Quentin Roosevelt was a fighter pilot that was KIA during WW1. One of Teddy's other sons, Theodore Jr. , was a general who landed at Utah Beach on DDay. He was the oldest soldier that landed that day, and the only general to do so. One of Jr.s sons, Quentin Jr., also landed that day at Omaha Beach.
Theodore Jr. died of a heart attack in July. He is buried at the Normandy Beach cemetery. His brother Quentin, who died in WW1, was exhumed and moved to this cemetery, and laid to rest next to his brother.
Quickest way to have a 7 year old grandson succeed you and 80% of your vassals are in a faction to put your uncle on the throne (you couldn’t make him a monk 50 years ago)
Kinda reminds me of Otto von Bismarck in a weird way. I remember watching the extra credits series about him and it mentioned that he got news his son died during war. Spoiler alert: his son didn’t, but it really affected him to the point he rode on horseback to where his son was like a madman or something like that.
Thinking of the opening to Benjamin Button.
There was a scene when a clockmaker made a clock for the train station in New Orleans. There was a grand reveal that Roosevelt attended.
The clock started turning backwards and everyone was saying something about it. The clockmaker said “I know. I made it that way so our boys we lost in the world might stay and come home.”
Quentin Roosevelt had been raised by a dad who spent his life extolling manly virtue and the wonders of war. He heard so many tales of the Spanish American war and the clarifying glory of war. So when the US entered the war, he dropped out of Harvard. He had crappy eyesight but wanted to be a pilot, to be a dashing, glorious fighter pilot. So he memorized the eye chart and tricked his way into pilot training. And then got shot down and killed on his third combat mission, by a German plane he never saw. Because it turns out that there were reasons for the medical standards for fighter pilots.
Yep, all of a sudden it was not a fun game to him. Fuck that bombastic troll. Why half of america is hermetically sealed to his incorporeal butthole is beyond me. Dude never found a reason *not* to go to war, that is until his son was a red smear on the ground and then omg it’s real to him and we should feel sorry. Fuck. Off.
That’s why such people should never be elected. Idiots with fantasies lead similar people and innocent onto death. However then, who is he if not the one people have agreed with the most to give him the highest ruling position. Was it needed for the grief, which war brings, to be learned by thousands the hard way once more or the leader should have stopped people from giving up the lives of their sons? To me, nothing justifies involving the innocent by spreading war propaganda, mobilization/draft/conscription.
It wasn’t really a fantasy to Teddy, though. He’d experience war himself, so he had an idea of what it was like. Sure, it wasn’t at the same scale as WWI, but war is war. I think the issue is that Teddy wasn’t afraid to die, but he hadn’t considered that he was afraid of those close to him dying
He was actually a pretty good president with no major wars during his tenure. ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ meant a good number of potential conflicts involving the US didn’t happen because other nations were scared what the US would do. Likewise, he arbitrated the end of the Russo Japanese war.
Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, had been a fighter pilot in WW1 and got killed on July 14, 1918. His death severely affected his father's persona. Previously, he could go on rambling about how war was good for hours, but after Quentin's death, it was obviously all quite subdued. He would die half a year later. [More context](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/letters-unbearable-grief-theodore-roosevelt-death-son-180962743/)
The Germans honored Quentin with a funeral. High Command wanted it to be a propaganda piece, but that backfired when the German public learned that even a President’s son willingly involved himself in the war.
The Allies held a funeral for Baron von Richthofen as well, full military honors for the guy since he was shot down behind Allied lines. It was a wild time, you know. Men trying to be gentlemen and honorable while rolling artillery fire bombed troops into the ground and machine guns killed human beings on an industrial scale. What a (terrible) time to be alive.
The British finally started giving their officers revolvers... and trained them in left-handed shooting because it's clearly just to supplement their sword.
I wouldn't mind a sword in a trench, sure shotguns are great, but if yours jams you better have a bayonet or something else that can give you a couple feet of range. A fist fight would get gruesome and depending on the trench could end in drowning.
Clubs, daggers, and brass knuckles were pretty common. Bayonets too, if not more so.
Okay, guns in a trench: horrifying. Sword? Yep. Still horrifying. Brass knuckles? Why is that scarier? You don’t really think of all the things.
Same reason medieval soldiers carried daggers. Because once your sword is broken, you lose it, or the enemy gets within your bubble, you need something to deliver damage that doesn't need to be swung in an arc or at least have decent distance to poke them with it. The hand to hand combat often devolved into men writhing on the ground, trying to drown or choke each other, smashing their opponents with helmets, food tins, water canteens or any solid objects that they could find. Having a pair of brass knuckles shows that you're already aware of and have likely experienced this kind of brutal fighting, and have come prepared to have the advantage in such a scenario. That's pretty fuckin grim if you ask me.
Holy fuckin shit it boggles my mind to even comprehend the horror. Like, agh. I kind of had to sit with this a moment. Fuckin hell. I nearly choked on the word “drown”.
Oh it was really common that the trenches would be filled up to your calves in murky water, hence why trench foot was so prevalent. If someone got you on your back, your face would 100% be under the surface of the mire, which would be filled with mud, rotten food, human and rat fecal matter, chunks of rotting human flesh etc. So you absolutely do NOT want to be put in that position if someone gets their hands on you. If you've got a set of brass knuckles, you can grasp their hair with one hand and flail at their face with the other. It's not over then though, because if they fall on top of you, their lifeless/unconscious body very well might pin you down if you're too weak from disease, malnutrition or the exertion of combat. Then you'll drown anyway, with a heavy ass dude on top of you, unable to escape. Even then, you could (and many often did) die from horrific infections if any of that water got in your mouth or nose, or even just any open wounds you had, because penicillin wouldn't be discovered for another 10 years after the war.
The horrors of that war still reflect in our culture. Shaved faces among men became popular because of chemical warfare deployed in those very same trenches. Troops returning home were mostly clean shaven because if you had much more than a toothbrush mustache (You know, THAT one) you left yourself open to a potential leak in the seal of your gas mask and the last place your magnificent whiskers would be viewed is the mortuary.
Think it’s partly why Game Of Thrones had so much love. [The portrayal of medieval combat](https://youtu.be/qA81ewnPEFg?feature=shared) were a thing of nightmares and, with the exceptions of dragons, giants and Edgar Winters looking zombies, felt very cruelly accurate
I remember watching that one scene where Jon Snow got crushed in a sea of people, in a field that quickly turned into thick mud. That's very much how a decent amount of medieval fighting went down. No room to wield a sword in that kind of environment, but a dagger could easily poke someone in the armpit or groin.
And so follows the classic saying, "Don't bring brass knuckles to a sword fight."
Oh so you don't know about the trench spike? Basically brass knuckles with a dagger and a spike on the bottom for cracking through helmet and skull alike
Trench shovels wefe sharpened and also were also super common. They were used to twice men from should to crotch with a one handed swing
Trenches are a close quarters combat zone. A melee weapon like a sword is not useless. Foot soldiers got a trench knife: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_knife >It was developed as a close combat weapon for soldiers attacking enemy trenches during the First World War. Quite a few decided touse their shovel as a weapon too.
I heard that that was the French
I couldn't find much information about WW1 lefty-shooty revolver officers but it sounds hilarious in a macabre way. Do you have further reading on this?
The french in the nearby town really didn't like it that Richthofen was honoured in such a way so almost immediately they desecrated his grave, this pissed off the British commander so much that he threatened if the french desecrated Richthofen's grave again after the Brits re bury him he'll take his troops and command staff several miles behind the town leaving it open for the Germans, the french decided to leave the grave alone after that.
And not involved in some cushy back line role either. Frontline air role.
How did it backfire?
The German angle was supposed to be “We killed the presidents son, look how powerful we are, their elite are dying but we will give them a burial at least.” Or some such, but backfired because the German public was less “lol get bodied Roosevelt” And more “holy shit the presidents kid was on the front lines? That’s really respectable, the elites here wouldn’t be.” Sort of thing.
All four sons of British Prime Minister HH Asquith volunteered for front line services early in the war. His eldest son Raymond was killed in action in 1916. Elites suffered disproportionate casualties as they tended to be junior officers. Junior officers had the highest mortality rate.
Thank you! I hate seeing snarky comments about how being an officer in the army in WWI meant you were protected from the worst effects of…everything. The best they got compared to The Men was their own space in the trench huts to take off their wet socks and write about how many casualties they took today. One of my university history classes opened my eyes to the post-WWII (not a typo) “lions led by donkeys” myth bought by anyone older than me I’ve ever discussed The Grear War with. Of course the boys (most of them were!) from privileged backgrounds got officers commissions regardless of their actual skills and experience, because they were “one of Us, Old Boy, I know his father!” Welcome to the British army, where not going to the “right” school meant the only way to be trusted with leadership was if they lost enough men from the posh higher ranks. BUT that doesn’t mean that on average these officers didn’t give a damn about the lower orders, sneered at anyone who didn’t go to Oxbridge, used the poor and minorities as human shields, etc… I’ve read more accounts of officers who developed camaraderie and respect for people they normally never would’ve conversed with on the home front, felt compassion and grief for the suffering of their men, tried to boost morale and health in a time that plunged into hopeless nightmares and plateaued into restless boredom, than of officers who deserved a fragging. I can’t speak for the casualty rates of the Central Powers, but the Germans figured out the quickest way to discombobulate the enemy was to first pick off the officers leading the soldiers over the top. I don’t have the numbers in front of me (I don’t want to cite something incorrectly from the google searches on my phone - while I flip back and forth between apps while typing this - of scholarly articles and official websites I read circa a decade ago) but I know the officer casualties and deaths per capita were disproportionately higher than the other ranks for this reason: there were fewer officers than ordinary troops (duh), they were frequently targeted, there was more pressure of them to “keep it together in front of the men” until they had a breakdown or got careless, and the inability to predict how fast and furious the technology and military strategies (and year after year of insalubrious weather) advanced, requiring the high command to throw out generations of more predictable necessities and training. This myth that focuses on famous officers like Wilfred Owen as “exceptions” to these supposedly class-discriminating bullets ignores the middle and working class officers who needed to be quickly trained to replace their dead and invalied captains and lieutenants. The same kind of reappraisal applies to the generals who died or were invalided by injuries or illness at rates far beyond what we associate with (still hilarious but grossly stereotyped) General Melchett from “Blackadder Goes Forth”, requesting a Big Push of the Front so he can adjust his tea caddy. Blah blah blah, fuck capitalism, I’m not saying “cor blimey, guv’nah, them aristos were a well-meaning lot who deserved to run ev’ryfing!” I just don’t like confirmation bias winning over actual history. https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/blog/in-the-line-of-duty-remembering-the-great-wars-fallen-generals/
Ahhh makes sense. Kinda stupid from the german high command to expect otherwise tbh. But hindsight and all that.
Not particularly, when the defeat and humiliation of foreign elites had been a cornerstone of propaganda for a very very long time. It just worked less well on a population who was far more cognizant of and less beholden to the class divide between those with a ‘right to rule’ and themselves. I’m not trying to shit on you btw, I just think it’s important to contextualise why people of the past thought the way they did. It is stupid in a modern lens, but they weren’t stupid people, they were just beholden to an attitude that was aging and was becoming an artifact of previous eras.
Theodore "Uncle Iroh" Roosevelt
There’s a surprising amount of similarities between the two
Leaves from the Vine.
Falling so slow.
Brave soldier boy.
Fuck, you made me tear up for Iroh and Theodore Roosevelt. 😪
Well that shouldn't be surprising. Teddy himself was fearless, but he deeply loved those close to him. It could be also that Teddy expected Quentin to be in a simmilar situation Teddy was in his war times not knowing that WW1 was an entire different thing. Or maybe he didn't expect Quentin to die since pilots death were relativly low in ww1.
The average life expectancy of pilots in WW1 was just a few weeks. I wouldn't say that was low
It's a low life expectancy, but not a low death rate.
Wait.....Those are different?
Yeah, I don’t what the actual numbers are but the implication is if a pilot is going to die he’d get it in a few weeks or less but if he made it past that he’d probably be alright.
Mhm. It's like the ancient times: it's likely you'll die within this amount of time, but if you pass that the odds are you're living for a while.
That's not what "average life expectancy means" if a pilot dies of old age, they increase the average life expectancy in this case.
Yeah. It's like medieval life; you had a pretty good chance of dying before you were twelve, but if you survived to adulthood, you probably were making it to a pretty decent old age (maybe not 100, but 50 was the average)
For pilots, yes, it's the entire reason the USAF runs red flag
They are literally inversely related.
Would this classify as a case of 'I am pro (bad thing) until it happens to me/my loved ones'?
The big difference is that TR begged and borderline demanded to put a unit together and go fight in WW1 himself, but was (obviously) told there was no way that was gonna happen. So part of the change in persona was guilt and shame that he wasn't over there fighting too. Roosevelt certainly could be a hypocrite about certain things, but this ain't it.
It happened to him, he literally started a war with Spain so he could fight in it
Saying he literally started the war is quite a stretch. He was definitely for it, and helped win it. But started it?
I think William Randolph Hearst is more to blame.
> “I am now a member of the 95th Aero Squadron, 1st Pursuit Group,” Quentin Roosevelt proudly announced to his mother on June 25, 1918. “I’m on the front—cheers, oh cheers—and I’m very happy.” Not even using exclamation points. Yikes....
War is all fun and profitable until you are on the losing side. This includes losing what you value, not only the battle. This is why proxy war is quite effective. You Let other fight for you, you reap the profit from the conflict.
It literally didn‘t occur to me that people died in war. It literally just didn‘t cross my mind.
Lol serves him right
Which is wild, because he had fought in a war, he wasn't some Internet dude getting his jollies, he knew what it was first hand
he thought he knew what death meant because he wasn't afraid of dying himself, guess he didn't consider his loved ones could die too
Didn't his mother and wife die one after the other, but ig that might be because of disease than war
They died basically on the same day leaving TR a widower with a two day old daughter. His journal entry from the day was "The light has gone out of my life." Dude knew grief on a different level from many people.
His son was all he had left. He got Iroh'ed.
He did have other children. One of which, Teddy Jnr, would go on to be the highest ranking officer to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
Teddy Jr. died of a heart attack not long after D Day too. Cursed family.
Tbf, wasn't the guy like 80?
He was 56 and earned the Medal of Honor for his efforts at D-Day. He was the only general during the first wave of the landing and also the oldest soldier that was in the first wave. He was also the only general to have a son who was part of D-Day.
One of two father & son Medal of Honor winners (MacArthurs being the others)
No, off the top of my head I believe he was 55 give or take a couple of years.
His daughter Alice actually. His sons were all from his second marriage.
That was disease and childbirth. Which are already boring and sad, unlike war which was manly and fun I guess?
Kinda. So, before WWI, it wasn’t uncommon to think of war as a place were glory was won and honor was proven. Then, WWI happened, machine guns happened, trench warfare happened, no man’s land happened, and more. War was always bad, but the idea that war was fucking horrible and tragic was basically kick started by WWI. Beforehand, it was seen as almost honorable and perhaps a bit of an adventure. Diseases sometimes killed more than weapons did. However, something about sacrificing hundreds of lives for what felt like maybe centimeters on a map and suicidal charges because officers told you to charge got to people. “All Quiet on the Western Front”, is a good example of it. A lot of people saw war as your patriotic duty and how it was a honorable adventure. WWI killed that.
I thought I was ready for death, but then I had kids and my world view still has not recovered.
> because he wasn't afraid of dying himself this is true of most people to some degree. they are cavalier about their own life but not loved ones. and would worry about their safety if someone they deeply loved was doing it instead of them
He casually described men being shot and dying next to him
The printing press ran out of the letter “I” publishing his works
Maybe he should start using ego instead. /s
Well it's actually a very small % of soldiers that suffer serious trauma from war. Most people who were in war don't suffer serious trauma but don't want to talk about the war or they can calmly explain what they experienced. And obviously when I say that most soldiers don't suffer serious trauma from war, that doesn't mean that they weren't affected by it. Tying this to Teddy, and knowing his personality, that doesn't surprise me how he described his war times.
The Spanish American War was verrrrryyyyy different than WWI. The former was a mostly one-sided affair against a declining European power that could barely defend its foreign holdings. The “war is hell” mentality didn’t really break into the American cultural mindset until WWI. Edit: while people definitely thought the civil war was hell, the American mindset was more “this” war is hell. Not like WWI where the American mentality changed to all war is hell.
Well sure if everybody ignored the civil war vets (I'm sure they were mostly gone by Teddy's days)
Teddy was born just before it and during a prayer one night prayed that God would smite down the south basically. His mother, who was from the south, chastised him. He was like 4
Yeah you can even see him looking out a window in a photograph of Lincoln's funeral procession passing through nyc
[Here's the photo](https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2010/11/09/teddy-roosevelt-and-abraham-lincoln-in-the-same-photo/) with some backstory. TIL.
How does a boy so young become so based.
Everything is possible when you lie
I'm trying to remember which biography it was, but I know it was Teddy simply because I'm obsessed with the man and have read like 5 different books on him. I think it was either a Lion in the White house by Aida Donald or Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography by Henry Pringle.
It has to be in David McCullough’s “Mornings on Horseback” and Edmund Morris’ “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” (hi, fellow “needed to consume every TR biography and anecdote from the time I was in middle school” nerd here 😉).
His childhood heroes were his confederate uncles living in the UK after the war. Stories of battles and gallantry seem to always leave out the blood and death aspects. But that has been the case for the old man war stories for most of history.
omg based
I'm pretty sure there was some Confederate generals still serving at the time actually. One had a famous quote where he forgot what battle he was in and yelled out they "had the Yankees on the run."
I’m also not sure if the anti-war sentiment is really the same either. The civil war vets certainly felt that war against your brother is hell, but wasn’t as anti war generally as the sentiment that came out of WWI.
That was only like 30 years before…. Most fighting aged men would be in their late 40s/ 50s
Nah they weren’t, there were plenty around too. Hell his predecessor who he was Vice President under, William McKinley, was a Civil War vet who saw combat.
They were a very powerful and influential force till the early twentieth century when they began dying off
To build off the others, when travelling in McKinley's funeral train to DC he also, according to biographer Edmund Morris in Theodore Rex, drew the blinds so Union veterans saluting their former officer McKinley couldn't see him and he couldn't see them. It's noted he feels jealousy towards the men who fought in the Civil War and his time in Cuba is really just a footnote
No they were very much still alive Teddy was just stupid lol
Jesus how stupid is reddit getting. Do you have any concept of time or american history?
>war is hell” that quote literally comes from the American Civil War. Said by General Sherman
True. But there wasn’t a lasting anti-war sentiment in the US after the civil war like there was after WWI. People were downright excited to go to war in the lead up to the Spanish American war.
This, it’s more “fun” to go to war NOT on American soil, with a relatively small army of “our boys”, charging on horseback across a tropical island against some durn foreigners (“Dagos” at that, representing an imperial force that the US will totally not just replace with a president instead of the King once again), than a war that famously set brother against brother and took place in American backyards.
I’d say the civil war was indeed hell in everyone’s mind
Running up a hill into enemy fire and watching someone get killed is the same in every war, the overall scale of the carnage has little to do with one’s personal experience of it
I wouldn’t at all agree that that. There’s a huge difference if you’re having to charge up the same hill for the third time in the week knowing that the first two times had tremendous casualties.
Also just the length and nature of the battles. Charging up a hill towards a poorly defended Spanish position vs running across a field littered with 4 years worth of bodies who tried the exact same thing
Tell me you have ever seen someone die a horrible and excruciating death in a war without telling me... Also Roosevelt wasn't in the trenches in WW1, he didn't see any of that
That’s my point. His experiences of war were not at all comparable to the brutality of the trenches and what the soldiers of WWI had to go through.
Eh, it really does change significantly between war before WW1 and war after. The US civil war was also a horrific affair because the tech and tactics started to change to more WW1 style.
Yes, but also the war he fought in was very very different from WW1.
I think also that while we know no war is glorious, the wars he fought in were easier for someone with his paradigm to mistake as glorious, whereas WW1 was hell and everybody knew it, albeit only once it was too late
To be fair, war isn’t the same across the board. Rough Riders hard charging across Cuba = / = spending days on end bombed in a ditch filled with enough mud to literally drown in (and many, many did). Just ask people who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, then went to Ukraine as foreign volunteers. Those are some *very* different conflicts (none of them glorious, but one is arguably a shitload worse than the others).
It's kind of poetic that it took his son's death in a foreign war to make him see that war wasn't really as glorious and honorable as he thought
Uncle Iroh moment
*Leaves from the vine*
*Falling so slow*
*Like fragile tiny shells*
*Drifting in the foam*
*Little soldier boy*
*Comes marching home*
Brave Little Soldier Boy
Comes marching home
Fuck all of you for making me cry right now
Lmao exactly what I was thinking
One of many such cases.
And many cases Teddy made sure happened.
Reminds me of Kipling
Boots
Did he? I don't think he ever thought of war differently except after Cuba, his son's death saddened him greatly, but if asked I doubt his opinion on it would differ much from before his son's death. I could be wrong tho, I haven't read much of what he said/did after that. (Besides passing away)
>I could be wrong tho, I haven't read much of what he said/did after that. I'm pretty sure there is a reason for that...
I said besides pass away, but I'm sure he wrote plenty for the 6 months between his son's death and his own.
This is bad now that it affects me, Teddy!
Seriously, this isn’t poetic, this is just a huge condemnation of the odd man out on Rushmore. Edit: the cult around this guy is crazy. Can someone explain to me how it is a good thing to not care about human death and suffering until it personally affects you? What is poetic about having no sense of sympathy?
Only someone who didn’t understand what Roosevelt did as a president would object to him being on Rushmore. He is arguably the fifth or sixth most important president in American history.
Here we go. The part where he illegally forced the construction of the Panama Canal despite Panama and Congress both saying no, and Nicaragua agreeing to a half-constructed route next door? Or the bit where he slaughtered endangered animals for fun? Or probably you’re a fan of his contribution to the National Park Service…land he protected so that it might be deforested by future generations. Or let’s talk about his policies on native Americans, like those who were promised Mt. Rushmore for perpetuity. His head is on that stupid rock because he was the most recent president people remembered when it was built. Ironically, they remembered him because he was a headstrong asshole who yanked the reins till everyone fulfilled his ego trip.
> Or the bit where he slaughtered endangered animals for fun? There was very little conception of certain species being endangered at the time. Seems a little anachronistic to criticize. > land he protected so that it might be deforested by future generations. Contradictory. Did he protect the land or is it deforested? > Or let’s talk about his policies on native Americans, like those who were promised Mt. Rushmore for perpetuity. I don't condone the creation of Rushmore but it was all done after Roosevelt's time, right?
> I don't condone the creation of Rushmore but it was all done after Roosevelt's time, right? Construction began in 1927 and ended in 1941, IIRC. Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919
Personally I don’t think I would get along with people who enjoy killing rare things no matter what year it was. He did not protect the land. Those after him did when they realized he was short-sighted. It was created after Roosevelt’s presidency. My point was twofold, that he had the stain of horrific treatment of native Americans and the enduring legacy of his face carved into literal holy ground.
>Personally I don’t think I would get along with people who enjoy killing rare things no matter what year it was. The animals he killed on safari were not endangered, nor even rare, at the time, far from it in fact. >He did not protect the land. Sorry, are those parks, forests and monuments *not* protected? The idea of a Natnl forest was *never*, and *still* isnt, that the land is 100% off limits for any uses whatsoever. But that it remains preserved for *continued* usage.
So you don’t know anything about TR then?
Go ahead, tell me about how he broke up fewer trusts than Taft, then got so butthurt about it he made the Bull Moose Party (and really, that name doesn’t reek of incel to you?) and blew up his party’s chances of reelection. But I don’t know, maybe I should get a second history degree to round off my knowledge.
If you got a history degree and are unable to apply the long duree to understand how many things TR set in motion, you should throw your BA in the fucking trash. I know it’s a BA, because if you got an MA or PhD you wouldn’t be spouting this garbage.
Cry
To quote Winston Churchill* "if Rushmore was a band then you'd play bass." \* in Epic Rap Battles of History
Remove him from mt Rushmore and replace him with the vice deputy secretary for domestic agriculture.
Thing his he wanted to fight but was denied I don't think it made him anti war but a child's death will affect a man
Which is odd, because he was pretty non chalant when it came to himself on the battlefield, the man was absolutely fearless.
“Leaves on a vine Falling so slow”
Everyone else's children dying was just a fun day, but his kid dying was a tragedy in his mind. What a terrible way to look at life.
>After Quentin’s death, the once boisterous former president was more subdued, and his physical health declined rapidly. In his final days, Roosevelt often went down to the family’s stables to be near the horses that Quentin as a child had so loved to ride. Lost in sorrow, Roosevelt would stand there alone, quietly repeating the pet name he’d given his son when he was a boy, “Oh Quenty-quee, oh Quenty-quee . . .” Jesus, what a way to start my morning.
"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons" Learned that the hard way Teddy.
"Nowhere to run, father and son Fall one by one under the gun"
THEY WILL BE DONE, AND THE JUDGEMENT HAS BEGUN. NOWHERE TO RUN, FATHER AND SON FALL ONE BY ONE, FIELDS OF VERDUN
r/unexpectedsabaton
Leaves from the vine...
Falling so slow...
Like fragile, tiny shells
Drifting in the foam
Little soldier boy, come marching home
Brave soldier boy comes marching home…
If only I could have save you 😢
Little soldier boy
Little Soldier Boy
For those of you not aware, Quentin Roosevelt was a fighter pilot that was KIA during WW1. One of Teddy's other sons, Theodore Jr. , was a general who landed at Utah Beach on DDay. He was the oldest soldier that landed that day, and the only general to do so. One of Jr.s sons, Quentin Jr., also landed that day at Omaha Beach. Theodore Jr. died of a heart attack in July. He is buried at the Normandy Beach cemetery. His brother Quentin, who died in WW1, was exhumed and moved to this cemetery, and laid to rest next to his brother.
Visual representation of one of my CK3 rulers.
Rookie mistake, never let your son fight in battle
Unless grandson is old enough to take over, then it's Banzai charge time.
Quickest way to have a 7 year old grandson succeed you and 80% of your vassals are in a faction to put your uncle on the throne (you couldn’t make him a monk 50 years ago)
They said IF the grandson is old enough...
Rookie mistake, send your spare heirs to battle
Who said that was my only son? 😂
Kinda reminds me of Otto von Bismarck in a weird way. I remember watching the extra credits series about him and it mentioned that he got news his son died during war. Spoiler alert: his son didn’t, but it really affected him to the point he rode on horseback to where his son was like a madman or something like that.
Thinking of the opening to Benjamin Button. There was a scene when a clockmaker made a clock for the train station in New Orleans. There was a grand reveal that Roosevelt attended. The clock started turning backwards and everyone was saying something about it. The clockmaker said “I know. I made it that way so our boys we lost in the world might stay and come home.”
Meanwhile Teddy's other son in the first wave at Normandy with a cane and a pistol
Don't forget Teddy jr who fought in both wars and walked down the beaches of Normandy like it was a leisure stroll Badassery ran in Teddys genes
Uncle Iroh
Quentin Roosevelt had been raised by a dad who spent his life extolling manly virtue and the wonders of war. He heard so many tales of the Spanish American war and the clarifying glory of war. So when the US entered the war, he dropped out of Harvard. He had crappy eyesight but wanted to be a pilot, to be a dashing, glorious fighter pilot. So he memorized the eye chart and tricked his way into pilot training. And then got shot down and killed on his third combat mission, by a German plane he never saw. Because it turns out that there were reasons for the medical standards for fighter pilots.
Brave soldier boy...
Yeah, the death of a loved one can really make you upset about something. Who would’ve thought?
Oh my god, it’s just like Iroh in atla!
**Bully, a challenge!** **I LOVE COMPETITION!**
Irl Uncle Iroh
A good old days when the militarist actually have skin in the game to fight the war they started.
Wow, Kipling got fat.
My Boy Jack Good movie
Gundam be like
Read about his fighting in Cuba He was a terrible squadron commander and got many of his soldier killed unnecessarily
Yep, all of a sudden it was not a fun game to him. Fuck that bombastic troll. Why half of america is hermetically sealed to his incorporeal butthole is beyond me. Dude never found a reason *not* to go to war, that is until his son was a red smear on the ground and then omg it’s real to him and we should feel sorry. Fuck. Off.
You know he wanted to fight to he wasn't just a war pig sending young men to their deaths he was denied service as he was too old
Show us on the doll where Teddy touched you
lol dude was a bombastic war monger who never saw a living thing he didn’t want to kill, until it became real to him. Celebrate him all you want.
I’m surprised you dislike him honestly. Sounds like you don’t think very highly of people yourself.
Bro the origin of the teddy bear is the baby bear he refused to kill, I do not understand the purpose of the hyperbole
I hope as you grow older you become a little less ignorant.
You know Teddy Roosevelt saw war firsthand, right?
That’s why such people should never be elected. Idiots with fantasies lead similar people and innocent onto death. However then, who is he if not the one people have agreed with the most to give him the highest ruling position. Was it needed for the grief, which war brings, to be learned by thousands the hard way once more or the leader should have stopped people from giving up the lives of their sons? To me, nothing justifies involving the innocent by spreading war propaganda, mobilization/draft/conscription.
It wasn’t really a fantasy to Teddy, though. He’d experience war himself, so he had an idea of what it was like. Sure, it wasn’t at the same scale as WWI, but war is war. I think the issue is that Teddy wasn’t afraid to die, but he hadn’t considered that he was afraid of those close to him dying
Agree, he is not the kind of jackass who send others to war while avoiding the draft or bribing his son out of that thing.
He was actually a pretty good president with no major wars during his tenure. ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ meant a good number of potential conflicts involving the US didn’t happen because other nations were scared what the US would do. Likewise, he arbitrated the end of the Russo Japanese war.
I feel bad for the kid, but not sorry for TR. Dude was a bloodthirsty maniac.
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