{"id":2541,"date":"2014-08-03T08:30:59","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T12:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2014-08-03T02:14:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-03T06:14:16","slug":"world-war-i-centennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2014\/08\/world-war-i-centennial\/","title":{"rendered":"World War I Centennial"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week marks the 100th anniversary of\u00a0Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia, which launched The Great War<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve never had as good a working knowledge of the First World War as I do of World War II, for several reasons.\u00a0 It’s older, doesn’t have as conclusive an ending, America did not play as key a role in it, it had a lot of French sounding battles, and the military storyline is more difficult to follow.<\/p>\n

That’s not an slight on the importance of the war.\u00a0 To the contrary, WWI was extremely consequential, setting the stage for a second war, twenty years later, and lurking in the background of many other conflicts, extending even to today.\u00a0 It accelerated advancements in technology, transformed the arts, and strengthened the power of government.\u00a0 In many ways, it’s a demarcation line between the old and modern worlds.<\/p>\n

I’ve been learning more about it reading anniversary articles, or 100-years-ago-today tweets people are posting on Twitter.\u00a0 I’ve got four years to get caught up.<\/p>\n

On a more personal level, I’ve found WWI draft records of two ancestors.\u00a0 The first is from my paternal grandfather in Pennsylvania:<\/p>\n