Ovi Magazine Issue #26: WWI - 100 years - Published: 2014-07-28

I
had always the feeling that the reason we commemorate more
often the Second World War than the First, is not because it
is more recent or because there are still alive memories; it is
because we feel consciously more comfortable. Despite the inhuman
crimes the lines between good and evil in WWII are
discreet and visual.
From one side there were the Nazis and from the other side the rest
of the world. And this is another discreet line. We are talking about
the Nazis and not about the Germans. It just happened that the Nazis
were Germans and the fascists were Italians. And it was the Nazis
that used the most inhuman methods to eliminate whole nations and
there were Germans with the victims.
Furthermore in the case of the WWII, the evil has a face and a name.
We know who to hate and we know who was responsible. Actually
only a reference to his name, Adolf Hitler, includes all the WWII, the
genocide crimes and the murder of millions. But even in his case we
avoid the causes that created him for the simple reason that everything
started with the First World War.
But when we are talking about WWI even though the two sides are
similar, led by the Germans in the one side and Anglo-Americans in
the other, the lines between good and evil are not so discreet. Both
sides were as evil as good and both sides acted like murderers employing
the most nightmarish and inhuman methods to exterminate
human lives.
What today is unthinkable and in WWII a big no, the use of chemical
and biological weapons, during WWI was a common practice from
both sides. It was not a war of imperialism but a war for extermination
and it was not about genocide but total death. The darkest side
of human nature was out there and for five years brought humanity
to its knees.
But here is the twist and the irony of history. Both sides used science
more than in any other conflict and that meant that science evalu-