WRN’s Bob Hague spoke with John Hall at the University of Wisconsin on the origins and history of Veterans Day.
Bob Hague 0:10
Talking with John Hall at UW Madison about the history of Veterans Day. John, you know what? I’m going to start off since we have a visual because I see you’re wearing a red poppy and perhaps explain the significance. Lots of us, of course, have purchased poppies from VFW folks perhaps without really understanding what the significance of that is.
John Hall 0:50
Well, the significance derives from the poem about the casualties at Flanders Fields in the First World War. And so the tradition is actually most strong in Britain and in Commonwealth nations, and those among the listeners who are hockey fans, as I suspect many of them are no doubt watching NHL broadcasts at this time of year will note that the Canadians in particular, and they’re not unique in this regard, generally wear the poppy for an extended period of time, marking not just Armistice Day, but also Remembrance Day and a broader commemoration of all of those who gave their lives in the First World War in particular, but then in subsequent conflicts as well.
Bob Hague 1:34
Obviously the the British Commonwealth nations and and Great Britain herself suffered very extensive casualties compared to America’s relatively brief participation in the First World War.
John Hall 1:48
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. United States joined that conflict in 1917 and did have some early engagement on the Western Front in the calendar year of 1917. But the bulk of its involvement came in 1918, the final year of the war and is my predecessor here at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, the great military historian Edward Mack Kauffman, proclaimed that the United States didn’t necessarily win the war for the Allies, but it was impossible that the the Central Powers would prevail once the US did join.
Bob Hague 2:24
So let’s talk a little bit about the origins of veteran’s day with the earlier Armistice Day. And I think many people who dive into this a little bit are particularly intrigued by the very precise timing at which the Armistice went into effect on the Western Front.
John Hall 2:47
Yeah, and which is exactly why to this day in the United States, it is tradition to observe 2 minutes of silence at a prescribed hour and minute during the day, which is set to 2:11 PM Eastern Time here in the central zone, that’s 1:11 PM. But the idea behind that is the original commemoration was commemorating the precise moment of the Armistice. So 11:11 on 11 in November of 1918 and in commemorations here so that the entire nation across all of its time zones out into the Pacific could commemorate the exact same 2 minutes of silence. That’s why the clock is somewhat shifted, but that those are the the minutes that all Americans are supposed to observe silence.
Bob Hague 3:42
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that that timing was set by the Allied High Command, who knew in advance that this is when the guns were going to fall silent on the Western Front. Presumably there were casualties sustained on both sides right up until the moment that the Armistice went into effect.
John Hall 4:06
Yeah, there were casualties on both sides right up until that moment. But rumors do spread rather quickly in large military organizations. And so the actual signing of the Armistice was a welcome relief to all of those involved, and I think probably a great many of them weren’t going to believe it until it actually came into effect. And so, you know, poetically, the guns fell silent at exactly that moment. But all the combatants on both sides were essentially fighting up to the whistle without necessarily believing that the tide of the war was going to change in those closing days or hours.
Bob Hague 4:52
So after the Armistice went into effect, eventually the the soldiers serving in the American Expeditionary Force returned to the United States. And I guess it was the following year, 1919, that President Rose, excuse me, President Wilson declared Armistice Day to be a national observance.
John Hall 5:12
Yeah, on that particular day. So the very first observance of Armistice Day in 1919 was a singular event commemorating the end of the war. It was not until 1926 that Congress asked the president to declare a proclamation of recognition of Armistice Day on a recurring basis. And that was sort of already something that many localities were doing. And then it wasn’t until 1938 that it actually became a federal holiday. But by that point, I think there were as many as 27 states that had already recognized Armistice Day as a state holiday.
Bob Hague 5:56
Obviously shortly after that the US entered World War 2 and it was after the conclusion of that conflict, I guess a couple of years later that I guess the movement sort of became born to recognize all veterans on this date.
John Hall 6:14
Yeah, that’s exactly right. So you had in the wake of World War 2 and then the Korean War. So it was actually in 1954 that the law establishing that Armistice Day as a national holiday was a renamed Veteran’s Day and repurposed so that it would honor the veterans of all of America’s conflicts and services in general, which is perhaps not surprising because as many as 16% of the US population had served in uniform during World War 2. And then, you know, you add to that what people had served in in the Korean War and so the veterans of the the great Crusade that was the Second World War and of the first hot engagement in the Cold War, they kind of had an attitude. What about us, right? You know that we’re thinking our World War One veterans. We now have also contributed to this and that resonated very well. Well, and so Congress responded to that. And President Eisenhower is the one who signed that into law, establishing the modern day federal holiday of Veteran’s Day.
Bob Hague 7:23
I guess in closing, John, I want to circle back to, I guess the significance of Armistice Day and America’s contribution to that first global conflict. And it’s it’s so often we, I guess we forget about that. We forget about Korea, but you know the the conflicts that perhaps are not um part of our national historic memory to the extent that the Second World War is, what sort of lessons do you think we can glean from America’s involvement in World War One?
John Hall 7:56
Well, I tell my students that we don’t really fully appreciate this conflict for the reasons that we addressed earlier, right? the United States joined late. Its contributions in terms of its toll of blood and casualties and national treasure pale in comparison to the other combatant nations. And the legacy of that war was largely overwhelmed then afterward by the global influenza pandemic and then subsequently by the Great Depression. So that by the 1930s, Americans had actually soured on their contribution to this war and largely regretted having gone to this war. There are actually congressional hearings. To figure out who was to blame for misleading the nation into the war. And it made Americans very reluctant to prepare for World War 2, even as Nazi Germany was rearming in plain view. And so I suppose the lesson I would derive from all of this is that, you know, history moves in sort of moves sideways, right? Societies learn overarching lessons from the recent past, and sometimes those lessons are never again. And that was the big lesson that Americans learned from World War One. But another one of the lessons is, although this is a lowercase R Republic, a representative government in which the burden of self-defense is supposed to fall on the citizenry at large. It’s a recognition that that burden must necessarily fall disproportionately on but a sliver of that population. And so Veterans Day to this day, I think, is a little bit less of a nationalistic, jingoistic kind of commemoration like Memorial Day, right? Which also commemorates the fallen of American war, America’s wars. These are days in which we don’t celebrate America’s great martial accomplishments. These are days in which we reflect upon service and sacrifice and those reflections may depending upon the moment, make the nation more or less willing to prepare for the common defense in the years to come.
Bob Hague 10:05
Well said. John Hall at UW Madison. Thank you so much for taking the time this afternoon. I really appreciate it.