Marking a century since the end of First World War
▶ Ernst Peter Fischer, who will speak at a French event to mark the end of the Great War, tells John Dennehy about his family’s wartime history
When Karl Nungesser heard Adolf Hitler had become chancellor of Germany in 1933, his reaction was darkly prophetic. “Hitler is going to start a war,” Nungesser said. “It is going to be terrible and we are going to lose.”
He was a German veteran of the First World War who was shot in the head in 1917 and just barely survived. He knew what the path to war looked like.
Decades later, Nungesser’s grandson is the German ambassador to the UAE. Ernst Peter Fischer, who was born in 1960, never had a chance to talk to his grandfather, who died when he just three but was told by his mother of this grim prediction.
On Sunday, the world marks 100 years since the end of the First World War and Mr Fischer will give a speech at an event organised by France to mark the sombre anniversary.
Mr Fischer, a career diplomat who joined the German Foreign Service in 1986, assessed the legacy of the Great War, the rise of Nazism and what lessons today’s leaders can glean from these years of convulsion.
His story is familiar to any family who lived through the upheaval of the 20th century. Both his grandfathers fought in the Great War. His other grandfather lost his leg.
Mr Fischer’s father was conscripted as a teenager towards the end of the Second World War.
“My dad was basically sent to the front around Munich, which was already crumbling,” he tells The National. “Soon officers came and said: ‘Kids, what are you doing here? Go’.
“As German diplomats, we have to be ready to be asked about the Second World War and the Holocaust – gigantic crimes perpetrated by Germany.
“Does my generation have guilt? No, we were not there. But we have responsibility. We don’t start wars or pursue people based on race or religion.”
The memory of the Great War is fast receding into history. The veterans have died and it has been overshadowed by what came later. But at the time it was the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen.
Chemical weapons were used for the first time, it brought the first mass aerial bombardment of civilians and ultimately reshaped the map of Europe.
Almost 10 million soldiers died, millions of peoples’ lives were torn apart and it created a lost generation permanently scarred by the horrors of war. Is there a danger the world could sleep walk into such catastrophe again?
“We talked about my grandfather but everyone had a grandfather like mine,” Mr Fischer says. “People tend to forget how terrible it was. So the responsibility that we feel is not to take peace lightly, don’t take it for granted. It is precious and can be lost.”
The war was the result of an arms race, toxic imperialism and rampant nationalism.
“The leaders thought: ‘Let’s go to the brink of war to protect our interests and if it happens, so be it,” Mr Fischer says. “‘We will win, that’ll be good and we will be better off.’ That was a gross miscalculation.”
Many comparisons have been made between the world in 1914 and 2018. Some commentators say the world today stands at a similar precipice with the rise of populism, anger at elites and job losses from technology.
Climate change is also eroding the living conditions for people in many parts of the world, while some are lashing out at migrants.
The Alternative for Germany party entered parliament for the first time last year, winning 12.6 per cent of the vote after an anti-migrant campaign.
“Some react to changes by saying: ‘I want an easy, swift, political solution. Enough with democratic bargaining’,” Mr Fischer says. “And there is the tendency to choose a scapegoat and frequently they are from another nationality or race.
“In Germany we feel a special responsibility because of our past. Extremism has no place there.”
But he agrees that some people feel governments are not listening to their concerns. Globalisation is radically reshaping their world and a protest vote develops.
When pressed on what exactly will help these disenfranchised people, Mr Fischer says education, regional policy, taxation and supporting companies to set up in deprived areas.
Immigration in particular is just one of these divisive issues in parts of the EU but he says people do not hear about the 95 per cent of migrants in Germany who have jobs and live in peace.
“Crime rates in Germany are going down but if a recent immigrant commits a crime, it makes the headlines,” Mr Fischer says.
“People want to come to Europe. We can’t switch it off.
“We have to learn how to manage it and make it humane. The answer is not closing our borders.”
He is optimistic that world leaders can prevent another eruption such as July 1914 but risks remain. He says Germany understands the need to defend itself but military interventions do not try to win the peace.
“Military intervention is only ever a part of any solution,” Mr Fischer says.
The EU kept peace in Europe but is facing pressure from Brexit, immigration and populism.
Mr Fischer says Germany regrets the decision by Britain to leave the bloc but respects it. He rejects, however, the suggestion that Brexit is leading to less cohesion among EU states and is confident Europe is not on the verge of another war.
“But remembering is not enough and it takes daily work,” he says. “People must come together. Schoolbooks must be good and cross-border programmes are needed at all levels.”
Germany has its own remembrance day this month. But today’s event is crucial, especially because it is being held by France.
“The 100th anniversary is being used to remind people there was a First World War, which at the time was the most terrible war anyone had ever seen and which in many ways induced developments that lead to the second.
“Here are two countries who used to be considered archenemies. That’s over. The war is over. We are friends.”
In Germany, we feel a special responsibility because of our past. Extremism has no place there ERNST PETER FISCHER German ambassador to the UAE
Sitting prominently in a cabinet in my home is a military medal from the First World War awarded to my great-uncle, Captain Ernest Hellyer, who took part in that conflict. Much of his service was humdrum, well away from any danger, and, as a child, I learned little from him of what he had actually experienced. He served and survived.
I shall think of Uncle Ernest today as, in the company of ambassadors and military personnel from a wide range of countries, I attend a service at St Andrew’s Church in Abu Dhabi that marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War and remembers the millions involved in that conflict. It is one of many events taking place here in the Emirates, and across the world, that coincide with the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the guns fell silent on the Western Front in Europe.
The end of that conflict may have been a century ago, but its results and its aftermath remain with us, not simply in Europe, but far beyond. As a recent article in this paper noted, the present-day political geography of the Arab world emerged as a result of the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire. More than a million troops from what was then British India fought in the war, from the muddy trenches of northern France to the deserts of Mesopotamia and the savannahs of Tanzania. Arab soldiers from the peninsula swept north into Palestine and Syria, as the concept of Arab nationalism gained strength, while thousands of others from the Levant served as officers in the Ottoman armies. It was a conflict that resonated far beyond the battlefields of Europe, which have, up until now, received the overwhelming majority of attention from historians.
One important feature of this anniversary is the way in which that broader aspect of the conflict is beginning to be recognised. Not for the first time, however, I find that much needs to be done to ensure that the basic facts of a major event in recent history, as this conflict was, are more widely known.
A few days ago, I was talking to students at a university in Dubai about the history of the UAE. Trying to relate our history to that of a wider world, I asked if any of them knew the significance of the date of November 11, 1918. None did. Yet some of these students, mainly young people of Indian heritage, may well have had grandparents or great-grandparents who served in, or were directly affected by, the First World War.
In Britain, there is now a concerted effort to throw some light, at last, on the contribution of colonial troops, including those from India, in the conflict. It is also time for greater recognition elsewhere of their service and of the sacrifice that was made. This is certainly applicable to the UAE’s expatriate communities today, so many of which derive from countries enmeshed in the world-changing events that took place between 1914 and 1918.
Here in the Emirates, the direct impact of the First World War was slight. The ships that carried thousands of Indian troops to the Iraqi battlefront appear to have bypassed the UAE’s ports, although news must have percolated down the Gulf of the surrender of the British-Indian Army at Kut Al Amara in 1916, an event described by one historian as “the most abject capitulation in Britain’s military history”. Naval conflict between the contesting powers did not impinge on the UAE’s waters, as it did in the Second World War, and there are few records of shortages of supplies, such as those that occurred in the 1940s.
We know now, only too well, that the many punishing military campaigns of 1914-18 did not form what was then optimistically proclaimed “the war to end all wars”.
That’s why the tradition of commemorating the end of the First World War on November 11 each year has expanded its scope to include those who served and have died in subsequent conflicts. Some of those were longlived catastrophes in terms of human suffering, others short and sharp hostilities that, nevertheless, wreaked their own devastation. In the Emirates later this month, on Martyrs’ Day, which falls on November 30, we will have our own losses of life in the ongoing conflict in Yemen to recall.
One feature of Sunday’s service of remembrance, here and elsewhere, is the reading of a verse from Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen. It is of the best-known poems of the First World War, and one that, I readily confess, I always recite with a catch in my voice.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
One hundred years on, for those who laid down their lives in that conflict, and in those that have followed, it is right that we should do so.