Bravo :)

"LET THESE PANELS NEVER BE FILLED"

Best sentiment in the entire Museum.

and this:

http://d3nd7i493f0o21.cloudfront.net/assets/upload/278694/1750109329/DSCF0273.JPG

That’s true, but thereafter his grasp became increasingly tenuous, heading towards deluded. Invasions of the Greek Isles, the coast of…

Had the Dardanelles landings succeeded (or indeed had Turkey remained out of WW1) Britain wouldn't have needed the Saud family's support in overthrowing Turkish rule in Arabia and the current incumbent wouldn't be on the throne.

Maybe Key…

Also, unlike just about every other politician, Churchill (albeit briefly) left politics during WW1 and took command of front-line troops…

Yeah I did know that. Was being facetious.

His story is interesting – the debacle at Gallipoli somehow didn't quite destroy his career. To some degree he probably became a better war leader because he no longer actually planned campaigns and left that task to…

Really short version.

Churchill had this idea that opening up another front would relieve pressure in France and Belgium. His plan was to sail troops into the Sea of Marmara and attack Istanbul.

The problem was the narrow…

The period 1914-1945 is sometimes referred to (somewhat contentiously) as 'the second thirty years war'.

French/German antipathy, and the roots of the French…

The Kaiser wasn’t a player in the 1918 surrender, having been forced to abdicate some months earlier by the military dictatorship that had effectively ruled Germany since 1916. The WW1 focus on the dastardliness of the largely ineffectual “Kaiser Bill” was mostly…

But there also seemed to be a culture angle. Troops never marched through Berlin. Suspect that's why Allies went the distance in WW2.

I'd suggest that the problem might have been that they really had their collective nose rubbed in it.

Are you suggesting that the conditions imposed upon Germany after it's WW1 defeat were excessively punitive? That seemed to be the dismayed consensus of Robert Graves and his fellow junior officers in Goodbye to All That. As a participant in the "Christmas Truce" of 1914 he…

Not into military history but it seems the first war wasn't finished properly (Germany not properly defeated) so after a couple of decades the second one started.

http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/anzac-day-ii/

Echoing Russell here. I've just finished reading all…

People might be familiar with the way the older generations (including my own) will tend to mumble through the Maori verse of the National Anthem…

They don't have to close on Monday either.

That seems rather weird. If it was merely about ensuring that all of your workers has one of the two days off, it's hard to see why large supermarkets…

Heh.
I'd thought that Australia was a little tougher than NZ when it came to enforcing the sanctity of ANZAC proper, but it seems…

There’s more than one way of…

I don't know about cafes. This household was woken on Anzac morning by a biohazard team stripping out the neighbouring house before demolition. I'm unsure whether to be peeved or pleased.

After I heard the Australian promoter talking on NatRad about how (from memory) it was New Zealanders' fault for not getting in to support something great,…

Are you replying to someone's specific…

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/67698088/Why-is-Kim-Kardashian-in-Armenia

Meanwhile Turkey was kicking out Armenians, and who has recently highlighted that centennial? Non other than Kim Kardashian, a descendant.

Indeed it is. It was the curiously North Korean aesthetic of Richard Taylor’s Rugby World Cup sculpture that first brought into focus for me how Weta had somehow become the arbiters of state-sanctioned capitalist…

So agreed on the "amusement park" trenches. My great-grand uncle died in one in Northern France.

However, the one in the Auckland museum always moved me. There was a similar larger-scale exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London that really got to me – it came with…

Hands... I recall James K Baxter's 'The Gunner’s Lament' (1965), about a dying Maori soldier in Vietnam – which he concludes with these burning lines:

‘And go and tell Keith…

This morning I read Gordon Campbell's excellent piece in Werewolf;…

"I think it would be denigrating their service and sacrifice to say they died for nothing. They died for a belief in our country and what we stand for and they stood alongside their…

It's the "official" endorsement from the RSA that I find most anger-making.

Speaking of which, I felt that this fits well with the refreshingly BS-free tone of Russell Brown's piece. Glen Le Lievre from tomorrow's SMH.

Quite. Where are the tone police when they are needed? (I didn’t realise the trench was on tour. Presented by the History Channel.)

Christchurch people: I’m told the 19th Battalion and Armoured Regiment Service at The…

The story we got told was…

I find the day similarly conflicting. My granddad was toe-tagged as dead during the Passchendaele campaign, serving with the 1st Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Only…

My great-grandfather, George "Sonny" Skerrett, Gallipoli survivor, interviewed for the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1992:

"Ashore, it was frightful. Terrible.... The Turks applied for the armistice to bury the dead. I went out with four doctors, couldn't…

I'm sure the Veterans Affairs Minister in a Government that slashed the VA budget by $100 million and announced plans to further cut veteran pensions last year will be suitably outraged,

I've never felt that connected to the "official messaging", but that might have more to do with the way Anzac Day actually went down…

And I'm fascinated by much of that as well.

But my father served in the Dutch…

*headdesk*

Every statistical casualty can be converted to political capital. In declaring himself to be a pacifist on ABC radio…

(I've spent yesterday and today sitting through rehearsals for tomorrow's ceremonies in Wellington. If I'd known how cartoonish parts…

True. The one good thing to come out of the failure at Gallipoli was that NZ & Australia started demanding from London a bigger say in their…

[edit] Oh, yes, the man on the cover is wearing an American uniform as well.

Worth having a deeper read on just how extreme was NZ law’s reaction to the First World War in Andrew Geddis' post on Pundit,…

I'd imagine the Ottoman Empire would have collapsed at some point in the 20th century though, with substantial ructions given the huge area of land (and oil) they…

Feels to me like they've forced the viewer into a Hobbit-sized POV...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/67841405/te-papa-brings-epic-scale-of-world-war-i-to-life

The promotional material told us:

__Kiwis will have the opportunity to sleep under the stars, just like the ANZAC soldiers did 100 years ago, and wake…

Billed by TVNZ as Don’t miss out on this.

Meanwhile, Stuff has How to get in the trenches on Anzac Day

The trenches were a place that young men died, not an amusement park ride.

German veterans could become associate members of the Australian RSL since at least the 1960s, though I imagine that sieg heiling during the silence would have been frowned upon.

When I was a young lad, we didn't need fake trenches. There was a bomb site on nearly every street in most UK cities.

People weren't much into remembrance parades either – I think the older generation had seen enough of actual war. And…

I’m surprised Aldi didn’t jump on that bandwagon as well.

Also, the use of war to sell stuff has gone on as long as we've had wars:

Yes.

I have been uneasy at so much of the well-meaning over-production this year, and I and many others want to acknowledge the centenary.

But fake trenches in the Auckland CBD? I can almost imagine my grandfather’s reaction. Jack Elliott was tetchy…

It's happened in Oz with Woolworths.

Paging Dr Freud..:)

I think the tone has…

Gallipoli is the name of a 1981 film starring Mel Gibson as a plain but heroic man in tragic circumstances. It was an interesting and exciting film, based loosely on historical facts. These things made it useful for teaching in Australian high schools.

By the mid 1990s…

I really liked the post Russell. I've noticed that there has been a huge change in how we talk about WWI over the last…

– Harry Patch (until 2009, the last surviving man to have fought in…

Yep, exactly.

those poor bastards, let's not do this again

And that. But also, the idea that WW1 was unique and we aren't "doing it again" on a smaller scale, and with the…

Unless the tone changes from one of 'didn't we do well to fight in those wars' to 'wan't that an awful chapter in…