World War I

Why did New Zealand suffer the worst casualty rate in World War I?
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By Mike Treen January 23, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Armistice Day, November 11, commemorates the day when the fighting stopped on the Western front in Europe.

As a participant in this lie of the “war to end all wars” New Zealand had achieved the unique result of suffering the highest military casualty rate of any nation involved in that war.

1918: Good bye to all that, but not for everyone
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1916: Use workers’ power to end the war
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By Käte Duncker, introduction by John Riddell September 21, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/John Riddell: Marxist Essays and Commentaries — 100 years ago today, a leading antiwar socialist in Germany explained the need for revolution to end the First World War. Her audience was delegates to the last unified national conference of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), held in Berlin on September 21-23, 1916.
Karl Liebknecht 1916: ‘Down with the war; down with the government!’
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Karl Liebknecht addressing Berlin demonstration. Introductory note by John Riddell July 20, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell’s blog with permission — One hundred years ago, on June 28, 1916, 55,000 metalworkers in Berlin went on strike to protest the sentencing of Karl Liebknecht to two and a half years in prison. It was Germany’s first mass protest strike of World War 1. Liebknecht received mass support in Germany and beyond as the first German socialist to have voted against parliamentary allocations to pay for the government war spending. He had been arrested at an illegal May Day demonstration organized by the Spartacist League, just after calling out, “Down with the war! Down with the government!” Two days after his arrest, Liebknecht explained the goals of the May Day demonstration and the Spartacist League in the following statement at his trial.
The Kiental Manifesto: Socialists against war, 1916
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Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacists called at Kiental for a new International. By John Riddell April 27, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell’s blog with permission -- One hundred years ago this week, socialist opponents of the First World War gathered in Kiental, Switzerland, issued an appeal calling on working people to “use every means possible to bring a rapid end to the human slaughter.” The appeal, known as the “Kiental Manifesto,” appears below.
John Riddell on Zimmerwald, 1915: New socialist resistance against war
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ANZACs: New film reveals what should not be forgotten -- or forgiven

Film by John Rainford and Peter Ewer

April 24, 2015 -- Green Left TV/Green Left Weekly//Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- As the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC's ill-fated Gallipoli campaign approaches, this timely short film cuts through the myth making, and shows with damning facts how lives were used as fodder as strategic and tactical blunders led to the slaughter of so many.

It reveals the context behind the Gallipoli campaign - a war fought because the world had been cut up into colonies by the major powers who were now battling for the spoils.

The film shows exactly why the terrible ANZAC Cove campaign should never be forgotten — and the crimes of the warmongers responsible never forgiven.

Saudi Arabia’s lesser known exports after oil: Wahhabism and pro-imperialism
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1915: When socialist women united against WWI

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Industrial Workers of the World poster against WWI
Socialists and World War I: Turn the imperialist war into a civil war

It has been a hundred years since the outbreak of the First World War.

How the top brass undermined WWI soldiers' attempts to 'live and let live'
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How socialists of Lenin’s time responded to colonialism
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