World Wars-Part 2

So, what was the cause of this disaster which transformed Europe into an ocean of blood? Why did the leaders of powerful countries push their nations into such a meaningless pit of death?

Before the war, many people thought that such a war would be very beneficial, and even that it was necessary. Many people welcomed the war and were overjoyed when war was declared. Leaders were proud to send off their soldiers to the battlefields.

The main cause of this great mistake was their belief in a concept, namely Darwinism. American historian Thomas Knapp explains this as follows:

The war itself was not a surprise. It had been in fact anticipated in wide European circles in the decade or so before 1914. There is even a fair amount of evidence to show that the number of Europeans on all sides welcomed the war. War was to be cleansing, exciting and rejuvenating (refreshing). Educational systems in most European countries were shot through with the kind of Social Darwinist competitive mentality in which war was seen as exhilarating and ennobling.

Social Darwinism was the application of Darwin's evolutionary theory to society.

In his theory, which was later disproved, Darwin claimed that all creatures in nature were engaged in a struggle to survive. He claimed that humans were an advanced form of animal which moved ahead through conflict. This mistaken theory, which looked like a scientific fact to many people considering the technological level of that age, formed the foundation for World War I, as well as a number of other social disasters.

The diaries and personal correspondence of European leaders from that time show that they were influenced by Social Darwinism. These leaders rejected the path of love and mercy-based morality which God had revealed to the people in favor of Social Darwinism instead.

For instance, General von Hoetzendorff, the Austria-Hungarian chief of staff, wrote this in his postwar memoirs:

Philanthropic (good hearted) religions, moral teachings and philosophical doctrines (theories) may certainly sometimes serve to weaken mankind's struggle for existence in its crudest form, but they will never succeed in removing it as a driving motive of the world… It is in accordance with this great principle that the catastrophe of the world war came about as the result of the motive forces in the lives of states and peoples, like a thunderstorm which must by its nature discharge itself.

Friedrich von Bernhardi, another First World War general, also drew a link between war and the so-called evolutionary laws of nature:

War is a biological necessity. It is as necessary as the struggle of the elements of nature; it gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things.

In sum, World War I was caused by European rulers who believed that fighting, bloodshed, suffering and making others suffer were all part of the "law of nature." It is Darwin's evolutionary theory which pushed an entire generation into these mistaken beliefs. The dark figure of Darwin lurks behind the curtain of war.

However, contrary to Darwin's claims, humans are not animals that survive in order to do battle with each other. In the Qur'an, God has this to say about those who start wars:

…Each time they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. They rush about the earth corrupting it. God does not love corrupters.

God created people, gave them a spirit that is unique among all other living things, and commanded them to lead a moral existence. This way of life requires love, fraternity, mercy and peace. Only if people obey this instruction can the world become a place of peace. The divine order that will bring peace and salvation to all humanity is expressed in the Qur'an as follows:

... And do good as God has been good to you. And do not seek to cause corruption in the earth. God does not love corrupters.

World War I was the product of a thought system that assumed that fighting and bloodshed were an essential law of nature. Even after the war ended, this philosophy lived on. Because it did not die, it went on to plant the seed of an even larger, more terrifying war. Germany was at the center of this great threat.

The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I imposed on Germany a very heavy financial burden of compensation (return). Even as the nation struggled to recover from the effects of the war, it began to fall into a serious economic crisis. Competing political groups took to fighting in the streets. In the midst of this chaotic atmosphere, a fanatical (enthusiastic) political movement began to rise. This was the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler. Nazism was nothing but an interpretation of Social Darwinism.

Hitler had already adopted the "racial struggle to survive" view which was the basis of Darwin's theory. According to Hitler, the Aryan race of the German people was at the top rung of the evolutionary ladder and it had the right to rule over other races. In order to make this view a reality, they needed another war, a war that would make Germany the ruler of the whole world. Brutal, ambitious leaders were leading this movement.

The situation of these leaders was explained as follows in the Qur'an:

Whenever he holds the upper hand, he goes about the earth corrupting it, destroying (people's) crops and breeding stock. God does not love corruption.

Then, is it to be expected of you, if you assumed power, that you will cause corruption in the earth and sever your ties of kinship?

Nazism started another world war in 1939. Nazi armies occupied Poland through a sudden attack. Germany brought Poland to its knees in only three weeks. Poland's capital Warsaw was bombed mercilessly and many civilians died.

The entire world was huddled (dumped) in fear, waiting to see what the next target would be. The German General Staff was making plans for new attacks. Meanwhile, another totalitarian power took the first step towards war: the Soviet Union ruled by Stalin's bloody dictatorship.

Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939. They reached an agreement to share Poland, but this was not to satisfy Stalin (Red Army). With a sudden attack, the Red Army invaded the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Then they moved towards the north and occupied Finland. This attack claimed over a quarter-million lives.

With a new attack launched in April 1940, Hitler's troops occupied Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands. German armies entered France via Belgium in May 1940. Tens of thousands of civilians started fleeing their homes out of fear of Nazi violence.

On June 13, German armies marched into the streets of Paris. Hitler posed for photographers in front of the Eiffel Tower. In the months to come, Germany went on to invade Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece. All of entire Europe was being crushed under Hitler's boots.

Germany's largest plan for occupation was against onetime ally Russia. This plan, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, began with a sudden attack on June 22, 1941.

The German Army moved quickly and within 12 weeks, they had invaded Kiev. One month later, they were at the outskirts of Moscow.

The next three years witnessed the unfolding of a horrific war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This conflict, which became the bloodiest war in all of history, claimed the lives of over 30 million people. Both of the sides fighting in this war, Nazism and Communism, committed terrible crimes against humanity.

The ideologies fighting in this war were trying to realize their own plans and expectations, although they had no moral or humanitarian cause. Towards their ends, they allowed the killings of millions of people. Supporting such cruelty which recognizes no boundaries is strictly forbidden in the Qur'an.

Do not obey the orders of the profligate (reckless), those who corrupt the earth and do not put things right.

World War II was more than just a war, it was also a concerted effort to commit massacres and genocide. This initiative was based on Hitler's racist "living space" policy.

As the allied forces liberated Nazi-occupied lands, the brutal genocide the Nazis carried out in the concentration camps came to light. 11 million people had been murdered with horrible mass extermination methods, and those few who were still alive were half-dead. This form of barbarity shows the extent of the catastrophes that Darwinist racism has led to.

Hitler claimed that Germany's current territory was not enough for the German people and that the Aryan race was being squeezed on this land. He thus argued that they had to occupy the Eastern European countries and turn these places into Lebensraum, or "living space," for Germans. The tens of millions of people already living on these lands faced cruel massacres.

The Nazi armies perpetrated enormous massacres in every region they occupied in Eastern Europe. In particular, they carried out wantonly merciless acts against Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Slavs, groups they saw as inferior to them.

Special Nazi SS units formed especially to carry out these massacres started killing all the groups they targeted, above all the Jews. All the occupied areas were thick with the bodies of the dead and survivors grieving over them. Clergymen and places of worship were favorite targets of the Nazis. They burned and destroyed all the churches and killed people of faith.

The Nazi's cruelty was on full show in their concentration camps. Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and Catholic clergymen were made to toil like slaves. These camps were turned into slaughterhouses for human beings. Millions of innocent men, women and children were cruelly murdered in systems designed to kill people en masse. When the camps were liberated, the Allies were greeted by tens of thousands of dead bodies side-by-side with prisoners waiting at death's door. In the Nazi concentration camps, a total of 11 million innocent people lost their lives.

By 1943, it had become clear that the Nazis were going to lose the war. In Stalingrad, Hitler's armies suffered a huge defeat at the hands of Soviet forces. After this disaster, Germans also lost another battle in the Kursk region, an event known as the greatest tank battle in history. Defeat was now inevitable. But the Nazis, even as they withdrew, continued their slaughter. Acting under Hitler's orders, they laid waste to all the areas they passed through and killed civilians. German armies left behind millions of dead bodies and survivors grieving for their relatives.

When the Allied armies reached Berlin, the downfall of Nazism was inevitable. However, the Red Army troops which entered Berlin were representatives of another ideology of violence. In the years of come, it became all-too-clear that Stalin's armies were no less cruel and violent than Hitler's. About the same number of people came to perish in Stalin's camps. In the areas they occupied, Stalin's soldiers committed massacres similar to the atrocities of Nazi soldiers.

The insanity known as World War II claimed the lives of 55 million people. The world had borne witness to another satanic rite of bloodshed. However, God told the people to follow the way of peace and security, not evil:

O You who believe! Enter absolutely into peace. Do not follow in the footsteps of Satan. He is an outright enemy to you.

World Wars-Part 1

Wars have existed almost since the dawn of humanity itself. Competing political and economic interests led people to take arms against one another. Weapons and armies have developed hand-in-hand, and so wars have grown ever more violent and destructive.

However, until the 20^th century, wars took the form of "front battles" in which soldiers of two armies would meet on both sides of a battlefield and the fighting would revolve around this axis. In these conflicts, it was the soldiers alone who were killed.

But in the 20^th century, a new breed of war was born, one targeting not only soldiers but also the masses of people. The effects of such wars would be felt in not just a handful of countries but rather were like they had taken the entire world into their terrible maw (jaws, chops, etc).

Throughout history, war has inflicted (imposed) great suffering and losses to society. A number of prophets (teacher or interpreter of the supposed will of God.) who were sent to the people as messengers warned them against this calamity and turmoil.( violent confusion; agitation., din and bustle.)

And to Madyan We sent their brother Shu'ayb, he said, "My people, worship God and look to the Last Day and do not act unjustly on earth, corrupting it." (Qur'an, 29: 36)

Through the voice of their prophets, the Israelites made a promise to God not to shed blood:

And when We made a covenant (agreement between God and the Israelites.) with you not to shed your blood and not to expel one another from your homes, you agreed and were all witnesses. (Qur'an, 2: 84)

In 19^th century Europe, colonialism was widespread. European powers such as Great Britain and France had established colonial empires in all four corners of the world. Germany, which had established its political unity later than other countries, was striving to become a forerunner (predecessor, herald.) in this race.

By the beginning of the 20^th century, interest-based relations had split Europe into two opposing poles. Britain, France and Russia were on one side, and Germany and the Austria-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Hapsburgs of German origin were on the other.

The tension between these two groups escalated (increase or develop rapidly by stages, make or become more intense.) with each passing day, and finally an assassination in 1914 provided the spark for war. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, was killed by Serbian nationalists who sought (wanted) to curb (check, restraint, strap) the empire's influence in the Balkans.

Within a very short period of time, provocations (cause of annoyance.) following on the heels of this incident pulled the entire European continent into war. First Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia. Russia, a traditional ally (friend, supporter) of the Serbians, then declared war against Austria-Hungary.

Then one after another, Germany, Britain and France entered the war. The fuse had been lit. Before the war had even begun, the German General Staff Falkenhayn had drawn up a plan and decided to take control of France through a sudden attack. To achieve this aim, the Germans entered Belgium and later crossed the border into France. Responding quickly, the French army stopped the Germans on the banks of the River Marne (a river in France) and started a counter-offensive.

Although both armies suffered serious losses, no progress on the battlefront was to be found. Both the German and French soldiers hid in trenches (trench —long narrow usually deep ditch dug by troops as a shelter from enemy fire by turning over the earth of (a field, garden, etc.) by digging a succession of ditches in order to protect themselves.) As the result of a series of attacks stretching over several months, some 400,000 French soldiers were killed. The death toll of German soldiers reached 350,000.

Trench warfare (competition, fighting) became the main strategy of World War I.next few years, soldiers practically lived in these trenches. Life there was difficult in the extreme. (very cold or very hot seasons) Soldiers lived under the constant threat of being bombarded, and they constantly faced extreme stress and fear. The bodies of those who died had to remain in these places, and soldiers had to sleep next to the corpses.(dead bodies) When it rained, the trenches overflowed with mud. Over the

More than 20 million soldiers who fought in World War I suffered horrific conditions in these trenches, and most of them died there.

Within a few weeks of its being established by a 1914 German attack (on France through Belgium ), the war's western front was essentially fixed in a stalemate (or checkmate as in chess. A position counting as a draw, in which a player cannot move except into check., deadlock.).

The soldiers burrowed in these trenches were trapped at a distance of only a few hundred meters away from each other. Every attack launched in an effort to end this stalemate was going to cost more lives.

At the beginning of 1915, Germans developed a new plan to break through the western front. Their plan was to suddenly attack the city of Verdun, which was considered the pride of the French. The goal of the attack was not to win the war but rather to inflict (do, impose) great losses on the French Army and so weaken their resistance (their power and strength). German Chief of Staff Falkenhayn calculated that every German soldier was going to single-handedly kill three French soldiers.

The attack began on Feb. 21. German commanders ordered their soldiers to "get out of their trenches," but every soldier that did so was dead or dying in about three minutes. Despite attacks that went on for months on end, the Germans failed to capture Verdun.( a city in France)

Taken together, the two sides lost about a million soldiers. And for that effort, the front line nudged (draw, push, shift,) 12 kilometers. One million people died for the sake of a dozen kilometers.

The British retaliated (attack in return, insult) against Germany's attack on Verdun with the Battle of the Somme. British factories produced hundreds of thousands of artillery (weapons) shells.

General Douglas Haig's plans called for the British Army to rain down continuous bombardment (through bombs) for a full week, followed by an infantry attack.(infantry attack means attack by the soldiers walking and running on the land) He believed that they would advance 14 kilometers on the first day alone and then shatter (destroy) all the German lines within a single week.

The attack began on June 1. British artillerymen attacked German lines for one week without letup (without break, continuously). At the end of that week, British officers ordered their soldiers to climb out of their trenches. However, during the bombardment the German soldiers had sat tight in their deep trenches and so hadn't been destroyed, failing the British plan. As the British soldiers moved across the front lines, the German soldiers opened up on them (suddenly came in front of british soldiers) with their machine guns. A total of 20,000 British soldiers died in the first few hours of the battle. In the darkness of that night, the field between two fronts was filled with tens of thousands of dead bodies as well as injured soldiers trying to drag themselves back.

The Battle of the Somme lasted not for the two weeks that General Haig had planned on, but rather for five months. These months were nothing but massacres (mass killing, death of many people.). Generals insistently sent wave after wave of their soldiers to a certain death. At the end of the battle, the sides between themselves had lost a total of 900,000 men. And for this, the front moved only 11 kilometers. These soldiers were sacrificed for a mere 11 kilometers.(instead of 14 which General Haig wanted to cover)

Both sides had many more attacks during World War I, and each one of these attacks was a massacre in itself. Third battle took place in Belgium's town of Ypres .(Total thre bbatles…one on river Marne, other the battle of Somme in Verdun, the third in Belgium’s town of Ypress) Some half a million soldiers died only in the third battle.

Each attack had the same result: Thousands of lives lost only to advance for a handful of kilometers.

This terrible war, which had no good cause, claimed the lives of countless innocents. Many people lost their relatives or had to abandon their homes.

The ultimate causes behind this social catastrophe (calamity, disaster) were political ambitions and the interests of certain ideological circles. Promoting corruption, which is caused by the worldly ambitions of those who deny God, is forbidden in the Qur'an. God forbids people to cause corruption on the earth:

Do not corrupt the earth after it has been put right. Call on Him fearfully and eagerly. God's mercy is close to the good-doers. (Qur'an, 7: 56)

World War I ushered (came up ) in the first appearance of a host of deadly phenomena. One of these was that war began targeting not only armies, but also civilians. The first bombardment aimed at civilian populations was a 1915 attack on Britain by a German zeppelin (It is a airship named after its driver or airman zeppelin). The bombs hurled from these zeppelins took the lives of many innocents.

The German submarine U-boats (The german submarines were called by this name) began a campaign of firing on civilian ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean. On May 7, 1915, the world's biggest transatlantic ship (A big ship which was crossing the Atlantic Ocean), The Lusitania (It is the name of the Ship), was sunk just off the coast of Ireland by a U-boat (German submarine) attack. Out of The Lusitania's 2,000 passengers, a total of 1,195 people drowned or died in the attack.

Another disaster of the war was chemical weapons. Poison gas, a weapon first used by the French and later also by the Germans, led to the agonizing (painful) death of thousands of soldiers. Many soldiers were blinded by the gas, and armies had to resort to issuing gas masks as a protective measure. Civilians, too, were given gas masks to protect them from this often-deadly menace (danger or threat).

In 1918 World War I finally drew to a close, after four years of pointless attacks at the hands of the British, French and German armies. But this peace, declared at 11:00 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, wasn't going to bring happiness to anyone. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers remained handicapped. Others proved unable to overcome the psychological (mental) impact of war after living in these trenches full of mud, dirt and dead bodies. The form of trauma (shock) known as "shell shock" was very common among war veterans (old soldier or long-serving war veteran; veteran actor, ex-serviceman or servicewoman.), and it caused its sufferers to undergo fits of intense fear and shaking. The fear of being bombed, which they had lived with every day for four years on end, was engraved (fixed, imprinted, had bad effect on mind) in their brains. Some patients felt compelled to go hide themselves at the mere mention of the word "bomb." Some veterans even felt terror grip them whenever they saw a uniform. Tens of thousands of soldiers also lost one or more limbs (arm, leg) in this war. So legion (large, gratin number) were the ranks of soldiers whose eyes, chins or noses were disfigured during the bombings that special masks were invented in Europe to mask their scarred faces.

The great pain inflicted by World War I was also reflected in the fine arts. Works of postwar art depicted pain and insanity (madness, mental illness). These works reflected not only the psychologies of the artists, but also that of the entire generation. This generation which felt the impact of the war's misery so deeply was later dubbed "the Lost Generation."

As we have seen, war is a great agent of cruelty which has no benefit for people or society. It is a social catastrophe which brings forth great pain and inflicts deep wounds on people which are long in healing, if they can. God, on the other hand, has instructed people to steer (guide) clear of wars and to make peace prevail. God gives good news to those who commit good deeds:

That abode (residence) of the hereafter-We grant it to those who do not seek to exalt (praise) themselves in the earth or to cause corruption in it. The successful outcome is for those who do their duty. (Qur'an, 28: 83)

Would We make those who believe and do right actions the same as those who cause corruption on the earth? Would We make those who do their duty the same as the dissolute? (Qur'an, 38: 28)