Veteran's day 2019

Madame President:

     Your morning briefing...today is a holiday in many countries. We call it Veteran's Day. It was originally called Armistice Day. At 11:00 AM on November 11, 1918, World War I officially ended.

    World War I was called "The war to end all wars." Before it began in 1914, Europe was enjoying incredible prosperity People were living the good life. A series of miscalculations led us into this awful conflict. Here are the sad statistics:

Military and civilian casualties:  40 million including 15-19 million killed and 23 million wounded. 1,700,000 of the deaths were Russians. Over 1,350,000 were French. Britain lost 908,731. Germany lost over 4 million killed. The US lost 166,000 killed. Another 3.3 million prisoners of war died.

     At the same time, you had the Spanish flu epidemic that killed 20 million to 50 million worldwide. All my family survived this epidemic. They must have been very tough. I am sure that it affected Brasil also.

    The losses of World War I were so bad that everyone believed that another war would not follow. They were sadly wrong. The war so destabilized Russia that the Czar fell, The Communists came to power. Lenin was the first Communist dictator. When he died unexpectedly, Josef Stalin came to power. During his reign of terror, some 67 million Russians died in famines, purges, and World War II.

   Germany did not take kindly to its humiliating defeat. The allies imposed draconian peace terms on them. You have a book talking about the results: When Money Had No Value. This led to a resurgence of German nationalism that brought on World War II.

   Today politicians are very sensitive to world public opinion, social media, etc. We still have wars, but they are far less bloody than this disaster of over 100 years ago. Leaders like Putin and Chairman Ji are "sweet lapdogs" compared to megalomaniacs like Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Stalin. Also, with many countries armed with nuclear weapons, leaders think twice before starting a major war.

    Anna, Luah and Pedro I am so thankful that none you ever had to put on a military uniform and fight in a war.

    We must never forget what happened here or we risk it happening again.