Making Sense of Kitchener and the Twentieth Century

The smoking remains of the twentieth century are barely cooled , and already I want to make sense of what happened. I live in the City of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. The name of this city can practically sum up the entire history of conflict during the 20th century.

It used to be named the city of Berlin, due to the large number of German settlers in the area, but bad feelings caused by the Great War in Europe led to a name change to "Kitchener", who was an English military figure. Ironically, Kitchener had something to do with the alignment of Germany vs. England in the war. For that, we can go back to the very first war of the twentieth century, the Boer War.

The Boer War in 1899, was fought between the British Empire and the free Dutch settlers of the Transvaal, in today's South Africa. At the time, Britain was the "sole superpower" as they say today. The British Empire had prevailed during the nineteenth century and was unrivalled at the time, although the rising new country of Germany had been formed out of a group of kingdoms during the 1800's.

Germany's main resentment at the time was having been left out of the scramble for colonies in Africa, due to their late arrival on the scene.

Britain's performance during the Boer War was not unnoticed by the Germans. The German view of the war was that the valiant and honourable Boers had held off a British Empire, with a force one quarter the size, and only conceded defeat in the face of inhuman atrocities by the British. These atrocities included rounding up the Boer women and children in concentration camps, where 20,000 of them died. Also, the burning of all the grazing land to deny food to the Boer horses, as all the Boer fighters were on horseback. Also, the burning of the Boer towns, and a "take no prisoners" policy where all Boer wounded and prisoners were shot (denied by the British). The person implementing these policies was Lord Kitchener, the same one that my own city was named for.

Although Britain had the ability to put a happy spin on the war for their own people back home, the rest of the world took a horrified view of the nature of the conflict. The amorality, and the greed for resources, which at this time seemed to include the rich gold and diamond deposits near Johannesburg. Also, the British Empire had put on a display of weakness as well as cruelty.

World opinion turned against Britain, you might say similarly to the second Bush war in Iraq. (Interesting note: Like Iraq, there were also two Boer wars, the first one being more successful for Britain). Britain decided to shore up their tattered image by forming an alliance with France. The Germans seemed to feel more sympathy for the Boers, given that the Germans themselves had few colonies in Africa, and that the Boers were seen by Germans as being almost like them. The language is quite similar, and the Dutch homeland shares a border with Germany. Also, the Boers were seen by Germans as heroic freedom fighters, while the British saw them as stupid and racist farmers.

Not long after, World War One pitted Germany against Britain and France, with the British portraying the Germans as a violent and warlike race. At the same time, the Germans kind of saw the British as a weakening evil empire that they were helping bring to an end. The British Empire was personified by Lord Kitchener, who was by that time, Britain's Secretary of State for War.

You know most of the rest of the history, Germany losing WW1, then losing the rematch in WW2, but by then the Germans had begun to believe the only way to win was by taking the evil route themselves, including the British idea of concentration camps. Following WW2, the entire African colonial system was broken up.

There are a couple of recurring themes to this history, leading to the current Israeli Palestinian conflict, which most obviously arose out of the holocaust of WW2. In 1899, Jewish diamond and gold agents in Johannesburg were blamed with stirring up the war against the Boers. Both Kitchener and Jan Smuts (a Boer Leader) had involvements in the Holy land. And both South Africa and Israel have been accused of apartheid policies.

The picture is a famous WW1 recruiting poster depicting Lord Kitchener.