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Nonetheless think about what these people are going through --- four years of war. All these countries in a sense sacrificing their future with each generation of youngsters that they call up and throw into the maw. And they're sacrificing their pasts too. They're cannibalizing their countries' historical and long-term assets. 



We've quoted the English wife of a German nobleman Princess Bl\"ucher, Evelyn Bl\"ucher, writing in her diary. She told this story that is just heartbreaking about you know the fact that the Germans don't have enough ammunition anymore and they're starting to go into the society and take things to melt down. One historian I read said that during this period more than ten thousand church bells were melted down and Princess Bl\"ucher tells a story about that. She says:
\begin{quote}There are other signs too, pathetic in their way, of the increasing scarcity of metal. For everywhere the old church bells and even the organ pipes are being dragged from the churches and turned into ammunition whilst, owing to the scarcity of oil, the sanctuary lamp, such a dear familiar sight in Catholic churches, may no longer shed its tender light before the tabernacle.

In a small town near here a sad little ceremony took place the other day. The ancient church bell which had rung the people from the cradle to the grave for three hundred years and more was requisitioned by the military authorities. The grief felt by the inhabitants was so great that they determined to do their ancient friend all the honor they could.

And after having performed the regular funeral service for the dead over it a procession was formed headed by the priest in his vestments and his acolytes swinging their incense and the inhabitants following the bell which was covered with wreaths and flowers and handed over to the military authorities under tears and protestations.
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I look at that story as kind of symbolic of you know the greatness of old Europe at the height and the high water marks of its wealth and civilization and you hundreds of years of glorious past behind them sort of girding the whole society being ripped apart and thrown into the maw and the furnace to provide the implements that are needed to fight the war that is destroying its high place on the world stage.



This is a sort of tragic irony that isn't confined to Germany by the way this is how Britain and France and Russia and all these old line powers kind of feel they're trapped in this conflict now
that is chewing up their wealth, destabilizing the structures of their society, and once again taking the next class of draftees who reach eighteen years old and throwing them into the meat grinder too.

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--- Dan Carlin, ``Blueprint for Armageddon VI'', 1:35:55, \url{http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-vi/}

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