U. S. Air force Academy Professor chuck steele talks about the state of the british grand fleet and the activity of submarines and argues that the actions of admiral william sims. His class is just over 50 minutes. Go ahead and take your seats. Okay. So were going to close out world war i talking about the american contribution and close out the lesson today by talking about william sims, one of the more neglected figures in military history as per the article i sent you, kind of comes off, you know, a distant second to pershing if that and so today this is a sea power class, well talk about the significance of sims and, you know, possibly get in to arguments as to who really made the more relevant contribution. That is sims, as you guys know, from being looking at the article. The painting is return of the mayflower. That shows the first group of american destroyers after we had entered the war arriving in ireland to begin operations against the german submarines. So its sort of the m
Thats interesting for us to understand why those myths fit and the reality of the experience. I want to start first by talking about how this connects to the first world overall. It is not just america that has this these myths but in the sense of how we understand the First World War to begin with and we think of the general narratives that we attach to it. One of the most common narratives was world war oi was as senseless slaughter. We get those images a lot, those are the images that i have up here for you. The idea that it is men sent to their deaths. I got two examples. One is all quiet on the western front. You are going to like this image. This is the cover for the first english edition of the novel. You will recognize it. Last class with the german war bond poster and that soldier was meant to represent germanys last hope. The one hes willing to sacrifice for his country and now it becomes sort of recycled as a different image and now it is an image of a man whos sacrificing f