How quickly things can change. In 1907, my mother’s family fresh from the ghettos of Hamburg Germany, set up a small brew pub outside of a major factory in our city’s Southside. One hundred years ago The Second Reich was the strongest military in the world. Its Krieg Akadamie considered by most the elite school for training future commanders, and its officer corps one of the most feared in the world.

In those days, it wasn’t unusual for Central European immigrants to flock to the Midwest factory towns. Entire neighborhoods filled with Schwabs, Wendts, Bohemians, Magyars, Bavarians, and Slovenians. In the days before cheap, plentiful motor transport, in-door plumbing, efficient electrical grids, paved streets, and clean water, it wasn’t unusual for children to die from typhus, influenza, cholera, and polio. My father’s German Grandfather had 13 brothers and sister, of which 3 died before they were eight. And Germany was one of the most modern nations on earth. Mothers cringed every time they heard a sniffle from their infants. A sniffle on Sunday could be mean death by the following Friday. Just one hundred years ago (a blink on the cosmic time scale) many of the now decayed urban neighborhoods in my city’s Southside filled with these noisy, hardworking, often sick Catholic immigrants. They fled poverty, oppression, and a kind of nationalistic militarism that was finally defeated in the ruins of Berlin in 1945.

The Europe of 1907 from where these people fled decayed rapidly with the first firings of the Guns of August – it breathed its last breath with the rise of Fascism in the 1920s and 30s. To catch a glimpse of it, one must find old black and white photos from that era. Visitors who toured Europe recently cannot possibly understand Old Europe. With its impeccably reconstructed inner cities, churches, museums, clean well kept villages and pampered citizens, today’s Europe is a far cry from what existed 100 years ago. Instead of $2 million dollar Swiss Chalets, and Tyrolean vacation homes, there were impoverished Swiss farmers, and overwhelmed Austrian craftsmen who worried over feeding their 11 children. The Churches stood full on Sundays; the liturgies were quiet Latin chants, and not loud rock filled entertainment sessions. Waiters served the lagers straight from the barrels, and most villages that had over 500 occupants had their own breweries. Life was improving, but it was still hard.

Germany, France, Russia, and the Austrian Empire still dictated the peace. Despite Bismarck’s attempt at Real Politick, Germany was racing towards a ruinous alliance with Austria. The Kaiser, a self indulgent neurotic couldn’t keep his mouth shut, or his fantasies to himself. Admiral Tirpitz got his wish, and Germany’s arms race with Great Britain began. Why? Because the Kaiser, a yachtsman wanted a Navy that could compete with his cousin’s Prince Edward's navy. Germany, a land nation with no naval tradition or skill (which would be painfully obvious during the Great War), decided to alienate its only diplomatic ace-card: Great Britain. The Kaiser’s pride dictated that no nation- not even Great Britain- should have superior battleships (the Dreadnought class). As if having 2 powerful land armies on his flanks wasn’t enough, the Kaiser damned the torpedoes and threw Great Britain into France’s lap. Defensive ententes between France and Great Britain soon followed.

Despondent over the Germany’s disintegrating geopolitical situation, Count von Schliefflen in 1905 penned a quick memo on how Germany would fight in a future conflict. It was an all or nothing strategy bases on desperation. Unfortunately, the Schliefflen Plan survived the retirement of its author. In 1907, Count von Moltke (the younger nephew of the famous Field Marshall) began to fiddle with the plan as well as add operational flesh to it. All that his fiddling accomplished was to accentuate the worst parts of the plan (invading Belgium, thus inviting Great Britain into the war) while removing the one piece of strategy that might have brought victoryin the case of Great Britain's entry (invading Holland and occupying the Norman coastline and its seaports). Luckily, as providence would have it, von Moltke was Supreme Commander in August 1914. He watched the rout of his armies in the West on the Marne River, while Russian forces poured into East Prussia. His nervous breakdown shortly followed. It served him right.

But August 1914 was still seven years in the future. For the Central Europeans, the farmer, factory worker, housfrau, craftsman or school teacher, life was actually good. By good, I mean improving. Yes, a person toiled 16 hours a day just to survive. Yes, death was a normal part of life, but things were looking up. It was almost a 100 years since the last general European war (a record by European standards), social security was law, labor laws precluded employing children in most factory jobs, prices were stable outside of the cities, and for the first time, workers had enough disposable income to afford a day off every now and then. Motor cars, while gaining in popularity, still were a luxury of the rich or nouveau riche. Gas lights became a standard fixture for many of the large cities, but kerosene and candle light still were common. The things that still occupied most people’s minds concerned the every day; most people were just too busy surviving and bettering their families to worry much about politics.

Even in the more cosmopolitan cities like Berlin or Vienna, no one saw the war coming. In 1907, yes there were rumors of war; but since the Franco Prussian War there was always a rumor that France would again seek revenge. Yes, people saw the war coming; they just never expected it to occur. The educated and sophisticated went a step farther. Europeans were too cosmopolitan, sophisticated, and sensitive to fight another bloody conflict. Wars were a thing of the past. History was evolving, and so was Man. The Kingdom of God was at hand and The Progress of Man its centerpiece. Most people considered Marxism and its stridency passé.  All of the spending on new ships, powerful artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire had its purpose –to fill the capitalist’s pockets. No one would actually use all of that hardware. Pope Pious X recent warning against Modernism and Rationalism went unheeded. The Popewas just an unsophisticated cleric upset that History was passing the Church of Rome by. God created Man and Reason, and History was on Man's side. Reason would guide Man to the Promise Land.

No one had a clue what was in store for them. They young boys played, studied and worked at their father’s side. In a decade, about a fifth of the 10 to 12 year olds in 1907 would be dead. In a decade, the bane of Karl Marx would spread like a cancer. Death and mutilation would occur on such a grand scale that the faith of sophisticated and ignorant alike would be shaken to its core. After 1918, no one spoke of the Progress of Man.