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Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘Ring of Fire' Review: World War I, Beyond the Trenches
A young man watches a fellow soldier beat a dog with the butt of a rifle and another soldier shoot the dog's owner—a pregnant woman—in cold blood, and simply calls the scene 'war in all its horror.' Another sets fire to a stranger's home in a town far from his own and admits 'the desire to destroy took over,' adding, 'if war is like this, then it's very ugly.' A third writes with equal detachment of the killings he has taken part in as 'living in a perpetual nightmare.' One of these voices belongs to a member of the French army, one is Austro-Hungarian and the other German. Which uniform each man wears, or in which theater of war he is fighting, is less important than what his experiences have in common with the others. These are but three among the countless troops and civilians whose experiences are viewed with a fresh perspective in 'Ring of Fire: A New History of the World at War, 1914,' by Alexandra Churchill and Nicolai Eberholst. Popular histories of World War I often reduce the worldwide conflict to two narrow fronts—eastern and western—both on a single western continent, with a primary focus on one of those two narrative boxes at the expense of the rest of the world. 'Ring of Fire' widens that lens and recenters the narrative, turning the conventional, top-down approach on its head. It pulls away from the proclamations of men in corridors of power to focus our attention instead on a bottom-up view of how the war impacted everyday men, women and children—lives lost, homes destroyed, jobs taken, food rationed, travel restricted, speech censored—whether they went to war or the war came to them. Ms. Churchill is a historian and battlefield guide who has hosted documentaries on military and royal history; Mr. Eberholst is a historian and archivist. The two skip past the daily volleys of righteous indignation in July 1914 and take us directly to the streets of the nations headed to war. We see young men in St. Petersburg and Berlin and Paris driven by patriotism to enlist, immigrants in Australia viewing service as a free passage back to Europe, and tribesmen in Africa volunteering for the food and regular income the military promised—with perils of combat paling next to recent famine. 'Ring of Fire' employs words with visual force to show us the opening shots of the war, following Germany's invasion of neutral Belgium, France's first offensive through Alsace-Lorraine, Austria-Hungary's attacks on Serbia, and Russia's bloody clashes with Austria-Hungary and Germany. In contrast to the recurring trope of 'lions led by donkeys,' we are shown armies adapting to modern, industrialized war and the replacement of incompetent field commanders with leaders who proved themselves effective during the war's first trials of combat. And we see the war's global reach, as the first British shot of the war is fired by an African soldier, the first British officer is killed in action in Germany's West African colony of Togoland and the first Australian officer is killed in action in German New Guinea.
Condé Nast Traveler
17-05-2025
- General
- Condé Nast Traveler
In the Bavarian Alps, Waltzing My Way Into Family History
Her life had been hard. She had lost so much: her mother to cholera, a brother stolen by the Russian army when soldiers invaded in what was then Austro-Hungary during World War I. When she was 18, her father sent her alone to a brother in America and she never saw any of her relatives again—most were murdered in the Holocaust, except her youngest brother who escaped to Palestine as a teenager. She met and married my grandfather, a Russian refugee, and they owned a laundry. He washed the clothes and she did the mending and ironing. By the time she and I ended up as roommates, Grandma, now in her seventies, had lived a life she'd never expected as a child. To cheer herself up, she liked to talk about her youth—climbing a cherry tree in her white graduation dress because she just had to have this one gorgeous cherry, ripping the dress her mother had hand-sewn for her on the way down. She sounded so high-spirited to me; her life seemed so magical before the wars swept her whole world away. She was educated, too, which was unusual for a girl in those times, and a Jewish one at that. She could read and write in seven languages. She was an expert seamstress and embroiderer, and she took dance lessons, which she loved. I was a dancer, too! Not social dancing, like her, but ballet and modern. As I read my book, I fantasized about the parties she must have attended at school. The muscle memory was still encoded in her body. She had rhythm and grace. Her grief and loss had not stolen this from her. Now, she was heavy-set, you could even say lumbering. But when I asked my question, she got up and began to slowly demonstrate by circling around my bedroom. One-two-three, one-two-three…her arms orbiting a phantom partner. I laughed when I saw her—she wasn't exactly an active senior, and she had neither a bra nor girdle on under her house dress. But then I recognized she could really move. The muscle memory was still encoded in her body. She had rhythm and grace. Her grief and loss had not stolen this from her. 'Pussycat,' she said, 'Come try.' I walked over and she put her arms around my waist and shoulder and began to hum, some waltz-y type music from her memory that I didn't know, as she spun me around our bedroom. We were both so happy. I have continued to dance ever since, taking ballet and jazz classes well into my forties and since then barre class every day and a lot of yoga. Dance has sustained me my entire life. But before we'd met Erik, that brief lesson from my grandmother was the only moment that I'd ever truly experienced ballroom dancing. Schloss Elmau was one of the first wellness destinations to offer dance retreats alongside more traditional spa activities. The dance intensives are designed to make guests of all ages feel comfortable—and find joy in movement. Now, I am going to be twirled again. Eric first puts on 'The Blue Danube' by Johann Strauss and then 'The Second Waltz by Dmitri Shostakovich'. He tells us to hold each other and move naturally, so Bruce and I sway side-to-side. He teaches us a two-step first and then the box step. Fun, but not what we'd come for. 'I want to swirl her around the room,' Bruce had said, when Erik had originally asked us for our goals. We keep knocking into one another. We laugh at our own clumsiness, and Erik laughs too. He is so glad that we are enjoying ourselves. Erik teaches us 'the lady turn,' where Bruce spins me under his arm, and then we two-step away from each other and he spins me back to him. Maybe it is the altitude, maybe it is the romance of it all, but by the time Eric puts on Elvis Presley's 'Can't Help Falling In Love With You'—also in ¾ time!—we are both breathless. And we are waltzing.
