On June 28, 1914, Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot dead by a Serbian assassin. At the time, nobody suspected that this murder had lit the fuse to a global conflagration, a cataclysm that would sweep up nations, empires, and peoples.
Among those swept up in the First World War were the Latter-day Saints, whose members made up congregations throughout the United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany.
What was it like for Latter-day Saints in the Great War? What was it like for the Soldiers of the belligerent nations to enlist, to train, to fight? How did Latter-day Saints fare in the trenches? What was it like for the Mormon people on the home front? And for those who survived, how did they make sense of what they lived through? We will explore that and more in this, our third season.
This first episode discusses the causes of the Great War, the desire of Latter-day Saints to prove their loyalty to their countries, and early recruiting efforts in Alberta, Canada among Latter-day Saints, William Kessler's decision to enlist in the German Army and fight for the Kaiser, the early shows of support for Germany from the LDS German community in Salt Lake City.
To learn more about the information in this episode, please check out the following (excellent!) sources:
Robert Freeman & Andrew Skinner, Saints at War: World War I (2018), available at https://www.amazon.com/Saints-Andrew-Skinner-Robert-Freeman/dp/1462122329. A true labor of love, Dr. Freeman and Dr. Skinner have compiled many first-hand accounts from Latter-day Saint veterans of World War I from many different nations.
James Perry, British Latter-day Saints in the Great War, 1914-1918, 44 J. of Mormon Hist. 70 (July 2018).
James L. Mangum, The Influence of the First World War on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BYU Thesus (23 Jan. 2007), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1839&context=etd.
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914-1918 (2006).
Jeffrey L. Anderson, Mormons and Germany, 1914-1933: A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Germany and its Relationship Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Germany and its Relationship With the German Governments from World War I to the Rise of With the German Governments from World War I to the Rise of Hitler, BYU Thesis and Dissertation (1991), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5475&context=etd.