Some quotes:
They could not help but notice that the Kingdom of God on Earth preached by optimistic chaplains failed to materialize, and began to question if their sacrifices had really been worthwhile.
Well, personally, I’ve given up speculating about that sort of thing. I don’t know, and I don’t much care whether there’s a God or no. This place is enough evidence that He returns the compliment. If He exists at all, then He must be an impersonal God who doesn’t care a hoot about mankind.
“The idiocy of having church parades, religious ceremonies, on active service. The absurdity of it! The damnable hollow sham of it! … What a pain it did give you in the fundamental. Was God going to take sides in this filthy business? It was rank blasphemy.”
To think we could propitiate a senseless god by abstaining from cursing! What god is there as mighty as the fury of a bombardment? … How will we ever be able to go back to peaceful ways and hear pallid preachers whimper of their puny little gods who can only torment sinners with sulphur, we who have seen a hell that no god, however cruel, would fashion for his most deadly enemies? Yes, all of us have prayed during the manic frenzy of a bombardment. Who can live through the terror-laden minutes of drumfire and not feel his reason slipping, his manhood dissolving?
However you look at it ,the fact is that between 1914-1945 Europe and Canada lost forever the best of their genetic pool. Germany, England, Russia, Italy, France and Canada have been forever impoverished. Add to that the effect of widespread birth control and abortion, then it is no surprise that their endemic populations are contracting and their civilizations are crumbling.
The carnage was horrible beyond being able to describe it in a couple of sentences. The war's genesis was in the fading inbred 19th century royalty straight from a Duck Soup casting call. They all decided it would be fun to have a war for their amusement. Nothing monumental was at stake. And it was never really over until 1945. Without WWI we would not have had WWII.
The USA should not have been involved in any way. It was a losing proposition from the start.
There was the famous postwar disillusionment after the war, but while it was going on, people were too busy and frightened to just give up on life and the idea that there was some purpose to the universe.
Finding a few prominent atheists who went to war doesn't change that. There probably were atheists on the battlefield in most modern wars, but my guess is that those who went into the war as unbelievers probably weren't many.
I don't quarrel with your quotes, but they may be the result of soldiers' general revulsion with the rhetoric of those at home, rather than a hostility to religion in particular.
WWI should have caused a loss of faith in government not God. But it didn’t. It also caused a shift in demographics which impacted voting patterns.
It started in the latter Nineteenth Century: The supposedly enlightened atheists, socialists, and evolutionists laid the groundwork for brutal global warfare.
Then they blamed the foul fruits of their arrogant and depraved godlessness on God.
My grandfather was wounded on July 18, 1918 outside of Soissons, France. He was with the Big Red One in the American Army. If anyone can recommend a book that includes information on this specific group of soldiers around this time and place, I would be very grateful. Despite life threatening injuries, he lived to be 95 years old and a wonderful grandfather to me.