The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The Forgotten Story Behind Veterans Day

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the Allied powers defeated Germany, ending World War I. The annual celebration of this pivotal date we know to be Veterans Day. Victor Davis Hanson breaks down the history of the holiday—from the challenges the U.S. faced entering World War I and the extraordinary contributions of American troops to the transformation of its beginnings as Armistice Day to a day in which we honor all who have served in the U.S. military—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 👉 This episode is sponsored by the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Learn more: ⁠https://go.pepperdine.edu/dailysignal⁠ 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com 👉The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: ⁠https://secured.dailysignal.com/⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. What is today? It's Veterans Day, November 11th, 2025. A lot of us forget where Veterans Day came from. It's different than Memorial Day. Memorial Day commemorates on the last Monday of May. The date alternates every year. All those who died in World Wars. It's from the Civil War idea of remembrance. And it was made an official holiday in the 50s, and the date changes, depending on which Monday, which date is the last Monday in May. Sometimes we confuse that with Veterans Day. Veterans Day commemorates all those who served in the armed forces, both those who died and those who survived. The vast majority survived. It came from a word called Armacist, Armicist Day. And that commemorated the end of World War I. The Allies who had defeated the German offensive dictated terms, and they needed an iconic time or date so that everybody would know when the war was officially over.

So they picked, given it was November, they picked the 11th day of November. November was the 11th month of the year, so it was the 11th month of the 11th day. and the armistice took place at 11 o'clock in the morning. And then the Allies, and obviously not the Germans who lost the war, or the Austrians who lost the war, and some of the Eastern European countries who lost the war, don't commemorate it. But the Allies in Western Europe and the United States then started to commemorate Armisusis Day. And it was made an official holiday, I think, in the 1950s, 1954, and it was made. the name was changed from Armistice's Day to veterans so that it wouldn't be exclusively

referring to World War I. So now it's all of our wars. We commemorate those who served, not necessarily those just who died, which will be commemorated later in the next year in the last Monday of May. There's one kind of little wrinkle to all this. When I was in high school, the date fluctuated in October, and it was changed in accordance with the pattern of Memorial Day to the fourth Monday in October. So you never knew what day Armist's Day was, and you wrote the complete connection between World War I and Armist's Day because it was no longer on the 11th hour, the 11th day of the 11th month. And then that was corrected later. And so we went back now, as we should have, we don't use a word armist anymore. We use Veterans Day, but it will

always be on the 11th day. And it commemorates what America has done in our wars, but by going back to that, as I said, all of the people who fought in all of our wars, but going back to that iconic date is important because it denotes the idea that America first went into a major World War. They did not want to go. America did not want to go into that war. They had been firmly isolationists. They had no defenses other than a Navy to speak of. The war had broken out in July of 1914, so it had been going on for three years. The Americans said it doesn't involve us. They fought the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, 71. They're always fighting wars. That's the nature of Europe. It's very different than us over here.

In addition, there were large minorities here of German immigrants, German Americans, and a large, of course, legacy of British, less so the French, but there was a feeling that we didn't want to create tensions within America of some people rooting for the Kaiser and some for the British. But we got into the war in April 6th of 1917, even though Woodrow Wilson, the president, had run, both in 1912 and again in 1916 that we would not get into war. What changed?

Well, there's a lot of things that changed. The Zimmerman Telegram denoted the ambassador from Germany to Mexico had sent a telegram saying that they were going to work out an agreement that Mexico would attack the United States and deflect our attention from Europe and in exchange for that war that they would wage against us, they would be given back some of the territories they lost in the Mexican War, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. And then also in 1917, the Germans restarted unrestricted submarine warfare,

saying that we will think Germany will think any ship taking supplies to Britain or to France regardless of the country. And they sunk a number of American ships. And then they had earlier sunk the Lusitania that had American civilians on it. So there was a outpouring of anger, and Wilson capitalized on that. And we had never been in a war overseas like this before. Never. We had the Barbary Pirates.

But most of the, even the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, they had been on American soil. Spanish-American War. We had gone to the Philippines and Cuba, but that was brief. This was something new. And we were going to fight the most formidable army in the history of Europe, the imperial German army. So there was a lot of apprehension. We had to have a draft almost immediately. We drafted 4 million people.

And probably in a achievement that's even more impressive than what we did in World War II, we forget this. The U.S. government was able to draft 2 million people after April 1917 all the way. to Armacist of November 11, 1918, and send them all the way to France without losing a single soldier to enemy action. And when those soldiers got there, it was absolutely critical that they get there in time because Germany had knocked out Russia and no longer had a two-front war at the end of 1917 and early 1918. So Germany was bringing vast amounts of fresh soldiers and veteran experienced fighters to crush the tired British and French on the Western front. So the infusion of Americans, 2 million of 10,000 a day were arriving. And they

had little experience. They had little equipment compared to their European counterparts that had been in war for over three years. They plugged the gap. And we weren't responsible entirely for the victory, that probably should be allotted to the Germans, to the British and French, who suffered a lot more losses, respectively, probably a million Frenchmen died, another million were wounded, and probably 900 British died. We lost about 116,000 of those were lost to disease, but we did bring in the manpower that stopped the German Spring and Invention of 1918, turn the tide, allowed Britain and France to win the war and to us to become a world power with this new army. We had a new Navy, and at the Versailles Treaty the next year, Woodrow Wilson oversaw the peace negotiations and the settlement.

They didn't work too well. Wilson was an idealist, and unfortunately, we can get into that sometime. The Versailles Treaty had innate flaws that almost as General Folk, the French Superior Commander, said this is not a peace treaty. It's a parentheses for war within 20 years, and that's exactly what happened. Nevertheless, today is Veterans Day. It commemorates the end of the World War I, the Armistist, on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour. And it's something we should all commemorate those who have served from the founding of the country until our most recent engagements in the Middle East, the soldiers who sacrificed for us both by their service and by those who were wounded and killed.

And it's something we should keep in mind. Thank you very much, Victor Davis-Hanson, for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.