1914 – 1918
The World Remembers
The World Remembers was created to build a global memorial for everyone who died in uniform in the 1914-1918 war. In the 1920s, local memorials were often erected in villages, towns and cities that included the names of the war dead from their town or village. A century later, The World Remembers is building the first comprehensive international First World War memorial, that aims to include the name of everyone lost from every village, town, city and country. We want to name them all.
Seeing all those names is to appreciate that behind every one of them is a life and a story. We must never lose sight of the fact that history is not the history of nations or ideologies, but of people.
We have so far assembled more than five million names from 28 participating countries. We continue to appeal to governments, national archives, historical institutions and other sources to complete the memorial. Often military records have been lost to bombing or fire in subsequent wars, or to neglect, revolution or indifference. As a result, finding names for the estimated nine and a half million military deaths during the war may never be possible. We have included names from both sides of the conflict, in the belief that a comprehensive and inclusive memorial is the appropriate response to the world’s first global war that inflicted losses almost beyond imagination. Those who died deserve to be individually remembered. Civilian names have not been included since accurate lists were rarely compiled. Most were never recorded as war deaths.
Using the Search the Names feature, you can find information about any of the more than five million names and launch a memorial display that features that name. The memorial display will run for 15 minutes. If The World Remembers memorial name display were to be run in its entirety for every name, it would take almost a year. We also invite you to explore our Photo Gallery which brings together more than 1,000 First World War photos submitted by the participating countries. In addition, we have included brief war histories of these countries.
Memory is part of what makes us human.
PEOPLE OF THE WAR
Who were the millions of men who fought and died? Who were the women who lost their lives serving as nurses or in the merchant navies? Why have most of the millions of individuals been entirely forgotten or left buried in archives? They have been acknowledged collectively, but never individually. This is why, more than 100 years later, The World Remembers has set out to do that — name by name, and country by country.
Our guiding principles are equality, universality, and accessibility: equality because, after more than 100 years, there is equality in death; universality because each person lost is universally respected, regardless of country, rank, gender, race, religion, or social status; and accessibility because our software allows viewers to call up and view information about any of the millions of men and women remembered in this memorial. Hundreds of millions of families lost relatives in the 1914–1918 war, and today each can participate through this unique commemoration.
The War
Fought on a scale never before imagined, the 1914–1918 war changed the course of history. Twenty-two million military personnel were wounded and over nine and a half million died in more than four years of fighting that occurred on most of the globe’s continents and oceans. The conflict involved countries from almost every part of the world. It is estimated that seven million civilians lost their lives. Empires were destroyed and borders redrawn in much of Europe and the Middle East, while the 1919 peace settlement led to consequences that many countries still live with today.
The First World War changed attitudes about the conduct of war itself and accelerated both democratic and revolutionary upheavals. Even today, live artillery shells still surface in the former battlefields of Belgium and France, and sometimes injure or kill. It seems that the war is not yet finished. What did we learn, and how should we remember more than a century later?
I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than the massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.