This year marks the centennial of World War I, a conflict that left 16 million dead and millions more injured. Harvard’s history during the war years is intimately connected with the global conflict. Alumni, students, and faculty played important roles in treating the injured, funding the war effort, developing the first unit of the Army’s ROTC, and much more. Not least of all, more than 11,000 Harvard men served in the Great War and nearly 400 were killed. Completed in 1932, Memorial Church was built to commemorate those who died, and it stands at the forefront of Tercentenary Theatre as a testament to their memory. Visitors can read an inscription of the Harvard men who died carved in the stone walls of the Memorial Room.
To learn more about how Harvard’s history and WWI are connected, check out The Harvard Volunteers in World War I edited by Douglass Carver AB ’59, available now from Amazon.com.
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World War I: Lessons From 1914 for 2014
Dr. Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, along with other scholars, weighs in on what leaders in 2014 can learn from those who led nations at the outbreak of the Great War. Read more.
In 1914, Poised for War
Many of the joyous students graduating a century ago would later be drawn into the rising world conflict, in which some of them would die. Read more.
