Posted on 08/03/2012 7:19:07 AM PDT by C19fan
This week the dominoes started to fall with Germany declaring war on Russia on August 1. Today the 3rd, Germany declares war on France. Tomorrow Britain will declare war on Germany for violating the Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgium neutrality. A century of technological progress will be turned on its creators. The self-confidence of Europe will be shattered to be replaced by the nihilism and moral decadence that we still live with today. I am currently reading Anna Karenina. In the back of my mind this world so brought to life by Tolstoy will be destroyed within the lifetimes of many of the characters in the novel.
Admins PLEASE fix the link, I would like to read the entire article.
WW1: The gift that keeps on giving the world headaches.
The most powerful and important nations in the west decided to waste their people in a useless fight based on some stupid bravado, misplaced nationalism, and silly treaties. Leaving nothing but a festering wound that turned into an even worse conflict that finally broke the back of the west and put us in the awful spot we are in today.
And why the U.S. decided to get roped in will never make sense to me.
There is no link. Just something I wrote down. I thought it would nice to have a place for people to talk about this horrible war that is about to destroy Europe.
Like Iraq and Syria.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
HL Mencken
have you ever read:
Wilson’s War/http://www.amazon.com/Wilsons-War-Woodrow-Blunder-Hitler/dp/1400082366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344004339&sr=8-1&keywords=wilson%27s+war
Or
Guns of August/http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning-Outbreak/dp/0345476093/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344004379&sr=1-1&keywords=guns+of+august ?
At sundown on Aug 3, 1914, Edward Gray, British Foreign Secretary at the time, is said to have remarked “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”.
The next morning, Germany invaded Belgium on their way to France.
Gray was right; Europe never recovered from the Great War.
I have not read those. I did read Keegan’s book, who just just passed away, on the war.
Can’t help but to wonder how history changes if we wouldn’t have entered either war. Especially the 2nd. I think the Nazis would have prevailed, or at least survived on, controlling much of Europe if we hadn’t intervened. Without the war on two fronts, Germany might have held on to much of Russia. If they would have taken Russia completely, our ‘Cold War’ wouldn’t have happened. Who knows what the world would have looked like then. The last half of the 20th Century would have surely looked very different.
2 things that caused WW II:
1. The POS “Treaty of Versailles” AND
2. The German “Stab-in-the-back myth”
Individual who deserve a SPECIAL Place in HELL:
Erich Ludendorff
Paul von Hindenburg
David Lloyd George
Georges Clemenceau AND certainly
Woodrow Wilson
If we hadn’t entered the Great War, Germany would have won, there would have been no Treaty of Versailles, no German reparations, and no ax for disgruntled Austrian painters to grind.
Ignoring all the above, had Germany not declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor and we had managed to stay out of the European component of that war, the Germans would probably have conquered Russia to the Urals, and it would have settled out there.
That’s my guess.
Do you think more people are wanting to learn more about WW I and it’s causes or it is just History “Nuts” like us? Have you visited the National WW I Museum in KC, MO yet?
Add “Kaiser” (V)Wilhelm(Queen Vic’s Grandkid) to the list!
Never visited the museum. I don’t think many American care because we entered the war so late. It should be interesting to see what happens when the 200th anniversary comes in 2014.
No Soviet Union as the Czar would not have been removed.
If we had stayed out of the 1st, Germany likely would have won or fought to a standstill. There would have been a treaty with some face-saving provisions, and territorial or colonial swaps between the sides, and life would have gone on.
The upshot would have been no WW2 as we knew it. Maybe a war between the west and Japan or some colonial war in Africa.
The Czar abdicated the month before the US entered the war, although he'd essentially consumed all his political capital quite some time before that. The two events are unrelated.
With the US not in the war, it is possible the Germans might have been able to more aggressively attack Russia, and it is certainly possible the Bolsheviks might not have come to power. The Germans probably would have held onto much of Ukraine and western Russia, Baltics, etc., either directly or thru puppet governments.
Versailles was a sick joke that the U.S. never should have went along with. It was a dictated peace from two Empires to another that we were too spineless to get up and walk away from when it was presented.
“No Soviet Union as the Czar would not have been removed” no he WOULD have been removed eventually just not a soon as 1917.
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