|
VikingSkull posted:If you really want to look at the rise of the American hegemony, WWI is the place you look. Almost every crisis the US caused or reacted to has its roots in WWI. The Cold War with the Soviets, dealing with WWII, loving around in the MidEast, Africa and South Asia. All of it starts post WWI. Well outside the Western Hemisphere, WW1 is when the US went from a regional power with pretensions to a world power. That said, the world in 1920 looked a lot different than the world of 1914 and you went from a world still largely dominated by empires that had roots in the middle ages (lets include China in there as well) to a world of national and super-national republics (or colonies that would aspired to be ones).
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 00:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
Saint Celestine posted:Wow. Interesting read! Paints a very different account from Tuchmann's Guns of august which pretty much stated "these two incompetent Russian generals, etc. etc. " I would disagree, actually. I found her account paints a favourable picture of both Generals, Samsonov in particular. All the stuff I mentioned she goes into greater detail.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 00:12
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Inferior generals rely on things like "operational security", "encryption", and "the element of surprise". The unbeatable Divine Russian Armies had no need of such trifles and sent all radio orders in the clear! Only overwhelmingly superior generalship could conceive of such flawless plans that it didn't matter whether the enemy knew every detail or not!
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 01:36
|
|
|
Barrakketh posted:I would disagree, actually. I found her account paints a favourable picture of both Generals, Samsonov in particular. All the stuff I mentioned she goes into greater detail. ...That doesn't sound like the same book I read. If I recall, it painted a pretty neutral or negative light of both. Ill have to read it again...
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 01:46
|
|
|
Soviet Space Dog posted:So you're saying let Austria annex Serbia (i.e. a total capitulation) and hope it works out better than what happened with Bosnia (a similar thing happened and Germany didn't back down from supporting Austria later)? We know how well "pressure" works on states, Germany and Italy certainly curtailed their actions in the inter-war years when similar coalitions tried without threatening war. Austria wasn't going to annex Serbia. The only reason Hungary agreed to war was the promise that no Serb territory be taken.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 10:52
|
|
|
Septimius posted:Austria wasn't going to annex Serbia. The only reason Hungary agreed to war was the promise that no Serb territory be taken. To be fair, Austria did intend to annex parts of Serbia under the pretense of "border adjustments" (and this area included Belgrade) and essentially turn the rest into a vassal state.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 11:07
|
|
|
Rogue0071 posted:I had a link to a list of Allied secret treaties released by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, but it seems to have died. Does anyone know if there is a collection of these elsewhere? Replying from pages ago, but the Internet Archive has your back. https://web.archive.org/web/20120628135643/http://tmh.floonet.net/books/tstu/secrettreaties.html
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 11:26
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Well outside the Western Hemisphere, WW1 is when the US went from a regional power with pretensions to a world power. That said, the world in 1920 looked a lot different than the world of 1914 and you went from a world still largely dominated by empires that had roots in the middle ages (lets include China in there as well) to a world of national and super-national republics (or colonies that would aspired to be ones). I wouldn't say that the US position in the world changed markedly between 1914 and 1918. After the war, the US quickly demobilized its army to a size slightly larger than Germany (you know, the humiliated country that wasn't allowed a proper military). They also stayed out of the League of Nations and pursued a somewhat isolationist foreign policy. There is really no comparison to, say, the role of the US on the world stage after 1945.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 12:08
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:I wouldn't say that the US position in the world changed markedly between 1914 and 1918. After the war, the US quickly demobilized its army to a size slightly larger than Germany (you know, the humiliated country that wasn't allowed a proper military). They also stayed out of the League of Nations and pursued a somewhat isolationist foreign policy. There is really no comparison to, say, the role of the US on the world stage after 1945. I doubt he was talking about army size, though even in that regard, the industrial engine the US demonstrated in WWI, which thirty years later would allow it to build and rebuild its army at a pace Japan couldn't while also keeping the Allies supplied with weapons of every kind, was far more important than the size of its actual standing army which it didn't need in peacetime. The war devastated Europe and broke the existing colonial empires as well as allowing the US the chance to demonstrate its competence in a European war and its considerable ability to influence the outcome of any such war, allowing the US to take on a more prominent economic and political role in the world. If WWII advanced the US from a world power to a superpower, WWI is what advanced the US from a regional power to a world power. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Feb 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 16:48
|
|
|
The US was (and is) in a nice strategic position insofar that it's got the two biggest moats in the world to protect it. Therefore the US didn't really need a large standing army post-WW1 because it didn't have any enemies on the North American continent and it could rely on its favourable geographical position and the US Navy to protect itself from any other potential foe until it could gear up for war. Which kinda is exactly what happened in WW2.Grand Prize Winner posted:Replying from pages ago, but the Internet Archive has your back. Thank you, these are one hell of an interesting read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 17:08
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:I wouldn't say that the US position in the world changed markedly between 1914 and 1918. After the war, the US quickly demobilized its army to a size slightly larger than Germany (you know, the humiliated country that wasn't allowed a proper military). They also stayed out of the League of Nations and pursued a somewhat isolationist foreign policy. There is really no comparison to, say, the role of the US on the world stage after 1945. The US has never been much of a formal military power until WW2, the strength of the US was always economic and its navy was there to protect its economic power. WW1 created a power vacuum that shifted power far more to outside of Europe (including eventually the USSR) and layed the framework of the new order that we readily accept today. Obviously, WW2, decolonization and then the end of the world took more pieces off the board but a lot of the groundwork was laid after ww1. The US had 106 million people in 1920, had industrialized, was untouched in a relative sense by the war and still had plenty of its internal resources to utilize. It wasn't broken up like Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire, wasn't a defeated state weighted down by reparations or demographic crises by war losses (Germany and the UK/France) and wasn't in a Civil War (Russia, and arguably China). The other comparable state to it was Japan, which had about half the population (lets exclude colonies for a second) and didn't have the internal resources it needed to fuel its industries. The US won the war and it has lost a tiny fraction of the lost manpower to do it. It didn't need a army. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Feb 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 22:47
|
|
|
That "Somewhat isolatonist" policy included the occupation of Nicaragua, along with various others landings and shows of force in Central America and China. We were just like Britain before the war, we had our navy so we only needed a small, professional army and Marine Corps.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 22:55
|
|
|
What was the relationship between Russia and the Allies, if any? IIRC, the Romanian roya family was pro-Entente while the parliament was pro-German (I think Greece had a similar but inverted situation going on with King Constantine being pro-German and Venizelos being pro-British, but I digress) so I'm curious as to how Romania ended up siding with the Allies--after all, it was pretty much surrounded on all sides by Central Powers nations, save for the Russian border. And I doubt anyone would have expected the Russians to be very useful for the Romanians, since the latter joined in 1916. Was the promise of land from Austria-Hungary that enticing, or were there other dynamics at work that I'm missing?
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:12
|
|
|
As I understand it, there was nothing for Romania to gain from a CP peace except for being on the winning side, whereas the Entente could promise the moon and the stars to Romania because, as you noted, Romania was surrounded by CP-aligned nations and presumably could nab something from all of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:17
|
|
|
They could have offered them Moldova, but I guess they had more to gain from working with the Entente, like Italy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:22
|
|
|
Kavak posted:They could have offered them Moldova, but I guess they had more to gain from working with the Entente, like Italy. On that topic, what did the Central Powers have to offer Italy? At leas the Entente could offer them some tracts of Austrian land like Fiume.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:25
|
|
|
Ofaloaf posted:As I understand it, there was nothing for Romania to gain from a CP peace except for being on the winning side, whereas the Entente could promise the moon and the stars to Romania because, as you noted, Romania was surrounded by CP-aligned nations and presumably could nab something from all of them. NEED TOILET PAPER posted:On that topic, what did the Central Powers have to offer Italy? At leas the Entente could offer them some tracts of Austrian land like Fiume.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:31
|
|
|
NEED TOILET PAPER posted:On that topic, what did the Central Powers have to offer Italy? At leas the Entente could offer them some tracts of Austrian land like Fiume. Nothing really. That's why Italy switched sides. As for Romania, their primary irredentist goal was aquiring Transylvania from Austria-Hungary so they too would have been on the "wrong" side if they'd have joined the Central Powers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:32
|
|
|
NEED TOILET PAPER posted:On that topic, what did the Central Powers have to offer Italy? At leas the Entente could offer them some tracts of Austrian land like Fiume. African colonial possessions and bits of southeastern France. For obvious reasons, Italy did not find those to be appealing options. Ofaloaf posted:As I understand it, there was nothing for Romania to gain from a CP peace except for being on the winning side, whereas the Entente could promise the moon and the stars to Romania because, as you noted, Romania was surrounded by CP-aligned nations and presumably could nab something from all of them. I have to find it, Now there is a decent discussion to be had about whether a 1915 Romanian entrance could have prevented the fall of Serbia. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Feb 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:African colonial possessions and bits of southeastern France. For obvious reasons, Italy did not find those to be appealing options. And more pragmatically, Italy recognized it lacked enough strength on land to fight France even alongside Germany, nor could its navy stand up to the combined Mediterranean squadrons of France and Britain. With Austria-Hungary apparently in the throes of military crisis in early 1915 following the collapse of Przemyśl, switching sides seemed likely to gain Italy on the cheap those bits of territory it had squabbled over with the Habsburgs since the wars of Unification (if not earlier).
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2014 01:42
|
|
|
Furthermore, the jingoist and irredentist element of Italian politics at the start of the 20th century mainly focused on the goals of incorporating Trentino and South Tyrol and making the Adriatic into an Italian pond. Therefore the political elites of Italy had long realized that they were in the "wrong" alliance block when 1914 rolled around. Italy's switch wasn't just an act of pure opportunism, but also a deliberate move towards achieving these strategic goals.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2014 01:54
|
|
|
WWI has always been so interesting to me, more so than WWII even. I'm going to have to check out some of the books mentioned in this thread. I read The White War and The Guns of August a few years ago and I'd like to read them again sometime. Right after The Guns of August, I read The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World, by Holger Herwig. The Guns of August ends right at the start of the Marne battle in September, so this seemed like a good book to follow it up with. Most WWI books I've seen have a British or French point of view, but this one mostly follows the Germans. It argues that the Marne is the most important battle in world history since Waterloo, being the battle that halted the German advance, solidified the British foothold on the continent, and ushered in the next four years of slaughter along with the whole modern era along with it. Without the Marne, there would likely be no Hitler; no Horthy; no Lenin; no Stalin. The scale of those opening battles is just so mind-boggling and incomprehensible to me. No other year of the war had as much mass death as the opening few months. The French and the Germans each suffered over a quarter of a million casualties in the battles leading up to the Marne, most of them over just a few days at the end of August during the battle of the Frontiers. At the Marne, there were over two million men fighting each other over a front only 200 kilometers long. It's so strange to imagine what it must have been like to actually be there. In those opening battles, forces maneuvered in the usual 19th century way, like something out of the American Civil War, with officers on horseback leading masses of men into combat, shoulder-to-shoulder, touching elbows, with regimental colors unfurled and marching bands playing patriotic songs. French troops would launch huge bayonet charges in their silly red pants while waving French flags alongside bands playing Le Marseillaise. Lances and swords were used alongside modern artillery. There were bayonet charges involving tens of thousands of men, sometimes surprisingly successful, and sometimes completely obliterated by artillery before they even made it within rifle range. Also lots of massed hand-to-hand fighting. I thought that the first skirmish of the war in the west was rather interesting: quote:On 2 August 1914, just a few hours before German troops occupied Luxembourg and thirty hours before war was declared between France and Germany, Lieutenant Albert Mayer of 5th Baden Mounted Jäger Regiment led a patrol of seven riders across a small ridge along the Allaine River near Joncherey, southeast of Belfort. Suddenly, French guards of the 44th Infantry Regiment appeared. Mayer charged. He struck the first Frenchman over the head with his broadsword, causing him to roll into a roadside ditch. Another Jäger drove his lance into the chest of a second French soldier. A third Jäger shot Corporal Jules-André Peugeot, making him the first French casualty of the war. The remaining group of twenty French soldiers took cover in the ditch and opened fire on the German sharpshooters. Mayer tumbled out of his saddle, dead. In this unexpected manner, the twenty-two-year-old Jäger became the first German soldier killed in the war. From men with goofy red pants and horse cavalrymen with swords and lances to fighter planes, bombers, tanks and poison gas within just a couple of years is ridiculous.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 03:08
|
|
|
Kenzie posted:From men with goofy red pants and horse cavalrymen with swords and lances to fighter planes, bombers, tanks and poison gas within just a couple of years is ridiculous. Overall the last century was a real corker in terms of development. My dear great-grandmother (bless her soul) was born in the Ottoman Empire half a year before the Wright Brothers' first flight, and died just five years ago in 2009. Over that period of time came flight, armored warfare, rockets, spaceflight, a man on the moon and so many technical innovations that oh my god. If you look at any long conflict, or any decent little historical period of the 20th century at all, you'll see an astonishing amount of change envelop everything.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 03:24
|
|
|
Ofaloaf posted:World War Two started with biplanes and cavalrymen and ended with jets, rockets and the atomic bomb. She was born when maps were made by people walking around or flying balloons and the telegraph was the only way to really communicate in anything approaching real time, the motion picture was in its infancy, and photography was just beginning to come around. When she died, people had devices the size of a deck of playing cards that could provide them with their location on the face of the planet within a few meters because we had autonomous electronic machines floating in space carrying clocks accurate to fractions of seconds over millions of years by measuring the vibrations of an atom, connect you visually and aurally to someone else on the opposite side of the world within seconds, play nearly any music in existence, and provide the user with nearly any piece of human knowledge ever recorded, literally at their fingertips. And it was cheap enough to be given away for free with a service contract, like how her bank may have given her a cheap timepiece for opening an account with them. By 2009 humanity was probably generating, recording, and storing more information every week than had been recorded in the span of human history prior to her birth, and most of it was probably cat videos and people loving. gently caress I hope I live that long and healthy enough to see what a leap like that from the 80's would look like. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Feb 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 06:06
|
|
|
In a hypothetical Balkan front that only stayed between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, without Russia or Germany supporting their respective allies, could Serbia have held out much longer than it did in reality? The Balkans, while certainly not on the scale of the Western or Eastern front, was actually a surprisingly active theater of war from the beginning to the end of the war. Austria was essentially alone in fighting its nemesis Serbia, at least at the start, but the Central Powers managed to persuade Bulgaria into joining them, and that provided a crucial advantage in finally subduing Serbia, but both sides mostly fought themselves to a draw when the war came further south to Macedonia. There's also the fact that Austria had most of its troops fighting the Russians, so I'm thinking the sheer material and manpower advantage would have crushed Serbia either way. The British and French were also negligent in helping Serbia, but they certainly had their own share of problems to deal with.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 06:08
|
|
|
Sylphid posted:In a hypothetical Balkan front that only stayed between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, without Russia or Germany supporting their respective allies, could Serbia have held out much longer than it did in reality? The Balkans, while certainly not on the scale of the Western or Eastern front, was actually a surprisingly active theater of war from the beginning to the end of the war. Austria was essentially alone in fighting its nemesis Serbia, at least at the start, but the Central Powers managed to persuade Bulgaria into joining them, and that provided a crucial advantage in finally subduing Serbia, but both sides mostly fought themselves to a draw when the war came further south to Macedonia. No. If Austria-Hungary could have concentrated its forces on Serbia alone Serbia would either have been crushed immediately or, if they'd managed to pull off an even bigger upset than in reality, they still would have been quickly ground down by the Austro-Hungarian reserves. Serbia just had too little manpower to sustain the losses it suffered.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 11:06
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:No. If Austria-Hungary could have concentrated its forces on Serbia alone Serbia would either have been crushed immediately or, if they'd managed to pull off an even bigger upset than in reality, they still would have been quickly ground down by the Austro-Hungarian reserves. Serbia just had too little manpower to sustain the losses it suffered. To add to just how badly Serbia got mauled: it lost the greatest proportion of its prewar population of any combatant nation,* 1.1 million out of approximately 4.5 million, or about a quarter in total (this includes civilian deaths from food shortages, exposure, and the influenza epidemic). That was with Allied, or at least Russian,** support, so I can't imagine things would have gone any better in a one-on-one brawl with the Habsburgs. *I qualify this somewhat as we have very incomplete records of exactly how many people in the former Ottoman Empire died, and the revolution in Russia and descent into civil war leaves us with a lot of corpses that might, or might not, belong to the Great War's butcher's bill, thus complicating the mathematics of death. **The landings in Greece ostensibly to take pressure off the Serbs were so farcical that the Germans referred to Thessaloniki as "the greatest internment camp on earth."
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 20:53
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:To add to just how badly Serbia got mauled: it lost the greatest proportion of its prewar population of any combatant nation,* 1.1 million out of approximately 4.5 million, or about a quarter in total (this includes civilian deaths from food shortages, exposure, and the influenza epidemic). Where are you getting that figure from? I can't find any academic sources, but I haven't found any that puts the total dead above 750,000, which is still the worst percentage wise.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Where are you getting that figure from? I can't find any academic sources, but I haven't found any that puts the total dead above 750,000, which is still the worst percentage wise. John Keegan's The First World War is where I found that percentage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 21:44
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:To add to just how badly Serbia got mauled: it lost the greatest proportion of its prewar population of any combatant nation,* 1.1 million out of approximately 4.5 million, or about a quarter in total (this includes civilian deaths from food shortages, exposure, and the influenza epidemic). That was with Allied, or at least Russian,** support, so I can't imagine things would have gone any better in a one-on-one brawl with the Habsburgs.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2014 22:03
|
|
|
So The Onion's AV club just did a talk about the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth http://www.avclub.com/article/25-ye...eview:1:Default
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 11:03
|
|
|
Soviet Space Dog posted:So you're saying let Austria annex Serbia (i.e. a total capitulation) and hope it works out better than what happened with Bosnia (a similar thing happened and Germany didn't back down from supporting Austria later)? We know how well "pressure" works on states, Germany and Italy certainly curtailed their actions in the inter-war years when similar coalitions tried without threatening war. I don't agree that Nazi Germany is a good analogy for Imperial Austria-Hungary in this situation. Germany in the 1930's was redeeming or annexing lands with a significant number of German speakers with a shared culture and recent history of alliance. These lands: the Saar, the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, were also rich in resources or had developed industry or both. They unambiguously made Germany stronger. Annexing Serbia, on the other hand, would only have destabilized Austria-Hungary more. We're talking about a largely undeveloped land filled with fiercely nationalistic people who just won their own war of independence, have several more wars under their belt, and who hate Austria so much they supported the assassination the heir to the throne...and you want to add parts of that country to an Empire already almost coming apart with ethnic strife? Austria plus Serbia is not going to be pulling off any conquests in France or Russia, or be any threat to anyone but the Serbs. Second, international pressure does work against states that aren't led by megalomaniacs. Just a few decades earlier at the Congress of Berlin, the Major Powers all got together and threatened Russia into relinquishing nearly all her gains she had just won from the Turks. The Kaiser didn't want a war; he was delighted when Serbia acceded to Austria's demands and it looked like war would be avoided. Without the Russian mobilization it's hard to argue that Von Moltke and friends would have been able to push him into attacking France over fears of the Russian Steamroller. But even if Germany did back Austria all the way, not caring about the consequences...so what? I'm going to go ahead and say that Serbia wasn't worth throwing millions of men into an industrial death machine for the next four years. Especially since they totally failed to prevent the fall of Serbia and the massacres of Serbs anyway.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 12:05
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:The Kaiser didn't want a war; he was delighted when Serbia acceded to Austria's demands and it looked like war would be avoided. Without the Russian mobilization it's hard to argue that Von Moltke and friends would have been able to push him into attacking France over fears of the Russian Steamroller. I know there is still a big divide in German historiography over the question, but Fischer still had pretty solid evidence about at least the Kaiser wanting the war at some point. I would like to hear about more recent work done, but I think it is fair to say that across Europe the groundwork had been laid down for a while for a coming conflict. You can get into his personal psychology (he was planning for it, but was relieved when it sounded like he didn't need to go to the big dance) but at very least Germany has to take its share of the blame in the affair.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 12:44
|
|
|
I never said anything exculpating Germany. Acknowledging that the Entente were partially responsible (and in the case of France, and to some extent Russia actively wanted a war about as much as Germany) doesn't mean I'm not giving Germany its share of the blame. I don't think there's anyone who places total blame for starting the war on the Entente (well, the Kaiser did in his retirement, but you know what I mean), and it's getting annoying to have to constantly have to say "But Germany is responsible too!!" after every other sentence lest I be accused of being a PR shill for the savage and bloodthirsty Hun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 13:00
|
|
|
So after the disasters in everyone's empires, why did Austria-Hungry not fall into revolution, or have their army go on strike like the French army did in 1917?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 13:07
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:I never said anything exculpating Germany. Acknowledging that the Entente were partially responsible (and in the case of France, and to some extent Russia actively wanted a war about as much as Germany) doesn't mean I'm not giving Germany its share of the blame. Well usually the discussion comes down to who is the "most" responsible, and from I have seen of the literature seems to be the Central Powers by a hair. Ultimately, it doesn't actually matter unless you believe war guilt is an important thing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 13:08
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Well usually the discussion comes down to who is the "most" responsible, and from I have seen of the literature seems to be the Central Powers by a hair. Ultimately, it doesn't actually matter unless you believe war guilt is an important thing. Oh I see. I'm not trying to have that argument. For what it's worth, I do agree that the Central Powers bear more direct responsibility for the war starting right then over Serbia. But the Entente's posture certainly gave legitimacy to the militaristic factions in those countries and I think it's at least interesting to talk about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 13:17
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:But the Entente's posture certainly gave legitimacy to the militaristic factions in those countries and I think it's at least interesting to talk about. I think the summarization in Blackadder Goes Forth was pretty good. To paraphrase: "The idea was to have two gigantic armies opposing each other so there could never be a war. There was a slight problem though. It was bollocks."
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 13:32
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:I think the summarization in Blackadder Goes Forth was pretty good. To paraphrase: "This war could have been so much more easily accomplished if we stayed at home and shot 50,000 of our own men a week." God drat but that left a young me going  at my bedroom ceiling for a weekend.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 15:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:54 |
|
|
Ardennes posted:I know there is still a big divide in German historiography over the question, but Fischer still had pretty solid evidence about at least the Kaiser wanting the war at some point. I would like to hear about more recent work done, but I think it is fair to say that across Europe the groundwork had been laid down for a while for a coming conflict. You can get into his personal psychology (he was planning for it, but was relieved when it sounded like he didn't need to go to the big dance) but at very least Germany has to take its share of the blame in the affair. MacMillan argues in her book that Wilhelm kept writing about how he hoped for peace, firing off letters to the other rulers about how this crisis was dreadful and we all need to work together, but when it came time to actually make a decision about whether or not to push towards war throughout the crisis, he either didn't act or didn't choose a peaceful solution. That's about as close as I've seen to "The Kaiser wanted peace."
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2014 15:28
|
|
