Milner’s Circus was never held to account. And not merely for WWI.
Read Max Hastings book Catastrophe, it is about the origins of war war one. The Kaiser was not the only one at fault. In some ways it was an actual comedy of errors. Once all of these countries started mobilization, it took on a life of its own, and the war ensured.
Somebody said that if Austria had just invaded and conquered Serbia without an ultimatum, there would have been no wider war. But the Austrian army wasn’t strong enough to do that, so I guess they should have just taken what they could get from Serbia.
Maybe there’s a parallel between that war and the current one. You can assign a lot of blame to Germany because of the blank check and the Schlieffen plan, but all the powers were so drenched in blood that war crimes trials would have been a sick joke.
The elites virtually never see consequences for their actions and atrocities. Mussolini was a piker.
He didn’t start it, and it wasn’t illegal. Did he forget to get UN permission for his actions in 1914?
This quote I think reflects more on WW1 than the pre civil war since it was written in the 1930s. Maybe a bit of timeless wisdom. The first sin mentioned in the Bible after the eating of the forbidden fruit is the murder of Abel. Leslie Howard who said this line would become a casualty of the second world war looming at the time only a few years later. Currently we have a senseless slaughter going on in the Ukraine with both sides suffering much.
Now the sun’s gone to hell and
The moon’s riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it’s written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms
-Dire Straits
Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff should have been executed for war crimes, and the Kaiser should have been allowed to remain (like Hirohito later), as a unifying symbol in a Constitutional monarchy.
Yeah.....He didn’t start it. Nor did Germany. In fact, Wilhelm did more than just about any other head of state to try to prevent the outbreak of war. Germany was not seeking land or conquest. It had no territorial ambitions. Its war aims were defensive.