Posted on 05/26/2020 2:37:23 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Point being, at that time there were no saints in Europe, especially France, and Russia, the two countries that dragged Britain into the war.
[Point being, at that time there were no saints in Europe, especially France, and Russia, the two countries that dragged Britain into the war.]
Barbara Tuchman’s mobilization theory of WWI is fine and dandy, but Germany could have stayed out of it. It chose not to. It saw this as an opportunity to take what had been denied it after the Franco-Prussian War, because a newly unified Germany had its hands full keeping the German states under the Prussian thumb. And it came pretty close to victory in WWI. Until the US jumped in.
If Germany had stayed out of WWI, would Austria-Hungary have invaded Serbia? Or the other parties have gotten involved? Austria-Hungary committed suicide, and the Germans joined them in hopes of completing their victory of 1870, during which Germany wasn’t unified enough to take on the additional burden of assimilating France.
Germany couldn’t have stayed out of it and had any chance to defend itself. Russia had way more people. Given time for the slow ponderous Russian Bear to fully mobilize, they could (it was thought) overwhelm Germany which would be forced to fight on two fronts because France could be counted on to stick the knife in Germany’s back any chance it got. So Germany’s only defense was the speed of its mobilization.
It wasn’t seeking to take anything. You ask if others would have gotten involved had Germany stayed out. The answer is a resounding YES! Russia was already involved. That’s what forced Germany to get involved. I don’t know where you get this notion that German victory in 1871 was incomplete but it wasn’t. It was quite complete. They gave France a sound drubbing. They had no desire to assimilate France. That would have been impossible anyway.
The empires were lost regardless; once the colonized watched Japan thrash Britain, France, and Holland in the east, those people were never going to quietly accept colonial rule again.
We halfheartedly tried to help France keep Indochina, but when it came down to it we weren’t going to get involved in fighting for their colony.
Germany couldn’t watch Austria-Hungary collapse, and even without war it was happening as Russian influence weakened the Hapsburg’s grip on the south of Austria-Hungary. That country was formed when Austria lost the battle for control of the German states to Prussia, but they were still German-speaking people - in a Europe that had generally encircled Germany with an alliance system designed to keep them a second-rate power.
Britain had to fight Germany because their growing naval power was a threat to an island nation and the empire; otherwise Britain had even less reason to fight than Germany.
Germany was never a global threat (in either world war); they were a continental threat, little else.
Yes, but the time for that was earlier. By August 1914, everybody was locked in and what was happening couldn't be stopped. Nobody was really a hero by that point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.