Posted on 09/28/2010 6:49:01 AM PDT by C19fan
World War One finally ends for Germany on Sunday - 92 years after the guns fell silent and nearly nine million men lay dead - as it pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies. A final payment of 69.9 million euros, or £59.3 million, writes off the crippling debt which was the price for one world war - and laid the foundations for another.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Since the Treaty of Versailles had reduced the German military to a small fraction of its previous size, it was basically a matter of shifting expenses to reparation payments from munitions.”
Kinda hard to have that same pre-war economy when the Royal Navy maintained the starvation blockade, LONG after the war had ended.
And neither were the Brits, French, Russians, Austrians or Turks. They were all screwed up with the monarchies, empires, and petty schemes.
WWI was a monument to arrogance and ignorance. A truly tragic war that didn't have to happen. It is also a pitty that the US ever got involved.
The British and French did nothing of the sort. They might not have had the same level of suffrage as the Germans, but they didn't, you know, bayonet women and children.
Also: the concentration camp was developed in America - they were set up for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s.
Neither the Indian camps nor the concentration camps of the Boer wars were designed as death camps: those that suffered from high death rates did so because of cholera, not due to deliberate attempts at genocide.
Hope this was helpful.
Germany was pushing for a war in Europe long before WWI broke out. After consolidating as a single nation the German government pursued policies of aggressive imperialism and building militarism designed to lead to conflict in Europe.
Their conduct of the war itself featured nearly every aspect of the same behavior as in WWII, albeit on a lesser scale, including invading neutral countries, terrorizing the population, concentration camps, etc.
Perhaps but it was Wilson, through his 14 points, who promised that the WWI peace would not be based on a traditioanl peace based on revenge. When the Germans agreed to the armistice, they stipulated that it was on on the basis of Wilson's 14 points. Of course, the allies, who continued their starvation blockade throughout the treaty negotiations, had different ideas and the Germans knuckled under. The "stab in the back" motif soon took hold and, well, we know what happened next.
Morant was not shot for following orders.
He was shot for violating what we would call today the "rules of engagement."
The supposed order, never confirmed, was that captured Boer guerrillas dressed as British soldiers should be executed by firing squad.
There was no evidence that any of the prisoners of war he murdered were in British uniform and there is proof that some of them were not. The best that he could argue is that one of his victims had a pair of British uniform trousers among his belongings, although he was not wearing them.
He also murdered an unarmed clergyman who had told Morant that he would report his crimes to Morant's superiors.
“Additionally, German behavior as the occupiers of Belgium and France was pretty bad”
That the same Belgium that murdered about 8 to 10 million in the Congo a few years before? A lot of the Germans in Begium stuff was nothing but British propaganda. Some wasn’t,,but most was. But still,, for a Belgian, to ever complain about how they are treated by an occupying force staggers the mind.
Europeans sure are a hoot sometimes.
“Yes, they would gladly have used us like they used the Australians”
The callous British disregard for Australian troops is only exceeded by the Czars slaughter of millions of Russians that were literally serfs.
Japan got a much better deal than they ever expected, especially after we dropped a second bomb on them to reiterate “What part of UNCONDITIONAL surrender were you having a problem understanding?”.
“the old world was dying, and these were the birth pangs of the new reality”
You nailed it.
A Polish historian believes that the first concentration camps were created in Poland in the 18th century when the Russian Empire established three concentration camps for Polish rebel captives awaiting deportation to Siberia.
The Allied blockade ended after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, in June 1919.
The armistice was just a cease-fire - it was the end of the shooting war but not the end of offensive operations, nor was it the beginning of peace.
Without actual occupation of Germany - which would have meant a bloody resumption of fighting similar to the putative invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945 - the blockade was the only way to force Germany’s compliance.
One way to think of the blockade is as WW1’s atomic bomb - it couldn’t be countered and eventually forced a military dictatorship to disintegrate.
If by "LONG" you mean the eight months between the surrender and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, OK.
The reason why Germans were starving from the blockade was the understaffing of farms and most food in Germany being shipped West to feed absent farmhands and others who were now soldiers.
Once the soldiers returned and the rationing ended, the blockade went from being a death threat to a survivable but onerous imposition.
The Germany economy was actually recovering faster than the French and English economies by 1921. Although it was predicted that it would be a decade before German industrial output returned to its prewar height, they met that goal in 18 months.
Interesting, thank you.
Are you refering to the mass slaughter of little old ladies, babies in the crib in Nagasaki, also known as the heart of Japanese Christianity? In any case, the surrender was NOT unconditional. Even after the dropping of the second bomb, the Japanese insisted on the CONDITION that they could keep the emperor. Truman overrode the objections of his bitter-end New Deal advisors and agreed to this CONDITION. Sadly, he probably could have had this deal much earlier and avoided the the mass slaughter of innocents.
Interesting hypothetical construct.It sounds like "demand side" economics.
I’ve never really been able to figure out what WWI was all about, besides the interlocking alliances, and the striped-pants, top-hatted diplomats f*in up and causing a conflagration, which I’m afraid is about to be repeated today. But as for any real cause, any real hatred, can’t figure it out.
Well we’re damn lucky Tojo and gang didn’t succeed in assassinating and replacing Hirohito, because they did not want to surrender even after the bombs.
EVEN after the 2nd bomb was dropped and the Emperor made the decision to surrender, Japanese militarists stormed the Imperial Palace and tied to prevent the surrender from happening. Only because Hirohito loyalists hid the recording announcing the surrender from them did it take place.
At the time the decision was made too surrender, no decision had been made regarding the status of the Emperor. That came after the Japanese decided to surrender. The reason they left Hirohito in place had more to do with concerns about stability in Japan and growing Soviet influence in the region. It was NOT on the table by either side PRIOR to the 2nd bomb being dropped.
Like most of you postings CK, you are totally devote of accuracy or fact.
World War I was about the old guard desperately trying to hang on to power, despite all of the changes going on around them that were about to make them obsolete.
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