Posted on 11/09/2018 12:08:07 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
The Great War of 1914-1918 was the defining event of our time: a lost generation of millions dead or maimed; mournful widows and orphans; empires toppled and nations shattered; Western civilization damaged; vast treasures sacrificed. And in war's aftermath, democracies stillborn and totalitarianism and vengeance enthroned.
How did it happen? Keegan, despite his vast expertise, confesses that even when one knows what happened, it is difficult to explain why.
"The First World War is a mystery. Its origins are mysterious. So is its course. Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent of global wealth and power and at one of the peaks of its intellectual and cultural achievement, choose to risk all it had won for itself and all it offered to the world in the lottery of a vicious and local internecine conflict? Why, when the hope of bringing the conflict to a quick and decisive conclusion was everywhere dashed to the ground within months of its outbreak, did the combatants decide nevertheless to persist in their military effort, to mobilise for total war and eventually to commit the totality of their young manhood to mutual and existentially pointless slaughter?"
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
His license plate on his car-A111 118.
The Armistice of 1918 was a recipe for disaster. There was no way Germany could pay back the reparations imposed on them.
A combination of Wilson hubris and Wall Street wanting its loans to Allied Powers to not be in jeapordy for repayment.
Sinking of the Lusitania with Americans on board.
Didn’t the Lusitania have armaments on board?
When Britain imposed their naval blockade of Germany, they should have expected the Germans to attack shipping to Britain with U-Boats.
We should have made it clear to Britain that we wouldn’t risk our ships to supply them until they lifted their blockade of Germany.
That’s what a real neutral would do.
The UK should have gotten a promise of Belgian independence from the Germans after they transited it and stayed out.
They should have set on the sidelines and offered to mediate. The nations that really wanted the war in order of desire for war - Austro-Hungary, France & Serbia.
Please research the ‘Zimmerman telegram’ and the re-introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Hun in 1917.
A better question is, after the rape of Belgium, the use of chlorine, mustard and phosgene gas, the sinking of the ‘Lustania’, the ‘Black Tom’ terrorist attack, etc., why did the US wait so long to enter the war against the Central Powers?
Simple answer, the largest number of immigrants to the US at that time had come from GERMANY and AUSTRIA. Besides, US industries were able to sell to both sides, though mostly to the Triple Entente, making incredible profits until 1917.
Keegan, despite his vast expertise, confesses that even when one knows what happened, it is difficult to explain why.
So, it’s not just me. I was born in 1958 but the subject of WWI I’ve always found haunting aND sad.
They needed “Brexit” in 1914.
How did US Shipping get past the British Naval Blockade of Germany?
Well, we tend to see WWI as the first of the modern wars, but really it may be better to look at it as the last of the pre-modern wars, because the reasons for it were sown in the previous centuries of European history.
Consider the state of the world at the end of the colonial era. The entire world had been divvied up among the European powers (and the United States), but then you had Imperial Germany which arose as a superstate at the end of the Napoleonic wars, too late to claim any of the really choice overseas colonies. It was left with a few scraps that none of the other powers wanted. The only option for it to expand its holdings in order to compete economically with the other powers was to go to war and hope to claim more colonies in a peace settlement.
The conflict was going to happen sooner or later, and the alliances were all set and ready to go, they were just waiting for some plausible excuse to get it started.
Neutral countries.
“I have never understood....”
I can hear what you are saying. As with the Kennedy assassination, I just don’t want to think that what I suspect happened was actually the truth. It really was all those interlocking mutual defense treaties. Once Austria decided to go to war, it pulled everybody else in.
We think it was foolish and unnecessary, and what if everybody then knew that, but they could not overcome the inertia of events!? Why after all, those treaties were legal, dontcha know. We can’t break a treaty!
As another Freeper on the thread has asked, how did we, the USA, get pulled in? If it was all Wilson and only Wilson as another suggested, then consider that as one bullet in the archduke started the war, then one bullet in Wilson could have kept us out of it.
Also, the Japanese were emboldened by their victories in the Russo-Japanese war. After they managed to wipe out the entire Russian fleet using their naval power, they thought they could use the same strategy to deal with other Western powers that were vexxing them, especially the U.S.
In fact, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was basically just an attempted re-enactment of the Japanese sneak attack on Port Arthur that started the Russo-Japanese war, except that this time the Japanese had naval aviation as the backbone of the attack instead of torpedo boats.
My grandfather was in the Secret Service at the time and was sent to Mexico to check the goings on there in the wake of the Zimmerman telegram.
Read: The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman. It’ll make it all clear.
One word: Those damn dirty baby-killing kraut huns.
If Francis Ferdinand and his wife had lived and Fran’s Jospeh had died earlier WW1 might have been averted.
In “Tora! Tora! Tora!” the Japanese run up the original “Z” flag used by Adm Togo in the battle of Tsushima Straits.
Hitler got his notions of racial superiority from Margaret Sanger’s “Eugenics” and his Nazi organizing techniques from Benito Mussolini.
The successes of the past will always find eager new students.
Britain had to be involved. George V, Wilhelm of Germany, and Nicholas of Russia were cousins.
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