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 ...
Goebbels probably learned a lot about the art of Propaganda from George Creel.
https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news
re #2, the still mighty France was seething over their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War by the unified Germany, and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine(which they had previously taken from Germans under Louis the 15th).
My GErman ancestors came over, late 1800s, to get away from all the disruption Kaiser Wilhelm was causing. My great-great-grandparents looked at their baby in the cradle and decided “You shall not serve the Kaiser.”
My maternal grandmother's mother came to the US after her two brothers surreptitiously left The Fatherland because they had no intention of becoming soldiers of the Kaiser. In this case, the Kaiser meant Wilhelm I, not his more notorious grandson. Once they got out here to Iowa, the brothers were effusive in their praise, and some of their siblings came later.
For anyone interested in WWI trivia, there was an Austrian WWI submarine captain who wrote a little book that occasionally touched on the British ability to shape public opinion in its favor. It is an interesting but not lengthy book by a man not widely recognized for either writing or piloting submarines.
The captain was a Baron named von Trapp...
Yes, the British’s treatment of the Boers was abysmal
The Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s favorite grandchild.
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