The real question that must be asked:
Why are so many freepers so desperate to grant Germans excuses for World Wars One and Two?
The historical memory demonstrated by many respondents seems highly selective; hampering any realistic analysis. Some facts to consider:
- The war began against the backdrop of the meteoric rise of Imperial Germany, and its accumulation of serious power on the international stage. Most Continental nations were frightened, but little of this troubled Allied trade interests. But the British became quite frightened of German insistence on building a fleet of surface warships, the purpose of which was seen as a challenge to the worldwide maritime dominance exercised by the British Royal Navy.
- Prior to 1919, extracting reparations from losers was the rule rather than the exception. The notion that generosity to losers was to be preferred, as both morally superior and more effective in reducing chances of future conflict was a mere fantasy constructed by the early Progressives. It is still devoid of merit.
- Germany was the last adversary left standing by November 1918. The other Central Powers had collapsed, disintegrated, or switched sides (Austrian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Italy). There was no one else left to blame.
- Great Britain was uninterested in war and hoped to avoid involvement, but German refusal to honor the three-way treaty (signed by Britain, France, and Germany) guaranteeing Belgian sovereignty & neutrality pushed them over the edge.
- British land forces played no role in German war planning and their potential impact was deliberately ignored by German planners.
- In 1914, Franco/German relations were at their lowest ebb of hostility since the 1870s. German planning, however, still demanded an attack on France first, and the Germans followed that line of thinking with exceptional lack of imagination. But they refused to allocate sufficient forces to do the job.
- German leadership repeatedly discounted the adverse impact of nautical/maritime operations. The snarling of international oceangoing trade hit them much harder than they anticipated. After several attempts by their High Seas Fleet to break out of the North Sea, they felt driven toward submarine warfare, and did come within weeks of forcing Britain out of the conflict in 1917. Better anti-submarine countermeasures and the involvement of American naval forces just barely rescued the Allied cause.
- The United States entered the conflict over dissatisfaction with repeated German sinkings of British-flagged vessels in which American lives were lost; many vessels were sunk immediately after German diplomats promised it would noever happen again. Whether American insistence on such a sweeping view of the rights of “neutrals” was realistic is a separate issue.
- There was no “stab in the back” of German forces by socialists & communists. Germany was failing militarily and by early summer 1918 their army leadership knew it, admitting as much within governmental circles.
That’s easy. How many times in her history had France attacked her eastern neighbor since 876?
Twenty-two times until 1870, not counting 1914 and 1939...