Posted on 02/28/2025 12:54:35 PM PST by 2manydegrees
When German and Russian defense sensitivities led Russia to mobilize and Germany to respond; and then Poland became a target for division between the two, all of Europe and then the U.S. became participants in a trench war that killed millions of young men.
When the health system of the time was totally unable to cope with the influenza that followed the war, millions more died.
I don't want to see that for my family, my country or my world.
As much as I dislike the Russian history of paranoid aggression, and as much as I admire Ukraine's determined resistance to the Russian military, I do not want to see my admiration turned into a perverse willingness to oppose Russia right down to the last American dollar and the last Ukrainian soldier.
We must stop before our generation crosses the same line that led all Europe and some of America into World War I and its consequences.
My position is: Stop shooting, scare Russia with the right mix of threats and reassurance, make a deal with Ukraine and try to make the next decade better.
Trump may be trying to do that. I hope so.
German Generals were thinking that Russia was modernizing to the point where in a few years they would never be able to invade Russia, so it was “now or never”.
But by going through Belgium, that brought in the Brits, and subsequently the US, into the fight.
“What’s really interesting about WW I is that it was a family fight between the relatives of the noble families.”
The Kaiser, the Czar, and King George were cousins.
As I understood it, the French were the ones pushing for reparations, not Wilson.
I see that Churchill was critical of reparations at the time. Sometimes, though, he writes things with the benefit of hindsight what don’t coincide with what he thought at the time. He was dying to get the US into WWI on Britain’s side, but wrote an article afterwards saying that if we stayed out it would have been better.
“Don’t forget various Constitutional Amendments we can blame Wilson for, *ahem*.”
An Amendment becomes law once the requisite number of States ratify it.
Presidents, including Wilson, had and have no role in the Amendment process.
Britain had a treaty with Belgium to protect its neutrality. The Belgium army put up an unexpectedly good fight slowing down the Germans. The intercepted Zimmerman telegram brought America into WW I.
Google AI:
Germany made several attempts to incite a war between Mexico and the U.S., seen especially in the Zimmermann Telegram affair in January 1917, where the aim was to draw the U.S. into conflict on its southern border rather than join Great Britain and France in the conflict against Germany and its allies.
Britain wouldn’t allow US Ships to enter German ports, even though we were still technically “neutral”.
So why should the US have risked their ships to aid Britain?
Isn’t that what a true “neutral” would have done?
Britain blockaded German ports. After years of the blockade, shortages undermined the German war effort. Britain bought arms and munitions from America. American ships were sunk by German submarines. At one point Germany stopped the submarine campaign to avoid war with America.
I like your comments, but have a problem with using the word “Biden”. He was nothing but a Deep State puppet and basically rubber stamped his signature on anything put in front of him and also tried to read whatever they put on the teleprompter for him.
That’s what I’m looking for.
1) understanding what the “triggering” event was all about, and
2) how the triggering event lead to what seems to be Germany’s first attempt to take over part of Europe.
Which book best explains this?
A lot of posts here.
Yours is the right one.
This is about young men dead, even more than about pride, or worry about what Putin might do, or dollars, or the map of Europe. Americans, even conservatives, must keep death in their minds every moment.
God and the President are the bearers of my hopes.
Justice and principle will have their day. They are not there for us at this moment.
I pray that peace may be possible, and that better leaders can lead the way to justice and principle when the killing and destruction have stopped.
My hope is that Clemenceau and Hitler are forever chained together in Hell.
Yes, Barbara Tuchman’s Guns of August is excellent and quite readable, too.
If you ever get a chance to watch the Austrian-German film “Sarajevo” released in 1914 starring Florian Teichtmeister, I think you would enjoy it. Yeah, subtitles, but talk about a movie that leaves you thinking about “things that make you go hmm”. It’s very, very well done.
Not they be confused with other films by the same name that came out the same year, so be careful.
Oops! Released in 2014, not 1914! Duh.
” the consensus they claimed that caused WWI was, get ready for it, ‘nationalism’! I could not get out of that place fast enough!”
Serbian nationalists killed Franz Ferdindand. Austria used that as a pretext to crush Serbia, who they believed, rightly it turned out, supported the Serbian nationalists in Bosnia. Russia stepped in to protect their Serb brothers and the war was on. Let’s have your theory if it wasn’t nationalism.
I call WWI a proxy war ... land grab. The old order of monarchs was going to be replaced by communism ... WWI created the likes of Hitler with that God forsaken treaty of Versailles .. Wars as well as elections (especially stolen elections) have consequences ...
As a President Trump supporter, getting called a NAZI has cauterized my humanitarian concern for these that use words to smear the people they hate.. AND the reference made to Christian nationalists as IF being Christian and love of my country makes me a threat .... reminds me of how the museum took pains to blame ‘nationalism’ for starting WWI ..
The Europeans seemingly lost their nationalism when they collectively became an union...
The President can get the ball rolling and add credibility to the proposal.
Nice try.
babble-on, you’re a Biden toadie.
I’m glad that your little green grifter burned himself down yesterday.
AHC (American Heroes Channel) aired a four-part documentary entitled “Apocalypse World War I” that was very good. I think it first aired in 2014, the anniversary of the start of WWI. I learned so much that I never knew before about WWI. It uses old film and narration. Some of it is very gory and hard to watch, but it gives a good history of WWI — before, during and after. They have aired it several times, and I think it is available on YouTube.
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