[risk]

You guys make some good points, and my arguments are not complete. I think we are talking about two different things here:

1. National guilt. Touchy and maybe wrong for an American to bring up just after the D-day anniversary, and I apologize.
2. Personal guilt. This is the burden a war criminal faces.

Figuring out what #1 means is a major undertaking. I do think the principles outlined in the Magna Carta make it clear that governments ultimately get their power from their people. Once we agree that people supply the force behind a government, then they must take on some sort of responsibility for evil geopolitical decisions such as the deeper invasion of China or Operation Barbarossa.

I'm not accusing the fictional Herr Mueller und seiner lieber Frau of being war criminals. I'm accusing them of loving Hitler or shuttering their windows and ignoring the truth. Either or both were all that was required for WWII to occur. Of course the Treaty of Versailles was critical in shaping the thoughts of Herr und Frau Meuller. So would Weimar socialism.

In 1919, the Big 4 met in Paris to negotiate the Treaty Lloyd George of Britain, Orlando of Italy, Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.

[The Scourge of Yazid]

I don't know.

I think the only legitimate causus belli at the time was the crumbling Ottoman Empire's treatment of its Armenian minorities.

It's unfortunate that most people only recall the petty territorial disputes that occurred between the Central Powers and their Western foes, and forget that the most poignant moment of the war came when besieged Armenians in Van made a last ditch effort to save themselves from massacre at the hands of the Turkish military and their personally trained chetes.

All of the other issues that putatively sparked "The Great War"-with the possible exception of Serbian nationalism, which precipitated the fight in the first place-are petty when compared to what was occurring throughout Turkey during this period.

The massacre of the Armenians in 1925 was the first modern example of mechanized, universally applied ethnic genocide in the 20th Century. It set the example-not only in moral terms, but in terms of actual real world applications-for Hitler's execution machine.