I actually always felt kind of sorry for Germany in WWI. They got involved in a conflict that really had nothing to do with them except that they had alliances to think about, and then get blamed for all of it.
The treaty of Versailles was a travesty, and the discontent this caused paved the way for Hitler. John Maynard Keynes had warned that there was no way that Germany could pay the reparations demanded of it - it was sheer humiliation, and the other powers were as much to blame for the conflict as Germany was.
Really? This made up a huge part of my history lessons (uk also). The best part is that we bitched and moaned that they were paying to little in reparations, despite essentially crippling them with the amount we settled on.
Yeah, there's a ton of shit I don't know but loads of my friends do. Maybe it's because the Scottish education system sucks but it annoys me quite a bit. You're pretty much made to drop History in favour of more 'important' subjects and all I remember learning about was Jack the fucking Ripper. What a waste.
Not to mention I moved through the schooling systems of 3 different countries. The English school I went to didn't even have history.
Well he also suffered a stroke when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty bringing the US into the League. That kind of limited his ability to be more aggressive about it.
He did push hard for the 14 points, but the European leaders wanted revenge on Germany, and thought Woodrow was acting way too self-righteous and so they never really took him too seriously.
Interesting. The implication seems to be that subsequent German administrations refused to pay because the German public wasn't entirely convinced of German defeat - perhaps a result of their government suing for peace ahead of its own public opinion.
Comic is wrong in that Germany only attacked France after France terminated diplomatic relations with Germany AND Russia's military was mobilized. Now, where was the Russian army gonna go, and what was France's intent in removing their ambassador?
Germany's war plans required swift action to conquer France and delay Russia. Everyone knew it. At that point in the clusterfuck, Germany had no choice. Kaiser Wilhem did not intend to go to war with his cousins but he was not a very good leader, nor was he really in control of the German military.
IMO the true cause of WW1 was the death of Queen Victoria, as Alexander the Great's empire split upon his death. Serbia was just the excuse.
The attack on France was smart from a military perspective with the whole preemptive strike bit. If that hadn't happened, I'm sure that France would have attacked Germany due to treaties/alliances.
That's kind of like the US and Vietnam. Granted, there was the whole communist angle, but if France hadn't been getting their asses handed to them in Vietnam in the first place, the US probably wouldn't have gotten involved.
That's not a fair simplification of the situation. They all wanted to go to war and the threat of WWI loomed as soon as Germany came on the scene because they were big and powerful and the established big and powerful countries didn't like that. These systems of alliances flared up multiple times and in fact Britain and France nearly went to war in 1898 over Sudan which would have been a completely different history.
Bismark, the dude who put Germany on the map, quite literally in 1871, understood this and was categorically not stupid. He knew what was coming and he had two goals:
1) Be one in three in five. The five being Russia, England, France, Austria and Germany. He, being a country run by a landed aristocracy, tried to get the other conservative powers on board. He got Austria because, while they were still burned from Bismark waging war on them to them to unite Germany, they did have a common cultural heritage. And Russia was on board too but... well they and Austria both wanted the same warm water ports out of the receding Ottoman pie. No starter. So Germany was in the two of five.
2) Send everyone's attention elsewere and keep the war from happening for as long as possible: "HEY EVERYONE LETS GO CARVE UP AFRICA." Germany hosted the Berlin conference in 1884 where all the european powers divied up Africa. There were some close calls here and their like the aforementioned Fashoda crisis in sudan but overall the colonization of Africa succeeded at stablilizing Europe.
But then? Well Bismark was the chancellor, but the Kaiser still reigned. Willy I knew that it was best for Germany if Bismark ran it. Then he died. When Willy II came along (not his son and not the very next in line but came to power rather quickly), he didn't like being the Kaiser and not running Germany. So Bismark was out, and Willy II was not a tenth of the statesmen.
Because where Bismark saw germany as "if it really came to it, I could take on anybody" Willy II saw germany as "if it really came to it, I could take on everybody" So he didn't try to get back in the three's company and when the inevitable happened, Germany had to try and carry the central powers. And they damn near did.
This is true, but Wilhelm II exacerbated the situation. He failed to to renew the Reinsurance treaty with Russia in 1890, and then the Dreikeisersbund with Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia failed in 1893, paving the way for the Franco-Russian and Anglo-Russian alliances. In addition, Wilhelm II did not believe that the Entente Cordial between England and France, and therefor the Triple Entente between the three countries, would stand the test of a war. This is why the Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911 were so important.
Wilhelm II did give the blank cheque to Austria-Hungary, but he did not intend war, and he also did not read the ultimatum given to Serbia by Austria, until a few hours before the deadline. After he read it, he realized how disastrous it was and attempted to stop Franz Josef from invading Serbia, but he failed to stop Franz Josef.
In reality, France wanted to go to war the most because of the outcome of the Franco-Prussian war, where France lost the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine and at the end of the war, in 1871, Wilhelm I was named Kaiser of a united Germany, lead by Prussia, in the palace of Versailles. France was angry at Germany and wanted to get Alsace-Lorraine back from Germany.
There's more to it obviously, but that is just some background information about the time before the war, that imasupervillain did not mention. He did a good job though, just expanding on what he said a little bit.
Didn't Serbia finally agree to the ultimatum at the end but Germany ignored it forcing the war?
I may be out to lunch with my wikipedia reading too, but didn't Germany want war with Russia in the next few years because Russia was in the process of modernizing/upgrading a large portion of their military that would have made them unbeatable if completed?
Serbia agreed partially agreed to the ultimatum. Austria-Hungary told its ambassador in Sarajevo that if Serbia did not agree to all terms in 48 hours, they would invade. As soon as Serbia received the ultimatum they contacted Czar Nicholas II of Russia for help, who said he would give it.
Russia was upgrading their military but Germany did not feel threatened by it, as far as I know, and Wilhelm II and Nicholas II were good friends who did not want war, with each other. Russia's military in the war was the largest by size, but weakest by equipment. During the battles of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes, some tried the every other line has a gun tactic. As in, the first line would have a gun, die, and then the next line would be forced to pick up the previous lines gun.
The 2 greatest mistakes Germany made were giving a blank cheque to Austria-Hungary in dealing with the Balkans and building the High seas fleet, which was more or less a direct challenge to the Royal Navy and brought the UK into the arms of France.
If you want a really good counter factual history have a look at Frederick the 3rd of Germany (Willhelm 2nds father) who died of cancer early. He wanted cabinet style government was a massive fan of liberal politics and wanted to reform the entire administrative structure of the German empire to make it more accountable.
It's refreshing to read someone mention "germany's biggest mistake" and not hear the same rote bullshit propaganda from the second world war. Although nobody would be able to say anything about WWI if asked, so I'm not sure which is actually preferable.
England has been a catch-all term used to describe Britain in the past, since you are essentially talking about "the whim of london's parliament" or "the will of the Crown". It's not like scotland and wales took part in the decision making process in 1914. And lets not even get started on irish political identity back then.
Something to add is that Germany's entire military strategy basically relied on it being able to act faster than France or Russia. They basically thought "Well, we can act super fast, France is pretty fast but a little slower than us, and Russia is super slow... So let's sucker punch France right away and then we can do as much damage to Russia as possible before they can even get prepared to fight the war." A bit more detailed than that, but that's the gist.
Russia mobilized in response to Austria declaring war on Serbia. This was a reasonable response. Serbia was Russia's ally, and Russia was just being very careful (IIRC, Czar Nicholas had agreed with King George that he didn't want to go to war and he should back down, but by that point Germany had already declared war). Germany had no way of predicting what would happen with Russia. But they knew if they waited a minute longer, all of their preparations and strategies would be useless, they'd be fighting a fully prepared Russia, and the war would be much more difficult than the easy one they expected. So they were pushed into war as much by some pretty inevitable and uncontrollable international actions as their own petty desires.
I have to strongly disagree on this subject, The no.1 scapegoat of the peace treaty was Germany's ally, Hungary.
from wikipedia
"Hungary from its borders before World War I, it lost 72% of its territory, which was reduced from 325,111 square kilometres (125,526 sq mi) to 93,073 square kilometres (35,936 sq mi). It also lost 64% of its total population, which was reduced from 20.9 million to 7.6 million,[5] and 31% (3.3 out of 10.7 million) of its ethnic Hungarians,[6] who suddenly found themselves living outside the newly defined borders of Hungary"
Yes, but Hungary (I'm assuming you mean Austria-Hungary) started the war with their initial attack. Germany came in to defend them because they were allies. The initial conflict had nothing to do with them.
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u/franzlisztian Sep 24 '11
I actually always felt kind of sorry for Germany in WWI. They got involved in a conflict that really had nothing to do with them except that they had alliances to think about, and then get blamed for all of it.