World War I might have been avoided if ....

Do you know that MacMillan is universally castigated for failing to understand the politics leading up to WWI, therefore has a bad premise for all her conclusions? How interesting ...

 

World War I was an unnecessary war that happened because of alliances. After Ferdinand was assassinated, Austria-Hungry attacked Serbia. Russia was forced to defend Serbia by treaty, and then Germany was forced to declare war on Russia by treaty. This caused France to declare war on Germany because of their treaty with Russia. Germany attacked France through Belgium who had a treaty with England which brought them into the war.

None of these countries were really enemies of each other, but were forced to enter the war because of treaties and alliances they had signed.

It was a crazy and unnecessary war.

 

I agree 100% and am not sure why the US felt compelled to get involved. At the very worst we would have seen a US ally German Empire which would have controlled all of germanic Europe and added to its world possessions (which it would later have been forced to let go, just like the British Empire). There would have been no reason for WWII.

Of course it is always possible that the British and German Empires would have ended up in conflict over some other situation.

Russia would have been the interesting situation - I am not sure what would have happened there. I suspect that the tzar would have remained in power for a while, but just don't know what would have happened.

I also wonder if Ireland would have sought her independence then if Britain was not tied up with WWI.

 

From what I understood we had a non-interventionist platform prior to 1917. The Germans sinking the Lusitania, and the Sussex caused some to want to declare war, but when we found out there were German subs probing the East Coast, that was the last straw.


Then there were economic interests, and good propaganda from both sides, but I do believe we tried to stay out of it.

 

The leader of "Black Hand", the group that pulled off the assassination, was the then-leader of Serbian military intelligence.

 

Contrary to what history tells us, World War I was an absolutely necessary war. In fact, British historian Sir Max Hastings produced a documentary by the same name, "The Necessary War", which is posted to you.tube in its entirety. The BBC snapshot of the one-hour program is below.

 

In 1914.....

".....Our culture, Western culture, in effect put a gun to its head and blew its brains out. Everything since has merely been the twitching of the corpse.”

https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-22-his-majestys-birthday/

 

Sorry, that's nonsense. If there was a trigger pulled, the gun was in Germany's hands.

 

You don't read anything anyone else posts, do you? You just go off half-cocked -- pun intended -- and spew nonsense wherever it may fall. Read the post I made four posts before this one and learn something for a change.

 

Don't forget the Zimmerman Telegram too.

I remember there was one of these historical debate shows on television a few years back, you know, the sort where a panel of eminent historians debate the whys and wherefores of WWI in front of a live studio audience of 'ordinary people' . A couple of times the 'incident at Sarajevo involving Franz Ferdinand' was cited by them as the trigger for the war's outbreak, without going into detail of said 'incident'; they then went on to describe the great suffering and loss of life in the war and how it led pretty inevitably to WWII, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, Vietnam, Cold War etc, with all the attendant loss of life and suffering involved there too. Eventually, this guy in the audience who was getting more and more agitated, stood up and shouted, "That Franz Ferdinand's got a lot to answer for: someone should've shot 'im!"

There was a stunned silence on the panel....

 

Obviously, Germany was appealing to the Germans who had emigrated to Mexico in the late 19th century. Vincente Fox is of German descent.

It's why Mexican music has accordions in it.

It's also why some Mexican beers taste like good European lagers.

 

Saw this today and thought of this thread. (Sorry it's so large)