Still in the fallout of the first WW

This is not a new idea. If you read Barbara Tuchman's classic, "The Guns of August," she saw all of the history between June 1914 and the early 1960s (when she wrote the book) as inextricably tied together. Her last paragraph speaks of a trap that the nations of the world had fallen into which neither we nor they have escaped. Oh, that she could have lived to see today! That "little Jewish housewife" was a prophetess!

Indeed, the Middle East crisis and the current terror war are the direct result of the rapid dismantling of the Ottoman posessions, rather than a gradual disintegration, which would have allowed for more stable nations to result from the breakup. I am not sure which was the most bone-headed move: breaking up the Ottoman Empire, or allowing TE Lawrence and a lady professor (whose name escapes me) to help draw the national boundaries on a map.

History must be viewed in the long view. When a French journalist asked the late Deng Tsiao Peng about the significance of the French Revolution to history, Deng smiled and said, "It's too soon to say."

 

Naw, this is stupid diplomatic blunders! Generals are limited in how much they can mess things up, diplomats, kings, prime ministers, and presidents can mess things up on an exponential scale.

 

Scott Adams, the great philosopher (and creator of the Dilbert comic strip) theorizes that all people are idiots.

The best of us are idiots occasionally.

More folks are idiots periodically.

A lot of folks are full-time idiots in one realm of life (love, home, work) while doing OK in other areas.

Some people make idiocy a profession.

And some people raise idiocy to an art form.

I think politicians and diplomats fall in the last two categories.

 

This is why the government that governs least usually governs best.

Anyone who wants political power should be kept from having it.

That being impractical, we should give government as little power over us as practical, and we should trim it back from time to time, just on principle.

We are moving the wrong way these days. And moving fast. Pray that we wake up before it's too late.

 

The Germans losing WW1 created the opportunity for Hitler to be something other than a local nut. It also opened the opportunity for the Bolsheviks to create the USSR and survive the civil war. We don't know what it would have been like had we not intervened and saved the allies.

Ah, the law of Unintended Consequences...i.e., we are not omniscient, nor prescient.

 

Hola Major B and Stratiotes,

Thought you might find this interesting.

Hegelian Dialectic

 

You are so right my friend. An interesting thought is what would have happened had Eisenhower gone along with Patton's idea to re-arm the surrendering German divisions and push the Russians out of Eastern Europe. Only we had the bomb by that time...

 

Gertrude Bell, I believe.

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

Two comments from me wrt WW1:-

1. It really was the 'Suicide of Empires', specifically the European Empires, including the British (upon which the sun really did begin to set), and marked the beginning of the end for European hegemony, which the countries of Europe are now trying to recover albeit as united rather than divided. A generation of men and a generation's money and other resources, both of which could have been used to effectively administer the colonies and develop them to political maturity (as well as maintain conservative elites at home), were squandered in the trenches. WW2 merely set the seal on the deal.

2. It spawned a generation of monsters. Without WW1, Hitler would have been just another struggling Viennese artist with anti-Semitic views and would probably never have gone to Germany, Mussolini yet another of the two-a-penny socialist Italian schoolteachers, Mao similarly in China, Lenin and Stalin would have been in and out of Siberia with their increasingly anachronistic form of Marxism as Tsarist Russia gradually reached the form of partial democracy in the 1920s that it has today, and Ho Chi Minh as he became would have stuck to what he was good at: making pastry in Paris.

That Franz Ferdinand bloke has a lot to answer for – someone ought to shoot him. Ho hum...

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

According to Tuchman, he was only there because when he was in the guise of a military officer (as inspector general of the Army), his beloved wife could accompany him and appear with him in public. She was a commoner, and when he was in his guise as heir apparent, she could not be seen with him. Therefore, he often inspected army posts (far more than needed) so he could be with her.

So, the social conundrums of the ancien regime put it in the position of danger.

 

If the Von Schlieffen plan had worked and Germany had won the war in 1914 I think WWII still would have happened. For the following reasons.

1) A German victory in Aug. or Sept 1914 would have left all of the empires in tact, except the third republic. The competition for land in Africa and Asia would have led to other wars.

2) France would have still been bitter for revenge, a feeling she felt toward Germany after 1871's Franco Prussian War. Who is to say that a French kook wouldn't have rose to power like Hitler did in defeated, post war Germany.

3)Russia probably would have been defeated very quickly by the Germans without Vladimir Illyich Ulianov(Lennin) being reintroduced to Czarist Russia. How long before the Czar collapsed anyway?

4)How would America have been different if our boys hadn't went "Over There"? There's an interesting quesiton?

 

You had everything in Russia from Democrats like Kerensky to hard line communists like Stalin and Trotsky.

Nicholas lived in a bubble, had already dissolved the Duma and his wife was taking spiritual advice from a charlatan like Rasputin.

The only heir to the throne was czareyavich Alexeii who suffered from Hemophilia. I would submit that the end of Romanov rule was a train that would have eventually arrived anyway.

It's interesting when you look at Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Both of them were young men when they came on to the throne and even though they ruled for many years before the war started, it seems as if neither one of them grew into the role of ruling very well.

I agree with you rsr that if economics in Russia had improved the status quo would have held. If the stock market crashes in 29' Russia would have been back in the same boat.