Germany never intended to occupy France. Even at its most optimistic (the Bethmann-Hollweg plan), the most Germany was looking for from France was payment of reparations, cession of a strip of land containing an ore-field on the German border, the destruction of border forts, and a treaty setting up free trade between France and Germany and restricting British imports to France.
Germany and France fought, not because of any sort of German designs on France, but because of French revanchism over Alsace-Lorraine, and because of the French-Russian alliance.
G. J. Meyer’s “A World Undone” is a very good book. If I remember Meyer’s arguments right, while Germany’s role in the July crisis has been overdone, she certainly played a major rule in the years leading up to it. Plus a lot of Austria-Hungary’s state papers were destroyed and Germany giving them a “blank cheque” was a disaster.
The Germans had an unbelievable knack for putting their foots in their mouth. Calling the Treaty to respect Belgium’s neutrality “a scrap of people” upset people, as did the heavy-handed treatment of civilians (later exaggerated by Allied propagandists). When a group of Americans volunteered to fight for France under the name “Escadrille d’Americans” (American squadron), Germany protested. The Americans put pressure on France and the name became “Ecadrille de Lafayette”, changing the perception from a group of adventures into a group dedicating to freedom, repaying a debt from the American Revolution from a lover of liberty. Unrestricted submarine warfare was not going to be effective because of the small number of U-boats. Bombing civilians by air from airplanes and zeppelins was seen as savage. Getting the United States involved by admitting Germany was trying to get Mexico to declare war on America was idiotic in plan and admitting it was true. Germany was the first nation to use poison gas yet prevailing winds would make sure it benefited the allies more.
When you say “Germany” here, you mostly mean “Kaiser Wilhelm”. And he was pretty wild. He was not insane, as some claim, but he was bombastic and had a massive inferiority complex. His mother was a British royal, and she was a rather vile woman who apparently never loved him (his arm was crippled because of a clumsy doctor). Essentially, he lived his entire life alternately trying to win their love or bring them low, occaisionally at the same time. As I’ve said before, World War 1 was the world’s bloodiest family fued.
The thing about WWI was you had a bunch of people (in this case, Great Britian, Italy, France, Germany, Russian and Austria-Hungary) looking for a fight.
You even had a bunch of little guys looking to fight. The little Balkan guys ganged up on the Ottoman Empire then turned around and beat each other up a little later.
The main cause Serbia vs Austria-Hungary was ridiculous. This is where the “Germany is at fault” origin lies.
Austria-Hungary was classed as a great power but really was weak. It was strong only on paper. When Austria-Hungary delivered it’s ultimatum and Serbia accepted all but one condition, which would’ve effectively killed its sovereignty this was the start of WWI
Now remember this, Austria-Hungary was VERY weak. Unless it had 100% German backing it couldn’t even beat tiny Serbia. Well perhaps it could but Austria-Hungary was full of unhappy minorities that wouldn’t have supported a war with Serbia, so even if Austria-Hungary won a war with Serbia by itself, (which was iffy at best), it would’ve suffered.
So this is why German guilt was assgined. Without that assurance of military help by German, there is no question that Austria-Hungary would’ve backed down.
Does that mean WWI wouldn’t have happened. Probably not, as I said, the countries were just itching for a fight. As close at 1898 (just 16 years earlier) the Fashoda Incident, nearly brought France and Great Britian to war.
Technical nitpick: Triple Entente propagandists…Allies is a WWII term, and confusing here, because Germany was part of the Triple Alliance (which eventually became known as the Central Powers after Italy defected from the Triple Alliance at the start of the war.
While they’re no doubt that the Entente played up German atrocities in Belgium, even to the point of including lurid, unsubstantiated accounts in the official report, it bears mentioning that the atrocities were part of deliberate German policy, not accidents of war. Prior the the war, the Kaiser himself had enthusiastically adopted the term “Huns” to refer to his armies in a speech urging merciless slaughter of Chinese Boxer rebels, and when the war started, Germany intended to strike a “healthy” fear into its foes by acting harshly.
Also, the German military was obsessed with memories of francs-tireurs (literally, “free shooters” – un-uniformed citizen snipers that were an outgrowth of private rifle clubs that had been popular in France) from the Franco-Prussian war. Before occupying Belgium there had been anticipation of resistance by francs-tireurs, and the jumpy Germans overreacted to every stray shot or armed peasant as if a mass uprising had occurred. There were citizen snipers and resistors against occupation, but German fears and their obsession with control made the problem seem much worse than it was, and prompted retaliatory harshness.
Well, not nuts, but, as smiling bandit correctly explained, disturbed.
In the Prussian climate, the military was everything. One of the worst insults (beside “Social democrat”, similar to “liberal” today) was “civilian”. That the Kaiser, who should have been the macho-est of all macho guys, the bestest soldier of all, since he was the top military leader (similar to the POTUS today), was actually not really fit because of his health problems and his crippled arm was a huge problem for him.
As for France, at that point, the “Erbfeindschaft” (Historic enmity) between Germany and France had been going on for several generations - after the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th. century, and the german-french war 1870/71 to found the German Kaiserreich - , and despite some voices calling for peace between the nations, most people found it completely normal - a force of nature, almost - that there was enmity between them, and thus killing them in war would be quite right, and preventing the French from attacking Germany.
After WWI, two ministers, German exterior minister Gustav Stresemann and French Aristide Briand tried to normalize relationships between the two countries, but were called traitors by most of their countrymen. Only after the decdicated efforts of Adenauer and DeGaulle, where the efforts were made by the state itself, with school exchanges, partner cities, official visits and so on, was this kind of thinking extinguished.
Well, it was about prestige. As for money pits - it took France, UK, Spain, Portugal until after WWII to really let their colonies go into independence, after rebellions and uprisings there, so they valued prestige or other things like strategic footholds more highly than pure economy, too.
As others have already said, the British Empire wasn’t nice and friendly towards the other countries, but acted on what was good only for the British, not for everybody. They acted arrogantly and dismissively towards other countries, their economic interests and so on. Remember, the US went into a war against the UK after the War of Independence again because they didn’t like the way the British navy treated their ships.
So the decision was made to risk angering the British by building up the navy. And as has been said, a large part was the Kaiser’s ego problem, trying to pull equal. Normal sense or economy didn’t enter into this.
Additionally, as has been said, all countries wanted to go war. War was seen as “the continuation of politics with other means”, not a terrible, terrible thing. Also, despite the horrors of mechanized industrial warfare that were visible in the 1870/71 war, most people - in Germany and in the other European countries - still were impression-ed by militaristic propaganda and believed that serving in the military and fighting a war would make a real man out of you, and was the only chance for glory and to become a hero, by killing other people. So everybody was eager for war, and the minority that tried to stop it were seen as traitors.
And the German population believed that when the Kaiser and other high-ranking people told them that they were encircled and had to strike out first, that this was a defense strike.
(I have refrained from drawing obvious parallels to current events or trends).
Where this claim first falls down is in relation to England. They did not stand to gain either from the financially ruinous naval arms race with Germany or from armed conflict. A war with the Boers had recently ended at great cost. War was not a viable or desired option for the British.
The Russians had also been weakened by the war with Japan that exposed their vulnerabilities. They had actually initiated a world conference designed to limit arms (not that it did very much). It’s hard to see how the Russians could be seen as eager for a war with Germany. There was some sentiment in France eager to avenge the humiliation of 1870 and get Alsace and Lorraine back, but this was not a universal feeling.
Yes, quite. George Bush’s withered arm led him to institute a massive arms race, the EU responded by vigorously colonizing Africa and all the major powers are obviously itching for a fight. :rolleyes:
Again, you are only going by what would be logically or economically, but that was not the general trend in the population. People in all nations marched off singing ditties on how they’d kill everybody else, fired on by the civilians. The British young men also believed that marching off to battle would give them a bloody baptism and make real men of them, while the only chance for glory and heroism.
So the old reports, fotos and so on of soldiers marching off full of enthusiasm are not true, exaggerated or what?
Um parallels doesn’t mean 1:1 analogy. But then, one of the problems with the widespread American militarism is how blind the population is to it and its problems.
Another point is that the whole issue of “placing the blame” in itself was a mixture of old-style war vs. the new reality of industrial-style butchering. In the wars of the previous centuries, the victor simply took the spoils without any excuse - the “vae victis” principle.
But with the mass slaughter in the Western front during WWI, suddenly the winners felt the need to find an official excuse both for punishing the looser with sever reparations (due to the wish of revanche from the French), and to put the blame for the whole thing itself somewhere else than the wide enthusiasm for war.
When it comes down to declarations of war and armies massing close to, if not actually on your doorstep poised for invasion, doubts have a way of being pushed aside in a wave of patriotism. Socialism was relatively popular among workers of the time, but when war broke out they readily went to war against their comrades. A common view among leaders of the time was expressed by Edward Grey, British secretary of state:
“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
The French may also have been a wee bit ticked off over having been occupied for four years and much of the country left a smoldering ruin by German troops (who did things like poisoning water supplies as they retreated).
The claim of “innocence” by or on behalf of the Germans for starting WWI is about as believable as alleged lack of responsibility for starting WWII.
Do start a thread to expound separately on this thesis, instead of making lame attempts at hijacking history to support it.
This is just ludicrous. While Britain was certainly out for its own interests and was not above throwing around its clout to get its way, NOBODY was looking to initiate a war with Britain. The US had nothing to gain from a war with Britain. Relations had been on an upward path since the Venezuelan border dispute of 1895. As for Germany, up until the British declared war over the violation of Belgian neutrality, the Germans had convinced themselves that the British would stay out of any war on the Continent. The last thing they wanted was a war with Britain while they were being menaced on both sides by France and Russia.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed for two reasons. The first was that Germany had to deal with the entry of the United States into the war and wanted a separate peace with the Bolsheviks so they could deal with the Western Front. The other reason was that the Bolsheviks were still consolidating power and didn’t want to be focused on fighting a war away from home when they had one to fight in Russia.
The bottom line is that Russia didn’t lose, they quit.
Agreed. Russia was devastated by the war. Hindenburg and Ludendorf demolished their armies, and there was really nothing in their government or social structure to let them recover and fight on (them being in the middle of a revolution). They signed the Treaty because the country had pretty much fallen apart.
Yes, and the Kaiser said in German parliament, regarding the social-democrats who had fought against the militaristic attitude in Prussia / Germany all the years before and had tried to avert the war, when war was declared “Ich kenne keine Parteien mehr, ich kenne nur Deutsche” (I don’t know (political) parties any more, I only know Germans), declaring a internal peace, and the SPD caved in.
Actually, the wish for revanche among the French stemmed from the assholish behaviour of the Kaiser and his entourage, crowning himself in the mirror hall of Versailles at the end of the war of 1871, as a way to ultimatley humiliate the French. (Bismarck was against this, because he was smart enough to understand that humiliation would fuel revenge and cause problems in the future; but the rest of the military was drunk-like on their success and didn’t listen.)
The French, sadly, repeated the mistake of humilitating the loser, thus ensuring another round of revenge.
Also, poisioning the water supplies in France? Where the front was frozen, and the German army was still on foreign ground when the treaty was signed? The quotes I find only mention the Eastern front, which was more mobile, and that both armies used “burned ground” tactics during retreat.
The whole issue of innocence wouldn’t have been necessary to prove if the blame hadn’t been placed on one country alone, when all countries were more or less eager to prove themselves on the field of honor (and get some spoils, too), which was why there were several almost-crises before WWI started for real.
It’s true that historians argue about how many of the population were in favour of a war (though in a monarchy, the monarch himself is enough), and how much each country contributed. But no serious historian claims that one country is 100% to blame, leaving all others blameless. Each contributed, everybody is guilty. And the bad treaty at the end laid the ground for the next.
All I have to add to this is that after reading the history of the wars I distinctly got the impression that France was quite blameworthy for both WW1 and WW2
WW1 because I assigned their decision to support their ally as the tipping point that caused war. IIRC, it went: Serbia → Austria → Russia → Germany → France
France had no geopolitical business in the immediate conflict and you could just smell them getting into it just to start shit with the Germans because they were butthurt from the last ass-kicking they got from Germany.
WW2 because they were the ones pushing for the overzealous scheme to punish germany post-WWI