Prevent World War I

I suggest you reread the book (which I have been doing, after reading “Catastrophe 1914” which also lays principle blame on the Central Powers for starting WWI).

Tuchman did not conclude that “they were all equally guilty”.

*"Woven into the text about the battles in Belgium are threads of fact that Allied governments would employ in the formation of the West’s eventual opinion that Germany had been the aggressor nation against Belgium. Such facts and conclusions would be repeated for the duration of the war and greatly affect the future involvement of the United States.

Also here in chapter 17 The Flames of Louvain, Tuchman places a selection of German views from a variety of sources as to the aims and desires of Germany. She cites Thomas Mann as saying the goal was “the establishment of the German idea in history, the enthronement of Kultur, the fulfillment of Germany’s historical mission”. She then conveys American reporter Irvin S. Cobb’s account of an interview with a ‘German scientist’: “Germany [is] for progress. German Kultur will enlighten the world and after this war there will never be another.” Yet further, a ‘German businessman’ opines that the war will give Europe “a new map, and Germany will be at the center of it” (aims similar to the Septemberprogramm).[4] Such outspoken menace worked to solidify opposition to Germany, caused George Bernard Shaw to become “fed up” at Prussian Militarism, and H. G. Wells to condemn the German “war god” and hope for an end to all armed conflict.

Chapter 17’s main focus is the German army’s atrocities in Belgium, in particular against the historic university city of Louvain. Tuchman frames her remarks by describing the Schrecklichkeit, the German military’s “theory of terror”. Accordingly, in a failed attempt to suppress the “illegal” franc-tireur (civilians shooting at German troops), hundreds of nearby citizens at several Belgium towns had been executed. Her accounts of the ferocity of such German army reprisals against the general population and of the willful burning of Louvain such as its university library make it obvious why the Western Allies might feel themselves justified to condemn Germany and Germans wholesale."*

Anything so large and complex as WW I cannot be attributed to any single person or even nation but I just recently read The Guns of August (at the suggestion of Dopers) and Tuchman is pretty hard on the Germans and Wilhelm especially. She obviously considered the Germans by far the biggest instigators (she hardly mentions A-H at all).

Wilhelm himself goes back and forth. At on point he wants to kick some butt and another time laments that the English were forcing him into war.

I think we can all agree Willy was a useless idiot whose inferiority complex was certainly one of the causes.

Yes. His army going to China “would be feared as the Huns.”
I will read the Guns of August again. I want to find a reference to Wilhelm and Nicholas telegraphing each other and begging the other guy not to mobilize.

Basically the Reich painted itself into a corner and ended up fighting a pre-emptive war against an apparently ever-strengthening Russia, and a pre-emptive war against a vengeful France, and a war for colonies against the British Empire.

Compare that to Bismarks skillful isolation of Austria and France in previous wars.

If just a few years earlier youd told the man on the Clapham omnibus a Great War was coming, hed have said “damn those frenchies and russkies! But Waterloo spirit, fine fellows those Prussian chaps…”

I don’t think you can prevent WWI no matter what you do to the timeline, at best you’ll change which countries are involved and the timing plus or minus 10 years or so. No matter how you shuffle things around the following will be true:

• colonisation happens, one way or another
• The radio, reliable internal combustion engines, diesel engines, the aeroplane and repeating fully automatic guns are invented, plus long distance artillery.

With those things in place massive large scale mechanized conflict is inevitable between colonial empires, so its a ‘world war’. Then 20 years later or so nuclear weapons are invented changing the equation again and making large scale war unlikely again.
In an alternate timeline world war I might have been the khmer empire vs the byzantine empire vs the qing empire, it would still be world war I, in that it would almost certainly kill millions, involve large scale trench warfare and end up getting bogged down into a long lasting stalemate.

To be fair, William II was very good at stirring up trouble. In 1908, for example, he created a furor in Europe after granting an interview to the Daily Telegraph, in which he (among other things) declared that most Germans loathed the British, claimed that he averted armed intervention by France and Russia against England over the Boer affair, and said that the German fleet might be needed against Japan in the Far East.

His Chancellor, von Bulow, (quoted in Robert Massie’s “Dreadnought”) said the interview revealed “more than any previous manifestation of the kind, the Emperor’s intellectual extravagance, his incoherent regard of facts, his complete lack of political moderation and balance, combined with an excessive urge towards…display.” “…these sad effusions could scarcely have been surpassed in tactless stupidity.”

It’s a good thing we don’t have world leaders like that today.

I believe the Germans refueled the Black Sea fleet on the way to Tsushima.
Not that it worked out well for the Russians.

You left off the appropriate smiley face - maybe headsmack, or rolleyes? I mean, if you substitute the word “candidate’s” for “Emperor’s” you would certainly be talking about a contemporary wannabe world leader. So, whoosh for me?

:smack::rolleyes::mad:

Widespread adoption of effective family planning two generations–or maybe two centuries–earlier.

Wars are driven by the imbalance between the rate of births and the rate of deaths.