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The thing that most amazes me about the Great War is how so many fought and died to prevent the EU [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm ht

The thing that most amazes me about the Great War is how so many fought and died to prevent the EU [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm Edit. It seems my brevity has caused some people to miss my point (or maybe not). I am lamenting the huge loss of life that flowed from the Great War that was fought trying to prevent the creation of the EU. On a personal note my great uncle died in the Great War and the effect this had on my family is still with with us to this day.

emj 10y ago
Your comment is short and slightly offensive, but sure there's some truth to that the diplomatic/economic European Union could have happend faster if people just hadn't warmongered so much. The people living there were, to put it midly worse off, but I'm sure the leaders thought it was a great idea to expand their culturaly influence just a little bit too far. But is unification really always the answer?
- danieltillett 10y ago
  The history of Europe in the 20th C. is really the long march towards a EU with Germany at the heart. It is more than a shame that so many died to end up exactly where we would have been if the Schlieffen Plan had worked [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan
  - tallanvor 10y ago
    Right... Except, of course, that the EU is a voluntary union rather than an attempt at conquest.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      I think you should ask the Greeks how voluntary the EU is these days. I am actually not opposed to the EU, I am just making the point of how little wars or personalities matter in the end.
      - tallanvor 10y ago
        Your comment about Greece can easily be turned around: ask the British how voluntary the EU is.
        danieltillett 10y ago
        I think the British are about to find out. I am glad I am not British.
        ggame 10y ago
        I would not be supprised if Teresa May was placed in power with the express goal of fumbling the exit.
        moomin 10y ago
        Hanlon's Razor applies here. (As does, since it's pretty clear our government doesn't know what they're doing, Occam's.)
        ggame 10y ago
        Not disagreeing... would the Peters principal also apply? Intentionally hired to be incompetent that would also imply malice? Those involved may have the best intentions, so no malice, and we're back to incompetence. Either way, if I were in charge and I needed someone to fumble it I would have picked her. That mail campaign asking people to self identify for deportation was the most anti Brexit thing I could imagine her doing.
        moomin 10y ago
        The Peter Principle would imply she was a good home secretary. She was actually kind of a disaster, but spent her days keeping out of the press. It's fairly clear her instincts remain to disclose as little information as possible to the press. It's less clear that's a good idea as PM. Edit: She was, however, probably the best candidate the party had. Ironically, the Labour Party has at least five people in parliament right now who'd make a better Prime Minister, but a fair few of those aren't even in the shadow cabinet.
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      I think it's important to distinguish between "voluntary by the will of the government" and "by the will of people". Your statement is 100% true for the former and only ~50% true (i.e., 50% false) for the latter.
      - tpm 10y ago
        Well, you can say that about every government and just about every issue ever.
        dmichulke 10y ago
        That's why voluntary is a dangerous word to use in this context and discussion benefits from a clear distinction between the two cases. To cite GP > The EU is a voluntary union Well, it is more voluntary than a Forth Reich but much less so than say a federation of Swiss-like democracies. Since the EU has democracy, freedom, transparency .. as its core values but doesn't follow them in important aspects, it's hypocritical and that very fact is part of why the people don't perceive it as "a good thing" anymore.
        tpm 10y ago
        The EU is a voluntary union though, given a country can exit the union when it wants to (see also Brexit). The EU is also as democratic as the state governments allow it to be - it has European Parliament, but many things are still decided between the national governments. That's not something the EU, as a set of institutions, can solve - only the national states can change that. So my conclusion is, the EU is often accused as the perpetrator of things it cannot change. Luckily enough people still perceive it as a good thing, even though populist or evil (mostly nationalistic) politicians are trying destroy it for the wrong reasons.
        candiodari 10y ago
        If the EU is a voluntary union, then how come it's members are democracies, yet almost every vote about joining the EU went the same way. Some examples: 1) Brexit (obviously) 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European_Union_Association_Agreement_referendum,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European... 3) OXI - Greek referendum on whether to accept EU authority over their financial system 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r... 5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_euro_referendum,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_euro_referendum,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_euro_referendum,_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_euro_referendum,_2003 It's not that they never won any referenda, but if anything has been made blatantly clear it's that EU constituencies do not want most of the EU. They want the Euro, Free trade and ... that's it. The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed. They do not want the EU controlling local economies. They do not want the ECB. They do not want the EC as a local regulator. They do not want the EU to control the borders. They do not ... etc. Recently the EU declared that anyone who has the right to exercise any protected job anywhere in the EU, has that right everywhere in the EU. That means doctors, accountants, ... This has got to be the stupidest move yet. The upper middle class is the center of support for the EU and this decision might decimate their incomes. Whether it will or not is even not that relevant, merely the fear of it will massively erode whatever support is left after the monumental immigration fuckups, the (financial, and real) devastation of southern Europe (now Italy has > 25% youth unemployment too, hell it's approaching 50% in some parts of southern Italy) Furthermore, your claims are inaccurate. The EU parliament has no power. Power exists within the European Commission, and the trade organisations. The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries (as was demonstrated with Greece and more generally southern Europe or the so-called PIGS). There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC. The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU. That is the perception, and, frankly, it's accurate. Looking at how the EC operates, that is neither an accident nor beyond their scope.
  - osullivj 10y ago
    Another way of putting it: German history since 1870 is series of attempts to recreate the Holy Roman Empire. Bismarck & the Kaiser's Second Reich, Hitler's Third Reich, and now the Merkel led EU imposing the ECB facilitated Eurozone diktat. To paraphrase von Clausewitz: finance is the continuation of politics by other means. Hence Merkel's ability to remove uncooperative heads of govt in Italy & Greece in recent years.
  - cstross 10y ago
    If the Schlieffen Plan had worked, the Germany that emerged victorious would be unrecognizable — an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp house of representatives that had demonstrated decisively that militaristic aggression got results. There would still — probably — have been a round two in the 1930s or 1940s; WW1 was in some respects a revenge fight for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. But without the gridlock of the western front to force the hothouse development of new weapons and tactics, the military tools of that second conflict would be much closer to those of our actually-existing WW1; that is, I don't believe we'd have ultimately avoided the bloodbathe of trench warfare — we'd just have postponed it (and retarded the development of civil aviation as an accidental side-effect). The real question is whether the ancien regime would have survived (no collapse of the monarchies; the Hapsburg, Wilhelmine and Romanov dynasties survive into the second half of the 20th century, and those guys called Lenin and Trotsky and Hitler are just fringe radicals) and if so, what the consequences would have been further down the line. One thing's for sure: no European Convention on Human Rights! (Source: lots of speculation here, but I'm an SF author with a track record in alternate history and this stuff is meat and drink ...)
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      While I agree with you that that this is a really interesting topic to think about, I don't agree that Germany (Prussia really) would have remained an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp democracy. There was already a cultural shift before the Great War towards greater democracy and human rights - the war can be seen as the last gasp of the dying monarchies to hold onto power in the face of this movement. We also would not have had the singular individual who was Hitler and all the damage he did. I think we would have ended up with something very close to a full intergrated EU economically dominated by Germany with a few internal borders shifted around and a declining U.K. outside the EU.
      - cstross 10y ago
        I suspect a declining UK facing a continental hegemonic superpower — anathema to British foreign policy going back half a millennium or more — would not have gone down quietly. And with an overseas empire behind it, the result could well have been an even more ruinous escalation of the Dreadnought Race of the 1900s, possibly leading to a full-blown naval war and/or British attempts to overturn the post-Schlieffen War settlement. Whatever, it would have been messy — very messy. (However, the move towards social democracy in Germany was a thing pre-war, and if anything it was the capitulation to nationalism of the moderate left that opened the door to the radical left and communist fringe across Europe; it's interesting to speculate where things might have ended up if the standard bearer for hardline socialism had been someone like Rosa Luxemburg rather than Vladimir Lenin.)
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Warfare is much more economic in nature these days. One of the reasons we don't go to war as much is because if you have the economic clout it's much easier to dominate nations and less destructive to boot. The EU is a remarkable construct, and obviously in its roots has the desire to prevent conflict. At the same time, there's plenty of parties that can use that same construct (and have) to dominate in other ways. If you are an unscrupulous German leader of industry, the ability and desire to gain more power is not so different from Krupp or other German businesses serving the Nazis. They are different in kind and end results, yes, and this economic warfare is kinder and more acceptable to peace. At the core, though is domination. The OP's comment is offensive because it is so short, but he's right in that Germany dominates the EU, for good and bad.
  - ggame 10y ago
    Warefare has always been largely economic. It's what you are fighting for, it's how you win. See Sun Tzus Art of War for an early example of military focus. Because of the well known destructive nature of war; more wars have been fought to prevent future wars than have not. E.g. The war to end all wars (WWI) The EU was intended to cause the economic and political crisis we are seeing. A shared currency among such different exonomies is fatally flawed and requires a superstate solution - which was actual goal. Citizens would not knowingly vote for this, but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk, it is considered proper to suppress it. Of course this effort to prevent future wars will inevitably lead to a future war. Thus, I consider the break up of the EU as the only path to preventing war. Either way we're entering interesting times.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      > but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk This is conspiracy-theory garbage.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        This is the second time in this thread you've dismissed others' arguments in abrupt emotional fashion. Please let us see your work.
ggame 10y ago
I second your statement. The EU is another attempt at a global power structure that has been going on since people were people. It's most recognizably German, and once the realities of governing a superstate are take into account, this was how I imagine a post WWI German victory to look.
pjc50 10y ago
This is highly offensive and will no doubt be flagged off HN soon. The EU as it presently stands is extremely different to the empires of the early 20th century. Declaring that people who fought in the Great War were fighting to "prevent" something completely different that came 50 years later is highly offensive to their memory.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Rather than being offended about a historical statement, what were the German war aims in 1914? Why did the British Empire enter the war? The British didn't die in their millions to defend the neutrality of the Belgians.
WildUtah 10y ago
Why the EU was necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE To divide and disunite Europe and make a complete pig's breakfast of the continent.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

emj 10y ago

Your comment is short and slightly offensive, but sure there's some truth to that the diplomatic/economic European Union could have happend faster if people just hadn't warmongered so much. The people living there were, to put it midly worse off, but I'm sure the leaders thought it was a great idea to expand their culturaly influence just a little bit too far. But is unification really always the answer?

danieltillett 10y ago
The history of Europe in the 20th C. is really the long march towards a EU with Germany at the heart. It is more than a shame that so many died to end up exactly where we would have been if the Schlieffen Plan had worked [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan
- tallanvor 10y ago
  Right... Except, of course, that the EU is a voluntary union rather than an attempt at conquest.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    I think you should ask the Greeks how voluntary the EU is these days. I am actually not opposed to the EU, I am just making the point of how little wars or personalities matter in the end.
    - tallanvor 10y ago
      Your comment about Greece can easily be turned around: ask the British how voluntary the EU is.
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        I think the British are about to find out. I am glad I am not British.
        ggame 10y ago
        I would not be supprised if Teresa May was placed in power with the express goal of fumbling the exit.
        moomin 10y ago
        Hanlon's Razor applies here. (As does, since it's pretty clear our government doesn't know what they're doing, Occam's.)
        ggame 10y ago
        Not disagreeing... would the Peters principal also apply? Intentionally hired to be incompetent that would also imply malice? Those involved may have the best intentions, so no malice, and we're back to incompetence. Either way, if I were in charge and I needed someone to fumble it I would have picked her. That mail campaign asking people to self identify for deportation was the most anti Brexit thing I could imagine her doing.
        moomin 10y ago
        The Peter Principle would imply she was a good home secretary. She was actually kind of a disaster, but spent her days keeping out of the press. It's fairly clear her instincts remain to disclose as little information as possible to the press. It's less clear that's a good idea as PM. Edit: She was, however, probably the best candidate the party had. Ironically, the Labour Party has at least five people in parliament right now who'd make a better Prime Minister, but a fair few of those aren't even in the shadow cabinet.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    I think it's important to distinguish between "voluntary by the will of the government" and "by the will of people". Your statement is 100% true for the former and only ~50% true (i.e., 50% false) for the latter.
    - tpm 10y ago
      Well, you can say that about every government and just about every issue ever.
      - dmichulke 10y ago
        That's why voluntary is a dangerous word to use in this context and discussion benefits from a clear distinction between the two cases. To cite GP > The EU is a voluntary union Well, it is more voluntary than a Forth Reich but much less so than say a federation of Swiss-like democracies. Since the EU has democracy, freedom, transparency .. as its core values but doesn't follow them in important aspects, it's hypocritical and that very fact is part of why the people don't perceive it as "a good thing" anymore.
        tpm 10y ago
        The EU is a voluntary union though, given a country can exit the union when it wants to (see also Brexit). The EU is also as democratic as the state governments allow it to be - it has European Parliament, but many things are still decided between the national governments. That's not something the EU, as a set of institutions, can solve - only the national states can change that. So my conclusion is, the EU is often accused as the perpetrator of things it cannot change. Luckily enough people still perceive it as a good thing, even though populist or evil (mostly nationalistic) politicians are trying destroy it for the wrong reasons.
        candiodari 10y ago
        If the EU is a voluntary union, then how come it's members are democracies, yet almost every vote about joining the EU went the same way. Some examples: 1) Brexit (obviously) 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European_Union_Association_Agreement_referendum,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Ukraine%E2%80%93European... 3) OXI - Greek referendum on whether to accept EU authority over their financial system 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_r... 5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_euro_referendum,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_euro_referendum,_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_euro_referendum,_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_euro_referendum,_2003 It's not that they never won any referenda, but if anything has been made blatantly clear it's that EU constituencies do not want most of the EU. They want the Euro, Free trade and ... that's it. The EU most certainly does not have the consent of the governed. They do not want the EU controlling local economies. They do not want the ECB. They do not want the EC as a local regulator. They do not want the EU to control the borders. They do not ... etc. Recently the EU declared that anyone who has the right to exercise any protected job anywhere in the EU, has that right everywhere in the EU. That means doctors, accountants, ... This has got to be the stupidest move yet. The upper middle class is the center of support for the EU and this decision might decimate their incomes. Whether it will or not is even not that relevant, merely the fear of it will massively erode whatever support is left after the monumental immigration fuckups, the (financial, and real) devastation of southern Europe (now Italy has > 25% youth unemployment too, hell it's approaching 50% in some parts of southern Italy) Furthermore, your claims are inaccurate. The EU parliament has no power. Power exists within the European Commission, and the trade organisations. The EC has the power to unilaterally impose laws on the member countries (as was demonstrated with Greece and more generally southern Europe or the so-called PIGS). There are very few things that are beyond the reach of the EC. The EU has been an unmitigated disaster for normal people in the EU. That is the perception, and, frankly, it's accurate. Looking at how the EC operates, that is neither an accident nor beyond their scope.
- osullivj 10y ago
  Another way of putting it: German history since 1870 is series of attempts to recreate the Holy Roman Empire. Bismarck & the Kaiser's Second Reich, Hitler's Third Reich, and now the Merkel led EU imposing the ECB facilitated Eurozone diktat. To paraphrase von Clausewitz: finance is the continuation of politics by other means. Hence Merkel's ability to remove uncooperative heads of govt in Italy & Greece in recent years.
- cstross 10y ago
  If the Schlieffen Plan had worked, the Germany that emerged victorious would be unrecognizable — an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp house of representatives that had demonstrated decisively that militaristic aggression got results. There would still — probably — have been a round two in the 1930s or 1940s; WW1 was in some respects a revenge fight for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. But without the gridlock of the western front to force the hothouse development of new weapons and tactics, the military tools of that second conflict would be much closer to those of our actually-existing WW1; that is, I don't believe we'd have ultimately avoided the bloodbathe of trench warfare — we'd just have postponed it (and retarded the development of civil aviation as an accidental side-effect). The real question is whether the ancien regime would have survived (no collapse of the monarchies; the Hapsburg, Wilhelmine and Romanov dynasties survive into the second half of the 20th century, and those guys called Lenin and Trotsky and Hitler are just fringe radicals) and if so, what the consequences would have been further down the line. One thing's for sure: no European Convention on Human Rights! (Source: lots of speculation here, but I'm an SF author with a track record in alternate history and this stuff is meat and drink ...)
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    While I agree with you that that this is a really interesting topic to think about, I don't agree that Germany (Prussia really) would have remained an authoritarian monarchy with a rubber-stamp democracy. There was already a cultural shift before the Great War towards greater democracy and human rights - the war can be seen as the last gasp of the dying monarchies to hold onto power in the face of this movement. We also would not have had the singular individual who was Hitler and all the damage he did. I think we would have ended up with something very close to a full intergrated EU economically dominated by Germany with a few internal borders shifted around and a declining U.K. outside the EU.
    - cstross 10y ago
      I suspect a declining UK facing a continental hegemonic superpower — anathema to British foreign policy going back half a millennium or more — would not have gone down quietly. And with an overseas empire behind it, the result could well have been an even more ruinous escalation of the Dreadnought Race of the 1900s, possibly leading to a full-blown naval war and/or British attempts to overturn the post-Schlieffen War settlement. Whatever, it would have been messy — very messy. (However, the move towards social democracy in Germany was a thing pre-war, and if anything it was the capitulation to nationalism of the moderate left that opened the door to the radical left and communist fringe across Europe; it's interesting to speculate where things might have ended up if the standard bearer for hardline socialism had been someone like Rosa Luxemburg rather than Vladimir Lenin.)
aaron-lebo 10y ago
Warfare is much more economic in nature these days. One of the reasons we don't go to war as much is because if you have the economic clout it's much easier to dominate nations and less destructive to boot. The EU is a remarkable construct, and obviously in its roots has the desire to prevent conflict. At the same time, there's plenty of parties that can use that same construct (and have) to dominate in other ways. If you are an unscrupulous German leader of industry, the ability and desire to gain more power is not so different from Krupp or other German businesses serving the Nazis. They are different in kind and end results, yes, and this economic warfare is kinder and more acceptable to peace. At the core, though is domination. The OP's comment is offensive because it is so short, but he's right in that Germany dominates the EU, for good and bad.
- ggame 10y ago
  Warefare has always been largely economic. It's what you are fighting for, it's how you win. See Sun Tzus Art of War for an early example of military focus. Because of the well known destructive nature of war; more wars have been fought to prevent future wars than have not. E.g. The war to end all wars (WWI) The EU was intended to cause the economic and political crisis we are seeing. A shared currency among such different exonomies is fatally flawed and requires a superstate solution - which was actual goal. Citizens would not knowingly vote for this, but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk, it is considered proper to suppress it. Of course this effort to prevent future wars will inevitably lead to a future war. Thus, I consider the break up of the EU as the only path to preventing war. Either way we're entering interesting times.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    > but as democracy in Europe is seen as a war risk This is conspiracy-theory garbage.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      This is the second time in this thread you've dismissed others' arguments in abrupt emotional fashion. Please let us see your work.

ggame 10y ago

I second your statement. The EU is another attempt at a global power structure that has been going on since people were people. It's most recognizably German, and once the realities of governing a superstate are take into account, this was how I imagine a post WWI German victory to look.

pjc50 10y ago

This is highly offensive and will no doubt be flagged off HN soon. The EU as it presently stands is extremely different to the empires of the early 20th century. Declaring that people who fought in the Great War were fighting to "prevent" something completely different that came 50 years later is highly offensive to their memory.

danieltillett 10y ago
Rather than being offended about a historical statement, what were the German war aims in 1914? Why did the British Empire enter the war? The British didn't die in their millions to defend the neutrality of the Belgians.

WildUtah 10y ago

Why the EU was necessary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE To divide and disunite Europe and make a complete pig's breakfast of the continent.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]