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Why 1866 Set the Stage for Two World Wars
- threesixandnine 10y agoWhat a fail. The very first paragraph is factually wrong. Didn't read the rest. Due to already receiving negative feedback on my comment let me explain. The assasination didn't happen in Serbia but Bosnia that was at the time occupied by Austro-Hungarian Empire. It's a huge fail by somebody who tries to explain to us what 'really happened'.
- 67726e 10y agoHow about refute the core of the work instead of focusing on a small issue?
- neaden 10y agoWell when it comes to WW2 he says "The U.S. military that desegregated in 1948 had recently assisted in putting down the second German attempt at empire in the 20th century – an attempt that itself grew out of bitterness and hate caused by the terms of surrender dictated by the French at the conclusion of World War I." Which is all essentially bullshit. The Treaty of Versailles was not unusually harsh, certainly when keeping in mind Germanys conduct in Belgium, unrestricted submarine warfare, and invention of chemical warfare and it was much more lenient then what Germany planned on leveraging against the allies. Germanies economic problems came much more from large amount of wartime borrowing and trying to weasel out of Treaty though intentional inflation, followed up by the global great depression.
- dmichulke 10y agoYet for some reason everyone, including the French, agreed a decade later to cancel the reparations which were expected to be fully repaid in 2008 (~90 years after end of WW1). But more importantly, those who (order) misconduct in war are very rarely the same people who pay the reparations.
- yazan94 10y agoThe core of the work is claiming that the reunification of Germany and the Franco-Prussian war along with the US civil rights movement post Civil War set the stage for World War 1. The first point is not novel nor unbelievable. I find that the second point is far fetched, and the author doesn't really support this argument in article.
- 67726e 10y agoWhich is fine, but that's not what the comment was talking about.
- mikeash 10y agoThis seems extraordinarily nitpicky given that the first paragraph exists merely to set up the simplistic view of the war's causes which the rest of the article is dedicated to knocking down. I mean, by all means point it out, but bailing out on the whole article because of that is a bit much.
- threesixandnine 10y agoBailing out of the whole article because of that little mistake is the only right thing to do if you want your brain to stay clean and not influenced by dilettants of the Internets. Why should I now read the whole article when I know I have to check every other 'fact'? Fellow HNers who read the whole thing already confirmed that the article is bullshit. So I think I was right. Experience my friend.
- bahjoite 10y agoI don't know if the text has been changed, but it reads:- > After all, it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Serbia in 1914 and doesn't say anything about _where_ the assassination happened. edit: the words "in Serbia" have been pointed out to me; there is a bug in my reading comprehension; sorry for the errant comment.
- mikeash 10y agoThe bit where it says "in Serbia" seems to be talking about where the assassination happened. That could potentially refer to where he was Archduke instead, but that would be a really odd way to construct the sentence if so, and in any case would still be wrong.
- yazan94 10y agoAccording to Wikipedia: > Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia [1] Even if the author meant that Franz was an Archduke in Serbia, he would still be mistaken. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Au...
- Kostic 10y agoI read it as: "assasination of the [person] of [country origin] in [place] in [year]". I can see why it's confusing.
- yazan94 10y agoTrue, you are correct. Though it could be attributed to the author as a smaller mistake, as Franz was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. I am more confused to how the US's reconstruction had anything to do with setting the stage for World War 1. > For just as 1866 guaranteed a militarily and culturally strong Germany which would wear down Britain, France, and Italy to a near breaking point in World War I, it also guaranteed a truly united United States, with a society that held the majority view that democracy and equality were worth fighting for – and which would intervene to defeat Germany just in the nick of time. Nothing in the piece supports this statement, and I find this pretty hard to agree with. The first part of the article is a rehash of known facts and history. The last few paragraphs are, from what I can tell, irrelevant to the overall theme as well as thinly-veiled glorification of the United States Civil Rights Act.
- thinkloop 10y agoI understood it that since the US unified and was able to allow african americans into the military, they were strong enough and stable enough to participate. Additionally since african american (human) equality was front and center, germany's hate-fueled racist agenda was especially distasteful adding social and political motivation to participate.
- smhenderson 10y agoWas Germany's involvement in WWI really based on a "hate-fueled, racist agenda"? Of course it was for WWII but I thought Bismark was more into empire building than out to get rid of anyone except the Germans...
- vkou 10y ago1. Bismark would have never supported Germany's behaviour leading up to WWI. The people in charge thought they had the genius of Bismark, but had a bit more in common with Nero. 2. The primary 'hate-fueled racist agenda' in WWI was the Serb-Austrian relationship... And that was less about direct racism, and more about imperialism. (Which the Entente was completely guilty of.)
- valuearb 10y agoYou are pedantically correct, but in all other ways wrong. Read it, it's an interesting piece even if you disagree with the conclusions.
- coldcode 10y agoThe other interesting thing about German unification is it led directly to the new nation deciding that universal health care should be a state sponsored thing.
- jimmyk 10y agoAnd it meant that there was a precedence for taking up arms for equality and freedom...for a war that would, "make the world safe for democracy," as President Woodrow Wilson put it in 1917 when he requested a declaration of war on the German Empire. What was the German Empire doing to threaten equality, freedom, and democracy that France and England and the US weren't also doing? The argument that the US entered because it declared itself to be in favor of those ideals is quite a stretch.
- danteembermage 10y agoWilson in his speech asking for American involvement in the war cited the injustice of submarine warfare more than anything, so I agree this point at least seems to fall flat.
- anigbrowl 10y agoGerman submarine warfare upset the US because they sank some US shipping at considerable loss of life, rather than because of any inherent moral flaw. Had they steered clear of civilian shipping (trickier than it sounds because some military ships disguised themselves as merchant marine vessels) or at least avoided sinking anything that was likely to belong to the US, things might have turned out very differently. Moral arguments in political speeches should not be taken at face value, since their inclusion is for emotional arousal rather than reasoned analysis.
- neaden 10y agoGermany invaded the neutral country of Belgium and killed about 60,000 civilians in Belgium, looted and burned cultural artifacts, and conscripted laborers. That in combination with unrestricted submarine warfare really did mean German conduct in the war was far crueler then the Allies.
- whack 10y agoBoth of the things you mentioned, were things that Germany was forced into doing, as a matter of survival. For example, Germany had no intentions of conquering Belgium. They simply wanted to travel through Belgium in order to reach France, and put an end to the war early on. This was something they were necessarily required to do, because they were sandwiched between both France and Russia, and hence, couldn't afford to fight a prolonged war. Germany offered Belgium neutrality and immunity as long as they were allowed to pass unimpeded through their highways, but Belgium instead refused and actively tried to kill the German soldiers passing through. Hence why Germany then had to wage war against Belgium. For more nuance on this topic, check out Dan Carlin's very detailed podcast on WW1. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
- kristianc 10y agoIf this is up your street, may I recommend Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon, which has over ten hours of podcast material exploring the lead up to the first world war. Probably the best podcast I've ever downloaded, and insane that it's available for nearly free. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-bluepri...
- cholantesh 10y agoAFAIK, everything Prophets of Doom onward is completely free. Not sure how long that will last, and I would love for Dan to put out a monthly or yearly subscription via Patreon; his work is of such high quality.
- badloginagain 10y agoThe latest 10 episodes are free. If a new one is put out, the 10th oldest is no longer available. You can buy his discography for something on the order of $50. Remember, if you think his shows are worth a dollar, Dan and Ben would love to have it.
- ruleabidinguser 10y agoDo you know them personally?
- throwanem 10y agoIt's a tagline.
- Clubber 10y agoI've bought his whole collection and they are very good. Much better than audiobooks which are usually dull and monotone.
- cholantesh 10y agoThanks for clarifying. I am happy to buy the discography, but I was hoping there was a way to do a repeating payment to support the project's continued development, as opposed to doing it on a show-by-show basis.
- huangc10 10y agoWhat's interesting to me here is that, it seems like a lot of the causes/triggers to WWI/WWII were due to conflicts between nations and/or assassinations. We don't necessarily have anything as big as 2 equal nations fighting, capitals getting invaded etc. So does that mean WWIII will probably never happen given that we don't have any of of these crazy causes/triggers?
- Synaesthesia 10y agoWe certainly have these triggers and it's possible! The Middle East is in chaos, and it's causing conflict between US and Russia, as well as the China-US conflict. Europe has been fighting vicious wars for centuries, climaxing in WW2. What's kept Europe peaceful since WW2 is the realisation that if they go to war again they might destroy everything! WW 2 was enormously destructive. However the US was not destroyed as Europe was by war, so they have maybe not learned these lessons yet.
- mamon 10y agoYeah, the only thing that US learned from WW1 and WW2 is that wars can be a great way to make money. Since then most of the wars that US started was due to economic reasons: either to control some valuable natural resources, like oil, or to punish the countries that refused to make business with them.
- Synaesthesia 10y agoYou are correct, the US does all of this, just like every great military power in history - and all wars are for economic reasons. States are not moral actors, they seek to expand their power and influence and it's up to us to keep them in check.
- sgt101 10y agoForget ideology, forget politics, forget racism. It's just economics. Also, when you say States, do you mean modern nation states? If so what about conflicts prior to the formation of the modern state... were these not wars? When a modern state is confronted by another actor - then?
- badloginagain 10y agoTying in the US seems a bit forced here. WWI as a result of Franco-Prussian war I can understand, US civil rights not-so-much. That Germany was 'destined' to lose is a non-starter anyways. From my understanding it was Britain's decision to enter WWI that really shaped the outcome, and that it was far from a foregone conclusion that Britain would enter a continental European war. If the British didn't get involved, Germany's chance of taking Paris is much better, denying the two front war Germany (rightly) saw as a worst case scenario.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bluejekyll 10y agoThe argument was that the US had gained a "defend the rights of man", i.e. Democracy, attitude because of the Civil War (though honestly with the early end of Reconstruction, I'm not sure it's valid). This attitude eventually encouraged the US to come directly into the War, though the US had been giving significant support to England and France prior to that point. I agree that it's weak though. And Britain is definitely the reason Germany wasn't capable of overrunning France. America at best made it clear that Germany could not win. While 120,000 troops lost by the US is far less than the Europeans, that is by no means a small number, especially considering such brief involvement. There really was no reason to ever believe the US would ever get involved in WWI. Even WWII there was no indication the US would actually enter the War directly until the Japanese forced the choice.
- autokad 10y agoEngland definitely slowed Germany down but Germany was decidedly winning. Prior to US involvement, the front line was quite close to Paris. After, it was just over the border of Germany, and then as you said, they knew it was over. US' involvement was huge.
- jonathonf 10y ago> England Britain. Along with contingents from most of its Empire. (Saying "England" when you mean "Britain" is like saying "Texas" when you mean "U.S.A.")
- kensai 10y ago"Two things of note happened in 1866 that would set the stage for the future, and in a very odd way, they served to counterbalance each other. The first was the Austro-Prussian War. Now, why would a two month war between Germanic peoples be any type of benchmark in history? Well, it becomes incredibly important once you realize that it set the stage for the Franco-Prussian War and the Unification of Germany. Those two events nearly made World War I inevitable." Well this is silly. If the Austrians had won, then we might have had a Franco-Austrian war. There was a problem in Alsace and Lorraine, a German-speaking population under the French. This had to be settled somehow. One of the two leading German nations would have done it: either the Prussians or the Austrians. Since the Prussians had won the 7-week war, it was them. But too many what ifs... you can't do that in history, too many branches stem away from the root of a tree of possible alternatives.
- Svip 10y agoIt's worth noting that Bismarck was against annexing Alsace and Lorraine, as he feared it would create an unnecessary adversary in France.
- Animats 10y agoGermany: too big for Europe, too small for the world. It's worth reviewing the run-up to WWI. The pre-WWI model of Europe, an endless struggle between Great Powers which had gone on for a millennium, is Putin's model of the world. That's because it gives Russia a role in the world. As an economic power, Russia is in 12th place, behind S. Korea. In a peaceful, trade-based world, Russia is a bit player. Especially since the price of oil tanked. Thus the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the war in Ukraine from 2014 to now. Putin's desire to be a player on the world stage drives this. The post-WWII world was, for a long time, two superpowers with nuclear overkill capability glaring at each other but not doing much. That was surprisingly stable. But it is not, historically, a normal condition. Right now, it's all too easy to bungle into a major war. Likely possibilities are N. Korea vs S. Korea and the US, China vs. somebody over the South China Sea, and Russia vs. Ukraine heating up.
- rhizome 10y agoThe pre-WWI model of Europe, an endless struggle between Great Powers which had gone on for a millennium, is Putin's model of the world Who plays Hindenburg in this scenario?
- rwmj 10y agoI've read Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers too (good book). However it's hard to see how the Great Powers "model" applies when everyone has nuclear weapons or can acquire them relatively easily.
- Animats 10y agoArguably, it stopped applying when everybody got serious firepower in the run-up to WWI. But WWI happened anyway.
- woodandsteel 10y agoOne key difference nuclear weapons make is that it is much easier to see beforehand how catastrophic a war would be.
- WalterBright 10y agoPBS just ran a 3 part "The Great War" which is an interesting documentary on the American perspective of WW1. It did strongly argue that America's entry into the war ensured the defeat of Germany.
- Koshkin 10y agoOh well... From today's perspective, who knows, the world might have been better off if Germany had won that war...
- sgt101 10y agoThere's some fun alternative histories to be written there. I would suggest that life in Africa, India and China in the late 20thC would have been significantly more unpleasant than it was. A chaotic and strongly resisted end to empire such as the one seen in Mozambique but involving billions rather than millions would not have been a happy story.
- nickik 10y agoHard to argue that. It rest on the argument that WW2 only happened because of the peace treaty of WW1, and that argument really fails.
- chiph 10y agoThis YT channel is broadcasting "the news from the front" as it happened 100 years ago. It's been fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar
- veddox 10y agoOh wow! Thanks for sharing that!
- bluejekyll 10y agoSo, I had always learned that the American Civil war was a foreshadowing of WWI, both the high number of casualties, and the entrenchment which was being utilized by the end of the Civil War... I knew about the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian Wars, but I didn't know about the casualties, OMG: > Total casualties in killed, wounded, and missing broke 100,000, with Austrian losses nearly doubling those of the Prussians. In two months of fighting? That's crazy, and at a 1-2 rate, definitely the end of the muzzle-loaded rifle. > Combined casualties from the combatants (killed, wounded, missing) neared the 1 million mark. In 9 months of fighting? That's insane. Those numbers far exceed the American Civil War, which was Approx. 650,000 for the entire four years. It should have been obvious to both France and Germany that WWI was going to be much much more deadly, they both had directly experienced it a generation before. It's sad this didn't give them pause.
- WesleyLivesay 10y agoI think they are erroneously including the number of men captured in the Franco-Prussian number. They aren't sharing sources for this article so it is hard to know but Wikipedia (which does source the number) lists 475,000 of that million number as prisoners of war that probably survived the war and were repatriated.
- bluejekyll 10y agoWell, even if you do divide it in half, that's still a rate of death of 500,000 a year. So using that as a way of estimating deaths of another conflict, it should have been enough to stop an actual war. That requires the people ruling the countries to actually care about the effects this would have on their own populations... Sadly, even using that as an estimate it would have been off by more than half of how many would actually die.
- WesleyLivesay 10y agoAbsolutely! I don't think your conclusions are wrong, it is pretty crazy that they would make that large of an error in the article. I assume they mixed up "missing" and "captured". It is also worth remembering that everybody thought the war in 1914 would be short, there were very few people who thought it would drag out for years. All involved probably did some mental math based on actions like the the Franco-Prussian war and figured that the same level of casualties, or even twice as many, was worth it. If they would have known, which we do with hindsight, that it was going to take 4+ years of fighting it may have never happened.
- readittwice 10y ago> Prussia had recently adopted a new model of rifle: one that was bolt action and so allowed for rapid fire, in comparison to the Austrians’ outmoded muzzle-loading Lorenz rifle-muskets. This really made a long-lasting impression, in Austria today (so 150 years later) we still use the phrase: "the prussians don't shoot that fast". We use it when there is still time and a solution isn't ready yet.
- oblio 10y agoI'm guessing that the meaning is ironic?
- Steko 10y agoIt's an admonition that slowing down is ok i.e. 'you're going even faster than the (very fast) Prussian rifles'.
- readittwice 10y agoThanks, much better explanation than I could give ;)
- zeveb 10y ago> Not only had the Prussians humiliated them on the battlefield, but they had marched through the streets of Paris – and if that wasn’t enough, they had taken the French territories of Alsace and Lorraine and added them to their Germanic realms. Weeellll, Elsaß was German (i.e., part of the Holy Roman Empire) until 1639 & Lothringen was German until 1766. They were both retaken from France in 1871, retaken by France from Germany in 1919, occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940 and restored to France in 1945. Out of the past 1,000 years, Elsaß has been de jure German for 687 and Lothringen has been German for 814. So describing them as French territories is a bit … Francophilic.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThat's like listing how long Texas or California were part of Spain/Mexico. It's true, as history, but it wouldn't make the US any happier if those lands went back to Mexico. Current facts on the ground say that those are part of the US, and have been for over a hundred years.
- veddox 10y agoNobody is asking France to return Alsace-Lorraine, but in a historical article, one might expect at least a footnote to say that this wasn't just French territory! And I don't think the comparison with Texas is all that fitting: this particular territorial dispute goes back almost to the days of Charlemagne, with sovereignty changing numerous times. This isn't so much a case of "It was yours, now it's mine" as of "It was mine, then it was yours, then mine again, then yours again - now we can't really say whose it ought to be, but I still want it".
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoMy point was that, no matter how many times it went back and forth, it had been France for over a hundred years. That's "just French territory" for most reasonable purposes. (Except this is Europe, where a hundred years is not a particularly long time...)
- cynusx 10y agoThe need for Germany to secure their left flank to avoid a two-front war and France's realization that it has nothing to gain from war with Germany also led to the creation of the European union in response. The idea was to deeply intertwine their economies so neither nation would benefit from war with each other. As for the US, their only objective is to prevent the rise of a dominant european power that can compete with them. e.g. WWI prevent germany from capturing france, WWII prevent germany from occupying russia (lend-lease) and then enter the war to prevent russia from occupying europe.
- sgt101 10y agoNit pick alert ! The EU was created in response to the opportunity that the fall of the Soviets provided - to bind in and develop the economies of eastern europe. The binding of France to Germany was achieved with the European Economic Community, the removal of German military infrastructure and the comprehensive occupation of Germany by the UK, France, USSR and USA. I don't see the USA as invested in preventing the rise of a European power that shares, approximately, the values of the USA. The USA entered WWII reluctantly, and the effect of it's entry was to shorten the war by many years, possibly a decade. Christ alone knows what the USSR would have looked like as the eventual winner in 1955. My thinking is, shattered in every conceivable way.
- cynusx 10y agoUS decided only to commit to D-day when the soviets were gaining ground on the Germans. In fact by the time they made the decision to do that, the soviets had already liberated half of ukraine. 4 months after the decision, the soviets had liberated the whole of ukraine. The soviets war machine steamrolled the rest of Germany and only US forces would be able to stop them from occupying the whole of europe.
- nickik 10y agoYour explanation of US action fails the reality test. There is no evidence that the US acted to prevent a dominant power in Europe. They joined the war because Germany acted in a way that made it almost impossible for them not too.
- jcranmer 10y agoWhen talking about the world wars, it's fairly obvious that WWII occurred as a result of the consequences of the WWI peace treaty. So the question about what caused both world wars is really a question of what caused WWI. I happen to have been going back through this history recently, so it's well been on my mind. There are many putative causes for WWI. Wilson, for example, favored the idea that secret treaties was what caused the mess to blow up, but the evidence is fairly against it (basically, everyone who was making the decisions either knew or correctly guessed what the countries were going to do, and the only real question in the July Crisis was what Britain would do, and the British themselves didn't seem to have made up their mind). Other theories include the idea of "timetable war": the timetables for mobilization were too inflexible such that starting them meant they had to be seen through to completion, but that's more of an excuse that the military gave to justify their actions. Franco-Prussian war comes up a lot, but as I'll shortly explain, France wasn't particularly in an offensive war mood. To understand what caused WWI, it's helpful to see the state of the countries in the immediate years preceding the war. Britain was distracted with the Irish Home Rule crisis (so much to the point that the July Crisis didn't really get noted until after the Serbian ultimatum!), and many feared that revolution or civil war was imminent. France, for its part, had had its internal divisions sharply exposed by the Dreyfus affair, and the Third Republic was a succession of weak governments. With the memory of the Franco-Prussian war, plus a strong socialist/reactionary divide, and the embarrassing and very public Dreyfus affair, its army was heavily demoralized and was in no mood to fight an offensive war, particularly not against Germany with no allies. Russia had lost the Russo-Japanese War in a shocking defeat, and was using primarily French funds to rebuild and modernize their army (which was dooming the Schlieffen Plan, as Germany planned to knock out France while Russia was mobilizing its army). The Russian government very nearly fell after their lost loss in a war, and they didn't expect to survive the next war if they lost. Austria-Hungary was basically two countries (Austria and Hungary) who had to work together but couldn't due to deep internal divisions. Some elements of the government (including Franz Ferdinand) saw the Balkans as a way to solve the problem by creating a third internal division that could overrule Hungarian objections to everything. Italy was a weak power who everyone pretended was a great power. The Ottoman Empire was slowly crumbling and featured more or less the last virgin land for colonial expansion. Last of all is Germany. By 1910, Bismarck's foreign policy had been completely torn up, and Germany saw itself surrounded by the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia. Its only allies were Austria-Hungary, which looked dangerously unstable if it lost a war, and Italy, which had more or less adopted a policy of be-friendly-to-everyone and couldn't be counted on to join in a war (in 1914, it did declare its neutrality). Internally, Germany had a rather sharp revolutionary/reactionary divide, a rather common feature in Europe. German foreign policy in the early 1900s was especially bad, as Germany started antagonizing most players, not helped by the tendency of Kaiser Wilhelm II to say things without consulting advisers or considering any coherent policy (which sounds unfortunately familiar to present times). Britain's traditional policy with respect to Europe had been to maintain a splendid neutrality and only intervene to maintain a balance of power on the continent; Germany hoped to convince Britain that France and Russia were greater threats and to bind itself to an alliance with Germany--which was shockingly naive, especially after Germany decided to try for naval parity with Britain in the naval race. The most Britain would have been willing to commit to would have been to stay out of certain offensive wars and to help mediate disputes and restrain other countries, which was far less than Germany wanted, given its fears of Franco-Russian two-front war. In the lead-up to WWI, there are a series of instructive crises. The first is the Moroccan Crisis, when Kaiser Wilhelm objected to French influence in Morocco, with the hope of being able to break the Entente Cordial (prelude to the Triple Entente) between France and Britain. It didn't, and Germany found no one willing to support its side, so it was forced to back down with no real gains. A few years later, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia, to which Russia stridently objected; this time, France and Britain convinced Russia to back down with no real gains from the issue. Then France moved to formalize its status in Morocco as a protectorate, to which Germany (not without reason) objected. Germany bungled the issue by asking for unreasonable demands in compensation (great way to lose support!), and was ultimately forced to settle with minimal compensation. Then Italy invaded the Ottoman Empire to get itself a colony in Libya, which convinced the Balkan minor states that it was finally open time to carve the Ottoman Empire up. The great powers were so terrified of the resulting destabilizing effects that they forced the war to a conclusion, but the Balkan states themselves, upset with who had gotten the spoils, immediately fought each other within a few months to change hands. In these various crises, major powers had mobilized and prepared for war, sometimes as a bluff, sometimes a fear of war being declared on them (better to mobilize before war gets declared on you), and sometimes as a genuine attempt to get to war first. So when a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, many observers more or less expected that yet another muddling-through would happen. So why didn't it? It's worth noting that all the major countries had major internal divisions, and governments generally saw war as a way to bring their country in unity--and, ironically, also saw the divisions in other countries as indicating that they wouldn't come together in war (the first part ended up being the case--only the Ottoman Empire failed to see unity in the war, and even then, the Arabs mostly did decide to wait until after the war to move forward on their grievances). There was also a general sense, particularly among the military, that war was inevitable and that it should be timed opportunely. The change in the relative qualities of the armies mattered too: the German's war plan (emphasis on the singular) had them defeating France while Russia mobilized, so the fact that the Russian army was improving, and the military logistics in European Russia in particular were improving, meant that their time frame for defeating France was shrinking. Ultimately, it was the July Crisis that started the war. Austria-Hungary, after dithering a bit, made up its mind to go to war against Serbia and crush it. The ultimatum it gave was made with the express purpose that it would be so insulting that it wouldn't be accepted. When Serbia did fail to fully accept the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary suddenly got cold feet, but the German high command pushed Austria-Hungary to actually declare war and defeat Serbia before anyone had time to respond. Even then, the initial reaction of countries like Britain and Russia was to try to push Austria-Hungary to achieve just a limited war ("halt in Belgrade"), which Austria-Hungary rejected. Russia's reaction was initially to mobilize against just Austria-Hungary, before the military convinced the tsar to include Germany as well. Germany seems to have made up its mind to go to war against Russia before the declaration of Russian general mobilization, although it delayed its announcement until after the war. Germany's war plan meant invading France and Belgium, and the Belgians and French made their preparations for mobilization for defense at the same time, although France was very careful to maintain that the war would be purely defensive for the purposes of British opinion. Italy decided it couldn't handle another war in the aftermath of its Libyan campaign, and declared its neutrality fairly early on. Britain throughout the entire crisis dithered and essentially deadlocked on whether or not to go to war. The German invasion of Belgium provided enough incentive to get Britain to join the war against Germany (the Germans were distraught, having thought the entire time that Britain would remain neutral). So what caused the war? In the end, it's hard to boil it down to a single statement that does justice to the situation. My best attempt is that WWI was caused ultimately because the people who had been keeping the peace suddenly decided to not do so this time. There are many reasons why the countries thought that war was justified, indeed potentially useful, and there are many reasons why the countries ended up dividing Europe into two main opposing alliances. Such a situation, however, need not lead to war: the Cold War is a great example of how a dueling alliances need not break out into general war (and the reasons why are similarly debated).
- aetherspawn 10y agoMany believe 1914 is a Bible prophecy... it is fascinating because some interpreted that the world would end on that exact year using numbers of years provided by a 3000 year old prophecy, and we actually got a world war. That would be like the Maya 2012 hype actually happening.
- graycat 10y agoNice. My college history class started way before the Romans, stayed a long time on what it liked, ran out of time just after the French Revolution, and never got to the 19th or 20th centuries. So, for those two centuries, I've used books, video documentaries, Web sites, etc. The OP here is a nice contribution.
- graycat 10y agoNice. My college history class started way before the Romans, stayed a long time on what it liked, ran out of time just after the French Revolution, and never got to the 19th or 20th centuries. So, for those two centuries, I've used books, video documentaries, Web sites, etc. The OP here is a nice contribution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ForFreedom 10y agoVery interesting write up
- dagenleg 10y agoI would advise people here to read 'The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914'. It a wonderful book exploring the causes for WW1 and focusing on just that. I think the strongest part of the book is that it goes beyond reiterating the usual accepted causes (diplomatic isolation of Germany, push for war from the military circles) and explores the complexity of pre-war diplomacy without assuming inevitability of the war. I think this resulted into a more unbiased approach: instead of trying to explain what caused the war postfactum, the author instead tries to adopt the political outlook of the contemporary politicians which really helps with understanding why certain actions were made and why they made sense politically - like Austria-Hungarian ultimatum.