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You realize Germany is the one who invaded Belgium and France, leading to 4 million Allied civilians dead?
by throwaway_4ever 4y ago
You realize Germany is the one who invaded Belgium and France, leading to 4 million Allied civilians dead?
- LAC-Tech 4y agoNo I didn't - mind blown. Have any more obscure historical facts to share?
- dmichulke 4y agoI think you're counting all casualties caused by Central Powers as a consequence of Germany's invasion of France. It can be seen like that but you should make clear that it assumes German single responsibility for the war, including for her Allies' actions against civilians, and also indirect consequences such as deaths caused by malnutrition. Then you would arrive at 3.78 million deaths, worst-case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
- throwaway_4ever 4y agoYes, I do. Austria-Hungary only invaded Serbia because they had the support of Germany. Germany's invasion caused the civilian death tolls across the continent. No German and Austria-Hungarian invasions, likely no mass murder.
- dmichulke 4y agoI don't personally agree with any story where there's one single 100% responsible party, be it divorce, terrorism or war. But that doesn't mean that I'm right or that you're wrong...
- eadmund 4y agoYou realise that Germany invaded Belgium and France because France and Russia mobilised against her? And that they mobilised because Germany was supporting Austro-Hungary against Serbia, whose intelligence service had commissioned the murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and of his wife? Not countering those mobilisations would have left the German Empire at the mercy of Russia and France. To the extent that one can talk about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sides in the Great War (which is not very far, really), Germany was on the good side (unlike in the Second World War).
- JetSetWilly 4y agoI don't think a country that performed the grotesque "rape of Belgium" can claim to be the good side. The simple fact is, Germany initiated the war, and Germany implemented the worst atrocities of the war. That makes it the "baddie" in my book.
- bluGill 4y agoI don't think there is any country in Europe that wasn't guilty of doing evil before the war to stir it up (even neutral countries like Switzerland, though I don't know of anything they actually did I'm still willing to lump them in with the guilty). Even in the rest of the world there were not many parties that were not stirring things up (remember Europe had colonies all over the world)
- JetSetWilly 4y agoI mean, I don't really buy this "they were all as bad as each other" argument. We're not talking about some moral assessment of the totality of German and British civilisations, but rather more specifically about WWI itself and the lead up to it. The simple fact is that Germany initiated the war (turned a "cold" rivalry hot), it invaded its neighbour, it treated civilians abonimably, and Britain's involvement in the war was in practice defensive to its ally France and took place mostly on French territory. I don't recall Britain rounding up villages of Germans and executing them. Even when it comes to the "war crimes" stuff in this thread - something like poison gases were straightforwardly outlawed by the Hague Convention, it was Germany that first decided to "go there" and make mass use of poison gas a feature of WWI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907#Hague_Convention_of_1899 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...
- bluGill 4y agoGermany was first, but both sides were looking for an excuse to start a war.