Ww1, Why Did It All Kick Off?

[sandyRoe]

Can the blame be laid squarely at the door of the arrogant Germans, or were there more complex reasons?

[stewey]

Sandy, read this. The Guns of August (1962), also published as August 1914, is a volume of history by Barbara Tuchman. It is centered around the first month of World War I. After introductory chapters, Tuchman describes in great detail the opening events of the conflict. Its focus then becomes a military history of the contestants, chiefly the great powers.

[emmie]

much more complex, as previous threads will testify, some seem to believe because of imperialism across Europe, land, who has it, who wants it, and those who's Royal houses, families were swept away in this conflict, they didn't realise perhaps that is how it would turn out but it did.

[stewey]

Towards the end of this article, read what August Bebel had to say about the situation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25635311

[emmie]

he wasn't wrong about the last bit, however the allies pact after the end of WW1, supposedly gave rise to the second world war. Not really sure that is true, but that can be saved for another time

[jake-the-peg]

The root cause was Imperialism

Over the previous century most of the main European powers had been busy grabbing different parts of the world and exploiting them

For Gove to balme German aggression is like one bank robber to blame another for trying to take more than his share of the loot

It was imperialism that provided the fuel.

The trigger came when the heir to the Austria-Hungarian empire was assassinated Austria Humgary threatened Serbia over it, The Russians waded in because they didn't want to lose their influence in the region.

The Germans wanted a war against the Russians but were afraid of being attacked by France if theuy started a war in the East so there was something called the Schlieffen plan by which they attacked France preemptively

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_Plan

Now you can characterise that as German aggression or you can look back as to why the Germans thought they'd be attacked by France

40 years Earlier Napoleon III started the Franco Prussian war which he'd comprehensively lost and as part of thet they had humilliatingly lost Alsace Loraine - French people had been kicked out or made to speak German and 'become Germans' and as you can imagine the French were still very sore over it.

As with most wars if countrys kept their armies in their own national borders it wouldn't be a problem.

But nation states are full of ambitious leaders always looking to take a bite out of each other

[emmie]

sandy makes no mention of Gove, so why bring him into this.

[VHG]

Remember that "Germany" was a fairly new country, only being formed in the late 1870s by the merging of Prussia (the largest part) with lots of other smaller nearby germanic states.

And whereas Britain (and Portugal and Holland and Spain) had been going round the world for hundreds of years grabbing up parts of Africa, South America, the Far East and so on, Germany had very little territory.

So Germany was late in the game and wanted to "catch up".

Britain of course was not too happy about Germany's aggression, even though we had been doing it ourselves for hundreds of years.

And of course in that period (late 1800s early 1900s) we still had large "empires" (British, Ottoman, Russian, French, Austro/Hungarian and so on) and kings and other leaders who all wanted to show they were the most powerful.

So they were a bit like drunk lads standing outside a pub on a Saturday night, all asking each other to show how "tough" they were.

And in the end they all dived in together for a huge "punch up".

[jake-the-peg]

Because it's been a big news story over the past few days Emmie

I'm sure Sandy won't have missed it.

In one sense our involvement was to do with the Germans preemptively invading France.

Without that the world might have gotten away with a smaller war between Serbia, Russia and the Austrian-Hungarians but the underlying tensions mean that almost inevitably a bigger war would have kicked off on some other pretext shortly after.

[emmie]

but it wasn't above his comments, this is about why it kicked off, and we all have somewhat different takes on that.

[jim360]

Not because Archduke Ferdinand shot an ostrich because he was hungry then?

[VHG]

I read a book about WW1 a few months ago.

In it there was a section about the young student who had killed Archduke Ferdinand which "kicked off" the whole war.

He was asked if he felt guilty that his action had started the war, and he replied that German was up for a fight anyway and if it had not been that they would have found another excuse to start a war.

p.s. Not that I am indicating the war was totally Germany's fault.

[LazyGun]

LoL Jim.

Gove has become the story in part because of his own high profile interjection, placing himself firmly in the revisionist camp when it comes to examining the causes and effects of WW1.

[sandyRoe]

Did I once read somewhere that the Germans then wanted a place in the sun? And we still hear that they lay towels on poolside loungers to reserve them. Plus ca change...

[jno]

the Germans' only sea costs are way up in the chilly north, sandyRoe It might have been better in the long run if they'd just seized a bit of territory in the Benidorm area rather than thinking of marching to Moscow.

[sandyRoe]

Didn't it nearly start a few years earlier when they showed an interest in Morocco? They're better off with their Baltic beaches.

[mushroom25]

//In one sense our involvement was to do with the Germans preemptively invading France. //

yes, but only because of the manner that they chose to do it, ie marching through neutral Belgium. when the British sought guarantees from Germany for continued Belgian neutrality, the vague wooly response led to a declaration of war (per the 2 19th century treaties of London).

[heathfield]

http://wuzumi.hubpages.com/hub/The-Origins-Of-World-War-1

Something that isn't talked about...Hidden at the bottom of all the piles of history about WWI is that, while the British government had decided that war with Germany was necessary, they knew that the British public didn't want it. So the Prime Minister called together the owners of all the Fleet Street broadsheets, and told them in no uncertain terms that it was up to them to change the public's mind. It took them a mere fortnight's worth of pro-war propaganda, after which the whole country couldn't wait to have a go at Germany.

[emmie]

are you referring to WW1, do you have a link that info....

[sandyRoe]

♫ ♪ We don't want to fight them but by jingo if we do
We've got the guns, we've got the ships, we've got the money too... ♫
I don't think the British people would have taken much persuasion.

[stewey]

A really interesting, and sometimes amusing, side story of the First World War involved the British, Germans, and Belgians on Lake Tanganyika. Read "Mimi And Toutou Go Forth" by Giles Fonden.