God only knows how many civilians they killed.

So, 90 years after that slaughter began, what was it all about, anyway? What was the great principle which required such bloodshed?

To me it is amazing that almost no one can coherently explain why it was necessary. Usually, you hear about Serbians killing a Duke, and Austria getting huffy, and Russia mobilizing, then Germany, etc.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
almost no one can coherently explain why it was necessary. Usually, you hear about Serbians killing a Duke, and Austria getting huffy, and Russia mobilizing, then Germany, etc.

So, it was about a Duke?

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To me it is amazing that almost no one can coherently explain why it was necessary.

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The British/Canadian soldiers' song -- sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" -- had the best explanation:

"We're here
because we're here
because we're here
because we're here..."

[ 04 August 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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From what I know, the 20th century was looking really good... until 1914.

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Depended where you were, of course. The Balkan Wars started in 1912, while in the Congo, the Belgian colonial administration was responsible for millions of deaths -- perhaps 15 million, perhaps more -- from 1885 or thereabouts.

[ 04 August 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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And socialism was really starting to take off in a lot of countries, but then the war came, and the surplus workers were put to work shooting each other.

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I think that's probably the exact reason for that war. Socialism was gaining ground, workers' movements were exploding, Anarchists were spreading their message, and social movements like women's sufferage, anti-poverty, and temperance were rising. How better to assert the primacy of the aristocracy than to murder millions of the common people whose rising consicousness was a direct threat to Imperial power?

In one of his letters home, "Jem" tells his mother that there's an "evil here" that needs to be wiped out.

And of course, throughout the book were sprinkled stories of "the Huns" bayonetting babies and the like.

Chris Harman has an excellent introduction into Lenin and Bukharin's theories in "Analyzing Imperialism". The first half covers the theoretical stuff, the second half looks at how the theories are justified by subsequent historical events from WW2 to the present Iraq War.

My father's older brother died at Passchendaele in 1917. He was nineteen.

Two Fusiliers


And have we done with War at last?
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,
And there’s no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.

By wire and wood and stake we’re bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.

Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the red bond of blood,
By friendship, blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men breath.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The Alliances, in which everyone participated, but Germany mastered, was key. Everyone who's played Diplomacy knows this. But perhaps the extent isn't clear, and it really has its start in the defeat of Napoleon, and the Congress of Vienna.

The Quadruple Alliance: Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria. An Alliance "for peace" with regular meetings of members.

But also:

The Holy Alliance: Austria, Russia, Prussia: based on a Conservative ideology (crush liberalism) and committed to upholding "Christian" values.

During this time, Britain is trying to prop up "the Old Man of Europe": the Ottomans, for selfish reasons.

Don't Forget about the Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871

1873: Alliance of the Three Emperors: Germany, Austria, Russia
1881: Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria, Italy
1879 (secret): German-Austrian alliance
1887 (secret): Reinsurance Treaty: Germany, Russia
1894: Military Agreement: France, Russia
1904: Entente cordiale, Britain, France
1905: Secret military talks: Britain, France
1907: Russian-British entente

So at the same time as Germany had a secret alliance with Austria, to side with it if attacked by another state, it had also made secret guarentees to Russia that if Austria attacked Russia, Germany would be neutral.

But the diplomatic atmosphere between Germany and Russia cooled after Bismark resigned in 1890. Even though Russia wanted to maintain the tenuous relationship, the Kaiser had different plans.

Of course, tension in the Balkans is really to blame for the initial conflict. The Alliances merely expanded the scope, inflated it.

With the withering of the Ottomans in Europe, Russia and Austria were constantly at odds over control of the slavic peoples of the Balkans.

The German-Russian 1887 secret Reinsurance Treaty concerns itself deeply with claims in the Balkans.

The assasination of the Duke probably only speeded up what was inevitable - the Austrian attempt to gobble up whatever the Ottomans left behind.

Oh right, Belgium. Well, British politicians would have been hardpressed to side with France, in spite of the diplomatic warming of the past two or so decades, if Germany hadn't ran over Belgium's traditional neutrality to invade France. The extra British troops against Germany prevented a quick war in the West (there was the potential to repeat the 1870-1871 war, which was a quick defeat of France). The powers were too balanced, the strategy too matched, and the war dragged on until everyone was dead - corpses can't fight.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: wei-chi ]

Goodbye to all That By Robert Graves (a footsoldier's account of the trenches)

A.J.P. Taylor's Pictorial History of the Great War

The First World War by John Keegan

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Key, clearly, to the war's ultimate brutality was Germany: 1) its (secret) system of alliances,

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Oh please. Sikes. Picot.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: Rand McNally ]

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Originally posted by wei-chi:
Key, clearly, to the war's ultimate brutality was Germany: 1) its (secret) system of alliances, 2) the invasion of Beligum which definitively brought Britain into the war. But the "cause" of the war was the slow death of the Ottoman empire and the rival claims of Russian and Austria in the Balkans.

The Alliances, in which everyone participated, but Germany mastered, was key. Everyone who's played Diplomacy knows this. But perhaps the extent isn't clear, and it really has its start in the defeat of Napoleon, and the Congress of Vienna.
...
Oh right, Belgium. Well, British politicians would have been hardpressed to side with France, in spite of the diplomatic warming of the past two or so decades, if Germany hadn't ran over Belgium's traditional neutrality to invade France. The extra British troops against Germany prevented a quick war in the West (there was the potential to repeat the 1870-1871 war, which was a quick defeat of France). The powers were too balanced, the strategy too matched, and the war dragged on until everyone was dead - corpses can't fight.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: wei-chi ]

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I think this is off. A system of alliances was hardly "mastered" by the Germans in comparison to the other countries. All alliances "worked" properly creating the "legal" excuse for war in July/August 1914. The fact was, Britain and Germany had been engaged in an arms race leading up to the war, while the imperial powers were already scrapping across the globe leading up to August, 1914. You rightly point out the Balkan Wars, but there was more to it that than. Examples:

1904: Imperial Russia's drive to the Pacific ran into Japan's drive into Korea, causing the Russo-Japanese war. It precipitated the 1905 Russian Revolution.
1906 & 1911: Germany and France had serious clash of interests in Morocco that could have caused war.
1900s: The Arms Race between Germany and Britain, especially over battleships, was widely thought to come to blows, hence a popular novel of the time "The Invasion of 1910", where the Germans invade Britain.

There were other episodes, but one only needs to read the history books to find numerous direct conflicts and proxy wars between the Great powers that led to war. It was all a product of competing imperial powers, attempting to carve out world markets. Because of its late capitalist development, Germany had the smallest empire and was keen on expanding not simply in Africa and the Pacific, but in Europe as well.

About Britain's contribution in Belgium, militarily speaking, the failure of the Germans to capture France by the end of 1914 has less to do with the fight put up with by the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium, than it had with the failure of the Schleiffen Plan to be adequately implemented. The plan was altered, weakening the German right flank that would sweep through Belgium and into Paris, and strengthening the left flank in Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans didn't repeat this lesson in 1940.

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Originally posted by black_dog:
Can anyone reccommend some good books on the subject?

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I think this is off. A system of alliances was hardly "mastered" by the Germans in comparison to the other countries.

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I see your point in this paragraph, Doug. But I think that Germany is the key to the "inflation" of the war beyond a Russian-Austrian conflict in the Balkans.

I also see your point about the British-German rivalry. But it *was* ultimately this Balkan conflict, and the invasion of Belgium that brought Britain and German to arms. The fact that France and Germany survived the Moroccan situation only points out that war *could* be averted, if the right decisions are made. The Schleiffen Plan, as you point out, wasn't properly implemented, but it was a close one. I maintain that without British military support, the French defense would have collapsed allowing Germany to capture Paris. Of course, this means re-writing what the Schleiffen Plan is...but there you go!

quote:

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Originally posted by wei-chi:

I see your point in this paragraph, Doug. But I think that Germany is the key to the "inflation" of the war beyond a Russian-Austrian conflict in the Balkans.

I also see your point about the British-German rivalry. But it *was* ultimately this Balkan conflict, and the invasion of Belgium that brought Britain and German to arms. The fact that France and Germany survived the Moroccan situation only points out that war *could* be averted, if the right decisions are made. The Schleiffen Plan, as you point out, wasn't properly implemented, but it was a close one. I maintain that without British military support, the French defense would have collapsed allowing Germany to capture Paris. Of course, this means re-writing what the Schleiffen Plan is...but there you go!

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You're correct, there is no question that Germany was central to the war. This, I would argue, was due to its drive to expand and break out from its confining empire (in comparison to France and Britain, especially). East Africa and some Pacific Isles hardly gave Germany the colonies they needed to operate like the other successful empires.

I disagree, though, that the war could have been averted simply through the correct diplomatic procedures - all decisions being made in this period were being made within the framework of imperialist goals. Of course, it the outcome was not pre-determined, but the conditions that existed gave little leeway for the German ruling class to operate. German capitalism was not wholly different from Britain's or France's, but it was far more state oriented, being deemed "state capitalist" by Bukharin, Hilferding and others. For it to survive economically, expansion was necessary, and therefore desired by the German ruling class. Sure, if the right decisions war could have been averted, but the German ruling class (correctly) perceived the option of not expanding as being a step towards economic collapse and social revolution. This ended up happening anyway, by the war wrecking the economy and the German revolution overthrowing the government and ending the war.

The Plan didn't take into account the intervention of the British on the French left flank, although neither did the Plan take into account that the French would attack into the pocket created by the German wheel - which the Germans thought would be a gift to them. They nevertheless expected to fight French troops on their right.

Keegan notes that Shlieffen himself wrote "we are too weak" for his Plan to work. Furthermore, the necessary eight corps needed to decide the battle could not be deployed because there was no room for them to march, thus they could not get to the decisive point of contact (the outskirts of Paris)in time.

The goal was to envelope Paris, not to worry about the Franco-German border. As I mentioned earlier, the 85'000-strong BEF might have been easily walked over at the Marne as it was at Mons, had Moltke allocated enough forces to the right flank.

There is also the Eastern Front to consider in this matter, as the Schlieffen Plan was subordinated to the needs of protecting Prussia, which meant - again - weakening the decisive right flank.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: Doug the Red ]

At the outset, I said that WWI was the saddest of wars because it was fought for no principle.

Others have pointed out that perhaps the "principle" was "empire" or "markets".

If that is correct, then the self-image of the participant countries has to be permanently revised: which of them would admit to sacrificing millions of people for "markets"?