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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHistory Simplified: If World War I was a bar fight
From the very entertaining www.distractify.com
pscot
(21,024 posts)Seventeen battered drunks crawling around the floor looking for cigarette butts.
JustAnotherGen
(31,818 posts)Georges Clemenceau asking George: Whose the little fellow over there standing on top of the guy from China?
trof
(54,256 posts)Clemenceau actually said that. "Who is the little fellow" in regards to one of the Japanese representatives.
Little did the world know . . . .
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)trof
(54,256 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,311 posts)Turkey gets left out a bit. After "a show of not looking at anyone", and the fight has begun, there could be "Turkey aims a kick at Russia, so Britain tries to punch it, but can't punch it and Germany at the same time, so shouts for its little brother Australia to do it".
You could also complicate it with Romania and Bulgaria - basically a couple of chancers who wait until they think they can see the chance to join in a winning side and get their own back for previous fights.
trof
(54,256 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Details:
Pushing Toward The Final War
by Paul Craig Roberts
In The genesis Of The World War, Harry Elmer Barnes shows that World War 1 was the product of 4 or 5 people. Three stand out: Raymond Poincare`, President of France, Sergei Sazonov, Russian Foreign Minister, and Alexander Izvolski, Russian Ambassador to France. Poincare` wanted Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and the Russians wanted Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They realized that their ambitions required a general European war and worked to produce the desired war.
A Franco-Russian Alliance was formed. This alliance became the vehicle for orchestrating the war. The British government, thanks to the incompetence, stupidity, or whatever of its Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, was pulled into the Franco-Russian Alliance. The war was started by Russias mobilization. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was blamed for the war despite the fact that he did everything possible to avoid it.
Barnes book was published in 1926. His reward for confronting the corrupt court historians with the truth was to be accused of being paid by Germany to write his history. Eighty-six years later historian Christopher Clark in his book, The Sleepwalkers, comes to essentially the same conclusion as Barnes.
In the history I was taught the war was blamed on Germany for challenging British naval supremacy by building too many battleships. The court historians who gave us this tale helped to set up World War 2.
CONTINUED...
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/28/pushing-toward-final-war-paul-craig-roberts/
Stuart G
(38,421 posts)The idiots in charge thought it would be simple, easy war, over in a short time..
Then rearrange the borders a little and settle it.
You know, like European wars of the 1800s. Instead of looking at the American Civil War for what it would be, the leadership looked elsewhere....
If the leaders had looked to the American Civil War, they could have seen the nightmare, and avoided it..maybe..The idiots could not foresee the millions of deaths. Change in the type of weapons, or trench warfare......
....stupid idiots ...that is what they were.....let alone, the ultimate nightmare of WWII.
....cause of the hate, need to place blame, and stupidity....
muriel_volestrangler
(101,311 posts)The Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War. WW1 turned out to be far more static that either, or than the US Civil War, thanks to improvements in defensive weaponry - machine guns, and simple barbed wire.