The problem started with WW1. France and Russia actually started the war (Clemenceau egged the Russians on because he wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871). Even the Brits mobilized before the Germans, who were last to mobilize. Those "allies" then turned around and blamed it all on the Germans and set off a revolution that made it possible for Hitler to gain power.
France and GB "leadership" were idiots and they ruined their own countries with both wars.
France and Russia didn't start the war, the Habsburg Dual Monarchy and Germany did. The Habsburgs went to war by issuing a broad reaching and illegal ultimatum to Serbia over the Sarajevo terrorist murders, and then responded to Serbia, and then responding to Serbia accepting every single condition in said ultimatum beyond the "accept Serbia be occupied by Habsburg police" one by declaring war. Germany issued a blank check encouraging the Habsburgs to go to war (in line with the internal German General Staff's conclusion that war should be started within 6 years in 1912) and responded to the Russian mobilization against the Habsburgs by first engaging in last minute personal diplomacy between "Willy" the Kaiser and "Nicky" the Tsar that saw the Tsar reaffirm his lack of interest in war with Germany but commitment to defend Serbia against attack, and that he was not mobilizing against Germany (something that was confirmed by German intelligence).
The Kaiser then went to the Reichstag and blatantly lied, claiming Russia was mobilizing against both the Habsburgs AND Germany, demanding a vote for war credits to supposedly "defend" the Reich against a nonexistent Russian mobilization to invade. This was granted, and upon it happening the German Empire declared war on Russia on August 1st.
This is important to grasp because unlike how this is often parsed, it was the SECOND declaration of war in the conflict, second only to the Habsburg declaration of war on Serbia. It was by one neutral party to another neutral party, at a time when Russia had not declared war on anyone (though it was mobilizing just in case it had to).
The Germans then compounded this by declaring war on France on August 3rd - again, when the French were still dumbstruck and baffled - and issuing an ultimatum to Belgium that they knew would not be accepted on the same day, followed up by invasion.
Prinz von Eulenberg -Wilhelm's since disgraced svengali at the time - even noted what had happened in his diary and lauded Wilhelm II for starting the war while making it look to German audiences that Russia had started it. This is important because of how it goes vastly against his public statements after the war and a lot of Central Powers apologia then and now, since he very obviously never expected we would have access to his private papers or to the Prussian State Archives like we do now.
Again, this removed any possible chance of a peaceful resolution (the Russians very well couldn't ignore being declared war on) and escalated what MIGHT have been a regional Habsburg-Serbian or Habsburg vs. Serbia/Russia war into a World War, since it removed any possible chance France and Britain would remain neutral. And how it was 3 days later when Austria-Hungary belatedly declared war on Russia (a regime that as unlovely as it was had not declared war on anyone at this stage).
As such fault for starting the war lies firmly and solely with the German Empire and the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary, with dishonorable mention to the Serbian terrorist networks of Unification or Death and its demented mini-me of Young Bosnia.
This is not how the story is usually told, which goes more like "Habsburgs declare war on Serbia, Russia declares war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declares war on Russia, France declares war on Germany, Germany invades Belgium, Britain declares war on Germany...." narrative that tends to crop up in pop culture. But the dates of the declarations of war don't lie, nor do the documents.
This was not a chain of escalation or alliances being triggered leading to a domino effect of war declarations. This was Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia on what we now know to be false grounds leading to Russia mobilizing, then to Germany going berserk and spamming war declarations on a host of other countries on what we now know to be outright fraudulent grounds.
"(Clemenceau egged the Russians on because he wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871)."
Just about the only true statement in this is that Clemenceau wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871. But that's irrelevant and does not pan out because
A: Clemenceau was NOT IN GOVERNMENT at the time, having been turfed out of office years before and going back to being a newspaper editor whose work was promptly censored by the actual government during this time. He wouldn't be offered a position in government until weeks after the war came to France, and he DECLINED and would ultimately not return to government until he was appointed as an outsider to PM in November 1917.
B: Clemenceau was supportive of the Franco-Russian Alliance against Germany but otherwise had middling at BEST relations with the Russians, and had been critical of them at many times, in part due to the Tsar's Jew hatred, Okhrana deployments to France, and reproachment with the Germans.
C: In any case the dates simply DO NOT add up. Even if the Russians had taken a hostile, foreign newspaper author and at the time ex-politician seriously, their pre-August mobilization plans were directed against the Habsburgs until the German declaration of war on them, and neither Russia or France got into the war until Germany declared war on them.
"Even the Brits mobilized before the Germans, who were last to mobilize."
Untrue. The German call for mobilization was on August 1st, 1914, and it was unique because UNLIKE BASICALLY EVERY OTHER MOBILIZATION PLAN IN THE WORLD AT THE TIME, the German Mobilization Plan *ALSO called* for declarations of WAR on the major Entente countries *AND* an invasion of Belgium whether the Belgians agreed to let them pass or not, meaning that (to quote the great historian David Fromkin), "Under the Schlieffen Plan, for Germany to mobilize was to mean war because as part of the plan, German troops as they were called up were to invade Belgium automatically."
This meant that unlike basically every other power, there was no prospect for Germany of calling up the troops and then demonstrating on the border before calling them back to barracks and demobbing them as part of a diplomatic strategy. There was no firebreak between declaring mobilization on one hand and declaring war. This is top tier Mens Rea along with the 1912 Conference and the early (pre-Sarajevo) 1914 orders by the Reichsbank to confiscate Gold as part of transitioning to a wartime economy.
In sharp contrast, the British only declared mobilization on August 4th.
"Those "allies" then turned around and blamed it all on the Germans and set off a revolution that made it possible for Hitler to gain power."
They blamed it all on the Germans and Austro-Hungarians because the Germans and Austro-Hungarians set the planet on fire with a series of unprovoked declarations of war, for which they were absolutely correct to do so as the data now shows and as the evidence we have from Austrian and German archives now lays any doubt to. Moreover, Hitler was trained and partially indoctrinated by the Imperial Dictatorship, especially from 1916 when his mentor and future temporary co-conspirator Ludendorff came to power as part of the Eastern Front Junta.
Forgive me if I cannot blame the allies for being particularly incensed at having a war (and in the case of Serbia an outright genocidal war) foisted upon them at great cost and fought with great criminality.
"France and GB "leadership" were idiots and they ruined their own countries with both wars."
That is the conformist version of history. Placing your faith in intel organs is not all that smart. They are often wrong, and in the case of Russia, they were. The Tsar knew that by taking on Austria, he was also going to take on Germany.
Nothing you posted challenges the fact that Germany was the last to mobilize. Because the time and effort required, mobilization was regarded as an act of war at the time.
"They blamed it all on the Germans and Austro-Hungarians because the Germans and Austro-Hungarians set the planet on fire with a series of unprovoked declarations of war,"
That is simply a lie. The killing of the Grand Duke was nothing if not an act of war/ The Serbian regime may not have ordered it,. but the Black Hand has many people in the regime and it takes as much credulity to believe the regime had no hand in it as it takes to believe Hitler new nothing of the holocaust.
The Kaiserreich was not a dictatorship. The Kaiser was turned down, many times by the Reachstag. That can not happen in a dictatorship.
Firstly: What the farq is that even supposed to mean and how is it in any way meaningful or valuable in terms of truth value?
Secondly: No, it is not. The overwhelming majority of mainstream or "conformist version" of histories generally obfuscate or muddy the origins of WWI. I can guarantee you that less than one in a thousand discuss things like the 1912 OHL Conference or the decision of the Reichsbank to confiscate domestic gold holdings even prior to the Sarajevo murders.
In general "conformist history" tends to muddy itself into convenient stories of mutual fault and responsibility and even great powers tangled in intertwining alliances that seemingly cannot be broken (except of course they could be and were).
The Third Reich's guilt for the outbreak of WWII is all but enshrined to the point of sacredness and where you are condemned for merely questioning it, and not without good reason, but the responsibility of the Second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is less o.
"Placing your faith in intel organs is not all that smart."
Placing them in themselves is not smart, but they are data points. Moreover, when we can confirm them from other points (such as Russian WWI Archives showing they were going after Austria-Hungary but not Germany, and German archives showing that their intelligence confirmed Russian claims they were mobilizing against Austria-Hungary but not seeking conflict with Germany while the Kaiser was lying to the Reichstag claiming otherwise) they must be accounted for.
In any case the relevant fact - and it is a fact - is that while I could not blame Germany and Austria-Hungary for considering that the Russian government was lying about its intentions, that doesn't justify the German and Austro-Hungarian governments lying to their own people or the world in order to start multiple wars of aggression, including one of genocidal extermination that would see something like one tenth of the entire Serbian population die.
"They are often wrong,"
Correct.
"and in the case of Russia, they were."
No, no they were not. And moreover Sektion IIIb and post-war research confirmed they were not wrong.
"The Tsar knew that by taking on Austria, he was also going to take on Germany."
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Alliance Treaties, and I think it is worth understanding Italy's public declaration of neutrality in which it painstakingly documented how Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia was a war of aggression that exempted the other members of the Triple Alliance from their treaty obligations to support them. And while we can quibble about how the Italians were doing this for cynical, self-serving reasons such as wanting better deals (and that has a lot of truth to it) on a legal and moral level they were completely correct.
What was different with Austria-Hungary's relationship with the other member of the Triple Alliance, Germany, was not the black letter treaty obligations or the law but the fact that Germany and Austria-Hungary both sought to provoke a general war, unbeknownst to the Russian government at the time (though they suspected). Nikolai II and his government hoped that by threatening the Austro-Hungarians they would force the Habsburgs to back down and accept limited Serbian concessions like the Serbs had agreed to in their ultimatum response, or failing that isolate the Habsburgs.
They did not expect the Germans to declare war on them before Russia had done so on Austria-Hungary. And they sure as HELL did not expect the Germans to declare war on them, the French, and the Belgians before the first Russian declaration of war had arrived in Vienna or Budapest, before the first Russian boot had crossed the border.
A miscalculation to be sure - and one of many, many, many ones made by the not-so-Great White Tsar and his government - but different.
"Nothing you posted challenges the fact that Germany was the last to mobilize."
This is blatantly false. Germany declared mobilization on August 1st, more than 24 hours before France and 72 hours before Britain. I pointed this out.
> *Untrue. The German call for mobilization was on August 1st, 1914, and it was unique because UNLIKE BASICALLY EVERY OTHER MOBILIZATION PLAN IN THE WORLD AT THE TIME, the German Mobilization Plan *ALSO called* for declarations of WAR on the major Entente countries *AND* an invasion of Belgium whether the Belgians agreed to let them pass or not, meaning that (to quote the great historian David Fromkin), "Under the Schlieffen Plan, for Germany to mobilize was to mean war because as part of the plan, German troops as they were called up were to invade Belgium automatically."
> This meant that unlike basically every other power, there was no prospect for Germany of calling up the troops and then demonstrating on the border before calling them back to barracks and demobbing them as part of a diplomatic strategy. There was no firebreak between declaring mobilization on one hand and declaring war. This is top tier Mens Rea along with the 1912 Conference and the early (pre-Sarajevo) 1914 orders by the Reichsbank to confiscate Gold as part of transitioning to a wartime economy.
> In sharp contrast, the British only declared mobilization on August 4th.*
So not only was Germany not the last to mobilize, it was among the very first to do so. And unlike every single other country involved, its mobilization plans were the only ones that inherently included declarations of war, with no off ramps, no firebreaks, and no gaps.
If you do not believe me, try digging up primary source information on British declarations of mobilization in 1914 versus German ones. And I am baffled as to why the hell you think otherwise.
If it is "conformist history" to assert the primacy of linear time and that August 4th indeed came after August 1st, then yes I confess to being an adherent of "conformist history." But that is not an indictment of me. And notably even those motivated to downplay German and Habsburg culpability for this war such as Chris Clark agree with me. We still have the documents.
"Because the time and effort required, mobilization was regarded as an act of war at the time."
Absolute bullshit. Mobilization was never something done lightly or easily precisely because it was costly, troublesome, and caused a panic. However, it was something done multiple times without the outbreak of war.
This is made crystal clear in cases such as the "War in Sight" Crisis of 1875 when Bismarck - worried at French recovery - wanted to provoke another war with France, only for Russia's new anti-German Tsar to issue mobilization and threaten that if Germany invaded France without due cause Russia would invade Germany, causing Bismarck to back down. Ditto Serbia's 1908 mobilization over Bosnia and the ensuing climbdown, and I could go on.
The difference is that the German mobilization plans in 1914 had no offramp, they inherently transitioned straight into invasion plans demanding war.
If you cannot answer the question or provide any reason why "conformist version of history" is worth noting in and of itself, you should not bother mentioning it.
"The rest is mostly BS."
I don't take judgements on BS from people who are so chronologically and historically illiterate they make provably wrong statements about things like when Imperial Germany mobilized in 1914 versus when France mobilized.
German Mobilization, Issued August 1st, Dated to be complete on August 2nd:
"The mobilization order reads: “I herewith decree: The German Army and the Imperial Navy are to be made ready for war in accordance with the mobilization plans for the German Army and the Imperial Navy. / August 2, 1914, will be set as the first day of mobilization, Berlin, August 1, 1914. / Wilhelm / Bethmann Hollweg / To the Imperial Chancellor, Imperial Admiralty, and the Minister of War.”"
So by your own standards, you should not be here due to peddling provable horse dung from some dishonest source that cannot even do chronological time correctly. Indeed, that you have far less justification to be here than I do because I don't have to resort to mealy mouthed phrasings like "conformist history." I can simply point out "This is absolute nonsense and anybody who has read the actual documents can prove it."
"The killing of the Grand Duke was nothing if not an act of war/"
Correct, HAD IT BEEN DONE BY THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT.
But it was not. It was done by a group of local terrorists in Sarajevo under the loose (VERY VERY LOOSE I MIGHT ADD) patronage of a terrorist network headed up by Dragutin Dimitrjevic, head of Serbian Military Intelligence, WITHOUT ANY APPROVAL FROM THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT WHATSOEVER.
And it's telling that not only did the German and Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian governments take possession of the vast majority of the Serbian state archives during WWI with every motivation to try and prove Serbian government endorsement of Apis and the Sarajevo regicides and *COULDN'T*, but a generation later the fucking NAZIS captured even more documents when they took over Belgrade and Yugoslavia in 1941 and also failed.
There is a very simple reason for this. Dimitrijevic and his network were rogue elements within the Serbian government but not directly responsible to it, and even then their knowledge and role of the Sarajevo murder planning - while more than enough to justify hanging all of them - was indirect and limited. They first came to Dimitrijevic's attention when Princip and his short bus compatriots bothered Dimitrijevic's 2IC to ask for help and the 2IC asked him to tell them to go away. Instead Dimitrijevic shrugged, gave them access to a shooting range for a day, found their worse-than-the-NYPD shooting accuracy to be satisfactory, and then gave them some pistols, expired poison, bomb making material, and passes (that the conspirators didn't need because of how they could slip in) and then wished them the best of luck, fully expecting them to fail miserably.
By the end of the war Dimitrijevic and co would be plotting to overthrow the Serbian government, only to fail and be hanged for treason.
The Serbian Government's track record was far from saintly, but nobody in the Royal Household or the Prime Minister's Cabinet knew or authorized the murders, and a century of trying to prove otherwise has failed miserably.
But even if we ignore all of that, it wouldn't justify the Austro-Hungarians committing large scale mass murder through Northern Serbia or Germany"pre-emptively" declaring war on Russia, France, and Belgium. Nor would it change the fact that as the 1912 Conference, the January 1914 Gold Order, and pretty much everything outside of Hoetzendorff's mouth for decades showed, the German and Austro-Hungarian governments had concluded on the need for an aggressive war, the only question was when, against whom, and with what pretext.
"The Serbian regime may not have ordered it,."
DID not order it.
Period full stop. Meaning Austria-Hungary had no justification whatsoever to issue the ultimatum, especially not in the terms it demanded, and particularly without even bothering to propose things like an international investigation.
"but the Black Hand has many people in the regime and it takes as much credulity to believe the regime had no hand in it as it takes to believe Hitler new nothing of the holocaust."
Except we can trace Hitler's culpability in the Holocaust to multiple Fuhrer Directives he issued such as the "life unworthy of life" decree inaugurating Aktion T4 and the "Armenian" Speech. Nobody has found any document from PM Pasic's Cabinet or the Royal Household justifying the Sarajevo murders and given their dire opinion on Dimitirjevic and the failure of the Habsburgs or Second and Third Reichs to find it or even forge something convincingly, we can be very sure none exists.
Moreover, it is worth noting that even among Unification or Death/the Serbian Black Hand under Dimitirjevic, shockingly little documentation survives showing Dimitrijevic knew much at all of Young Bosnia's (amateurism) planning for what would turn out to be the Sarajevo Murders, and he had little role in it except as a funder who expected it to fail but welcomed the opportunity anyway. He and his goons were guilty and deserved death, but they were never the masterminds directly overseeing the Sarajevo murders, nor did they plan for war.
And again, even if we ignored all that it would do absolutely nothing to justify Germany declaring war on Russia, France, or Belgium. It frankly doesn't even justify Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. Even the US in the wake of 9/11 gave the Taliban one final chance to turn over OBL and the Al Qaeda leadership to them, and the Austro-Hungarians pointedly refused any attempt at international investigation.
"The Kaiserreich was not a dictatorship."
Define "dictatorship." Because by any measure it became more and more of one as time went on as Wilhelm II mentioned. This is why the writings of the likes of Wilhelm II< the Prinz von Eulenberg, and especially Falkenhayn, Ludendorff, and Hindenburg are useful. In 1914 it was not as strong of one that Wilhelm felt he could ignore the Reichstag altogether and so instead favored conning them into voting for war credits and to voluntarily limit their power, but after that it was downhill.
"The Kaiser was turned down, many times by the Reachstag. That can not happen in a dictatorship."
I'm sure Brezhnev and his fights with the Presidium and even Lenin and his wrangling with the Central Committee would have been surprised to know. And in any case the Reichstag ceased being able to effectively counteract the Kaiser and Cabinet soon after the War Credits vote. That became worse since they were constitutionally incapable of overruling the Kaiser's prerogatives on the military or the Reichsbank anyway.
By 1915 the OHL and Imperial Cabinet responded to Liebknecht's vocal opposition of them by illegally conscripting him into the military in contravention of the constitutional protections of a Reichstag member, and while that was the most dramatic case at several other times the Kaiser intervened to gag, dissolve, or intimidate the legislature. So it became dictatorial very soon in the war, and I think a close analysis of Eulenberg's diaries (again, not exactly sources examined much by "conformist history") bears out that the mechanisms of a velvet gloved dictatorship able to form an iron fist were ironed out years earlier before Eulenberg's disgrace.
The Black Hand has people salted throughout the Serbian Government. To think the government had no had in it is pure naïveté.
The last part of your response contradicts what you said earlier. There was always tension between the Reichstag and the throne because they would not knuckle under to the Kaiser. It was not a dictatorship.
OTOH, Governments tend to become dictatorships when they are at war. Nothing surprising there. Look at the behavior of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR. No difference.
"The Black Hand has people salted throughout the Serbian Government. To think the government had no had in it is pure naïveté."
Firstly: I don't take lectures on "pure naïveté" from someone who has so little grasp of the subject matter they managed to ignore basic, undisputable, not-controversial facts such as days of mobilization by which power.
(And I say again: )
German Mobilization, Issued August 1st, Dated to be complete on August 2nd:
"The mobilization order reads: “I herewith decree: The German Army and the Imperial Navy are to be made ready for war in accordance with the mobilization plans for the German Army and the Imperial Navy. / August 2, 1914, will be set as the first day of mobilization, Berlin, August 1, 1914. / Wilhelm / Bethmann Hollweg / To the Imperial Chancellor, Imperial Admiralty, and the Minister of War.”"
Secondly: "Pure naïveté" is accepting that which is not proven just because it is befitting your particular narrative. Pure naïveté is blaming France and Russia for the outbreak of war because Clemenceau while having absolutely farq all idea Clemenceau was not even in government at the time.
Thirdly: The Central Powers and the Nazis both spent about a decade in control of the lion's share of the Serbian Royal Archives trying to "prove" that the Serbian government outside of Dimitrijevic was complicit in the Sarajevo murders, and the Central Powers' modern day dishonest apologists like Chris Clark have had even longer with access to it.
They have been able to provide absolutely nothing except things like Pasic's grudging and late warning to the Bosnian Military Governor of the KuK that there was a potential plot, gutting their claims.
If there was something to be had or even significant evidence to the contrary, we wouldn't have to peddle blather about "conformist history", Clemenceau the In Opposition Newspaper Man Illuminati Puppetmaster, or documents that if anything underline how the Serbian Government did not know about the "Black Hand" (the proper title here is Unification or Death). or their plans for the Sarajevo murders (and indeed that Unification or Death had very little idea on the Sarajevo Murders beyond the broad idea because it was mostly a plan of Young Bosnia).
BUT EVEN IF WE IGNORED ALL OF THAT, there's this:
Fourthly: Did the Habsburgs have any evidence whatsoever that the Serbian Government was complicit, and would resist any attempt to render justice before war, especially at the time they declared war?
No, No, and No. Indeed very much the opposite, they knew the Serbian Government had responded to their ultimatum by accepting every single term except for the one allowing the Habsburg police forces to essentially occupy the country and suspend the constitution. They also knew the Serbs and others were advocating for an international investigation. The Habsburgs and Potsdam knew this, but they went to war anyway and conducted themselves with atrocious cruelty and brutality.
"The last part of your response contradicts what you said earlier."
Only if you pretend that dictators never see the importance of retreating before pressure even if legally they don't "need" to or practically they could probably push it. Try reading things like how Hitler (who was by any stretch of the imagination an even greater dictator than the Kaiser or his warlords) was forced to publicly cancel Aktion T4, or how Stalin made an abortive attempt to purge many of his rivals like Tukhachevsky in 1930 and backed off due to not believing his power was secure.
The Kaiser had already run roughshed over German law on many points before, especially in the areas where the Cabinet and Military could curtail parliamentary oversight. He and the Prinz von Eulenberg had already engaged in extensive vote rigging campaigns both for elections in the Reichstag (especially in places like the Electoral Kreises of Upper Saxony and Hanover).
"There was always tension between the Reichstag and the throne because they would not knuckle under to the Kaiser. It was not a dictatorship."
Eulenberg and Wilhelm II's primary source documents do not go away just because you want to ignore them. And yes there was always tension between them, in part because the Reichstag wouldn't always knuckle under to the Kaiser and in part because even when it did like over the von Trotha crisis there was still bitter feelings.
This manifested most sharply in the military and bureaucracy (where the Reichstag had indirect oversight at best) and in Imperial territories like Alsace-Lorraine, but also in other aspects like vote counting in the State of Prussia. And after the War Credits vote Wilhelm II gradually - and to his detriment - dropped the mask in favor of empowering a series of military leaders (first Moltke the Younger, then Falkenhayn, then Ludendorff and Hindenburg).
"OTOH, Governments tend to become dictatorships when they are at war. Nothing surprising there. Look at the behavior of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR. No difference."
Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR never forcibly conscripted a sitting member of the legislature without trial (Vallandingham was given a court martial in which he was duly convicted of advocating violation of wartime law and propagandizing for the Confederacy and deported). They also did not order the murder or forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of prisoners or civilian detainees as we now know the Kaiserreich did in things like the forced deportation of Poles from the "Polish Border Strip." They also did not order the lawless imprisonment and torture of a loyal soldier like Armin Wegner and the destruction of his property without charge purely in order to destroy evidence of their ally engaging in racially based and religiously motivated mass murder.
But let's go back to basics.
You want to claim that Germany was the last to mobilize, even after Britain.
Pray tell me what dates do you think Britain, France, and Germany mobilized? And why on Earth do you think you get to ignore handwritten notes from the Kaiser himself ordering mobilization on August 1st to be completed on the Second by blathering about "Conformist History"?
This is a basic skill check to see if you can even evaluate a chronological timeline accurately or what order August 1st, August 2nd, August 4th, and August 5th of the same year come in. Talking about "conformist history" is not an adequate substitute for basic facts like that.
Princip was terrorist scum and a murderer whose only remorse was supposedly that he killed the Archduke's wife rather than Governor Potiorek, but he had nothing to do with the fundamental causes why the world went to war. By 1912 the German General Staff and Imperial Cabinet had concluded they would have to go to war at some time in the next 6 years, preferably before 1916, and early in 1914 (IIRC January to March) the Reichsbank had issued orders that all circulating gold be handed over to them, indicating intention to put the German Empire on imminent war footing. Moreover, Conrad von Hoetzendorff in his role as Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff had advocated "Preventive War" on Serbia even without justification every year for multiple years, with a host of other planned wars to boot.
Had Habsburg Police in Bosnia gotten smart and scooped up the entire Young Bosnia network, the Habsburgs and German Empire would have sparked a global war a bit later over some other pretense like they had been maneuvering towards with things like the Panther Affair.
And ideologically a lot of the precursors for Hitler and Stalin were already in place (see the German "Socialists of the Chair" or "Royal Socialists" in economics or the "War Socialism" of Ludendorff, or Koba the Dread and Lenin operating in the Russian environment) and the underlying problems that made Sykes-Picot seem like the lesser evil were already in place. The big issue I see was Japan, which was indeed screwed over unjustly largely by the US. But ultimately Princip was an excuse rather than the actual cause, and ironically or not he murdered just about the only significant pro-Slavic Dove in the Habsburg senior leadership.
No he did not. Indeed he had his own role in crippling British preparedness with the 10 Year Rule. Those that fomented WWII were German Militarists of which the National Socialists were ultimately the victors, the Soviet Union and its Comintern, the Japanese Militarists, and the Italian Fascists.
But it's fitting a Jew Hating Neo-Nazi Dumbfuck like yourself would claim as such.
"Read up on the history focusing on the lead up to WW2."
Bitch please, I have. Indeed, I've probably forgotten more about the relevant history and history in general than you have ever known. Which is why I was able to dumpster your Neo-Nazi, Jew hating asshole when you claimed it was impossible to open the Strait of Hormuz so long as Iran existed, something that would've been VERY SURPRISING to the Portuguese (who outright occupied Bahrain, Hormuz, Basra, and several Iranian Ports in the early 1600s until English and Dutch ships helped break Portuguese lines of communication), British East India Company (who occupied Busher in 1856 and kept it and straits contact straight through THE FREAKING 1857 MUTINY), or the Iraqis and Us (as in spite of Saddam's Iraq failing to defeat Iran and spending most of the war on the backfoot it was able to fight hard enough to prevent the strait from ever being closed entirely, until the Iranians did a retard move and prompted US retaliation in Operation Praying Mantis that ensured the Strait would remain open to Iraqi and pro-Iraqi Gulf Arab shipping for the rest of the conflict).
This is objectively provable and easily confirmable if you know worth a fuck where to look. Which makes your bullshitting on the matter all the more jarring and indefensible because there really is absolutely no justification for it factually or even ideologically. And if you're at the point of denying objectively observable reality like the Portuguese fortifications at places like Bahrain and Kuwait, you're in full "I reject your reality and substitute my own" territory that makes paying you much heed worthless and indicates your integrity and intellectual rigor are utterly lacking.
"Note how the UK and France use Poland the same way NATO has used Ukraine- push it into war as a way to drain an enemy white."
Except that's not what happened, that's retarded cope that came much later from German militarists and later Neo-Nazis trying to justify their criminal conspiracy with the Soviets to dismember Eastern Europe, and later the Kremlin for its failure to topple the new Ukrainian government in 2014 and 2022.
The reality is that prior to 1939 the British and French had worked to put a stop to Polish aggrandizement, with their peacekeeping troops having fought Polish rebels in Silesia in the 1910s and early 1920s, helping the Germans keep all of Silesia in the first two uprisings and then brokering a compromise vote after the third that saw the Poles take a third of Silesia but Germany keep the last. They also blatantly refused to sanction the Polish coup in Vilnius officially, even if their diplomatic relations continued. Furthermore, Hitler made the choice to reach out to Poland and sign a pact with their Foreign Minister Beck in 1934, where the Poles allowed the Danzig Nazi Party to monopolize domestic politics in the Free City of Danzig on condition it would not be annexed to Germany proper, Hitler abandoned all open territorial claims against Poland, and both sides agreed to cooperation against Czechoslovakia (which they actually did) and against the Soviet Union (which Hitler betrayed the clauses of by coordinating with the Soviets).
Hitler then betrayed that pact after 1939 when he further betrayed the last remaining provisions of Munich after he already devoured Czechoslovakia, by which point the Poles were caught flatfooted and desperately reached out to Britain and France to prepare for a defensive war.
In contrast, the Kremlin was simply retarded about Ukraine, ignoring the all but godgiven chance for their influence as a result of the Orange Revolution Coalition imploding in mutual accusations and infighting and Yanukovych's successful triangulation between his base and that of his traditional enemies by claiming he would continue trade relations with Russia while seeking to negotiate an association agreement with the EU by sperging out and forcing Yanukovych to abandon EU Association Talks for terms that were seen as humiliatingly feeble even by the traditionally pro-Russian electorates in the South and East. The Russian government then responded to the utterly predictable "Oh look it's a time that ends in O Clock" traditionally Ukrainian mass protests by pushing Yanukovych to crack down first questionably legally and then flat out illegally in a way that wound up in even his own coalition deserting him. And when Yanukovych responded to summons from his own Rada to appear before them and answer questions about cabinet policy and actions by doing a runner (after stealing some things from his office) Putin ordered an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 in the hopes of securing the areas (successfully in the case of Crimea, unsuccessfully in the case of the Donbas).
Then when Ukraine pointedly failed to keel over or knuckle down and indeed over the course of the long war began to push back on the Donbaschukuos (with them being reduced to about a third of their peak size in 2021) and taking advantage of Biden and co's weakness and appeasing attitude, the Kremlin authorized a full scale invasion of Ukraine with the intent of decapitating the Ukrainian government and imposing some kind of puppet status on them. That they failed due to a few screwed up calculations and overconfidence and wound up in a war that is bleeding them white does nothing to change the fact that this is not how it was supposed to go, or that they have nobody to thank more than themselves for this particular fuckup, having demonstrated to everybody and anybody in the class that the rewards for constitutional neutrality in former Soviet Space and trying to engage in peaceful co-existence with both the West and the "Russian World" is perfidy, war, and plans of national dismemberment.
I don't expect you to know all that since as I've established before you're a historical illiterate, Jew hater, and Neo-Nazi fuck.
"They just didn't count on the effectiveness of the tank + blitzkrieg doctrine. "
Mate, the Western Allies invented the tank. As for the "blitzkrieg doctrine" it didn't exist, what did was Bewegunskrieg, the Maneuver-War/Struggle, and that was something they and pretty much everyone else underestimated.
But the main thing they and nobody else counted on was the Nazi-Soviet Alliance and the fact that even after the significant Nazi victories on Poland's Western frontier rendering Warsaw indefensible in the long term, the Soviets would come in from the East to roll up Poland's "Romanian Salient/Bridgehead" where they had planned to hold out for eventual relief.
I'm not surprised you don't want to address that fact precisely because it removes any doubt who started this war and who bears the blood guilt for it, in addition to touching on how Hitler made an alliance with the supposedly-Jewish-coded Bolsheviks to dismember Eastern and Central Europe. But the fact remains that without the Soviets overrunning most of Eastern Poland and cooperating to neutralize pro-Allied neutrals in the area like the Baltic Three, Romania, and Finland there would have been no prospect of the German military being able to turn West and North in the time it did.
Fortunately, Putin did not have a Hitler/Stalin type co-conspirator in 2014 or 2022 and was nowhere near as farsighted or competent, and unlike the Nazis and Soviets he refused to engage in a general mobilization since he had been led to believe the "special military operation" would be a walkover.
"Also note how Churchill, in spite of saying some mean (but true) things about jews in his youth, owed a lot of money to jewish financiers who didn't require him to pay it back, forgiving it after the death of the debt holders."
I realize you're historically illiterate and dishonest, but Churchill owed a lot of money to lots of financiers, both Jews and non-Jews. At no point whatsoever did he owe more money to Jewish financiers than he did to non-Jews, and while he spent much of the 1920s and 1930s in deep debt he got a number of sweetheart deals and fortunate breaks and by 1937 was paying both the interest and principles, and a year before Hitler betrayed Munich in 1939 he was solvent, not due to DA JOOZ but because of the income he got as a journalist as well as his wife's investments. "Jewish Financiers" helped, but so did basically everyone else, and by 1947 he had paid down all debts that had not been forgiven.
It's all a very sordid affair but not at all atypical for British aristocracy of both pro-and-anti-Jewish bents, or others. And while we're on that subject wait till we talk about Hitler's tax returns! Or lack thereof. "The Fuhrer is Tax Exempt" and all that, as well as extreme tax evasion and fraud on his part.
In any case, had the "Jewish Financiers" and others been paying him to foment war with Germany, they badly misjudged and screwed up since Churchill would take until 1930 before he abandoned support for the 10 Year Rule he had helped create, by which time he was a political outcast and disgrace. Conversely had they been paying him to vocally defend Jews against Jew haters like yourself he had already been doing so well before.
So the realistic, non-deluded take would be that some Jewish Financiers and others gave him easy loans because he was a sympathetic voice, but so did a lot of non-Jews.
"WW2 was precipitated because GE threatened the UK,"
No, it was precipitated because multiple totalitarian nutcases wanted global conquest or hegemony. Hitler's Unpublished Second Book and a host of shit the Bolsheviks wrote makes this abundantly clear that they would not accept anything short of global dominance.
"and because GE went off the international trade system that allowed banks to skim a % off the top of all intn trade."
Oh no, it's a dishonest retard that doesn't know how banks work.
Please, please tell me when Germany supposedly "went off the international trade system." I'll be waaaaiting. And be waiting for why the Nazi government complained so hard about embargos such as the US Embargo on Helium after the illegal theft of DELAG.
"Hence the international banker angle."
Which does not exist because you're an idiot.
"also check out:
"Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich" by Guido Giacomo Preparata (Pluto Press, 2005)"
Unfortunately for you, I already have.
And Preparata is a dumbass, historically illiterate, chronologically illiterate idiot who among other things gets who in the Russian Government in 1916 and 1917 wanted to exit the war wrong (outside of Rasputin), claimed Trebitsch-Lincoln was hired to foil the Kapp Putsch (something that even the habitually Jew hating Luttwitz and Kapp did not claim until well later and without evidence), and as typical failed to read the War Guilt Clause of Versailles (or its adjacent peace treaties like Trianon and Saint-Germain but shush on that) wrong.
All of these things are broadly and objectively provable and not in serious dispute, but which Preparate shows himself to be grotesquely incompetent at when he's not outright dishonest.
In addition to a host of other more arcane shit like claiming the Hess that flew to Britain was not the real Hess, something that was considered at the time by the British and disproven by their taking of his blood and fingerprints and also by the Nazis separately, resulting in Hitler ruthlessly purging many of Hess's former comrades.
If Preparata is going to be enough of a dishonest, historically illiterate dumbfuck he can't even tell how Hess's identity was confirmed, I have no reason to trust him on a host of other things.g
The UK is no longer the UK of Winston Churchill. It is degenerating into a fascistic Islamic republic. Under these circumstances I would prefer it if they had no armed forces whatsoever especially nuclear weapons.
The distinct possibility of Islamic leaning if not outright Islamist governments in the UK, Germany and France in the near future is not fantastical. The EU actually seems to feel it is to their advantage for that to happen because...? Should the EU get their way, I predict they will find those Islamist leaning governments behavior...not as predicted.
the good news is that none of the 4 V boats will be running by then, and I suspect that the Tridents themselves require parts from the USN and NNSA. though some smart Paki can likely get a bang out of the warhead, if shipped in a Conex.
Bad news? The Frog warheads likely are independent of the US supply chain.
Then there are the 60 B61's held hostage in Turkey
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. (The River War I: 248-49)
I prefer they reverse course and start making the Islamists abide by Britain's laws, eliminate Sharia laws and courts, and, most importantly, buy or invest in their once proud Navy. How to do that? Put the Adults back in charge.
This is, regretfully, a look into the future for our own failing immigration policies and our own underinvestment in the US Navy.
That assumes there are enough adults to whip the kindergartner class back into shape. The House of Lords is not yet coopted by immigrant interests. They would need to find a way or renouncing the Parliament act of 1911 and regain their historical position of leadership.
I don't think they can make the "Islamists abide by Britain's laws." The only way Britain can survive, and still be Britain, is to remove the Islamists.
I've been to the Imperial War Museum, though it's been nearly 25 years ago. Just walking into the atrium was awe inspiring. Planes hanging from the ceiling tanks on the floor. (Including Monty's command tank and a Jagd Panther.)
The only thing that put me off a bit was the gallery dedicated to Monty. It clearly presented how it was that he won WWII. I suppose they have to make do with the heroes they have.
I'm afraid the IWM is now off my recommended must see places.
You're right about the heros you have....with all the sturm und drang going on now about Cesar Chavez.....
But Monty? The war would have been over in 1944 if Eisenhower had shot him and De Gaulle in 1943. Or breaking him after he took credit for winning the Battle of the Bulge - where he couldn't be assed to show up to the meeting, much less do anything. Getting Eisenhower and Bradley both on the verge of resignation for his big mouth?
The longer the insanity lasts in England the less chance of recovery....
Unfortunately you don't have to look into the past to experience the crumbling of a legendary navy and an empire for that fact. It's happening before our very eyes.
The British used to deal with treason with a short rope or a sharp axe and this situation amounts to nothing short of treason.
To the lads at 42 Commando, I wish I could buy the next round again.
This is what the Founding Fathers of the US feared. When the population of the country can be bought by essentially repurposing tax-money to bribe those actually being taxed, you get this sort of country-destroying foolishness. The UK has been in the process of burying itself as each government sought to purchase the loyalty of the British electorate using taxpayers' money.
Ben Franklin said: "A republic, if you can keep it." The Brits are finding that it is very hard to keep the Westminster-style Parliamentary democracy they thought they had.
Even now, amongst many of the British people, the refrain is not, "why is our Navy so crap." It's actually, "how many National Health Service Nurses could those carriers have paid for?" The UK Government, sadly, is delivering what their people wanted.
Saw the video a day or 2 ago. Sad but it's been in motion for decades. Both UK political parties have hollowed out their military to the point where it's irrelevant. All in pursuit of implementing Socialist programs and enabling the Muslim takeover of the country. The UK has many existential problems brought on by the political class. This is just one of them.
Last time I saw numbers which was a few years ago there were slightly more sailors in the RN than civilian employees in the MoD. Is that still true? Even then the civilian employees were larger than the Army.
The problem is not in using civilian mariners. The problem is in choosing to throw the money to pay them away on pointless things. The Starmer government has a tendency to favor grandiose public programs that are 'shared' with a foreign government over funding day-today activities. Fund the GCAP aircraft program because it allows him to fly to Tokyo or Rome and have a grand time with his Japanese or Italian counterparts. Don't fund more Type 31 frigates (cheap workhorse equivalent to FF(X) because those aren't shared with foreigners. Spend money on Type 26 uber-frigates that are ridiculously expensive for what you get because they're shared with the Norwegians. Don't spend money buying F-35s to fill the decks of your existing carriers. Those won't get you positive meetings with friendly European politicians. Bonus: If you hand build-slots to the Norwegians, you can kick your own frigate purchases down the road and not piss the Scots off.
You know, Tom, here at the deckplates? We'd layout several layers of bubble wrap and use a few sheets to minimize sweating and continue to use our racks. If I was the CO, I'd authorize the sponsons and the forecastle for hanging laundry along with other spaces after raiding the bousn's locker and paraloft for cord.
What we are doing to the crew is unconscionable. The Ford crew is what, 2,380? Even a Third Class Boatswain’s Mate has a skill set which can only be replaced after hours and hours of experience. How are you going to get a BM3 to re-enlist when you put him at sea for a year with no rack and a forty-minute line for the shitter?
What’s worse is the more traditionally educated ratings. There are Machinist’s mates capable of teaching college physics; do you have any idea of how few high school kids can pass Calculus? We are taking 400 nukes and putting them through the worse cruise imaginable. How many of them are going to say, “man, I need more of this.” Boomers at least get blue and gold treatment; these poor slobs don’t even get liberty. How sustainable is this?
Then I'd guess the skipper needs to step up like “Chowdah” Hill and start instilling some motivational leadership starting from the Wardroom down. They're surviving all that crap and still doing okay. - that needs to be served up as quiet daily non-bullschitt motivational inspiration. You know, like the Chief walking the spaces and the Div O going with him a couple of times a week. It's also time to lobby for a bit of colored ribbon, namely the PUC.
You won't salvage everyone (particularly the married ones.)
Going looking for a working shitter was also an occasional event as was the more frequent hunting for a working shower.
Frankly, I suspect you knew very little of how much time the white hats spent dealing with habitabilty problems or the more amusing ones like waiting 2.5 hours one year for Thanksgiving Dinner only to literally put the food down and get called to man overboard and five minutes later come back a to cleared table and a closed galley.
You know, they didn't close the Wardroom like they did the enlisted galley.
This is the time they pay the khaki to lean forward and lead!
The sewage collection system was stupid. White House, TN has such a system adn when I was doing some work there, back in the 80s, they told me they wish they had never built the thing. Gravity system are far easier to build and maintain. Vacuum systems are constant maintenance headaches.
Maybe, maybe not. It appears neither the quality was built in before the name went and I have my own questions about the PM on the crew self-laundering facility.
Watched Felton’s video the other night…sobering…as was Reese-Mogg’s on the remains of the Royal Navy. Seems to me Britain’s beyond redemption unless what’s left of British manhood rises up, tosses the Muslim immigrants out and reclaims the country for Britons. That would probably mean putting paid to most of the elite - aristocracy and all - and replacing the House of Windsor with a dynasty that actually has some stones.
CDR, are you happy with this crap?
Sure, Adm Raeder
The problem started with WW1. France and Russia actually started the war (Clemenceau egged the Russians on because he wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871). Even the Brits mobilized before the Germans, who were last to mobilize. Those "allies" then turned around and blamed it all on the Germans and set off a revolution that made it possible for Hitler to gain power.
France and GB "leadership" were idiots and they ruined their own countries with both wars.
"The problem started with WW1."
France and Russia didn't start the war, the Habsburg Dual Monarchy and Germany did. The Habsburgs went to war by issuing a broad reaching and illegal ultimatum to Serbia over the Sarajevo terrorist murders, and then responded to Serbia, and then responding to Serbia accepting every single condition in said ultimatum beyond the "accept Serbia be occupied by Habsburg police" one by declaring war. Germany issued a blank check encouraging the Habsburgs to go to war (in line with the internal German General Staff's conclusion that war should be started within 6 years in 1912) and responded to the Russian mobilization against the Habsburgs by first engaging in last minute personal diplomacy between "Willy" the Kaiser and "Nicky" the Tsar that saw the Tsar reaffirm his lack of interest in war with Germany but commitment to defend Serbia against attack, and that he was not mobilizing against Germany (something that was confirmed by German intelligence).
The Kaiser then went to the Reichstag and blatantly lied, claiming Russia was mobilizing against both the Habsburgs AND Germany, demanding a vote for war credits to supposedly "defend" the Reich against a nonexistent Russian mobilization to invade. This was granted, and upon it happening the German Empire declared war on Russia on August 1st.
This is important to grasp because unlike how this is often parsed, it was the SECOND declaration of war in the conflict, second only to the Habsburg declaration of war on Serbia. It was by one neutral party to another neutral party, at a time when Russia had not declared war on anyone (though it was mobilizing just in case it had to).
The Germans then compounded this by declaring war on France on August 3rd - again, when the French were still dumbstruck and baffled - and issuing an ultimatum to Belgium that they knew would not be accepted on the same day, followed up by invasion.
Prinz von Eulenberg -Wilhelm's since disgraced svengali at the time - even noted what had happened in his diary and lauded Wilhelm II for starting the war while making it look to German audiences that Russia had started it. This is important because of how it goes vastly against his public statements after the war and a lot of Central Powers apologia then and now, since he very obviously never expected we would have access to his private papers or to the Prussian State Archives like we do now.
Again, this removed any possible chance of a peaceful resolution (the Russians very well couldn't ignore being declared war on) and escalated what MIGHT have been a regional Habsburg-Serbian or Habsburg vs. Serbia/Russia war into a World War, since it removed any possible chance France and Britain would remain neutral. And how it was 3 days later when Austria-Hungary belatedly declared war on Russia (a regime that as unlovely as it was had not declared war on anyone at this stage).
As such fault for starting the war lies firmly and solely with the German Empire and the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary, with dishonorable mention to the Serbian terrorist networks of Unification or Death and its demented mini-me of Young Bosnia.
This is not how the story is usually told, which goes more like "Habsburgs declare war on Serbia, Russia declares war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declares war on Russia, France declares war on Germany, Germany invades Belgium, Britain declares war on Germany...." narrative that tends to crop up in pop culture. But the dates of the declarations of war don't lie, nor do the documents.
This was not a chain of escalation or alliances being triggered leading to a domino effect of war declarations. This was Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia on what we now know to be false grounds leading to Russia mobilizing, then to Germany going berserk and spamming war declarations on a host of other countries on what we now know to be outright fraudulent grounds.
"(Clemenceau egged the Russians on because he wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871)."
Just about the only true statement in this is that Clemenceau wanted another shot at the Germans for 1871. But that's irrelevant and does not pan out because
A: Clemenceau was NOT IN GOVERNMENT at the time, having been turfed out of office years before and going back to being a newspaper editor whose work was promptly censored by the actual government during this time. He wouldn't be offered a position in government until weeks after the war came to France, and he DECLINED and would ultimately not return to government until he was appointed as an outsider to PM in November 1917.
B: Clemenceau was supportive of the Franco-Russian Alliance against Germany but otherwise had middling at BEST relations with the Russians, and had been critical of them at many times, in part due to the Tsar's Jew hatred, Okhrana deployments to France, and reproachment with the Germans.
C: In any case the dates simply DO NOT add up. Even if the Russians had taken a hostile, foreign newspaper author and at the time ex-politician seriously, their pre-August mobilization plans were directed against the Habsburgs until the German declaration of war on them, and neither Russia or France got into the war until Germany declared war on them.
"Even the Brits mobilized before the Germans, who were last to mobilize."
Untrue. The German call for mobilization was on August 1st, 1914, and it was unique because UNLIKE BASICALLY EVERY OTHER MOBILIZATION PLAN IN THE WORLD AT THE TIME, the German Mobilization Plan *ALSO called* for declarations of WAR on the major Entente countries *AND* an invasion of Belgium whether the Belgians agreed to let them pass or not, meaning that (to quote the great historian David Fromkin), "Under the Schlieffen Plan, for Germany to mobilize was to mean war because as part of the plan, German troops as they were called up were to invade Belgium automatically."
This meant that unlike basically every other power, there was no prospect for Germany of calling up the troops and then demonstrating on the border before calling them back to barracks and demobbing them as part of a diplomatic strategy. There was no firebreak between declaring mobilization on one hand and declaring war. This is top tier Mens Rea along with the 1912 Conference and the early (pre-Sarajevo) 1914 orders by the Reichsbank to confiscate Gold as part of transitioning to a wartime economy.
In sharp contrast, the British only declared mobilization on August 4th.
"Those "allies" then turned around and blamed it all on the Germans and set off a revolution that made it possible for Hitler to gain power."
They blamed it all on the Germans and Austro-Hungarians because the Germans and Austro-Hungarians set the planet on fire with a series of unprovoked declarations of war, for which they were absolutely correct to do so as the data now shows and as the evidence we have from Austrian and German archives now lays any doubt to. Moreover, Hitler was trained and partially indoctrinated by the Imperial Dictatorship, especially from 1916 when his mentor and future temporary co-conspirator Ludendorff came to power as part of the Eastern Front Junta.
Forgive me if I cannot blame the allies for being particularly incensed at having a war (and in the case of Serbia an outright genocidal war) foisted upon them at great cost and fought with great criminality.
"France and GB "leadership" were idiots and they ruined their own countries with both wars."
Untrue, but the Kaiserreichs were.
That is the conformist version of history. Placing your faith in intel organs is not all that smart. They are often wrong, and in the case of Russia, they were. The Tsar knew that by taking on Austria, he was also going to take on Germany.
Nothing you posted challenges the fact that Germany was the last to mobilize. Because the time and effort required, mobilization was regarded as an act of war at the time.
"They blamed it all on the Germans and Austro-Hungarians because the Germans and Austro-Hungarians set the planet on fire with a series of unprovoked declarations of war,"
That is simply a lie. The killing of the Grand Duke was nothing if not an act of war/ The Serbian regime may not have ordered it,. but the Black Hand has many people in the regime and it takes as much credulity to believe the regime had no hand in it as it takes to believe Hitler new nothing of the holocaust.
The Kaiserreich was not a dictatorship. The Kaiser was turned down, many times by the Reachstag. That can not happen in a dictatorship.
Part 1
"That is the conformist version of history."
Firstly: What the farq is that even supposed to mean and how is it in any way meaningful or valuable in terms of truth value?
Secondly: No, it is not. The overwhelming majority of mainstream or "conformist version" of histories generally obfuscate or muddy the origins of WWI. I can guarantee you that less than one in a thousand discuss things like the 1912 OHL Conference or the decision of the Reichsbank to confiscate domestic gold holdings even prior to the Sarajevo murders.
In general "conformist history" tends to muddy itself into convenient stories of mutual fault and responsibility and even great powers tangled in intertwining alliances that seemingly cannot be broken (except of course they could be and were).
The Third Reich's guilt for the outbreak of WWII is all but enshrined to the point of sacredness and where you are condemned for merely questioning it, and not without good reason, but the responsibility of the Second Reich and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is less o.
"Placing your faith in intel organs is not all that smart."
Placing them in themselves is not smart, but they are data points. Moreover, when we can confirm them from other points (such as Russian WWI Archives showing they were going after Austria-Hungary but not Germany, and German archives showing that their intelligence confirmed Russian claims they were mobilizing against Austria-Hungary but not seeking conflict with Germany while the Kaiser was lying to the Reichstag claiming otherwise) they must be accounted for.
In any case the relevant fact - and it is a fact - is that while I could not blame Germany and Austria-Hungary for considering that the Russian government was lying about its intentions, that doesn't justify the German and Austro-Hungarian governments lying to their own people or the world in order to start multiple wars of aggression, including one of genocidal extermination that would see something like one tenth of the entire Serbian population die.
"They are often wrong,"
Correct.
"and in the case of Russia, they were."
No, no they were not. And moreover Sektion IIIb and post-war research confirmed they were not wrong.
"The Tsar knew that by taking on Austria, he was also going to take on Germany."
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Alliance Treaties, and I think it is worth understanding Italy's public declaration of neutrality in which it painstakingly documented how Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia was a war of aggression that exempted the other members of the Triple Alliance from their treaty obligations to support them. And while we can quibble about how the Italians were doing this for cynical, self-serving reasons such as wanting better deals (and that has a lot of truth to it) on a legal and moral level they were completely correct.
What was different with Austria-Hungary's relationship with the other member of the Triple Alliance, Germany, was not the black letter treaty obligations or the law but the fact that Germany and Austria-Hungary both sought to provoke a general war, unbeknownst to the Russian government at the time (though they suspected). Nikolai II and his government hoped that by threatening the Austro-Hungarians they would force the Habsburgs to back down and accept limited Serbian concessions like the Serbs had agreed to in their ultimatum response, or failing that isolate the Habsburgs.
They did not expect the Germans to declare war on them before Russia had done so on Austria-Hungary. And they sure as HELL did not expect the Germans to declare war on them, the French, and the Belgians before the first Russian declaration of war had arrived in Vienna or Budapest, before the first Russian boot had crossed the border.
A miscalculation to be sure - and one of many, many, many ones made by the not-so-Great White Tsar and his government - but different.
"Nothing you posted challenges the fact that Germany was the last to mobilize."
This is blatantly false. Germany declared mobilization on August 1st, more than 24 hours before France and 72 hours before Britain. I pointed this out.
> *Untrue. The German call for mobilization was on August 1st, 1914, and it was unique because UNLIKE BASICALLY EVERY OTHER MOBILIZATION PLAN IN THE WORLD AT THE TIME, the German Mobilization Plan *ALSO called* for declarations of WAR on the major Entente countries *AND* an invasion of Belgium whether the Belgians agreed to let them pass or not, meaning that (to quote the great historian David Fromkin), "Under the Schlieffen Plan, for Germany to mobilize was to mean war because as part of the plan, German troops as they were called up were to invade Belgium automatically."
> This meant that unlike basically every other power, there was no prospect for Germany of calling up the troops and then demonstrating on the border before calling them back to barracks and demobbing them as part of a diplomatic strategy. There was no firebreak between declaring mobilization on one hand and declaring war. This is top tier Mens Rea along with the 1912 Conference and the early (pre-Sarajevo) 1914 orders by the Reichsbank to confiscate Gold as part of transitioning to a wartime economy.
> In sharp contrast, the British only declared mobilization on August 4th.*
So not only was Germany not the last to mobilize, it was among the very first to do so. And unlike every single other country involved, its mobilization plans were the only ones that inherently included declarations of war, with no off ramps, no firebreaks, and no gaps.
If you do not believe me, try digging up primary source information on British declarations of mobilization in 1914 versus German ones. And I am baffled as to why the hell you think otherwise.
If it is "conformist history" to assert the primacy of linear time and that August 4th indeed came after August 1st, then yes I confess to being an adherent of "conformist history." But that is not an indictment of me. And notably even those motivated to downplay German and Habsburg culpability for this war such as Chris Clark agree with me. We still have the documents.
"Because the time and effort required, mobilization was regarded as an act of war at the time."
Absolute bullshit. Mobilization was never something done lightly or easily precisely because it was costly, troublesome, and caused a panic. However, it was something done multiple times without the outbreak of war.
This is made crystal clear in cases such as the "War in Sight" Crisis of 1875 when Bismarck - worried at French recovery - wanted to provoke another war with France, only for Russia's new anti-German Tsar to issue mobilization and threaten that if Germany invaded France without due cause Russia would invade Germany, causing Bismarck to back down. Ditto Serbia's 1908 mobilization over Bosnia and the ensuing climbdown, and I could go on.
The difference is that the German mobilization plans in 1914 had no offramp, they inherently transitioned straight into invasion plans demanding war.
"What the farq is that even supposed to mean and how is it in any way meaningful or valuable in terms of truth value?"
If you have no understanding of what that means, you should not be here.
The rest is mostly BS.
If you cannot answer the question or provide any reason why "conformist version of history" is worth noting in and of itself, you should not bother mentioning it.
"The rest is mostly BS."
I don't take judgements on BS from people who are so chronologically and historically illiterate they make provably wrong statements about things like when Imperial Germany mobilized in 1914 versus when France mobilized.
German Mobilization, Issued August 1st, Dated to be complete on August 2nd:
https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/wilhelmine-germany-and-the-first-world-war-1890-1918/the-kaisers-order-for-german-mobilization-august-1-1914
"The mobilization order reads: “I herewith decree: The German Army and the Imperial Navy are to be made ready for war in accordance with the mobilization plans for the German Army and the Imperial Navy. / August 2, 1914, will be set as the first day of mobilization, Berlin, August 1, 1914. / Wilhelm / Bethmann Hollweg / To the Imperial Chancellor, Imperial Admiralty, and the Minister of War.”"
French mobilization order, issued August 2nd:
https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/facomponent/2f836b2871dd125f3622365951cfe1f159e49598/
British Mobilization Orders, August 4th and August 5th.
https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/proclamations-that-mobilised-the-british-army-in-1914/
So by your own standards, you should not be here due to peddling provable horse dung from some dishonest source that cannot even do chronological time correctly. Indeed, that you have far less justification to be here than I do because I don't have to resort to mealy mouthed phrasings like "conformist history." I can simply point out "This is absolute nonsense and anybody who has read the actual documents can prove it."
Part 2
"That is simply a lie."
No, it is truth.
"The killing of the Grand Duke was nothing if not an act of war/"
Correct, HAD IT BEEN DONE BY THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT.
But it was not. It was done by a group of local terrorists in Sarajevo under the loose (VERY VERY LOOSE I MIGHT ADD) patronage of a terrorist network headed up by Dragutin Dimitrjevic, head of Serbian Military Intelligence, WITHOUT ANY APPROVAL FROM THE SERBIAN GOVERNMENT WHATSOEVER.
And it's telling that not only did the German and Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian governments take possession of the vast majority of the Serbian state archives during WWI with every motivation to try and prove Serbian government endorsement of Apis and the Sarajevo regicides and *COULDN'T*, but a generation later the fucking NAZIS captured even more documents when they took over Belgrade and Yugoslavia in 1941 and also failed.
There is a very simple reason for this. Dimitrijevic and his network were rogue elements within the Serbian government but not directly responsible to it, and even then their knowledge and role of the Sarajevo murder planning - while more than enough to justify hanging all of them - was indirect and limited. They first came to Dimitrijevic's attention when Princip and his short bus compatriots bothered Dimitrijevic's 2IC to ask for help and the 2IC asked him to tell them to go away. Instead Dimitrijevic shrugged, gave them access to a shooting range for a day, found their worse-than-the-NYPD shooting accuracy to be satisfactory, and then gave them some pistols, expired poison, bomb making material, and passes (that the conspirators didn't need because of how they could slip in) and then wished them the best of luck, fully expecting them to fail miserably.
By the end of the war Dimitrijevic and co would be plotting to overthrow the Serbian government, only to fail and be hanged for treason.
The Serbian Government's track record was far from saintly, but nobody in the Royal Household or the Prime Minister's Cabinet knew or authorized the murders, and a century of trying to prove otherwise has failed miserably.
But even if we ignore all of that, it wouldn't justify the Austro-Hungarians committing large scale mass murder through Northern Serbia or Germany"pre-emptively" declaring war on Russia, France, and Belgium. Nor would it change the fact that as the 1912 Conference, the January 1914 Gold Order, and pretty much everything outside of Hoetzendorff's mouth for decades showed, the German and Austro-Hungarian governments had concluded on the need for an aggressive war, the only question was when, against whom, and with what pretext.
"The Serbian regime may not have ordered it,."
DID not order it.
Period full stop. Meaning Austria-Hungary had no justification whatsoever to issue the ultimatum, especially not in the terms it demanded, and particularly without even bothering to propose things like an international investigation.
"but the Black Hand has many people in the regime and it takes as much credulity to believe the regime had no hand in it as it takes to believe Hitler new nothing of the holocaust."
Except we can trace Hitler's culpability in the Holocaust to multiple Fuhrer Directives he issued such as the "life unworthy of life" decree inaugurating Aktion T4 and the "Armenian" Speech. Nobody has found any document from PM Pasic's Cabinet or the Royal Household justifying the Sarajevo murders and given their dire opinion on Dimitirjevic and the failure of the Habsburgs or Second and Third Reichs to find it or even forge something convincingly, we can be very sure none exists.
Moreover, it is worth noting that even among Unification or Death/the Serbian Black Hand under Dimitirjevic, shockingly little documentation survives showing Dimitrijevic knew much at all of Young Bosnia's (amateurism) planning for what would turn out to be the Sarajevo Murders, and he had little role in it except as a funder who expected it to fail but welcomed the opportunity anyway. He and his goons were guilty and deserved death, but they were never the masterminds directly overseeing the Sarajevo murders, nor did they plan for war.
And again, even if we ignored all that it would do absolutely nothing to justify Germany declaring war on Russia, France, or Belgium. It frankly doesn't even justify Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. Even the US in the wake of 9/11 gave the Taliban one final chance to turn over OBL and the Al Qaeda leadership to them, and the Austro-Hungarians pointedly refused any attempt at international investigation.
"The Kaiserreich was not a dictatorship."
Define "dictatorship." Because by any measure it became more and more of one as time went on as Wilhelm II mentioned. This is why the writings of the likes of Wilhelm II< the Prinz von Eulenberg, and especially Falkenhayn, Ludendorff, and Hindenburg are useful. In 1914 it was not as strong of one that Wilhelm felt he could ignore the Reichstag altogether and so instead favored conning them into voting for war credits and to voluntarily limit their power, but after that it was downhill.
"The Kaiser was turned down, many times by the Reachstag. That can not happen in a dictatorship."
I'm sure Brezhnev and his fights with the Presidium and even Lenin and his wrangling with the Central Committee would have been surprised to know. And in any case the Reichstag ceased being able to effectively counteract the Kaiser and Cabinet soon after the War Credits vote. That became worse since they were constitutionally incapable of overruling the Kaiser's prerogatives on the military or the Reichsbank anyway.
By 1915 the OHL and Imperial Cabinet responded to Liebknecht's vocal opposition of them by illegally conscripting him into the military in contravention of the constitutional protections of a Reichstag member, and while that was the most dramatic case at several other times the Kaiser intervened to gag, dissolve, or intimidate the legislature. So it became dictatorial very soon in the war, and I think a close analysis of Eulenberg's diaries (again, not exactly sources examined much by "conformist history") bears out that the mechanisms of a velvet gloved dictatorship able to form an iron fist were ironed out years earlier before Eulenberg's disgrace.
The Black Hand has people salted throughout the Serbian Government. To think the government had no had in it is pure naïveté.
The last part of your response contradicts what you said earlier. There was always tension between the Reichstag and the throne because they would not knuckle under to the Kaiser. It was not a dictatorship.
OTOH, Governments tend to become dictatorships when they are at war. Nothing surprising there. Look at the behavior of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR. No difference.
"The Black Hand has people salted throughout the Serbian Government. To think the government had no had in it is pure naïveté."
Firstly: I don't take lectures on "pure naïveté" from someone who has so little grasp of the subject matter they managed to ignore basic, undisputable, not-controversial facts such as days of mobilization by which power.
(And I say again: )
German Mobilization, Issued August 1st, Dated to be complete on August 2nd:
https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/wilhelmine-germany-and-the-first-world-war-1890-1918/the-kaisers-order-for-german-mobilization-august-1-1914
"The mobilization order reads: “I herewith decree: The German Army and the Imperial Navy are to be made ready for war in accordance with the mobilization plans for the German Army and the Imperial Navy. / August 2, 1914, will be set as the first day of mobilization, Berlin, August 1, 1914. / Wilhelm / Bethmann Hollweg / To the Imperial Chancellor, Imperial Admiralty, and the Minister of War.”"
French mobilization order, issued August 2nd:
https://francearchives.gouv.fr/fr/facomponent/2f836b2871dd125f3622365951cfe1f159e49598/
British Mobilization Orders, August 4th and August 5th.
https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/proclamations-that-mobilised-the-british-army-in-1914/
Secondly: "Pure naïveté" is accepting that which is not proven just because it is befitting your particular narrative. Pure naïveté is blaming France and Russia for the outbreak of war because Clemenceau while having absolutely farq all idea Clemenceau was not even in government at the time.
Thirdly: The Central Powers and the Nazis both spent about a decade in control of the lion's share of the Serbian Royal Archives trying to "prove" that the Serbian government outside of Dimitrijevic was complicit in the Sarajevo murders, and the Central Powers' modern day dishonest apologists like Chris Clark have had even longer with access to it.
They have been able to provide absolutely nothing except things like Pasic's grudging and late warning to the Bosnian Military Governor of the KuK that there was a potential plot, gutting their claims.
If there was something to be had or even significant evidence to the contrary, we wouldn't have to peddle blather about "conformist history", Clemenceau the In Opposition Newspaper Man Illuminati Puppetmaster, or documents that if anything underline how the Serbian Government did not know about the "Black Hand" (the proper title here is Unification or Death). or their plans for the Sarajevo murders (and indeed that Unification or Death had very little idea on the Sarajevo Murders beyond the broad idea because it was mostly a plan of Young Bosnia).
BUT EVEN IF WE IGNORED ALL OF THAT, there's this:
Fourthly: Did the Habsburgs have any evidence whatsoever that the Serbian Government was complicit, and would resist any attempt to render justice before war, especially at the time they declared war?
No, No, and No. Indeed very much the opposite, they knew the Serbian Government had responded to their ultimatum by accepting every single term except for the one allowing the Habsburg police forces to essentially occupy the country and suspend the constitution. They also knew the Serbs and others were advocating for an international investigation. The Habsburgs and Potsdam knew this, but they went to war anyway and conducted themselves with atrocious cruelty and brutality.
"The last part of your response contradicts what you said earlier."
Only if you pretend that dictators never see the importance of retreating before pressure even if legally they don't "need" to or practically they could probably push it. Try reading things like how Hitler (who was by any stretch of the imagination an even greater dictator than the Kaiser or his warlords) was forced to publicly cancel Aktion T4, or how Stalin made an abortive attempt to purge many of his rivals like Tukhachevsky in 1930 and backed off due to not believing his power was secure.
The Kaiser had already run roughshed over German law on many points before, especially in the areas where the Cabinet and Military could curtail parliamentary oversight. He and the Prinz von Eulenberg had already engaged in extensive vote rigging campaigns both for elections in the Reichstag (especially in places like the Electoral Kreises of Upper Saxony and Hanover).
"There was always tension between the Reichstag and the throne because they would not knuckle under to the Kaiser. It was not a dictatorship."
Eulenberg and Wilhelm II's primary source documents do not go away just because you want to ignore them. And yes there was always tension between them, in part because the Reichstag wouldn't always knuckle under to the Kaiser and in part because even when it did like over the von Trotha crisis there was still bitter feelings.
This manifested most sharply in the military and bureaucracy (where the Reichstag had indirect oversight at best) and in Imperial territories like Alsace-Lorraine, but also in other aspects like vote counting in the State of Prussia. And after the War Credits vote Wilhelm II gradually - and to his detriment - dropped the mask in favor of empowering a series of military leaders (first Moltke the Younger, then Falkenhayn, then Ludendorff and Hindenburg).
"OTOH, Governments tend to become dictatorships when they are at war. Nothing surprising there. Look at the behavior of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR. No difference."
Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR never forcibly conscripted a sitting member of the legislature without trial (Vallandingham was given a court martial in which he was duly convicted of advocating violation of wartime law and propagandizing for the Confederacy and deported). They also did not order the murder or forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of prisoners or civilian detainees as we now know the Kaiserreich did in things like the forced deportation of Poles from the "Polish Border Strip." They also did not order the lawless imprisonment and torture of a loyal soldier like Armin Wegner and the destruction of his property without charge purely in order to destroy evidence of their ally engaging in racially based and religiously motivated mass murder.
But let's go back to basics.
You want to claim that Germany was the last to mobilize, even after Britain.
Pray tell me what dates do you think Britain, France, and Germany mobilized? And why on Earth do you think you get to ignore handwritten notes from the Kaiser himself ordering mobilization on August 1st to be completed on the Second by blathering about "Conformist History"?
This is a basic skill check to see if you can even evaluate a chronological timeline accurately or what order August 1st, August 2nd, August 4th, and August 5th of the same year come in. Talking about "conformist history" is not an adequate substitute for basic facts like that.
I blame Gavrillo Princip. Without him no Hitler, no Stalin, no Sykes-Picot, no disgruntled Japan, etc.
Princip was terrorist scum and a murderer whose only remorse was supposedly that he killed the Archduke's wife rather than Governor Potiorek, but he had nothing to do with the fundamental causes why the world went to war. By 1912 the German General Staff and Imperial Cabinet had concluded they would have to go to war at some time in the next 6 years, preferably before 1916, and early in 1914 (IIRC January to March) the Reichsbank had issued orders that all circulating gold be handed over to them, indicating intention to put the German Empire on imminent war footing. Moreover, Conrad von Hoetzendorff in his role as Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff had advocated "Preventive War" on Serbia even without justification every year for multiple years, with a host of other planned wars to boot.
Had Habsburg Police in Bosnia gotten smart and scooped up the entire Young Bosnia network, the Habsburgs and German Empire would have sparked a global war a bit later over some other pretense like they had been maneuvering towards with things like the Panther Affair.
And ideologically a lot of the precursors for Hitler and Stalin were already in place (see the German "Socialists of the Chair" or "Royal Socialists" in economics or the "War Socialism" of Ludendorff, or Koba the Dread and Lenin operating in the Russian environment) and the underlying problems that made Sykes-Picot seem like the lesser evil were already in place. The big issue I see was Japan, which was indeed screwed over unjustly largely by the US. But ultimately Princip was an excuse rather than the actual cause, and ironically or not he murdered just about the only significant pro-Slavic Dove in the Habsburg senior leadership.
No he did not. Indeed he had his own role in crippling British preparedness with the 10 Year Rule. Those that fomented WWII were German Militarists of which the National Socialists were ultimately the victors, the Soviet Union and its Comintern, the Japanese Militarists, and the Italian Fascists.
But it's fitting a Jew Hating Neo-Nazi Dumbfuck like yourself would claim as such.
Part 1
"Read up on the history focusing on the lead up to WW2."
Bitch please, I have. Indeed, I've probably forgotten more about the relevant history and history in general than you have ever known. Which is why I was able to dumpster your Neo-Nazi, Jew hating asshole when you claimed it was impossible to open the Strait of Hormuz so long as Iran existed, something that would've been VERY SURPRISING to the Portuguese (who outright occupied Bahrain, Hormuz, Basra, and several Iranian Ports in the early 1600s until English and Dutch ships helped break Portuguese lines of communication), British East India Company (who occupied Busher in 1856 and kept it and straits contact straight through THE FREAKING 1857 MUTINY), or the Iraqis and Us (as in spite of Saddam's Iraq failing to defeat Iran and spending most of the war on the backfoot it was able to fight hard enough to prevent the strait from ever being closed entirely, until the Iranians did a retard move and prompted US retaliation in Operation Praying Mantis that ensured the Strait would remain open to Iraqi and pro-Iraqi Gulf Arab shipping for the rest of the conflict).
This is objectively provable and easily confirmable if you know worth a fuck where to look. Which makes your bullshitting on the matter all the more jarring and indefensible because there really is absolutely no justification for it factually or even ideologically. And if you're at the point of denying objectively observable reality like the Portuguese fortifications at places like Bahrain and Kuwait, you're in full "I reject your reality and substitute my own" territory that makes paying you much heed worthless and indicates your integrity and intellectual rigor are utterly lacking.
"Note how the UK and France use Poland the same way NATO has used Ukraine- push it into war as a way to drain an enemy white."
Except that's not what happened, that's retarded cope that came much later from German militarists and later Neo-Nazis trying to justify their criminal conspiracy with the Soviets to dismember Eastern Europe, and later the Kremlin for its failure to topple the new Ukrainian government in 2014 and 2022.
The reality is that prior to 1939 the British and French had worked to put a stop to Polish aggrandizement, with their peacekeeping troops having fought Polish rebels in Silesia in the 1910s and early 1920s, helping the Germans keep all of Silesia in the first two uprisings and then brokering a compromise vote after the third that saw the Poles take a third of Silesia but Germany keep the last. They also blatantly refused to sanction the Polish coup in Vilnius officially, even if their diplomatic relations continued. Furthermore, Hitler made the choice to reach out to Poland and sign a pact with their Foreign Minister Beck in 1934, where the Poles allowed the Danzig Nazi Party to monopolize domestic politics in the Free City of Danzig on condition it would not be annexed to Germany proper, Hitler abandoned all open territorial claims against Poland, and both sides agreed to cooperation against Czechoslovakia (which they actually did) and against the Soviet Union (which Hitler betrayed the clauses of by coordinating with the Soviets).
Hitler then betrayed that pact after 1939 when he further betrayed the last remaining provisions of Munich after he already devoured Czechoslovakia, by which point the Poles were caught flatfooted and desperately reached out to Britain and France to prepare for a defensive war.
In contrast, the Kremlin was simply retarded about Ukraine, ignoring the all but godgiven chance for their influence as a result of the Orange Revolution Coalition imploding in mutual accusations and infighting and Yanukovych's successful triangulation between his base and that of his traditional enemies by claiming he would continue trade relations with Russia while seeking to negotiate an association agreement with the EU by sperging out and forcing Yanukovych to abandon EU Association Talks for terms that were seen as humiliatingly feeble even by the traditionally pro-Russian electorates in the South and East. The Russian government then responded to the utterly predictable "Oh look it's a time that ends in O Clock" traditionally Ukrainian mass protests by pushing Yanukovych to crack down first questionably legally and then flat out illegally in a way that wound up in even his own coalition deserting him. And when Yanukovych responded to summons from his own Rada to appear before them and answer questions about cabinet policy and actions by doing a runner (after stealing some things from his office) Putin ordered an invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 in the hopes of securing the areas (successfully in the case of Crimea, unsuccessfully in the case of the Donbas).
Then when Ukraine pointedly failed to keel over or knuckle down and indeed over the course of the long war began to push back on the Donbaschukuos (with them being reduced to about a third of their peak size in 2021) and taking advantage of Biden and co's weakness and appeasing attitude, the Kremlin authorized a full scale invasion of Ukraine with the intent of decapitating the Ukrainian government and imposing some kind of puppet status on them. That they failed due to a few screwed up calculations and overconfidence and wound up in a war that is bleeding them white does nothing to change the fact that this is not how it was supposed to go, or that they have nobody to thank more than themselves for this particular fuckup, having demonstrated to everybody and anybody in the class that the rewards for constitutional neutrality in former Soviet Space and trying to engage in peaceful co-existence with both the West and the "Russian World" is perfidy, war, and plans of national dismemberment.
I don't expect you to know all that since as I've established before you're a historical illiterate, Jew hater, and Neo-Nazi fuck.
"They just didn't count on the effectiveness of the tank + blitzkrieg doctrine. "
Mate, the Western Allies invented the tank. As for the "blitzkrieg doctrine" it didn't exist, what did was Bewegunskrieg, the Maneuver-War/Struggle, and that was something they and pretty much everyone else underestimated.
But the main thing they and nobody else counted on was the Nazi-Soviet Alliance and the fact that even after the significant Nazi victories on Poland's Western frontier rendering Warsaw indefensible in the long term, the Soviets would come in from the East to roll up Poland's "Romanian Salient/Bridgehead" where they had planned to hold out for eventual relief.
I'm not surprised you don't want to address that fact precisely because it removes any doubt who started this war and who bears the blood guilt for it, in addition to touching on how Hitler made an alliance with the supposedly-Jewish-coded Bolsheviks to dismember Eastern and Central Europe. But the fact remains that without the Soviets overrunning most of Eastern Poland and cooperating to neutralize pro-Allied neutrals in the area like the Baltic Three, Romania, and Finland there would have been no prospect of the German military being able to turn West and North in the time it did.
Fortunately, Putin did not have a Hitler/Stalin type co-conspirator in 2014 or 2022 and was nowhere near as farsighted or competent, and unlike the Nazis and Soviets he refused to engage in a general mobilization since he had been led to believe the "special military operation" would be a walkover.
"Also note how Churchill, in spite of saying some mean (but true) things about jews in his youth, owed a lot of money to jewish financiers who didn't require him to pay it back, forgiving it after the death of the debt holders."
I realize you're historically illiterate and dishonest, but Churchill owed a lot of money to lots of financiers, both Jews and non-Jews. At no point whatsoever did he owe more money to Jewish financiers than he did to non-Jews, and while he spent much of the 1920s and 1930s in deep debt he got a number of sweetheart deals and fortunate breaks and by 1937 was paying both the interest and principles, and a year before Hitler betrayed Munich in 1939 he was solvent, not due to DA JOOZ but because of the income he got as a journalist as well as his wife's investments. "Jewish Financiers" helped, but so did basically everyone else, and by 1947 he had paid down all debts that had not been forgiven.
It's all a very sordid affair but not at all atypical for British aristocracy of both pro-and-anti-Jewish bents, or others. And while we're on that subject wait till we talk about Hitler's tax returns! Or lack thereof. "The Fuhrer is Tax Exempt" and all that, as well as extreme tax evasion and fraud on his part.
In any case, had the "Jewish Financiers" and others been paying him to foment war with Germany, they badly misjudged and screwed up since Churchill would take until 1930 before he abandoned support for the 10 Year Rule he had helped create, by which time he was a political outcast and disgrace. Conversely had they been paying him to vocally defend Jews against Jew haters like yourself he had already been doing so well before.
So the realistic, non-deluded take would be that some Jewish Financiers and others gave him easy loans because he was a sympathetic voice, but so did a lot of non-Jews.
"WW2 was precipitated because GE threatened the UK,"
No, it was precipitated because multiple totalitarian nutcases wanted global conquest or hegemony. Hitler's Unpublished Second Book and a host of shit the Bolsheviks wrote makes this abundantly clear that they would not accept anything short of global dominance.
Part 2
"and because GE went off the international trade system that allowed banks to skim a % off the top of all intn trade."
Oh no, it's a dishonest retard that doesn't know how banks work.
Please, please tell me when Germany supposedly "went off the international trade system." I'll be waaaaiting. And be waiting for why the Nazi government complained so hard about embargos such as the US Embargo on Helium after the illegal theft of DELAG.
"Hence the international banker angle."
Which does not exist because you're an idiot.
"also check out:
"Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich" by Guido Giacomo Preparata (Pluto Press, 2005)"
Unfortunately for you, I already have.
And Preparata is a dumbass, historically illiterate, chronologically illiterate idiot who among other things gets who in the Russian Government in 1916 and 1917 wanted to exit the war wrong (outside of Rasputin), claimed Trebitsch-Lincoln was hired to foil the Kapp Putsch (something that even the habitually Jew hating Luttwitz and Kapp did not claim until well later and without evidence), and as typical failed to read the War Guilt Clause of Versailles (or its adjacent peace treaties like Trianon and Saint-Germain but shush on that) wrong.
All of these things are broadly and objectively provable and not in serious dispute, but which Preparate shows himself to be grotesquely incompetent at when he's not outright dishonest.
In addition to a host of other more arcane shit like claiming the Hess that flew to Britain was not the real Hess, something that was considered at the time by the British and disproven by their taking of his blood and fingerprints and also by the Nazis separately, resulting in Hitler ruthlessly purging many of Hess's former comrades.
If Preparata is going to be enough of a dishonest, historically illiterate dumbfuck he can't even tell how Hess's identity was confirmed, I have no reason to trust him on a host of other things.g
Ok Lying Dumbfuck, that is not an actual response or counter-argument.
Especially since it guts basically all your arguments and claims.
The UK is no longer the UK of Winston Churchill. It is degenerating into a fascistic Islamic republic. Under these circumstances I would prefer it if they had no armed forces whatsoever especially nuclear weapons.
The distinct possibility of Islamic leaning if not outright Islamist governments in the UK, Germany and France in the near future is not fantastical. The EU actually seems to feel it is to their advantage for that to happen because...? Should the EU get their way, I predict they will find those Islamist leaning governments behavior...not as predicted.
It will be a shame to see all European history from Charles Martel to John Sobieski erased.
Islam cannot stand any memorials or culture but their own brutal religions.
Just another chapter, not erased. The UK and the US are following the same steps as every Empire before us. *Fate of Empires by Sir John Glubb.
The New EU as a Caliphate? Doesn't the Quran promote Dar al-Islam?
Yeah, with their own, Caliphate controlled nukes...
the good news is that none of the 4 V boats will be running by then, and I suspect that the Tridents themselves require parts from the USN and NNSA. though some smart Paki can likely get a bang out of the warhead, if shipped in a Conex.
Bad news? The Frog warheads likely are independent of the US supply chain.
Then there are the 60 B61's held hostage in Turkey
With sufficient spheres, one states "Hand them back, now, or we will provide more, soon." Ugly, but unless the recipient is insane, likely to work.
Key is to get the nuclear weapons out of their hands….
Sinking and neutralizing their submarines may be a future course of action.
Churchill considered “Mohammadism” - as he termed it - the greatest threat to the West of all.
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. (The River War I: 248-49)
I've posted that quote far and wide, many times.
I prefer they reverse course and start making the Islamists abide by Britain's laws, eliminate Sharia laws and courts, and, most importantly, buy or invest in their once proud Navy. How to do that? Put the Adults back in charge.
This is, regretfully, a look into the future for our own failing immigration policies and our own underinvestment in the US Navy.
That assumes there are enough adults to whip the kindergartner class back into shape. The House of Lords is not yet coopted by immigrant interests. They would need to find a way or renouncing the Parliament act of 1911 and regain their historical position of leadership.
Seemingly not a likely course of action to be seen from the same people who aided and abetted the rape of their own daughters.
I don't think they can make the "Islamists abide by Britain's laws." The only way Britain can survive, and still be Britain, is to remove the Islamists.
More admirals than ships
15 surface combatants, ten submarines, 125 admirals?
But think of how diverse of a country we will be and diversity is our greatest strength who needs a military if you have welfare
45 actual Admirals, 63 ships, so a little better than us. (Gulp)
If you count patrol craft.
25 combatants.
This will be the USN 20 years from now.
More "Fail, Britannia" from this morning:
https://www.lordashcroft.com/2026/03/the-imperial-woke-museum-didnt-want-to-display-my-war-medal-collection-at-least-theres-still-one-place-that-values-duty-bravery-and-sacrifice/
And more:
https://restoremag.com/eight-days/
I fear things are far worse than what is being reported.
The smart way to bet....
That's unfortunate...
I've been to the Imperial War Museum, though it's been nearly 25 years ago. Just walking into the atrium was awe inspiring. Planes hanging from the ceiling tanks on the floor. (Including Monty's command tank and a Jagd Panther.)
The only thing that put me off a bit was the gallery dedicated to Monty. It clearly presented how it was that he won WWII. I suppose they have to make do with the heroes they have.
I'm afraid the IWM is now off my recommended must see places.
You're right about the heros you have....with all the sturm und drang going on now about Cesar Chavez.....
But Monty? The war would have been over in 1944 if Eisenhower had shot him and De Gaulle in 1943. Or breaking him after he took credit for winning the Battle of the Bulge - where he couldn't be assed to show up to the meeting, much less do anything. Getting Eisenhower and Bradley both on the verge of resignation for his big mouth?
The longer the insanity lasts in England the less chance of recovery....
Yeah, saw that. Depressing
Absently, I wonder how long before he gets prosecuted for speaking against the UK...
Already happening
Unfortunately you don't have to look into the past to experience the crumbling of a legendary navy and an empire for that fact. It's happening before our very eyes.
The British used to deal with treason with a short rope or a sharp axe and this situation amounts to nothing short of treason.
To the lads at 42 Commando, I wish I could buy the next round again.
This is what the Founding Fathers of the US feared. When the population of the country can be bought by essentially repurposing tax-money to bribe those actually being taxed, you get this sort of country-destroying foolishness. The UK has been in the process of burying itself as each government sought to purchase the loyalty of the British electorate using taxpayers' money.
Ben Franklin said: "A republic, if you can keep it." The Brits are finding that it is very hard to keep the Westminster-style Parliamentary democracy they thought they had.
Even now, amongst many of the British people, the refrain is not, "why is our Navy so crap." It's actually, "how many National Health Service Nurses could those carriers have paid for?" The UK Government, sadly, is delivering what their people wanted.
Saw the video a day or 2 ago. Sad but it's been in motion for decades. Both UK political parties have hollowed out their military to the point where it's irrelevant. All in pursuit of implementing Socialist programs and enabling the Muslim takeover of the country. The UK has many existential problems brought on by the political class. This is just one of them.
Last time I saw numbers which was a few years ago there were slightly more sailors in the RN than civilian employees in the MoD. Is that still true? Even then the civilian employees were larger than the Army.
Like us, they had the bright idea of saving money by using Civilian Mariners for Navy supply ships.....
The problem is not in using civilian mariners. The problem is in choosing to throw the money to pay them away on pointless things. The Starmer government has a tendency to favor grandiose public programs that are 'shared' with a foreign government over funding day-today activities. Fund the GCAP aircraft program because it allows him to fly to Tokyo or Rome and have a grand time with his Japanese or Italian counterparts. Don't fund more Type 31 frigates (cheap workhorse equivalent to FF(X) because those aren't shared with foreigners. Spend money on Type 26 uber-frigates that are ridiculously expensive for what you get because they're shared with the Norwegians. Don't spend money buying F-35s to fill the decks of your existing carriers. Those won't get you positive meetings with friendly European politicians. Bonus: If you hand build-slots to the Norwegians, you can kick your own frigate purchases down the road and not piss the Scots off.
The Dutch in the Medway
Rudyard Kipling
If wars were won by feasting,
Or victory by song,
Or safety found in sleeping sound,
How England would be strong!
But honour and dominion
Are not maintained so.
They're only got by sword and shot,
And this the Dutchmen know!
The moneys that should feed us
You spend on your delight,
How can you then have sailor-men
To aid you in your fight?
Our fish and cheese are rotten,
Which makes the scurvy grow–
We cannot serve you if we starve,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Our ships in every harbour
Be neither whole nor sound,
And, when we seek to mend a leak,
No oakum can be found;
Or, if it is, the caulkers,
And carpenters also,
For lack of pay have gone away,
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mere powder, guns, and bullets,
We scarce can get at all;
Their price was spent in merriment
And revel at Whitehall,
While we in tattered doublets
From ship to ship must row,
Beseeching friends for odds and ends–
And this the Dutchmen know!
No King will heed our warnings,
No Court will pay our claims–
Our King and Court for their disport
Do sell the very Thames!
For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet–
And this the Dutchmen know!
Let's talk about the sailors on the USS Ford. No toilets, no beds, how long without shore leave?
"Our fish and cheese are rotten,"
You know, Tom, here at the deckplates? We'd layout several layers of bubble wrap and use a few sheets to minimize sweating and continue to use our racks. If I was the CO, I'd authorize the sponsons and the forecastle for hanging laundry along with other spaces after raiding the bousn's locker and paraloft for cord.
What we are doing to the crew is unconscionable. The Ford crew is what, 2,380? Even a Third Class Boatswain’s Mate has a skill set which can only be replaced after hours and hours of experience. How are you going to get a BM3 to re-enlist when you put him at sea for a year with no rack and a forty-minute line for the shitter?
What’s worse is the more traditionally educated ratings. There are Machinist’s mates capable of teaching college physics; do you have any idea of how few high school kids can pass Calculus? We are taking 400 nukes and putting them through the worse cruise imaginable. How many of them are going to say, “man, I need more of this.” Boomers at least get blue and gold treatment; these poor slobs don’t even get liberty. How sustainable is this?
Then I'd guess the skipper needs to step up like “Chowdah” Hill and start instilling some motivational leadership starting from the Wardroom down. They're surviving all that crap and still doing okay. - that needs to be served up as quiet daily non-bullschitt motivational inspiration. You know, like the Chief walking the spaces and the Div O going with him a couple of times a week. It's also time to lobby for a bit of colored ribbon, namely the PUC.
You won't salvage everyone (particularly the married ones.)
Going looking for a working shitter was also an occasional event as was the more frequent hunting for a working shower.
Frankly, I suspect you knew very little of how much time the white hats spent dealing with habitabilty problems or the more amusing ones like waiting 2.5 hours one year for Thanksgiving Dinner only to literally put the food down and get called to man overboard and five minutes later come back a to cleared table and a closed galley.
You know, they didn't close the Wardroom like they did the enlisted galley.
This is the time they pay the khaki to lean forward and lead!
The sewage collection system was stupid. White House, TN has such a system adn when I was doing some work there, back in the 80s, they told me they wish they had never built the thing. Gravity system are far easier to build and maintain. Vacuum systems are constant maintenance headaches.
The toilets didn't clog themselves, and that laundry didn't set itself on fire. A very disgruntled crew was protesting an extended deployment.
Maybe, maybe not. It appears neither the quality was built in before the name went and I have my own questions about the PM on the crew self-laundering facility.
This is the UK that wanted a war with Russia to defend Ukraine, the one who were going to defend Greenland against the USA.
This is just what you get when to fight everyone's wars and battles for them, Beta male nations with impotent militaries.
Truly sad, The cut flower in the vase so lovely but just as dead, has now wilted to dust.
His editorial comment @ 7:30 made me laugh through my tears for the RN.
So sad.
Hook Nelson up to a generator and power London.
You could probably power Europe and much of Asia.
Watched Felton’s video the other night…sobering…as was Reese-Mogg’s on the remains of the Royal Navy. Seems to me Britain’s beyond redemption unless what’s left of British manhood rises up, tosses the Muslim immigrants out and reclaims the country for Britons. That would probably mean putting paid to most of the elite - aristocracy and all - and replacing the House of Windsor with a dynasty that actually has some stones.