Post by Ten on Feb 27, 2010 12:18:35 GMT -5
Ten's Take on History:
with that same old disclaimer no guaranteed accuracy blah blah blah
Some of this information is fresh, whereas some of it I'm remembering from years ago. If I leave out anything important/interesting or I get anything wrong, let me know (but don't be surprised).
After the death of Prince Rudolf (who may or may not have had a glowing red nose) in 1889, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand became the heir-apparent for the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meaning that whenever Emperor Franz Josef kicked the bucket, Ferdy would be in charge. Ferdy was pretty dang important.
Sophie Chotek was not important. Sure, she was Duchess of Hohenberg, but that's just a title. She was a maid. Yet she and Ferdinand fell in love, even though Franz Josef disapproved. He warned Ferdy not to marry beneath his rank. But the lovebirds did just that. As a result, Franz Josef took away the rights of succession for their children (meaning their kids wouldn't have any power) and he did not go to their wedding. You might think that's pretty bad, butlisten read on.
Austria-Hungary was having issues with Serbia at the time (some dispute over territory and rights and colonies blah blah blah), spawning a Serbian terrorist group called the Black Hand. When Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie went on a visit to Sarajevo in 1914, a member of the Black Hand named Gavrilo Princip shot and killed them both. The Emperor Franz Josef (the man who had turned his back on and shunned this couple) was outraged at their deaths (but didn't go to the funeral) and invaded Serbia.
Germany was an ally of Austria-Hungary, so it joined in to help. Russia had made promises to help Serbia if Austria-Hungary attacked it. Then Germany decided to attack France, and it had to go through Belgium (mm, chocolate) to get there, so the Kaiser (dude in charge of Germany) asked the King of Belgium permission to march through on the way to invade France. When the King said no, the Kaiser was like, okay, man, have it your way, and Germany attacked Belgium. The UK did not think this was cool and declared war on Germany.
Then, since Brits are cool, everyone followed the fad (although America didn't get around to it until the last minute) and started declaring war on everybody until you might as well say the whole world was involved. Okay, that's me being flippant by calling it a fad. The reality is a lot of these war declarations were unavoidable (from a diplomatic standpoint) because so many countries had made so many alliances. They had promised to have each others' backs. So they did. And that's part of how we ended up with the Great War, as it was known then. Nobody called it World War I because there hadn't been a World War II yet and a lot of people figured it would be the last war there'd ever be (The War to End All Wars, they called it).
This war was intense. It was the first to use "modern" technology such as submarines, tanks, poison gas, machine guns, and all that. There had never been a war this big before. Tons of people were dying, in part because of the amount of countries involved and in part because trench warfare is stupid beyond words (then again, more people died from the Spanish Influenza, but hey, that was over twenty million people). Anyway, you already know war is bad, so let's skip a few years.
By 1917, the US had its butt in gear and was at last joining the fight against the Central Powers (that'd be Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, etc.). Americans were crappy soldiers, unused to trench warfare (not that anyone can really get used to that, but you know what I mean... their training wasn't as good) but there were a lot of them coming in, and the prospect of facing yet another foe was not good news to Germany. At this time the American president, Woodrow Wilson, had a plan called the Fourteen Points that included a lot of idealistic stuff (freedom of the seas because Britain had a beast navy and nobody trusted them with it, no more making deals in secret, taking away economic barriers, reducing military everywhere and thus lowering taxes, letting colonies decide if they want freedom or that sort of thing) that Germans thought sounded pretty good. They surrendered on the condition that they get those Fourteen Points.
As it happened, because politics is politics and every country wanted something different, the peace negotiations ended up giving Germany maybe three of those points. Germans felt betrayed. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the Great War (aka WWI), bartered away German colonies, mandated that Germany have a very small army (leaving it feeling weak and vulnerable), and forced Germany to pay a ton of cash to the winners (after it had already spent a fortune on the war). Not much later, the economic depression hit.
Is it any surprise, then, that Germans felt abused and dejected? They felt defiant of the countries that had cheated them, I'd imagine. It'd wouldn't be tough for an inspirational speaker, a misunderstood artist, speaking of his personal struggle, to rally Germans together to make something great and world-changing from their beaten nation. All he'd have to do is stir up a little nationalistic fervor, beef up the military, and... mm, you should know what I'm getting at here.
The A sad thing is how much devotion Woodrow Wilson had to one part of his Fourteen Points... this idea about a League of Nations (like an early form of the UN) that would be a club of all countries, but because he made some stupid political moves and ticked off the Republicans (who got control of Congress), America didn't become a member. Wilson believed the League of Nations would be what this textbook in my lap calls "the only real hope of preventing future wars". When it was created, it excluded Germany (and Russia). Yeah. Real helpful, guys. That and the mangled, vengeful peace treaty that ended the War to End All Wars contributed to Germany's reasons for kicking off World War II. That's what blows my mind: how peace of clumsy craftsmanship can help create war.
Quick Web Resources:
www.firstworldwar.com/bio/ferdinand.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war_i
europeanhistory.about.com/od/worldwar1/a/ww1countriesint.htm
www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
with that same old disclaimer no guaranteed accuracy blah blah blah
Some of this information is fresh, whereas some of it I'm remembering from years ago. If I leave out anything important/interesting or I get anything wrong, let me know (but don't be surprised).
After the death of Prince Rudolf (who may or may not have had a glowing red nose) in 1889, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand became the heir-apparent for the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meaning that whenever Emperor Franz Josef kicked the bucket, Ferdy would be in charge. Ferdy was pretty dang important.
Sophie Chotek was not important. Sure, she was Duchess of Hohenberg, but that's just a title. She was a maid. Yet she and Ferdinand fell in love, even though Franz Josef disapproved. He warned Ferdy not to marry beneath his rank. But the lovebirds did just that. As a result, Franz Josef took away the rights of succession for their children (meaning their kids wouldn't have any power) and he did not go to their wedding. You might think that's pretty bad, but
Austria-Hungary was having issues with Serbia at the time (some dispute over territory and rights and colonies blah blah blah), spawning a Serbian terrorist group called the Black Hand. When Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie went on a visit to Sarajevo in 1914, a member of the Black Hand named Gavrilo Princip shot and killed them both. The Emperor Franz Josef (the man who had turned his back on and shunned this couple) was outraged at their deaths (but didn't go to the funeral) and invaded Serbia.
Germany was an ally of Austria-Hungary, so it joined in to help. Russia had made promises to help Serbia if Austria-Hungary attacked it. Then Germany decided to attack France, and it had to go through Belgium (mm, chocolate) to get there, so the Kaiser (dude in charge of Germany) asked the King of Belgium permission to march through on the way to invade France. When the King said no, the Kaiser was like, okay, man, have it your way, and Germany attacked Belgium. The UK did not think this was cool and declared war on Germany.
Then, since Brits are cool, everyone followed the fad (although America didn't get around to it until the last minute) and started declaring war on everybody until you might as well say the whole world was involved. Okay, that's me being flippant by calling it a fad. The reality is a lot of these war declarations were unavoidable (from a diplomatic standpoint) because so many countries had made so many alliances. They had promised to have each others' backs. So they did. And that's part of how we ended up with the Great War, as it was known then. Nobody called it World War I because there hadn't been a World War II yet and a lot of people figured it would be the last war there'd ever be (The War to End All Wars, they called it).
This war was intense. It was the first to use "modern" technology such as submarines, tanks, poison gas, machine guns, and all that. There had never been a war this big before. Tons of people were dying, in part because of the amount of countries involved and in part because trench warfare is stupid beyond words (then again, more people died from the Spanish Influenza, but hey, that was over twenty million people). Anyway, you already know war is bad, so let's skip a few years.
By 1917, the US had its butt in gear and was at last joining the fight against the Central Powers (that'd be Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, etc.). Americans were crappy soldiers, unused to trench warfare (not that anyone can really get used to that, but you know what I mean... their training wasn't as good) but there were a lot of them coming in, and the prospect of facing yet another foe was not good news to Germany. At this time the American president, Woodrow Wilson, had a plan called the Fourteen Points that included a lot of idealistic stuff (freedom of the seas because Britain had a beast navy and nobody trusted them with it, no more making deals in secret, taking away economic barriers, reducing military everywhere and thus lowering taxes, letting colonies decide if they want freedom or that sort of thing) that Germans thought sounded pretty good. They surrendered on the condition that they get those Fourteen Points.
As it happened, because politics is politics and every country wanted something different, the peace negotiations ended up giving Germany maybe three of those points. Germans felt betrayed. The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the Great War (aka WWI), bartered away German colonies, mandated that Germany have a very small army (leaving it feeling weak and vulnerable), and forced Germany to pay a ton of cash to the winners (after it had already spent a fortune on the war). Not much later, the economic depression hit.
Is it any surprise, then, that Germans felt abused and dejected? They felt defiant of the countries that had cheated them, I'd imagine. It'd wouldn't be tough for an inspirational speaker, a misunderstood artist, speaking of his personal struggle, to rally Germans together to make something great and world-changing from their beaten nation. All he'd have to do is stir up a little nationalistic fervor, beef up the military, and... mm, you should know what I'm getting at here.
Quick Web Resources:
www.firstworldwar.com/bio/ferdinand.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war_i
europeanhistory.about.com/od/worldwar1/a/ww1countriesint.htm
www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/
