Who started both World Wars?

[9/11-investigator]

Gary North is libertarian like proponents of complete sharia law are libertarian.

I am not a libertarian, not in a long shot.
And quit heavy-handed when it comes to the Sharia law on European soil, I like to add.

Like the libertarian freedom of speech though.

 

[9/11-investigator]

Let's go back to chronology.

So far we have made it to page 23 in Uncle Pat's book of 423 pages, exclusing index and footnotes, completing chapter 1. The End of "Splendid Isolation"

Next chapter 2 - "Last Summer of Yesterday"

Deals with the first months after the assassination of the archduke, June 28, 1914.

First a quote from the final pages of the first chapter. Buchanan had already stated that Germany had made a strategic error by wanting to build a me-to-fleet that she did not need at all, due to the lack of a large colonial empire; the older European nations had already snatched away every colonizable piece of land.

p.23 - Yet, as the summer of 1914 began, no one expected war. The naval arms race had ended in 1913 when Tirpitz conceded British superiority by telling the Reichstag Budget Committee he was ready to accept a 60% rule, a 16-10 ration in favor of the Royal Navy... In the end, the High Seas Fleet had nothing to do with Britain's decision to go to war, but everything to do with converting Britain from a friendly power aloof from the alliances of Europe into a probable enemy should war come.

Conclusion: Germany had already backed down on the fleet issue, but Britain wanted war anyway. Britain considered Germany too strong, that was the real reason. At least within a small faction within the British government that proved to be decisive.

The affair only entered the British cabinet 4 weeks later with the ultimatum that Austria had just delivered to Serbia.

p.26 - The Austrians did not want a European war. Vienna wanted a short, sharp war to punish Serbia for murdering the heir to the throne and to put an end to Serb plotting to pull apart their empire. For they suspected that Belgrade's ambition was to gather the South Slavs into a united nation where Serbia would sit at the head of the table.

A concern not entirely without merit, as that country would indeed be founded in 1918 as a result of WW1. A country that unceremoniously ceased to exist in 1992, as even the youngsters here will know from their own experience.

p.27 - When news hit that Serbia had failed to submit to all 10 Austrian demands, crowds were in the streets clamoring for war [in Vienna.911I]. On July 27, the Austrian-Hungarian empire declared war. On the 28th, Belgrade was shelled from across the Danube. But... few in Britain had an inkling that within 7 days, England would enter a world war... "The Cabinet was overwhelmingly pacific", says Churchill. "At least 3/4 of its members were determined not to be drawn into a European quarrel, unless GB were gherself attacked, which was not likely."

Buchanan however earlier referered to the secret agreement that Grey had made to the French. An agreement backed by Churchill:

p.28 - "The Cabinet was absolutely against war and would never have agreed to being committed to war at this moment," wrote Churchill. Those favoring Britain's going to war, should it come, were Grey and Churchill, who had made commitments to France.

Buchanan shows the war mongering character of Churchill:

"Churchill was the only Minister to feel any sense of exultation at the course of events," writes biographer John Charmley. On July 28, he had written his wife Clementine: "My darling one & beautiful: Everything tends toward catstrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?" That same day, the Kaiser was desperately trying to avert the war to which Churchill looked forward with anticipation.

So speaks a future Prime Minister from Hell.

 

[9/11-investigator]

So how did Britain get into the war? Answer: Belgium.

p.31 - In proding the Cabinet into war, the ace of trumps for Grey and Churchill was Belgium... Believing that control of the Channel coast opposite Dover by a great hostile power was a threat to her vital interests, England had gone to war with Philips II of Spain, Louis XIV, and Napoleon's empire. After Belgium had been torn from the carcass of Napoleon's empire, Britain had extracted a guarantee of Belgium's neutrality. The European powers respected this as a vital British interest.

As today the Germans of those days already had an image problem, even before the rise of the H-word:

p.32 - Public opinion in other European nations slowly came to sense a threat, less because of the goals of German policy per se than the crude, overbearing style that Germany projected on the international stage. Without this background, one cannot understand the truly radical hate for Germany and all things German that broke out in the Entente countries with the war of 1914.

In Germany itself there was a growing sense of threat coming from Russia. As Bethmann-Hollweg (the Helmut Kohl of those days) formulated it:

p.33 - The future [belongs] to Russia, which grows and grows... in a few years there will be no defense against it.

The German situation was one of being locked between a hostile France and an ever growing Russia implying a possible 2 front war. The central figure in Germany who defined the strategic doctrine was Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen. The doctrine became known as the Schlieffen Plan.

Short version: wherever war may erupt, strike first and hardest to crush Germany's strongest enemy, France, then jump on the train towards the east to 'discipline' the Russians.

This rather agressive type of defense was a result of the geography of the German empire. The Schlieffen Plan was designed to avoid a 2 front war. Speed and time tables was everything in this view. The Germans had expected to have to deal with only 2 enemies: France and Russia. Obviously it was unaware of the secret agreement between a few members of the British government and the government of France. The French however had strong fortifications on the German-French border. The essence of the Schlieffenplan was to circumvent these fortifications and walk through Britains front yard Belgium.

p.36 - The British were largely unaware of the Schlieffen Plan, and few had any idea that a 75 year old treaty to defend Belgian neutrality might drag them into a great European war most had no desire to fight... The Germans had forgotten Bismarck, who warned that preventive war is "like committing suicide out of fear of death." It would be the arrival of a British Expeditionary Force of 120,000 men that crossed the Channel in the first 2 weeks without hindrance from the High Seas Fleet that would blunt the German advance and defeat the Schlieffen Plan.

To the defense of the Germans it should be said that they permanently had to fear the French revanchism over Elzas-Lotharingen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French-German_enmity
The desire for revenge (esprit de revanche) against Germany, and in particular for the recovery of the “lost provinces” of Alsace and Lorraine (whose importance was summed up by the French politician Gambetta in the phrase: “Never speak of them; never forget them!”) remained strong in France over the next 50 years and was the key French war aim in World War I.

Map europe August 1914.

 

[Uzzy]

More idiotic propaganda. Do you have any thoughts of your own, or are you just quoting from a slightly less ignorant layman?

 

[Corsair 115]

It is this typical Anglo lack of concern with burning to death of innocent civilians that is so frightening about them.

Only if one assumes that, in a state of total war between modern industrialized states, there really is such a thing as an 'innoncent civilian.' Especially considering that the military of Germany could not have been sustained without the effort of the civilian population to provide the military personnel and produce the arms of war. No civilians, no economy; no economy, no military; no military, no war. This is simple fact. Tanks, rifles, bullets, and artillery pieces don't build themselves. The electricty to power the factories where those items are constructed doesn't produce itself. The minerals and raw resources needed do not take themselves out of the ground. The trains which transport those resources to the factories and the supplies of war to the troops do not run themselves. And so and so on.

It's very simple: if you do not hinder the economy of the enemy, an industrialized nation-state has a nearly unlimited capacity to produce more.

Welcome to war, where you have to make many unpleasant choices.

Let us also remember the cities of Germany were hardly undefended. The Reich spent plenty of resources to defend its airspace with fighters, flak batteries, radar networks, and shelters. These defences extracted an often high toll on the Allied crews who went against them. And, ironically, had Hitler listened to some of his Luftwaffe commanders, that aerial defence of the Reich would have been better than it was. Fortunately for the Allies, Hitler was more interested in revenge than in fully protecting Germany.

It's interesting too how you place all the blame on the Allies and yet the leadership of Germany seems to escape any blame at all for what happened.

They will likely launch a nuke again if it suits them... 'to end the war', that goes without saying. Corsair, member of that group of people that occupies the lower regions of the west slope of the Bell mountain, in his avatar decorates himself with the achievements of those he would like to burn alive. For 65 years the world has been looking in the wrong direction, courtesy Spielberg and co. Fortunately they are going nowhere any time soon. The people able to do it are no longer there to do it. Even building a fast train is too much to asked.

Lots of high-sounding rhetoric and appeals to emotion but no actual rebuttals of historical fact and no actual content.

Not surprising, really.

Could somebody please turn this guy off?

No answer to the facts, eh? Again, I am not surprised.

 

[9/11-investigator]

Here is a quote of central importance:

p.37 - By that evening [August 1], Germany had declared war on Russia, which had refused to halt it's mobilization, and on France, which had refused to declare neutrality.

In London Grey was preparing the Cabinet for war. Again an insight into the character of Churchill:

p.37 - "Winston very bellicose and demanding immediate mobilization," wrote Asquith, "occupied at least half the time"... wrote Asquith's daughter Violet. "When they broke up for an interval at luncheon time all those I saw looked racked with anxiety and some stricken with grief. Winston alone was buoyant... The key figure was Lloyd George, and Churchill played a major role in winning his support for a declaration of war."

More on the internal dynamics of the British Cabinet that led to the declaration of war:

"It was an historic disaster - though not for his own career - that Lloyd George did not support the opponents of intervention at this critical juncture, " writes Ferguson. That there was opportunism in Lloyd George's refusal to lead the antiwar ministers out of the Cabinet, and in his quiet campaign to persuade them to hold off resigning until they learned whether the German Army would violate the neutrality of Belgium, seems undeniable.

More on the dubious character of Churchill:

p.39 - Yet there was cynicism and opportunism also in Churchill's clucking concern for Belgium. As Manchester writes, Churchill "didn't care for the Belgians; he thought their behavior in Congo disgraceful". Of all the colonial powers in Africa, none had acted with greater barbarity than the Belgium of King Leopold... the cost in human life due to murder, starvation, disease and reduced fertility has been estimated at ten million: half the existing population.

Churchill wanted war plain and simple. He used Belgium merely as a pretext.

p.40 - By Monday morning, Lloyd George had deserted the anti-interventionists and enlisted in the war party. Two years later, he would replace Asquith and lead Britain to victory. Over that weekend the mood of the British people underwent a sea change... millions who did not want to go to war for France were suddenly wildly enthusiastic about war for Belgium... Said Churchill; "Every British heart burned for little Belgium. By Monday morming's Cabinet meeting, King George had a request from King Albert, calling on Britain to fulfill its obligation under the 1839 treaty. Belgium would fight."

p.41 - Grey's address carried the House and prepared the nation for the ultimatum that would bring a declaration of war on August 4.

 

[stilicho]

So how did Britain get into the war? Answer: Belgium.

Oh good grief. Belgium's neutrality was "extracted" by Prussia and Austria as well as by Palmerston. The French and the Germans had a fine time punching it up in 1870 without violating that treaty. What changed by 1914?

In Germany itself there was a growing sense of threat coming from Russia. As Bethmann-Hollweg (the Helmut Kohl of those days) formulated it:

Bethmann-Hollweg was the Bethmann-Hollweg of his day. I don't know why you'd compare him to Helmut Kohl or anyone else for that matter.

Short version: wherever war may erupt, strike first and hardest to crush Germany's strongest enemy, France, then jump on the train towards the east to 'discipline' the Russians.

Nobody here--that I have seen--would argue that wasn't exactly what happened. But there was a conscious decision by the German General Staff, under instruction from the highest levels of government, to violate Belgian neutrality to accomplish this coup.

The Germans underestimated the capacity of the French army to collapse and surrender as it had in 1870 and did again in 1940. The British were under no obligation to support France in case of a direct attack through Alsace and Lorraine.

 

[Squidgy]

The problem with history is, the winners write the story. I am by no means saying that the history we are taught is wrong!

 

[9/11-investigator]

The problem with history is, the winners write the story. I am by no means saying that the history we are taught is wrong!

The winners of yesterday will be the losers of tomorrow.

Keep laughing at the damned and avoid looking into mirrors!

 

[9/11-investigator]

More on Churchill for future reference:

p.43 - At 11 P.M., August 4, as the ultimatum expired and the moment came when Britain was at war, a tearful Margot Asquith left her husband to go to bed, and as she began to ascend the stairs, "I saw Winston Churchill with a happy face striding towards the double doors of the Cabinet room". Lloyd George was sitting within with his disconsolate prime minister when, as he later told a friend:

winston dashed into the room, radiant, his face bright, his manner keen, one word pouring out after another how hew was going to send telegrams to the Mediterranean, the North Sea, and God knows where. You could see he was a really happy man,​

Churchill was exhilarated. Six months later, after the first Battle of Ypres, with tens of thousands of British soldiers in their graves, he would say to Violet Asquith, "I think a curse should rest on me - because I am so happy. I know this war is smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment and yet - I cannot help it - I enjoy every second."

 

[Squidgy]

The winners of yesterday will be the losers of tomorrow.

Keep laughing at the damned and avoid looking into mirrors!

I am confused, sorry. What do you mean about mirrors?

 

[9/11-investigator]

Why did Britain fight?

British historian John Keegan (The First World War, p.3):

WW1 was... an unnecessary conflict. Unnecessary because the train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks that preceded the first clash of arms, had prudence or common goodwill found a voice. Had the Austrians not sought to exploit the assassination of Ferdinand to crush Serbia, they would have taken Serbia's acceptance of 9 of their 10 demands as vindication. Had Czar Nicolas II been more forceful in rescinding his order for full mobilization, Germany would not have mobilized, and the Schlieffen Plan would not have begun automatically to unfold. Had the Kaiser and Bethmann realized the gravity of the crisis, just days earlier, they might have seized on Grey's proposal to reconvene the six-power conference that resolved the 1913 Balkan crisis. The same 6 ambassadors were all in London, including Germany's Prince Lichnowsky, an Anglophile desperate to avoid war with Britain.

Buchanan states why we must analyse the behavior of the British:

And it is in Britain's decisions and actions that we are most interested. For it was the British decision to send an army across the Channel to fight in Western Europe, for the first time in exactly one hundred years, that led to the defeat of the Schieffen Plan, four years of trench warfare, America's entry, Germany's collapse in the autumn of 1918, the abdication of the Kaiser, the dismemberment of Germany at Versailles, and the rise to power of a veteran of the Western Front who, four years after the war's end, was unreconciled to his nation's defeat... Britain turned the European war of August 1 into a world war.

Buchanan comes with a list of 5 reasons as to why Britain fought (p.45-50):

1. Preserve France as a Great Power

Grey saw in the Kaiser a new sort of Napoleon intending to subjugate Europe. He believed in the domino theory: first France, then Holland, then Denmark. Buchanan judges that 'Grey was tragically mistaken'.​

2. British Honor

The will to live up to the obligations towards Belgium. Had the Germans not invaded Belgium, had the Belgians not fought, the Cabinet would not have supported the ultimatum.​

3. Retention of Power

Basically career opportunism. The sitting cabinet feared it would loose the elections if the Cabinet would fall over the war and that Unionists would be brought to power who supported a war. They dreaded opposition. They went to war partly to keep the Tories out.​

4. Germanophobia (to be recognized everywhere where English comment on anything German even today)

Britain resented the rise of Germany and feared that a defeat of France would men German preeminence in Europe and the eclipse of Britain as an economic and world power. [911I: this happened eventually big time anyway, even after the destruction of Versailles and 1945-1990, with the UK probably turning into a pathetic Islamic Republic within 20 years. Bright light: the British are not racists! Idiots maybe, but not racists!]​

5. Imperial Ambition and Opportunism

The British war party saw France and Russia as bearing the cost in blood of land battle in europe while the Royal Navy, supreme at sea, ravaged Germany's trade, seized her markets, and sank the High Seas Fleet, as the empire gobbled up every German colony from Togoland to the Bismarck Archipelago [911I: hooliganism avant la lettre wearing a top hat]. A war where France and Russia fought the German army, while Britain did most of her fighting outside Europe or at sea, matched perfectly the ambitions and strengths of the British Empire.​

Here is Buchanan's bird's eye view judgment of the situation:

p.50 - For Britain, World War I was not a war of necessity but a war of choice. The Germans did not want a war with Britain, nor did they seek to destroy the British Empire. They feared a 2-front war against a rising Russian Empire and a France resolute upon revenge for 1870 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Berlin would have paid a high price for British neutrality.

Tomorrow we are going to discuss uncle Pat's take on the German perspective regarding WW1.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fine.

Why do you think the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor?

Ask Yamamoto Isoruku, it was his idea.

I'll wait, go ahead.

 

[9/11-investigator]

Ask Yamamoto Isoruku, it was his idea.

I'll wait, go ahead.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

If you don't mind I will stick to chronology rather than jumping from Pearl Harbor to Zimmermann to the Schlieffen Plan.

 

[Uzzy]

Will you just make your silly little blog already? It's clear you're not interested in learning the truth or writing good history, but as you yourself have acknowledged, are only interested in creating propaganda. Leave this forum for discussion.

 

[9/11-investigator]

Ask Yamamoto Isoruku, it was his idea.

I'll wait, go ahead.

He is dead now. You really cannot come up with an idea?

Let's wait with discussing this while you think.
You may use a calculator for this exercise.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He is dead now. You really cannot come up with an idea?

Let's wait with discussing this while you think.
You may use a calculator for this exercise.

I'm not doing your homework for you, nor am I giving you things to quibble about in the usual petulant style.

 

[9/11-investigator]

I'm not doing your homework for you, nor am I giving you things to quibble about in the usual petulant style.

The idea is that you vigorously attack me. Too bad, another soldier 'gloriously advancing towards the Channel'.

I have some issues with your avatar, it suggests a level a agression not matched with reality.

I suggest you replace it with this one.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The idea is that you vigorously attack me. To bad, another soldier 'gloriously advancing towards the Channel'.

I have some issues with your avatar, it suggests a level a agression not matched with reality.

I suggest you replace it with this one.

You're not very good at this. Have you not been taking your meds?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

You're not very good at this. Have you not been taking your meds?

Don't let 9/11 Investigator drag you down to general insults when your knowledge gives you the opportunity to "educate him slowly over the coals bit by bit". "9/11 Investigator" changes topics when faced with hard evidence so that is your best weapon.

9/11 Investigator claims that Churchill knew in November, from Bletchley Park Japanese decrypts, that Pearl Harbour was going to be attacked in December. ( I assume he means Japanese Navy codes JN4, JN11, JN40, and JN25) He bases this on a David Irving editorial. I have pointed out that Hong Kong was attacked on the same day as Pearl Harbour and considering Churchill did not put Hong Kong on a war footing it is probable that Churchill knew nothing about Pearl Harbour. Does this seem a logical position? What does the USN Intelligence say about this history?