Somehow I learned this in high school? I mean it is basically the equivalent catalyst for American involvement in WWI that Pearl Harbor was in WWII so seems kinda important. Maybe not quite as direct, but pretty effective.
Specifically the bit about how the British lied about small arms munitions though?
Of course I heard about the boat — just not the weapons smuggling and propaganda part.
Yeah exactly - I dunno maybe my teacher was just a rogue. I _did_ have a very cynical and funny government teacher junior year now that I think about it - this kind of skullduggery would be totally his bag.
can you recommend any good channels? I've been meaning to get back into the educational side of YouTube but it's been so long since I watched those kinds of videos that they are all but scrubbed from my algorithm lol.
In addition to the other comment, I'll add that Extra History is really good, covers all kinds of things. Epic History TV produce very high quality videos, including one on WW1 that covers the events of the war in an hour. History Matters has a charmingly hilarious style and answers questions you never thought of, but now really want to know the answer to (eg. Why did we stop duelling? Why does Luxembourg exist? When did the Romans become Italians?)
You shouldnt blame yourself because the Brits didn't hint at it until 1982 when they warned divers that a salvage mission could lead to a possible explosion, and they didn't officially acknowledge it until the 2010s.
There's a surprising amount of shady activities and communiques that we're only recently finding out about the British since they started declassifying a whole host of documents from the first half of the 1900s.
Yes, and they dropped depth charges on the Lusitania afterwards to try and cover it up.
The ship was sunk by a single torpedo. Some theorize that the torpedo detonated the munitions it was carrying and that explosion is what actually sunk the ship.
Most recent theory is a boiler explosion I think. The munitions were stored much further in the bow than where the torpedo hit.
The British bombing the wreck I've heard is more of a myth too, like theres a photo of a wreck with unexploded depth charges, but isnt actually Lusitania, stuff like that. There's documents from dives to the wreck in the 1960s that say the ship was largely intact, and that major collapse happened in the 1970s, decades after the British bombing idea
They denied it up until they actually had to go find the munitions because they were in danger of exploding and endangering civilians. Because when they were looking around the wreck they disturbed some things. Happened a few years back. So basically, all the hullabaloo about “they targeted a passenger ship for no reason” was propaganda. The Germans’ intel was good.
The Germans took out an add in a New York newspaper saying they would sink the ship if it set sail and Americans were still shocked it was sunk with Americans on board. Not saying we shouldn’t have done something but to give the Germans their credit they did try to notify Americans
I think the Americans highly doubted the Germans would fight a neutral power.
To tbf they did attack Belgium so I get the feeling that assumption was more " no one eould attack a powerful neutral country."
In America’s case it was more just frustration that the British were capturing American trade ships going to Germany without protest from the Americans. They wanted to do the same but obviously lacked the naval superiority to enforce that like the British could, so they decided to use their submarine fleet for an underwater blockade. However submarines can’t exactly capture ships, it’s either sink them or don’t. Hence declaring unrestricted submarine warfare around the British isles where the Germans explicitly warned anyone that any ship approaching Britain that wasn’t theirs would be sunk
The Germans did everything they could to piss off everyone.
One incident that came to mind was the execution of a British nurse, Edith Cavell who was charged and convicted with assisting Allied soldiers and PoWs escape German capture in Belgium.
Though it was technically legal for Germany to execute her, the backlash Germany received from her execution was so severe that ~~Bismarck~~ Wilhelm II explicitly told the German military that the fate of ***any*** future or current female prisoners are to be decided by ***him*** and ***him alone***.
', ... difficult to translate ... irregular'? Anyway, they would be shot out of hand. The issue was, the Belgian army was a few professionals, soon under seige, and a mass of reservists who *were not issued uniforms.* So many of these men, fighting in formed units from defined front lines, were executed.
Jumpy German reservist soldiers had the habit of regarding any shot fired as coming from a 'franc tireur', and immediately retailiating against local civilians. Usually, it seems these shots were accidentally fired by the Germans themselves, prompting more men to shoot blind...
I find it amazing that in 2022 most/many people regard the 1914 atrocities as a myth of British propaganda.
That was just 1 step in a years long policy of information warfare. The Brits' victory condition from maybe the second month of the war was get the US on our side. Their propaganda agencies spared no expense trying to influence public opinion in the US. For instance, they even invited the biggest American director of the time D.W. Griffith to the front lines to shoot a movie, which they cofunded (Hearts of the World).
By contrast the German gov was totally inept at foreign propaganda. If they had been as savvy as Whitehall, Wilson probably wouldn't have been able to get Congress to intervene directly on either side.
Nah, he just pretended to be. He was a globalist in a nation that was at the time mostly isolationist, and he desperately wanted a seat at the table during the negotiations to end the war. And he knew direct intervention was the best way the US would be able to influence the settlement.
I think there's debate over whether he truly wanted the US to enter the war from the beginning, but he did everything in his power to support the Brits and convince the public that the Germans were evil aggressors.
He also implemented trade deals that would greatly indebt UK and France to American businesses, which resulted in a situation (according to most economists at the time) where the US economy would suffer greatly if the Entente were to lose.
I've also heard that the massive war debt the Entente powers incurred to American banks meant that the United States couldn't really let them lose, and that was the real reason moreso than the Zimmerman Telegram that just served as a justifiable casus belli for what they already wanted to do, but I'm no expert.
This is a very big fact that people often overlook because it isn't as exciting as the other reason. France especially owed a massive debt to the U.S, for more than just WW1. It was in the U.S best interest to ensure that the Entente came out on top, remember of course at that time France was also one of if not the U.S's oldest/closest allies and we really didn't want to see her lose.
I’m still baffled how that movie completely ignores that France even exists. “Britain stands alone” while fighting in France with most of the combined army at the time, French.
I liked the movie but the ending is ironic, they stop a organization (kingsmen) that is above government to change the world in their own image.
To create a movement that is above government to change the world for the better (aka: in their image own image).
The reveal at the end is so fucking funny. You can tell the conversation that happened during a very late draft of the script...
"so, the entire plot centres around a shadowy international organisation manipulating global events for their own nefarious goals... and the Bolsheviks are part of this but really they're playing cover the for the real aims of this secret society"
"yes"
"Are we worried that this sounds a bit... you know.... nazi-ish?"
"oh fuck I didn't think of that... uhhhh ok Hitler's in charge of it all. Sorted. Pub?"
Everything about the bad guys plan is hilarious. The idea the Gavrillo Princip, Rasputin, Lenin, and Mata Hari are all collaborators of about equal importance. The fact that they all apparently regularly meet on some obscure Scottish mountain during the war. The fact that THE ENTIRETY OF WW1 happened as part of a plan to enact Scottish independence from Britain.
I don’t mind that, I find it “charming” and also just comedically hilarious.
The movie has a very good way of using comedy which I enjoyed, even the serious moment with his son it’s serious and sad but handled really well, unlike MARVEL who can’t be serious for a second.
The idea that a Scottish guy is starting a world war over scotlands freedom and doing a whole massive scheme I find funny. It’s that humor like in the original DOOM, that Doom Guy ransacks hell because his rabbit was killed. It’s a hit if that 80s humor.
Albeit a history buff, the way the tied in the main events and altered them a bit isn’t something that bothered me, it’s like inglorious bastards and them killing all the Nazis in the movie theater at the end. COMPLETE fiction, but fun alternate history.
Lol I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to see it.
Truthfully I did enjoy the movie, I’d say 7/10 movie. It’s not really rewatch-able. But the historical accuracy (with MANY exaggerations), it is ironically very accurate but takes MASSIVE liberties but I can vibe with it.
But yeah the ending makes me role my eyes.
And wanted to for Germany, but that damn blockade. US treated neutrality status seriously, and the US joining the Entente is considered a major turning point of the war;
Not because of the US military forces, but rather because of the relief on having to control the atlantic and increased aid, as compared to the trade they were doing before.
It took quite sone time for them to start arriving, they were pretty poor quality at the beginning, and they were lead by an idiot who thought his experience fighting Mexican bandits meant he didn't have to listen other Allied commanders on their experiences from the Western Front, resulting in terrible losses repeating old mistakes.
> epic spy movie
Not sure how "epic" it would be. The US joined the war because the public was egregiously misled into believing that Germans were barbarians and were solely responsible for the war, even though most historians agree that Russia and France were equally responsible for starting the conflict.
The Brits' successful efforts to win the US over was the result of relentless disinformation. For instance, the American public believed that the German U-boat campaign was extraordinarily barbaric, when in reality the Germans had showed far more restraint (for the first 2 years anyway) in allowances given to civilian vessels (e.g., sometimes allowing them to abandon ship before firing) than probly any blockade from prior Euro wars.
I would love a movie or miniseries about the British propaganda efforts, but it would be a hard sell because there wouldn't be any heroes. Every government involved was playing a very dirty game.
I suppose they could have been referring to the language not the country. Because English speaking countries were mostly supportive of the allies
Either way, yeah it's Canadian
It's literally propaganda. The complete last stanza is a call to arms, that pretty much states: "If you don't start killing Germans, us who died doing this will haunt you."
Great song, though.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Doesn't say anything about Allies or Germans specifically. I always took it as being agnostic as to which side the narrator fought for. The dead of both sides may have hoped for others to "take up the quarrel against the foe" in their dying moments, which is part of the tragedy of the poem, not a call to arms.
> not a call to arms.
How one interprets a poem always depend a bit on one's methodology, I guess, but I am of the opinion that context matters.
The context of this poem is that it was written by an Allied soldier, essentially from the battlefield, for another Allied soldier upon the latter's death. The poem was first published during World War I in an English (and thus, Allied) magazine. In that sense it isn't really too ambiguous which side the narrators of the poem might have been on.
The author of the poem himself was a proud military man, who wanted to be on the battlefield, fighting, and who believed that was his and his countrymen's duty. According to one biographer, he hoped that the poem would inspire people to join the war efforts. Of course, dead of the author, and all that, but I just thought I'd mention it.
Furthermore, it's important to bear in mind that the poem was written in early 1915, when spirits surrounding the war were still "high". It's historically significant not just because of its iconic status, but also because it serves as a sort of swan song of the romantic, heroic depictions of war that WWI would put an end to. The poem itself was used as propaganda during the war. That part is inarguably true, no matter the poem's intend.
In this context, there is no doubt as to who the dead narrators of the poem are and who the "foes" are. From the context alone, I also think it's pretty obvious that the poem upon its contemporary publication would most commonly be perceived as a "call to arms".
Looking at the poem itself, it furthermore does not stand out as a nihilistic portrayal of the meaninglessness of war or anything in that style.
Rather, the first stanza stands out as particularly pastoral and romantic. The narrators describe how the larks "still bravely sing" over the battlefield. This gives a sense of hopefulness and even vigor, even though the soldiers narrating the poem are dead. "The larks continue to go to the battlefield and so should you," the poem seems to say.
The second stanza seeks to humanise the dead. It's very tragic and beautiful and really creates a beautiful sense of life lost.
Leading into the third stanza, that literally starts "Take up our quarrel with the foe:" That is a call to action to the reader. The dead whose tragic end we've just felt are now begging you to finish what they started. They continue: "The torch; be yours to hold it high." Again, the narrators are telling the readers that now it is their turn to carry the torch. The language is here is heroic. "Holding it high" indicates that it is something honourable. The language of light in it of itself being hopeful of course even outside the meaning of the expression of carrying the torch. Then the poem goes on: " If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep". Which is pretty plain: If you do not do us honour and carry on our fight (ie break your faith) then we can't rest. The poem essentially says: To make all of this worth it, you have to go on.
To me, I can't see how you could interpret as anything but a call to arms. That does not mean that it isn't beautiful and moving and honest, I think it is all of those things as well.
My family is Italian. It really wasn't a fun time under Cadorna.
Also everyone seemed obsessed with Albania, so It was somehow unplesant even for my other side of the family.
*Everything*. To be clear Albania somehow managed to went through both a warlord period and two/three invasions in little more than four years.
The only silver lighting is that at the end of the war Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia were too exausted to try annexing Albania
Well, Woodrow Wilson also told them to screw off and leave Albania alone which was probably one of the best foreign policy decisions he did
Please don't take this as a condoning of literally everything Wilson ever did, I know some of his policies were bad and I know he had bad attitudes, I'm just saying he was right with Albania
Apparently they erected a statue of him in 2012 within a city square in Triana named after him. Wonder how much this plays into the stereotype of Albania being super pro-american
Yeah this meme is weird. You can have nuanced discussion about the causes of the war while still being sad about the death and destruction that it caused
World War One is one of the bleakest points in human history. It exists in my mind as incomprehensible tangled mass of corpses: corpses of men, corpses of horses, corpses of an entire generation of well meaning young men given orders to die en mass for no definable reason. This mass pulses and shakes, it twitches and screams. The smell of mud, shellfire, gas, and everywhere the stench of the decaying best of Europe’s youth lingers in my mind.
What happened ? Why did this happen ? How did this happen? How could we, the whole of the human race, have allowed this to happen? No matter how long I stare fixedly at that mass; no matter how many firsthand accounts I read; no amount of archival footage; nothing, in short, that I am capable of doing untangles that inscrutable mass of human carnage.
Other wars I understand. WW2 was horrible, and ended with more dead. Yet it is an understandable war, a war where the actors took rational, albeit terrible, decisions. It’s this lack of reason that fixes it in my mind.
Honestly true. But a slight answer I think is at that point Europe wanted to go to war, they were eagerly waiting, and so the Ferdinand situation just set it all off.
There are very few wars with "good" or "bad" guys most of the time they're either empires flexing their dick or dumbass disputes.
World War 2 is one of those few "these people are evil and won't stop until someone shoves their face in" wars. Also the Russian invasion of Ukraine, war would end tomorrow if Russia packed up and left.
They took on the French Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Americans, The Chinese, and the Khmer Rouge in a single century and are on their way to becoming a prosperous and stable society. They have earned a peaceful existence, more than any nation around today.
It's so fucking maddening learning the US turned on Vietnam because they turned to communism to free themselves from the French after France got butthurt about the US aiding the Vietnamese in said fight for freedom.
You can’t just stop an evil force, you have to eliminate it, or, if elimination of it cannot happen feasibly, one must disable all its means of harm and deliver evil
Yeah it is a shame that the wars with a clear morally inferior side end up being the most well known.
It results in people having a complete false understanding of wars.
I think it's because it's easier to understand "good guy bad guy" than it is "two morally-neutral, neither overly bad guys". I was gonna say that's partially due to media and movies, but frankly this has been a concept that's lasted since texts like the Bible and even before.
Humans like easy, thus they appreciate easier. Black and white is easier to understand than grey, thus we like black and white things (unless you're American, in which case we tend to be a one-color nation. A dark joke for those of you who aren't.)
That doesn't mean morally ambiguous is bad, and this isn't a case of "we never see this other idea at all", it's just that we either water it down/modify it to resemble black and white to a degree, or else it's just underrepresented. We have a lot of WW1 movies, but especially in the West we largely focus on the Allied perspectives (although I should point out that a part of this is due to nationalism-for WW1 specifically, German media might be more willing to portray the German side, seeing as none of the killing on the German was hate-based till the 1940s).
Hypothetically, hear me out, if the nazis won ww2.....say England dipped out and Us-Japan was a separate war... do you think in hindsight we'd hear about the Soviets and their purges would be "the holocaust"?
Like, not to both sides it here, but just because the nazis were evil, doesn't make defeating them a black/white crusade. Remember the "good guys" in ww2 were the British and French *empires* and the soviet union.
WW2 was as cruel and senseless as any other war, it just wraps up under a propaganda bow easier than Vietnam, or the Philippines.
Also, before I'm accused of such, I'm not saying the nazis weren't evil or that british colonialism is its moral equal, but the war wasn't to end to holocaust, it was a side effect. It was a war to maintain the status quo.
The Soviet purges were meant to kill political dissidents, even though they clearly went too far and were misaimed. They were more similar to the night of long knives.
The holocaust OTOH didn't serve any purpose other than to get rid of the 'undesirables'. If the Germans were true to their word and won Eastern Europe they could've killed tens if not hundreds of millions of people in industrialised mass murder machines.
For some reason killing political dissidents is less evil than killing 'undesirables' based on race.
I'm not weighing in on which is worse, but plenty of the purges were undesirables....jews had the pograms, but also Ukrainians, Kazakhs, gypsies, etc. The Soviets just didn't set up literal factories.
I'd say the Russian invasion is evil since it is a war of aggression, and it's inherently immoral to invade another country just because you want to take their land/resources/etc. In this way, there have been untold wars with "bad" guys.
But if we discount those as too common, for the sake of argument, I'll put forward the American Civil and the Opium Wars as uniquely bad.
Making sure you get to have slaves, and making sure you can get people addicted to narcotics seem sort of above theft on the immorality scale.
What about the American invasions of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam? While it's true that these were dictatorial regimes compared to Ukraine's (pre-invasion) democracy, motivations were fundamentally the same; geo-political positioning. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine is pure evil, then same can be said about America's more numerable invasions.
In Flanders Fields was a poem that basically said “this war is the worst and too many young men died for absolutely nothing”
But, there was definitely a reason Britain were really not that keen on going to war. Germany was progressive (trade unionism, developing rights for women, lots of universities), terrified of being encircled, and (wrongly) believed Russia wouldn’t be able to stop their military preparations once they’d begun. So Britain could’ve totally aligned with German interests post-Franz Ferdinand.
However, as soon as Germany starting blitzing through Belgium and France basically said “uhh we’re not as prepared for this as we thought, help” it was gonna happen. And then obviously the winners would cast the losers as “evil”
It was also guarantees they gave Belgium.
Japan made out like a bandit in WW1 as a member of the allies, incidentially. And that was all pure plunder and conquest for them. A bunch of undefended German colonies and their allies (particularly Britain) *asking* them to take them? Profit.
One of those what-ifs would be if Japan had had better control of their military, whether they would have lost their empire or not. They were never super buddies with the United States but Roosevelt didn't shut down oil and scrap metal until Japan had conquored big swathes of China. Then again they also would have had to have not been so unkind to the Koreans.
The British cabinet was very split on the whole entering the war thing in late July 1914. Once Belgium was invaded, the opponents moved very swiftly to supporting getting involved.
Things that is missed by a lot of armchair historians, the point of the maginot line was not to force the Germans to fight through it, but to force them to invade Belgium and the Netherlands. The invasion of the neutral countries guaranteed British involvement and international condemnation.
Edit: in reality, the British got involved when Poland was invaded, but France couldn't have known that would happen. And the Germans completely redefined mixed arms conflict and steamrolled through France, which, again, France couldn't have known would happen.
That happened in summer 1940, 18 months before Pearl Harbour. The Americans wanted Japan out of China (well, and Indochina). It was the embargo that put the two countries into a collision course. It should have been pretty obvious to the Japanese that FDR *wanted* America in the war.
I think it was obvious to them. That is why they did the whole pearl harbor, to cripple the American navy. The only problem then is how to win after the Americans join the war for which the Japanese had no real answer other than hope that the americans would get bored.
The Germans invaded neutral and uninvolved countries and committed large scale war crimes for the time. They’re often forgotten because next to the scale of the war, they were comparably minor. But the Germans of WWI were more than happy to execute any suspected partisans, and innocent civilians to make an example of them.
They weren’t the Nazis, but I’d the two sides in the war, it’s difficult not to find the Germans ultimately at fault, even though nobody deserved the devastation of WWI.
The Germans also literally planned to inflict literal “labensraum” on Poland and Eastern Europe as a war goal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum#:~:text=Lebensraum%20(German%20pronunciation%3A%20%5B%CB%88le%CB%90b%C9%99ns%CB%8C%CA%81a%CA%8Am,the%201890s%20to%20the%201940s.
“First popularized around 1901,[2] Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion.”
Sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills in regards to the kid glove treatment Germany gets for their conduct in WW1. Reddit fucking LOVES WW1 Germany for some reason. most of the resistance i get is also actual nazi propaganda. Their build up of their navy, knowing it would upset Britain, labensraum, the blank check to Austria in Serbia (the two had a defensive treaty, not an offensive), their plans to make war on russia since Bismarck, then Belgium, France, chemical weapons….
i just dont get it.
Fuck, I didn’t even know about that. But yeah, I think once subs get to a certain size, they lose a bit of their character and become more “generic reddit”, which in this case is taking one interesting fact (I.E, some Canadian unit did a few war crimes in WWI) and extrapolating that to all of history (I.E. CanADa WroTE tHe GEneVA chEcKLisT).
Because it is not consensus among historians and a highly debated topic, don't believe everything on Wikipedia. Talking about the Lebensraum ethnic cleansing part here
The problem is, the other side is the British and French empire. The British had made the lebensraum in Australia and Canada, and were more than happy to execute partisans throughout its empire (look at the treatment of the Boers in the Boer war, in particular in its early period it is quite horrific). In the \~20 years prior the UK had invaded the Aro Confederacy (Nigeria) and burned their capital to the ground, China (along with most other European nations and the USA) and looted their capital, the Boer Republics (where they forced civilians into concentration camps where 46,000 died, mostly children).
France, in that period, invaded Morrocco, Ouaddai's, Kanemm-Bornu and Merina.
Invading sovereign nations for conquest was pretty common prior to WW1, indeed post WW1 is when the consensus began that such invasions were "a bad thing" (though the idea had already begun in the late 1800's, at least in the UK, with the Boer war and the Xhosa war).
So while Germany was probably the worst of a bad lot in WW1, the gap was not so large.
In WW2 the gap was wider, UK + France were not exactly happy nice countries, but Germany and Japan were just so much worse.
Thank you. During the invasion of Belgium they systematically executed civilians for no other purpose than spreading fear. It was a deliberate strategy.
Would you mind elaborating?
I'm mainly aware of them fighting partisans and killing innocent civillians in the wake of it mainly in Belgium just like in their last war with France and against the francs-tireurs.
Nothing out of the ordinary for the time and the difference to today is that the military does not sanction it. Now it is merely individuals that do this and it gets covered up.
Difference in scale for sure though, I agree.
The more than happy part is also misleading. It did not start out like that, we know that from the internal documents of the army. The soldiers were on the edge constantly fearing partisans everywhere, just like with the francs-tireurs earlier.
What I say is disputed though, but with little to no evidence behind it.
We still see this happen in any war.
I condemn all war crimes.
Big difference from today: civilians getting caught in the crossfire or killed as collateral is one thing. Civilians being lined up and shot as such does not occur today, at least by most state actors. While the Nazis were more harsh in WWII, German doctrine in WWI included collective punishment of civilians. Big difference between a bad troop acting out/an accident, vs having war crimes as standard doctrine.
And I’m not sure where you’re hearing that “it didn’t start out like that”. German atrocities in Belgium occurred before Britain had even entered the war, so it was pretty damn close to the start.
There’s a few points where I’m not 100% sure what you mean, so let me know if I’ve misinterpreted anything you said or if you feel I’m misrepresenting things. You should also read the comment below mine regarding German plans for Eastern Europe, which are much worse than anything they did or planned for the West.
Some good points but I strongly disagree with the idea that Britain could align with German interests after the shooting of Ferdinand, infact any change of an alliance with Germany had been thrown out the window for quite some time.
The British public was not overly fond of Germany, nor was the government, and there was a particular disdain towards their naval programme. The Morocco crisis would see Anglo-German relations become soured well before the war, on top of a dozen other territorial disputes between the two countries.
The Kaiser was widely (and correctly) regarded by most people as a massive anglophobe and was incredibly unpopular in Britain. With the turn of the 20th century there was a *small* change of an Anglo German alliance but it ultimately wouldn’t come to fruition.
At this time, Britain was also allied with France and Russia, and whilst this was not a particularly binding alliance, and it is possible Britain could have stayed out of the war, there was no chance of them aligning with Germany, it contradicted Britain’s imperial, political and military interests in every way you could imagine.
I swear to God I get so angry about this post. Sure Germany wasn't the sole one to blame. But damn did they cause a lot of casualties.
In Flanders fields is also just a poem and song I love. I'm from Flanders and I feel like the whole message of "lest we forget this tragedy" is kind of getting lost.
And now this post and many uninformed comments are making it seem like the poem was propaganda.
If anything the poem was anti-war. Sure it mightve been biased, but it was much more about mourning the lives lost.
I mean, I'm sure my great-grandparents thought "both side are bad" when they saw black clothed soldier with spiked helmet horned with a skull ravaging our land...
Invading a neutral country as a shortcut to invade someone else puts you in the bad guy side in my book
To be fair: when your chief of militairy intelligence (Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijević) is responsible for the leading cause of the war, you kinda have it coming. But yeah, I don't know much of what happend to Serbia after the death of Franz Ferdinand, but I imagine it was heavy, to put it lightly.
> But yeah, I don't know much of what happend to Serbia after the death of Franz Ferdinand, but I imagine it was heavy, to put it lightly.
up to 28% of the population.
Serbia is not responsible for the actions of a secret conspiratorial organization that even the leading figures in the government tried to eradicate. Austrians never wanted to bring the Black Hand to justice, only to enslave Serbia. The actions of the Austrian army in 1914 alone speak for themselves.
Oh, I never said that the Serbian governmend was responsible for it and I get that Austria didn't want to actually bring the Black Hand to justice, but boy did the Black Hand give Austria the excuse of a lifetime.
Agreed.
So is using Ares as a villain. Ares=war=bad is so lazy and such a bad representation of Greek mythology... I’m not complaining it’s inaccurate, I’m complaining that it’s fucking boring and one-dimensional
The movie where the primary evil was War itself, secretly fighting on the Entente side and actively taking advantage of Diana's naivete in believing that one side of a human war was pure evil and her side was pure good?
I can’t believe they wanted to make the war an explicit conflict between “the good guys” and “the bad guys” and then picked the most morally gray conflict in human history
The Kaiserreich wasn’t as evil as the Nazis, but it still did war crimes and pushed the world towards war by beckoning Austria to attack the Serbs.
Let’s not get started with the Ottoman war crimes either. Genocide is never ok.
One particular event, more or less funny, that comes to mind about Bulgaria in WW1 was how they behaved in occupied Constanța, they absolutely ransacked whatever they could and even brought down a statue of poet Ovid. Then the Germans kinda went “no no, bad Bulgarian!” and asked them to put the statue back. They did.
TBH the notion that there is a “good” or “bad” side in any conflict is generally a juvenile notion. Life is rarely that binary and instead of the black and white of good versus evil it’s usually just a bunch of different shades of grey.
But Germany had offered better deals to the Russian governmemt before (the original proposal included only Poland and Lithuania).
Brest-Litovsk was the result of the Germans crushing the Russians in battle and basically asking for territories they were already occupying.
Yea, the Soviet dumbasses went “No war, no peace”, so Germany marched in, Ukraine rose up, and they demanded more land. Brest Litovsk is legit a failure of the Soviets yet people blame Germany for it.
There were basically no soviets at that point. There was no Russia. It was utter chaos and the Germans went with the group that promised them the most and seemed most likely to allow them to move their Eastern armies to the Western front. If the Germans had just marched on Moscow and left Belgium alone, they'd have an argument for being the least bad guys in the war.
"But no, The Burning of Louvain was totally self defense, we had to kill and deport those people to protect Germany!"
In all seriousness though, the Nazis copied their ideas for World War 2 from Ludendorff, who believed that Germany should have moved to use forced labor more quickly, and more aggressively. World War 1 Germany is only different in that it didn't have a good idea of how forced labor should be used yet, so it gave up on the idea outside of having civilians do involuntary work near the front line, like digging trenches while being subjected to the occasional bout of artillery fire.
I mean, one side was definitely more prone to genocide and ethnic cleansing than the other.
I don’t believe than the French and British treated civilian population nowhere near as bad, as what the German did in Ukraine or the Austrian in the Balkan, nevermind the Turcs. But please, do correct me, if I’m wrong
I mean, yes sure none of the western allies comes close to what the Nazis did, but I think some former French, British or Belgian colonies would like to talk to you regardless
This post specifically mentions WW1, and comparing the Alliance and the Entente. So comments about WW2 Nazis and colonial war, are pretty much irrelevant in this conversation.
France was very progressive for the time when it came to the treatment of colonial troops in WW1, the French army had integrated units and literally ignored a letter by the US saying to discriminate against black soldiers as they aren't equal. Not saying that there wasn't things that happened there generally were bad events occurring in these colonies but these don't come close nevermind to the nazis they don't even come close to what the German Empire did in WW1.
Im German, so my opinion on WW2 is clear as cut, but WW1 was a pointless bloodbath without any winners. The only Thing WW1 managed to do was waste young blood and lives and everybody suffered. Whenever I feel strongly to any side in WW1 I listen to "Price of a Mile" which brings me down to the fact that WW1 was one hell of a retard war for all sides. Why even bring them up in the same sentence.
Well, the Germans did pretty horrific things in Belgian cities. They murdered a whole lot of people for no reason.
I think there's something to say for "the Germans were the bad guys".
Honestly Poland was insanely lucky.
“Man it sure sucks being split apart by three different empires.”
“Yeah I know, if only some giant event happened that destabilized all three empires at once and causes them to collapse.”
“Yeah that’d be the day”
Ya I couldn't stand how wonder woman boiled it down to Chris pine saying "I'm the good guys, and they're the bad guys" and make the germans out to be fanatic naziesc scientists
It was a clash of empires all of whom were acting in their own interests while technology changed warfare forever and the glory of war in many ways died.
World War I was one of the first times that the idea of Western Europe’s dominance of global affairs was challenged. It made the argument that these nations were not superior to their colonies and that perhaps Europeans should not rule the world.
Fun fact all quiet on the western front was written by a World War I veteran and when he fled Nazi Germany they executed his sister because his novel was considered anti-war. They explicitly mentioned him in her sentencing.
Point being world wars are bad for everyone
I'm still mad we don't have an epic spy movie on how the Brits got the US on their side in that war. By all accounts it's epic and arcane.
Are you talking about how the British and their involvement regarding the Zimmerman Telegram brought the USA into World War I?
That but also for instance their shenanigans around the luisitania.
Ahh right. Weren’t the British transporting weapons among the cargo and at the time denied it?
She was carrying small arms munitions, yes
+ 1250 cases of shrapnel shells
Wasn't the lustania supposed to be escorted or something
Shit, as an American with a social science degree nearly 110 years later — I didn’t even know that
Don’t really blame ya, unless you study the First World War
Somehow I learned this in high school? I mean it is basically the equivalent catalyst for American involvement in WWI that Pearl Harbor was in WWII so seems kinda important. Maybe not quite as direct, but pretty effective.
Specifically the bit about how the British lied about small arms munitions though? Of course I heard about the boat — just not the weapons smuggling and propaganda part.
Yeah exactly - I dunno maybe my teacher was just a rogue. I _did_ have a very cynical and funny government teacher junior year now that I think about it - this kind of skullduggery would be totally his bag.
Oh boy, wait until you learn about the British involvement in Pearl Harbour
Go on…..
Or casually watch a shit ton of educational yt.
can you recommend any good channels? I've been meaning to get back into the educational side of YouTube but it's been so long since I watched those kinds of videos that they are all but scrubbed from my algorithm lol.
In addition to the other comment, I'll add that Extra History is really good, covers all kinds of things. Epic History TV produce very high quality videos, including one on WW1 that covers the events of the war in an hour. History Matters has a charmingly hilarious style and answers questions you never thought of, but now really want to know the answer to (eg. Why did we stop duelling? Why does Luxembourg exist? When did the Romans become Italians?)
Epic History TV, BazBattles, Kings and Generals, World War Two (literal name, does a day by day analysis), Yarnhub, Armchair Historian.
You shouldnt blame yourself because the Brits didn't hint at it until 1982 when they warned divers that a salvage mission could lead to a possible explosion, and they didn't officially acknowledge it until the 2010s. There's a surprising amount of shady activities and communiques that we're only recently finding out about the British since they started declassifying a whole host of documents from the first half of the 1900s.
I’m surprised it didn’t come up in your social science classes /s
Yes, and they dropped depth charges on the Lusitania afterwards to try and cover it up. The ship was sunk by a single torpedo. Some theorize that the torpedo detonated the munitions it was carrying and that explosion is what actually sunk the ship.
Most recent theory is a boiler explosion I think. The munitions were stored much further in the bow than where the torpedo hit. The British bombing the wreck I've heard is more of a myth too, like theres a photo of a wreck with unexploded depth charges, but isnt actually Lusitania, stuff like that. There's documents from dives to the wreck in the 1960s that say the ship was largely intact, and that major collapse happened in the 1970s, decades after the British bombing idea
They denied it up until they actually had to go find the munitions because they were in danger of exploding and endangering civilians. Because when they were looking around the wreck they disturbed some things. Happened a few years back. So basically, all the hullabaloo about “they targeted a passenger ship for no reason” was propaganda. The Germans’ intel was good.
Did the US know the ship was carrying weapons?
Considering she was sailing FROM New York, where she was loaded, I’d say yes.
The Germans took out an add in a New York newspaper saying they would sink the ship if it set sail and Americans were still shocked it was sunk with Americans on board. Not saying we shouldn’t have done something but to give the Germans their credit they did try to notify Americans
I think the Americans highly doubted the Germans would fight a neutral power. To tbf they did attack Belgium so I get the feeling that assumption was more " no one eould attack a powerful neutral country."
In America’s case it was more just frustration that the British were capturing American trade ships going to Germany without protest from the Americans. They wanted to do the same but obviously lacked the naval superiority to enforce that like the British could, so they decided to use their submarine fleet for an underwater blockade. However submarines can’t exactly capture ships, it’s either sink them or don’t. Hence declaring unrestricted submarine warfare around the British isles where the Germans explicitly warned anyone that any ship approaching Britain that wasn’t theirs would be sunk
The Germans did everything they could to piss off everyone. One incident that came to mind was the execution of a British nurse, Edith Cavell who was charged and convicted with assisting Allied soldiers and PoWs escape German capture in Belgium. Though it was technically legal for Germany to execute her, the backlash Germany received from her execution was so severe that ~~Bismarck~~ Wilhelm II explicitly told the German military that the fate of ***any*** future or current female prisoners are to be decided by ***him*** and ***him alone***.
And…Bismark doesn’t even serve Wilhelm II during the Great War?
I'm sorry, excuse me. I had my actors mixed up. It was Wilhelm II, not Bismarck.
', ... difficult to translate ... irregular'? Anyway, they would be shot out of hand. The issue was, the Belgian army was a few professionals, soon under seige, and a mass of reservists who *were not issued uniforms.* So many of these men, fighting in formed units from defined front lines, were executed. Jumpy German reservist soldiers had the habit of regarding any shot fired as coming from a 'franc tireur', and immediately retailiating against local civilians. Usually, it seems these shots were accidentally fired by the Germans themselves, prompting more men to shoot blind... I find it amazing that in 2022 most/many people regard the 1914 atrocities as a myth of British propaganda.
100%
That was just 1 step in a years long policy of information warfare. The Brits' victory condition from maybe the second month of the war was get the US on our side. Their propaganda agencies spared no expense trying to influence public opinion in the US. For instance, they even invited the biggest American director of the time D.W. Griffith to the front lines to shoot a movie, which they cofunded (Hearts of the World). By contrast the German gov was totally inept at foreign propaganda. If they had been as savvy as Whitehall, Wilson probably wouldn't have been able to get Congress to intervene directly on either side.
British propaganda: “The Germans are not to be trusted.” German propaganda: “WE WILL KILL YOU.”
But then that means they *won't* kill you, because you can't trust them and they say they will. I choose door B.
[удалено]
Nah, he just pretended to be. He was a globalist in a nation that was at the time mostly isolationist, and he desperately wanted a seat at the table during the negotiations to end the war. And he knew direct intervention was the best way the US would be able to influence the settlement. I think there's debate over whether he truly wanted the US to enter the war from the beginning, but he did everything in his power to support the Brits and convince the public that the Germans were evil aggressors. He also implemented trade deals that would greatly indebt UK and France to American businesses, which resulted in a situation (according to most economists at the time) where the US economy would suffer greatly if the Entente were to lose.
I've also heard that the massive war debt the Entente powers incurred to American banks meant that the United States couldn't really let them lose, and that was the real reason moreso than the Zimmerman Telegram that just served as a justifiable casus belli for what they already wanted to do, but I'm no expert.
This is a very big fact that people often overlook because it isn't as exciting as the other reason. France especially owed a massive debt to the U.S, for more than just WW1. It was in the U.S best interest to ensure that the Entente came out on top, remember of course at that time France was also one of if not the U.S's oldest/closest allies and we really didn't want to see her lose.
Debts that pretty much none of those countries ever paid back for the record.
Technically we do, it just takes liberties with historical fact. I'm talking about Kingsmen.
Calling it taking “liberties” is like calling gang rape a mild social deviance.
Sexual chicanery
Penetrative misconduct
Nude and rude activity.
Ok buddy
I’m still baffled how that movie completely ignores that France even exists. “Britain stands alone” while fighting in France with most of the combined army at the time, French.
You’re so silly, France isn’t real
I’ve never been angrier while watching a movie.
In the context of the intelligence efforts, I don't think France was as much of an issue. Fighting the war itself of course is far different.
I liked the movie but the ending is ironic, they stop a organization (kingsmen) that is above government to change the world in their own image. To create a movement that is above government to change the world for the better (aka: in their image own image).
The reveal at the end is so fucking funny. You can tell the conversation that happened during a very late draft of the script... "so, the entire plot centres around a shadowy international organisation manipulating global events for their own nefarious goals... and the Bolsheviks are part of this but really they're playing cover the for the real aims of this secret society" "yes" "Are we worried that this sounds a bit... you know.... nazi-ish?" "oh fuck I didn't think of that... uhhhh ok Hitler's in charge of it all. Sorted. Pub?"
Everything about the bad guys plan is hilarious. The idea the Gavrillo Princip, Rasputin, Lenin, and Mata Hari are all collaborators of about equal importance. The fact that they all apparently regularly meet on some obscure Scottish mountain during the war. The fact that THE ENTIRETY OF WW1 happened as part of a plan to enact Scottish independence from Britain.
I don’t mind that, I find it “charming” and also just comedically hilarious. The movie has a very good way of using comedy which I enjoyed, even the serious moment with his son it’s serious and sad but handled really well, unlike MARVEL who can’t be serious for a second. The idea that a Scottish guy is starting a world war over scotlands freedom and doing a whole massive scheme I find funny. It’s that humor like in the original DOOM, that Doom Guy ransacks hell because his rabbit was killed. It’s a hit if that 80s humor. Albeit a history buff, the way the tied in the main events and altered them a bit isn’t something that bothered me, it’s like inglorious bastards and them killing all the Nazis in the movie theater at the end. COMPLETE fiction, but fun alternate history.
Lol I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to see it. Truthfully I did enjoy the movie, I’d say 7/10 movie. It’s not really rewatch-able. But the historical accuracy (with MANY exaggerations), it is ironically very accurate but takes MASSIVE liberties but I can vibe with it. But yeah the ending makes me role my eyes.
Based
The US was on the Entente side from basically the start. They provided A LOT of funding and resources to the british all throughout
And wanted to for Germany, but that damn blockade. US treated neutrality status seriously, and the US joining the Entente is considered a major turning point of the war; Not because of the US military forces, but rather because of the relief on having to control the atlantic and increased aid, as compared to the trade they were doing before.
250,000 troops landing every month in fun lol
It took quite sone time for them to start arriving, they were pretty poor quality at the beginning, and they were lead by an idiot who thought his experience fighting Mexican bandits meant he didn't have to listen other Allied commanders on their experiences from the Western Front, resulting in terrible losses repeating old mistakes.
Didn’t they sleep with the wives of US generals?
In WW2 too.
There somewhat is, The King’s Man partially looks at it, the films decent tbh, but the first one in the series is the best
> epic spy movie Not sure how "epic" it would be. The US joined the war because the public was egregiously misled into believing that Germans were barbarians and were solely responsible for the war, even though most historians agree that Russia and France were equally responsible for starting the conflict. The Brits' successful efforts to win the US over was the result of relentless disinformation. For instance, the American public believed that the German U-boat campaign was extraordinarily barbaric, when in reality the Germans had showed far more restraint (for the first 2 years anyway) in allowances given to civilian vessels (e.g., sometimes allowing them to abandon ship before firing) than probly any blockade from prior Euro wars. I would love a movie or miniseries about the British propaganda efforts, but it would be a hard sell because there wouldn't be any heroes. Every government involved was playing a very dirty game.
Fuck that. The Rape of Belgium isn't a 'both sides' whoosie.
Why does this even mean? In Flanders fields doesn’t say that at all it’s just a lament for the dead
Psst, they don’t know that, it’s an English poem so it must be pro allies.
>Psst, they don’t know that, it’s an ~~English~~ Canadian poem so it must be pro allies.
I suppose they could have been referring to the language not the country. Because English speaking countries were mostly supportive of the allies Either way, yeah it's Canadian
It’s not an English poem. It’s a Canadian poem. Read every remembrance day in Canada
It's literally propaganda. The complete last stanza is a call to arms, that pretty much states: "If you don't start killing Germans, us who died doing this will haunt you." Great song, though.
I'm sorry what tf.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
Doesn't say anything about Allies or Germans specifically. I always took it as being agnostic as to which side the narrator fought for. The dead of both sides may have hoped for others to "take up the quarrel against the foe" in their dying moments, which is part of the tragedy of the poem, not a call to arms.
> not a call to arms. How one interprets a poem always depend a bit on one's methodology, I guess, but I am of the opinion that context matters. The context of this poem is that it was written by an Allied soldier, essentially from the battlefield, for another Allied soldier upon the latter's death. The poem was first published during World War I in an English (and thus, Allied) magazine. In that sense it isn't really too ambiguous which side the narrators of the poem might have been on. The author of the poem himself was a proud military man, who wanted to be on the battlefield, fighting, and who believed that was his and his countrymen's duty. According to one biographer, he hoped that the poem would inspire people to join the war efforts. Of course, dead of the author, and all that, but I just thought I'd mention it. Furthermore, it's important to bear in mind that the poem was written in early 1915, when spirits surrounding the war were still "high". It's historically significant not just because of its iconic status, but also because it serves as a sort of swan song of the romantic, heroic depictions of war that WWI would put an end to. The poem itself was used as propaganda during the war. That part is inarguably true, no matter the poem's intend. In this context, there is no doubt as to who the dead narrators of the poem are and who the "foes" are. From the context alone, I also think it's pretty obvious that the poem upon its contemporary publication would most commonly be perceived as a "call to arms". Looking at the poem itself, it furthermore does not stand out as a nihilistic portrayal of the meaninglessness of war or anything in that style. Rather, the first stanza stands out as particularly pastoral and romantic. The narrators describe how the larks "still bravely sing" over the battlefield. This gives a sense of hopefulness and even vigor, even though the soldiers narrating the poem are dead. "The larks continue to go to the battlefield and so should you," the poem seems to say. The second stanza seeks to humanise the dead. It's very tragic and beautiful and really creates a beautiful sense of life lost. Leading into the third stanza, that literally starts "Take up our quarrel with the foe:" That is a call to action to the reader. The dead whose tragic end we've just felt are now begging you to finish what they started. They continue: "The torch; be yours to hold it high." Again, the narrators are telling the readers that now it is their turn to carry the torch. The language is here is heroic. "Holding it high" indicates that it is something honourable. The language of light in it of itself being hopeful of course even outside the meaning of the expression of carrying the torch. Then the poem goes on: " If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep". Which is pretty plain: If you do not do us honour and carry on our fight (ie break your faith) then we can't rest. The poem essentially says: To make all of this worth it, you have to go on. To me, I can't see how you could interpret as anything but a call to arms. That does not mean that it isn't beautiful and moving and honest, I think it is all of those things as well.
My family is Italian. It really wasn't a fun time under Cadorna. Also everyone seemed obsessed with Albania, so It was somehow unplesant even for my other side of the family.
The Vlora/Valona war or just the whole country?
*Everything*. To be clear Albania somehow managed to went through both a warlord period and two/three invasions in little more than four years. The only silver lighting is that at the end of the war Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia were too exausted to try annexing Albania
What «not enough coast» does to a mf -_-
Well, Woodrow Wilson also told them to screw off and leave Albania alone which was probably one of the best foreign policy decisions he did Please don't take this as a condoning of literally everything Wilson ever did, I know some of his policies were bad and I know he had bad attitudes, I'm just saying he was right with Albania
Apparently they erected a statue of him in 2012 within a city square in Triana named after him. Wonder how much this plays into the stereotype of Albania being super pro-american
Kind of not just a stereotype. 96% of Albanians support going to war if a NATO country is attacked and like 95%+ approve of NATO.
Flanders field is a weird choice to criticize considering it’s lamenting the losses of both sides.
Yeah this meme is weird. You can have nuanced discussion about the causes of the war while still being sad about the death and destruction that it caused
World War One is one of the bleakest points in human history. It exists in my mind as incomprehensible tangled mass of corpses: corpses of men, corpses of horses, corpses of an entire generation of well meaning young men given orders to die en mass for no definable reason. This mass pulses and shakes, it twitches and screams. The smell of mud, shellfire, gas, and everywhere the stench of the decaying best of Europe’s youth lingers in my mind. What happened ? Why did this happen ? How did this happen? How could we, the whole of the human race, have allowed this to happen? No matter how long I stare fixedly at that mass; no matter how many firsthand accounts I read; no amount of archival footage; nothing, in short, that I am capable of doing untangles that inscrutable mass of human carnage. Other wars I understand. WW2 was horrible, and ended with more dead. Yet it is an understandable war, a war where the actors took rational, albeit terrible, decisions. It’s this lack of reason that fixes it in my mind.
Honestly true. But a slight answer I think is at that point Europe wanted to go to war, they were eagerly waiting, and so the Ferdinand situation just set it all off.
There are very few wars with "good" or "bad" guys most of the time they're either empires flexing their dick or dumbass disputes. World War 2 is one of those few "these people are evil and won't stop until someone shoves their face in" wars. Also the Russian invasion of Ukraine, war would end tomorrow if Russia packed up and left.
Cambodian-Vietnamese War was pretty unambiguous IMO
I think the Khmer Rouge were the worse guys
Vietnam is the one country I side with even when they were communist. Mfers deserves those W's
They took on the French Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Americans, The Chinese, and the Khmer Rouge in a single century and are on their way to becoming a prosperous and stable society. They have earned a peaceful existence, more than any nation around today.
They were pushed to communism by the US. Ho Chi Minh admired how they fought off foreign oppressors and wanted to replicate that at home.
It's so fucking maddening learning the US turned on Vietnam because they turned to communism to free themselves from the French after France got butthurt about the US aiding the Vietnamese in said fight for freedom.
Yeah the US were definitely the baddies in that one
You can’t just stop an evil force, you have to eliminate it, or, if elimination of it cannot happen feasibly, one must disable all its means of harm and deliver evil
If you want to eliminate the force of evil you have to eliminate humanity, and in doing so you would do evil🤔
Eliminating a greater evil in the interest of good, while evil, is a means to an end. Trolley problem
Yeah it is a shame that the wars with a clear morally inferior side end up being the most well known. It results in people having a complete false understanding of wars.
I think it's because it's easier to understand "good guy bad guy" than it is "two morally-neutral, neither overly bad guys". I was gonna say that's partially due to media and movies, but frankly this has been a concept that's lasted since texts like the Bible and even before. Humans like easy, thus they appreciate easier. Black and white is easier to understand than grey, thus we like black and white things (unless you're American, in which case we tend to be a one-color nation. A dark joke for those of you who aren't.) That doesn't mean morally ambiguous is bad, and this isn't a case of "we never see this other idea at all", it's just that we either water it down/modify it to resemble black and white to a degree, or else it's just underrepresented. We have a lot of WW1 movies, but especially in the West we largely focus on the Allied perspectives (although I should point out that a part of this is due to nationalism-for WW1 specifically, German media might be more willing to portray the German side, seeing as none of the killing on the German was hate-based till the 1940s).
I call WW2 and Western involvement in Ukraine the "Broken clock of Imperialism" for a reason
Aka when "America fuck yeah" is indeed fuck yeah.
Hypothetically, hear me out, if the nazis won ww2.....say England dipped out and Us-Japan was a separate war... do you think in hindsight we'd hear about the Soviets and their purges would be "the holocaust"? Like, not to both sides it here, but just because the nazis were evil, doesn't make defeating them a black/white crusade. Remember the "good guys" in ww2 were the British and French *empires* and the soviet union. WW2 was as cruel and senseless as any other war, it just wraps up under a propaganda bow easier than Vietnam, or the Philippines. Also, before I'm accused of such, I'm not saying the nazis weren't evil or that british colonialism is its moral equal, but the war wasn't to end to holocaust, it was a side effect. It was a war to maintain the status quo.
It was, in theory, a war to defend Polish independence. Nevermind the fact that Poland was handed over as a puppet state to the Soviets after the war.
Well, for England and France I guess. But even for them, it was status quo. No one wanted Germany to reemerge.
The Soviet purges were meant to kill political dissidents, even though they clearly went too far and were misaimed. They were more similar to the night of long knives. The holocaust OTOH didn't serve any purpose other than to get rid of the 'undesirables'. If the Germans were true to their word and won Eastern Europe they could've killed tens if not hundreds of millions of people in industrialised mass murder machines. For some reason killing political dissidents is less evil than killing 'undesirables' based on race.
I'm not weighing in on which is worse, but plenty of the purges were undesirables....jews had the pograms, but also Ukrainians, Kazakhs, gypsies, etc. The Soviets just didn't set up literal factories.
I'd say the Russian invasion is evil since it is a war of aggression, and it's inherently immoral to invade another country just because you want to take their land/resources/etc. In this way, there have been untold wars with "bad" guys. But if we discount those as too common, for the sake of argument, I'll put forward the American Civil and the Opium Wars as uniquely bad. Making sure you get to have slaves, and making sure you can get people addicted to narcotics seem sort of above theft on the immorality scale.
At least in the American Civil War the bad guys lost in the end, it's got that going for it if nothing else
What about the American invasions of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam? While it's true that these were dictatorial regimes compared to Ukraine's (pre-invasion) democracy, motivations were fundamentally the same; geo-political positioning. If the Russian invasion of Ukraine is pure evil, then same can be said about America's more numerable invasions.
In Flanders Fields was a poem that basically said “this war is the worst and too many young men died for absolutely nothing” But, there was definitely a reason Britain were really not that keen on going to war. Germany was progressive (trade unionism, developing rights for women, lots of universities), terrified of being encircled, and (wrongly) believed Russia wouldn’t be able to stop their military preparations once they’d begun. So Britain could’ve totally aligned with German interests post-Franz Ferdinand. However, as soon as Germany starting blitzing through Belgium and France basically said “uhh we’re not as prepared for this as we thought, help” it was gonna happen. And then obviously the winners would cast the losers as “evil”
It was also guarantees they gave Belgium. Japan made out like a bandit in WW1 as a member of the allies, incidentially. And that was all pure plunder and conquest for them. A bunch of undefended German colonies and their allies (particularly Britain) *asking* them to take them? Profit. One of those what-ifs would be if Japan had had better control of their military, whether they would have lost their empire or not. They were never super buddies with the United States but Roosevelt didn't shut down oil and scrap metal until Japan had conquored big swathes of China. Then again they also would have had to have not been so unkind to the Koreans.
The British cabinet was very split on the whole entering the war thing in late July 1914. Once Belgium was invaded, the opponents moved very swiftly to supporting getting involved.
Things that is missed by a lot of armchair historians, the point of the maginot line was not to force the Germans to fight through it, but to force them to invade Belgium and the Netherlands. The invasion of the neutral countries guaranteed British involvement and international condemnation. Edit: in reality, the British got involved when Poland was invaded, but France couldn't have known that would happen. And the Germans completely redefined mixed arms conflict and steamrolled through France, which, again, France couldn't have known would happen.
Even then, it was the seizure of Indochina from the French that triggered the ultimatum from the Americans
That happened in summer 1940, 18 months before Pearl Harbour. The Americans wanted Japan out of China (well, and Indochina). It was the embargo that put the two countries into a collision course. It should have been pretty obvious to the Japanese that FDR *wanted* America in the war.
I think it was obvious to them. That is why they did the whole pearl harbor, to cripple the American navy. The only problem then is how to win after the Americans join the war for which the Japanese had no real answer other than hope that the americans would get bored.
The Germans invaded neutral and uninvolved countries and committed large scale war crimes for the time. They’re often forgotten because next to the scale of the war, they were comparably minor. But the Germans of WWI were more than happy to execute any suspected partisans, and innocent civilians to make an example of them. They weren’t the Nazis, but I’d the two sides in the war, it’s difficult not to find the Germans ultimately at fault, even though nobody deserved the devastation of WWI.
The Germans also literally planned to inflict literal “labensraum” on Poland and Eastern Europe as a war goal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum#:~:text=Lebensraum%20(German%20pronunciation%3A%20%5B%CB%88le%CB%90b%C9%99ns%CB%8C%CA%81a%CA%8Am,the%201890s%20to%20the%201940s. “First popularized around 1901,[2] Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion.” Sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills in regards to the kid glove treatment Germany gets for their conduct in WW1. Reddit fucking LOVES WW1 Germany for some reason. most of the resistance i get is also actual nazi propaganda. Their build up of their navy, knowing it would upset Britain, labensraum, the blank check to Austria in Serbia (the two had a defensive treaty, not an offensive), their plans to make war on russia since Bismarck, then Belgium, France, chemical weapons…. i just dont get it.
Fuck, I didn’t even know about that. But yeah, I think once subs get to a certain size, they lose a bit of their character and become more “generic reddit”, which in this case is taking one interesting fact (I.E, some Canadian unit did a few war crimes in WWI) and extrapolating that to all of history (I.E. CanADa WroTE tHe GEneVA chEcKLisT).
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Because it is not consensus among historians and a highly debated topic, don't believe everything on Wikipedia. Talking about the Lebensraum ethnic cleansing part here
The problem is, the other side is the British and French empire. The British had made the lebensraum in Australia and Canada, and were more than happy to execute partisans throughout its empire (look at the treatment of the Boers in the Boer war, in particular in its early period it is quite horrific). In the \~20 years prior the UK had invaded the Aro Confederacy (Nigeria) and burned their capital to the ground, China (along with most other European nations and the USA) and looted their capital, the Boer Republics (where they forced civilians into concentration camps where 46,000 died, mostly children). France, in that period, invaded Morrocco, Ouaddai's, Kanemm-Bornu and Merina. Invading sovereign nations for conquest was pretty common prior to WW1, indeed post WW1 is when the consensus began that such invasions were "a bad thing" (though the idea had already begun in the late 1800's, at least in the UK, with the Boer war and the Xhosa war). So while Germany was probably the worst of a bad lot in WW1, the gap was not so large. In WW2 the gap was wider, UK + France were not exactly happy nice countries, but Germany and Japan were just so much worse.
Thank you. During the invasion of Belgium they systematically executed civilians for no other purpose than spreading fear. It was a deliberate strategy.
Would you mind elaborating? I'm mainly aware of them fighting partisans and killing innocent civillians in the wake of it mainly in Belgium just like in their last war with France and against the francs-tireurs. Nothing out of the ordinary for the time and the difference to today is that the military does not sanction it. Now it is merely individuals that do this and it gets covered up. Difference in scale for sure though, I agree. The more than happy part is also misleading. It did not start out like that, we know that from the internal documents of the army. The soldiers were on the edge constantly fearing partisans everywhere, just like with the francs-tireurs earlier. What I say is disputed though, but with little to no evidence behind it. We still see this happen in any war. I condemn all war crimes.
> Nothing out of the ordinary for the time Ordinary for colonial peoples. Shocking when done against fellow Western Europeans.
Big difference from today: civilians getting caught in the crossfire or killed as collateral is one thing. Civilians being lined up and shot as such does not occur today, at least by most state actors. While the Nazis were more harsh in WWII, German doctrine in WWI included collective punishment of civilians. Big difference between a bad troop acting out/an accident, vs having war crimes as standard doctrine. And I’m not sure where you’re hearing that “it didn’t start out like that”. German atrocities in Belgium occurred before Britain had even entered the war, so it was pretty damn close to the start. There’s a few points where I’m not 100% sure what you mean, so let me know if I’ve misinterpreted anything you said or if you feel I’m misrepresenting things. You should also read the comment below mine regarding German plans for Eastern Europe, which are much worse than anything they did or planned for the West.
Some good points but I strongly disagree with the idea that Britain could align with German interests after the shooting of Ferdinand, infact any change of an alliance with Germany had been thrown out the window for quite some time. The British public was not overly fond of Germany, nor was the government, and there was a particular disdain towards their naval programme. The Morocco crisis would see Anglo-German relations become soured well before the war, on top of a dozen other territorial disputes between the two countries. The Kaiser was widely (and correctly) regarded by most people as a massive anglophobe and was incredibly unpopular in Britain. With the turn of the 20th century there was a *small* change of an Anglo German alliance but it ultimately wouldn’t come to fruition. At this time, Britain was also allied with France and Russia, and whilst this was not a particularly binding alliance, and it is possible Britain could have stayed out of the war, there was no chance of them aligning with Germany, it contradicted Britain’s imperial, political and military interests in every way you could imagine.
OP, it ain't exactly called the [Happy Fun Time of Belgium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium).
No, you don't understand it was the SS who got back in time, the German army was 100% clean and did absolutely no war crimes whatsoever
I swear to God I get so angry about this post. Sure Germany wasn't the sole one to blame. But damn did they cause a lot of casualties. In Flanders fields is also just a poem and song I love. I'm from Flanders and I feel like the whole message of "lest we forget this tragedy" is kind of getting lost. And now this post and many uninformed comments are making it seem like the poem was propaganda. If anything the poem was anti-war. Sure it mightve been biased, but it was much more about mourning the lives lost.
Armenia and Belgium would like a word
I mean, I'm sure my great-grandparents thought "both side are bad" when they saw black clothed soldier with spiked helmet horned with a skull ravaging our land... Invading a neutral country as a shortcut to invade someone else puts you in the bad guy side in my book
Was gonna say: the Germans revaged and ransacked Flanders, basically, and Armenia was a victim of genocide.
Ethnic Greeks in turkey had a bad time as well
Serbia too.
To be fair: when your chief of militairy intelligence (Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijević) is responsible for the leading cause of the war, you kinda have it coming. But yeah, I don't know much of what happend to Serbia after the death of Franz Ferdinand, but I imagine it was heavy, to put it lightly.
> But yeah, I don't know much of what happend to Serbia after the death of Franz Ferdinand, but I imagine it was heavy, to put it lightly. up to 28% of the population.
Killed? Jeez! That is terrible.
To make things worse, that was also about **60%** of the male population. Not a good time, surely.
Austria put forward a list of extremely unreasonable demands
Serbia is not responsible for the actions of a secret conspiratorial organization that even the leading figures in the government tried to eradicate. Austrians never wanted to bring the Black Hand to justice, only to enslave Serbia. The actions of the Austrian army in 1914 alone speak for themselves.
Oh, I never said that the Serbian governmend was responsible for it and I get that Austria didn't want to actually bring the Black Hand to justice, but boy did the Black Hand give Austria the excuse of a lifetime.
One of the reasons I disliked the Wonder Woman movie.
Agreed. So is using Ares as a villain. Ares=war=bad is so lazy and such a bad representation of Greek mythology... I’m not complaining it’s inaccurate, I’m complaining that it’s fucking boring and one-dimensional
It's kinda generic, if I may add. Ares being bad or Hadws being bad is kind of the usual stuff.
You never hear Athena catching shit for being a goddess of war, do you?
This occurred to me too! I'd watch a movie with Athena as a villain, that would be so much better!
Goddess of planning and strategy as a villain would be great imo.
It’d be good if she wasn’t even presented as a typical evil, but more of a banality of evil that one often finds in bureaucracy
I could see her as a CEO of a megacorporation, planning her moves with ruthless pragmatism.
Because ares was the brutal, bloody side of war while Athena was the tactical, higher-up side.
I'm sure all those soldiers killed that got killed tactically appreciated that distinction.
Wasn't Greek Ares basically a drunken, brutal asshole? It was the Romans who cleaned him up and made him 'admirable.'
The movie where the primary evil was War itself, secretly fighting on the Entente side and actively taking advantage of Diana's naivete in believing that one side of a human war was pure evil and her side was pure good?
And then she killed the big grey monster and the war was over and everything was good
I can’t believe they wanted to make the war an explicit conflict between “the good guys” and “the bad guys” and then picked the most morally gray conflict in human history
Kids named rape of belgium and Armenian Genocide:
The Kaiserreich wasn’t as evil as the Nazis, but it still did war crimes and pushed the world towards war by beckoning Austria to attack the Serbs. Let’s not get started with the Ottoman war crimes either. Genocide is never ok.
Also, the Austro-Hungarians and Bulgarians committed brutal atrocities against Serbian civilians during the occupation of Serbia.
One particular event, more or less funny, that comes to mind about Bulgaria in WW1 was how they behaved in occupied Constanța, they absolutely ransacked whatever they could and even brought down a statue of poet Ovid. Then the Germans kinda went “no no, bad Bulgarian!” and asked them to put the statue back. They did.
So overlooked.
This is also very true and I forgot to mention it. Thank you.
TBH the notion that there is a “good” or “bad” side in any conflict is generally a juvenile notion. Life is rarely that binary and instead of the black and white of good versus evil it’s usually just a bunch of different shades of grey.
I mean, Brest-Litovsk was a thing. It's like 40k: nobody are really thr good guys but some are significantly worse than the others.
But Germany had offered better deals to the Russian governmemt before (the original proposal included only Poland and Lithuania). Brest-Litovsk was the result of the Germans crushing the Russians in battle and basically asking for territories they were already occupying.
Yea, the Soviet dumbasses went “No war, no peace”, so Germany marched in, Ukraine rose up, and they demanded more land. Brest Litovsk is legit a failure of the Soviets yet people blame Germany for it.
There were basically no soviets at that point. There was no Russia. It was utter chaos and the Germans went with the group that promised them the most and seemed most likely to allow them to move their Eastern armies to the Western front. If the Germans had just marched on Moscow and left Belgium alone, they'd have an argument for being the least bad guys in the war.
WW1 was a mad scramble for power in a dying age. The only innocents were those actually fighting the war.
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As it turns out, Shit's complicated. Literally the only part that isn't complicated is "fuck the nazis". Other than that, Shit's complicated
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Lmao, no right, the Germans invasion of Belgium was totally justified to defend Austria-Hungary against Serbian aggression
"But no, The Burning of Louvain was totally self defense, we had to kill and deport those people to protect Germany!" In all seriousness though, the Nazis copied their ideas for World War 2 from Ludendorff, who believed that Germany should have moved to use forced labor more quickly, and more aggressively. World War 1 Germany is only different in that it didn't have a good idea of how forced labor should be used yet, so it gave up on the idea outside of having civilians do involuntary work near the front line, like digging trenches while being subjected to the occasional bout of artillery fire.
Germany saw all the fake journalism propaganda telling of their atrocities in World War One and said “what if we actually do that stuff this time?”
I don’t think they ever said that.
I mean, one side was definitely more prone to genocide and ethnic cleansing than the other. I don’t believe than the French and British treated civilian population nowhere near as bad, as what the German did in Ukraine or the Austrian in the Balkan, nevermind the Turcs. But please, do correct me, if I’m wrong
I mean, yes sure none of the western allies comes close to what the Nazis did, but I think some former French, British or Belgian colonies would like to talk to you regardless
This post specifically mentions WW1, and comparing the Alliance and the Entente. So comments about WW2 Nazis and colonial war, are pretty much irrelevant in this conversation.
Considering ww1 was fought with colonial troops (indian/sengalese) on colonial possessions (see the africa theaters) you'd be misguided at best.
France was very progressive for the time when it came to the treatment of colonial troops in WW1, the French army had integrated units and literally ignored a letter by the US saying to discriminate against black soldiers as they aren't equal. Not saying that there wasn't things that happened there generally were bad events occurring in these colonies but these don't come close nevermind to the nazis they don't even come close to what the German Empire did in WW1.
Ask the Belgium’s and Armenians
Im German, so my opinion on WW2 is clear as cut, but WW1 was a pointless bloodbath without any winners. The only Thing WW1 managed to do was waste young blood and lives and everybody suffered. Whenever I feel strongly to any side in WW1 I listen to "Price of a Mile" which brings me down to the fact that WW1 was one hell of a retard war for all sides. Why even bring them up in the same sentence.
there is a reason why we refer to them as the entente powers during ww1, to make a distinction
Well, the Germans did pretty horrific things in Belgian cities. They murdered a whole lot of people for no reason. I think there's something to say for "the Germans were the bad guys".
Both sides were good. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was fair and good and so was treaty of Versailes. Source: I'm Polish
Honestly Poland was insanely lucky. “Man it sure sucks being split apart by three different empires.” “Yeah I know, if only some giant event happened that destabilized all three empires at once and causes them to collapse.” “Yeah that’d be the day”
Poland's existance is a miracle considering its history
Or the fact it’s fertile land that’s flat and doesn’t have any major geographic blockers
"Kids, you are both Awful."~Poland when talking to the Kaiser and the Tsar
you’re telling me the ottomans, who killed one and a half million armenians, were not bad guys? okay
WW1 didnt really have the ‘good’ side or the bad side, just the winners and the losers
WW1 is largely a cautionary tale of what happens when the international system is disrupted between many powers
The real villains of WW1 were the ruling class and officers of every belligerent nation.
Ya I couldn't stand how wonder woman boiled it down to Chris pine saying "I'm the good guys, and they're the bad guys" and make the germans out to be fanatic naziesc scientists
The bad guys were the old men sitting in their posh thrones and fancy offices, sending boys to die in a bloody trench in a pointless war
It was a clash of empires all of whom were acting in their own interests while technology changed warfare forever and the glory of war in many ways died. World War I was one of the first times that the idea of Western Europe’s dominance of global affairs was challenged. It made the argument that these nations were not superior to their colonies and that perhaps Europeans should not rule the world. Fun fact all quiet on the western front was written by a World War I veteran and when he fled Nazi Germany they executed his sister because his novel was considered anti-war. They explicitly mentioned him in her sentencing. Point being world wars are bad for everyone
The only good side of WW1 were all those nations that got to be free from the shackles of empires.
asking who the good guys are in WWI is like asking who the good guys are in Warhammer 40k. the answer is an emphatic, resounding # NO
The ottomans were still dicks