France? Do you think that the French input into the treaty of Versailles put Germany in a position were a leader like Hitler could rise to power and there by causing the war? The British and American input was not anywhere as near as the harsh punishment wanted by the French. If the treaty had been realistic would it have prevented WW2? Your thoughts please?
Gavrilo Princip, when he shot Archduke Ferdinand in 1914.
Not as silly as you might think – it is quite valid to consider the interwar years as a temporary truce which was always going to boil over, largely due to the Treaty of Versailles.
I thought it was hitler, because germany had to pay for WWI and germany didnt get anything, so hitler was furious, and started WWII.
Nothing like keeping it simple, eh?
Let us not forget that president wilsons intervention and soft approach to the germans after ww1 prevented the triple ententre from crippling gemany’s millitary might sufficiantly
What that have with WW2 MoS can you explain me.
Id go along with this but take it farther back. The German decision to challenge the RN on the high seas at the turn of the century. Without that move the UK probably wouldnt have joined the triple entente and the war of 1914 would probably have played out as the Franco-Prussian war Mk2.
Well i think its safe to say that Germany got the shaff after WW1. A war they didnt start.
Now the Treaty of Versailles was the perfect setup for a nut like Hitler to come along but this doesnt justify any of Germany’s action prior to Sept 1st, 1939. Probably back a bit further than that.
On the other hand dont forget that the Japanese invaded Manchuria long before the War in Europe ever started. So IMO if you didnt know anything about WW1 then it was the Japanese that started WW2.
Very, very arguable - not only did they give the Austrians effectively a blank cheque of support against Serbia (for an ultimatum they knew was designed to be unacceptable) but there is some fairly stronge evidence that they were planning a war for around autumn 1914 anyway. There was a conference to plan exactly this just before Christmas 1912.
To be honest, I think Germany got off rather too lightly after WW1. I would personally (with the benefit of greater knowledge than was available at the time) have opted to continue fighting for another month or two until the German army collapsed utterly - which it was very close to doing - and then gone on to occupy Germany militarily. I would also have broken it up into several different states, and above all ensured that Prussia no longer had access to the Ruhr.
Incidentally, if you think Germany was treated harshly at Versailles, I suggest you read the Treaties of Versailles and Brest-Litovsk. Given how harshly Germany had treated the Russians (in a war that the Russians certainly didn’t start) it becomes very hard indeed to argue that the Germans were treated too harshly at Versailles.
What you have to remember is that WW1 was essentially fought with a 19th century mindset. So if the Allies had gone on to conquer Germany I think it would have turned out better for Germany in a twisted sort of way.
What I mean is that they would have accepted defeat without an Armistace and probably gotten of with better terms ironically. This could mean that they didnt feel so cheated in a war they thought they could have won as they would definately know they had lost.
A heck of a lot of lateral thinking though.
What that have with WW2 MoS can you explain me.[/quote]
Re-read the second paragraph
I’ve never looked at it like that, but it makes quite a bit of sense.
The answer is undoubtedly one Herr Adolf Hitler.
You can trace the second world war back to any number of other contributors but where do you stop?
For example at one extreme why not say his mother started the war by having him in the first place? At the other extreme why not say that Bismarck started the war through his contribution to the German/Austrian alliance of the late 19th Century which - had it not existed - might have meant that Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Ferdinand might have been a mere page 3 news article instead of being a defining point in 20th Century history. In between these two extremes you could say that Gavrilo Pricip or many others caused the start of WW2.
Quote below is from http://www.worldwar1.com/tlwarorg.htm#austria
A prolonged two-front war was a nightmare scenario for German military strategists in 1914. Yet policies formulated by Bismarck in the 1870s ensured that Germany did face threats on both its eastern and western frontiers. Bismarck’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 created a France that seemed incorrigibly hostile, at least to German policymakers. In addition, his alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879 ultimately led to a hostile Russia and thus to the Franco-Russian alliance. This essay examines why Germany adopted and kept these policies and also details what results they had in military campaign of 1914
So you could argue that Bismarck’s policies lead to an inflamed and hostile Europe which lead to World War 1 which then lead to World War 2. So did Bismarck start the Second World War?
However in my view the Germans got beat in World War 1, the victors did what victors had always done up to that time and demanded reparations etc via the Versailles Treaty. The Germans should have “acted like a man about it”, met the terms of the treaty or renogotiated and got on with their lives. Instead a mad man called Hitler came along, stoked things up, twisted history, found scapegoats, illegally circumvented the Versailles Treaty restricting his military forces and so on … AND THEN STARTED WORLD WAR 2.
There were many decent Germans - such as Hindenburg - who could see what Hitler was up to and tried to stop it but failed. Perhaps if the Germans had stuck with the likes of Hindenburg the war would never have started.
Hitler’s the man you are looking for!
Nope! You must get your facts right mate. Germany never got beat in WW1. They wanted things that were bull and they should have been more creaul to the ones who started WW1. If you go and read about WW1 you will notice that nowhere they would say Germany started the war, they simply whent with the whole thing and made war. Yes, they did make a lot of dammage but it is war. That means something is goeing to be destroyed or some people going to get killed, that is the thing about war and we all know so to go and say that is why is actualy not right.
The Uk and France was the bad guys in the whole story who later made a lot of shit for the rest of the world and then later on played the game they love to play, the blameing game.
Now you ask, but how do you deal with them? The UK and France should have taken away all milliatary power Germany had at that time and made it so that they could not touch it for years. Then they should have helped the people to get a goverment that will give the country someone who will take them out of the war nation into a notion who will build on their past misstakes and not start to blame someone like Hitler did.
The treaty of Versailles was a bunch of bull. Why? They wanted someone to blame so they took Germany and gave them all the blame and made them the joke of the century and the world. Now if they did that to my country I would be pissed and I would like to get back at them for doing that.
Just think how you would have felt if you had little food, money is worht nothing and the goverment can not deal with all the problems so you get mad at the people who did that to you and then wars start.
Yes, Germany should have paid after WW1, and the UK and France, because they all killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of things so to play the blameing game is bull.
Hitler used it all to his advantage to gain power and thus take over.
Henk
Technically Austria-Hungary could be thought of starting the war. They after all invaded Serbia, who was allied to Russia, who was Allied to France, etc etc…
Also to say the Germans didnt lose WW1 is a little strange? They were defeated and were falling back.
Yes, they were pulling back, but they were never invaded nor totaly destroyed military wise.
Henk
I’ve always thought of things this way…
Interesting how the Versailles Treaty actually made the German military better, in the long run, by forcing them to become more innovative and adaptive while the Allies grew reactionary and stale. It also created a tradition of paramilitary militias to augment the small German Army, ultimately leading to the SS…
Pre WW1 Europe was like a coiled spring due to the various treaties and Germanys expasnsionist ambitions which created the climate in which a war was possible however Germanys invasion of France was a major factor in the out break of hostilities.
Germanys resentment of the treaty of Versailles and Hitlers expansionist ambitions coupled with various mutual defence treaties created the climate in which a second war was possible however Germanys invasion of Poland was a major factor in the out break of hostilities.
During the cold war Nato and the Warsaw pact countries spent years staring down the barrels of each others guns in a political climate in which war was possible and had one or the other decided to invade then war it would have been.
I would suggest that to start a war you have to take some sort of offensive action such as invading another country political tension occurs from time to time and has through out Europes history war however needs one side to throw the first punch. In both 1914 and 1939 the first punch was thrown at least in westrn Europe by Germany.
HG wrote:
Germany never got beat in WW1.
That is a seriously revisionist statement - better start re-writing all the history books as I don’t recollect the UK being occupied by a German army of occupation post WW1 whilst an allied army of occupation DID occupy Germany!!!
You don’t have too comprehensively militarily defeat a nation to win a war. Sometimes destroying their economy is enough to win a war. Sometimes destroying their will to fight on is enough.
Take the Falklands War. The UK did not comprehensively defeat the Argentinian forces. It did defeat those actually based in the Falkland Islands which resulted in a collapse in political will in Argentina to continue the fight. Hence Britain won.
Winning a war doesn’t just come down to a military collapse. In any event in WW1 Germany had carried out the last major offensive it was likely to be able to do AND the US was just getting up to speed - the Germans knew that collapse was inevitable and did THE RIGHT THING by negotiating an amistice. It’s a shame that Hitler did not do the same thing in 1943 when defeat WAS inevitable.
Thing is, the Germans had pretty much collapsed when the armistice came into force. The HSF was in mutiny with the red flag flying, the “home front” was on the verge of revolution and the army was retreating constantly at an ever increasing speed. Look at a map of the last couple of weeks of the war if you don’t believe me - in the last 5 days of the war, the BEF advanced nearly 20 miles in some places. That wasn’t a one-off either, but part of a continued advance of up to 75 miles since early August.
From the 18th of July to the end of the war, the French, Americans and Belgians captured 196,700 prisoners and 3,775 guns. The BEF (substantially smaller) captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns. That means in 4 months and allowing for killed/wounded the Germans lost half a million men and 6,500 artillery pieces. I would argue that this very much represents a military collapse.