Cameron and Miliband's Messages On Wreaths (WW1 Centenary)

[mr friendly guy]

To those who gave their all in WWI

Your sacrifice helped end European Imperialism er I mean end European Colonialism, er I mean help the spread of liberty and self determination of people just as Woodrow Wilson wanted it, except in places like China where the British and French awarded Chinese territory conceded to the German Empire to Japan, because it was totally about liberty and all that cool stuff.

At least WWI started the process of ending the Europeans colonial empires even if the participants did not anticipate that. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[Thanas]

Nothing about that made me look stupid. Pissed off that my intelligence was questioned for asking a question certainly, but not stupid. I should have been much clearer in making it a question however.

Your subsequent posts do a good job of showing you to be one of those believing the German Empire was evil, or had a less desirable society than Britain. This is demonstrably not true, for Britain subjugated far more people than the German Empire ever did and integrated far less minorities than the German Empire did. It also was far less democratic than the German Empire, for the proportion of people who were ruled over and actually got to vote are vastly skewed in favor of the German Empire.

You addressed the third statement but not the second (the least likely and far worst of the two).

So why would a German Empire dominated central Europe actually be a bad thing, again? Most historians agree that it would be a coalition of several states economically dominated from Berlin. Oh yes, very bad, such a thing.

What do autarkies have to do with this?

I meant aristocratic governments and typed the wrong word, sorry, it happens.

And the differences between the allied and Central governments? One phrase comes to mind. Long term ideology. The British Empire was already starting to crack under it's own weight in 1914. It's desperate peoples were slowly moving further and further toward self rule and eventually democracy. And in fact WWI only sped up this process considerably. It being the starting point and WW II being the nail in the coffin. If the central powers had won? What do think they'd do Thanas? Just sit back and gloat at their victory? We know what Germany's plans for Africa were had they won. And we know they wanted control of shipping ports along the French coast. We know they wanted to punish France for past "aggressions" by annexing even more of the country. We know they never intended to give up Belgium and fully intended to annex Luxembourg. Put the pieces together man. They were trying to build a new world wide Empire by slicing off parts of their neighbors, and they had no intention of ever adopting true democracy.

These are not accepted as goals by anyone not believing in wartime propaganda. The parts who most probably were to be annexed form Belgium and Luxembourg were those that were already inhabited by germans since the early 4th century. The last thing the German Empire wanted was to bring more minorities inside the Reich. As to Austria, they were already splitting apart and the end of the war would have seen them becoming dissolved, with the german speaking parts going to Germany and the others becoming their own nations.

The German government of pre-1919 was an absolute monarchy where the emperor paid no attention to the will of the people.

It was not. Nobody working in the field believes so.

And if we are talking about absolute monarchies and oppressing people, the British Empire and the Russian Empire were both immediately before and during WWI far worse than anything the German Empire ever did.

Austria-Hungary was even worse. The slow move to a more libertarian style of governing would have been severely delayed or outright stopped especially in Europe. And sorry for bursting your bubble but the Jews aren't the only people who've had a miserable existence at the hands of authoritarian governments. What about the occupation of Serbia by Austria-Hungary? Or the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire?

What about the countless people who were genocided by the British Empire? Or the treatment of Ireland? Or the colonial empires? Fact is, when it comes to millions of people being oppressed, the German Empire is a long distant to any of the other powers fighting WWI. Even the USA killed and oppressed more than Germany ever did.

See above.

So no I don't believe those men gave their lives for nothing. One could say I almost refuse to believe it, however, I may be stubborn but I am not stupid. I'll accept I'm wrong about all this, I'll accept that it was all a waste if the logic bares out and mine proves wrong. But don't question my intelligence. And I still do not see what's wrong with what he wrote.

I'll question the intelligence of anybody who spouts wartime propaganda and rails on the oh so oppressive German Empire while thinking "they died for our [British] liberties" is correct. A German victory would not have infringed on British liberty (unless you count being able to oppress the Irish and other nations as essential parts of British liberty).

[K. A. Pital]

Brilliant reply, Thanas. I would also note that colonies never were essential for Germany the way they were for oceanic Empires. The only good thing about the British Empire was its demise; and it took way more time thanks to it repeatedly winning wars.

[Thanas]

I should also add that over a million of people got conscripted to die for the colonial powers, but apparently dying for your colonial overlords is defending your own freedom nowadays. (and if we compare the british to the German colonial forces, the latter were much smaller (only 11000 or so), treated much better as well - almost twice the pay and both the German Empire and subsequent Governments honored pension obligations).

I'd love for Cameron to explain how the Indian Expeditionary Force defended Indian freedom. Fact is, everyone claims to defend freedom but nobody really does so in a war pre-1945 (and rarely after 1945), for wars are fought for the national interest. Heck, Britain did not even really try to defend Serbian freedom. They only acted (and then belatedly) after German forces infringed on territory they were obligated to defend per treaty and because certain circles thought this a good opportunity to get rid of a competitor.

[gigabytelord]

Apologies for the long delay in responding.

I'm faced with two options here. The first being I'm wrong, period, end of story. Which I'm willing to accept bruised ego and all, and come to the conclusion that even though I know how, when and where the war was fought and can recite various statistics of the conflict off the top of my head. I have, against my better judgment, picked up a freighting amount of historical bias along the way and completely misunderstood the reason for the conflict whether realised or unrealized at that time. Which I honestly never intended to do. Hell after a lot of deep thought about it I think I may have discovered the source of this error, but that's neither here nor there and unimportant at the moment.

The second is that like my self your opinion is also biased, but in the opposite direction and we're both picking and choosing which parts of history fit into our preferred view. This is an altogether useless assessment and means that any further argument in this area is pointless and like the first option the same pointlessness would still apply to the deaths of the soldiers involved.

Neither of these options are particularly easy pills to swallow but decisions based on bruised egos generally don't make good decisions so I'm siding with the first option.

Also

*sigh* Tell me. How much do you actually know about the First World War?

That comment is why this is even an argument in the first place. It seems needlessly sarcastic and rude and reeks of the typical "you dumb Americans" snobbery that I see in posts and comments every day all across the web. Perhaps I'm wrong, again, and read to much into it. If so, I sincerely apologize. If I was correct in my assessment of it's implied meaning however, then I seriously expected better from SD.net.

[Thanas]

A question - which historians have you read so far?

[madd0ct0r]

GBlord - in fairness to Thanas, fun as he can be to wind up, he is a professional historian.

Living in the UK, the school classes on WW1 were never really 'liberty'. Instead, they were much more - this was the increasingly unstable web of alliances in Europe at that time. This guy got shot and dominoes proceeded to fall in a pointless and bloody stupid war.
Not only that, but we fucked up the peace afterwards resulting in the much more clearly evil Nazi's and WW2.

This isn't just me be a hippy, the educated stance in the UK in my generation is pretty much that. Having WW2 actually helps because that one feels justified. WW1 celebrations, by contrast, are memories for the dead. the lions led by donkeys.

[gigabytelord]

A question - which historians have you read so far?

It's actually quite weird really. Do to reasons beyond my control I never finished school (dropping out around 6th grade to take care of a family member) or received my diploma, so what I do know (about anything really) has been supplied by reading and watching thousands of hours of historical documents and documentaries. Names that come to mind however are individuals such as Peter Barton, David Fletcher, Norman Franks, Alistair Horne and a few others. Really most of the time I just search for information about a particular subject and read, well, everything available and generally don't even bother to look at the name of the person who wrote it. I could pull up the list of historians on Wikipedia and just point out names that sound familiar...

[Thanas]

Not to belabour the point, but English-language documentaries are usually the worst when it comes to presenting wars anything other than the good old "good(us English) vs evil (ZHE GERMANS)". To this day, I have not watched a good documentary on WWI.

This can be seen in a lot of English literature as well. Especially when you get lazy guys like Robert K Massie who literally just copied British historians from the thirties and sixties and thus has a very skewed view when it comes to the Kaiser. For example, his main points seem to be that the Kaiser walked funny to conceal his deformity (oh no, the horror), hated his English mother (gee, when your English mother is a giant raging bitch who tried to have your physical problems corrected by torturing you in childhood you might get a few complexes) and tried to upstage his cousin at yacht races (somehow this is a sign of insecurity rather than a great triumph of engineering on part of the yacht designers). Meanwhile, the British king is presented as a great leader despite being a bully at school and so petty that when a close friend criticized him for his weight said friend was thrown out of the house during the night. Point is not wether the opinions are correct or no, point is that you'll not get a balanced account that way.

I'd advise you to read several of the new literature about the German Empire and the war, most specifically Christopher Clark. Start with Iron Kingdom and then work your way onwards.

Or, if you want a really radical challenge to your beliefs, read Niall Ferguson's The pity of war, which is the best book when it comes to demolishing the idea that the war was necessary, the Germans are evil Imperials etc. Great book, a bit too much going into the other direction for my taste but you should read it just to get the other perspective. Wikipedia has a summary that should lead you to at least read it or reconsider your views.

[Coop D'etat]

Further to Thanas's point, the British Empire also wasn't a democracy for a large portion of their native citizenry. They restricted the vote with property requirements so about 1/3rd of the (male) populace was disenfranchised for being too poor. This didn't get changed until 1918.


German elections on the other hand, had full male sufferage for Reichstag elections since 1871. Which is part and parcel of how the German Empire's constitution was something very wierd to modern eyes with one of the most progressively designed legislatures in the world while retaining an autocratic executive branch (the Bundesrat wasn't very democratic, but then again neither was the House of Lords). It was neither a full democracy nor an autocracy but an odd hybrid constitutional monarcy.

You could fairly say that it wouldn't be uncommon for a native British soldier on the WW1 western front to have essentially no democratic rights which wouldn't have been the case for his opposing number on the other side of no-mans-land.

[K. A. Pital]

Ferguson, though, is a hack. Considering his colonialist apologism, his homophobia and religiosity, I'd take anything he writes with a grain of salt, but hey, maybe it is the broken clock that's right once a day. I also know that 'civilizationists' in the modern world is pretty much the last refuge of racists, so sadly the disdain spreads to the entire school and its single representatives...

[Thanas]

Ferguson, though, is a hack. Considering his colonialist apologism, his homophobia and religiosity, I'd take anything he writes with a grain of salt, but hey, maybe it is the broken clock that's right once a day. I also know that 'civilizationists' in the modern world is pretty much the last refuge of racists, so sadly the disdain spreads to the entire school and its single representatives...

Ferguson most likely (never met him) is a major asshole and he most likely did not do the most work on the book, that were probably his assistants. However, that should not detract from the quality of the work itself or the value of a dissenting opinion that challenges beliefs that were forged decades ago.

[Zaune]

That comment is why this is even an argument in the first place. It seems needlessly sarcastic and rude and reeks of the typical "you dumb Americans" snobbery that I see in posts and comments every day all across the web. Perhaps I'm wrong, again, and read to much into it. If so, I sincerely apologize. If I was correct in my assessment of it's implied meaning however, then I seriously expected better from SD.net.

Again, I apologise for coming off that way. I admit I was annoyed at your apparent ignorance of a fairly important event in world history, but your nationality had nothing to do with it; hell, I hadn't even noticed you'd specified it in your profile.

[Thanas]

A good interview although Ferguson comes across as a bit conceited.

[gigabytelord]

Again, I apologize for coming off that way. I admit I was annoyed at your apparent ignorance of a fairly important event in world history, but your nationality had nothing to do with it; hell, I hadn't even noticed you'd specified it in your profile.

If no harm was meant then no apology is required. Believe it or not some times it's really difficult to gauge emotional intent through text alone.

Also I've been reading and watching more by Ferguson and well... He's got some really interesting ideas and those ideas are generally (thankfully) backed up by evidence. However, I have to agree the dude needs to learn a bit of humility, sometimes he just seems so condescending and smug it's painful to watch. Also going alone with what Stas Bush said, he must certainly reeks of a colonial apologist, however, if what he says is supported by evidence then you have to at least give pause to his words. I'll see if I can get a hold of some of his books rather than some snippets on the web.

[K. A. Pital]

Ferguson is a colonial apologist; that being said, nothing really stops him from making decent points where he can. His biggest problem is omission (just as with any historian - most of them are ideologically biased, as history is a political weapon firing from the past into the present), not showing facts that can put the 'achievements' of colonialism in perspective; when comparing development of the colonies, two rules: ignore metropoles and ignore other successful independent nations, so that the colonies start looking good.

However, there is plenty of evidence that World War I was an exercise in pointless carnage even without Ferguson. Just reading some basic studies of the societies of France, Britain, Russia and Germany will make you understand a great many things. You don't need a specific 'World War I was pointless' book to understand it was pointless.