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i find World War 1 and the period leading up to it (and the Victorian era in general) to be really interesting. that was the time period when the foundations of the modern versions of many of our worst problems - capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, militarism, and globalism - were laid, as well as when they were taken to such extreme excesses as to spark big backlashes and create many of the movements that kinda underpin modern leftism i'll start us off by talking about how World War 1 is often taught in the US as being the result of a "powder keg" situation in which a complicated web of alliances made war essentially unavoidable, causing all the countries to get inescapably pulled in when a minor incident happened. but that is, of course, total bullshit. in fact, all of the participants had no trouble wiping their asses with treaties and telling alliances to get hosed when it suited them World War 1 happened because every major country that got involved wanted a war. at the time, the major powers were starting to run out of easy territory to colonize, which fueled increasing tensions between the various empires whose imperialist ambitions were increasingly clashing. meanwhile, the rise of nationalism was driving some powers to be especially ambitious about creating and expanding empires at all costs, while weakening some other powers, and the Great Power tradition of constantly meddling in each other's affairs to prevent the European status quo from being upset only let these tensions build further by the early 20th century, most of the major powers had at least some interest in having a quick little war to shake things up. and while nobody really wanted to be the ones to start that war, none of them were particularly interested in backing off from a chance to have a war they could blame on someone else. and then the shooting started and it turned out that even the first few weeks of war was so much more intense than expected that the political consequences for leaving the war without a clear victory would have been devastating, so none of the governments involved were seriously willing to pursue a negotiated peace note that this isn't just intensity in terms of bodycount. though the bodycount was definitely considerable. by the end of September 1914, Germany, France, and Russia had all suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. but there was also a major economic factor: faced with the costs of mobilizing their full resources toward industrial warfare, the major belligerents spent everything they (and their colonies) had and then some, taking on massive amounts of debt without regard for repayability or sustainability. they bet everything on winning the war and then sticking the losers with the bill. this not only led to the mess that was Versailles and its aftermath, but created a massive economic disincentive for any kind of negotiations and of course, outside of Europe, World War 1 largely laid the seeds for the world of the 20th century. in the Middle East, the British and French heavily supported Arab nationalists and made all sorts of lofty promises about freedom and independence, while secretly plotting to carve up the region for themselves. in East Asia, the British pushed for Japan and China to join the war, which gave a big boost to Japanese expansionism and severely stressed the already-unstable Chinese government. and all over the world, the severe demands and oppression the various empires placed on their colonies led to heavy pressure for decolonization and independence worldwide. and with the European mainland devastated, distant countries that had been able to engage with the war entirely on their own terms (such as the US and Japan) saw major increases in their relative importance note: i am not a historian or a history student, i'm just some person who reads the military history threads a lot
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Feb 12, 2021 05:09
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my bony fealty posted:one of the super chuddy gun shops here posted this on their social media and I have no idea what to think crack ping probably means they're Q believers who think the sheeple need to learn the gospel of Qanon
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Feb 22, 2021 14:11
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Filthy Hans posted:easier to fund the production of 66 atomic bombs when you already have a plan drawn up that requires them, I guess it's not 66 bombs, it's 66 cities to destroy which the paper calculates would require 466 bombs that said, that paper is on the level of "the US planned to invade Canada in the 1930s" stuff - technically true, but not representative of any actual political or military intention to do so
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Mar 27, 2021 05:36
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Cerebral Bore posted:just planning a genocidal bombing campaign for funsies, as you do yes, this is an accurate description of modern professional militaries with people whose full-time job is literally just to plan for potential wars with other countries. militarism sucks like that and there was absolutely no possible way the US was gonna beat the Red Army in any conflict, offensive or defensive, without going all-in on nukes now, if the UK had nukes in 1945, that would have been real bad. basically as soon as Hitler shot himself, that paranoid maniac Churchill was demanding British war planners come up with a plan for a joint US/UK/German/Polish invasion of Soviet Europe to, and this is a direct quote, "impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire". just to dispel any thoughts that it was a standard just-in-case plan to keep the war planners busy now that their role in the war was essentially over, he had the report titled "Russia, Threat to Western Civilization" British war planners spent the entire report openly trying to convince that maniac that there was absolutely no way in hell anyone was winning a conventional land war against the Red Army in 1945
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Mar 27, 2021 17:08
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since it hasn't been brought up yet I'd like to recommend that anyone with any interest in WWII check out Poilu, the Diaries of Corporal Louis Barthas unlike most WWI battlefield writers, he's a cranky old barrelmaker, pacifist, and dedicated socialist who hates the war with all his heart
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May 1, 2021 07:16
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Weka posted:Did Lincoln have backers in the oil industry? in 1862, there were big tax increases on just about everything, due to a sudden pressing need to fund a certain very expensive war the North American oil industry barely existed in 1862. the first oil wells on the continent had only been built a couple years prior
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Sep 26, 2021 09:27
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