If have any interest in American History...

[Pop23]

...you MUST look at the PBS series on WWI. It was absolutely outstanding and astounding. I thought I was reasonably well informed about WWI, but I was as wrong as I could be. Like Sergeant Schultz, "I knew NOTHING!"

Covers the buildup to the war, President Wilson's evolving positions, the incredible brutality of the Germans, mainly, and the war itself, the birth of the U.S. as a "world superpower," the devastation of the Influenza ("flu") epidemic that killed millions, and on and on.

BTW, not suitable for children. It exposes the ugly underside of "American Values," war, Woodrow Wilson, and the political parties.

Six hours of outstanding television. Not pretty.

This was an excellent series, but if you get a chance listen to Dan Carlins podcast series, Countdown to Armegeddon.

Nothing brings the horror of WWI home like listening to it.

 

[Divine Wind]

Sounds like anti-German propaganda.

A good overview offers "Der erste Weltkrieg" by Hans Herzfeld.

Fuck the Keiser and the Nazis who rose up after him. Fuck ISIS and Assad too!

Thanks for the info on the series, DGS49

There was terrible anti-German propaganda. Way fiercer than during WWII. But fact is that German militarism* did not cause WWI. In fact, Germany´s leading role in technology, science and economy posed a grave threat to the established European powers.

*A myth. Doesn´t exist. A pan-German military started in 1870. It had to catch up. It could defeat France without, though.

Sounds like anti-German propaganda.

A good overview offers "Der erste Weltkrieg" by Hans Herzfeld.

Fuck the Keiser and the Nazis who rose up after him. Fuck ISIS and Assad too!

Thanks for the info on the series, DGS49

There was terrible anti-German propaganda. Way fiercer than during WWII. ....

No. Propaganda reached a new level during WWII.

Technology. At the time, radio. In the Cold War years it was television. Now it's the Internet. The Arab Spring wouldn't have happened without it.

 

[Disir]

That was really good. I watched it today.

 

[Picaro]

]
He did he said it was harder than the actually military. Of course.

At many of them it is; they have much stricter codes of conduct and learning achievement, and physical demands are tougher as well. Basic is nothing after 4 years of military school. ROTC is harder, too, at the college level, but not as hard as 9th-12th grade at a military academy.

 

[Picaro]

From a modern perspective. Do you think the US should have stood up to Japan sooner or were they right to wait for Pearl Harbor? How about the Euros; were they right to wait until Germany had overrun Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and France to fight them or, from a modern perspective, would they have been better off nipping Germany's ass in the bud?

WW II was just WW I Part II. Nobody stood up to Wilhelm II for the two decades leading up to the shooting war he deliberately kicked off in 1914, so yes, it's far better and cost far fewer lives to shut down belligerents and imperialists early on, before they accumulate enough power and arms to start major wars, and that is just as true now as it has always been throughout history.

 

[Picaro]

The best history of WW I is David Stevenson's Cataclysm. Forget the stupid Sarajevo nonsense mythology about it all being some sort of 'accident', it was deliberate and calculated, with Moltke and the Kaiser's general staff believing they had only a three year window to accomplish all that Wilhelm wanted to do before the other powers would be able to stop him, so he took the fake pretext and ran with it, issuing his 'Blank Check'.

Cataclysm

You won't find a more comprehensive study on it than this one.

For a fairly decent social history on the rise of Wilhelm II and his wrecking of Bismarck's great diplomatic achievements for Germany and European peace in general, Robert Massey's Dreadnought is a good general narrative of it, re Max Weber and the rise of the 'pan-german movement' and the like as well as the arms races.

 

[Picaro]

All wars do a great deal of damage on the working class. You won't ever see a trump spawn enlist. But yea you're on a little bit of a conspiracy trail with that one...

Wars aren't so good on anyone....horses too!

Still, as we see today, should we sit back and let ISIS/Nazis/Imperial Japan or some other assholes do as they want until they arrive at our borders or do we stand up against them? Tough call.

"As we see today"? I don't think we need to worry too much about the Nazis or Imperial Japan today. Update your list.

From a modern perspective. Do you think the US should have stood up to Japan sooner or were they right to wait for Pearl Harbor? How about the Euros; were they right to wait until Germany had overrun Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and France to fight them or, from a modern perspective, would they have been better off nipping Germany's ass in the bud?

They "should have" not given the territory in China that Germany had been controlling to Japan at the end of WWI. Wilson should have had the sack to stand up to British and French demands to utterly emasculate Germany in the Treaty of Versailles instead of obsessing over his dreams of global social engineering.

Wilson did tell them. When they refused, what could he do except what he did? The US didn't have as much power then and too many Americans wanted to go back to isolationism.

Wilson was a disaster. He kept making secret unilateral peace offers to Germany and then getting caught at it, thus making him completely untrustworthy to the other Allies, which in turn led to them cutting short following up on the victory and occupying Germany properly, which in turn allowed German propagandists to run around lying and claiming Germany was never actually defeated and that the Versailles Treaty was somehow illegal and 'outrageous'; it wasn't for the most part, no worse than what Germany imposed on France when it defeated them in the 1870's.

Parts of it were just stupid, like limiting the Germany Army to 100,000 men in arms, not nearly enough to impose order on a country in economic and social chaos and famine; this allowed all kinds of craziness, with both left and right wingers raising their own private armies and fighting in the streets throughout the Wiemar Republic.

The Americans also insisted the Reich Bank be 'privatized', being enamored with the 'laissez faire' nonsense they loved so much in the Gilded Age, and the managers of course deliberately inflated the currency making the aftermath even more of a disaster.