Lessons to learn from the Great War
Posted
Two bullets in Sarajevo ended years of peace and launched the 20th century on a warpath that was by no means inevitable, writes Marius Benson.
Centenaries and commemorative moments generally are a time to stir feelings about the past; a time for emotion more than thought. That will be increasingly true this year as the world looks back to 1914 and the outbreak of WWI. But beyond emotional responses, the centenary year has also opened with plenty of clear thinking about why the Great War happened and what we can learn from it.
If I were to choose one word to distil the lessons of the outbreak of war in 1914 it would be "contingent". Which, the Macquarie tells us means: "liable to happen or not; uncertain, possible."
There are some who see the war as inevitable - a product of great power rivalries, alliances, German ambition, and French, British and Russian anxiety. They were bound to tumble into war by some law of historical gravity. But there were several crises in the years before 1914 that were resolved without war, and assassinations in the Balkans were almost routine. If you want to get a sense of the role of sheer chance in the lead up to the war, look at the events of June 28 when Gavrilo Princip fired the bullets that killed the Austrian royal couple and turned out to be the first shots in four years of slaughter and another world war beyond that.
Princip was just 19 years old, a Serbian nationalist and part of a clandestine group, the Black Hand, which was committed to liberating Serbia from Austrian rule. Franz Ferdinand was their chosen target in part because he was a voice of moderation in Austria and the nationalists feared if he succeeded to the imperial throne he could cement Austrian control by making its rule more acceptable.
The Black Hand was backed by the Serbian government and that government played a still debated role in the June 28 killings. Princip was one of no fewer than seven would-be assassins strung out along the imperial couple's riverside route in Sarajevo that fine summer's day. Assassin One lost his nerve and failed to throw his bomb, Assassin Two, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, threw his but it bounced off the royal car, or possibly was batted away by Franz Ferdinand in an admirable display of Archducal cool. The device hit the ground and exploded injuring several officers in the car behind and bystanders. Cabrinovic then continued to demonstrate his unsuitability to the assassination business by swallowing a cyanide pill, that was not strong enough to do anything but make him sick, while leaping into the Miljacka River, that was too low for drowning.
The Archduke, who was not the comic opera figure that all those whiskers and braidings suggest, ordered the parade to continue as the smoke cleared. He drove past more assassins who lost their nerve. Improbably the royal couple carried on to the planned Town Hall reception where the mayor, despite the attempt on his visitor's life, delivered a speech declaring that the citizens of Sarajevo were filled with happiness by the visit. The Archduke, not unreasonably, responded: "I come here as your guest and you people greet me with bombs."
After the reception there was, naturally, a discussion about whether the royal visit should continue. Finally it was decided the royal motorcade should go back along the riverside drive, Appel Quay, but not take a planned right-hand turn into Franz Joseph Street. It was hoped that change of route would defeat any further planned attack. But the change of plan was not passed onto the motorcade's lead drivers who took the right turn and the Archduke's vehicle followed. Standing at the corner of Appel Quay and Franz Joseph Street was Princip.
The Archduke's car stopped at the corner, and because it had no reverse gear, had to be pushed back to Appel Quay. Princip, who had thought the Black Hand plot had failed and been abandoned, suddenly was presented with his target, almost stationary at point blank range. He didn't have time to reach for the bomb tied around his waist, but fired two shots with his revolver, both fatal. The Archduke was hit in the neck, the bullet severing his jugular vein. He died saying to his beloved wife: "Sophie, Sophie don't die, stay alive for our children!"
Those shots were later described as being heard around the world. At the time they were noticed, but with no sense of what they heralded. The French president was told about the killings at the Longchamp races in Paris and stayed there. The English papers reported them, but they were a distant second as a news story to unrest over Irish home rule.
But in just over a month - the assassination was on June 28, war began on August 1 - the world was at war. The July crisis is a complex mix of moves, communications, miscommunications and mistakes. Who do you blame? Serbia, the rogue state that backed the assassins? Austria for reacting so fiercely? Germany, the most commonly named culprit for invading Belgium? France and Russia for mobilising too quickly?
Any finger pointing fails because it relies on ascribing a level of logic and planning to what was an unfolding series of events with each move driven by those around it. Britain is depicted as being bound to go to war when Germany invaded Belgium. But in fact the obligation to Belgium was set out in a yellowing treaty signed in 1839. And reports of the British cabinet discussions show that ministers were not mainly concerned with Belgium's sanctity, but the wider question of Germany emerging as a sole, dominant European power.
The Liberal government members were also concerned with the political implications of a cabinet split, with Churchill, the Admiralty Lord and Grey, the Foreign Secretary, expected to walk out and bring down the government if the decision was not to go to war.
But the search for a culprit is the wrong one. As Christopher Clark says in his excellent book The Sleepwalkers, the outbreak of WWI was not a crime it was a tragedy. It was a tragedy that was not inevitable. It was all contingent, not going to war was possible, until the moment fighting began. Then wars take on their own momentum and the logic of alliances and armaments of the time meant that once the Great War began, short of a surrender by one side, there was no way out.
And if you want a sense of the war in action Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front takes you there better than any other work, as German boys barely out of school try to survive in an abattoir.
Two bullets in Sarajevo ended an Edwardian idyll and launched the 20th century on a path that would make it the bloodiest in human history. A hundred years on there is much to think about.
Marius Benson can be heard covering federal politics on ABC NewsRadio Breakfast each weekday morning. View his full profile here.
Topics: world-war-1, history, death, world-politics
Comments (68)
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ram:
17 Feb 2014 3:08:45pm
Tom Lehrer puts it best with respect to World War III when he says "We'll all go together when we go."
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Shane:
17 Feb 2014 4:24:39pm
Or, in another song specifically about Germany:
"We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then"
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Half Past Human:
17 Feb 2014 6:15:24pm
One of the best lines I heard is in Aki Karurismaki's film I Hired a Contract Killer.
Pietari Kaapa: "The Working Class Has No Fatherland"
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Hudson Godfrey:
17 Feb 2014 6:03:59pm
"When the world becomes uranious we will all go simultaneous..."
But its a different war and I agree the better context to reflect upon. The Great War was the beginning of the end for romantic notions of bravery, and should probably have been the last word. But no we did the whole thing over again within a couple of decades or so. And still the concept of total destruction isn't quite getting through to us!
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Jay Somasundaram:
17 Feb 2014 3:12:39pm
A hundred years on and we are as stupid as we were then.
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David Ferstat:
17 Feb 2014 3:35:08pm
I disagree.
The victors in 1918 imposed harsh conditions on Germany, which injured both its economy and its pride, and provided a fertile ground for the political violence and extremism that would bring the Nazis to power in 1933.
The victors in 1945 (not coincidentally the same nations, by and large) instead instituted the Marshal Plan, which, instead of punishing Germany, transformed it into an ally.
World War II started only 20 years after the end of World War I.
Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II we have not had a war with anything like those levels of violence.
Yes, we've still had wars; indeed, I don't think we've had a year without a war, somewhere. But then, I'm sure that was the situation before the World Wars.
What we haven't had is an all-out conflict around the world.
I reckon we've got at least slightly smarter.
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carbon-based lifeform:
17 Feb 2014 5:13:53pm
Actually, David, World War I never actually ended. That's why it was called an "Armistice". France didn't help, either, by baiting Germany during the 1920s ... occupying the Ruhr district, etc.
WW I was mainly caused by fervent nationalism by all the nations, especially by the people of Great Britain who were told the "sun never set on the Empire".
Now it's International Banking that is running the world by funding both sides of conflicts and bankrupting countries.
The US of Amnesia is also guilty of the deaths of over 5 million people since the end of WW II.
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David Ferstat:
17 Feb 2014 6:06:26pm
"Actually, David, World War I never actually ended."
You are incorrect. The Armistice took effect on 11 November 1918, and was the agreement that ended the fighting on the Western Front.
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Western Power.
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Bruce:
17 Feb 2014 5:23:01pm
David
I think you get near to an important point.
To highlight it I need to distinguish between 'philosophical economic thinking' (PET) - which has basis in much more universal truths that apply to real systems generally - and pragmatic political Economics (PPE) which is a dog's breakfast more or less made up to suit the purposes of the rich and powerful of the moment.
PET appreciates sociability - the economy and economics under PET serve the society and the motivation to society of all the member people of societies. It appreciates that the fullest involvement of as many of the members as possible in the functions and the opportunities of a society empowers and enriches that society in the elements of true value to it.
PPE, at Versailles, only acted to punish the bastards. It enshrined the crazy line-on-map drawing arrogance of British nutters and of the continental and New World colonial powers who were moving to the lower-cost imperialism of PPE occupation of their empires - which quite probably persuaded Japan's course of inter-war action as well.
Thence WWII and Depression.
Had the Versailles conference remotely appreciated PET (which was between the lines of economics throughout the 19th Century) they should have been able to find an end-of-war position that would have avoided WWII, the Great Depression and the Cold War.
Yet still today, Politicians and Economists of PPE fail to appreciate that we are all in this together and that we can thrive together with a good dollop of wise common sense and a pure and simple appreciation of PET and like-minded thinking.
PPE driven Politics and Economics - the rich and powerful rubbish - has nothing to offer at all. Yet we have continued to leave them in the driver's seats of our present and future life choices.
STOP - before it is too late - again.
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John51:
17 Feb 2014 5:35:21pm
Smarter, no, I have to disagree on that one. It was simply that the consequences of the major powers going to war directly against each other became far to great.
Nuclear weapons do that, although there were still too many occasions where we came far to close to it. If you lived through that time than you do remember how close they felt.
What we did was have the major powers still go to war. And some very big wars at that when you take into account Korea and South Vietnam. But the major powers never directly went to war against each other, or at least officially. Both of those wars could have got much bigger if the Hawks on each side had got their way.
And those are only two of many numerous wars since World War 2 that have led to millions of deaths fueled by the war machinery of the major powers. So smarter? Not really when we look at Afghanistan and Iraq and what is now going on in the Middle East and Africa. Not a chance.
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David Ferstat:
17 Feb 2014 6:11:54pm
"It was simply that the consequences of the major powers going to war directly against each other became far to great."
One of the unfortunate truths in criminology is that consequences don't stop stupid people committing crimes.
If we hadn't got smarter, we would have ignored the consequences. As we didn't ignore the consequences, we MUST have got that little bit smarter.
The rest of your post simply agrees with most of what I wrote, ignoring the last bit:
"What we haven't had is an all-out conflict around the world."
As far as i can see, my argument still holds water.
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marksfish:
17 Feb 2014 5:47:15pm
If you think the treaty of Versailles was harsh you should do some reading on the peace treaty the Germans inflicted on the Russians at brest -litvosk in 1917. It. Made the armistice and following treaty look soft.
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firthy:
17 Feb 2014 3:43:12pm
Um no we are not. We avoided nuclear war during the cold war years so we clearly learnt something (indeed JFK well knew the story of WW1 as he had read the Guns of August which discusses the same topic this article does). And as the article notes WW1 wasn't so much a product of stupidity rather it was a number of issues that combined at the time. Similar crisis had arisen in the past (Balkan wars 1 and 2 come to mind as well as the Moroccan crisis) but they did not lead to world war. Worth reading about...
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Zing:
17 Feb 2014 4:01:32pm
It is not stupidity. It is simply pragmatism.
If you are not willing to fight, you must be willing to obey those who would fight you.
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claudius Pseudonymus:
17 Feb 2014 5:06:40pm
Well, I guess that's why the Afghans and Taliban are continuing to fight the Anglo-American led invaders
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Zing:
17 Feb 2014 5:41:56pm
And why groups like the Taliban get control of countries in the first place.
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Half Past Human:
17 Feb 2014 5:41:36pm
Zing,
What about those people who obey their masters and fight for them willingly?
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I think I think:
17 Feb 2014 6:31:09pm
Pragmatism is the preserve of the mentally incompetent and lazy.
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polony:
17 Feb 2014 4:35:05pm
Wrong:
Any modern politician advising soldiers that they would be "home by Christmas" would be ridiculed.
The horror of war is now public knowledge.
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the yank:
17 Feb 2014 4:43:20pm
No, the world has managed to avoid a world war for 69 years.
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Dove:
17 Feb 2014 3:19:09pm
So many words on the immediate trigger for war, so few on the underlying causes. If lessons have been learned then we can discount imperial and alliance entanglements, rampant empire building, enforcing private commercial interests with state muscle, mutual suspician and hostility and German railway timetables. For all the wasted lives, Australia has at least salvaged a nation building myth, and maybe that's good enough.
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JoeBloggs:
17 Feb 2014 4:14:10pm
Agreed.
While there is a perceived need to fight over access to resources there will be war between members of our species.
When we begin to harvest the abundant resources of our solar system (primarily in the asteriod belt) their will be little perceived need to fight over those resources due to their abundance.
However if we once again reach a critical population mass and begin to compete over access to resources the perceived need to fight will once again rear its very ugly head.
Unless of course we have mastered the ability of interstellar travel by such time allowing our species to access the resources of the galaxy.
and so on......
hopefully there are a sufficient number of universes to support our massive future population of humans (or whatever we will have evolved into by then).
(and equally hopefully a superior species doesn't develop a 'cure' for the 'virus' known as humans).
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MJLC:
17 Feb 2014 3:22:34pm
"Two bullets in Sarajevo ended years of peace and launched the 20th century on a warpath ..."
Fascinating. I'm sure the Boer commandos firing their rifles and their women and children languishing in concentration camps in South Africa up until 1902 would have been absolutely delighted to have heard of this.
Not being a conflict historian, I'm unsure who else was being shot at and sadly dying during those years between "the launch" and 1914, but I'm sure somebody does. A pity they don't seem to qualify for educational value.
It seems there might be a few worthwhile "lessons" there for article writers before we even get to the Great War.
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carbon-based lifeform:
17 Feb 2014 5:15:04pm
Actually, it was the British soldiers who did the killing, not Boer commandos.
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MJLC:
17 Feb 2014 5:59:58pm
That's one of the most refreshingly, novel accounts of the conflict I've ever heard. You would have made an absolute mint writing Afrikaans history books in the decades following 1948.
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Disraeli:
17 Feb 2014 6:01:54pm
So, carbon-based lifeform ... the 20,000 British casualties during the Boer war died as a result of suicide, disease,or some natural cause? Or were the Australians, NZ, Canadian etc to blame?
And those dum-dum bullets we hear about the Boers using , didnt really exist?
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Grover Jones:
17 Feb 2014 5:35:21pm
While the Boer Wars were tragic in their outcome for the Boers, they did not initiate anything like the "shots heard around the world" a dozen years later. The Boer wars were strictly local affairs, and cannot be considered a trigger for the wars that followed over the next 1./2 centure.
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MJLC:
17 Feb 2014 6:05:58pm
And if that indeed was what I had written about, I'd be the first to agree with you GJ. However, seeing as I'm restricting myself here to shining a spotlight on the article's assertion that there were "...years of peace..." in the world pre-1914 and ignores the fact that the "warpath" was already well-and-truly "launched" even back when Neanderthals were all the rage, I'm afraid what you've written isn't of any relevance to my original comment.
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Alpo:
17 Feb 2014 3:26:15pm
"but the wider question of Germany emerging as a sole, dominant European power."... Exactly, WWI was the last clash of the old European Empires. After that, the Bolshevik revolution changed the landscape forever, and from the fight between nationalisms, Europe plunged into the fight between ideologies and worldviews. It took WWII and then the Cold War to end that phase too. Now we are left scratching our heads and asking ourselves: What's worth fighting for?.... "fighting" for?
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Veganpuncher:
17 Feb 2014 3:26:27pm
WWI was the inevitable outcome of Germany's late arrival to European geopolitics. Only after Bismarck had engineered the Schleswig-Holstein annexation, the German Customs Union, removed Austrian influence north of the Alps and then beaten the French in 1870-1 was Germany able to participate in the great industrial revolution that was making Europe rich.
Unfortunately, by that time, the other Europeans had carved up the world into their own markets leaving Germany with, effectively, nowhere to sell their goods. With internal discontent due to overflowing population due to advanced agricultural techniques and a repressive central state (the first welfare state), Germany had to expand. She couldn't go North - the North Sea; or South - the Alps, that left East - Russia; or west - France.
Everyone in Europe knew this, so they all started making alliances and developing war plans. It was effectively a Mexican stand-off, but no one had a solution to the overwhelming problem of Germany's unstoppable force and France/Russia's immovable object. In the end neither side blinked and Gavrilo Princip was the man who pulled the trigger.
The lesson that we can learn from this is that politics and rhetoric must take a back seat to geopolitical realism when it comes to international tension. JFK demonstrated this during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he made absolutely sure that Kruschev knew his position and his commitment - no room for misinterpretation, no room for negotiation. Kennedy stared him in the eye and said 'If you don't back down, I will destroy your country'.
If we are to avoid any future equivalents of WWI, we must learn the lesson that politics starts wars, not people.
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Dove:
17 Feb 2014 3:59:01pm
The causes of WWI are still standard fare for university history undergrads because it's such a wonderful case study that goes absolutely nowhere. Whenever you ask enough questions and finally get to the root of anything you're right back where you started. The boardgame Diplomcacy captured it so well...or perhaps Attenborough's "Oh What a Lovely War". Alas we've learned nothing...except that we now couldn't tolorate the weekly casualty lists which seem unbelieveable by modern standards. Now we leave the big death tolls to the other side.
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APM:
17 Feb 2014 3:28:59pm
I don't buy that WW1 was all a misunderstanding or an accident or that it was about nothing. The trendy Left view (which is always instrumental in using history to shape the future rather than as a realistic portrayal of the past) is that no one country was to blame and that millions died for the sport and misrule of the upper classes. Thus Germany's role is airbrushed to pursue a phoney European identity, and instead it was really just class warfare. No this was a war about values. The British were fighting against German expansionism that was almost as threatening as Nazi Germany later and defeat for the allies would seen Europe subject to brutal authoritarian German rule. This would have had a disastrous impact on Australia too, validating its participation.
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Not Really:
17 Feb 2014 4:31:40pm
As opposed to the pleasant and benign rule the British practiced in their expansionism into Africa and India?
Any idea that WW1 was a conflict of 'values' is really just parroting history as written by the winners. The major cause of the war was a spectacular failure of diplomacy during the same period as a massive buildup in armaments, all of which were deemed necessary to protect the colonial ambitions of the major European powers.
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JoeBloggs:
17 Feb 2014 4:59:13pm
WW1 was purely a war over who will dominate global trade
Everything else is just a distraction.
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claudius Pseudonymus:
17 Feb 2014 5:10:34pm
APM, I would recommend you watch Blackadder
George: The war started because of the vile Hun and his villainous empire-building.
Blackadder: George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front.
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Dugong:
17 Feb 2014 5:58:27pm
I was thinking of exactly the same episode, though perhaps the next line, (and I paraphrase):
"In the end, it was too hard NOT to have a war"
I still think that is the best answer to the question of how WWI started as any I've read/heard.
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APM:
17 Feb 2014 6:10:56pm
The world is better off for the British empire. If you look at the successful countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, India improving... Britain has left high standards of civility and prosperity and liberalism or at least made them stronger than they would be. Bermuda is a rich nation, whilst Haiti is a basket case. Commonwealth countries are usually better places than nearby equivalents. Even the ethnic groups who allege British misrule are better off than their native state.
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Disraeli:
17 Feb 2014 6:12:34pm
True, Britain did many shameful things in its imperialism. But I suggest you consider the way that nations such as France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Japan, Spain and Belgium, behaved when imposing their colonial powers.
I suspect that countries such as India, Australia, NZ would have suffered much more if they had been a colony of any of the other major nations.
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gbe:
17 Feb 2014 3:35:00pm
Marius as things change in a century they also remain the same. Any major global conflict now will be Armageddon the tools are in place not so in 1914.
How ever a poorly chosen word or an thoughtless act can still bring aggression from politicians the decision of the ABC to publish stolen top secret information without clarification from the government that created an international incident is a case in point.
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seg:
17 Feb 2014 4:10:44pm
Oh wicked wicked ABC!
Please do keep in mind that secrecy has no place in good governance and is the enemy of a healthy democracy. Anything a government decides should be secret is most certainly something that should not be secret.
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Peter the Lawyer:
17 Feb 2014 4:41:01pm
That is silly. There are plenty of things that need to be secret to save lives of members of the armed forces or security services or to preserve commercial agreements and formulae, etc.
I suppose you would have no problem with the ATO publishing all your finacial and tax details for all to see?
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JoeBloggs:
17 Feb 2014 5:02:35pm
"or to preserve commercial agreements"
which is what this is all about really isn't it.
Spying isn't really done for any other reason that ensuring an economic benefit for xyz nation.
Just like war isn't undertaken over dead princes or fallen buildings but instead over the ability to control access to resources and markets.
ps. I couldn't care less if the ATO published my tax data. By the way any company worth its salt has to publish their financial data anyway.
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carbon-based lifeform:
17 Feb 2014 5:17:56pm
silly argument, Peter.
We're talking about government's secrets, not private individuals.
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Charles:
17 Feb 2014 3:36:43pm
I am not sure that the level of reaction at the time was one of the main causes that precipitated the war. If for example the British had shown the same level of restraint they showed prior to World War II when Chamberlain thought he had received assurances that peace was possible, only to be almost as quickly disabused of this notion by the actions of Hitler.
There is no saying at that time that one or other of the protagonists might have committed other actions which would have provoked the necessary reaction for World War I to commence.
So, I believe considering all the status and competing interests of various nations at the time, war to some extent was inevitable. It is hard to know though how things will play out in those situations and it is difficult to estimate to see what might be the possible outcome of someone like Iran for example becoming armed with nuclear bombs. Hopefully, it doesn't lead to anything, but then again you never know, so it is hard to criticise the responses of those of 100 years ago.
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Victor :
17 Feb 2014 3:38:51pm
Marius, I gave enjoyed listening to you on ABC radio for years, and it turns out that your writing style is far ahead of most of the efforts made by other contributors to the Drum, the few articles that you have contributed are a pleasure to read.
You have given us a history lesson of sorts, but I can't agree that the Great War was not 'inevitable'.
The French were itching for revenge after 1870, the British had had the most powerful navy the world had ever seen for over a century and were eager to show the world, yet again, that this was so. The Russian empire was in terminal decay and wanted to show the world that it wasn't and they were looking to redeem themselves after the defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905.
The Austro Hungarian empire was probably in much the same situation but didn't know it.
The British had the biggest empire the world had seen and should have wrapped it up (the war) in a few months, and apart from the personal disfunctionality of the Kaiser, there was probably some sibling rivallery among the royalty of Europe who were mostly related.
If Germany had won WWI, and they almost did, there is no doubt that Australia would now have been a German colony...... we would have all been speaking German!
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JoeBloggs:
17 Feb 2014 5:04:15pm
If Germany had won WWI, ....
They would have been the power that controlled global trade.
Which is what the war was about.
They probably would have happily traded with Australia too.
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Grover Jones:
17 Feb 2014 5:39:23pm
No, we wouldn't. You may have forgotten this, but we'd been a British colony for over 100 years by the time the first war started. Global domination was not possible in 1914, even if the Germans had won, they did not have the navy to dominate the world.
Once the American machine got lumbering, there was no chance that Germany was going to win.
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claudius pseudonymus:
17 Feb 2014 3:39:09pm
Oh, Marius. Just over 12yrs ago, certain people in the USA, prodded on no doubt by certain people in Israel, decided to invade Iraq & Afghanistan on the flimsiest excuse. They were accompanied by almost every "democratic" nation in the world and hundreds of thousands have since ben killed ...sorry, collaterally damaged... and millions more maimed, made homeless, widowed, orphaned and yet no one has yet brought the war criminals Bush, Blair & John Howard and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing to trial.
Before WW1, when someone exclaimed that only inconceivable stupidity on the part of our leaders would bring about a world war, General Henry Wilson replied "Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! Seems that a hundred years later, we are still getting the same inconceivable stupidity!!
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Maynard:
17 Feb 2014 3:41:12pm
Had Britain stood aside the great empire would still exist & Europe would have led the world.
One mistake by the Germans is forgivable but two incomprehensible.
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Horrocks:
17 Feb 2014 3:57:14pm
Interesting article.
So who do we blame, given subsequent actions by Sebians in later conflicts there can be some blame there however I must admit I still don't understand why the Germans invaded Belgium, was it again because they wanted a port such as Antwerp so they couln't be hemmed in by the Royal Navy.
As we commerate and remember the fallen during the 100th anniversary of the various battles I hope that both right and left wing nutters keep their collective traps shut and we are able to do so with due respect. I have never been to Gallipoli but I have driven through Belgium and the Somme and visited various Commonwealth War Graves sites and found the atmosphere haunting but also stunningly quiet and peaceful and restful, even when there are motorways only a short distance away.
they are there for all the wrong reasons but if you do find yourself at one at some stage over the next 4 years then take a moment and reflect, and lay a poppy on a tombstone, it can be a calming preaceful experience
Oh and please can we make it illegal over the next 4 years to call sportsmen and women, heroes, courageous, valiant or any other words along those lines, after all they are none of the above they are just entertainers and have no concept of any of those qualities unless they have served in battle.
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wandererfromoz:
17 Feb 2014 3:59:50pm
Thank you for this thoughtful article. If the love of money is the root of all evil then what did the lust for power and riches play in the lead up to WW1. If I remember correctly by the time WW1 erupted the boy giant of the new land USA was already producing more in goods and services as measured by GDP as Russia, Germany, France and England combined. But no one European - English ego-maniac thought about that at the time and the implications for the future. No one asked "what the hell are we fighting over when that young chap down the road - if he ever mobilizes - could whip the pants off all us?"
Real politics is always behind actual measurable events too often bogged down in stereo-typical thinking as evidenced by the blunder over Vietnam. In that sense 'politics' is the driver backed by the usual mass media mob stirrers as occurs today. Today ego-maniacs in politics abound and together with the 'mad-dog' mix as found for example in North Korea (comparing its leader to the equally mad-dog Hitler of the day is not an overstretch) we could 'accidentally' stumble into another crisis.
I have yet however to read - and that does mean I have read everything - far from it - any seemingly plausible account as to why WW1 started - except to hear from many German immigrants that Willhelm the 11 was an 'idiot'. And yet it seems a common and accurate perception that WW2 was just an extension of WW1 albeit perhaps the trigger was for different reasons.
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wandererfromoz:
17 Feb 2014 5:01:07pm
Addendum - not read everything.
But lets look at misunderstandings re the current situation between Australia and Indonesia.\\
Why did the Indonesian foreign minister say "We are going to discuss this with the USA Secretary of State - Kerry" when he comes? At first blush this seems 'silly' and our response "he can discuss whatever he likes".
Or was it a warning? - We are going to discuss this with your great and powerful friend and ally the USA so that when we take direct action against you re insults, shocking rudeness and behaviour towards our leader and now this 'invasion' of our borders they will understand and stay out of it as they will have no moral ground to intervene on your behalf.
Well, I suppose this sounds silly - just as silly as the reasons, seemingly so, the Indonesians warned us they were going to have a chat with our friend Kerry.
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AP:
17 Feb 2014 4:09:34pm
I'd just like to point out that "All Quiet on the Western Front" was a work of fiction - admittedly, based on Remarque's very brief war service in France, but written in 1928 as part of a wider anti-war reaction to the horrors of the First World War.
Might I suggest Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel" (1920) for a more accurate and vivid portrayal of combat on the Western Front, written before the aforementioned anti-war trend in the post-war literature.
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Claudius Pseudonymus:
17 Feb 2014 5:02:13pm
Or even The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer and Campaign in Russia by Leon Degrelle for experiences of German soldiers on the Eastern front during Ww2
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Keith Lethbridge Snr:
17 Feb 2014 4:49:34pm
G'day Marius.
Thanks for your article.
Humans are territorial, war-like creatures, always on the look-out for something to "blue" about. It was ever thus. There are plenty of excuses for every war, but never a reason. The best we could say is that wars are sometimes thrust upon those who would prefer to avoid them.
Until I see the enemy charging down my road, armed to the teeth, I'll remain a live coward. Sorry about that.
Someone once said: "What if they held a war & no-one turned up?" Wouldn't that be a great day? Apparently logic & perspicacity are no match for human nature.
Regards,
Cobber
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JoeBloggs:
17 Feb 2014 5:06:03pm
"What if they held a war & no-one turned up?"
Which is why they resort to conscription.
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Ken Lyneham:
17 Feb 2014 5:00:10pm
Being willing and prepared to go to war is all that is needed. After that, all that is needed, is to press the button.
Once war has started, there are no winners or losers, only those that are left standing to clean up the mess.
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GregK:
17 Feb 2014 5:08:48pm
While it's true that "nationalist" Serbs were involved in the assassination Austrian investigators could find no evidence that the Serbian government knew about the plot.
The Serbian government may not have been lily-white [what government was ?] but what is true is that the Austro-Hungarian government [particularly the Austrian parts] was looking for an excuse to go to war with Serbia.
As the British ambassador to Vienna noted at the time.."But the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe .."
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Huonian:
17 Feb 2014 5:22:00pm
Marius, do you think that the war would have happened even if those two shots had not been fired?
Perhaps they were the excuse rather than the reason to go to war.
Seems to me that a few people in power were just itching to have a go at each other. If Princip had missed the archduke, perhaps Serbia beating Austria at a football match might have been the trigger for war.
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CF Zero:
17 Feb 2014 5:30:39pm
History is written by the winners.
Google WW1 Rothschild and you will get the picture.
Just another banker's war.
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old67:
17 Feb 2014 5:45:28pm
Bad governments are the biggest problem.
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Billious:
17 Feb 2014 5:51:55pm
Don't forget Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his missus both had state-of-the-art body armour on that day. At the time of the assassination the Archduke was wearing a silken vest made by a canny priest who worked out how to tightly weave the silk into a cross ply. Cost was around $12,000 each.
Same principle used today for kevlar knife and bullet vests.
If the shots were just a bit lower then the world whore's war (both) may have never eventuated.
Centenary of Commemorations thought... if it wasn't for the Lee Enfield rifle would we here in Oz not be speaking German or Japanese?
Billious.
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John51:
17 Feb 2014 5:56:47pm
I am sorry Marius, but I am on the side of the inevitable. Even if it did not happen from that event it was going to happen. Germany had at last managed to pull all of its warring states into a nation state. Compared to Britain and its British Empire it had come to its national statehood late.
Germany was dominated by its Nationalists and Militarists and it wanted to flex not only its power, but its growing industrial might. And it is simple, not one of its major neighbours trusted it.
And of course we had empires crumbling, like the Austrian Hungarian Empire. Which gave lead to a whole lot of others in Europe, including the Balkans seeking to become nation states in their own right. If you remember we had only just become a nation state ourselves in Australia.
We can see the same power and identity struggles going on now all around the world, in the Middle East, in Africa. We also see new emerging global powers seeking to express that power in their position in the world. Just look at China and India. And they are trying to flex their new felt power while the old powers are trying to maintain theirs.
Other than time little changes. It would be nice to think we get smarter over time. But we are very much still struggling with it. Our only saving grace may be that we hopefully realise we have more to lose no than what we once did. That's the hope. We can only hope it is not forlorn.
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get real:
17 Feb 2014 6:09:20pm
From Get Real,
Forgive my lack of ability to concentrate on such a long piece which I am sure is well written-I have other things in my life! However my understanding is that the most important lesson from the 'great war' is that the blind following of the 'great leader' results in great disasters and the large the size of the following the larger the disaster. And no as history clearly shows this lesson has not been learn. The only lesson I could conclude is that there is a tipping point where the size of the weapon(s) reduces the chance of the logical escalation in the size of conflicts ie the arrival of nuclear weapons-but of course it was touch and go during the cold war. Supposed restrictions on weapon accumulation after the great war did not work-and in fact for example Germany ended up with the largest military machine despite the phony restriction and so on.
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JMJ:
17 Feb 2014 6:13:15pm
Marius, there were two other Balkan conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula during during 1912 and 1913 which set the stage for the First World War & Macedonia was in the thick of things.
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Adrian:
17 Feb 2014 6:16:20pm
I've always been astonished by this argument that it was an accident. WW1 was precipitated by Germany invading Belgium and France. It was preceded by a territorial dispute in the Balkans but Germany chose to invade these two sovereign countries because of a desire for territorial expansion. This was no accident. It was a despicable act founded on Prussian militarism. Britain chose to fight to defend Belgium and France, two countries that were not part of the British Empire, at great cost even though they were not obligated to. They did this because this was unacceptable behaviour and this Shiism be applauded.
I have always wondered why the left chooses to make excuses for German aggression. I assume it has something to so with the ALP split over conscription, and the failed mass strikes of 1917 which the far left whimsically wishes had resulted in a copycat Bolshevik revolution in Australia.
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gnome:
17 Feb 2014 6:24:42pm
The real lesson from the European war (1914-1945) is that the unintended consequences of any government action will far outweigh the intended consequences in the long term.
Tragic as it was at the time, who would rather live in the semi-feudal world of pre-1914 Europe than the free world which the war spawned?
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Disraeli:
17 Feb 2014 6:27:18pm
One appalling thing about WW1, amongst so many, was the Treaty of Versailles.
Wilson's idea for the League of Nations was never going to work , and didnt ( the fact the US didnt join says it all).
The vengeful attitude to the German people was simply evil . They had suffered as much as anyone. It was also dopey. Germany paid very little in momentary terms. The 'victors' paid much more. In fact , Germany might be said to be one of the combatants that did least badly out of WW1.
Now, WW2 was totally different in that the victors took a more sensible approach to assisting the remnants of Europe. And who did most to assist Europe in recovering from WW2 ? .... er, that" nasty" and " evil" USA.
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