article here. click at your own risk. make sure you have braincells to spare before readinghere comes the rant:
The 100-year anniversary of the most important event in the 20th century passed recently with predictably scant notice in the American media. The anniversary can't be that of the allied D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II, because that event happened only 70 years ago. And it's not the anniversaries of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the moon shot, or the 9/11 attacks.
calling the start of ww1 the "most important event in the 20th century" is INCREDIBLY debatable. many would argue the development of the computer, atomic bomb, moonshot, etc. to be far more important, but no. one could argue that without world war 1, however, none of what I previously mentioned would have happened. my rebuttal to that is WORLD WAR 1 WAS CONSIDERED INEVITABLE NO MATTER HOW ANYONE LOOKED AT IT.
even german statesman otto von bismarck, in 1878 (A FULL 36 YEARS BEFORE FRANZ IS TAKEN OUT) said "
Europe today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off."
now, I do understand that the author may be referring explicitly to the 100th anniversary of an important event, however, he is still calling the assassination
the most important event, something which I do not consider it to be.
next paragraph.
On June 28, 1914, one hundred years ago, the Archduke Ferdinand -- to be the future ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- was gunned down by a Serbian-government sponsored assassination team. What? A few Americans might vaguely remember this incident from their high school social studies or history classes, but is it the most important event in the 20th century? Yes.
first of all, why would the serbian government fund an "assassination team" that previously killed its own king and queen several years earlier? second of all, the black hand did not assassinate ferdinand and his wife, a man named gavrilo princip who primarily identified with the young bosnia (a radical yugoslavian independence movement) did. the weapons and people involved in the plot to assassinate were smuggled in by the black hand though, I will admit. I don't mean to argue semantics here for this, so I digress.
see above for my opinions regarding his last few sentences.
The event was the spark that triggered what is now called World War I but really should be called, "The World War: Part I." The more recent and popular World War II should be called, "The World War: Part II," because the results of World War I caused World War II. Thus, World War I was historically much more important than its more heralded successor.
really, we're doing this again? the whole "world war 1 is part one, interbellum is the ceasefire, and world war 2 is part two to one larger conflict" charade? I thought this was debunked numerous times because:
1. they involved different leaders
2. they involved different tactics
3. they involved different eras
4. they involved different motives
5. they involved different political, economic, social, and military landscapes
apples to oranges
Of course, World War II is more popular because we have its veterans still living, because the villains vanquished were more evil than those in the First World War, and because the United States sat unrivaled as a world power after its victory in the second war.
the united states was unrivaled after world war 2? do you even know what the soviet union or the cold war was?
Thus, the bipartisan foreign policy elite uses World War II to show that the United States must in stop any aggression overseas before it snowballs into a threat to the U.S. homeland.
I didn't realize that embargoing other nations was reserved for "bipartisan foreign policy elites" to reduce overseas threats
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Riddler at Munich in 1938, despite Riddler's aggressive behavior in Czechoslovakia, is usually dragged out to demonstrate what not to do in foreign affairs and to illustrate that that the United States must deal very harshly with any such encroachment (for example, Vladimir Putin's recent annexation of Russophilic Crimea).
crimea is russophilic? is this before or after those mysterious russian military guys showed up "just in time" for those pro-russian demonstrations?
Even here, Chamberlain had no choice but to appease Riddler, because Britain was not yet ready for conflict and had to catch up with Riddler's war preparations (including obtaining the air defenses that saved the British in the critical Battle of Britain).
well I'll be damned, the first not-entirely-stupid thing he's said this entire article. here's a gold star.
As for the United States, if you ask any American why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, you will usually get a blank stare instead of an brown townysis of American actions prior to the attack -- the U.S. attempt to strangle the Japanese economy and military by cutting off petroleum-based exports (America was then the largest producer) in reaction to Japanese attempts to join the imperial club in East Asia, of which America and its allies were already members. Americans also conveniently forget that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused Japanese overtures to negotiate an end to the embargo and avoid war. FDR already had learned the false lesson of Munich that all negotiation to avoid war is appeasement.
ah yes, because the big ol' mean uncle sam spanked the japanese economy because we didn't want them infringing on colonial efforts in the far east.
in addition, I like how the author chose to euphemize japan's falsely justified invasion, occupation, enslavement, and resource-sucking of manchuria as "joining the imperial club in east asia." also I'm sure that japan's actions in 1937, most notably the rape of nanking, is just another bump in the road on their way to becoming a world power. sure, because it's totally mandatory to rape, pillage, and burn an entire capital city, leaving no survivors by raping the women and children and deporting the men so they can be experimented on, is just another fraternity hazing ritual.
no, the american petroleum embargo on japan was totally unjustified and we should've taken more gentle actions against them. totally. you hear that guys? pearl harbor was our fault because we embargoed their oil for their barbaric actions against another country, not because japan partly wanted to cripple our naval capacity and keep us out of the war or anything or any other number of reasons as to why pearl harbor happened. now I'm just rambling.
But all this would not have happened if it hadn't been for American involvement in World War I, which tipped the victory to the allied side and caused Britain and France to falsely declare the Germans guilty of starting the war, rub its nose in defeat with heavy war reparations, and grab German and its losing allies' colonies overseas. Woodrow Wilson, the American president, also demanded that the German king, Kaiser Wilhelm II, abdicate. All of these post-war depredations paved the way for the rise of the hyper-nationalist and jingoistic Riddler.
e-excuse me? first of all, the treaty of versailles did not blame germany. it blamed germany
and her allies. second, people always like to look at the treaty of versailles as being too harsh despite the central powers being the losers to a world conflict. plus, germany didn't even pay back those war reparations. they had the genius idea to bankrupt their economy, thus subverting the reparations and paving the way for Riddler themselves.
also, what? wilson did not force wilhem ii to abdicate. wilson doesn't have that kind of power. not to mention that wilhelm wasn't the leader of germany, he was the leader of prussia.
In reality, France and Russia, with its rapid military build up prior to the outbreak of the First World War, probably behaved more aggressively than Germany did. But the winners of war write the history, and Germany's behavior in World War I now seems more aggressive in light of the evil Riddler's subsequent aggression in World War II, which Germany also lost.
I'm not even going to waste my time here. I could arguably have made my entire post surrounding this terrible display of revisionist history, but here is my main point:
france and russia formed an alliance together to resist germany's increasingly bellicose attitude along with its alliance with austria-hungary. considering central europe was forming this large power bloc, russia felt threatened and thus naturally fell into france's arms. it was mainly wilhelm ii's failure to renew his non-aggression treaty with russia in 1890 that forced all of these events to transpire, but that's for another day.
Austria-Hungary, Germany's ally prior to the First World War, understandably felt the need to respond to a Serbian government-backed assassination of its second highest ranking official--clearly an act of war. Germany backed an Austro-Hungarian ultimatum and war, thinking that the conflict could be contained on the Balkan Peninsula, as two prior conflicts were in the previous few years, because Russia would not enter the war on behalf of Serbia. That assumption proved to be wrong, because the French were pushing their ally Russia to turn a conflict in the Balkans into a general war in Europe to get Russian help against their old enemy Germany. Britain was aligned with France and Russia and also entered the fray.
I'm probably about to hit the character limit so I'll just leave this hereThus, if we go back farther in history, which Americans rarely do, we learn the opposite lesson from merely examining Munich 1938 and World War II.
first of all, this is a humorously low-quality tribal jab. second of all, since when does going forward in time count as going farther back?
We learn that the post-World War II U.S. policy of hyper-interventionism into the affairs of other nations was not the traditional foreign policy of the nation's founders or of the United States for most of its history.
monroe doctrine
The stark unintended consequences of World War I reaffirmed the founders' inclination to stay out of wars on the other side of the world (especially those in Europe), to avoid entangling alliances, and to be suspicious of large standing armies. Of course, we got all three during the post-World War II Cold War.
except most, if not all, of washington's farewell address (which the author is referring to) was readdressed and revised by thomas jefferson because he realized it could not function properly for the united states. if you want reasons why, look up the barbary coast wars.
The roots of that Cold War can also be traced to World War I.
yeah, let's just ignore that little space in between the two. it's not important enough to have affected my precious world war 1
The possibility of allied victory with the belated entry into the conflict of the United States -- the greatest industrial power at the time -- and Wilson's and the allies' promises of aid to the Russian Kerensky government to stay in the war were pivotal in keeping Russia in a quagmire unpopular with its people. The only Russian party advocating getting out of the war was the Bolshevik party. Vladimir Lenin even said that the only reason the Bolsheviks rose to power during the second Russian revolution was the Russian public's exhaustion from the carnage of World War I. In addition, most Americans don't know that during the ensuing Russian civil war, the U.S. and its wartime allies invaded Russia to help anti-Bolshevik forces and to keep Japan out of the Russian far east. The suspicion of the West by the Russian communists originated here.
the author seems to have a special interest for blaming the united states for conspiracies. he's missing a big point that the allied powers wanted russia in the war to keep the eastern front alive, however, and keep pressure on the central powers. when russia tagged out and the united states tagged in, though, I suppose that was subverted (not to mentioned essentially the end of the war)
If the United States had let Germany win World War I by an exhausting 15-round decision, rather helping to achieve its knockout, the boundaries of Europe would have been slightly adjusted, as they had during all previous European wars that the United States had stayed out of. The 20th century probably wouldn't have been by far the bloodiest in world history, because World War II and the Cold War likely would not have occurred.
...
"slightly adjusted"? the treaty of brest-litovsk is "slightly adjusted"? every other european war the united states had stayed out of had merely "slightly adjusted" borders? what? WHAT???
And World War I just keeps on giving in the 21st century. After the war, because Woodrow Wilson was willing to give his British and French allies anything for his failed League of Nations scheme, he not only let them tromp all over Germany by inflicting war guilt and reparations but let them steal overseas colonies from Germany and its ally, the defunct Ottoman Empire.
oh sure, it was wilson being a complete pusillanimous individual that germany got slapped so hard with those peace terms, not because they lost a loving global conflict. totally not.
The British and French both wanted Middle Eastern oil, so they drew artificial boundaries in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere that didn't correspond to the lines of their ethno-sectarian inhabitants. The conflict in all these places today is a result of World War I and its aftermath.
who on earth is using that oil? tanks and planes are in their infancy and cars haven't caught on yet. who the loving is using this oil?? this guy just screams revisionism
However, unfortunately most Americans view an interest in history as quaint or nerdy. Thus, their ill-informed nature allows politicians like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and richard Cheney to selectively mine history for lessons that will justify their often aggressive and ill-advised preferences for today's U.S. overseas meddling. That is why remembering back far enough is really important.
AH, HIS TRUE COLORS ARE SHOWN! THIS ARTICLE WAS MERELY A POLITICAL STATEMENT! why am I not surprised. but even with this paragraph, what is he trying to say? that the united states is the only country in history to ever use history to justify conflict? whatever.
I hope you enjoyed my historical rant. if I made any inaccuracies, let me know
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