Talk:Gerhard Weinberg/Archive 1

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Czechoslovakia
Did Weinberg really originate (or publicise) the view that Hitler wanted war with Czech'a in 1938? AJP Taylor banged this drum years ago.Keith-264 (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was a major theme of the second volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, plus his essays "Munich After 50 Years" in Foreign Affairs, “The Munich Crisis in Historical Perspective" from International History Review, and "Reflections on Munich after 60 Years" in The Munich Crisis 1938. Quoting from the latter essay, please see pages 3-5 & 7, where Weinberg states that up to September 29th of 1938, Hitler was serious with going ahead with an attack on Czechoslovakia on October 1st, and only changed his mind literally at the last minute about going to war in 1938. I do believe that Weinberg was one of the first historians to make this point. I must disagree with you about Taylor making the same claim, at least not in The Origins of the Second World War, where Taylor says on pages 191-192 & 207-208 of the 1976 edition published by Hamish Hamilton that Hitler was only bluffing in 1938. I don't believe that is right to put Weinberg and Taylor into the same camp given that the two volumes of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany were written with the aim in rebutting Taylor's account in The Origins of the Second World War. Give me some time, and will I check if Weinberg was the first historian to argue that Hitler was not bluffing in 1938, but was in fact deadly serious about going ahead with a war, and only changed his mind at the last minute.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble. I haven't read any Taylor for a while, evidently my memory has played me false. I have only recently begun to look at Weinberg who strikes me as a bit of a bruiser in the AJP mould. I was particularly pleased by his apparent anglophobia in the book of essays I got recently though :o). I was a little surprised at his apparent appropriation of the 'serious' view of 1938 but perhaps he's entitled.Keith-264 (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Your welcome. Sometimes, my memory plays me false as while. Yes, I would argee with about your description as Weinberg as a combative historian in the same mould as Taylor. As someone familiar with some of Weinberg’s writings, he can be awfully harsh about those historians who take a contrary line to his own. Through to be fair, at times historians like Andreas Hillgruber do deserve a whack or two for their German apologetics. I was little surprised that you mentioned Weinberg and Taylor as arguing the same case given that Weinberg in the first volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany had some rather dismissive and hostile things to say about Taylor. To be fair, Taylor in his review of the same book was not too positive about Weinberg, so perhaps the feeling was mutual. I would agree with you as while about Weinberg’s tendency to be rather curt to say the least about Britain’s performance in World War II, and a corresponding tendency to take the American side as self-evidently right in all of the various Anglo-American strategic disputes, but since I don’t have any sources for that other then Weinberg’s own books and essays, I am rather hesitant to put my gloss on Weinberg’s writings in the article based solely on my own reading of them. Smacks too much of original research, at least for something like that. To take an example, Weinberg always writes about British signet be based upon the work of Polish code-breakers at Bletchley Park, when in fact there were no Poles at Bletchley. To be fair the Poles, ULTRA was based on technology and techniques developed by the Poles in the 1930s, but the code-breakers at Bletchley were British. Thanks for the kind words.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History' is the one I've got. Having looked around I realise he's been around for a lot longer than I realised so he may well be the person who took the 1938 war intention seriously. I like foreigners who take swipes at Britain's war effort, particularly Germans who are sucking up to the Americans! His snide remarks about Tobruk and Singapore have been obsolete for about twenty five years though. I like your exposition of the cause of the Great War on that discussion page as well - succinct and erudite. Your opponents have given you a run for your money so I expect that was a creative pressure on you.Keith-264 (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please accept my most humble apologies for ignoring you for so long. I meant to go to you earlier, but between work, life, research and that hateful, tiresome debate on the Great War page, I’ll not able to get back to you.

Thank you so very much for the kind words about my humble contributions on the Great War page. I’m so glad that at least someone appreciates my work! It is an awful, terrible debate which I sincerely wished I had never gotten into with the German apologists, because all it does is take up my time to no good purpose and it never ends, but it is too late now. I’m a very shy, modest fellow both here and in real life, so I must confess I really not enjoying that debate, but on the other hand, these attempts to bully me into supporting something that I know is untrue is not something I will stand for. In for a penny, in for a pound. That page was outrageously pro-German (through I have cleaned up, at least for the moment). I can fight my own battles, but could you please tell me if you think that my reworked version is better. I know it is much longer and detailed, but given the contentious nature of the subject, I felt really didn’t I had any choice. My favourite part (which I since rephrased into something better) was when the Wilhelm’s rant about how Britain started the war is presented as his “startling observations” about the war began. Observation implies that somebody went, took a look at something and drew a conclusion. I.e. “He observed it was raining” or “She observed the stars”. So in other words, the word observation refers to some sort of objective reality and one’s relationship with it. So, by labelling the Kaiser’s Anglophobic rant as his “startling observations” implies that he is describing the objective reality of 1914, and not only that, but doing it exceptionally well. Both a POV edit and a very false one, to boot. By the same logic, one could speak of Hitler’s “startling observation” that the Jews started World War II. Just because somebody believes something does not make it true, and we should be not presenting people's personal beliefs about as fact like as "starting observations".

Back to Weinberg, yes, I would argee witht that there appears to be a somewhat anti-British bias in a lot of his work. I'm not certain where that comes from. Do somebody insult when he was a refugee in war-time Britain, and he's having an awfully long time getting over it? Through I might not fond of this aspect of his writings, I do regard as a great historian.

Moving the subject to the 1938. I done some checking up, and no, Weinberg, not the first to argue that thesis of Case Green as a serious military operation. I can’t you offhand who was the first (through it seems to be a claim first made by German historians in the 1960s) but one find can the same arguments in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich by Klaus Hildebrand (1970), the 1974 essay "England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion" by Andreas Hillgruber from the Journal of Contemporary History, How War Came (1989) by Donald Cameron Watt, the essay “Germany and the Munich Crisis: A Mutilated Victory?”  by Richard Overy from The Munich Crisis 1938 (1999), the essay “Foreign Policy and Preparation for War”  by Manfred Messerschmidt from Germany and the Second World W,ar (which is the official German history of World War II),  The Hitler of History  (1997) by John Lukacs, The Change in the European Balance of Power (1984) by Williamson Murray (through with a completely different and much more hostile interpretation of Chamberlain then Weinberg’s), The Third Reich in Power (2005) by Richard J. Evans, and the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (2000)

Personally, I might disagree with you about Case Green as a bluff, but however, one debate at a time! Just a couple of things to work through. At present, I might suggest if still have your copy handy of Hitler, Germany and World War II that you look at the section about Hitler’s secret speech to about 200 German journalists on November 10, 1938 about the need for some hate propaganda to work the German people up into a frenzy of war fever, which something that Hitler felt the German people lacked in September 1938, and that that the next time he risked war, he wanted to see some real blood lust in his people. At very least, I think that the sense that he didn't have his people fully behind him in September 1938 that led to abandon war at the last moment.

There are couple of other things to consider. The first, is until mid-September 1938, Hitler refused to lay claim to the Sudetenland area, and instead only demanded autonomy for the region. If Hitler was bluffing to get the Sudetenland, then he was defeating the purpose of his bluff by refusing to lay claim to the region. But if we accept the idea that Case Green was not a bluff, then his action makes more sense because the idea was to to show the world how reasonable and moderate he supposedly was in only asking for autonomy for the Sudetenland, which the Czechs refused to give. He upped his demand for handing the region over, when in early September 1938 Prague granted for the Sudetelander's demands for autonomy with the so-called "Fourth Plan" under intense Anglo-French pressure, which threantened to deprive Hitler of his pretext for war. Hence, he suddenly laid claim to it in mid-September. Now, of course, one could say he was still bluffing, but that begs the question why he escalated his demands at the Bad Godesberg summit. Under Chamberlain's plan presented at Bad Godesberg, the Sudetenland was going to be his within the next six months, and what more Chamberlain had agreed to the most egregious German demands about was going to be the criterion for deciding what district were to go to Germanly, namely a 50% ethnic German population (instead of 80% as first proposed) on the basis of the Austrian census of 1910 (instead of the Czech census of 1930). If Hitler wanted to bluff his way into the getting the Sudetenland, he could had his way right there and then at Bad Godesberg. There was really no need for him to throw a spanner into the works by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded no later then October 1st, 1938, and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia be satisfied also by October 1st. Given that Hitler could really care less about the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia in private, his insistence that he would go to war unless Poland and Hungary were happy by October 1st, 1938 seems like an excuse just to to war in 1938.

Then of course, there is the very intense debate between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938. I think it is noteworthy that Beck seemed to believe that Hitler was serious (indeed he resigned as Chief of the General Staff over the issue, and then was preparded to led a putsch over the issue), and that Hitler never once in his of his debates with Beck said anything about bluffing. Indeed, Hitler never anything about bluffing until Munich. True, a bluffer does not normally reveal he is bluffing until the game is over, but still, Hitler kept on taking about going to war in 1938. True, after Munich, Hitler did say he was bluffing. But I think we have to remember that Hitler was a bit like Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. Whatever Clouseau falls over, he always says he did that on purpose, and will never admit to making a mistake. Hitler was the same way. It was a big part of Hitler's image, that he was a man of providence, a figure chosen by destiny, fate and by some vaguely higher supernatural power to save Germany. Hitler cared greatly about image, which is why he often to extraordinary lengths to try to deny that he ever changed his mind or made a mistake. I think that the best example of this is Hitler's claim that he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. If Hitler really wanted to let the BEF escape, then why he send the Luffwaffe to bomb Dunkirk night and day? Because he didn't the BEF to escape, and that he only made up the escape story in July 1940 when it became clear that Britain would not surrender, at which point his halt order of May 1940 before Dunkirk was starting to look like a real blunder.

Turning back to Munich, I think that it is noteworthy after Munich, how much he talked in private about how Chamberlain had "cheated" him out of a war at Munich. As late as Feburary 21, 1945 Hitler was still going on in private about how if Chamberlain had not "cheated" out a war at Munich, then he would not be in his present predicament (i.e. losing the war). Now, that claim is nonsense, but I think it reflects Hitler's real bitterness that he didn't have his war in 1938 as he had planned. One might also consider that one of Hitler's big post-Munich initiatives was Plan Z of January 1939, which called for building a colossal Kriegsmarine capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944-the first and only time that the Kriegsmarine was given first priority on economic resources during the Third Reich 's entire 12 years. At very least, I think that the Z Plan should be understood as part of Hitler's post-Munich resolve that because Britain was not going to step aside from Europe, that he he needed to destroy Britain. This is my personal theory, but I think we connect the dots, the fact that Hitler regarded Britain as his real enemy in 1939 as reflected in things like the Z Plan helps to explain the pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.

One of these days, when I get some time, I’m going go and rework the Munich Conference page. At present, that page could use some drastic reworking-there is no mention of the intense debates between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938, the attitudes of the Dominions, Japan, Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union and the other Central European states needs some expanding; the section dealing with the problems of the French economy on French decision-making needs  particular work, there at present no mention of any of the debates within the French Cabinet. When I am done, I’ll invite you to take a look, and suggest any improvements that are in order. I think that you having probably gotten a foretaste of the sort of arguements that I will be making. Anyhow, through I don't much like debates, but I am prepared to take and consider honest criticism (as opposed to the sort that I'm getting on the Great War page!) Through I must admit I think I your more much reasonable and saner person then my German apologist opponents on the Great War page. Thanks for making my day!:)--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Mr Brown, thank you for taking so much trouble.
 * I wonder if I gave the impression that I thought Hitler's attitude to the Sudentenland was a bluff when I meant to imply that the 'bluff thesis' was the other way of looking at it (bearing in mind that as I had remembered it, AJP was the one who thought it wasn't a bluff). My view at the moment is mainly determined by what I read in Tooze about the economic pressures Germany was under at the time. This favours the idea that Chamberlain thwarted Hitler of his small war in 1938 (Which it appears I erroneously gave to AJP). Reading your comments further it also came to mind that it was AJP (as I remember it) who referred to Hitler's blaming of Chamberlain and Franco as the only people who had bested him - AJP's defence of appeasement is at least implicitly favourable to Chamberlain and Baldwin.

Tooze sees the Z plan as a recognition that the arms race Hitler set off had spread to the USA and that one way or another the USA would support his enemies so Germany needed to prepare for a great air-sea war in the west once the resources of the east had been captured (I think he says that there wasn't enough steel making capacity in Europe to fulfull Plan Z and the other arms programmes).

As for the origins of WWI, I'm ploughing through Stevenson 'Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904-1914' which is full of useful stuff but is as readable as a party manifesto. I haven't made my mind up (Will I ever?) but I find that the view that Austria-Hungary wanted war with Serbia in 1914 (the generals had wanted to settle their hash for a long time and Serbian expansion after the Ottomans were routed made this more acceptable to the diplomats and politicians) and that German support reduced Austrian fears of Russia (recovering strongly from the defeat in the Far East from its lowest point in 1908-1909) thus making a great European war possible suits me. On top of this I think there was a general European crisis of falling expectations, which had gone on for some considerable time, which perhaps the apologists make more of than they should and which possibly tended to make the greater powers increasingly the hostage of parochial events (like Archie Duke getting shot)and the lesser powers' reactions to them. Perhaps the better question is to ask 'why the war didn't begin earlier'? Stephenson is making a good argument that Agadir 1911 is a watershed in the alignment of military, political-diplomatic and economic personnel and structures in favour of war (or of at least war readiness) when such a thing hadn't been the case earlier - possibly a development that had been on the cards since the Russian-French alliance of the 1890's and only delayed by Russia's defeat in Manchuria. Events in the Balkans do seem to have had a profound effect - the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan War(s) and the revolution; similar events in China and Mexico perhaps being a dire warning to Austria-Hungary of the fate of a country which dropped below the level of a great power (albeit as an also-ran).Keith-264 (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank very much for the kind words and thoughtful remarks.

I have not read Tooze, so I am not familar with his arguements. Through I unfortunately inherited a copy of his book through the death of my best friend, my father last year (he was half-way through The Wages of Destruction at the time of his death), so I suppose one day will try to forget my father and read it. Your right about the Z Plan as totally economically unrealistic, indeed aspects of it were economic fantasy and did not stand a chance of being realized. Plus, it was unrealistic even on naval grounds because some of the battleships envisioned in the plan would have been too bad to fit into any dock anywhere in the world. It's only importance is how it was sign of Hitler's foreign policy objectives were going into 1939, as you have quite rightly stated. There is a lot of debate about whatever the Z Plan was a just an anti-British move or both an anti-British and anti-American move. Personally, I think that the immediate impetus for the Z Plan was anti-British (coming as it shortly after Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to start building a stragetic bomber force), but that in long term, such a giantic fleet that Hitler wanted was probably meant to fight both the British and the Americans. At least as an immediate impetus, I think that Chamberlain's warning to Hitler that if you do not accept the terms offered at Bad Godesberg (which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands about the Sudentenland, and then some), then we will declare war if you attack Czechoslovakia, which is what led Hitler at the last minute to abandon his war is probably what led to the anti-Western orienation in his foreign policy. I remember Father telling me based on his reading of Tooze that the Anglo-American free trade agreement of November 1938 was misunderstood in Germany as marking the beginning of an Anglo-American bloc designed to block German ambitions (which in a way it was, but not in the way the Germans thought about it-secret military clauses and all that). This is my own personal theory, but I think what caused the abandoment of Case Green was the British warning delivered by Sir Horace Wilson on September 28, 1938 that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honor the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty of 1924, and then Britain would probably come in. The key issue was Germany's oil problem. 80% of German oil imports in the 1930s came from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, and all of which would be cut off by a British blockade. And since the synethic oil program, in which Germans produced eratsz oil from coal was still way beyond schedule in 1938 (indeed did not come on line until 1942-two years late), Romania not in the German sphere of influence in 1938, and the Soviet Union unwilling to supply that year, that Germany had enough oil for a small war with Czechoslovakia, but not enough to face Britain and France, hence the climb-down from war. The Germans already a foretaste of what to expect when in September 1938, the British stopped several Hamburg-bound tankers for a couple of days in British ports for spurious reasons, something that caused immediate economic pain. I think that the importance of the oil issue can be seen that with the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Germans got access to Soviet oil, and hence were immune to a British blockade (at least with oil). At very least, I think this explains what Joachim von Ribbentrop meant when he told Hitler that now that we have the Pact with the Soviets, the British will never go to war for Poland-i.e. Germany was now immune to a blockade.

Good luck with Stevenson! I feel your hypothesis about Austria seeking a war with Serbia, no matter sounds acceptable to me. After all, this was the gang that activated War Plan B for a war against Serbia, and that only very belateley discovered that they would have to activated War Plan R for a war against Russia, which led to the mother of a logistical traffic-jams as the Army Group that was supposed to go to Bosnia instead had to be turned around to go to Galicia. That incidentally is the main cause of the great Austrian defeats of September 1914 in Galicia, which cost the Dual Monarchy 50% of its pre-August standing army-the real end of Austria-Hungary as a great power, which thereafter become a German dependency for the rest of the war. Yes, that does seem to be something of that in the air before 1914, namely an obsession with national decay and decline, perhaps reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism. Eugen Weber, through he was only writing about France, claimed that sports and health obsession of the fin-de-siecle era was due to the widespread belief that healthy nations were nations that won wars, and unhealthy nations lost wars. A similar thing happened in Britain with the Boar War where a great many people blamed the early British defeats on the fact that so many British soldiers were the products of malnutrition, which was not the cause, but who can account for public opinion? And this Social Darwnist understanding of the world was much prevelent in the German-speaking world then in the West. As far as I am aware, Social Darwnism did not have much influence in either Russia or Serbia-perhaps the backward state of those countries meant that science and pseudo-science did not enjoy the same prestige as in the Western world. At very least, I think that your right in the case of Austria-Hungary that a great many of the elite there had a morbid fear of national decay (probably made worse that Austria had lost almost every war it had fought since 1815) together with an exaggerated fear of Serbia. Yes, Serbia had doubted in size after the Balkan Wars, and yes, there was far too much nationalist fire-breathing talk from too far many Serb politicans, but the idea that a backward Balkan state that was on the verge of bankrupcty and had taken very heavy causalities during the Balkan Wars was going to bring down Austria-Hungary in the near-future seems to me to be more the product of hysteria in the Austrian elite then a rational assessement of the situation. Through I would agree with you that after the Second Moroccan Crisis, there was a climate of opinion that was more conductive to war, I don't think that one should underrate human agency. There is a lot that is wrong with Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, but he is right about that. After all, there were signs that France was falling behind in the arms race, and that at least a body of French opinion was starting to favor reaching an understanding with Germany, so the claims made by the Germans and their apologists about a obsessive, venegful France being beat on a war of revenge should be taken with a grain of salt. There were options other then war, but unfortunately for the world, those options were not taken.

Thank you for the kind words and interesting conversation!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings again, condolences on your bereavement. I can understand your reluctance to look at Tooze - I have similar feelings about 'Kes' (Barry Hines). Unfeasible withal, a Z-Plan aimed at England would also be implicitly anti-American by existing. US access to Europe is after all something they've gone to war over twice. Tooze takes much of his strategic-political analysis from DRZW which sees Hitler's Russian venture as a response to the need to secure resources before UK-US rearmament matured - the foodstuffs, raw materials and fuel usurped from the USSR would provide the economic infrastructure Germany lacked, bearing in mind that the economic resources of western Europe were near useless without non-European imports barred by Britain's refusal to fold. This doesn't preclude the ideological motives but does explain the timing of Barbarossa. It is instructive that before General Thomas toed Hitler's line he didn't say that Ukraine would get Germany out of trouble, more that if any region could it was Ukraine. Even with the Hongerplan, the transport needed to get Russian commodities to Germany was lacking. Apparently the same was true of oil imports from Rumania - the rail and river capacity needed investment before substantial increases of oil could be delivered to Germany (once the contracts that Britain used to by Rumania's surplus ran out). As usual with nazi wheezes making oil from coal only transferred the problem from one part of the economy to another - synthetic refineries needed huge anounts of steel to build, huge amounts of coal to refine and huge amounts of rail traffic to carry it.

I'm not as seized by human agency as you it seems; a crisis of falling expectations seems to me to lie less in mentalities susceptible to Social Darwinism as a rival ideology to socialism/communism/anarchism* and more in a growing (political) structural impasse as the effects of demographic, economic and technological growth did in Europe something akin to what happened in Africa (more an explosion than an implosion though in Europe, over 40 rather than 400 years) which set off the Scramble. Clearly as interbloc rivalry worsened, the reason for forming them surfaced in an acute form - the gradual collapse of the European political structure of the Congress of Vienna as modified in 1871; note for example that the loss of the Ottoman counterweight in the Balkans seriously upset the military balance between Serbia and the Empire, when from our perspective it seems like a piddling thing. Curiously Vienna doesn't get half as much stick as the Treay of Versailles. . . . I think for example that Britain edged towards Russia and France to exert its independence the better from the inside, having tried unilateral negotiations with Germany - note French acceptance that the British connexion precluded unilateral action in Belgium, despite the strategic sacrifice it entailed, something the Germans could never have accepted. As I recall the Austro-Hungarians were damned if they did, damned if they didn't over Galicia - the transport infrastructure couldn't cope with B-Staffel whatever they tried.


 * My favourite.

Thanks for comparing notes rather than ranting - there should be more of it on Wiki!


 * Thank you for the thoughtful remarks and kind words. Through I miss my father, and would do anything to get those awful memories of his corpse being carried away out of my mind, one just has to be tough about these things and carry out. Sorry for not getting back sooner; usually when someone writes something intelligent around here, it takes more time for me to pen a response, and between work and life, I’m being rather hard pressed to find the time.

Moving to on to more happier subjects, finally, a user who appreciates logistics and economics! You could use a lot more people like you, Keith since right now, we have far too pages written by economic illiterates and/or armchair generals. Of course, I would not take an economic determinist approach with economics deciding anything, but I do think that the economic situation does in fact limit a statesmen’s (and I usually that term very broadly here) options. After all, no money means just that, and I do wish that we have more users who pay attention to the economic constraints imposed on various politicians. The same goes with logistics. That’s makes sense with Plan R being doomed anyhow by an inadequate rail network, through I think that that the task of attempting to turn around the B-Staffel army group from the Balkans to Galicia could not have helped the (mis)fortunes of the Austrian Army. Until I got dragged into that debate on the Great Power page back in February, the last time I did any serious reading on the subject was almost 9 years ago, so I am bit rusty. I operating at somewhat of a disadvantage because of that, through I am trying to get caught up, through I am somewhat overjoyed at reading David Fromkin’s 2004 book Europe Last Summer because his version of how the war started is remarkably close to the one I articulated in an essay written in November 2000. There’s an old saying that great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, and I hope that the fact I independently worked out a similar analysis to Fromkin four years before he published his book is a case of the former, not the latter!

In order to reduce the amount of ranting, which I agree that we have far too much of at present, I think would really like to bring in a licensing system. Right now, we have too many pages written by people who either lacked the necessary knowledge for the subject, have some sort of axe to grind or are just plain insane. Right now, we have people contributing here who would never in a million years ever be published by a reputable publisher, and in some cases, not even a disreputable publisher. To take an example, there was (and still is in some of the section) on the Great War page, a set of statements that subtly implied that was all a case of Allied aggression against the Central Powers such as the remark about the Kaiser’s “startling observations” about how Britain engineered the war. This is all somebody’s lunatic fringe conspiracy theory being dressed up as history. What really bothers me is at the risk of sounding egoistic is why didn’t anybody spot these things? I have taken on the thankless task of purging the page of these German apologetics, but where was everybody’s else? There was that was really wrong with that page such as its statement that Austria actually expected their “unacceptable” (their words, not mine) ultimatum to be accepted by the Serbs. True, the Serbs were not being straight forward in their reply, giving the false impression that they accepted far more in the ultimatum then was actually the case, but my view of the subject is this: If you give a ultimatum that is meant to be rejected, then you really don’t have anything to complain about when your ultimatum is in fact rejected. What we really need is that before somebody is allowed to contribute, they should be subjected to tests to see if they possess the requisite knowledge to write about the subject, don’t any axes to grind and are sane. This goes against the principle of allowing this place being open to all, but I think it solve not all, but at least, a great deal of the of the current problems if such a system were brought in.

It also all seems I’m rather rusty on the origins of the Second World War. Thanks for bringing up to speed up on that subject. That’s interesting that Romanian oil owing to transport problems was not as helpful to the German war effort as I had been led to believe, through that is helpful to hear that the British ‘economic offensive” in the Balkans was damaging to the Reich. I mentioned the “economic offensive” on the Neville Chamberlain page, but since Weinberg does not go into great detail about the subject, there was not much I could add. I know that Joachim von Ribbentrop called an angry press conference to complain about British “economic encirclement” of Germany in June 1939, but given that Ribbentrop was a colossal idiot and an extreme Anglophobe (after about 1937), I was not certain how much of this was due to genuine economic pain, and how much was to feigned outrage over the foreign policy of the country that Ribbentrop loved to hate. Through I am not up to the details of the German synthetic oil program, that’s makes sense that the way that resources allocated to it weakened other projects. The whole German war effort seems to me to be nothing more then a vast, muddled inefficient ball of confusion and chaos. Having said that much, projects like the V weapons and jet fighters were a complete waste of resources on weapons that were not war-winning. This is Richard Overy, and I am writing from memory here, so I may be wrong about the precise numbers, but I remember reading that for the costs of building one V-1, the Germans could have built about 1, 000 FW 190 fighters. Arguably, a 1, 000 FW 190s would have given the Germans a much bigger bang for their buck, so to speak then one V-1.

I would agree with the ultimate anti-American implications of the Z Plan. After all, in his Zwites Buch of 1928, Hitler had spoken of a great war for the mastery of the world with an Anglo-German combination taking on the United States, through admittly Hitler projects this war to sometime in the 1980s. However, there are great signs that by the late 1930s that what Hitler had seen as the work of his successors he himself wanted to do. In his diary, Goebbels speaks of Hitler telling him that he wanted to “see the Great Germanic Reich in his own lifetime”. So, I think that one say that the Z Plan was in part a response to Hitler’s realization that his fanciful project for an Anglo-German alliance was folly, and that he would have to fight Britain, either by herself or in alliance with the United States. This is something that Weinberg is good at pointing out that Hitler held the Soviet Union in complete contempt. Operation Barbarossa was only supposed to be a six-month affair, and then the Soviet Union was going to be finished. One could see how seriously Hitler was in his assessment of the Soviet Union in that on June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa began, he cut the German Army’s allocations of raw materials for 1942 in order to provide for a bigger Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for 1942. There’s a great deal of historical debate about whatever Barbarossa should be regarded as an anti-Soviet move, or as in the case of John Lukacs, an anti-British move. The truth seems to be that Barbarossa was both, and I argue that based on what you told me, that it should be regarded as anti-American move as while.

I’m sorry, I’m afraid I misunderstood you about human agency. Through, he doesn’t use the same terminology as you do about falling expectations, David Fromkin makes the same point in Europe’s Last Summer where he writes about the extremely pessimistic evaluation of the international situation held by the decision-makers in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the last years before the war, and through this is being vigorously contested right on the origins of the Great War page right now, there was a sense that history was against them in all the ways you already mentioned (diplomatic, military, economic, etc), and that only a war could reversal the trend. Actually, Fromkin mentions there were even some contemporaries who felt that way, and talks about the peace mission of Colonel House, President Wilson’s chief political fixer to Europe in 1914. What’s interesting about Colonel House’s mission is not he what he accomplished (which was nothing), but rather the date: May 1914. It’s interesting that even an American isolationist (as Wilson was in 1914) could sense there was something wrong with the fundamental political make-up of Europe, and send out his right-hand man to try stop what Wilson and company feared might be the impeding catastrophe.

A synthesis I think that ties in the falling expectations and human agency might be noting just incredibly mediocre the leadership of Germany, and even more Austria was. You just look at the Austro-German leadership of 1914, and one is stuck by just how second-rate all these men were. I already mentioned at the Great War page about how Wilhelm had almost certainly suffered brain damage owing to his botched birth, which would go a long way to explaining his erratic behaviour, which he displayed right from his earliest days. It was the world’s misfortune that Wilhelm inherited a job that he was supremely unqualified for because almost all of the people Wilhelm appointed to high positions were in varying ways incompetent because Wilhelm him was incompetent. A fish starts to rot at the head, and I think the same thing could be said about Germany.

And even those German leaders that did have some brains like Admiral Tirpitz, the “evil genesis” of the Second Reich as Gordon A. Craig once called him were very good at tactics, and totally wrong about strategy. Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet concept all sounds good on paper, but for it to work two preconditions were needed, namely 1) that the British not notice that the High Seas Fleet was being built against them and 2) that there be sufficient tensions between Britain and other world powers, so the British would have to spread their fleet all round the world, thereby giving the High Seas Fleet concentrated in the North Sea the edge. But of course, London noticed that because building a vast fleet of battleships is something that is very hard to conceal, and as I already pointed on the Great War page, the High Seas Fleet was “short-legged”, and thus could was only operate in the North Sea. And anyhow, the High Seas Fleet was simply way too big for the navies of France and Russia (and in the case of the Russian Baltic Fleet which been sunk by the Japanese in 1905, thus removing any danger for Germany in the Baltic for several years). As an Admiralty report pointed out as early as 1902, any war with the Franco-Russian combination would be primarily a land war, and all these millions of marks going to the Navy could only weaken the German Army (which indeed turned out to the case). And second, it turned out that Britain could settle all of the principle differences with France, Russia, the United States, etc, thus allowing the Royal Navy to be concentrated at Scapa Flow. Once the naval race began, the superior size of the British ship-building industry guaranteed that this was a race that Germany could only lose. So in nutshell, all Tirptiz managed to do was gratuitously alienate Britain before 1914, and commit Germany to spending millions of marks for a white elephant of a fleet whose most notable contribution in WWI was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. This entire Risk Fleet idea was folly right from the get-go, and that the fact that Germans would commit themselves and continue with the naval race that they were clearly losing even as 1908 speaks volumes about this how inept Germany’s leaders were. Anybody with any common sense would had the foresight to end the naval race once it become clear that they were losing like around 1908 rather then continuing to pour millions of marks into it right up to 1914 (through at a reduced rate after 1912 owning to the insistence of the Army), or better yet, avoid the naval challenge altogether. Admiral Tirpitz was all very clever in getting his way, but his overall vision was grossly defective. This is just an aside, but the fact that the Germans were willing to make the naval challenge proves how little they really felt threatened by Russia/France before 1912-if that had been the case, the Germans would had accepted the British offer of an alliance in 1899 (which they turned down flat) instead of engaging in the naval race. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other examples to support the contention that Germany and even more so, Austria had really terrible leaders. So I think, we can tie in your point about the crisis of falling expectations with human agency by saying that confronted with the crisis of falling expectations, the leaders of Austria and Germany could think of no better way of resolution other then war. Had those countries had more intelligent leaders then what they did in fact actually possessed, I think they could had managed things much better without resorting to war.

Through I would agree with your assessment about the crisis of falling expectations, but I think it really applies to the Central Powers. Certainly with Britain, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Grey felt he could manage whatever crisis that might come up, and through a carrot and stick policy persuade the Germans to stop trampling on everybody’s toes in their quest for world power. Through one would never know so from reading the Great War page as it is currently written, it is the Germans who drove the British into the arms of the French and Russians. Initially, it was British policy to stand in “splendid isolation”, and if they were going to ally with anybody, it was the Reich. There were two British offers of an alliance, one in 1899 and another in 1902, both refused by the Germans, who believed that they would get so more by building their Risk Fleet. Given German antagonism as expressed by such things as the naval challenge, I really do think that they had any other choice, but to reach out to old enemies like the French, and even more so, the Russians to exercise some weight to restrain the Germans. But I don’t think that the idea of reaching an accommodation with the Germans was abandoned. Hence, Grey’s policy at one moment leaning towards France, and the next moment leaning towards Germany-now, there was more leaning towards France that was because the French were more inclined to be friendly and the Germans in the form of the naval race to be less friendly. Through at the same time, Grey in 1914 was offering colonial concessions to try to settle Anglo-German antagonism, and in the July Crisis, was criticized by his own officials, and by the French and the Russians for trying to too hard to work with the Germans. A Russian diplomat was quoted as saying in the July Crisis: “War is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hesitated”. Through a common criticism, I don’t it is warranted since Grey finally did warned the Germans his country would go to war if they went to war, it did not stop them from going ahead anyhow.

I think your right about the decline of the Ottoman Empire as causing a power vacuum in the Balkans. After all, a recurring feature of the so-called Eastern Question, which haunted the chancelleries of Europe, at least since the Crimean War had an on-going rivalry. I have heard the First World War described as the War of Ottoman Succession, through for the life of me, I can’t remember where I read that. That’s probably going a little too far, since there was more at stake then the question of whatever the Balkans were going to be in either the Austrian or Russian sphere of influence. But having said that much, the end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe as occasioned by the Balkan Wars did have the effect of greatly intensifying the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry for spheres of influence in that part of Europe. It is notable the idea of launching a war to destroy Serbia first started to be advocated seriously in Vienna in the fall of 1912-just after the First Balkan War. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that the Austrians would launched their war in 1912 with German support had it not been for the British warning to Berlin that London would to war with the Reich if they did so. It was the British warning that led to the infamous German War Council of December 1912. Leaving aside the long-term results of the War Council, the consensus that German Navy was not strong to fight the Royal Navy in 1912 led to Germany applying pressure on the Austrians to call off the war. But nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the idea of a war was on the minds of the Austrian General Staff, which proposed war against Serbia a good 24 times between January 1913-January 1914. The Balkan power vacuum was still unfilled, and this together with what one could only the Russian war hysteria caused by the Russian Great Military Programme which gripped the German elite from after 1912 all, but guaranteed a war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is only a secondary cause of the war; even if he survived, a war would still occurred.

I would agree that Vienna should get much of a stick then does the much maligned Treaty of Versailles. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, after 1918, the Dual Monarchy was a vanished state. So, there weren’t any contemporary political points to be scored against blaming Austria for the war. Second, as I mentioned elsewhere, after 1918, the Germans undertook a massive deception campaign to re-write history. If interested in the details of this, check Holger Herwig’s essay “Clio Deceived”, which is on pages 5-44 from International Security, Fall 1987. The purpose behind this campaign was to discredit Versailles by proving that Germany was not responsible for the war, which thereby helping to the wider German campaign to do away with Versailles, especially Part V of the treaty, which had disarmed Germany. Most people don’t know, but when they stated everybody was at fault, they are merely repeating German propaganda from the 1920s-30s meant to do away with Versailles. The very fact that the line is everybody was at fault shows its propaganda purposes all too well. One might expect that the Germans would be repeating their WWI line that they were the victims of Allied aggression, but I think the purposes of doing a sales job, the Germans realized that that line would not do. A line that blames everybody for the war was much likely to appeal to British and French public opinion then a line that blames Britain and France exclusively. And of course, if everybody is at fault for the war, then Versailles, which blamed Germany would be in need of revising. A very successful propaganda campaign, whose pernicious effects are still with us today. Finally, I would suggest that there is a peculiar tendency on the part of the Western mind to feel guilt. I’m not certain why this is so, but it is a matter of fact that people in the West are far more likely to feel agonizing guilt over real and/or imagined wrongs then people are in other civilizations. Just look at the entire slavery reparations debate (now I think that slavery is very wrong, and I would be all for paying reparations for former slaves, if they were any still alive). But Muslims were just as active as slavers in Africa as the Westerners were (and indeed for a much longer period of time), but I don’t see any guilt in the Muslim world over this, or any Muslims calling their governments to pay reparations for all the Africans they enslaved in former times. If the United States, United Kingdom, France, etc should pay reparations for slavery, then by the same logic, so should Saudi Arabia and Oman, but I don’t see anybody calling upon those states to make amends for their part in the slave trade. This is particularly egregious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which only got around to abolishing slavery in 1962, so they might very well be former slaves from that country still alive today. Or look at the way people in the United States feel guilty over dropping the atomic bombs on the Japanese vs. the complete lack of any remorse, indeed active denial of all the various Japanese war crimes in Japan such as the Rape of Nanking, Burma Death Railroad, etc, etc. I list endless other examples, but I think you get the point. So, I think that everybody feel guilty over Versailles (which truth be told saved the peace by keeping Germany disarmed, at least until 1935) while letting the Austrians off the hook for the war they helped to cause reflects the peculiar tendency on the part of Westerners to always blame themselves for all the world’s problems. Just a pet theory on my part for what it is worth. Thank you for the thoughtful comments-we use more users like you!--A.S. Brown (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Czechoslovakia
Did Weinberg really originate (or publicise) the view that Hitler wanted war with Czech'a in 1938? AJP Taylor banged this drum years ago.Keith-264 (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was a major theme of the second volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, plus his essays "Munich After 50 Years" in Foreign Affairs, “The Munich Crisis in Historical Perspective" from International History Review, and "Reflections on Munich after 60 Years" in The Munich Crisis 1938. Quoting from the latter essay, please see pages 3-5 & 7, where Weinberg states that up to September 29th of 1938, Hitler was serious with going ahead with an attack on Czechoslovakia on October 1st, and only changed his mind literally at the last minute about going to war in 1938. I do believe that Weinberg was one of the first historians to make this point. I must disagree with you about Taylor making the same claim, at least not in The Origins of the Second World War, where Taylor says on pages 191-192 & 207-208 of the 1976 edition published by Hamish Hamilton that Hitler was only bluffing in 1938. I don't believe that is right to put Weinberg and Taylor into the same camp given that the two volumes of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany were written with the aim in rebutting Taylor's account in The Origins of the Second World War. Give me some time, and will I check if Weinberg was the first historian to argue that Hitler was not bluffing in 1938, but was in fact deadly serious about going ahead with a war, and only changed his mind at the last minute.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble. I haven't read any Taylor for a while, evidently my memory has played me false. I have only recently begun to look at Weinberg who strikes me as a bit of a bruiser in the AJP mould. I was particularly pleased by his apparent anglophobia in the book of essays I got recently though :o). I was a little surprised at his apparent appropriation of the 'serious' view of 1938 but perhaps he's entitled.Keith-264 (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Your welcome. Sometimes, my memory plays me false as while. Yes, I would argee with about your description as Weinberg as a combative historian in the same mould as Taylor. As someone familiar with some of Weinberg’s writings, he can be awfully harsh about those historians who take a contrary line to his own. Through to be fair, at times historians like Andreas Hillgruber do deserve a whack or two for their German apologetics. I was little surprised that you mentioned Weinberg and Taylor as arguing the same case given that Weinberg in the first volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany had some rather dismissive and hostile things to say about Taylor. To be fair, Taylor in his review of the same book was not too positive about Weinberg, so perhaps the feeling was mutual. I would agree with you as while about Weinberg’s tendency to be rather curt to say the least about Britain’s performance in World War II, and a corresponding tendency to take the American side as self-evidently right in all of the various Anglo-American strategic disputes, but since I don’t have any sources for that other then Weinberg’s own books and essays, I am rather hesitant to put my gloss on Weinberg’s writings in the article based solely on my own reading of them. Smacks too much of original research, at least for something like that. To take an example, Weinberg always writes about British signet be based upon the work of Polish code-breakers at Bletchley Park, when in fact there were no Poles at Bletchley. To be fair the Poles, ULTRA was based on technology and techniques developed by the Poles in the 1930s, but the code-breakers at Bletchley were British. Thanks for the kind words.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History' is the one I've got. Having looked around I realise he's been around for a lot longer than I realised so he may well be the person who took the 1938 war intention seriously. I like foreigners who take swipes at Britain's war effort, particularly Germans who are sucking up to the Americans! His snide remarks about Tobruk and Singapore have been obsolete for about twenty five years though. I like your exposition of the cause of the Great War on that discussion page as well - succinct and erudite. Your opponents have given you a run for your money so I expect that was a creative pressure on you.Keith-264 (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please accept my most humble apologies for ignoring you for so long. I meant to go to you earlier, but between work, life, research and that hateful, tiresome debate on the Great War page, I’ll not able to get back to you.

Thank you so very much for the kind words about my humble contributions on the Great War page. I’m so glad that at least someone appreciates my work! It is an awful, terrible debate which I sincerely wished I had never gotten into with the German apologists, because all it does is take up my time to no good purpose and it never ends, but it is too late now. I’m a very shy, modest fellow both here and in real life, so I must confess I really not enjoying that debate, but on the other hand, these attempts to bully me into supporting something that I know is untrue is not something I will stand for. In for a penny, in for a pound. That page was outrageously pro-German (through I have cleaned up, at least for the moment). I can fight my own battles, but could you please tell me if you think that my reworked version is better. I know it is much longer and detailed, but given the contentious nature of the subject, I felt really didn’t I had any choice. My favourite part (which I since rephrased into something better) was when the Wilhelm’s rant about how Britain started the war is presented as his “startling observations” about the war began. Observation implies that somebody went, took a look at something and drew a conclusion. I.e. “He observed it was raining” or “She observed the stars”. So in other words, the word observation refers to some sort of objective reality and one’s relationship with it. So, by labelling the Kaiser’s Anglophobic rant as his “startling observations” implies that he is describing the objective reality of 1914, and not only that, but doing it exceptionally well. Both a POV edit and a very false one, to boot. By the same logic, one could speak of Hitler’s “startling observation” that the Jews started World War II. Just because somebody believes something does not make it true, and we should be not presenting people's personal beliefs about as fact like as "starting observations".

Back to Weinberg, yes, I would argee witht that there appears to be a somewhat anti-British bias in a lot of his work. I'm not certain where that comes from. Do somebody insult when he was a refugee in war-time Britain, and he's having an awfully long time getting over it? Through I might not fond of this aspect of his writings, I do regard as a great historian.

Moving the subject to the 1938. I done some checking up, and no, Weinberg, not the first to argue that thesis of Case Green as a serious military operation. I can’t you offhand who was the first (through it seems to be a claim first made by German historians in the 1960s) but one find can the same arguments in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich by Klaus Hildebrand (1970), the 1974 essay "England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion" by Andreas Hillgruber from the Journal of Contemporary History, How War Came (1989) by Donald Cameron Watt, the essay “Germany and the Munich Crisis: A Mutilated Victory?”  by Richard Overy from The Munich Crisis 1938 (1999), the essay “Foreign Policy and Preparation for War”  by Manfred Messerschmidt from Germany and the Second World W,ar (which is the official German history of World War II),  The Hitler of History  (1997) by John Lukacs, The Change in the European Balance of Power (1984) by Williamson Murray (through with a completely different and much more hostile interpretation of Chamberlain then Weinberg’s), The Third Reich in Power (2005) by Richard J. Evans, and the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (2000)

Personally, I might disagree with you about Case Green as a bluff, but however, one debate at a time! Just a couple of things to work through. At present, I might suggest if still have your copy handy of Hitler, Germany and World War II that you look at the section about Hitler’s secret speech to about 200 German journalists on November 10, 1938 about the need for some hate propaganda to work the German people up into a frenzy of war fever, which something that Hitler felt the German people lacked in September 1938, and that that the next time he risked war, he wanted to see some real blood lust in his people. At very least, I think that the sense that he didn't have his people fully behind him in September 1938 that led to abandon war at the last moment.

There are couple of other things to consider. The first, is until mid-September 1938, Hitler refused to lay claim to the Sudetenland area, and instead only demanded autonomy for the region. If Hitler was bluffing to get the Sudetenland, then he was defeating the purpose of his bluff by refusing to lay claim to the region. But if we accept the idea that Case Green was not a bluff, then his action makes more sense because the idea was to to show the world how reasonable and moderate he supposedly was in only asking for autonomy for the Sudetenland, which the Czechs refused to give. He upped his demand for handing the region over, when in early September 1938 Prague granted for the Sudetelander's demands for autonomy with the so-called "Fourth Plan" under intense Anglo-French pressure, which threantened to deprive Hitler of his pretext for war. Hence, he suddenly laid claim to it in mid-September. Now, of course, one could say he was still bluffing, but that begs the question why he escalated his demands at the Bad Godesberg summit. Under Chamberlain's plan presented at Bad Godesberg, the Sudetenland was going to be his within the next six months, and what more Chamberlain had agreed to the most egregious German demands about was going to be the criterion for deciding what district were to go to Germanly, namely a 50% ethnic German population (instead of 80% as first proposed) on the basis of the Austrian census of 1910 (instead of the Czech census of 1930). If Hitler wanted to bluff his way into the getting the Sudetenland, he could had his way right there and then at Bad Godesberg. There was really no need for him to throw a spanner into the works by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded no later then October 1st, 1938, and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia be satisfied also by October 1st. Given that Hitler could really care less about the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia in private, his insistence that he would go to war unless Poland and Hungary were happy by October 1st, 1938 seems like an excuse just to to war in 1938.

Then of course, there is the very intense debate between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938. I think it is noteworthy that Beck seemed to believe that Hitler was serious (indeed he resigned as Chief of the General Staff over the issue, and then was preparded to led a putsch over the issue), and that Hitler never once in his of his debates with Beck said anything about bluffing. Indeed, Hitler never anything about bluffing until Munich. True, a bluffer does not normally reveal he is bluffing until the game is over, but still, Hitler kept on taking about going to war in 1938. True, after Munich, Hitler did say he was bluffing. But I think we have to remember that Hitler was a bit like Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. Whatever Clouseau falls over, he always says he did that on purpose, and will never admit to making a mistake. Hitler was the same way. It was a big part of Hitler's image, that he was a man of providence, a figure chosen by destiny, fate and by some vaguely higher supernatural power to save Germany. Hitler cared greatly about image, which is why he often to extraordinary lengths to try to deny that he ever changed his mind or made a mistake. I think that the best example of this is Hitler's claim that he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. If Hitler really wanted to let the BEF escape, then why he send the Luffwaffe to bomb Dunkirk night and day? Because he didn't the BEF to escape, and that he only made up the escape story in July 1940 when it became clear that Britain would not surrender, at which point his halt order of May 1940 before Dunkirk was starting to look like a real blunder.

Turning back to Munich, I think that it is noteworthy after Munich, how much he talked in private about how Chamberlain had "cheated" him out of a war at Munich. As late as Feburary 21, 1945 Hitler was still going on in private about how if Chamberlain had not "cheated" out a war at Munich, then he would not be in his present predicament (i.e. losing the war). Now, that claim is nonsense, but I think it reflects Hitler's real bitterness that he didn't have his war in 1938 as he had planned. One might also consider that one of Hitler's big post-Munich initiatives was Plan Z of January 1939, which called for building a colossal Kriegsmarine capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944-the first and only time that the Kriegsmarine was given first priority on economic resources during the Third Reich 's entire 12 years. At very least, I think that the Z Plan should be understood as part of Hitler's post-Munich resolve that because Britain was not going to step aside from Europe, that he he needed to destroy Britain. This is my personal theory, but I think we connect the dots, the fact that Hitler regarded Britain as his real enemy in 1939 as reflected in things like the Z Plan helps to explain the pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.

One of these days, when I get some time, I’m going go and rework the Munich Conference page. At present, that page could use some drastic reworking-there is no mention of the intense debates between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938, the attitudes of the Dominions, Japan, Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union and the other Central European states needs some expanding; the section dealing with the problems of the French economy on French decision-making needs  particular work, there at present no mention of any of the debates within the French Cabinet. When I am done, I’ll invite you to take a look, and suggest any improvements that are in order. I think that you having probably gotten a foretaste of the sort of arguements that I will be making. Anyhow, through I don't much like debates, but I am prepared to take and consider honest criticism (as opposed to the sort that I'm getting on the Great War page!) Through I must admit I think I your more much reasonable and saner person then my German apologist opponents on the Great War page. Thanks for making my day!:)--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Mr Brown, thank you for taking so much trouble.
 * I wonder if I gave the impression that I thought Hitler's attitude to the Sudentenland was a bluff when I meant to imply that the 'bluff thesis' was the other way of looking at it (bearing in mind that as I had remembered it, AJP was the one who thought it wasn't a bluff). My view at the moment is mainly determined by what I read in Tooze about the economic pressures Germany was under at the time. This favours the idea that Chamberlain thwarted Hitler of his small war in 1938 (Which it appears I erroneously gave to AJP). Reading your comments further it also came to mind that it was AJP (as I remember it) who referred to Hitler's blaming of Chamberlain and Franco as the only people who had bested him - AJP's defence of appeasement is at least implicitly favourable to Chamberlain and Baldwin.

Tooze sees the Z plan as a recognition that the arms race Hitler set off had spread to the USA and that one way or another the USA would support his enemies so Germany needed to prepare for a great air-sea war in the west once the resources of the east had been captured (I think he says that there wasn't enough steel making capacity in Europe to fulfull Plan Z and the other arms programmes).

As for the origins of WWI, I'm ploughing through Stevenson 'Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904-1914' which is full of useful stuff but is as readable as a party manifesto. I haven't made my mind up (Will I ever?) but I find that the view that Austria-Hungary wanted war with Serbia in 1914 (the generals had wanted to settle their hash for a long time and Serbian expansion after the Ottomans were routed made this more acceptable to the diplomats and politicians) and that German support reduced Austrian fears of Russia (recovering strongly from the defeat in the Far East from its lowest point in 1908-1909) thus making a great European war possible suits me. On top of this I think there was a general European crisis of falling expectations, which had gone on for some considerable time, which perhaps the apologists make more of than they should and which possibly tended to make the greater powers increasingly the hostage of parochial events (like Archie Duke getting shot)and the lesser powers' reactions to them. Perhaps the better question is to ask 'why the war didn't begin earlier'? Stephenson is making a good argument that Agadir 1911 is a watershed in the alignment of military, political-diplomatic and economic personnel and structures in favour of war (or of at least war readiness) when such a thing hadn't been the case earlier - possibly a development that had been on the cards since the Russian-French alliance of the 1890's and only delayed by Russia's defeat in Manchuria. Events in the Balkans do seem to have had a profound effect - the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan War(s) and the revolution; similar events in China and Mexico perhaps being a dire warning to Austria-Hungary of the fate of a country which dropped below the level of a great power (albeit as an also-ran).Keith-264 (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank very much for the kind words and thoughtful remarks.

I have not read Tooze, so I am not familar with his arguements. Through I unfortunately inherited a copy of his book through the death of my best friend, my father last year (he was half-way through The Wages of Destruction at the time of his death), so I suppose one day will try to forget my father and read it. Your right about the Z Plan as totally economically unrealistic, indeed aspects of it were economic fantasy and did not stand a chance of being realized. Plus, it was unrealistic even on naval grounds because some of the battleships envisioned in the plan would have been too bad to fit into any dock anywhere in the world. It's only importance is how it was sign of Hitler's foreign policy objectives were going into 1939, as you have quite rightly stated. There is a lot of debate about whatever the Z Plan was a just an anti-British move or both an anti-British and anti-American move. Personally, I think that the immediate impetus for the Z Plan was anti-British (coming as it shortly after Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to start building a stragetic bomber force), but that in long term, such a giantic fleet that Hitler wanted was probably meant to fight both the British and the Americans. At least as an immediate impetus, I think that Chamberlain's warning to Hitler that if you do not accept the terms offered at Bad Godesberg (which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands about the Sudentenland, and then some), then we will declare war if you attack Czechoslovakia, which is what led Hitler at the last minute to abandon his war is probably what led to the anti-Western orienation in his foreign policy. I remember Father telling me based on his reading of Tooze that the Anglo-American free trade agreement of November 1938 was misunderstood in Germany as marking the beginning of an Anglo-American bloc designed to block German ambitions (which in a way it was, but not in the way the Germans thought about it-secret military clauses and all that). This is my own personal theory, but I think what caused the abandoment of Case Green was the British warning delivered by Sir Horace Wilson on September 28, 1938 that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honor the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty of 1924, and then Britain would probably come in. The key issue was Germany's oil problem. 80% of German oil imports in the 1930s came from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, and all of which would be cut off by a British blockade. And since the synethic oil program, in which Germans produced eratsz oil from coal was still way beyond schedule in 1938 (indeed did not come on line until 1942-two years late), Romania not in the German sphere of influence in 1938, and the Soviet Union unwilling to supply that year, that Germany had enough oil for a small war with Czechoslovakia, but not enough to face Britain and France, hence the climb-down from war. The Germans already a foretaste of what to expect when in September 1938, the British stopped several Hamburg-bound tankers for a couple of days in British ports for spurious reasons, something that caused immediate economic pain. I think that the importance of the oil issue can be seen that with the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Germans got access to Soviet oil, and hence were immune to a British blockade (at least with oil). At very least, I think this explains what Joachim von Ribbentrop meant when he told Hitler that now that we have the Pact with the Soviets, the British will never go to war for Poland-i.e. Germany was now immune to a blockade.

Good luck with Stevenson! I feel your hypothesis about Austria seeking a war with Serbia, no matter sounds acceptable to me. After all, this was the gang that activated War Plan B for a war against Serbia, and that only very belateley discovered that they would have to activated War Plan R for a war against Russia, which led to the mother of a logistical traffic-jams as the Army Group that was supposed to go to Bosnia instead had to be turned around to go to Galicia. That incidentally is the main cause of the great Austrian defeats of September 1914 in Galicia, which cost the Dual Monarchy 50% of its pre-August standing army-the real end of Austria-Hungary as a great power, which thereafter become a German dependency for the rest of the war. Yes, that does seem to be something of that in the air before 1914, namely an obsession with national decay and decline, perhaps reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism. Eugen Weber, through he was only writing about France, claimed that sports and health obsession of the fin-de-siecle era was due to the widespread belief that healthy nations were nations that won wars, and unhealthy nations lost wars. A similar thing happened in Britain with the Boar War where a great many people blamed the early British defeats on the fact that so many British soldiers were the products of malnutrition, which was not the cause, but who can account for public opinion? And this Social Darwnist understanding of the world was much prevelent in the German-speaking world then in the West. As far as I am aware, Social Darwnism did not have much influence in either Russia or Serbia-perhaps the backward state of those countries meant that science and pseudo-science did not enjoy the same prestige as in the Western world. At very least, I think that your right in the case of Austria-Hungary that a great many of the elite there had a morbid fear of national decay (probably made worse that Austria had lost almost every war it had fought since 1815) together with an exaggerated fear of Serbia. Yes, Serbia had doubted in size after the Balkan Wars, and yes, there was far too much nationalist fire-breathing talk from too far many Serb politicans, but the idea that a backward Balkan state that was on the verge of bankrupcty and had taken very heavy causalities during the Balkan Wars was going to bring down Austria-Hungary in the near-future seems to me to be more the product of hysteria in the Austrian elite then a rational assessement of the situation. Through I would agree with you that after the Second Moroccan Crisis, there was a climate of opinion that was more conductive to war, I don't think that one should underrate human agency. There is a lot that is wrong with Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, but he is right about that. After all, there were signs that France was falling behind in the arms race, and that at least a body of French opinion was starting to favor reaching an understanding with Germany, so the claims made by the Germans and their apologists about a obsessive, venegful France being beat on a war of revenge should be taken with a grain of salt. There were options other then war, but unfortunately for the world, those options were not taken.

Thank you for the kind words and interesting conversation!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings again, condolences on your bereavement. I can understand your reluctance to look at Tooze - I have similar feelings about 'Kes' (Barry Hines). Unfeasible withal, a Z-Plan aimed at England would also be implicitly anti-American by existing. US access to Europe is after all something they've gone to war over twice. Tooze takes much of his strategic-political analysis from DRZW which sees Hitler's Russian venture as a response to the need to secure resources before UK-US rearmament matured - the foodstuffs, raw materials and fuel usurped from the USSR would provide the economic infrastructure Germany lacked, bearing in mind that the economic resources of western Europe were near useless without non-European imports barred by Britain's refusal to fold. This doesn't preclude the ideological motives but does explain the timing of Barbarossa. It is instructive that before General Thomas toed Hitler's line he didn't say that Ukraine would get Germany out of trouble, more that if any region could it was Ukraine. Even with the Hongerplan, the transport needed to get Russian commodities to Germany was lacking. Apparently the same was true of oil imports from Rumania - the rail and river capacity needed investment before substantial increases of oil could be delivered to Germany (once the contracts that Britain used to by Rumania's surplus ran out). As usual with nazi wheezes making oil from coal only transferred the problem from one part of the economy to another - synthetic refineries needed huge anounts of steel to build, huge amounts of coal to refine and huge amounts of rail traffic to carry it.

I'm not as seized by human agency as you it seems; a crisis of falling expectations seems to me to lie less in mentalities susceptible to Social Darwinism as a rival ideology to socialism/communism/anarchism* and more in a growing (political) structural impasse as the effects of demographic, economic and technological growth did in Europe something akin to what happened in Africa (more an explosion than an implosion though in Europe, over 40 rather than 400 years) which set off the Scramble. Clearly as interbloc rivalry worsened, the reason for forming them surfaced in an acute form - the gradual collapse of the European political structure of the Congress of Vienna as modified in 1871; note for example that the loss of the Ottoman counterweight in the Balkans seriously upset the military balance between Serbia and the Empire, when from our perspective it seems like a piddling thing. Curiously Vienna doesn't get half as much stick as the Treay of Versailles. . . . I think for example that Britain edged towards Russia and France to exert its independence the better from the inside, having tried unilateral negotiations with Germany - note French acceptance that the British connexion precluded unilateral action in Belgium, despite the strategic sacrifice it entailed, something the Germans could never have accepted. As I recall the Austro-Hungarians were damned if they did, damned if they didn't over Galicia - the transport infrastructure couldn't cope with B-Staffel whatever they tried.


 * My favourite.

Thanks for comparing notes rather than ranting - there should be more of it on Wiki!


 * Thank you for the thoughtful remarks and kind words. Through I miss my father, and would do anything to get those awful memories of his corpse being carried away out of my mind, one just has to be tough about these things and carry out. Sorry for not getting back sooner; usually when someone writes something intelligent around here, it takes more time for me to pen a response, and between work and life, I’m being rather hard pressed to find the time.

Moving to on to more happier subjects, finally, a user who appreciates logistics and economics! You could use a lot more people like you, Keith since right now, we have far too pages written by economic illiterates and/or armchair generals. Of course, I would not take an economic determinist approach with economics deciding anything, but I do think that the economic situation does in fact limit a statesmen’s (and I usually that term very broadly here) options. After all, no money means just that, and I do wish that we have more users who pay attention to the economic constraints imposed on various politicians. The same goes with logistics. That’s makes sense with Plan R being doomed anyhow by an inadequate rail network, through I think that that the task of attempting to turn around the B-Staffel army group from the Balkans to Galicia could not have helped the (mis)fortunes of the Austrian Army. Until I got dragged into that debate on the Great Power page back in February, the last time I did any serious reading on the subject was almost 9 years ago, so I am bit rusty. I operating at somewhat of a disadvantage because of that, through I am trying to get caught up, through I am somewhat overjoyed at reading David Fromkin’s 2004 book Europe Last Summer because his version of how the war started is remarkably close to the one I articulated in an essay written in November 2000. There’s an old saying that great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, and I hope that the fact I independently worked out a similar analysis to Fromkin four years before he published his book is a case of the former, not the latter!

In order to reduce the amount of ranting, which I agree that we have far too much of at present, I think would really like to bring in a licensing system. Right now, we have too many pages written by people who either lacked the necessary knowledge for the subject, have some sort of axe to grind or are just plain insane. Right now, we have people contributing here who would never in a million years ever be published by a reputable publisher, and in some cases, not even a disreputable publisher. To take an example, there was (and still is in some of the section) on the Great War page, a set of statements that subtly implied that was all a case of Allied aggression against the Central Powers such as the remark about the Kaiser’s “startling observations” about how Britain engineered the war. This is all somebody’s lunatic fringe conspiracy theory being dressed up as history. What really bothers me is at the risk of sounding egoistic is why didn’t anybody spot these things? I have taken on the thankless task of purging the page of these German apologetics, but where was everybody’s else? There was that was really wrong with that page such as its statement that Austria actually expected their “unacceptable” (their words, not mine) ultimatum to be accepted by the Serbs. True, the Serbs were not being straight forward in their reply, giving the false impression that they accepted far more in the ultimatum then was actually the case, but my view of the subject is this: If you give a ultimatum that is meant to be rejected, then you really don’t have anything to complain about when your ultimatum is in fact rejected. What we really need is that before somebody is allowed to contribute, they should be subjected to tests to see if they possess the requisite knowledge to write about the subject, don’t any axes to grind and are sane. This goes against the principle of allowing this place being open to all, but I think it solve not all, but at least, a great deal of the of the current problems if such a system were brought in.

It also all seems I’m rather rusty on the origins of the Second World War. Thanks for bringing up to speed up on that subject. That’s interesting that Romanian oil owing to transport problems was not as helpful to the German war effort as I had been led to believe, through that is helpful to hear that the British ‘economic offensive” in the Balkans was damaging to the Reich. I mentioned the “economic offensive” on the Neville Chamberlain page, but since Weinberg does not go into great detail about the subject, there was not much I could add. I know that Joachim von Ribbentrop called an angry press conference to complain about British “economic encirclement” of Germany in June 1939, but given that Ribbentrop was a colossal idiot and an extreme Anglophobe (after about 1937), I was not certain how much of this was due to genuine economic pain, and how much was to feigned outrage over the foreign policy of the country that Ribbentrop loved to hate. Through I am not up to the details of the German synthetic oil program, that’s makes sense that the way that resources allocated to it weakened other projects. The whole German war effort seems to me to be nothing more then a vast, muddled inefficient ball of confusion and chaos. Having said that much, projects like the V weapons and jet fighters were a complete waste of resources on weapons that were not war-winning. This is Richard Overy, and I am writing from memory here, so I may be wrong about the precise numbers, but I remember reading that for the costs of building one V-1, the Germans could have built about 1, 000 FW 190 fighters. Arguably, a 1, 000 FW 190s would have given the Germans a much bigger bang for their buck, so to speak then one V-1.

I would agree with the ultimate anti-American implications of the Z Plan. After all, in his Zwites Buch of 1928, Hitler had spoken of a great war for the mastery of the world with an Anglo-German combination taking on the United States, through admittly Hitler projects this war to sometime in the 1980s. However, there are great signs that by the late 1930s that what Hitler had seen as the work of his successors he himself wanted to do. In his diary, Goebbels speaks of Hitler telling him that he wanted to “see the Great Germanic Reich in his own lifetime”. So, I think that one say that the Z Plan was in part a response to Hitler’s realization that his fanciful project for an Anglo-German alliance was folly, and that he would have to fight Britain, either by herself or in alliance with the United States. This is something that Weinberg is good at pointing out that Hitler held the Soviet Union in complete contempt. Operation Barbarossa was only supposed to be a six-month affair, and then the Soviet Union was going to be finished. One could see how seriously Hitler was in his assessment of the Soviet Union in that on June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa began, he cut the German Army’s allocations of raw materials for 1942 in order to provide for a bigger Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for 1942. There’s a great deal of historical debate about whatever Barbarossa should be regarded as an anti-Soviet move, or as in the case of John Lukacs, an anti-British move. The truth seems to be that Barbarossa was both, and I argue that based on what you told me, that it should be regarded as anti-American move as while.

I’m sorry, I’m afraid I misunderstood you about human agency. Through, he doesn’t use the same terminology as you do about falling expectations, David Fromkin makes the same point in Europe’s Last Summer where he writes about the extremely pessimistic evaluation of the international situation held by the decision-makers in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the last years before the war, and through this is being vigorously contested right on the origins of the Great War page right now, there was a sense that history was against them in all the ways you already mentioned (diplomatic, military, economic, etc), and that only a war could reversal the trend. Actually, Fromkin mentions there were even some contemporaries who felt that way, and talks about the peace mission of Colonel House, President Wilson’s chief political fixer to Europe in 1914. What’s interesting about Colonel House’s mission is not he what he accomplished (which was nothing), but rather the date: May 1914. It’s interesting that even an American isolationist (as Wilson was in 1914) could sense there was something wrong with the fundamental political make-up of Europe, and send out his right-hand man to try stop what Wilson and company feared might be the impeding catastrophe.

A synthesis I think that ties in the falling expectations and human agency might be noting just incredibly mediocre the leadership of Germany, and even more Austria was. You just look at the Austro-German leadership of 1914, and one is stuck by just how second-rate all these men were. I already mentioned at the Great War page about how Wilhelm had almost certainly suffered brain damage owing to his botched birth, which would go a long way to explaining his erratic behaviour, which he displayed right from his earliest days. It was the world’s misfortune that Wilhelm inherited a job that he was supremely unqualified for because almost all of the people Wilhelm appointed to high positions were in varying ways incompetent because Wilhelm him was incompetent. A fish starts to rot at the head, and I think the same thing could be said about Germany.

And even those German leaders that did have some brains like Admiral Tirpitz, the “evil genesis” of the Second Reich as Gordon A. Craig once called him were very good at tactics, and totally wrong about strategy. Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet concept all sounds good on paper, but for it to work two preconditions were needed, namely 1) that the British not notice that the High Seas Fleet was being built against them and 2) that there be sufficient tensions between Britain and other world powers, so the British would have to spread their fleet all round the world, thereby giving the High Seas Fleet concentrated in the North Sea the edge. But of course, London noticed that because building a vast fleet of battleships is something that is very hard to conceal, and as I already pointed on the Great War page, the High Seas Fleet was “short-legged”, and thus could was only operate in the North Sea. And anyhow, the High Seas Fleet was simply way too big for the navies of France and Russia (and in the case of the Russian Baltic Fleet which been sunk by the Japanese in 1905, thus removing any danger for Germany in the Baltic for several years). As an Admiralty report pointed out as early as 1902, any war with the Franco-Russian combination would be primarily a land war, and all these millions of marks going to the Navy could only weaken the German Army (which indeed turned out to the case). And second, it turned out that Britain could settle all of the principle differences with France, Russia, the United States, etc, thus allowing the Royal Navy to be concentrated at Scapa Flow. Once the naval race began, the superior size of the British ship-building industry guaranteed that this was a race that Germany could only lose. So in nutshell, all Tirptiz managed to do was gratuitously alienate Britain before 1914, and commit Germany to spending millions of marks for a white elephant of a fleet whose most notable contribution in WWI was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. This entire Risk Fleet idea was folly right from the get-go, and that the fact that Germans would commit themselves and continue with the naval race that they were clearly losing even as 1908 speaks volumes about this how inept Germany’s leaders were. Anybody with any common sense would had the foresight to end the naval race once it become clear that they were losing like around 1908 rather then continuing to pour millions of marks into it right up to 1914 (through at a reduced rate after 1912 owning to the insistence of the Army), or better yet, avoid the naval challenge altogether. Admiral Tirpitz was all very clever in getting his way, but his overall vision was grossly defective. This is just an aside, but the fact that the Germans were willing to make the naval challenge proves how little they really felt threatened by Russia/France before 1912-if that had been the case, the Germans would had accepted the British offer of an alliance in 1899 (which they turned down flat) instead of engaging in the naval race. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other examples to support the contention that Germany and even more so, Austria had really terrible leaders. So I think, we can tie in your point about the crisis of falling expectations with human agency by saying that confronted with the crisis of falling expectations, the leaders of Austria and Germany could think of no better way of resolution other then war. Had those countries had more intelligent leaders then what they did in fact actually possessed, I think they could had managed things much better without resorting to war.

Through I would agree with your assessment about the crisis of falling expectations, but I think it really applies to the Central Powers. Certainly with Britain, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Grey felt he could manage whatever crisis that might come up, and through a carrot and stick policy persuade the Germans to stop trampling on everybody’s toes in their quest for world power. Through one would never know so from reading the Great War page as it is currently written, it is the Germans who drove the British into the arms of the French and Russians. Initially, it was British policy to stand in “splendid isolation”, and if they were going to ally with anybody, it was the Reich. There were two British offers of an alliance, one in 1899 and another in 1902, both refused by the Germans, who believed that they would get so more by building their Risk Fleet. Given German antagonism as expressed by such things as the naval challenge, I really do think that they had any other choice, but to reach out to old enemies like the French, and even more so, the Russians to exercise some weight to restrain the Germans. But I don’t think that the idea of reaching an accommodation with the Germans was abandoned. Hence, Grey’s policy at one moment leaning towards France, and the next moment leaning towards Germany-now, there was more leaning towards France that was because the French were more inclined to be friendly and the Germans in the form of the naval race to be less friendly. Through at the same time, Grey in 1914 was offering colonial concessions to try to settle Anglo-German antagonism, and in the July Crisis, was criticized by his own officials, and by the French and the Russians for trying to too hard to work with the Germans. A Russian diplomat was quoted as saying in the July Crisis: “War is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hesitated”. Through a common criticism, I don’t it is warranted since Grey finally did warned the Germans his country would go to war if they went to war, it did not stop them from going ahead anyhow.

I think your right about the decline of the Ottoman Empire as causing a power vacuum in the Balkans. After all, a recurring feature of the so-called Eastern Question, which haunted the chancelleries of Europe, at least since the Crimean War had an on-going rivalry. I have heard the First World War described as the War of Ottoman Succession, through for the life of me, I can’t remember where I read that. That’s probably going a little too far, since there was more at stake then the question of whatever the Balkans were going to be in either the Austrian or Russian sphere of influence. But having said that much, the end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe as occasioned by the Balkan Wars did have the effect of greatly intensifying the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry for spheres of influence in that part of Europe. It is notable the idea of launching a war to destroy Serbia first started to be advocated seriously in Vienna in the fall of 1912-just after the First Balkan War. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that the Austrians would launched their war in 1912 with German support had it not been for the British warning to Berlin that London would to war with the Reich if they did so. It was the British warning that led to the infamous German War Council of December 1912. Leaving aside the long-term results of the War Council, the consensus that German Navy was not strong to fight the Royal Navy in 1912 led to Germany applying pressure on the Austrians to call off the war. But nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the idea of a war was on the minds of the Austrian General Staff, which proposed war against Serbia a good 24 times between January 1913-January 1914. The Balkan power vacuum was still unfilled, and this together with what one could only the Russian war hysteria caused by the Russian Great Military Programme which gripped the German elite from after 1912 all, but guaranteed a war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is only a secondary cause of the war; even if he survived, a war would still occurred.

I would agree that Vienna should get much of a stick then does the much maligned Treaty of Versailles. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, after 1918, the Dual Monarchy was a vanished state. So, there weren’t any contemporary political points to be scored against blaming Austria for the war. Second, as I mentioned elsewhere, after 1918, the Germans undertook a massive deception campaign to re-write history. If interested in the details of this, check Holger Herwig’s essay “Clio Deceived”, which is on pages 5-44 from International Security, Fall 1987. The purpose behind this campaign was to discredit Versailles by proving that Germany was not responsible for the war, which thereby helping to the wider German campaign to do away with Versailles, especially Part V of the treaty, which had disarmed Germany. Most people don’t know, but when they stated everybody was at fault, they are merely repeating German propaganda from the 1920s-30s meant to do away with Versailles. The very fact that the line is everybody was at fault shows its propaganda purposes all too well. One might expect that the Germans would be repeating their WWI line that they were the victims of Allied aggression, but I think the purposes of doing a sales job, the Germans realized that that line would not do. A line that blames everybody for the war was much likely to appeal to British and French public opinion then a line that blames Britain and France exclusively. And of course, if everybody is at fault for the war, then Versailles, which blamed Germany would be in need of revising. A very successful propaganda campaign, whose pernicious effects are still with us today. Finally, I would suggest that there is a peculiar tendency on the part of the Western mind to feel guilt. I’m not certain why this is so, but it is a matter of fact that people in the West are far more likely to feel agonizing guilt over real and/or imagined wrongs then people are in other civilizations. Just look at the entire slavery reparations debate (now I think that slavery is very wrong, and I would be all for paying reparations for former slaves, if they were any still alive). But Muslims were just as active as slavers in Africa as the Westerners were (and indeed for a much longer period of time), but I don’t see any guilt in the Muslim world over this, or any Muslims calling their governments to pay reparations for all the Africans they enslaved in former times. If the United States, United Kingdom, France, etc should pay reparations for slavery, then by the same logic, so should Saudi Arabia and Oman, but I don’t see anybody calling upon those states to make amends for their part in the slave trade. This is particularly egregious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which only got around to abolishing slavery in 1962, so they might very well be former slaves from that country still alive today. Or look at the way people in the United States feel guilty over dropping the atomic bombs on the Japanese vs. the complete lack of any remorse, indeed active denial of all the various Japanese war crimes in Japan such as the Rape of Nanking, Burma Death Railroad, etc, etc. I list endless other examples, but I think you get the point. So, I think that everybody feel guilty over Versailles (which truth be told saved the peace by keeping Germany disarmed, at least until 1935) while letting the Austrians off the hook for the war they helped to cause reflects the peculiar tendency on the part of Westerners to always blame themselves for all the world’s problems. Just a pet theory on my part for what it is worth. Thank you for the thoughtful comments-we use more users like you!--A.S. Brown (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I sympathise with your frustration but I doubt that Wiki would agree. I think that there's a practical benefit in the huge amounts of dross that gets onto Wiki, which is that when you scrape it off, the people who get most annoyed are often the ones who have most to gain by going to work to refute the alterations. Of course there are the frauds but they are everywhere - the fools and ignoramuses get a chance to develop and I have some hope that Wiki is good at that. It can drive you potty at times though! I have a hypothesis that people who get interested in military history start with derring-do at the front then get interested in management decisions, 'Hitler should have finished off Britain before starting Barbarossa' etc. It's only when we get to the point of wondering why people did the obviously wrong thing when it was obviously wrong that any idea of constraint emerges. Some of that is related to experience too; when we leave school or university the sheer difficulty of getting anything done is harder to understand than it is twenty years later. Some people on Wiki are at the stage of counting the bullets fired from a six-gun and others are musing about the myth of the cowboy. It's bound to be frustrating, especially when the wrongheaded merge with the fraudulent. I like your 'bonkers' idea about Wilhelm, it explains a lot. The trouble with it for me is that although it's easy to see that the structure of the higher management of the German Empire required a competent Emperor to function (not unlike Hitler's system of rule) I thing that that's how all hierarchical systems operate, more a means to an end than ends in themselves - hence politics and politicians being universally loathed. Barbarossa - 'anti' everyone in fact. From Hitler's point of view it was an elegant answer to several questions - how to end the war with Britain, rob the USSR of its commodities, break free of the economic constraints created by both enemies' existence so as to get ready for an inevitable showdown with the USA and implement the ideological aims of the nazi movement. I like 'Luxury Fleet' better! Of course this only holds because Germany lost the war. The strategic logic of the fleet looks barmy to us because of this. I wonder if the WWI fleet acted as a distraction for a large portion of British resources, like the Tirpitz did in the Big Two? To achieve this it had to be big enough to be a threat but not necessarily big enough to stand a chance in a fleet action. Whether this was the real intent once war began or not I don't know but the fleet certainly became a significant influence on the economy before the war. "War is inevitable and by the fault of England...." Equally, had Britain been more belligerent the Russians and French may have been less conciliatory. One thing that's obvious from reading Stephenson is that the international scene was becoming less and less stable, particularly after 1909 and that as each cisis abated, the prospect of peaceful resolution of the next one diminished. I fear that by mid-1914 war increasingly began to look like the continuation of peace by other means. Gavrilo Princip in this view is analogous to Marinus van der Lubbe - a godsend. Despite her dreadful prose style I found Annika Mombauer's book on the historiography of the origin of the war 'The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus' rather interesting. [I'm going to have to stop now as the computer is playng up. I'll be back tomorrow.]Keith-264 (talk) 21:34, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Czechoslovakia
Did Weinberg really originate (or publicise) the view that Hitler wanted war with Czech'a in 1938? AJP Taylor banged this drum years ago.Keith-264 (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was a major theme of the second volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, plus his essays "Munich After 50 Years" in Foreign Affairs, “The Munich Crisis in Historical Perspective" from International History Review, and "Reflections on Munich after 60 Years" in The Munich Crisis 1938. Quoting from the latter essay, please see pages 3-5 & 7, where Weinberg states that up to September 29th of 1938, Hitler was serious with going ahead with an attack on Czechoslovakia on October 1st, and only changed his mind literally at the last minute about going to war in 1938. I do believe that Weinberg was one of the first historians to make this point. I must disagree with you about Taylor making the same claim, at least not in The Origins of the Second World War, where Taylor says on pages 191-192 & 207-208 of the 1976 edition published by Hamish Hamilton that Hitler was only bluffing in 1938. I don't believe that is right to put Weinberg and Taylor into the same camp given that the two volumes of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany were written with the aim in rebutting Taylor's account in The Origins of the Second World War. Give me some time, and will I check if Weinberg was the first historian to argue that Hitler was not bluffing in 1938, but was in fact deadly serious about going ahead with a war, and only changed his mind at the last minute.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble. I haven't read any Taylor for a while, evidently my memory has played me false. I have only recently begun to look at Weinberg who strikes me as a bit of a bruiser in the AJP mould. I was particularly pleased by his apparent anglophobia in the book of essays I got recently though :o). I was a little surprised at his apparent appropriation of the 'serious' view of 1938 but perhaps he's entitled.Keith-264 (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Your welcome. Sometimes, my memory plays me false as while. Yes, I would argee with about your description as Weinberg as a combative historian in the same mould as Taylor. As someone familiar with some of Weinberg’s writings, he can be awfully harsh about those historians who take a contrary line to his own. Through to be fair, at times historians like Andreas Hillgruber do deserve a whack or two for their German apologetics. I was little surprised that you mentioned Weinberg and Taylor as arguing the same case given that Weinberg in the first volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany had some rather dismissive and hostile things to say about Taylor. To be fair, Taylor in his review of the same book was not too positive about Weinberg, so perhaps the feeling was mutual. I would agree with you as while about Weinberg’s tendency to be rather curt to say the least about Britain’s performance in World War II, and a corresponding tendency to take the American side as self-evidently right in all of the various Anglo-American strategic disputes, but since I don’t have any sources for that other then Weinberg’s own books and essays, I am rather hesitant to put my gloss on Weinberg’s writings in the article based solely on my own reading of them. Smacks too much of original research, at least for something like that. To take an example, Weinberg always writes about British signet be based upon the work of Polish code-breakers at Bletchley Park, when in fact there were no Poles at Bletchley. To be fair the Poles, ULTRA was based on technology and techniques developed by the Poles in the 1930s, but the code-breakers at Bletchley were British. Thanks for the kind words.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History' is the one I've got. Having looked around I realise he's been around for a lot longer than I realised so he may well be the person who took the 1938 war intention seriously. I like foreigners who take swipes at Britain's war effort, particularly Germans who are sucking up to the Americans! His snide remarks about Tobruk and Singapore have been obsolete for about twenty five years though. I like your exposition of the cause of the Great War on that discussion page as well - succinct and erudite. Your opponents have given you a run for your money so I expect that was a creative pressure on you.Keith-264 (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please accept my most humble apologies for ignoring you for so long. I meant to go to you earlier, but between work, life, research and that hateful, tiresome debate on the Great War page, I’ll not able to get back to you.

Thank you so very much for the kind words about my humble contributions on the Great War page. I’m so glad that at least someone appreciates my work! It is an awful, terrible debate which I sincerely wished I had never gotten into with the German apologists, because all it does is take up my time to no good purpose and it never ends, but it is too late now. I’m a very shy, modest fellow both here and in real life, so I must confess I really not enjoying that debate, but on the other hand, these attempts to bully me into supporting something that I know is untrue is not something I will stand for. In for a penny, in for a pound. That page was outrageously pro-German (through I have cleaned up, at least for the moment). I can fight my own battles, but could you please tell me if you think that my reworked version is better. I know it is much longer and detailed, but given the contentious nature of the subject, I felt really didn’t I had any choice. My favourite part (which I since rephrased into something better) was when the Wilhelm’s rant about how Britain started the war is presented as his “startling observations” about the war began. Observation implies that somebody went, took a look at something and drew a conclusion. I.e. “He observed it was raining” or “She observed the stars”. So in other words, the word observation refers to some sort of objective reality and one’s relationship with it. So, by labelling the Kaiser’s Anglophobic rant as his “startling observations” implies that he is describing the objective reality of 1914, and not only that, but doing it exceptionally well. Both a POV edit and a very false one, to boot. By the same logic, one could speak of Hitler’s “startling observation” that the Jews started World War II. Just because somebody believes something does not make it true, and we should be not presenting people's personal beliefs about as fact like as "starting observations".

Back to Weinberg, yes, I would argee witht that there appears to be a somewhat anti-British bias in a lot of his work. I'm not certain where that comes from. Do somebody insult when he was a refugee in war-time Britain, and he's having an awfully long time getting over it? Through I might not fond of this aspect of his writings, I do regard as a great historian.

Moving the subject to the 1938. I done some checking up, and no, Weinberg, not the first to argue that thesis of Case Green as a serious military operation. I can’t you offhand who was the first (through it seems to be a claim first made by German historians in the 1960s) but one find can the same arguments in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich by Klaus Hildebrand (1970), the 1974 essay "England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion" by Andreas Hillgruber from the Journal of Contemporary History, How War Came (1989) by Donald Cameron Watt, the essay “Germany and the Munich Crisis: A Mutilated Victory?”  by Richard Overy from The Munich Crisis 1938 (1999), the essay “Foreign Policy and Preparation for War”  by Manfred Messerschmidt from Germany and the Second World W,ar (which is the official German history of World War II),  The Hitler of History  (1997) by John Lukacs, The Change in the European Balance of Power (1984) by Williamson Murray (through with a completely different and much more hostile interpretation of Chamberlain then Weinberg’s), The Third Reich in Power (2005) by Richard J. Evans, and the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (2000)

Personally, I might disagree with you about Case Green as a bluff, but however, one debate at a time! Just a couple of things to work through. At present, I might suggest if still have your copy handy of Hitler, Germany and World War II that you look at the section about Hitler’s secret speech to about 200 German journalists on November 10, 1938 about the need for some hate propaganda to work the German people up into a frenzy of war fever, which something that Hitler felt the German people lacked in September 1938, and that that the next time he risked war, he wanted to see some real blood lust in his people. At very least, I think that the sense that he didn't have his people fully behind him in September 1938 that led to abandon war at the last moment.

There are couple of other things to consider. The first, is until mid-September 1938, Hitler refused to lay claim to the Sudetenland area, and instead only demanded autonomy for the region. If Hitler was bluffing to get the Sudetenland, then he was defeating the purpose of his bluff by refusing to lay claim to the region. But if we accept the idea that Case Green was not a bluff, then his action makes more sense because the idea was to to show the world how reasonable and moderate he supposedly was in only asking for autonomy for the Sudetenland, which the Czechs refused to give. He upped his demand for handing the region over, when in early September 1938 Prague granted for the Sudetelander's demands for autonomy with the so-called "Fourth Plan" under intense Anglo-French pressure, which threantened to deprive Hitler of his pretext for war. Hence, he suddenly laid claim to it in mid-September. Now, of course, one could say he was still bluffing, but that begs the question why he escalated his demands at the Bad Godesberg summit. Under Chamberlain's plan presented at Bad Godesberg, the Sudetenland was going to be his within the next six months, and what more Chamberlain had agreed to the most egregious German demands about was going to be the criterion for deciding what district were to go to Germanly, namely a 50% ethnic German population (instead of 80% as first proposed) on the basis of the Austrian census of 1910 (instead of the Czech census of 1930). If Hitler wanted to bluff his way into the getting the Sudetenland, he could had his way right there and then at Bad Godesberg. There was really no need for him to throw a spanner into the works by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded no later then October 1st, 1938, and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia be satisfied also by October 1st. Given that Hitler could really care less about the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia in private, his insistence that he would go to war unless Poland and Hungary were happy by October 1st, 1938 seems like an excuse just to to war in 1938.

Then of course, there is the very intense debate between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938. I think it is noteworthy that Beck seemed to believe that Hitler was serious (indeed he resigned as Chief of the General Staff over the issue, and then was preparded to led a putsch over the issue), and that Hitler never once in his of his debates with Beck said anything about bluffing. Indeed, Hitler never anything about bluffing until Munich. True, a bluffer does not normally reveal he is bluffing until the game is over, but still, Hitler kept on taking about going to war in 1938. True, after Munich, Hitler did say he was bluffing. But I think we have to remember that Hitler was a bit like Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. Whatever Clouseau falls over, he always says he did that on purpose, and will never admit to making a mistake. Hitler was the same way. It was a big part of Hitler's image, that he was a man of providence, a figure chosen by destiny, fate and by some vaguely higher supernatural power to save Germany. Hitler cared greatly about image, which is why he often to extraordinary lengths to try to deny that he ever changed his mind or made a mistake. I think that the best example of this is Hitler's claim that he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. If Hitler really wanted to let the BEF escape, then why he send the Luffwaffe to bomb Dunkirk night and day? Because he didn't the BEF to escape, and that he only made up the escape story in July 1940 when it became clear that Britain would not surrender, at which point his halt order of May 1940 before Dunkirk was starting to look like a real blunder.

Turning back to Munich, I think that it is noteworthy after Munich, how much he talked in private about how Chamberlain had "cheated" him out of a war at Munich. As late as Feburary 21, 1945 Hitler was still going on in private about how if Chamberlain had not "cheated" out a war at Munich, then he would not be in his present predicament (i.e. losing the war). Now, that claim is nonsense, but I think it reflects Hitler's real bitterness that he didn't have his war in 1938 as he had planned. One might also consider that one of Hitler's big post-Munich initiatives was Plan Z of January 1939, which called for building a colossal Kriegsmarine capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944-the first and only time that the Kriegsmarine was given first priority on economic resources during the Third Reich 's entire 12 years. At very least, I think that the Z Plan should be understood as part of Hitler's post-Munich resolve that because Britain was not going to step aside from Europe, that he he needed to destroy Britain. This is my personal theory, but I think we connect the dots, the fact that Hitler regarded Britain as his real enemy in 1939 as reflected in things like the Z Plan helps to explain the pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.

One of these days, when I get some time, I’m going go and rework the Munich Conference page. At present, that page could use some drastic reworking-there is no mention of the intense debates between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938, the attitudes of the Dominions, Japan, Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union and the other Central European states needs some expanding; the section dealing with the problems of the French economy on French decision-making needs  particular work, there at present no mention of any of the debates within the French Cabinet. When I am done, I’ll invite you to take a look, and suggest any improvements that are in order. I think that you having probably gotten a foretaste of the sort of arguements that I will be making. Anyhow, through I don't much like debates, but I am prepared to take and consider honest criticism (as opposed to the sort that I'm getting on the Great War page!) Through I must admit I think I your more much reasonable and saner person then my German apologist opponents on the Great War page. Thanks for making my day!:)--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Mr Brown, thank you for taking so much trouble.
 * I wonder if I gave the impression that I thought Hitler's attitude to the Sudentenland was a bluff when I meant to imply that the 'bluff thesis' was the other way of looking at it (bearing in mind that as I had remembered it, AJP was the one who thought it wasn't a bluff). My view at the moment is mainly determined by what I read in Tooze about the economic pressures Germany was under at the time. This favours the idea that Chamberlain thwarted Hitler of his small war in 1938 (Which it appears I erroneously gave to AJP). Reading your comments further it also came to mind that it was AJP (as I remember it) who referred to Hitler's blaming of Chamberlain and Franco as the only people who had bested him - AJP's defence of appeasement is at least implicitly favourable to Chamberlain and Baldwin.

Tooze sees the Z plan as a recognition that the arms race Hitler set off had spread to the USA and that one way or another the USA would support his enemies so Germany needed to prepare for a great air-sea war in the west once the resources of the east had been captured (I think he says that there wasn't enough steel making capacity in Europe to fulfull Plan Z and the other arms programmes).

As for the origins of WWI, I'm ploughing through Stevenson 'Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904-1914' which is full of useful stuff but is as readable as a party manifesto. I haven't made my mind up (Will I ever?) but I find that the view that Austria-Hungary wanted war with Serbia in 1914 (the generals had wanted to settle their hash for a long time and Serbian expansion after the Ottomans were routed made this more acceptable to the diplomats and politicians) and that German support reduced Austrian fears of Russia (recovering strongly from the defeat in the Far East from its lowest point in 1908-1909) thus making a great European war possible suits me. On top of this I think there was a general European crisis of falling expectations, which had gone on for some considerable time, which perhaps the apologists make more of than they should and which possibly tended to make the greater powers increasingly the hostage of parochial events (like Archie Duke getting shot)and the lesser powers' reactions to them. Perhaps the better question is to ask 'why the war didn't begin earlier'? Stephenson is making a good argument that Agadir 1911 is a watershed in the alignment of military, political-diplomatic and economic personnel and structures in favour of war (or of at least war readiness) when such a thing hadn't been the case earlier - possibly a development that had been on the cards since the Russian-French alliance of the 1890's and only delayed by Russia's defeat in Manchuria. Events in the Balkans do seem to have had a profound effect - the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan War(s) and the revolution; similar events in China and Mexico perhaps being a dire warning to Austria-Hungary of the fate of a country which dropped below the level of a great power (albeit as an also-ran).Keith-264 (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank very much for the kind words and thoughtful remarks.

I have not read Tooze, so I am not familar with his arguements. Through I unfortunately inherited a copy of his book through the death of my best friend, my father last year (he was half-way through The Wages of Destruction at the time of his death), so I suppose one day will try to forget my father and read it. Your right about the Z Plan as totally economically unrealistic, indeed aspects of it were economic fantasy and did not stand a chance of being realized. Plus, it was unrealistic even on naval grounds because some of the battleships envisioned in the plan would have been too bad to fit into any dock anywhere in the world. It's only importance is how it was sign of Hitler's foreign policy objectives were going into 1939, as you have quite rightly stated. There is a lot of debate about whatever the Z Plan was a just an anti-British move or both an anti-British and anti-American move. Personally, I think that the immediate impetus for the Z Plan was anti-British (coming as it shortly after Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to start building a stragetic bomber force), but that in long term, such a giantic fleet that Hitler wanted was probably meant to fight both the British and the Americans. At least as an immediate impetus, I think that Chamberlain's warning to Hitler that if you do not accept the terms offered at Bad Godesberg (which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands about the Sudentenland, and then some), then we will declare war if you attack Czechoslovakia, which is what led Hitler at the last minute to abandon his war is probably what led to the anti-Western orienation in his foreign policy. I remember Father telling me based on his reading of Tooze that the Anglo-American free trade agreement of November 1938 was misunderstood in Germany as marking the beginning of an Anglo-American bloc designed to block German ambitions (which in a way it was, but not in the way the Germans thought about it-secret military clauses and all that). This is my own personal theory, but I think what caused the abandoment of Case Green was the British warning delivered by Sir Horace Wilson on September 28, 1938 that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honor the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty of 1924, and then Britain would probably come in. The key issue was Germany's oil problem. 80% of German oil imports in the 1930s came from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, and all of which would be cut off by a British blockade. And since the synethic oil program, in which Germans produced eratsz oil from coal was still way beyond schedule in 1938 (indeed did not come on line until 1942-two years late), Romania not in the German sphere of influence in 1938, and the Soviet Union unwilling to supply that year, that Germany had enough oil for a small war with Czechoslovakia, but not enough to face Britain and France, hence the climb-down from war. The Germans already a foretaste of what to expect when in September 1938, the British stopped several Hamburg-bound tankers for a couple of days in British ports for spurious reasons, something that caused immediate economic pain. I think that the importance of the oil issue can be seen that with the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Germans got access to Soviet oil, and hence were immune to a British blockade (at least with oil). At very least, I think this explains what Joachim von Ribbentrop meant when he told Hitler that now that we have the Pact with the Soviets, the British will never go to war for Poland-i.e. Germany was now immune to a blockade.

Good luck with Stevenson! I feel your hypothesis about Austria seeking a war with Serbia, no matter sounds acceptable to me. After all, this was the gang that activated War Plan B for a war against Serbia, and that only very belateley discovered that they would have to activated War Plan R for a war against Russia, which led to the mother of a logistical traffic-jams as the Army Group that was supposed to go to Bosnia instead had to be turned around to go to Galicia. That incidentally is the main cause of the great Austrian defeats of September 1914 in Galicia, which cost the Dual Monarchy 50% of its pre-August standing army-the real end of Austria-Hungary as a great power, which thereafter become a German dependency for the rest of the war. Yes, that does seem to be something of that in the air before 1914, namely an obsession with national decay and decline, perhaps reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism. Eugen Weber, through he was only writing about France, claimed that sports and health obsession of the fin-de-siecle era was due to the widespread belief that healthy nations were nations that won wars, and unhealthy nations lost wars. A similar thing happened in Britain with the Boar War where a great many people blamed the early British defeats on the fact that so many British soldiers were the products of malnutrition, which was not the cause, but who can account for public opinion? And this Social Darwnist understanding of the world was much prevelent in the German-speaking world then in the West. As far as I am aware, Social Darwnism did not have much influence in either Russia or Serbia-perhaps the backward state of those countries meant that science and pseudo-science did not enjoy the same prestige as in the Western world. At very least, I think that your right in the case of Austria-Hungary that a great many of the elite there had a morbid fear of national decay (probably made worse that Austria had lost almost every war it had fought since 1815) together with an exaggerated fear of Serbia. Yes, Serbia had doubted in size after the Balkan Wars, and yes, there was far too much nationalist fire-breathing talk from too far many Serb politicans, but the idea that a backward Balkan state that was on the verge of bankrupcty and had taken very heavy causalities during the Balkan Wars was going to bring down Austria-Hungary in the near-future seems to me to be more the product of hysteria in the Austrian elite then a rational assessement of the situation. Through I would agree with you that after the Second Moroccan Crisis, there was a climate of opinion that was more conductive to war, I don't think that one should underrate human agency. There is a lot that is wrong with Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, but he is right about that. After all, there were signs that France was falling behind in the arms race, and that at least a body of French opinion was starting to favor reaching an understanding with Germany, so the claims made by the Germans and their apologists about a obsessive, venegful France being beat on a war of revenge should be taken with a grain of salt. There were options other then war, but unfortunately for the world, those options were not taken.

Thank you for the kind words and interesting conversation!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings again, condolences on your bereavement. I can understand your reluctance to look at Tooze - I have similar feelings about 'Kes' (Barry Hines). Unfeasible withal, a Z-Plan aimed at England would also be implicitly anti-American by existing. US access to Europe is after all something they've gone to war over twice. Tooze takes much of his strategic-political analysis from DRZW which sees Hitler's Russian venture as a response to the need to secure resources before UK-US rearmament matured - the foodstuffs, raw materials and fuel usurped from the USSR would provide the economic infrastructure Germany lacked, bearing in mind that the economic resources of western Europe were near useless without non-European imports barred by Britain's refusal to fold. This doesn't preclude the ideological motives but does explain the timing of Barbarossa. It is instructive that before General Thomas toed Hitler's line he didn't say that Ukraine would get Germany out of trouble, more that if any region could it was Ukraine. Even with the Hongerplan, the transport needed to get Russian commodities to Germany was lacking. Apparently the same was true of oil imports from Rumania - the rail and river capacity needed investment before substantial increases of oil could be delivered to Germany (once the contracts that Britain used to by Rumania's surplus ran out). As usual with nazi wheezes making oil from coal only transferred the problem from one part of the economy to another - synthetic refineries needed huge anounts of steel to build, huge amounts of coal to refine and huge amounts of rail traffic to carry it.

I'm not as seized by human agency as you it seems; a crisis of falling expectations seems to me to lie less in mentalities susceptible to Social Darwinism as a rival ideology to socialism/communism/anarchism* and more in a growing (political) structural impasse as the effects of demographic, economic and technological growth did in Europe something akin to what happened in Africa (more an explosion than an implosion though in Europe, over 40 rather than 400 years) which set off the Scramble. Clearly as interbloc rivalry worsened, the reason for forming them surfaced in an acute form - the gradual collapse of the European political structure of the Congress of Vienna as modified in 1871; note for example that the loss of the Ottoman counterweight in the Balkans seriously upset the military balance between Serbia and the Empire, when from our perspective it seems like a piddling thing. Curiously Vienna doesn't get half as much stick as the Treay of Versailles. . . . I think for example that Britain edged towards Russia and France to exert its independence the better from the inside, having tried unilateral negotiations with Germany - note French acceptance that the British connexion precluded unilateral action in Belgium, despite the strategic sacrifice it entailed, something the Germans could never have accepted. As I recall the Austro-Hungarians were damned if they did, damned if they didn't over Galicia - the transport infrastructure couldn't cope with B-Staffel whatever they tried.


 * My favourite.

Thanks for comparing notes rather than ranting - there should be more of it on Wiki!


 * Thank you for the thoughtful remarks and kind words. Through I miss my father, and would do anything to get those awful memories of his corpse being carried away out of my mind, one just has to be tough about these things and carry out. Sorry for not getting back sooner; usually when someone writes something intelligent around here, it takes more time for me to pen a response, and between work and life, I’m being rather hard pressed to find the time.

Moving to on to more happier subjects, finally, a user who appreciates logistics and economics! You could use a lot more people like you, Keith since right now, we have far too pages written by economic illiterates and/or armchair generals. Of course, I would not take an economic determinist approach with economics deciding anything, but I do think that the economic situation does in fact limit a statesmen’s (and I usually that term very broadly here) options. After all, no money means just that, and I do wish that we have more users who pay attention to the economic constraints imposed on various politicians. The same goes with logistics. That’s makes sense with Plan R being doomed anyhow by an inadequate rail network, through I think that that the task of attempting to turn around the B-Staffel army group from the Balkans to Galicia could not have helped the (mis)fortunes of the Austrian Army. Until I got dragged into that debate on the Great Power page back in February, the last time I did any serious reading on the subject was almost 9 years ago, so I am bit rusty. I operating at somewhat of a disadvantage because of that, through I am trying to get caught up, through I am somewhat overjoyed at reading David Fromkin’s 2004 book Europe Last Summer because his version of how the war started is remarkably close to the one I articulated in an essay written in November 2000. There’s an old saying that great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, and I hope that the fact I independently worked out a similar analysis to Fromkin four years before he published his book is a case of the former, not the latter!

In order to reduce the amount of ranting, which I agree that we have far too much of at present, I think would really like to bring in a licensing system. Right now, we have too many pages written by people who either lacked the necessary knowledge for the subject, have some sort of axe to grind or are just plain insane. Right now, we have people contributing here who would never in a million years ever be published by a reputable publisher, and in some cases, not even a disreputable publisher. To take an example, there was (and still is in some of the section) on the Great War page, a set of statements that subtly implied that was all a case of Allied aggression against the Central Powers such as the remark about the Kaiser’s “startling observations” about how Britain engineered the war. This is all somebody’s lunatic fringe conspiracy theory being dressed up as history. What really bothers me is at the risk of sounding egoistic is why didn’t anybody spot these things? I have taken on the thankless task of purging the page of these German apologetics, but where was everybody’s else? There was that was really wrong with that page such as its statement that Austria actually expected their “unacceptable” (their words, not mine) ultimatum to be accepted by the Serbs. True, the Serbs were not being straight forward in their reply, giving the false impression that they accepted far more in the ultimatum then was actually the case, but my view of the subject is this: If you give a ultimatum that is meant to be rejected, then you really don’t have anything to complain about when your ultimatum is in fact rejected. What we really need is that before somebody is allowed to contribute, they should be subjected to tests to see if they possess the requisite knowledge to write about the subject, don’t any axes to grind and are sane. This goes against the principle of allowing this place being open to all, but I think it solve not all, but at least, a great deal of the of the current problems if such a system were brought in.

It also all seems I’m rather rusty on the origins of the Second World War. Thanks for bringing up to speed up on that subject. That’s interesting that Romanian oil owing to transport problems was not as helpful to the German war effort as I had been led to believe, through that is helpful to hear that the British ‘economic offensive” in the Balkans was damaging to the Reich. I mentioned the “economic offensive” on the Neville Chamberlain page, but since Weinberg does not go into great detail about the subject, there was not much I could add. I know that Joachim von Ribbentrop called an angry press conference to complain about British “economic encirclement” of Germany in June 1939, but given that Ribbentrop was a colossal idiot and an extreme Anglophobe (after about 1937), I was not certain how much of this was due to genuine economic pain, and how much was to feigned outrage over the foreign policy of the country that Ribbentrop loved to hate. Through I am not up to the details of the German synthetic oil program, that’s makes sense that the way that resources allocated to it weakened other projects. The whole German war effort seems to me to be nothing more then a vast, muddled inefficient ball of confusion and chaos. Having said that much, projects like the V weapons and jet fighters were a complete waste of resources on weapons that were not war-winning. This is Richard Overy, and I am writing from memory here, so I may be wrong about the precise numbers, but I remember reading that for the costs of building one V-1, the Germans could have built about 1, 000 FW 190 fighters. Arguably, a 1, 000 FW 190s would have given the Germans a much bigger bang for their buck, so to speak then one V-1.

I would agree with the ultimate anti-American implications of the Z Plan. After all, in his Zwites Buch of 1928, Hitler had spoken of a great war for the mastery of the world with an Anglo-German combination taking on the United States, through admittly Hitler projects this war to sometime in the 1980s. However, there are great signs that by the late 1930s that what Hitler had seen as the work of his successors he himself wanted to do. In his diary, Goebbels speaks of Hitler telling him that he wanted to “see the Great Germanic Reich in his own lifetime”. So, I think that one say that the Z Plan was in part a response to Hitler’s realization that his fanciful project for an Anglo-German alliance was folly, and that he would have to fight Britain, either by herself or in alliance with the United States. This is something that Weinberg is good at pointing out that Hitler held the Soviet Union in complete contempt. Operation Barbarossa was only supposed to be a six-month affair, and then the Soviet Union was going to be finished. One could see how seriously Hitler was in his assessment of the Soviet Union in that on June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa began, he cut the German Army’s allocations of raw materials for 1942 in order to provide for a bigger Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for 1942. There’s a great deal of historical debate about whatever Barbarossa should be regarded as an anti-Soviet move, or as in the case of John Lukacs, an anti-British move. The truth seems to be that Barbarossa was both, and I argue that based on what you told me, that it should be regarded as anti-American move as while.

I’m sorry, I’m afraid I misunderstood you about human agency. Through, he doesn’t use the same terminology as you do about falling expectations, David Fromkin makes the same point in Europe’s Last Summer where he writes about the extremely pessimistic evaluation of the international situation held by the decision-makers in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the last years before the war, and through this is being vigorously contested right on the origins of the Great War page right now, there was a sense that history was against them in all the ways you already mentioned (diplomatic, military, economic, etc), and that only a war could reversal the trend. Actually, Fromkin mentions there were even some contemporaries who felt that way, and talks about the peace mission of Colonel House, President Wilson’s chief political fixer to Europe in 1914. What’s interesting about Colonel House’s mission is not he what he accomplished (which was nothing), but rather the date: May 1914. It’s interesting that even an American isolationist (as Wilson was in 1914) could sense there was something wrong with the fundamental political make-up of Europe, and send out his right-hand man to try stop what Wilson and company feared might be the impeding catastrophe.

A synthesis I think that ties in the falling expectations and human agency might be noting just incredibly mediocre the leadership of Germany, and even more Austria was. You just look at the Austro-German leadership of 1914, and one is stuck by just how second-rate all these men were. I already mentioned at the Great War page about how Wilhelm had almost certainly suffered brain damage owing to his botched birth, which would go a long way to explaining his erratic behaviour, which he displayed right from his earliest days. It was the world’s misfortune that Wilhelm inherited a job that he was supremely unqualified for because almost all of the people Wilhelm appointed to high positions were in varying ways incompetent because Wilhelm him was incompetent. A fish starts to rot at the head, and I think the same thing could be said about Germany.

And even those German leaders that did have some brains like Admiral Tirpitz, the “evil genesis” of the Second Reich as Gordon A. Craig once called him were very good at tactics, and totally wrong about strategy. Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet concept all sounds good on paper, but for it to work two preconditions were needed, namely 1) that the British not notice that the High Seas Fleet was being built against them and 2) that there be sufficient tensions between Britain and other world powers, so the British would have to spread their fleet all round the world, thereby giving the High Seas Fleet concentrated in the North Sea the edge. But of course, London noticed that because building a vast fleet of battleships is something that is very hard to conceal, and as I already pointed on the Great War page, the High Seas Fleet was “short-legged”, and thus could was only operate in the North Sea. And anyhow, the High Seas Fleet was simply way too big for the navies of France and Russia (and in the case of the Russian Baltic Fleet which been sunk by the Japanese in 1905, thus removing any danger for Germany in the Baltic for several years). As an Admiralty report pointed out as early as 1902, any war with the Franco-Russian combination would be primarily a land war, and all these millions of marks going to the Navy could only weaken the German Army (which indeed turned out to the case). And second, it turned out that Britain could settle all of the principle differences with France, Russia, the United States, etc, thus allowing the Royal Navy to be concentrated at Scapa Flow. Once the naval race began, the superior size of the British ship-building industry guaranteed that this was a race that Germany could only lose. So in nutshell, all Tirptiz managed to do was gratuitously alienate Britain before 1914, and commit Germany to spending millions of marks for a white elephant of a fleet whose most notable contribution in WWI was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. This entire Risk Fleet idea was folly right from the get-go, and that the fact that Germans would commit themselves and continue with the naval race that they were clearly losing even as 1908 speaks volumes about this how inept Germany’s leaders were. Anybody with any common sense would had the foresight to end the naval race once it become clear that they were losing like around 1908 rather then continuing to pour millions of marks into it right up to 1914 (through at a reduced rate after 1912 owning to the insistence of the Army), or better yet, avoid the naval challenge altogether. Admiral Tirpitz was all very clever in getting his way, but his overall vision was grossly defective. This is just an aside, but the fact that the Germans were willing to make the naval challenge proves how little they really felt threatened by Russia/France before 1912-if that had been the case, the Germans would had accepted the British offer of an alliance in 1899 (which they turned down flat) instead of engaging in the naval race. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other examples to support the contention that Germany and even more so, Austria had really terrible leaders. So I think, we can tie in your point about the crisis of falling expectations with human agency by saying that confronted with the crisis of falling expectations, the leaders of Austria and Germany could think of no better way of resolution other then war. Had those countries had more intelligent leaders then what they did in fact actually possessed, I think they could had managed things much better without resorting to war.

Through I would agree with your assessment about the crisis of falling expectations, but I think it really applies to the Central Powers. Certainly with Britain, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Grey felt he could manage whatever crisis that might come up, and through a carrot and stick policy persuade the Germans to stop trampling on everybody’s toes in their quest for world power. Through one would never know so from reading the Great War page as it is currently written, it is the Germans who drove the British into the arms of the French and Russians. Initially, it was British policy to stand in “splendid isolation”, and if they were going to ally with anybody, it was the Reich. There were two British offers of an alliance, one in 1899 and another in 1902, both refused by the Germans, who believed that they would get so more by building their Risk Fleet. Given German antagonism as expressed by such things as the naval challenge, I really do think that they had any other choice, but to reach out to old enemies like the French, and even more so, the Russians to exercise some weight to restrain the Germans. But I don’t think that the idea of reaching an accommodation with the Germans was abandoned. Hence, Grey’s policy at one moment leaning towards France, and the next moment leaning towards Germany-now, there was more leaning towards France that was because the French were more inclined to be friendly and the Germans in the form of the naval race to be less friendly. Through at the same time, Grey in 1914 was offering colonial concessions to try to settle Anglo-German antagonism, and in the July Crisis, was criticized by his own officials, and by the French and the Russians for trying to too hard to work with the Germans. A Russian diplomat was quoted as saying in the July Crisis: “War is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hesitated”. Through a common criticism, I don’t it is warranted since Grey finally did warned the Germans his country would go to war if they went to war, it did not stop them from going ahead anyhow.

I think your right about the decline of the Ottoman Empire as causing a power vacuum in the Balkans. After all, a recurring feature of the so-called Eastern Question, which haunted the chancelleries of Europe, at least since the Crimean War had an on-going rivalry. I have heard the First World War described as the War of Ottoman Succession, through for the life of me, I can’t remember where I read that. That’s probably going a little too far, since there was more at stake then the question of whatever the Balkans were going to be in either the Austrian or Russian sphere of influence. But having said that much, the end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe as occasioned by the Balkan Wars did have the effect of greatly intensifying the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry for spheres of influence in that part of Europe. It is notable the idea of launching a war to destroy Serbia first started to be advocated seriously in Vienna in the fall of 1912-just after the First Balkan War. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that the Austrians would launched their war in 1912 with German support had it not been for the British warning to Berlin that London would to war with the Reich if they did so. It was the British warning that led to the infamous German War Council of December 1912. Leaving aside the long-term results of the War Council, the consensus that German Navy was not strong to fight the Royal Navy in 1912 led to Germany applying pressure on the Austrians to call off the war. But nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the idea of a war was on the minds of the Austrian General Staff, which proposed war against Serbia a good 24 times between January 1913-January 1914. The Balkan power vacuum was still unfilled, and this together with what one could only the Russian war hysteria caused by the Russian Great Military Programme which gripped the German elite from after 1912 all, but guaranteed a war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is only a secondary cause of the war; even if he survived, a war would still occurred.

I would agree that Vienna should get much of a stick then does the much maligned Treaty of Versailles. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, after 1918, the Dual Monarchy was a vanished state. So, there weren’t any contemporary political points to be scored against blaming Austria for the war. Second, as I mentioned elsewhere, after 1918, the Germans undertook a massive deception campaign to re-write history. If interested in the details of this, check Holger Herwig’s essay “Clio Deceived”, which is on pages 5-44 from International Security, Fall 1987. The purpose behind this campaign was to discredit Versailles by proving that Germany was not responsible for the war, which thereby helping to the wider German campaign to do away with Versailles, especially Part V of the treaty, which had disarmed Germany. Most people don’t know, but when they stated everybody was at fault, they are merely repeating German propaganda from the 1920s-30s meant to do away with Versailles. The very fact that the line is everybody was at fault shows its propaganda purposes all too well. One might expect that the Germans would be repeating their WWI line that they were the victims of Allied aggression, but I think the purposes of doing a sales job, the Germans realized that that line would not do. A line that blames everybody for the war was much likely to appeal to British and French public opinion then a line that blames Britain and France exclusively. And of course, if everybody is at fault for the war, then Versailles, which blamed Germany would be in need of revising. A very successful propaganda campaign, whose pernicious effects are still with us today. Finally, I would suggest that there is a peculiar tendency on the part of the Western mind to feel guilt. I’m not certain why this is so, but it is a matter of fact that people in the West are far more likely to feel agonizing guilt over real and/or imagined wrongs then people are in other civilizations. Just look at the entire slavery reparations debate (now I think that slavery is very wrong, and I would be all for paying reparations for former slaves, if they were any still alive). But Muslims were just as active as slavers in Africa as the Westerners were (and indeed for a much longer period of time), but I don’t see any guilt in the Muslim world over this, or any Muslims calling their governments to pay reparations for all the Africans they enslaved in former times. If the United States, United Kingdom, France, etc should pay reparations for slavery, then by the same logic, so should Saudi Arabia and Oman, but I don’t see anybody calling upon those states to make amends for their part in the slave trade. This is particularly egregious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which only got around to abolishing slavery in 1962, so they might very well be former slaves from that country still alive today. Or look at the way people in the United States feel guilty over dropping the atomic bombs on the Japanese vs. the complete lack of any remorse, indeed active denial of all the various Japanese war crimes in Japan such as the Rape of Nanking, Burma Death Railroad, etc, etc. I list endless other examples, but I think you get the point. So, I think that everybody feel guilty over Versailles (which truth be told saved the peace by keeping Germany disarmed, at least until 1935) while letting the Austrians off the hook for the war they helped to cause reflects the peculiar tendency on the part of Westerners to always blame themselves for all the world’s problems. Just a pet theory on my part for what it is worth. Thank you for the thoughtful comments-we use more users like you!--A.S. Brown (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Czechoslovakia
Did Weinberg really originate (or publicise) the view that Hitler wanted war with Czech'a in 1938? AJP Taylor banged this drum years ago.Keith-264 (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was a major theme of the second volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, plus his essays "Munich After 50 Years" in Foreign Affairs, “The Munich Crisis in Historical Perspective" from International History Review, and "Reflections on Munich after 60 Years" in The Munich Crisis 1938. Quoting from the latter essay, please see pages 3-5 & 7, where Weinberg states that up to September 29th of 1938, Hitler was serious with going ahead with an attack on Czechoslovakia on October 1st, and only changed his mind literally at the last minute about going to war in 1938. I do believe that Weinberg was one of the first historians to make this point. I must disagree with you about Taylor making the same claim, at least not in The Origins of the Second World War, where Taylor says on pages 191-192 & 207-208 of the 1976 edition published by Hamish Hamilton that Hitler was only bluffing in 1938. I don't believe that is right to put Weinberg and Taylor into the same camp given that the two volumes of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany were written with the aim in rebutting Taylor's account in The Origins of the Second World War. Give me some time, and will I check if Weinberg was the first historian to argue that Hitler was not bluffing in 1938, but was in fact deadly serious about going ahead with a war, and only changed his mind at the last minute.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble. I haven't read any Taylor for a while, evidently my memory has played me false. I have only recently begun to look at Weinberg who strikes me as a bit of a bruiser in the AJP mould. I was particularly pleased by his apparent anglophobia in the book of essays I got recently though :o). I was a little surprised at his apparent appropriation of the 'serious' view of 1938 but perhaps he's entitled.Keith-264 (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Your welcome. Sometimes, my memory plays me false as while. Yes, I would argee with about your description as Weinberg as a combative historian in the same mould as Taylor. As someone familiar with some of Weinberg’s writings, he can be awfully harsh about those historians who take a contrary line to his own. Through to be fair, at times historians like Andreas Hillgruber do deserve a whack or two for their German apologetics. I was little surprised that you mentioned Weinberg and Taylor as arguing the same case given that Weinberg in the first volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany had some rather dismissive and hostile things to say about Taylor. To be fair, Taylor in his review of the same book was not too positive about Weinberg, so perhaps the feeling was mutual. I would agree with you as while about Weinberg’s tendency to be rather curt to say the least about Britain’s performance in World War II, and a corresponding tendency to take the American side as self-evidently right in all of the various Anglo-American strategic disputes, but since I don’t have any sources for that other then Weinberg’s own books and essays, I am rather hesitant to put my gloss on Weinberg’s writings in the article based solely on my own reading of them. Smacks too much of original research, at least for something like that. To take an example, Weinberg always writes about British signet be based upon the work of Polish code-breakers at Bletchley Park, when in fact there were no Poles at Bletchley. To be fair the Poles, ULTRA was based on technology and techniques developed by the Poles in the 1930s, but the code-breakers at Bletchley were British. Thanks for the kind words.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History' is the one I've got. Having looked around I realise he's been around for a lot longer than I realised so he may well be the person who took the 1938 war intention seriously. I like foreigners who take swipes at Britain's war effort, particularly Germans who are sucking up to the Americans! His snide remarks about Tobruk and Singapore have been obsolete for about twenty five years though. I like your exposition of the cause of the Great War on that discussion page as well - succinct and erudite. Your opponents have given you a run for your money so I expect that was a creative pressure on you.Keith-264 (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Please accept my most humble apologies for ignoring you for so long. I meant to go to you earlier, but between work, life, research and that hateful, tiresome debate on the Great War page, I’ll not able to get back to you.

Thank you so very much for the kind words about my humble contributions on the Great War page. I’m so glad that at least someone appreciates my work! It is an awful, terrible debate which I sincerely wished I had never gotten into with the German apologists, because all it does is take up my time to no good purpose and it never ends, but it is too late now. I’m a very shy, modest fellow both here and in real life, so I must confess I really not enjoying that debate, but on the other hand, these attempts to bully me into supporting something that I know is untrue is not something I will stand for. In for a penny, in for a pound. That page was outrageously pro-German (through I have cleaned up, at least for the moment). I can fight my own battles, but could you please tell me if you think that my reworked version is better. I know it is much longer and detailed, but given the contentious nature of the subject, I felt really didn’t I had any choice. My favourite part (which I since rephrased into something better) was when the Wilhelm’s rant about how Britain started the war is presented as his “startling observations” about the war began. Observation implies that somebody went, took a look at something and drew a conclusion. I.e. “He observed it was raining” or “She observed the stars”. So in other words, the word observation refers to some sort of objective reality and one’s relationship with it. So, by labelling the Kaiser’s Anglophobic rant as his “startling observations” implies that he is describing the objective reality of 1914, and not only that, but doing it exceptionally well. Both a POV edit and a very false one, to boot. By the same logic, one could speak of Hitler’s “startling observation” that the Jews started World War II. Just because somebody believes something does not make it true, and we should be not presenting people's personal beliefs about as fact like as "starting observations".

Back to Weinberg, yes, I would argee witht that there appears to be a somewhat anti-British bias in a lot of his work. I'm not certain where that comes from. Do somebody insult when he was a refugee in war-time Britain, and he's having an awfully long time getting over it? Through I might not fond of this aspect of his writings, I do regard as a great historian.

Moving the subject to the 1938. I done some checking up, and no, Weinberg, not the first to argue that thesis of Case Green as a serious military operation. I can’t you offhand who was the first (through it seems to be a claim first made by German historians in the 1960s) but one find can the same arguments in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich by Klaus Hildebrand (1970), the 1974 essay "England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion" by Andreas Hillgruber from the Journal of Contemporary History, How War Came (1989) by Donald Cameron Watt, the essay “Germany and the Munich Crisis: A Mutilated Victory?”  by Richard Overy from The Munich Crisis 1938 (1999), the essay “Foreign Policy and Preparation for War”  by Manfred Messerschmidt from Germany and the Second World W,ar (which is the official German history of World War II),  The Hitler of History  (1997) by John Lukacs, The Change in the European Balance of Power (1984) by Williamson Murray (through with a completely different and much more hostile interpretation of Chamberlain then Weinberg’s), The Third Reich in Power (2005) by Richard J. Evans, and the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (2000)

Personally, I might disagree with you about Case Green as a bluff, but however, one debate at a time! Just a couple of things to work through. At present, I might suggest if still have your copy handy of Hitler, Germany and World War II that you look at the section about Hitler’s secret speech to about 200 German journalists on November 10, 1938 about the need for some hate propaganda to work the German people up into a frenzy of war fever, which something that Hitler felt the German people lacked in September 1938, and that that the next time he risked war, he wanted to see some real blood lust in his people. At very least, I think that the sense that he didn't have his people fully behind him in September 1938 that led to abandon war at the last moment.

There are couple of other things to consider. The first, is until mid-September 1938, Hitler refused to lay claim to the Sudetenland area, and instead only demanded autonomy for the region. If Hitler was bluffing to get the Sudetenland, then he was defeating the purpose of his bluff by refusing to lay claim to the region. But if we accept the idea that Case Green was not a bluff, then his action makes more sense because the idea was to to show the world how reasonable and moderate he supposedly was in only asking for autonomy for the Sudetenland, which the Czechs refused to give. He upped his demand for handing the region over, when in early September 1938 Prague granted for the Sudetelander's demands for autonomy with the so-called "Fourth Plan" under intense Anglo-French pressure, which threantened to deprive Hitler of his pretext for war. Hence, he suddenly laid claim to it in mid-September. Now, of course, one could say he was still bluffing, but that begs the question why he escalated his demands at the Bad Godesberg summit. Under Chamberlain's plan presented at Bad Godesberg, the Sudetenland was going to be his within the next six months, and what more Chamberlain had agreed to the most egregious German demands about was going to be the criterion for deciding what district were to go to Germanly, namely a 50% ethnic German population (instead of 80% as first proposed) on the basis of the Austrian census of 1910 (instead of the Czech census of 1930). If Hitler wanted to bluff his way into the getting the Sudetenland, he could had his way right there and then at Bad Godesberg. There was really no need for him to throw a spanner into the works by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded no later then October 1st, 1938, and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia be satisfied also by October 1st. Given that Hitler could really care less about the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia in private, his insistence that he would go to war unless Poland and Hungary were happy by October 1st, 1938 seems like an excuse just to to war in 1938.

Then of course, there is the very intense debate between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938. I think it is noteworthy that Beck seemed to believe that Hitler was serious (indeed he resigned as Chief of the General Staff over the issue, and then was preparded to led a putsch over the issue), and that Hitler never once in his of his debates with Beck said anything about bluffing. Indeed, Hitler never anything about bluffing until Munich. True, a bluffer does not normally reveal he is bluffing until the game is over, but still, Hitler kept on taking about going to war in 1938. True, after Munich, Hitler did say he was bluffing. But I think we have to remember that Hitler was a bit like Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. Whatever Clouseau falls over, he always says he did that on purpose, and will never admit to making a mistake. Hitler was the same way. It was a big part of Hitler's image, that he was a man of providence, a figure chosen by destiny, fate and by some vaguely higher supernatural power to save Germany. Hitler cared greatly about image, which is why he often to extraordinary lengths to try to deny that he ever changed his mind or made a mistake. I think that the best example of this is Hitler's claim that he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. If Hitler really wanted to let the BEF escape, then why he send the Luffwaffe to bomb Dunkirk night and day? Because he didn't the BEF to escape, and that he only made up the escape story in July 1940 when it became clear that Britain would not surrender, at which point his halt order of May 1940 before Dunkirk was starting to look like a real blunder.

Turning back to Munich, I think that it is noteworthy after Munich, how much he talked in private about how Chamberlain had "cheated" him out of a war at Munich. As late as Feburary 21, 1945 Hitler was still going on in private about how if Chamberlain had not "cheated" out a war at Munich, then he would not be in his present predicament (i.e. losing the war). Now, that claim is nonsense, but I think it reflects Hitler's real bitterness that he didn't have his war in 1938 as he had planned. One might also consider that one of Hitler's big post-Munich initiatives was Plan Z of January 1939, which called for building a colossal Kriegsmarine capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944-the first and only time that the Kriegsmarine was given first priority on economic resources during the Third Reich 's entire 12 years. At very least, I think that the Z Plan should be understood as part of Hitler's post-Munich resolve that because Britain was not going to step aside from Europe, that he he needed to destroy Britain. This is my personal theory, but I think we connect the dots, the fact that Hitler regarded Britain as his real enemy in 1939 as reflected in things like the Z Plan helps to explain the pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.

One of these days, when I get some time, I’m going go and rework the Munich Conference page. At present, that page could use some drastic reworking-there is no mention of the intense debates between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938, the attitudes of the Dominions, Japan, Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union and the other Central European states needs some expanding; the section dealing with the problems of the French economy on French decision-making needs  particular work, there at present no mention of any of the debates within the French Cabinet. When I am done, I’ll invite you to take a look, and suggest any improvements that are in order. I think that you having probably gotten a foretaste of the sort of arguements that I will be making. Anyhow, through I don't much like debates, but I am prepared to take and consider honest criticism (as opposed to the sort that I'm getting on the Great War page!) Through I must admit I think I your more much reasonable and saner person then my German apologist opponents on the Great War page. Thanks for making my day!:)--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Mr Brown, thank you for taking so much trouble.
 * I wonder if I gave the impression that I thought Hitler's attitude to the Sudentenland was a bluff when I meant to imply that the 'bluff thesis' was the other way of looking at it (bearing in mind that as I had remembered it, AJP was the one who thought it wasn't a bluff). My view at the moment is mainly determined by what I read in Tooze about the economic pressures Germany was under at the time. This favours the idea that Chamberlain thwarted Hitler of his small war in 1938 (Which it appears I erroneously gave to AJP). Reading your comments further it also came to mind that it was AJP (as I remember it) who referred to Hitler's blaming of Chamberlain and Franco as the only people who had bested him - AJP's defence of appeasement is at least implicitly favourable to Chamberlain and Baldwin.

Tooze sees the Z plan as a recognition that the arms race Hitler set off had spread to the USA and that one way or another the USA would support his enemies so Germany needed to prepare for a great air-sea war in the west once the resources of the east had been captured (I think he says that there wasn't enough steel making capacity in Europe to fulfull Plan Z and the other arms programmes).

As for the origins of WWI, I'm ploughing through Stevenson 'Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904-1914' which is full of useful stuff but is as readable as a party manifesto. I haven't made my mind up (Will I ever?) but I find that the view that Austria-Hungary wanted war with Serbia in 1914 (the generals had wanted to settle their hash for a long time and Serbian expansion after the Ottomans were routed made this more acceptable to the diplomats and politicians) and that German support reduced Austrian fears of Russia (recovering strongly from the defeat in the Far East from its lowest point in 1908-1909) thus making a great European war possible suits me. On top of this I think there was a general European crisis of falling expectations, which had gone on for some considerable time, which perhaps the apologists make more of than they should and which possibly tended to make the greater powers increasingly the hostage of parochial events (like Archie Duke getting shot)and the lesser powers' reactions to them. Perhaps the better question is to ask 'why the war didn't begin earlier'? Stephenson is making a good argument that Agadir 1911 is a watershed in the alignment of military, political-diplomatic and economic personnel and structures in favour of war (or of at least war readiness) when such a thing hadn't been the case earlier - possibly a development that had been on the cards since the Russian-French alliance of the 1890's and only delayed by Russia's defeat in Manchuria. Events in the Balkans do seem to have had a profound effect - the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan War(s) and the revolution; similar events in China and Mexico perhaps being a dire warning to Austria-Hungary of the fate of a country which dropped below the level of a great power (albeit as an also-ran).Keith-264 (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank very much for the kind words and thoughtful remarks.

I have not read Tooze, so I am not familar with his arguements. Through I unfortunately inherited a copy of his book through the death of my best friend, my father last year (he was half-way through The Wages of Destruction at the time of his death), so I suppose one day will try to forget my father and read it. Your right about the Z Plan as totally economically unrealistic, indeed aspects of it were economic fantasy and did not stand a chance of being realized. Plus, it was unrealistic even on naval grounds because some of the battleships envisioned in the plan would have been too bad to fit into any dock anywhere in the world. It's only importance is how it was sign of Hitler's foreign policy objectives were going into 1939, as you have quite rightly stated. There is a lot of debate about whatever the Z Plan was a just an anti-British move or both an anti-British and anti-American move. Personally, I think that the immediate impetus for the Z Plan was anti-British (coming as it shortly after Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to start building a stragetic bomber force), but that in long term, such a giantic fleet that Hitler wanted was probably meant to fight both the British and the Americans. At least as an immediate impetus, I think that Chamberlain's warning to Hitler that if you do not accept the terms offered at Bad Godesberg (which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands about the Sudentenland, and then some), then we will declare war if you attack Czechoslovakia, which is what led Hitler at the last minute to abandon his war is probably what led to the anti-Western orienation in his foreign policy. I remember Father telling me based on his reading of Tooze that the Anglo-American free trade agreement of November 1938 was misunderstood in Germany as marking the beginning of an Anglo-American bloc designed to block German ambitions (which in a way it was, but not in the way the Germans thought about it-secret military clauses and all that). This is my own personal theory, but I think what caused the abandoment of Case Green was the British warning delivered by Sir Horace Wilson on September 28, 1938 that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honor the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty of 1924, and then Britain would probably come in. The key issue was Germany's oil problem. 80% of German oil imports in the 1930s came from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, and all of which would be cut off by a British blockade. And since the synethic oil program, in which Germans produced eratsz oil from coal was still way beyond schedule in 1938 (indeed did not come on line until 1942-two years late), Romania not in the German sphere of influence in 1938, and the Soviet Union unwilling to supply that year, that Germany had enough oil for a small war with Czechoslovakia, but not enough to face Britain and France, hence the climb-down from war. The Germans already a foretaste of what to expect when in September 1938, the British stopped several Hamburg-bound tankers for a couple of days in British ports for spurious reasons, something that caused immediate economic pain. I think that the importance of the oil issue can be seen that with the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Germans got access to Soviet oil, and hence were immune to a British blockade (at least with oil). At very least, I think this explains what Joachim von Ribbentrop meant when he told Hitler that now that we have the Pact with the Soviets, the British will never go to war for Poland-i.e. Germany was now immune to a blockade.

Good luck with Stevenson! I feel your hypothesis about Austria seeking a war with Serbia, no matter sounds acceptable to me. After all, this was the gang that activated War Plan B for a war against Serbia, and that only very belateley discovered that they would have to activated War Plan R for a war against Russia, which led to the mother of a logistical traffic-jams as the Army Group that was supposed to go to Bosnia instead had to be turned around to go to Galicia. That incidentally is the main cause of the great Austrian defeats of September 1914 in Galicia, which cost the Dual Monarchy 50% of its pre-August standing army-the real end of Austria-Hungary as a great power, which thereafter become a German dependency for the rest of the war. Yes, that does seem to be something of that in the air before 1914, namely an obsession with national decay and decline, perhaps reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism. Eugen Weber, through he was only writing about France, claimed that sports and health obsession of the fin-de-siecle era was due to the widespread belief that healthy nations were nations that won wars, and unhealthy nations lost wars. A similar thing happened in Britain with the Boar War where a great many people blamed the early British defeats on the fact that so many British soldiers were the products of malnutrition, which was not the cause, but who can account for public opinion? And this Social Darwnist understanding of the world was much prevelent in the German-speaking world then in the West. As far as I am aware, Social Darwnism did not have much influence in either Russia or Serbia-perhaps the backward state of those countries meant that science and pseudo-science did not enjoy the same prestige as in the Western world. At very least, I think that your right in the case of Austria-Hungary that a great many of the elite there had a morbid fear of national decay (probably made worse that Austria had lost almost every war it had fought since 1815) together with an exaggerated fear of Serbia. Yes, Serbia had doubted in size after the Balkan Wars, and yes, there was far too much nationalist fire-breathing talk from too far many Serb politicans, but the idea that a backward Balkan state that was on the verge of bankrupcty and had taken very heavy causalities during the Balkan Wars was going to bring down Austria-Hungary in the near-future seems to me to be more the product of hysteria in the Austrian elite then a rational assessement of the situation. Through I would agree with you that after the Second Moroccan Crisis, there was a climate of opinion that was more conductive to war, I don't think that one should underrate human agency. There is a lot that is wrong with Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, but he is right about that. After all, there were signs that France was falling behind in the arms race, and that at least a body of French opinion was starting to favor reaching an understanding with Germany, so the claims made by the Germans and their apologists about a obsessive, venegful France being beat on a war of revenge should be taken with a grain of salt. There were options other then war, but unfortunately for the world, those options were not taken.

Thank you for the kind words and interesting conversation!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings again, condolences on your bereavement. I can understand your reluctance to look at Tooze - I have similar feelings about 'Kes' (Barry Hines). Unfeasible withal, a Z-Plan aimed at England would also be implicitly anti-American by existing. US access to Europe is after all something they've gone to war over twice. Tooze takes much of his strategic-political analysis from DRZW which sees Hitler's Russian venture as a response to the need to secure resources before UK-US rearmament matured - the foodstuffs, raw materials and fuel usurped from the USSR would provide the economic infrastructure Germany lacked, bearing in mind that the economic resources of western Europe were near useless without non-European imports barred by Britain's refusal to fold. This doesn't preclude the ideological motives but does explain the timing of Barbarossa. It is instructive that before General Thomas toed Hitler's line he didn't say that Ukraine would get Germany out of trouble, more that if any region could it was Ukraine. Even with the Hongerplan, the transport needed to get Russian commodities to Germany was lacking. Apparently the same was true of oil imports from Rumania - the rail and river capacity needed investment before substantial increases of oil could be delivered to Germany (once the contracts that Britain used to by Rumania's surplus ran out). As usual with nazi wheezes making oil from coal only transferred the problem from one part of the economy to another - synthetic refineries needed huge anounts of steel to build, huge amounts of coal to refine and huge amounts of rail traffic to carry it.

I'm not as seized by human agency as you it seems; a crisis of falling expectations seems to me to lie less in mentalities susceptible to Social Darwinism as a rival ideology to socialism/communism/anarchism* and more in a growing (political) structural impasse as the effects of demographic, economic and technological growth did in Europe something akin to what happened in Africa (more an explosion than an implosion though in Europe, over 40 rather than 400 years) which set off the Scramble. Clearly as interbloc rivalry worsened, the reason for forming them surfaced in an acute form - the gradual collapse of the European political structure of the Congress of Vienna as modified in 1871; note for example that the loss of the Ottoman counterweight in the Balkans seriously upset the military balance between Serbia and the Empire, when from our perspective it seems like a piddling thing. Curiously Vienna doesn't get half as much stick as the Treay of Versailles. . . . I think for example that Britain edged towards Russia and France to exert its independence the better from the inside, having tried unilateral negotiations with Germany - note French acceptance that the British connexion precluded unilateral action in Belgium, despite the strategic sacrifice it entailed, something the Germans could never have accepted. As I recall the Austro-Hungarians were damned if they did, damned if they didn't over Galicia - the transport infrastructure couldn't cope with B-Staffel whatever they tried.


 * My favourite.

Thanks for comparing notes rather than ranting - there should be more of it on Wiki!


 * Thank you for the thoughtful remarks and kind words. Through I miss my father, and would do anything to get those awful memories of his corpse being carried away out of my mind, one just has to be tough about these things and carry out. Sorry for not getting back sooner; usually when someone writes something intelligent around here, it takes more time for me to pen a response, and between work and life, I’m being rather hard pressed to find the time.

Moving to on to more happier subjects, finally, a user who appreciates logistics and economics! You could use a lot more people like you, Keith since right now, we have far too pages written by economic illiterates and/or armchair generals. Of course, I would not take an economic determinist approach with economics deciding anything, but I do think that the economic situation does in fact limit a statesmen’s (and I usually that term very broadly here) options. After all, no money means just that, and I do wish that we have more users who pay attention to the economic constraints imposed on various politicians. The same goes with logistics. That’s makes sense with Plan R being doomed anyhow by an inadequate rail network, through I think that that the task of attempting to turn around the B-Staffel army group from the Balkans to Galicia could not have helped the (mis)fortunes of the Austrian Army. Until I got dragged into that debate on the Great Power page back in February, the last time I did any serious reading on the subject was almost 9 years ago, so I am bit rusty. I operating at somewhat of a disadvantage because of that, through I am trying to get caught up, through I am somewhat overjoyed at reading David Fromkin’s 2004 book Europe Last Summer because his version of how the war started is remarkably close to the one I articulated in an essay written in November 2000. There’s an old saying that great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, and I hope that the fact I independently worked out a similar analysis to Fromkin four years before he published his book is a case of the former, not the latter!

In order to reduce the amount of ranting, which I agree that we have far too much of at present, I think would really like to bring in a licensing system. Right now, we have too many pages written by people who either lacked the necessary knowledge for the subject, have some sort of axe to grind or are just plain insane. Right now, we have people contributing here who would never in a million years ever be published by a reputable publisher, and in some cases, not even a disreputable publisher. To take an example, there was (and still is in some of the section) on the Great War page, a set of statements that subtly implied that was all a case of Allied aggression against the Central Powers such as the remark about the Kaiser’s “startling observations” about how Britain engineered the war. This is all somebody’s lunatic fringe conspiracy theory being dressed up as history. What really bothers me is at the risk of sounding egoistic is why didn’t anybody spot these things? I have taken on the thankless task of purging the page of these German apologetics, but where was everybody’s else? There was that was really wrong with that page such as its statement that Austria actually expected their “unacceptable” (their words, not mine) ultimatum to be accepted by the Serbs. True, the Serbs were not being straight forward in their reply, giving the false impression that they accepted far more in the ultimatum then was actually the case, but my view of the subject is this: If you give a ultimatum that is meant to be rejected, then you really don’t have anything to complain about when your ultimatum is in fact rejected. What we really need is that before somebody is allowed to contribute, they should be subjected to tests to see if they possess the requisite knowledge to write about the subject, don’t any axes to grind and are sane. This goes against the principle of allowing this place being open to all, but I think it solve not all, but at least, a great deal of the of the current problems if such a system were brought in.

It also all seems I’m rather rusty on the origins of the Second World War. Thanks for bringing up to speed up on that subject. That’s interesting that Romanian oil owing to transport problems was not as helpful to the German war effort as I had been led to believe, through that is helpful to hear that the British ‘economic offensive” in the Balkans was damaging to the Reich. I mentioned the “economic offensive” on the Neville Chamberlain page, but since Weinberg does not go into great detail about the subject, there was not much I could add. I know that Joachim von Ribbentrop called an angry press conference to complain about British “economic encirclement” of Germany in June 1939, but given that Ribbentrop was a colossal idiot and an extreme Anglophobe (after about 1937), I was not certain how much of this was due to genuine economic pain, and how much was to feigned outrage over the foreign policy of the country that Ribbentrop loved to hate. Through I am not up to the details of the German synthetic oil program, that’s makes sense that the way that resources allocated to it weakened other projects. The whole German war effort seems to me to be nothing more then a vast, muddled inefficient ball of confusion and chaos. Having said that much, projects like the V weapons and jet fighters were a complete waste of resources on weapons that were not war-winning. This is Richard Overy, and I am writing from memory here, so I may be wrong about the precise numbers, but I remember reading that for the costs of building one V-1, the Germans could have built about 1, 000 FW 190 fighters. Arguably, a 1, 000 FW 190s would have given the Germans a much bigger bang for their buck, so to speak then one V-1.

I would agree with the ultimate anti-American implications of the Z Plan. After all, in his Zwites Buch of 1928, Hitler had spoken of a great war for the mastery of the world with an Anglo-German combination taking on the United States, through admittly Hitler projects this war to sometime in the 1980s. However, there are great signs that by the late 1930s that what Hitler had seen as the work of his successors he himself wanted to do. In his diary, Goebbels speaks of Hitler telling him that he wanted to “see the Great Germanic Reich in his own lifetime”. So, I think that one say that the Z Plan was in part a response to Hitler’s realization that his fanciful project for an Anglo-German alliance was folly, and that he would have to fight Britain, either by herself or in alliance with the United States. This is something that Weinberg is good at pointing out that Hitler held the Soviet Union in complete contempt. Operation Barbarossa was only supposed to be a six-month affair, and then the Soviet Union was going to be finished. One could see how seriously Hitler was in his assessment of the Soviet Union in that on June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa began, he cut the German Army’s allocations of raw materials for 1942 in order to provide for a bigger Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for 1942. There’s a great deal of historical debate about whatever Barbarossa should be regarded as an anti-Soviet move, or as in the case of John Lukacs, an anti-British move. The truth seems to be that Barbarossa was both, and I argue that based on what you told me, that it should be regarded as anti-American move as while.

I’m sorry, I’m afraid I misunderstood you about human agency. Through, he doesn’t use the same terminology as you do about falling expectations, David Fromkin makes the same point in Europe’s Last Summer where he writes about the extremely pessimistic evaluation of the international situation held by the decision-makers in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the last years before the war, and through this is being vigorously contested right on the origins of the Great War page right now, there was a sense that history was against them in all the ways you already mentioned (diplomatic, military, economic, etc), and that only a war could reversal the trend. Actually, Fromkin mentions there were even some contemporaries who felt that way, and talks about the peace mission of Colonel House, President Wilson’s chief political fixer to Europe in 1914. What’s interesting about Colonel House’s mission is not he what he accomplished (which was nothing), but rather the date: May 1914. It’s interesting that even an American isolationist (as Wilson was in 1914) could sense there was something wrong with the fundamental political make-up of Europe, and send out his right-hand man to try stop what Wilson and company feared might be the impeding catastrophe.

A synthesis I think that ties in the falling expectations and human agency might be noting just incredibly mediocre the leadership of Germany, and even more Austria was. You just look at the Austro-German leadership of 1914, and one is stuck by just how second-rate all these men were. I already mentioned at the Great War page about how Wilhelm had almost certainly suffered brain damage owing to his botched birth, which would go a long way to explaining his erratic behaviour, which he displayed right from his earliest days. It was the world’s misfortune that Wilhelm inherited a job that he was supremely unqualified for because almost all of the people Wilhelm appointed to high positions were in varying ways incompetent because Wilhelm him was incompetent. A fish starts to rot at the head, and I think the same thing could be said about Germany.

And even those German leaders that did have some brains like Admiral Tirpitz, the “evil genesis” of the Second Reich as Gordon A. Craig once called him were very good at tactics, and totally wrong about strategy. Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet concept all sounds good on paper, but for it to work two preconditions were needed, namely 1) that the British not notice that the High Seas Fleet was being built against them and 2) that there be sufficient tensions between Britain and other world powers, so the British would have to spread their fleet all round the world, thereby giving the High Seas Fleet concentrated in the North Sea the edge. But of course, London noticed that because building a vast fleet of battleships is something that is very hard to conceal, and as I already pointed on the Great War page, the High Seas Fleet was “short-legged”, and thus could was only operate in the North Sea. And anyhow, the High Seas Fleet was simply way too big for the navies of France and Russia (and in the case of the Russian Baltic Fleet which been sunk by the Japanese in 1905, thus removing any danger for Germany in the Baltic for several years). As an Admiralty report pointed out as early as 1902, any war with the Franco-Russian combination would be primarily a land war, and all these millions of marks going to the Navy could only weaken the German Army (which indeed turned out to the case). And second, it turned out that Britain could settle all of the principle differences with France, Russia, the United States, etc, thus allowing the Royal Navy to be concentrated at Scapa Flow. Once the naval race began, the superior size of the British ship-building industry guaranteed that this was a race that Germany could only lose. So in nutshell, all Tirptiz managed to do was gratuitously alienate Britain before 1914, and commit Germany to spending millions of marks for a white elephant of a fleet whose most notable contribution in WWI was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. This entire Risk Fleet idea was folly right from the get-go, and that the fact that Germans would commit themselves and continue with the naval race that they were clearly losing even as 1908 speaks volumes about this how inept Germany’s leaders were. Anybody with any common sense would had the foresight to end the naval race once it become clear that they were losing like around 1908 rather then continuing to pour millions of marks into it right up to 1914 (through at a reduced rate after 1912 owning to the insistence of the Army), or better yet, avoid the naval challenge altogether. Admiral Tirpitz was all very clever in getting his way, but his overall vision was grossly defective. This is just an aside, but the fact that the Germans were willing to make the naval challenge proves how little they really felt threatened by Russia/France before 1912-if that had been the case, the Germans would had accepted the British offer of an alliance in 1899 (which they turned down flat) instead of engaging in the naval race. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other examples to support the contention that Germany and even more so, Austria had really terrible leaders. So I think, we can tie in your point about the crisis of falling expectations with human agency by saying that confronted with the crisis of falling expectations, the leaders of Austria and Germany could think of no better way of resolution other then war. Had those countries had more intelligent leaders then what they did in fact actually possessed, I think they could had managed things much better without resorting to war.

Through I would agree with your assessment about the crisis of falling expectations, but I think it really applies to the Central Powers. Certainly with Britain, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Grey felt he could manage whatever crisis that might come up, and through a carrot and stick policy persuade the Germans to stop trampling on everybody’s toes in their quest for world power. Through one would never know so from reading the Great War page as it is currently written, it is the Germans who drove the British into the arms of the French and Russians. Initially, it was British policy to stand in “splendid isolation”, and if they were going to ally with anybody, it was the Reich. There were two British offers of an alliance, one in 1899 and another in 1902, both refused by the Germans, who believed that they would get so more by building their Risk Fleet. Given German antagonism as expressed by such things as the naval challenge, I really do think that they had any other choice, but to reach out to old enemies like the French, and even more so, the Russians to exercise some weight to restrain the Germans. But I don’t think that the idea of reaching an accommodation with the Germans was abandoned. Hence, Grey’s policy at one moment leaning towards France, and the next moment leaning towards Germany-now, there was more leaning towards France that was because the French were more inclined to be friendly and the Germans in the form of the naval race to be less friendly. Through at the same time, Grey in 1914 was offering colonial concessions to try to settle Anglo-German antagonism, and in the July Crisis, was criticized by his own officials, and by the French and the Russians for trying to too hard to work with the Germans. A Russian diplomat was quoted as saying in the July Crisis: “War is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hesitated”. Through a common criticism, I don’t it is warranted since Grey finally did warned the Germans his country would go to war if they went to war, it did not stop them from going ahead anyhow.

I think your right about the decline of the Ottoman Empire as causing a power vacuum in the Balkans. After all, a recurring feature of the so-called Eastern Question, which haunted the chancelleries of Europe, at least since the Crimean War had an on-going rivalry. I have heard the First World War described as the War of Ottoman Succession, through for the life of me, I can’t remember where I read that. That’s probably going a little too far, since there was more at stake then the question of whatever the Balkans were going to be in either the Austrian or Russian sphere of influence. But having said that much, the end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe as occasioned by the Balkan Wars did have the effect of greatly intensifying the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry for spheres of influence in that part of Europe. It is notable the idea of launching a war to destroy Serbia first started to be advocated seriously in Vienna in the fall of 1912-just after the First Balkan War. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that the Austrians would launched their war in 1912 with German support had it not been for the British warning to Berlin that London would to war with the Reich if they did so. It was the British warning that led to the infamous German War Council of December 1912. Leaving aside the long-term results of the War Council, the consensus that German Navy was not strong to fight the Royal Navy in 1912 led to Germany applying pressure on the Austrians to call off the war. But nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the idea of a war was on the minds of the Austrian General Staff, which proposed war against Serbia a good 24 times between January 1913-January 1914. The Balkan power vacuum was still unfilled, and this together with what one could only the Russian war hysteria caused by the Russian Great Military Programme which gripped the German elite from after 1912 all, but guaranteed a war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is only a secondary cause of the war; even if he survived, a war would still occurred.

I would agree that Vienna should get much of a stick then does the much maligned Treaty of Versailles. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, after 1918, the Dual Monarchy was a vanished state. So, there weren’t any contemporary political points to be scored against blaming Austria for the war. Second, as I mentioned elsewhere, after 1918, the Germans undertook a massive deception campaign to re-write history. If interested in the details of this, check Holger Herwig’s essay “Clio Deceived”, which is on pages 5-44 from International Security, Fall 1987. The purpose behind this campaign was to discredit Versailles by proving that Germany was not responsible for the war, which thereby helping to the wider German campaign to do away with Versailles, especially Part V of the treaty, which had disarmed Germany. Most people don’t know, but when they stated everybody was at fault, they are merely repeating German propaganda from the 1920s-30s meant to do away with Versailles. The very fact that the line is everybody was at fault shows its propaganda purposes all too well. One might expect that the Germans would be repeating their WWI line that they were the victims of Allied aggression, but I think the purposes of doing a sales job, the Germans realized that that line would not do. A line that blames everybody for the war was much likely to appeal to British and French public opinion then a line that blames Britain and France exclusively. And of course, if everybody is at fault for the war, then Versailles, which blamed Germany would be in need of revising. A very successful propaganda campaign, whose pernicious effects are still with us today. Finally, I would suggest that there is a peculiar tendency on the part of the Western mind to feel guilt. I’m not certain why this is so, but it is a matter of fact that people in the West are far more likely to feel agonizing guilt over real and/or imagined wrongs then people are in other civilizations. Just look at the entire slavery reparations debate (now I think that slavery is very wrong, and I would be all for paying reparations for former slaves, if they were any still alive). But Muslims were just as active as slavers in Africa as the Westerners were (and indeed for a much longer period of time), but I don’t see any guilt in the Muslim world over this, or any Muslims calling their governments to pay reparations for all the Africans they enslaved in former times. If the United States, United Kingdom, France, etc should pay reparations for slavery, then by the same logic, so should Saudi Arabia and Oman, but I don’t see anybody calling upon those states to make amends for their part in the slave trade. This is particularly egregious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which only got around to abolishing slavery in 1962, so they might very well be former slaves from that country still alive today. Or look at the way people in the United States feel guilty over dropping the atomic bombs on the Japanese vs. the complete lack of any remorse, indeed active denial of all the various Japanese war crimes in Japan such as the Rape of Nanking, Burma Death Railroad, etc, etc. I list endless other examples, but I think you get the point. So, I think that everybody feel guilty over Versailles (which truth be told saved the peace by keeping Germany disarmed, at least until 1935) while letting the Austrians off the hook for the war they helped to cause reflects the peculiar tendency on the part of Westerners to always blame themselves for all the world’s problems. Just a pet theory on my part for what it is worth. Thank you for the thoughtful comments-we use more users like you!--[[User:A.S. Brown|A.S I sympathise with your frustration but I doubt that Wiki would agree. I think that there's a practical benefit in the huge amounts of dross that gets onto Wiki, which is that when you scrape it off, the people who get most annoyed are often the ones who have most to gain by going to work to refute the alterations. Of course there are the frauds but they are everywhere - the fools and ignoramuses get a chance to develop and I have some hope that Wiki can be good at that. It can drive you potty at times though! I have a hypothesis that people who get interested in military history start with derring-do at the front then get interested in management decisions, 'Hitler should have finished off Britain before starting Barbarossa' etc. It's only when we get to the point of wondering why people did the obviously wrong thing when it was obviously wrong that any idea of constraint emerges. Some of that is related to experience too; when we leave school or university the sheer difficulty of getting anything done is harder to understand than it is twenty years later. Some people on Wiki are at the stage of counting the bullets fired from a six-gun and others are musing about the myth of the cowboy. It's bound to be frustrating, especially when the wrongheaded merge with the fraudulent. I like your 'bonkers' idea about Wilhelm it explains a lot. The trouble with it for me though is that although it's easy to see that the structure of the higher management of the German Empire required a competent Emperor to function (not unlike Hitler's system of rule) I thing that that's how all hierarchical systems operate, more a means to an end than ends in themselves - hence politics and politicians being universally loathed. Barbarossa - 'anti' everyone in fact. From Hitler's point of view it was an elegant answer to several questions - how to end the war with Britain, rob the USSR of its commodities, break free of the economic constraints created by both enemies' existence so as to get ready for an inevitable showdown with the USA and implement the ideological aims of the nazi movement. I like 'Luxury Fleet' better! Of course this only holds because Germany lost the war. The strategic logic of the fleet looks barmy to us because of this. I wonder if the WWI fleet acted as a distraction for a large portion of British resources, like the Tirpitz did in the Big Two? To achieve this it had to be big enough to be a threat but not necessarily big enough to stand a chance in a fleet action. Whether this was the real intent once war began or not I don't know but the fleet certainly became a significant influence on the economy before the war. "War is inevitable and by the fault of England...." Equally, had Britain been more belligerent the Russians and French may have been less conciliatory. One thing that's obvious from reading Stephenson is that the international scene was becoming less and less stable, particularly after 1909 and that as each cisis abated, the prospect of peaceful resolution of the next one diminished. I fear that by mid-1914 war increasingly began to look like the continuation of peace by other means. Gavrilo Princip in this view is analogous to Marinus van der Lubbe - a godsend. Despite her dreadful prose style I found Annika Mombauer's book on the historiography of the Treaty of Versailles rather interesting. [I'll stop now as the computer is playing up. Be back tomorrow]Keith-264 (talk) 21:43, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you again for the thoughtful remarks.

Of course, your right about the amount of dross (and there you are currently suffering from a surplus of it right now) does provide a spur to those of us who are more committed to providing more accurate information. I shouldn’t really complain because it was the very fact that I happened to browse the Ribbentrop article four years ago, noticed that there some major omissions, and that the information that was there was frequently wrong (i.e. the page had Ribbentrop joining the German Foreign Office in 1916, which he didn’t get his first diplomatic position until 1934 when Hitler appointed him to the very misnamed office of Commissioner for Disarmament) which led me to the conclusion that I could do better. Through it is somewhat frightening when a page manages to make it to B class, in spite of very wrong information as page on Neville Chamberlain did. Through I since taken this out, but the page stated until last year that in spite of demands from the opposition, Chamberlain refused to spend any money on defence, which is wrong on both counts. Now, I suppose what could count the “Churchill Camp” and the “Eden Group” in the Conservative Party as a form of opposition, but until late 1938, Labour always voted against increasing defence spending, and thereafter, went over to merely abstaining on defence votes. And in fact, the Chamberlain government did increase defence spending from 1937 on, until by July 1939 Britain was spending 50% of the national revenues on the military, which is an extraordinary high level of defence spending in peacetime for a democratic state. Now, in saying all this, I’m not endorsing the line usually taken by Chamberlain’s defenders that appeasement was a crafty stratagem to buy time for rearmament because the evidence doesn’t support that thesis. At least until early 1939, and then even afterwards, through in a modified form, the aim was to reach a “general settlement” with Germany, not to go to war with Germany. Rearmament was in part meant to prepare for a worse case scenario of war should a “general settlement” prove impossible to attain, but in main, it was meant as the counterpart of appeasement. To reach the “general settlement”, there was going to be a carrot (e.g. territorial changes in Germany’s favour in Central Europe, restoring lost African colonies, some sort of free trade agreement with the British Empire) and the stick (i.e. to possess such a margin of military superiority to deter Germany from choosing war as an option). The whole point behind rearmament was not so to prepare for war as to stop a war by means of deterrence. So, I am not trying to rehabilitate Chamberlain here, but the point is that the popular claim that he refused to spend any money on defence is nonsense, and an article could reach B status despite containing such inaccuracies I find rather appalling. Now, of course, I know this happened. The claim that the Chamberlain government wouldn’t spend a penny for defence fits in with the popular stereotype so well that I think most people won’t even think of questioning it. Now, to be fair, the claim that Chamberlain did have rather naïve ideas about Hitler does have considerable factual basis, but on the other hand, there was some distrust of Hitler, since why else would Chamberlain have adopted a carrot and stick policy of appeasement and rearmament as the best way of saving the peace as opposed to a carrot only policy of appeasement? After all, you do not spend 50% of your national revenues on defence (and much of that going into radar stations and bombers) if are convinced that Hitler is a man of peace. All I suppose do is stay cool and work hard at clearing away the accumulated dross, through I must confess that like you, I sometimes find it a maddening process.

Yes, I think hypothesis about the armchair generals who for whom devising the strategy of winning wars from the comfort of their living rooms (or whatever they happened to be) explains a lot. It is only when you put yourself into the position of the men in the spot and stop using hindsight too much that history starts to make more sense. Plus, it only helps if one understands logistics. To take an easy example, General Wilhem von Thoma visited North Africa in early 1941 and reported to the German High Command that the current port facilities only support four German divisions plus the existing Italian forces. So, in what can only be described as indicating a complete contempt for logistics as a factor in war, the Germans sent 7 divisions to North Africa. So in trying to provide for a corps that was at least 3 divisions too big for the ports in Libya to handle, plus all of the Italian divisions, and coupled with air and naval attacks from Malta on convoys to North Africa made for a logistical nightmare. So even if the Axis forces did win at El Alamein, it would not have made any difference in the long run, and probably not even in the short run. All that would happened would have that an overstretched supply line running all the way from Tripoli would have been more overstretched and overwhelmed, and the Axis forces would have defeated elsewhere in Egypt. So all these fanciful scenarios of the Germans overrunning the Middle East if they had won at El Alamein are not supported by the evidence. Now, admittedly if they had captured Alexandria with its port facilities intact, and they obtained sufficient naval and air superiority in the Mediterranean to run convoys to Alexandria, then that might have been a different story, but I think those two ifs are very big ifs.

I would agree with your statement that the incompetence is unfortunately the norm, not the exception, but I might counter your suggestion here, that to paraphrase Tolstoy, all incompetent leaders are incompetent in their own way. Of course, the analogy doesn’t hold up all while because if all happy families are alike in the same way, then not all competent leaders are alike. Through not disagreeing with your point about how authoritarian systems breed mediocrities, I think one can say that everyone is incompetent in his or her own special way, and that some leaders are more likely to blunder into war then others. Now of course, I am not tying to suggest that are some rules one can follow can one to success, because I don’t history supports such rules. After all, some generals lose a battle because they are too brave, and go rushing in where prudence and caution is called for, whereas other generals lose a battle because they are too timid, and either move too slowly or don’t move at all where speed and decisiveness are called for. So sometimes in war, it is a good idea to rush in, and at others times, it is not such a good idea to rush in, so there are no firm “rules” from history about what course to follow. Now, the point here I made here about war applies to politics in general. So, perhaps they happened to be a collection of particularly second-rate leaders in charge of Germany and Austria in1914 made for a war that another collection of equally second-rate leaders would have avoided.

Barbarossa-Germany against the world. Through I would disagree with any of your points about the reasons for the operation, one can’t but wonder at times, if an additional and only secondary cause was the streak of mindless, nihilist violence always present in National Socialism. After all, I think it striking when reviewing Hitler Youth pamphlets from the war how they always spoke of the “eternal struggle”, implying that the Second World War was not the final war, but only the first of many. It fits in well with Hitler’s remarks that seemed to envision Germany being in a state of more or less permanent war.

True, in hindsight, much appears as folly. I don’t believe that during World War I that the High Seas Fleet seemed to distract any sufficient % of British resources. After all, in 1914, the Grand Fleet already had a commanding lead over the High Seas Fleet, so it really wasn’t necessary to build any more dreadnoughts. I am working from memory here, but I think that British shipyards finished off the last of the dreadnoughts ordered before the war, and that there were not much new battleships commissioned after 1915, which would suggest that the Admiralty already felt they had enough to defeat the High Seas Fleet in a fleet action. Obviously, as long as the Germans had a “fleet in being” in Kiel that served to tie down the Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow, but the reversal also held, that as the British had a “fleet in being” in Scapa Flow that served to tie down the High Seas Fleet. But this apparent statement benefited the British far more then the Germans. The practical result of this statement was that the High Seas Fleet didn’t stand a chance of winning a fleet action (note how quickly the High Seas Fleet turned back to Germany after meeting the Grand Fleet at Jutland), which meant the British had naval mastery over the world’s oceans and could blockade Germany. So I think the British benefited far more in practical terms from their pre-war investment in their Navy then did the Germans. The Grand Fleet allowed a blockade to be imposed, whereas all the High Seas Fleet managed to do of lasting importance was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. In real terms, the High Seas Fleet was a white elephant that didn’t bring in any sort of strategic benefit through its existence. The only way the High Seas Fleet could justify itself was to inflict enough damage on the Royal Navy to break the blockade, and it failed to do that. Even by its original pre-war purposes, the High Seas Fleet failed. It failed to either to intimate Britain into choosing a pro-German foreign policy course (indeed, had exactly the opposite effect from the one intended), and it failed to deter Britain from going to war with Germany in 1914. I have spoken of the dangers of hindsight, but in this sense, the fact that the High Seas Fleet was a failure in its original purposes was certainly clear to contemporaries, so why the Germans persisted with such a losing policy could only be explained by their grossly incompetent leadership.

Good point that the hope of obtaining British support led Russia and France to being more conciliatory then may otherwise have been the case. Through I find that Grey’s efforts to be even-handed were somewhat misguided in the sense it assumed that the Franco-Russian bloc was equally at fault as the Austro-German bloc, but that is all easy to say in hindsight. Now to be fair, had only be Bethmann-Hollweg running Germany, the British warning of July 29th that Britain would enter the war on the Allied side probably had stopped the war. I think more of the confusion on the Great War page is caused by the fact that Bethmann-Hollweg was all for a war with France and Russia in 1914, but not with Britain. Bethmann-Hollweg happened to have much respect for British power, and one of his political preconditions for fighting a victorious war was British neutrality. It is notable that Bethmann-Hollweg’s first and only efforts to stop the war occurred after his meeting with Goshen on July 29th. But at the same time, Bethmann-Hollweg was not running the show, and the German Army, which happened to have little respect for British power, proceeded to turn over and decided to press on with the war.

Again, I think that you having some very good points about the increasing dire expectations that came to colour decision-makers after 1909. I don’t disagree with anything you are saying here, or perhaps a better way of putting it, is my differences of opinion are more of kind rather then degree. I would agree entirely with the idea of an international climate that was becoming less and less friendly towards peace, but I would argue that the war didn’t have to happen, and it was the decisions of the leaderships of Austria-Hungary and Germany that tipped the scales. Having said that much, I would agree that Princip played the same historical role as van der Lubbe a godsend to provide an excuse for something already decided. And let’s not even consider all of the flaws on the Reichstag Fire, where everybody keeps on insisting that it was impossible for van der Lubbe, one guy with matches to burn down the Reichstag all on his own. First thing, van der Lubbe didn’t burn down the Reichstag, all he managed to manage down was the assembly area under the dome. And second, how could one guy with matches do all that? Simple: set the curtains under fire, which is one of the best ways (or so I have heard) to getting a good fire going. One of these days, I will have to back to that page, and try to persuade the assembled contributors of the nonsense of all their wild-eyed conspiracy theories featuring secret tunnels, and the even more mysterious “self-igniting fluid” that supposedly causes objects covered with it to spontaneously combust (no chemist in 1933 or today has ever heard of this “self-igniting fluid”), and try to convince them of the merits of the more common sense theory that one guy with matches via settling the curtains afire could easily turn set off the blaze entirely by himself. That's not going to be an easy battle. But back to the main point, Princip and van der Lubbe have much in common, in inadvertently helping the powers that be with their plans. Thanks for pointing that out.

I almost finished Mombauer’s Moltke and the Origins of the First World, so I have sympathy for you with The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus'. Thanks again for the interesting conversation.--A.S. Brown (talk) 01:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC) Greetings A.S. Brown, how are things? I've been away for a while but I have reached the last few pages of Stevenson so I will have something to report soon.Keith-264 (talk) 22:05, 23 July 2009 (UTC) Keith, please accept my apologies for my tardiness in replying here. Events have not taking a good turn as of late, with yet another death in the family. My nephew left this world just as soon as he entered it, so I have been doing my best to help my poor baby sister. That compared with some other unfavourable recent events have left little time to the necessary research for another bout with my antagonists on the WWI page. But since my sister seems a little better, I’ll suppose its time to go hit the books for the next round. Thanks for the info.--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC) Apologies for the belated reply.

Condolences, I hope that good company and the passage of time is of help.

I finished Stephenson which I found informative but bland. He concluded that the state of armaments became much more important after 1909, partly because Russia stabilised and had an economic boom which meant that it could bounce back from the drubbing and revolution of 1904-5 and surge past the earlier level of armaments and also because the Euros began to synchronise diplomatic and military readiness. When the Entente powers really decided to put some effort into rearmament the logic of German and Austro-Hungarian behaviour became more and more short term. The Balkan Wars really tore it because Austria's southern counterweight to Serbia turned into an accession of strength to the Serbs just as the Rumanians and Russians became more formidable. He concludes that the effect of armaments and readiness becoming more important was in the fact that the Germans especially saw their margin of military superiority diminishing. They could calculate that if they were ever going to change military potential into reality then it had to be before 1917 when the Russians would become unbeatable. He sees a period when a power has had military superiority but is being surpassed as more risky than one where there is a general increase in armaments. In the meantine I read 'Bloody Victory' by William Philpott, which was a good synthesis of secondary sources about the Battle of the Somme written in ghastly prose. The French army gets its due (at Verdun as well) which in English writing is long overdue; although he is not immune to French chauvinism, even as he criticises British writers for insularity. The paucity of sources about the German army is evident although this isn't his fault given how little has been translated. He concludes that the Somme was the beginning of the end for the German army and that the small capture of ground at the time is less important than the damage inflicted on the Germans by them trying to hold it (the Germans were out-Verdunned). He sees the withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line as something forced on the Germans by the battle and that it was an expedient with limited value, since the British and French forced the Germans off commnding ground on either side of the Line in 1917 (Arras, Vimy, Chemin des Dames and Messines-Passchendaele). He also links German naval and air strategy (unresricted U-boat warfare and bombing London) to the army's losses in 1916 (principally caused by the Somme) and the consequent desperation of the Germans to stave of defeat. On the whole I agree, although I don't share his bitchiness about Haig or his disdain for the quality of the British army. I think that its methods were more a matter of what could be done with the equipment it had, rather than that many of its officers were overpromoted due to the big expansion of the army since 1914. He criticises the British for large numbers of small attacks between the big pushes but doesn't criticise German penny-packet counter-attacks or the French for resorting to this practice in September. If all three armies use a method it can't be put down to British obtuseness. I think it more to do with the need to exploit success colliding with serious supply difficulties as the allies armies advanced further into the beaten zone and the weather deteriorated. Now I'm having a rest from the Great War by reading ' The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway' by Alfred C. Mierzejewski. Best wishes to you and your family. Keith-264 (talk) 19:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Keith

Thank you for your kind words. Much appreciated! I’m been swimming in a sea of troubles without end, and thank you again for your kind words. Please accept my apologies for my lateness in replying; you have something interesting to say, and with the problems I’ve facing it is hard to think the time to type something decent in response.

Mommbauer in her book on Moltke, through of course focusing mostly on the German side of things, say much the same thing, namely that the arms race which the Germans themselves had started had swung decisively against the Reich, which created the sense of crisis and of falling behind that so governed German thinking in the years immediately prior to 1914. Through I don’t think this has attracted enough comment, but at least in part the German reaction to falling behind the Entente in the arms race was due to the fact that they were assuming that the Entente thought like Germans-if you are in the lead, you exploit it mercilessly. Lots of people are like that-it is notable in World War II that the Germans always accused the Allies of seeking to do to them what they were themselves were doing to others. I think it highly characteristic of the alarmist hyperbole in Berlin caused by the growth in Russian strength that when in 1912, some trees in the Chancellery garden got knocked by the wind, Bethmann Hollweg refused to allow new trees to be planted under the grounds that the Russians would be occupying this place in a few years time, so it was not the worth the effort. Contrary to the assertions of my opponents, it is generally accepted by most historians today that German thinking was governed by the 1917 deadline when the Russian Great Military Programme was supposed to be completed (through even in a counter factual scenario where war did not break out in 1914, who knows if the Russians would have made the 1917 deadline or not-the Czarist government was not precisely a model of efficiency). Even Hillgruber, for all of his German nationalist agenda (which ultimately destroyed his reputation as a historian, but that is another story), in his “calculated risk gone wrong” theory of 1914 conceded that the Germans were obsessed with irrational fears generated by the Russian Great Military Programme, and felt that something drastic needed to be done to readdress the perceived shifting of power before 1917 came along. As for the Austrians, it was the Balkan Wars that really seemed to have unhinged them. This is something that I don’t think has attracted enough comment, but with the destruction of Turkish power in the Balkans with the First Balkan War meant that not only was Serbs not going to be distracted from supporting their “committeemen” in Macedonia any longer, but the possibility of a two front war with Turkey and Austria not longer existed. Perhaps, if the Austrian effort to build up Bulgaria as the new power in the Balkans had paid off, then maybe the Austrian neurosis with Serbia would not have gotten out of hand, but since Bulgaria was defeated even faster in the Second Balkan War then Turkey was in the First, that whole idea went by the wayside. Strange that Czar Ferdinand should be known, as “Foxy” Ferdinand-one would think that a leader that led his country into such a debacle as he did in 1913 should be known by different epithets.

A good book about the Somme from the German perspective is Through German Eyes: the British and the Somme 1916 by Christopher Duffy. It is as far I know the only book in English that is devoted to this topic, and it should probably been better known as it presents a much needed revisionist look at the German experience of the Somme. That battle ran from July to November, and it simply not acceptable that historians cite the admittedly disastrous opening of the battle on July 1st for the British as proof that the Somme was a German triumph. Through I don’t think Haig is ever going to be regarded as one of Britain’s greatest generals, but it is time for a reassessment of the whole “lions led by donkeys” stereotype. After all, the Germans did lose the war (through it was not well after 1945 did the Germans finally admit to that rather their much beloved “stab in the back legend”), so the Allies must had been doing something right. In part, I think this anti-Allied bias which affects the work of a great many British and American historians is due to
 * 1) The Somme was a horrific battle (but then all battles are horrific, this one just happened very big and occured in modern times), so many people from our more refined time find it hard to justify.
 * 2) The insidious anti-Westernism of many Western historians, which led them to instinctively declare that whatever their own country did, was wrong, and whatever their enemy was right.
 * 3) The German Army had a more markedly intellectual bend then did the British Army did at the time, with some British officers in WWI taking what only be described as a frankly anti-intellectual stance. This is a particular bias of historians that often does not attract notice, but a great many historians are biased towards intellectuals or even pseudo-intellectuals like John F. Kennedy because they are people like them. To use the example of another American President, Woodrow Wilson enjoys an entirely undeserved good press in large part because he was an academic, so historians like someone like themselves. Personally, I think a great deal of the German military writing by Clausewitz, Ludendorf and company to be pretentious, boring, tendentious, long-winded and at times almost unreadable (I had just finished reading On War this spring and summer after a particulary epic struggle), but nonetheless, this tradition leads a great many historians to rate the German Army higher then what it should be.

Turning back to the main subject, I would be inclined towards agreeing with Philpott’s assessment of the Reich living on borrowed time after 1916, with the net graducally closing in, and the need to restort to increasing desperate expediates to strave off defeat. The logisictic constraints which affected so affected Allied strategy and tactics in the war usually gets passed over, mostly because a topic like logistics is boring subject, which thus leds to armchair generals declaring that those people must had been stupid (no, of course, some of the time they were stupid). I’m not entirely up on the history of the Great War, but I know there have been several revisionist works written on the Allied war effort in recent years, so I should one day get caught up.

Thanks for your support and comments! --A.S. Brown (talk) 04:56, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Saddened as I am to hear that things aren't getting better I can't offer anything practical (as I prefer to do) so I hope that as you swim through your sea of troubles, you find the desert island where Captain Jack Sparrow was marooned with the beach, the coconut palms and the rum stash.

I am reading 'The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation' by Avner Offer which has much of interest, some of which is about the Great War. The congeries of racism, English settlement of the Pacific rim, the grain frontier and metropolitan pretentions to enlightenment principles outside the metropolis are getting a good airing. It's most disappointing to read that in the Dominions and the west coast of the US, racial exclusion was one of the first policies followed to humour working class radicalism as the franchise widened. Offer suggests that it wasn't just the prod dogs in Nireland who saw participation in the war as a way to entrench chauvinistic privilege. Curiously, the similarity in the quantity of Australian, Canadian and Indian war dead didn't redound to putative Indian migrants' advantage (medals and all). As for the Somme (Verdun the other way round) a look at relief maps (there are a few on t'interweb) and the interaction of weapons with it, say more about what happened than most writers. I've got Duffy's book which I found better than I'd hoped. It encouraged me to see the second half of 1916 as the watershed in the development of Britain's continental sized army rather than the battle of Arras. You might have noticed that operational-strategic analyses of the German campaigns at Verdun and the Somme (with the exception of the excellent Robert Foley) are conspicuous by their absence, in English anyway. I suspect that it is this vacuum which allows the English Literature version of the Great War to persist. I'm considering asking for Terry Zuber's book on the Schlieffen plan or Mombauer's book on Moltke for a Xmas present, Mombauer might be more informative but her prose is dreadful. At least Offer can write in sentences and make a discussion of the unusual nature of British land tenure nearly interesting.

I have a copy of the Paret translation of Clausewitz which may be more attractive than the Pelican paperback version I've been getting round to since 1977. I have also got a cheapo copy of the British Official History of the Sicily and Italy campaign for 1943-44 to look at Operation Baytown, having read in Weinberg's big book that Montgomery deliberately dragged his feet. How accellerating the advance of one infantry division on land would be a better thing than sending several direct to Salerno by sea Weinberg doesn't say. The truth doesn't fit the legend so he's printed that. I wonder what Liberty Valance would make of it?Keith-264 (talk) 15:54, 6 September 2009 (UTC) Have I commended this to your attention? http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/IS3202_pp155-191_Lieber.pdf it certainy leaves the pro-Germans with something to think about.Keith-264 (talk) 11:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Dear Keith Please accept my most humble apologies again for my tardiness in replying. I didn’t realize your post was here until I a few days ago. Thanks for the words of support. One does have to tough with these ways, and put some steel in one’s soul. Through I do wound not mind Captain Jack as company, but I rather be marooned with Keira Knightley, if I had choice about the matter. But thank again, thank you for your kind words.

Yes, that is a little talked about chapter (at least until recently) in the Pacific Rim in the early years of the last century about the relationship between racism and working class politics. Contrary to Marx, being on the bottom of the social scale does not (at least not automatically) build solidarity. Through to be fair, most of the progressive intelligentsia, much to the embarrassment of their spiritual heirs today, were firm advocates of Asian exclusion. That’s caused something of mild scandal when in Canada they put a statue of the suffragette leader Emily Murphy, and then somebody inconveniently pointed out Murphy like the rest of the suffragette leaders were avid advocates of Chinese exclusion, a problem that simply solved by ignoring it, and even worse, re-writing history to say Murphy was not really against Chinese immigration (trust me on this, Murphy’s rather violent philippics against the “fishy blooded” Chinese do not make for pleasant reading today). True, that was against the Chinese, not the Indians, but I think the exclusion of Indian immigration has to seen as part of the wider efforts to ensure white only immigration in the Dominions and the United States. To take that a step further, the same thing happened on the East Coast of the United States, where in cities like New York in the 19th century, the most viciously anti-black elements tended to be the Irish immigrants whose conditions of poverty was only marginally above the blacks. The anti-draft riots of 1863 in New York, which holds the dubious distinction of being the bloodiest riots in US history, which besides for being a protest by largely Irish working class for whom the burden of the draft fell disproportionately on, was also an anti-black pogrom with rioters going out of their hand to loot and burn down black churches, homes and businesses. Now admittedly, this was exacerbated by the strains of the Civil War and it would be a mistake to treat the draft riots of 1863 as the norm, but that the anti-black prejudices of the Irish in the 19th century America were fairly notorious in their own day, and can probably be best explained as an effort that as low as the Irish were, at least they had someone to whom they were superior to.

But turning back to anti-Asian racism in the Pacific Rim and your point about the more or less equal burdens borne by the Dominions and India, and the exclusion politics practiced against Indian immigration, one wonders how much this helped to undermine Imperial idea in India. Since 1947, the British Raja has been painted in the blackest of colours by historians in both India and Pakistan, and the entire period of British rule is portrayed quite falsely as a long national struggle for independence. Of course, it is true that British rule never acquired unqualified acceptance from all segments of Indian society, and throughout the Raja there was some sort of opposition going on, but if the truth be told, by the end of the 19th century, a very large segment of Indian society had be won over to acceptance of British rule. After all, thousands of Indians fought and died in the Great War, and through German-Turkish efforts to stir up revolts did enjoy some success with the Muslim population (for whom many the sultan in Constantinople was also the Caliph), even then the great jihad the Germans and Turks hoped to see with millions of Muslims rising up, and thereby forcing the British to send their Army to India did not occur. The closely they ever came to success with the Singapore mutiny of 1914. With the Hindus and Sikhs, the Germans had less success. Now of course, probably the most important thing that undermined acceptance of the legitimacy of British rule was that if you were a smart Indian, even one who had to a large extent assimilated British culture, you could get so far, and then you would hit a glass cleaning, which could not be passed. To take an example, the young Gandhi was a lawyer who wore elegant Savile Row suits, had his moustache done in the Edwardian style and considered himself a honorary Englishman, but during a infamous train ride in South Africa, was forced into the third class seats despite buying a first class ticket because when push came to shove, he was still a WOG, and would always have to sit in the third class section. Now of course, those were the values of those times, so a counter-factual speculation about how things might had worked out had different values prevailed is futile, but one can a case had the Indians enjoyed the same status as the French Canadians and the Afrikaners as basically equals within the Empire, then perhaps things might had worked out differently.

But returning to the main point, there is no doubt that the discrimination suffered by the Indians as regards immigrating to the Dominions did play its part in convincing that segment of the Indian population who were initially favourable to British rule that under the Empire they would always be WOGs. Which of course brings up the basic contradiction of British India after 1858 when it became a Crown colony, namely that a liberal democratic state ruled millions of people in illiberal manner. No, of course, when I say illiberal, I don’t mean to say that British rule was a rule of terror because it that not the case at all (except maybe for the exceptional case of the Indian mutiny, which for some of its participants on both sides was seen as a race war), but rather it was non-democratic. A Governor-General appointed by London had power over millions of people, who had no absolutely say over what he did. Even then, traditional forms of rule in India were non-democratic, which no doubt explains why the Raja went out of its way to emphasize continuity in ruling India (after all the Mughal empire had been founded by Muslim Turkic invaders from Central Asia in the 16th century, so for most Hindu Indians the replacement of Mughal rule by British rule was one foreign occupation being replaced by another), so this contradiction between a liberal state ruling illiberally in India did not really come to a fore until a more or less westernized middle class emerged. In a way, those 19th century British civil servants in India who sought to westernize at least elements of Indian society in a way quite unknowingly helped to dig the grave of the Raja.

But even, as I think you have rightly pointed out, in the First World War, all of the Dominions sought to use the war to assert more autonomy within the Empire, so the centrifugal forces within the Empire would have come into play anyhow. Even before 1914, one see that in a way, as in for example Canadian defence policies which must rank as one of the worse cases of free-loading in the world. Essentially, Canadian defence policy before 1914 can reduced to two principles, which were one vociferous protests at any hint that London might not defend Canada against the Americans, and two just as vociferous protests against the idea that Canada should one even cent for its defence. The Canadian Army is descended from the Permanent Active Force Militia, which was created in 1855, so thus the Canadian Army is 12 years older then Canada itself. In this is not entirely unusual that the Army should be older then the state. After all, the People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 60th anniversary this October, but the somewhat misnamed People’s Liberation Army dates it’s founding in 1927. But the Canadian Army is unusual, if does not count the farcical Fennian raids of 1866, that it never saw action before the state was created. The only reason why the Permanent Active Force Militia was created was because in 1854, almost the entire British garrison was pulled out of Canada to fight in the Crimean War, and expecting a long war, the Permanent Active Force Militia was created in 1855 to guard the frontiers against the Americans. Even then, this was only done because certain American newspapers suggested in their editorials, that since Britain was engaged in a war with Russia, now was a great time to seize Canada. Upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris in 1856, the government in Canada would had all too happy to disband the Militia, and go back to the old system where the British Army took care of defence, but the government in London seeing a great chance to get out of the costs of defending Canada, refused to send back the troops that had been pulled out in 1854. Through the last British troops were not pulled out until 1906, with the exception of the war scare of 1861, the British garrison in Canada was always a fraction of what it been before the Crimean War. And so in this way, Canadian politicians were very reluctantly forced to keep the Permanent Active Force Militia in being. The point is that 19th century Canadian politicians, for all talk in pride in the Empire were most unwilling to pay their share, and put their own local interests (i.e. not paying for their defence) ahead of any common imperial good.

I’m been a bit suspicious of Duffy since his book Red Storm on the Reich, which I found a very good operational history of the usually overlooked Eastern Front, but I was bit jarred at the way he used his book as a partisan shot in the Historikerstreit, where he heeds Hillgruber’s call for historians to “identify” with German troops (his bibliography lists books which show he was aware of the moral problems that this poses, but there is no sign of it in his book), and he seems to imply that the end that Germany has the right to retake her lost eastern lands. I had a look at Duffy’s book about the German experience of the Somme, which looks interestingly, so perhaps I am judging an author too much by one of his books. However, I would agree with you, Keith, that the legend of the BEF (lambs led to their slaughter by donkeys) is a remarkably persistent one that is not going to die easily. I say legend, because legend means a story that through not true, has some factual basis. Something like the Trojan War qualifies as a legend because it is probably based on something that actually happened, but has been distorted in the re-telling too many times over the centuries. Whereas as a myth would be something based on something that did not happen at all like the story of the Titans vs. the Olympians. With the possible exception of John Terraine, I don’t anything seriously considers Haig to be one of Britain’s better generals, so there is an element of truth to the English version of the Great War, but this whole picture of the entire British officer corps in the Great War as a gang of blinkered, hopelessly stupid Colonel Blimp types really needs to go. I think part of the problem here is the sort of lies people are most likely to believe are things that people predisposed to believe in already, and this since for better or for worse, Colonel Blimp is the best known British army officer of the 20th century, everybody accepts that the English version of the Great War. Some of the historians I have met in my travels happened to be revisionists on the Western Front, so perhaps I could get a reading list out of them on this subject.

I found Mombauer’s book on Moltke, through it was a struggle and it reads way too much like a PhD dissernation that it once was. That’s usually a bad sign when it comes to readiblity; every dissernation that I have ever read has ever been turned into a book seems to be turgid. Most of the book is actually about the typically convoluted structure of the German decision-making progress in the Second Reich, and civil-military relations. But that is a probably a result of the fact that if Eichmann was the banality of evil, then Moltke was the banality of banality. He’s an important person, who probably more then anybody helped to cause the Great War, but of himself, he’s not really a subject of interest. Not all great deeds are done by great men. All I have read by Zuber is an article by him in History Today, which seemed readable enough, but always couched in the sort of aggressive-defensive lanuage one usually gets when you have somebody presenting a novel thesis. However, his basic claim that the Schlieffen plan as usually presented as a fully thought-out plan was a bascially a post 1918 invention by former German general staff officers who wished to explain why away Germany’s failure to achieve victory in 1914 by saying they had a perfect plan for victory, which was unfortunately ruined by Moltke seems sound enough to me. Interestingly the way that the Germans always addressed the casuses of their defeat in terms of how they lost the Great War rather then how the Allies won it.

Thank you for the offer about Clausewitz, but I think for the moment I had my fill of him. I set myself the goal of reading Clausewitz, the best known military philosopher of the West, and Sun Tzu,, the best known military philosopher of the East, and I am so happy that after a three year struggle, I have completed that task. Sun’s cryptic epigraphs were much easier on the eyes then Clausewitz’s turgid prose, but there was much Intellectual weight to Clausewitz. I do understand that the Paret version is more readable then the Pelican version (which is the one my sister got him for X-mas), which in it turn is more readable then the German original, which is so unreadable that even Germans prefered to read Clausewitz in English. The Pelican version is actually an odd sort of book, since has a running commentary by Anatol Rapoport whose anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear agenda that somewhat dates the Pelican version as a product of the late 60s, where he essentially says this book is garbage. Right now, I have finished off A Writer At War, an account of Vasily Grossman’s time as a war correspondent on the Eastern Front. Nothing new, but there is a real poetry and humanity to Grossman’s writing, so one gets a sense of what the war was like for your average Red Army soldier, even through Grossman was prone to idealizing Private Ivan. Besides for that, I have almost done with Auschwitz and the Allies by Martin Gilbert, which somewhat belies its title by focusing more on the British reaction to the Holocaust then the American (which perhaps reflects the fact that Gilbert is a British historian). Gilbert is reasonably fair on this issue, but still the juxtaposition between on this day, this many people were gassed at Auschwitz and at the same some bureaucrat in Washington or London was writing about how we can not take in Jewish refugees makes for distressing reading. Gilbert very good on the how, but I think he falls short a bit on the why. One gets the sense that through the Holocaust was known, it did not really sink in. Plus for the British, there was the fear of another Arab revolt in Palestine like that which took place between 1936-39, a war that has usually overlooked, even through by 1938, there were more British divisions in Palestine then were in all of the United Kingdom. There doesn’t seem any doubt to me that the near fanatical way that various British officials sought to uphold the White Paper of 1939 was the price of peace in the Palestine Mandate. I have started the Oxford History of Britain, which is a book that has been sitting so long on my bookshelf that I don’t have to dust it for prints.

The Official history of the Italian campaign sounds interesting. Yes, legends do die hard. Most interesting would be Liberty Valance’s take on that matter. Thank you very much for all your kind words and interesting thoughts--A.S. Brown (talk) 03:21, 25 September 2009 (UTC).

Weinberg
Greetings Mr Brown, I hope that things haven't got worse even if some aspects can't get better. Thank you for the informative piece above. The case of India seems to demonstrate that Empire cannot be benign, that 'reforms' to the system can only ameliorate the second-class status of the ruled. Turning the Raj and the Empire into a place where Ghandi wouldn't have his property (the first-class ticket) stolen because of a characteristic that 'transcended' money, would have meant putting India, South Africa and Britain onto the same legal footing, thus ending the Empire. Historians tend to say that the nazi regime would never have settled down because of cumulative radicalisation but the empires like this which lasted give one pause.

The suggestion that the Dominions were enthusiastic to go to war in 1914 because of an ulterior motive like that of the prods in Ireland as well as individual sentiment, suggests to me that the inner contradiction of thieving land where there aren't many natives and plundering them where there are requires a 'respectable' justification once the system moves beyond piracy. The Raj may not have been as grotesque as Reichskommissariat Ukraine but in the last quarter of the C19th about a million people a year died of famine. The potato blight in Ireland and the 1930's famine in Ukraine look like birthday presents by comparison. Those Canadian cheapskates rather remind me of that shower further south who did the same thing a hundred years earlier. I've been wondering if it also motivated the British in their rush for an American protectorate in 1940. It would explain the government's craven subservience over American crimes against humanity ever since.

I remember reading Duffy's book 'Red Storm...' and thought that he must have been an army officer who needed to make a few anti-Soviet poses for effect and that on the whole he shouldn't give up the day job. I'm half way through the Official History for 1916 (Vol 2) and although it is mainly about the British army, there are enough comments from German and French accounts to bear out Duffy's conclusions about what improved in the British army as well as demonstrating that things did. His quotes from German sources about British artillery and air power are borne out by the OH and even more by the RAF OH. John Buckley and others have pointed out that Allied offensive efforts in Normandy 1944 which were criticised for so long were more successful than German ones going the other way. Having read through the account of August 1916 (which was perhaps the German army's supreme effort during the battle) it's also clear that they had the same difficulties as the Anglo-French and didn't overcome them to the same extent. There are lots of descriptions of German counter-attacks dissolving under artillery and small arms fire even more disastrously than the Anglo-French equivalents. It's also worth remembering that when the Germans had tried the same thing at Verdun the French withstood it better than the Germans on the Somme. I've added to the complexity of the task by holding 'The Somme: The Day by Day Account' by Chris McCarthy open, as he reproduces the maps from the OH and then juggling the RAF OH (Vol 2) to use the more detailed description of weather conditions as an aid to understanding which things contributed most to Allied success (poor weather late June - end of August reduced visibility from the air making British artillery fire less accurate and stopped RFC ground attacks. The arrival of large German reinforcements, particularly of artillery were multiplied in their effect by this.

I've browsed Grossman's book (which perhaps would make a diptych with Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte) and have 'Life and Fate' to read. It's a great shame that the people who didn't want Jewish European refugees to settle in Palestine turned out to be right about the illigitimacy of a colony in the Middle East just as they were about colonies in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. 'Israel' seems to waver between a Raj regime and an 'ethnic nationalist' settler state. That's all for now, hope you have an Indian summer.Keith-264 (talk) 14:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC) http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do   is worth a look. I got about 20 theses off it (including Mombauer's and Zabecki's) for free!Keith-264 (talk) 14:12, 30 October 2009 (UTC)