Germanys fault on WW1

[Imgran]

One point about the demands on Serbia -

They were intended to be refused, because ongoing issues with Serbian terrorists had made it pretty obvious that the Serbian government had either no ability or no interest (or both) in addressing the problem, and there was supposedly evidence of high level support for it. The idea was to invade and clean out the nest of vipers, whether the Serbian government wanted it or not. In the process, occupying Serbia and setting up a more amenable puppet government would probably have been the result, not an outright conquest of land. It was certainly "aggression", but in the form of an overly harsh response to a very real threat and a lackluster initial reply by Serbia.

If I recall correctly, the plan was in fact to place a puppet government over Serbia. The Hungarian court in particular was adamantly opposed to adding even more Slavic land to the Empire.

In other words, when someone breaks into your house with a gun to rob it, and you shoot them and steal their shoes, two wrongs do not make a right, but you can't blame it solely on the home owner who was protecting his house. The severity of the response may not have been completely appropriate, but would probably have been considered legally "justified", except for stealing the robber's shoes afterwards. Austria was clearly working that shady area between victim and aggressor.

I don't completely disagree, the murder of the heir to the throne of a hereditary monarchy is about as "act-of-war" as it's possible to be, but let's point out a couple facts.

First of all, this homeowner proposed to actually chase down the robber after the house was robbed, kill him, and steal his shoes. Make no mistake, the war Austria wanted on Serbia was an act of reprisal, not self defense

Second of all, this was a terrible idea because the robber has ties to the Russian Mafia, and even if you're buddies with a guy who works out, that's still bad odds.

Germany was staring at the high probability of an eventual war with both France and Russia (at least in part because of French desire to regain A-L), and while their preemptive declaration of war was clearly an illegal move (especially going through neutral Belgium), it was not without a perceived pressing need. Whether that perception was accurate or not is very debatable, but it's pretty obvious that it wasn't done purely for expansionist reasons (although that probably factored into it to some degree). In other words, clearly guilty, but with extenuating circumstances that reduce the degree of guilt.

I don't agree with the idea that naked aggression is extenuated by the fact that it is necessary to permit even more naked aggression. If France and Russia had done anything against Germany in terms of a war of aggression (or in France's case, reconquest) they would have done it with no help from Britain, and they knew it. And they would have been facing a sizeable coalition of medium-sized powers alongside Germany as well (Italy, OE, A-H), not to mention a Germany that itself wasn't even blockaded just a little bit and so was able to use its full strength.

Germany had the alliances in place it needed to keep France and Russia at bay as long as Britain stayed neutral. There was no need for preemptive aggression until Serbia kicked over the house of cards. I'd argue there was no need for preemptive aggression even then. There are ways to deal with a rogue state without turning it and most of the rest of Europe into a rubble pile.

We can thank French and Russian policies for a lot of the extenuating circumstances, although they in turn had their own justifications. There was plenty of blame to share between practically all involved (probably not Belgium), even though Germany almost certainly deserves the largest slice of the stinking brown pie.

I really feel that Austria gets most of the pie. They were the ones that ultimately turned an international crisis into a shooting war.

 

[keynes2.0]

I mean... yeah they kinda did. The entire colonial empire and several chunks at home. I'd even argue that the carving up of the Ottomans actually managed to outdo the absurdly large annexation from Brest-Litovsk.

The whole notion of colonialism was incredibly hypocritical but there were differences between the German plans for conquest and European colonialism. Furthermore, the Germans had colonial ambitions on top of their plans for European conquest. So that's a wash.

They were intended to be refused, because ongoing issues with Serbian terrorists had made it pretty obvious that the Serbian government had either no ability or no interest (or both) in addressing the problem, and there was supposedly evidence of high level support for it.

Even if we were to accept this premise as true it still wouldn't be a justification. Serbia was weak and Austria was strong. Every great power supported Austria enforcing harsh terms on Serbia, including Russia. Austria could have enforced the terms at any time. There was no reason for pre-emptive invasion except that they didn't want a settlement.

 

[Avernite]

Have you read the terms of Serbia's acceptance of the ultimatum?

They agreed to censor their own press to make it illegal to criticise Austria-Hungary. They agreed to close down any private organisations and political parties which Austria-Hungary claimed were hostile to its interests. They agreed to remove textbooks from schools and dismiss teachers from their jobs if they criticised Austria-Hungary. They agreed to dismiss any army officers or civil servants who were deemed to be anti-Austrian.

These were all things that Austria-Hungary had demanded from them. Do you honestly see them as 'ancillary terms'? More to the point, can you imagine world reaction if, for example, China issued such demands today to the Philippines, or Putin's Russia made similar demands on Poland?

Yet Serbia meekly agreed to them all.

When it came to the issue of the assassination, Serbia agreed to cooperate with Austria-Hungary in suppressing the 'subversive movement' behind the killings. They agreed to arrest the specific people named as suspects in the case (Tankosic and Ciganovich), as long as Austria-Hungary provided the evidence giving reasonable grounds for their arrest, as is normal for an extradition case. They agreed to investigate the people who allowed the assassins to cross the frontier, and try and punish them as appropriate.

The one demand they didn't agree to completely was allowing the Austro-Hungarian police to come into Serbia to investigate the assassination plot and make arrests and hold trials on their own authority. They said, apologetically, that this would be against their constitution, but they were ready to hold investigations and stage trials themselves, and would keep the Austro-Hungarian police informed of everything they found out.

That was the "rejection" that was apparently sufficiently serious as to justify four years of war and over ten million dead.

Again, imagine if the FBI sent investigators to the Kremlin tomorrow, claiming they were investigating Russian involvement in the recent email scandals; and they made it clear that they expected to be able to arrest anybody up to and including Putin himself, and take him back to Washington DC for a trial. Do you think the Russians would happily welcome them in and give them carte blanche? Or would they object that this was a violation of their sovereignty? (Or if you prefer, imagine Iraqi police turning up in the Pentagon and the White House in the USA, claiming to be conducting an investigation into war crimes in Iraq.)

So basically the Serbian response to the ten points of the ultimatum was 1) Yes 2) Yes 3) Yes 4) Yes 5) Yes 6) We can't do exactly that but we'll do the best we can under our constitution 7) Yes 8) Yes 9) Yes 10) Yes.

Even Kaiser Wilhelm's initial reaction was that the Serbian acceptance of 95% of the ultimatum meant that there was now no excuse for war. (Although he was disappointed, not relieved; and went on to add that the Austrian troops should invade Serbia anyway, just to make a point and ensure that the Serbs did what they'd promised to do.)

I believe the problem is that exactly the refusal is what I consider the most important term, and as the prior analogies put it, all the rest was asking for Serbia's shoes on the side.

Let's not forget that the USA demanded exactly what you're mocking as ridiculous from the Taliban, after Taliban-aligned but not really the Taliban themselves attacked the USA.

Issuing a string of demands to the Afghanistan regime, Mr Bush told the Taliban to handover all terrorists connected to bin Laden's al Qa'eda terrorist network and close all its training camps.
The Taliban must also let American officials inspect the camps to ensure that they had ceased to function, Mr Bush said. And in reference to several aid workers detained in Afghanistan, Mr Bush demanded that the Taliban must release all foreign nationals.

This reads pretty similar to the Austrian ultimatum (Do X, let some investigators in to make sure you do X, and also on the side do Y), and while we all know Bush didn't expect the Taliban to do any of that, nor did the Taliban agree... I don't think the US government would have trusted the Taliban if they said 'we are gonna dismantle the Al Qaeda sites, but we're not handing you the ability to check if we really do'.

And let's be clear, I never said the rejection was worth WW1 - I didn't even say their refusal was serious; I simply said their not-full-acceptance was not 'very generous' (note: I repeat the quotes to make sure you read it as possibly generous but not very generous, rather than the alternative interpration of 'not very generous' as not generous at all). It really is sad that you have to drag that in to try to shore up a flagging argument.

 

[yerm]

One point about the demands on Serbia -

They were intended to be refused, because ongoing issues with Serbian terrorists had made it pretty obvious that the Serbian government had either no ability or no interest (or both) in addressing the problem, and there was supposedly evidence of high level support for it. The idea was to invade and clean out the nest of vipers, whether the Serbian government wanted it or not. In the process, occupying Serbia and setting up a more amenable puppet government would probably have been the result, not an outright conquest of land. It was certainly "aggression", but in the form of an overly harsh response to a very real threat and a lackluster initial reply by Serbia.

In other words, when someone breaks into your house with a gun to rob it, and you shoot them and steal their shoes, two wrongs do not make a right, but you can't blame it solely on the home owner who was protecting his house. The severity of the response may not have been completely appropriate, but would probably have been considered legally "justified", except for stealing the robber's shoes afterwards. Austria was clearly working that shady area between victim and aggressor.

Germany was staring at the high probability of an eventual war with both France and Russia (at least in part because of French desire to regain A-L), and while their preemptive declaration of war was clearly an illegal move (especially going through neutral Belgium), it was not without a perceived pressing need. Whether that perception was accurate or not is very debatable, but it's pretty obvious that it wasn't done purely for expansionist reasons (although that probably factored into it to some degree). In other words, clearly guilty, but with extenuating circumstances that reduce the degree of guilt. We can thank French and Russian policies for a lot of the extenuating circumstances, although they in turn had their own justifications. There was plenty of blame to share between practically all involved (probably not Belgium), even though Germany almost certainly deserves the largest slice of the stinking brown pie.

Since the victors get to write the history books, Germany was held almost entirely to blame, yet Austria-Hungary was dismantled and cut up as a result, with Hungary losing nearly 60% of the country, considerably harsher terms than what Germany suffered. We can see who got punished the hardest, regardless of who got blamed, because it was "expedient" for French foreign policy at the moment. So, apparently France isn't considered "guilty" for stealing the robber's accomplice's shoes afterwards, because France donated them to its own friends.

There was not a high probability of an eventual war with both France and Russia, and zero need for a preemptive war. This notion that France was coming for Alsace and Lorraine and Russia was going to join them and it was only a matter of time, all speculation and frankly silly. Russia did not have territorial designs on Germany and nobody at all believed the Tsar would be stupid enough to try to annex Germans into that empire. This eventual losing war was nothing more than a speculative possibility. It becomes particularly absurd when it hinges on Germany losing prominence in Europe and Russia gaining it while alliances still treat Germany and Russia the same, which any halfwit knew was unlikely - balance of power would mean changes in diplomacy, on top of natural changes anyway.

It's one of these persistent and awful ideas that get pushed around over and over because nobody wants to accept that the national leaders were just a bunch of irrational hawks. Germany was not in danger of a French and Russian future attack - they were in danger of not being the best, and THAT was what was unacceptable.


Meanwhile if we're gonna go this route of dropping simple analogies for describing WWI, here's mine:

Spoiler

You can clearly see the video start with Pedro Wilhelm II ruining Bismarck's alliance with Russia Williams. Next we see the British Umpire arbitrating the Morocco Crisis much to Germany's clear dismay, followed by a clear indicator that Germany's allies are tired old men. This first world war eventually ends when Curt "absolutely perfect analogy for Woodrow Wilson" Schilling gets involved and wins the fight but nobody listens to America's yelling in the proceedings, and we see Germany left sulking with the blame and having lost its helmet.

Then there's the 2nd world war where the British Umpire initially rules in Germany's favor while France runs away, but this time Russia takes it gloves off and comes in swinging hard and Germany for some reason blames the Italian baserunner for running to second and historians argue that he could have reached 3rd if only he had more tanks.

If we're going to have analogies at least make them interesting, IMO.

 

[StephenT]

The United States demanded the right to send observers to make sure Afghanistan complied with its demands, which is entirely different to sending American administrators to enact and enforce policies on their own authority. The second is what colonial powers do to their colonies.

And that's what Austria-Hungary was trying to do here, make no mistake. They'd already turned Bosnia-Hercegovina into a colony — against the wishes of most of its inhabitants — and now they wanted to reduce Serbia to less-than-independent status as well.

Personally I think the Serbian compliance with 95% of the outrageous Austrian demands was incredibly and astonishingly generous. Still, that's subjective. What's an objective fact is that Serbia offered to put the whole matter before the International Court in the Hague or before a conference of the Great Powers, if Austria-Hungary did not think their response went far enough. The Austrians weren't interested in neutral third-party arbitration, however. They wanted war.

 

[stevieji]

This reads pretty similar to the Austrian ultimatum (Do X, let some investigators in to make sure you do X, and also on the side do Y), and while we all know Bush didn't expect the Taliban to do any of that, nor did the Taliban agree... I don't think the US government would have trusted the Taliban if they said 'we are gonna dismantle the Al Qaeda sites, but we're not handing you the ability to check if we really do'.

And let's be clear, I never said the rejection was worth WW1 - I didn't even say their refusal was serious; I simply said their not-full-acceptance was not 'very generous' (note: I repeat the quotes to make sure you read it as possibly generous but not very generous, rather than the alternative interpration of 'not very generous' as not generous at all). It really is sad that you have to drag that in to try to shore up a flagging argument.

I find this to be a quite extraordinary argument. Perhaps the main problem with it is that you are equating Serbia ( a sovereign state, which had no direct involvement in an act of terrorism), with the Taliban. The Taliban.

Go back a page and you will find a pretty comprehensive description of the terms which Serbia was expected to accept - but you appear to be saying that Austria was justified in invading Serbia, even though almost all of their outrageous demands were agreed. It has always seemed quite clear to me that Russia must have thrown Serbia under the bus at this point - willing to see their 'brothers' humiliated, in order to avoid war. So quite how Austria (and more to the point Germany) managed to remain on course for war, is almost inexplicable.

 

[demanvanwezel]

I find this to be a quite extraordinary argument. Perhaps the main problem with it is that you are equating Serbia ( a sovereign state, which had no direct involvement in an act of terrorism), with the Taliban. The Taliban.

Go back a page and you will find a pretty comprehensive description of the terms which Serbia was expected to accept - but you appear to be saying that Austria was justified in invading Serbia, even though almost all of their outrageous demands were agreed. It has always seemed quite clear to me that Russia must have thrown Serbia under the bus at this point - willing to see their 'brothers' humiliated, in order to avoid war. So quite how Austria (and more to the point Germany) managed to remain on course for war, is almost inexplicable.

the taliban were the rulers of afghanistan at that time, the taliban were the serbians and the black hand was al queda if we're going to use that analogy

both had at least officially nothing to do with each other

PS I don't condone the US invasion of afghanistan any more then I condone the austrian invasion of serbia

 

[stevieji]

the taliban were the rulers of afghanistan at that time, the taliban were the serbians and the black hand was al queda if we're going to use that analogy

both had at least officially nothing to do with each other

Yes, I understand the attempted parallel - I just don't think the two things are remotely comparable.

 

[demanvanwezel]

Yes, I understand the attempted parallel - I just don't think the two things are remotely comparable.

how so?

 

[stevieji]

how so?

Well, because the Taliban didn't have the status of a sovereign state - its entire existence was based on terror - and it was hand in glove with Al Qaeda. In contrast, Serbia simply had a small faction which, although it had links to individuals in the military, had nothing to do with the state. You might as well compare the UK government to the Taliban - because of links between certain individuals and protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

 

[demanvanwezel]

Well, because the Taliban didn't have the status of a sovereign state - its entire existence was based on terror - and it was hand in glove with Al Qaeda. In contrast, Serbia simply had a small faction which, although it had links to individuals in the military, had nothing to do with the state. You might as well compare the UK government to the Taliban - because of links between certain individuals and protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.

as far as I understand it the taliban were the de facto rulers of afghanistan and officially had no ties with al qaeada

they shared the same ideology yes but that was pretty much it

 

[stevieji]

as far as I understand it the taliban were the de facto rulers of afghanistan and officially had no ties with al qaeada

they shared the same ideology yes but that was pretty much it

I would only say that 'de facto rulers' is not the same thing as a viable sovereign state - and that I believe the Taliban and Al Qaeda were linked by more than ideology - but I'll accept that direct links are hard to establish.

 

[Kovax]

Have you read the terms of Serbia's acceptance of the ultimatum?

They agreed to censor their own press to make it illegal to criticise Austria-Hungary. They agreed to close down any private organisations and political parties which Austria-Hungary claimed were hostile to its interests. They agreed to remove textbooks from schools and dismiss teachers from their jobs if they criticised Austria-Hungary. They agreed to dismiss any army officers or civil servants who were deemed to be anti-Austrian.

These were all things that Austria-Hungary had demanded from them. Do you honestly see them as 'ancillary terms'? More to the point, can you imagine world reaction if, for example, China issued such demands today to the Philippines, or Putin's Russia made similar demands on Poland?

Yet Serbia meekly agreed to them all.

I wouldn't call it "meekly". The wording of the acceptance was almost defiant in itself, designed to make the already harsh demands seem even more unreasonable. When someone demands that you remove the offensive comments from your official school literature (teaching the children to hate Austria-Hungary from a young and impressionable age), you agree to never allow offensive comments in your schools, and word it so it sounds as if that was the original demand. The Serbian press and official literature painted Austria as the enemy of the Serbian people, which helped foster hostilities and made an ideal recruiting pool for terrorists. Serbia could not be trusted to police itself, and had failed to do so repeatedly. Austria certainly took advantage of the situation to further its own imperial ambitions, but the situation in the first place was largely due to Serbia's official policies and failures to restrain its radical elements. It probably couldn't if it tried. There were no "innocent" sides to the conflict; unfortunately there were a lot of innocent people on both sides who suffered as a result.

 

[StephenT]

When someone demands that you remove the offensive comments from your official school literature (teaching the children to hate Austria-Hungary from a young and impressionable age), you agree to never allow offensive comments in your schools, and word it so it sounds as if that was the original demand.

The original demand was "to eliminate without delay from public instruction in Serbia, everything, whether connected with the teaching corps or with the methods of teaching, that serves or may serve to nourish the propaganda against Austria-Hungary;". ("ohne Verzug aus dem öffentlichen Unterricht in Serbien, sowohl was den Lehrkörper als auch die Lehrmittel betrifft, alles zu beseitigen, was dazu dient oder dienen könnte, die Propaganda gegen Österreich-Ungarn zu nähren")

That goes a lot further than asking them to remove offensive comments from specific books. They're asking Serbia to sack school teachers who "may" - not have, may - do anything to 'nourish propaganda' against them; such as teaching children that the people of Bosnia are Serbs and Croats.

The Serbian press and official literature painted Austria as the enemy of the Serbian people

Well, Austria-Hungary's forcible annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and their severe economic sanctions against Serbia (the 'Pig War' beginning in 1906), and the way Austrian newspapers regularly portrayed Serbia as a wretched hive of scum and villainy, might have encouraged them in that impression. Serbia can be criticised, but Austria-Hungary's hands weren't clean either.

 

[keynes2.0]

I wouldn't call it "meekly". The wording of the acceptance was almost defiant in itself, designed to make the already harsh demands seem even more unreasonable

Are you trying to lay the foundation for the argument that the war was caused by Serbia not being self abusing enough in the way they worded their surrender?

 

[Kovax]

Are you trying to lay the foundation for the argument that the war was caused by Serbia not being self abusing enough in the way they worded their surrender?

Merely pointing out that reading the terms of acceptance or refusal alone does not convey the entire picture. Again, two wrongs do not make a right.

 

[TheFatWombat]

Austria Hungary didn't force the Germans to declare war on Russia. Germany could have told the Austrians that if they didn't accept the (incredibly generous) Serbian offer, they wouldn't have support against Russia. Germany could have accepted the French and British calls for a peace conference. There is so much that Germany could have done that they didn't do because everyone wants to go with this "sleepwalkers" narrative.

Germany had it in their power to get a reasonable peace. Russia was okay with any peace whatsoever between Austria and Serbia. France was okay with anything except for Germany crushing Russia militarily. Britain was okay with anything except for Germany invading France and Belgium. None of Germany's enemies made unreasonable demands of her. Germany made unreasonable demands of all of them.

Sure A-H deserves it's share of blame but that doesn't excuse the fact that Germany wanted the war.

I never said Germany was innocent, they definitely deserve a lot of blame just for supporting Austria Hungary, not to mention the invasion of Belgium, I just said it is ridiculous to call Germany the main culprit despite the fact that they turned down way more chances for peace than Germany did, while also being in a much better position to do so without losing face. And Germany basically had to declare war when Russia began fully mobilizing and the reason for Russia fully mobilizing was Austria Hungary, meaning they did in fact force Germany to declare the war on Russia.

Germany was not a corporation and should therefore not be thought of as an individual person. It was a country with many different people at the helm and hardly as monolithic as often (even by me) described. Some Germans considered it adequate and were happy about it while some others considered it inadequate, some didn't really care about the ultimatum and it's pretext for conflict.

Well the Kaiser´s opinion is probably about as close as it gets.

 

[keynes2.0]

Merely pointing out that reading the terms of acceptance or refusal alone does not convey the entire picture. Again, two wrongs do not make a right.

But this is some "no the earth isn't round" level of nitpicking. The Serbian fault you take issue with is that you dislike the wording they chose while giving every possible concession. The austrian fault is that they deliberately chose to start a major war. There is no comparison.

I ask you again, do you think that if Serbia had just sounded more surrendery there wouldn't have been war?

 

[Imgran]

Merely pointing out that reading the terms of acceptance or refusal alone does not convey the entire picture. Again, two wrongs do not make a right.

Yes but 2 wrongs also aren't automatically of equal value. Even if you accept the premise that these are indeed two wrongs, it's rather absurdly clear that the wrong of Serbia backtalking a bit on the way to giving a superpower everything they want, is not equal to the wrong of Austria-Hungary starting a war that killed 10 million people because Serbia was not meek enough in giving them everything they want.

 

[CarloG]

Games like Bf1 are played from dozens of young people without any real interests in real historic facts and without a good education on that. Although I see it possible to show content from the Germans and a SP-Campaign, it should then contain a self-critical-view about the war and not just a "Hero" Story f.e. about Richthofen. I dont blame the normal Soldiers, in the same way as most german "normal" soldiers on WW2 cant be blamed.

But it should be a clear thing to show that Germany was the Aggressor on this War and that they violated common law ( Belgium at least ). I agree that this might be too much and too complicated for a game company like DICE and so they skipped it all at all and showed only the Entente.

After a few pages of comments on WW1 I think it would be good to go back to the battlefield game. Now the game is out, and it turns out the single player campaign is divided in 5 different war stories plus a prologue where you play as different soldiers.
Now looking at them, there seems to be a certain "anglosphere" bias. You play as a:

African-american US soldier in France
British tank driver in France
US fighter pilot in France
Italian soldier in the Alps
Arab woman who fights alongside Lawrence of Arabia in the Middle East
Anzac soldier at Gallipoli

The campaign thus seems to present a certain narrow view of the war. This view doesn't seem to be related to the "let's just show the Entente because they are the good guys". After all, half of the war stories are set in France and you never play as a french! To be exact four (or even 4 and half) episodes are about english speakers.

And to conclude: i find some irony in your idea that Germany shouldn't be represented because they were the aggressor and yet in the only war story not related to the US or the British Empire you get to play as an italian.
Out of the various Entente powers Italy waged a war of aggression without coming up with any defensive excuse for it. Really, my country only justification was: the Central Powes seems to be losing! It's high time to enter the war to get some juicy chunks of lands! Trento and Trieste are italian! And while we are at it lets grab as much territory as we can, no matter who lives there! Germans and slavs will be happy to become italians or we will get them italianized by force!