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OP Question: "Who started WWI?"
I started reading the book (WWI isn't the actual title, but I can't recall what it was called), and never got beyond the third or fourth page. Don't spoil the ending for me. Seriously though, it has a few crude illustrations, a lot of it is very obviously anti-German propaganda, and it was printed even before the US officially got into the war. The book only covers the beginning of the war in a rather one-sided manner, barely mentions the incident in Sarajevo other than as an excuse for German warmongering, and ends with the war still in progress and the US leaning toward entry on the Allied side to defend Democracy.
History classes in the US gave a really shallow treatment to the whole matter, and we probably spent about 2 or 3 days (at 55 minutes per day) on the "Great War", and another week on WWII. Far more time was spent on the American Civil War, which was also a remarkably shallow and stereotyped pure "good versus evil" treatment of the situation, and practically every school year either covered the American Revolution once again with the same crude caricature overview as the other wars, or was wasted in re-learning about Athenian democracy (other than how and why it failed). I learned far more about all those wars from casual outside reading (which in turn led to more serious reading) than I did over the entire course of my government-funded education.
The problem with teaching history is that learning names, dates, and places tells you very little about WHY it happened, and if you don't understand the "WHY" part, then you really haven't learned anything from it aside from trivia. School wasn't very big on teaching "why".
I started reading the book (WWI isn't the actual title, but I can't recall what it was called), and never got beyond the third or fourth page. Don't spoil the ending for me. Seriously though, it has a few crude illustrations, a lot of it is very obviously anti-German propaganda, and it was printed even before the US officially got into the war. The book only covers the beginning of the war in a rather one-sided manner, barely mentions the incident in Sarajevo other than as an excuse for German warmongering, and ends with the war still in progress and the US leaning toward entry on the Allied side to defend Democracy.
History classes in the US gave a really shallow treatment to the whole matter, and we probably spent about 2 or 3 days (at 55 minutes per day) on the "Great War", and another week on WWII. Far more time was spent on the American Civil War, which was also a remarkably shallow and stereotyped pure "good versus evil" treatment of the situation, and practically every school year either covered the American Revolution once again with the same crude caricature overview as the other wars, or was wasted in re-learning about Athenian democracy (other than how and why it failed). I learned far more about all those wars from casual outside reading (which in turn led to more serious reading) than I did over the entire course of my government-funded education.
The problem with teaching history is that learning names, dates, and places tells you very little about WHY it happened, and if you don't understand the "WHY" part, then you really haven't learned anything from it aside from trivia. School wasn't very big on teaching "why".
? Honor had everything to do with it. The Archduke had been assassinated.
The Serbians were asked to move against the terrorist organization which had murdered the Archduke. Had they complied, Austria-Hungary would have been satisfied.
Even so, this whole thing could have been worked out diplomatically.
Unfortunately, that might have required the Kaiser, the Emperor, the Czar, the President, and the King to get together, and get drunk over it and the weather was pleasant on the Baltic, and the Kaiser wanted to go boating for 2 weeks.
It was only when Germany STARTED A WAR that the WAR STARTED.
I don't understand why people cannot understand this.
Austria-Hungary started the war, right? Not the World War according to you, but definitely the war.
so... random austro-hungarian gets shot in Sarajevo, and there's an escalation to the halls of power in Vienna?
nope.
….and even the Hungarian side of A-H advised against it (partly due to selfish reasons, because it would have further increased the power of the already dominant Austrian half), but were all-but powerless to prevent it. Of course, that made Hungary the "bad guys", who had to be dismantled by the Allies after the war.
Note, though, that they didn't dismantle Belgium after the war, and I'm not sure why not. They were just as much to blame as Hungary, if not more so.
clearly they started 'a war.' which had it been contained, would probably be seen today as the 3rd Balkan War, or the Austro-Serbian War, or whatever.
It was the Germans who escalated everything into a world war by declaring war on Russia, and subsequently invading declaring war on France and Belgium (and Luxembourg, i guess?).
so you think that russia wouldn't intervene on serbia's behalf even if all the signs point to them doing so?
That moment, when you want to blame Germany so hard you start making excuses for Austri-Hungary.
If anything the Treaty of Versailles didn't go far enough in blaming Germany. The war reparations wasn't really enough to cover the cost of all the damage they had done. They should've been forced to pay all the debts the allies had accumulated during the war as well. UK for instance didn't pay all of it until 2015.
Let's twist things round and admit that the first world war was the Seven Years War.
Thus, the British started the first world war.
Thus, the British started the first world war.
He also said the UK and France started ww2, is that right too in your opinion ?
Also by his logic the UK is responsible for ww1.
Its all nonsense.
who knows?
it certainly didn't happen.
what did happen, in the actual world in which we live, is that Germany declared war on Russia, then declared war on France and Belgium.
They did dismantle Austria too, however.
From what I heard the French especially weren't so keen on the concept of an Austro-Hungarian empire, no matter which half of it was considered. That did set up things nicely for an Austrian to enact revenge by annexing to Germany/incorporating into the German sphere of influence the weak and divided remnants of the empire 20 years later and then waging war all over Europe, but that's another topic
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