(07-19-2014 10:23 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote: (07-19-2014 03:18 PM)bitcruncher Wrote: (07-19-2014 01:26 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote: Kaiser Wilhelm II. MOFO set the stage for 2 fcking world wars by pushing Austria/Hungary to exact revenge against Serbia after Archduke Ferdinand was killed. One could make the assertion that his militaristic bravado was responsible for more deaths than any one leader. For sure the 16 million in WW1.
FYI: The Kaiser had nothing to do with WWII. That was all on Hitler, who gained his power in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, which gave the Nazi Party an excuse to take absolute control over the German government.
But the desperate situation that led the Nazis to begin preparing for WWII were the harsh penalties imposed on Germany by the Allies after WWI. Had Germany's economy not be so devastated, the Germans might not have felt the need to start a war in order to turn things around.
Of course, if Hitler's art teacher hadn't tried to push him into architecture after criticizing his artwork, WWII might never have started. Or if it did, it would have been with a different leader in Germany.
But you can't blame WWII on Kaiser Wilhelm. The countries you mention were very minor players on the world scene, and there is no way those nations could have started that war, much less defeat enough nations to become much of a worldwide threat.
My assertion is simply based on the theory that without WW1?....there would be no WW2. I'm not alone in that assertion. This has been debated for decades. The harsh war reparations after the WW1 set the perfect environment for Hitlers nationalist policies. I only blame KW2 for getting the ball rolling.
You can't blame WWII on the Germans, since it was stupid decisions by Allied command that set the stage for WWII. They were the one who set the stage for future wars, and not just WWII. But you can lay Korea, Vietnam, and most of the unrest today at their feet.
Just look at the Middle East. The nations of the Middle East had their borders setup at the end of WWI by oil advisors (
mostly from BP), who advised them to setup those borders around the major oil fields, instead of considering the people who lived in the area. So all the people of the Middle East suddenly found their families scattered across several nations, and their mortal enemies were fellow countrymen. In almost every nation of the Middle East you have areas where there are Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurd regions, and all of 'em are fighting each other all the time.
In Europe, Yugoslavia is a perfect example of the stupidity of the Allied command, which created this nation from the breakup of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire by merging the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs with the formerly independent Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. Yugoslavia's original name was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, established in 1918, and renamed the Kingdom Yugoslavia in 1929. The Kingdom part of the name disappeared after WWII. But the nation itself was doomed, since it was composed of people who have distrusted and hated each other since they first came into the area sometime in the stone age.
I could go on and on, since there are numerous examples of such ignorant decisions made by a people who were sick of war by the end of WWI. But their decisions made future wars inevitable, just as decisions made at the end of WWII led to further warfare down the road. Patton and MacArthur had the right idea at the end of WWII. But the President refused to listen to the idea, since the Russians were our allies in the fight. But both advised him to continue the war until the Russians surrendered (
although MacArthur advised dropping one more A-bomb on Moscow), and then demand that the rest of the world disarm itself. That would have ensured peace, of a sort, for all time. But we weren't willing to commit to that.
I've wondered at times what the world would be like if we have done that. Would it be significantly different from today?