Lyke Omg!11, The Nazis Were Soo Imperliaistic!!!1111!

Hapsburg,

Thank you for showing up as I requested. In response to your pm, yes, I know you've posted earlier in this thread. I requested your return for some specific reasons. You're our resident expert on pre-WWI Germany. One of Mountainhare's main lines of thought is this whole 'land-grabbing' issue. A run-down of the shifting of borders and land-possession would be helpful. The whole issue is quite muddled.

Also, I made a comment about how the Prussians were a sort of elite in the German Empire and thus after the split-up, Germany didn't necessarily have any claim to the lands held by a Prussian overlordship.

What exactly was the nature of the relationship between the Prussians and the Germans? Junkers were a sort of nobility, were they not?

And. As to 'claim' mentioned above. A vital point is that the land changes in hand in treaties and thus the idea of any party being able to lay claim to land taken from them as a result of loss in war and treaty is highly debatable.

I realize that Mountainhare's and I 'discussion' got quite heated there for a while and perhaps reading through our posts would be tedious, but you would be extremely helpful if you'd answer what I've just put to you.

Also, when I have more time, I'll go back through and see if any other issues pop up with which you might be able to help and I can't remember right now.


Mountainhare,

I will return.
(And. I will offer an apology for being so harsh with you. I've had a rather rough time of it this past week or more. I've been extremely worried about a loved one and I've probably been taking my worries out on certain scapegoats. However, you made yourself a target by that first response where you started calling people idiots or whatever. To Ophiolite, I think it was directed. Anyway. I understand many of your points and the thing is that they're not that controversial. However, I still contend that your reasoning is flawed in several key areas. I'll elaborate further when I have time.)

Good day.

 

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Yeah, the Junkers were a kind of aristocracy, prussian landowners. And, since the Prussians led the German Empire, the junkers were kind of at the top of the empire. Emperor William II, though theoretically vested with absolute power, was sort of a figurehead, at least through some parts of his reign.
But, after 1871, Prussians were Germans, just as Bavarians were germans, at least officially. Before that, they were germans, but in name only, no true legitimacy to be a german nation.
In my opinion, The German Republic had legitimate claims to land that the majority population were germanic. I.E, Austria, Sudeten, East Prussia; generally the territory they held in 1938. Beyond that, they had no legitimate claim to any other land. If only they had been able to do that without having to resort to letting a maniac like Hitler come to power, a whole buncha shit could have been avoided...

 

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Because power politics aren't practiced to uphold points of law. It's an exercise in calculated self-interest, where morality and law are used to camouflage national self-interest. Germany was a threat to European hegemony due to her geographical position, culture, technology, economy, and Hitler's ruthless disposition. Communist Russia - both savage and primitive - was not. As such, Germany was the danger, and the Soviet Union the method by which she could be brought down.

IMO, a more powerful argument might be made in the form of the apparent unwillingness of the west to try to kill Hitler during the war.

I think Hitler's objective was to have Germany play the same role in Europe as Prussia did in forging Germany.

In many ways, Versailles was the opposite to the German vision espoused in Brest-Litovsk. Under the allied scheme, the great eastern European empires were shorn of large territories - which superficially promoted national identity, but also just happened to allow Europe to descend into diplomatic disunity (which the west could dominate), and over a dozen states were cast into vacuum without any meaningful method to protect their security. Under the German scheme, the peoples of Europe would have organized under one banner - Germany's - as a sort of 1918 version of NATO. I think it probable that had the Germans won the war, Europe would have been in the long run better off.

Don't we all?

Germany's role in the outbreak of World War One was to enflame the Austrian reaction to the murder of the heir to the throne. They had become fearful, too pessimistic, of encirclement and increasingly saw war as a method to break the ring perceived to be descending upon Germany. Without Berlin's overarching support, it is possible that the Hapsburgs would not have carried matters as far as a great power war.

However, there is ample room within the documentary evidence to suggest that the war came about in equal parts due to the fears of Great Britain and the expansionist ambitions of Imperial Russia. Here, the critical variables are the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 (which allowed for an anti-German policy in London) and the defeat of Russia in the 1904-1905 war against Japan in the Far East (which turned Russian ambitions into Europe and allowed England to secure an Entente with the Asiatic giant in 1907).

In the wake of her defeat against Japan, the Russian army essentially collapsed and her domestic preoccupation for several years thereafter was to prevent revolution. During this period, neither the French nor Russians supported each other in various crises (1904, 1905, 1908, 1911), and so Great Britain was able to wield a relatively harmless, but effective, sword to bring Germany's ill-considered Weltpolitik to heel. But after 1912 the Russian bear began to regain former strength, and as it did so it exerted increasing pressure upon all points of contact with the west (German, Austrian, Turkish and British) - from Afghanistan all the way to the Balkans. By 1914, Sir Edward Grey (the British Foreign Secretary, and author of the Entente policies) was essentially losing control of an increasingly aggressive Russia. When Bethmann (the German Chancellor) undertook a strong demarche in the wake of the heir's murder at Sarajevo, there is sufficient latitude to suggest that the British may have lured the Germans onwards to promote a head-on smash with Russia.

I remember on an old 60 Minutes piece that it was mentioned on at least one occasion the Russians, Americans and French all voted to release Hess, and the British vetoed it. (In most cases the Soviets themselves nixed it, so the Brits didn't have to). Further, there were rumors that Hess was murdered in the end because the Wall was coming down and keeping him in captivity was becoming too problematical.

I'm uncertain as to why Hess was singled out for life in prison - when all the other Nazis were either executed or released from prison within a number of years. Why keep Hess and no one else if not because of a story that couldn't be released? It's a poser. The worst case scenario, IMO, would look this: Hess was indeed carrying a peace offer from Hitler - but not one where Hitler invades Russia and Britain is supposed to cheer him on. Rather, a dark possibility might be Hitler, fearing the uncertainty of war in Russia, seeks peace with Britain on the basis of Germany not invading Russia. That would be the historical equal to a 20 megaton H-Bomb, and about the only thing I can think of that would require deep burial.

Yes, but the LAW doesn't show up over your home country in a swarm of B-29's and flatten it with carpet bombing. Shorn of extrania, the argument appears to be that the precedent and settlement of World War One both underscored the legitimacy of force as diplomacy, as well as erased any meaning inherent in the then-current delineation of national borders. If so, that and a nickel would get the Germans a piece of gum. Realpolitik - the rule of force - was the last thing Germany could lightly risk, and by willingingly ushering violence to center stage in 1939, Hitler willed the partition of his country.

Denying or diminishing the Holocaust isn't worth discussion. The pattern of lies in Western history are little things - occasional omissions, deletions, strategic distortions of a fact here and there to change or "spin" the color of an issue. The Holocaust is too damn big for this kind of tactic. Ergo, it happened.

Re - Walking skeletons: In 1944 the Russian army overran the breadbasket of Rumania, while the Americans took France. These two crippling blows to the German food supply system, coupled with massive disruption in German communications, led to a severe famine in Nazi occupied Europe during the fall and winter of 1944/1945. With not enough to go around, the Nazis appear to have deliberately chosen to selectively starve certain groups.

This may be too charitable of British and French intentions. The problem, IMO, wasn't a lack of morale fiber in the west, it was the failure to glean just how war could result in a Europe that the west may find more appealing than the status quo. That is to say, Chamberlain wasn't keen on war with Germany in large part because it would see the Soviet Union and France partition Europe between them. Britain didn't mind flattening Europe in destructive wars, but they also didn't wish to have one simply to hand power to another country! His policy was to try to deter the Germans short of war, and keep them hemmed up as much as possible. He did not wish to bring on a showdown because he wasn't certain of the outcome.

The British and French conquered large amounts of territory - both the former German colonies as well as massive swaths in the Middle East. That the Ottoman Empire was sitting on top of an oil goldmine in Iraq was known to the Entente before the war. This may have been tempting to imperialist powers. Perhaps this is why, in 1917 while her European allies were withering away, the British were on the march (to the tune of 750,000 men, IIRC) against an enemy that would have turned friendly in a heartbeat - the Turks.

Versailles is over rated in this respect. The core issue surrounding World War One was the fact that the basic issue wasn't decided. The war happened because power in Europe was divided into three camps - London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, that were all natural rivals, did not trust one another, and most importantly - any two could defeat the third. Because power wasn't binary, because any two could defeat the third, the situation was not only unstable, but dynamically so. For each of the "lucky" two powers would wish to finish matters before some diplomatic hiccup or other could mosey along and cast them as the isolated, sure to be defeated, third.

It was because of this - the rise of Germany and Russia and the return to a trip balance of power between natural enemies, that World War Two was inevitable. The major feature change in the second conflict was that Germany exercised her ability to buy Russian neutrality with territory and face the west without a second front. Had she done so in the first war, she'd have probably won it.

12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe - as many as two million of whom may have perished. Further, the accusation that as many as 1.5 million German POW's died after the war in Allied camps has never been, to my knowledge, resolved. In comparison to Hitler's program of genocide, these types of numbers are small potatoes. But still significant.

I'd add that the war beginning in Poland was a dead-on sign that Hitler started it. He attacked Poland for no good reason - the Poles siding with Germany in the 1938 Munich Crisis. That a war broke out for such frivolous reasons supports the notion that Hitler had no master plan, and simply moved from situation to situation, looking to break Europe to his will.

This is not a bad point. I think a strong case can be made that Germany, sitting in the middle of Europe without a friend in the world and no guarantees whatever, had a right to re-forge the map in a fashion that assured her security. But, at the same time, it was crucial for her to adhere to the strictest rules protecting human rights while doing so. Hitler's crime wasn't necessarily launching a war inevitable anyway, it was needlessly, eagerly, making it so bloody.

I think this point has some merit. School programs can have political undertones. Witness the continued bitterness in China that Japanese schools teach a history of the Japanese Empire at variance with reality.

It depends what the alleged "offer" was. If it were to sit back and let Hitler dismember Russia, then it would have been nothing but a joke, and not worthy of discussion.

It's interesting to note that, when the Americans took over, all the nonsense stopped. Cold.

1) The British Empire broke up while America stood over its deathbed, looking on without pity at the unplugged life support system as the patient expired. No more archaic, destructive, stupid, counterproductive balance of power tactics, where one half of Europe was set against the other.

2) Any possibility of a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany was intolerable to Washington. Should Paris have pulled that crap, they'd have made a formidable American enemy indeed.

3) Germany was, for the first time ever, welcomed into the fold with rock-solid guarantees of territorial security and integrity, backed by the armed forces of the entire western world. No longer would Europe's strongest power lay adrift in the center of Europe, alone and unprotected by any international organization.

4) Russia, that trailer trash menace to Europe, was quarantined.

5) NATO policy in the Balkans has mimicked that of the old Central Powers - Serbia is regarded as a menace that must be contained.

6) The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk has sprung forth anew from the grave, as the territories of the former Soviet Union split off from Russia and join the west.

The Americans seem, when in charge, to have become somewhat...German...in their approach to things.

 

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Austria allying with Turkey in WW1, to me, seems a very odd thing. I mean, the Austrians and Germans have fought against the Turks since, well even before the Osmanli dynasty took power in the mideast. Suddenly allying with them seems to be a total reverse of tradition, a powerful thing in Austro-German society.

 

A side effect of the German-Ottoman alliance, to be sure.

In the prewar period there were factors at play pushing forward the idea of an Austro-Turkish axis. It was recognised in Vienna that Turkey (by checking Greece), could allow the unchaining of Bulgaria (defeated in 1913). If so, then Serbia was doomed - being unable to withstand even a dozen K.u.K. divisions if the Bulgars were taking her down from behind.

The Austrians, as with the Germans, were too prone to panic in 1914. After all, even though they were defeated on the battlefield everywhere (The Washington Generals of the History Channel, to borrow a Simpsons classic), by the end of 1915 the Austrians had essentially won their war - Serbia vanquished, Russia thrown back, and Italy at bay.