Who were the "good guys" during WW1?

This may appear to be a stupid question, but it seems to me that the Germans and Austrians were in the right. The government sanctioned Black Hand had murdered Franz Ferdinand, and the Austrians had every right to invade Serbia. Russia supported Serbia because of some prior disagreement with Austria. The war plans established in the years prior to Austria's invasion of Serbia were all put into effect, and all out war broke out (Russia could not invade Austria w/out invading Germany; Germany could not fight Russia w/out first invading France, etc...).
It appears that Serbia is ultimately responsible for the War, and that were it not for the petty Russians, nothing bad would have happened.
But I know next to nothing about this. What do you people think?

 

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Well, I think ultimately that the winner in every war is the side that was right, only because the are the ones who write the textbooks that say they were afterwards.

In this specific case, although I think that Austria was a little bit extreme in their response, it was right because the other side initiated the war.

 

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The losers write textbooks too.

 

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I took a WW1 class but can't really remember the details. The basic believe is that the war was caused by obligations by states to other states. The black hand was like modern day "Hamas", a radical group of the serbs ( Who I am sure also had moderate groups). The serbs were in bed with Romania, Hungary, Germany, Austria-hungary, Turkish empire, Bulgaria. While all these states opposed UK, France, and Russia, Italia. The tension leading to the way had been building up, which includes the arms race between UK and Germany, economic imperialism, and a reformation of post napoleonic Europe; and it only took the Duke's assassination to set the fire. There are no good guys in war, only victors and the others.

 

There's two different questions. Who was responsible for WW1 and, apart from that, who were the 'good guys'.

The first is 'everyone'. It was a clash of imperialistic empires. The second is 'sort of' the allies. The USA came and came in on the ally side because it was basically democracies...Britain, Canada, Australia, France fighting more authoritarian states (Germany and Austria). Russia was sort of a side show with other issues going on. Wilson was very adamant that it was a fight for freedom and democracy. Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle but it was 'mostly' western democratic values against slightly more authoritarian values.

In WW2 it was the white hats against the black hats. In WW1 grey hats against darker grey hats.

In less than 5 years the last allied WW1 veternan will be dead and it will be easier to discuss the WW1 tragedy without political correctness.

 

Unfortunately you are wrong, There are Good Guy's in war, its just that for the good guys to win they have to become bigger bastards than the bad Guy's they are fighting, That is what I know from being in a war my self, and it is a lesson that to many don't know, when it come to Life and death the Good are at a disadvantage because we don't whish to kill, we without training hesitate a fraction a second, and those who wish to kill take full advantage of that hesitation, That hesitation is in full view here, Chatha you are a prime example, you don't recognize the Bad Guy, as a fact in life and history, how long do you think you would have lived with your beliefs in Nanking? the Warsaw Ghetto? Buchenwald,? Auschwitz? what would you have done when you were rounded up and the deportation order was signed to send you to the Concentration Camps? Told to strip, walk into the Gas Chamber, Would you have decided that there were no good guy in that war? How about the Tommy's, the G.I., the Frogs, how about if they arrived just in time to save you from the gas chamber, finally starving to death in the concentration camp, would those heroes still be bad guys in you self centered little world?


Read this and tell me if you can't find the bad guys?

Japan Film Revives Memories of Wartime Atrocities

By Tim Large

TOKYO (Reuters) - One Japanese war veteran confesses to 328 murders. A former army sergeant describes throwing babies onto camp fires for laughs. Another says he raped and killed a woman, then carved up her body to feed to his troops.

Those are some of the macabre confessions in a controversial documentary that promises to stir up painful memories of Japan's World War Two aggression and raise tough questions about individual responsibility for wartime atrocities.

Elderly veterans and curious youngsters were among the crowd at Japan's first public showing of ``Japanese Devils,'' a three-hour mea culpa in which 14 former imperial army soldiers recall their brutal role in their country's war against China between 1931 and 1945.

``Once you've killed your second or third, you stop thinking about it,'' Yasuji Kaneko, a former army corporal, tells the camera, describing how he grew numb to slaughter after bayonet drills using live Chinese prisoners tied to stakes.

``It was ultimately about competition,'' another veteran says, reeling off a litany of horrors that included burning Chinese babies just for fun. ``So how many you killed becomes a standard of achievement.''

The documentary has been shown at film festivals around the world, notching up prizes for director Minoru Matsui in Germany and Portugal.

But its screening on home soil threatens to hit a raw nerve in a country where frank discussion about wartime atrocities remains largely taboo, and a backlash from right-wing activists is a real possibility.

The arts cinema in Tokyo's trendy Shibuya district that is showing the film said it received phone threats prior to the opening.

The theater braced for trouble from members of right-wing ''uyoku'' groups, who typically cruise the streets in black vans blaring militarist music or stage noisy kerbside demonstrations from atop flag-draped trucks.

``So far there's been no problem, but who knows what will happen?'' Katsue Tomiyama, the cinema's president, said.

GRUESOME CONFESSIONS

The 14 former soldiers interviewed in the film recount in harrowing detail personal experiences of killing, burning, rape, torture and live vivisection, mostly after Japan plunged into full-scale war against China in 1937.

They also describe a brutal military culture sustained by extreme peer pressure, routine acts of cruelty and a doctrine of racial supremacy that they say turned some ordinary conscripts into merciless butchers.

``If I were in their place, or you were in their place, we might have done the same thing,'' director Matsui told a news conference after a recent press screening.

One former sergeant major, Masayo Enomoto, says he became so inured to murder -- and so steeped in the idea that the Chinese were sub-human -- that he thought nothing of chopping up a rape victim, cooking her flesh and serving it to his hungry troops.

``Killing lots of people also proved your loyalty to the emperor,'' says Yoshio Tsuchiya, a former second lieutenant.

Yoshio Shinozuka, a former corporal with the infamous Unit 731 that conducted gruesome experiments on live prisoners, says: ``We referred to these people as logs.''

``Japanese Devils'' gets its name from the expression coined by the Chinese to describe the Japanese invaders.

Though the veterans' accounts sometimes sound almost clinical, they are underscored by a feeling of remorse that they say has translated into a sense of duty to pass on their stories.

``I will bear witness with as much detail as possible to the young generation,'' one former soldier says, explaining why he took the unprecedented step of confessing all before the camera.

 

There is no such thing as right and wrong in war, it is perception

Personally, I feel germany was right in WWI and WWII

 

Actually this is quite a bit of oversimplification. For instance authoritarian Imperial Russia was a major element in WW1 up until the Russian revolution 1917. Russia was a member of the triple entente, together with France and Britain.

It was less a matter of ideologies but rather a fight for power of the nations involved, though the fight for democracy was sometimes used as a pretext for the entry of the USA. One of the real reasons for the US to finally enter was a direct threat by the Germans. First due to the submarine warfare, later markedly by the German proposal to Mexico to declare war on the USA, with the promise to reclaim Texas, Arizona and New Mexico (just as a sidenote).

The assassination in Sarajewo was at most a pretext to start an all-out war which in essence was readily planned out beforehand (the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary sent to Serbia was never meant to be fulfilled).
Some historians (or at least most that I read/know) emphasize that the massive mobilization of France, Germany and Russia almost inevitably led to a conflict, especially as the military had an enormous burden on the respective economies which the given nations sought to relieve by expansion. After all the belief in imperialism was still strong in those countries at that times.
AFAIK the Britains were mostly drawn towards a stance against Germany (as opposed against the more traditional enemy France) by the increase of the German navy as a potential threat to the naval dominance of Britain.

Essentially the major powers were "set" to dole out dominant power positions within Europe and by extension, the given colonies.
Now who were the good guys? The problem here is that at that time each nation found for them legitimate reasons to start a conflict. The notions of today are therefore largely useless. One could argue that Austria-Hungary took the first shot, but other than that no real classifications can be made.

 

Nothing like admitting that your are a Nazi, and have a Nazi Mentality.

 

So you're telling me, that you have no problem with Hitler gassing/murdering 6million Jews? Or do you deny the holocaust too?

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I think your gene pool needs a bit of chlorine added to it.

 

"All's fair in love and war", but hey I accept that they are criminals and bad guys sometimes.

 

my grandfather has said to me and my brother that he is glad we lost the war refering to ww2 he is german. germany was most defenitely in the wrong in ww2 to say otherwise is an insult to humanity

 

The problem with History textbooks is that they are changed over the years to suit a particular audience, regarding whose view or take it is on the event.

My question is "How historically correct is history?"

 

Well you have nothing wrong against Bush killing hundreds of thousands of innocent iraqis? or that Israeli prime minister ordering attacks and killing innocent palestinians?

Did I want those jews to die? No, but look at the monsters they have become. They once killed 5 children, five, at the same time. If that is what the world gets for letting them live, then they might as well have died

 

your forgetting that hitler killed 12 million people 6 million jews and 6 million other such as gays, the handicapped, slavs (particlly the poles), gypsies, and the metally retarded. anyone who can say that the person behind all these deaths is in the right in my opionion is pure evil.

 

I can understand your Grandfathers point of view today, but he is talking from hindsight. At that time (1939 onwards) the Germans "thought" they were doing the right thing, from a German point of view.

Had the Germans attacked the UK instead of going to the Russian front they would have beaten us, we were too weak at that time. The Germans would have had complete control over Europe and the British Empire and that would have been a totally different story. The Germans would have been victorious, but would that have made them "The good guys"?.

 

As for gays, they deserve to die. IF you are a christian, a moslim, or even a jew you should hate gays because they are against religion.

As for everyone else, I even agree that was evil. I was referring ONLY to the jews

and considering what the jews have done, perhaps it was right to have killed them before THEY could have a chance to kill countless innocence

 

I do. Bush is a retard. Both he and the 565 current bratty, bickering members of Congress is a shameful representation of this country.
As for Israel, if you want to look at it from a religious standpoint, Jerusalem and Israel itself belonged to the Jewish people before the Arabs/Muslims; way back before Islam was even a fuckin thought in Ishmael's brain. It's their land. Why the Arabs are whining when they have all that fuckin land over there when Israel is as tiny as it is, I'll never know. But that's a whole other debate in itself. Jewish people have no less right to exist than any Arab or Muslim.

Who killed five children? And where?
How many Jewish children were killed during the holocaust?

 

Every human has the right to choose which sexual preference they desire. Which is no different to which religion they choose.

Every human on this planet has the right to choose whatever, and it would be best if you can accept that. If you can't then I feel sorry for you.

What I dont agree with is others forcing a choice or their preferences on others.

 

yeah the jews may have killed innocent people but to condone genicide of any group is depicable. how would you like if people said oh look at all the horrible things muslims did we should have killed them all them so they could not have killed all those people.