Who started world war one?

[snaark]

I know that this should probably go in the history forum but, since nobody ever ventures there, I shall post it here. Move it if you really must.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a small town called Topola, about an hour from Belgrade. There is a small church there in which members of the (former) Serbian royal family a buried. Nearby there is also a small museum in what was once the hunting house of Petar I, the last King of Serbia. There is not much to see, a few paintings and engravings, except for this. It's a telegram sent from the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister to Petar I on the 28th of July, 1914, declaring war on Serbia. This tiny piece of paper marks the official start of WWI! Given the current “scholarly” debate over who really started WWI, I found this pretty interesting. Feel free to share my interest (or not).

[coldharvest]

Otto von Bismarck

[Q]

Wrote a lengthy paper on the subject. Opinion was that the collusion of British interests and Pan-Slavism in the Balkans pretry much justifies all Central Powers actions.

Got an A on it from a super America Fuck Yeah professor, so I definitely made the case.

[snaark]

Opinion was that the collusion of British interests and Pan-Slavism in the Balkans pretry much justifies all Central Powers actions.

People around here would like to believe that.

[cbychoice]

This war could have been prevented, there where too may cooks in the kitchen with their own interests.

[Osiris]

Fox News told me it was Obama's fault.

[Yeahsure]

http://www.c-span.org/video/?316109-1/m ... -world-war

[DennisM]

I heard it all started when a bloke named Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.

[AztecDave]

I heard it all started when a bloke named Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.

Long live Baldrick!

[AztecDave]

Fox News told me it was Obama's fault.

funny, MSNBC said it was Bush's fault.

[ROMAD_25]

This reminds me of advertisements for this club near the Castro that catered to the military back when the Presidio and Treasure Island were still around.

For Armistice Day the ad would say "Come hang out with our Dough boys" and for Veterans Day it would be "The Battle of the Bulge" contest.

[coldharvest]

Seriously, the Krauts did it.

[grawp]

Napoleon III and the generals who lost the Franco-Prussian War.
They promoted the whole sick "The Army was betrayed by the politicians" nonsense.
This to distract from the General Staff's being too hidebound and conservative.
Or to have learned anything from the string of failures they'd had since the Crimean War, viz:
1) Their useless excursion against Juarez in Mexico
2) Colonial silliness in Africa and southeast Asia that garnered a record for genocide only slightly better than that of Belgium in the Congo
3) A good old boy network shot through with anti-semitism that culminated in the ridiculous Dreyfus Affair
4) Their not paying attention to or learning from other wars, the American Civil War in particular.
5) not showing interest in technical innovations derived from other fields, as exemplified by the Germans studying how Ringling Bros. loads their circus trains to increase efficiency in their rail movement of troops, equipment and supplies.

[ROMAD_25]

Seriously, the Krauts did it.

Without a doubt.

Money talks and bullshit walks and without financing from the Krauts, the only thing Austria-Hungary was capable of doing involved piss and moaning. I aint no scholar because assholes smell like my opinions; however the way I see it, Germany started the war by giving Austria-Hungary access to it's PayPal account, poking it's finger in the chest of Nick The Dick from Russia and bringing Wienerschnitzel franchises to Luxembourg. These things kinda makes the point a little sharper for my feeble mind...

[El Presidente]

Max Hastings in his latest book "Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War" makes a pretty compelling argument that Germany may not have "started" the war, they were most responsible for egging it on. While British, Hastings offers a ruthless criticism of Britain's incompetence and even suggests borderline-criminal cowardice by UK commanders during the early months of WW1 which adds to his already persuasive argument against "no one was at fault".