Who's the dude who claims that WWI and WWII was in actual fact one long conflict with a bit of a breather in the middle?

Laurens wrote:Who's the dude who claims that WWI and WWII was in actual fact one long conflict with a bit of a breather in the middle?

I believe You have in mind Ferdinand Foch who, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles remarked "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years" (Quoted in Winston Churchill, "The Second World War, Vol 1, "The Gathering Storm"".)

theyounghistorian77 wrote:

Laurens wrote:Who's the dude who claims that WWI and WWII was in actual fact one long conflict with a bit of a breather in the middle?

I believe You have in mind Ferdinand Foch who, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles remarked "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years" (Quoted in Winston Churchill, "The Second World War, Vol 1, "The Gathering Storm"".)

I believe there is also a historian who published a book with this as its thesis? Or is this the same dude?

Laurens wrote:I believe there is also a historian who published a book with this as its thesis? Or is this the same dude?

Niall Ferguson's "War of the World" makes out that the 20th century was one single continuous conflict. Is that who you're thinking of?

theyounghistorian77 wrote:

Laurens wrote:I believe there is also a historian who published a book with this as its thesis? Or is this the same dude?

Niall Ferguson's "War of the World" makes out that the 20th century was one single continuous conflict. Is that who you're thinking of?

Yes I believe so, thanks. I've read articles where it was mentioned, I just couldn't for the life of me remember who it was...

Laurens wrote:Yes I believe so, thanks. I've read articles where it was mentioned, I just couldn't for the life of me remember who it was...

He did a series for Channel4 about his book a few years ago, if its on youtube you should check it out

I've promised composing a brief history of the Weimar republic earlier in this thread. What i plan to do is instead of putting it all into one lengthy post/thread i'll compose small bitesize chunks here. They are going to be brief so if by any chance you do want more information than what is provided, your best bet is either to go to the sources i cite or simply drop me a PM. If this works well i may use it as the script for a video like i've done in the past. If a mod wishes to move said chunks to somewhere more appropriate or to compose a new thread on the history of the Weimar republic with what i'm about to say in that new thread, feel free to but f i want to begin first with my thoughts regarding the following:

australopithecus wrote:Trouble is though is that if you're going to assert the Treaty of Versailles as the start of the war (hypothetically) then you can equally say it was Hitler's formation of the Stabswache, or Mussolini's March on Rome, or even the failed putsch in 1923. All equally valid candidates but nothing more than major events on the road to the war's declaration.

I agree and Im not entirely sure about some of the arguments presented in this thread. Let me explain: if one is to suggest that say the year 1918 (the end of the war) or 1919 (with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles [henceforth will be called the TOV later on]) are really as arbitrary as any other date in modern German history. It seems then with this form of logic, one coud go back as far as the late 19th/early 20th century with it's consequences, for one thing it was around this time that the concept of 'Reich' was 'especially reinvoked' in German politics, for another thing this was about the same time the political Right discovered that "socialism" (either through deed as in Bismarck's welfare reforms or simply utilising the name itself) could be utilised away from the left and used for essentialy conservative ends. There were other things going on too such as the development of the concept of Lebensraum, and propagation of Social Darwinism from the Anglosphere into Germany which for racists and antisemites gave them further justifications for their hatreds, ie to see things now in Racial terms and "race struggle" (This was even more so the case concerning the extreme-nationalist "và¶lkisch" philosophers and sects who saw the Germans and the German state as a "pure entity" to be protected against supposedly corrupting elements [especially what they deemed to be Jewish elements]). Unfortunately such ideas made it's way into intellectual currents too.

"Is the history of nations"¦any different [from Darwin's Origin of the Species]? ... No! The fate of those branches of the human family, which, as nations and races, have struggled for survival and progress for millennia now, is governed by the same external, iron laws that have determined the history of the entire organic world which for millions of years has provided life on earth"¦the victors in the struggle for life were not always the nobler or more perfect forms" - Ernst Häckel, from "Die Welträthsel", quoted in Joachim Remak (ed), "The Nazi Years: A Documentary History", p4.

And within this context of "Race" and "Nation" struggle, nationalist authors would often claim that it is their own race or nation that are the superior ones. such currents can be found within Houston Stuart Chamberlain's infamous racist diatribe, "The foundations of the Nineteenth century"

"The entrance of the Jew into European history had, as Herder said, signified the entrance of an alien element , alien to that which Europe had already achieved [...] If we look around, we see that the importance of each nation as a living power to-day is dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic blood in its population. Only Teutons sit on the thrones of Europe."

Now how important is all of this with regards to the war which began in 1939? Certainly all of this carries importance in the making of what was to become Nazi ideology, but knowing this alone offers little in the way in how such an ideology took power in Germany, much less how the infamous war of 1939 came to be, as it can be argued (and already has been done so. see Ian Kershaw's Two part biography of Hitler (Nemesis and Hubris) for more details) that there is litte in the way of straight or undeviating "clear-cut" special path from the late 19th century to 1939, or 1933, and that Historical circumstance had to come into play first. Lucy Dawidowicz in her book "The War against the Jews" mentions a "easy to draw" line of "anti-Semitic descent from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler" (p23). That does not necessarily mean it was inevitable such an antisemitism like the one Hitler espoused would be put into practice.

Imagine for a moment that Germany had say won the war of 1914-1918. European History would obviously have been very different. The British Empire, denied acsess to the continents ports would have swiftly died. The domination of the US economy may not have been so dramatic. Poland may have never came into existance in the 20th century, It's extremely difficult to predict what would have happened to Russia, but it's perhaps easier to say Hitler would most likely have been little more than a mediocre painter, perhaps a Beerhall bore, but the way the victorious Kaiser would have been set up, it would have been significantly harder for a hitler type character specifically to get into a position of complete power.

But of course, all of that was speculative alternative history that didn't play out. Instead what we got was a Germany, at the end of 1918, defeated!

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This part will cover the relative power-political decline of the Kaiser during the War and it's latter stages. I do not think a complete history of World War I needs to trouble me here but i do wish to mention a few things for the sake of context. I'm going to begin with General Erich von Falkenhayn, the man whom the Kaiser himself chose to replace Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after a combination of his ill-health and blame for the defeat at the battle of Marne. But we shouldn't read too deeply into this action in order to imply the Kaiser was some sort of supreme overlord presiding over all of the war effort! On the contrary. It was perhaps a trait of the Kaiser to go along with what others had to say rather than him having the final input, thus as long as the Kaiser could curry the favour of some general or politician, so he could easily be subject to manipulation by them. So it was with von Falkenhayn who managed to remain in his post until August 1916 despite multiple failures such as the failure to properly bleed the French dry at Verdun. He had enough power and influence in his position for the Kaiser to actually remark "I'm only a shadow" to a Junior officer, he also said "If i'm of so little use, than i can go back and live in Germany." (Quoted from Lemar Cecil, "Wilhelm II. Volume II: Emperor and Exile, 1900-1941.", p233.) Nonetheless to put it briefly his failures soon began to stack up against him, also his military strategies for bringing the war to a positive end for Germany (i'll get to this in a min) were dividing High Command. This quickly lead to voices clamouring against him and, after lobbying from Paul Von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, ultimately his resignation on the 16th. It was Ludendorf, A man that already had proven his salt with victories on the Eastern Front whilst the Western front was still stagnent that sucseeded him. And here was a man who openly put it later in his memoirs that he did not like anyone outside High command meddling with strategy.



In practice this also applied to the Kaiser aswell no matter how deeply he respected the system of German Monarchy. This didn't prevent the Kaiser from taking a keen interest in War development as one can see in this photograph here but now his opinions went largely ignored. This then is my brief explaination from how Imperial Germany transcended into what historians like Martin Kitchen calls "the silent dictatorship" during the latter stages of the War.

I've already mentioned von Falkenhayn's divisivse military strategies, there is something obvious to note about it and that is that Germany was locked into a Two Front War and not just that; the nature of the fronts were totaly different from one another. Ever since 1914 the Western front had remained stagnent to the extent Battle gains could be measured simply in Yards and not Miles wheras the Eastern Front was wide open and massive gains and losses could be recorded. This not only led to debates about logistics and the allocation of Men and Machine alike on the Two Fronts but also led to debates about what the grand strategy should be. Von Falkenhayn preferred what is known in German circles as "Ermattungsstrategie", ie the gradual weakening of the French and British through attrition which would ultimately bring them to the negoating table, in fact this was the rationale behind Verdun wheras Ludendorf and Hindenburg preferred the traditional Prussian "Vernichtungsstrategie", ie the big battle to decide the War. As Verdun was a failure so the tide of opinion in High command turned to Vernichtungsstrategie.

And Ludendorf and Hindenburg would soon get the chance to enact just that on the Western Front. And i think we all know the story! Political and social unrest in Russia, aided by the increasingly unpopular war over there (see 7:28 onwards and part 4), ushered in the Bolsheviks who finally siezed power in the October Revolution of 1917. The subsequent Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the general ending of hostilities in the east, allowed the Germans to refresh their depleted ranks in the West for a massive assault (dubbed the "Kaiserschlacht" or "Kaiser's Battle") headed up by Ludendorff to break the British back into the channel and force the French to armistice, before the Americans who had ]officially entered the war on April 6th 1917 could get really involved. (see Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis" Part III, Chapter XVII "The Twenty-First of March")

The gains of the offensive when it was launched, although may have looked impressive on a map by the standards of the boggy trench warfare of the previous 3 years, were unsustainable given the increasing German casualty rates and diminishing ability to supply the lines with fresh troops. Ludendorff had failed to achieve the decisive breakthrough needed to win the war. So when the allies counterattacked in the summer of that year, and launched what has become known as the "Hundred Days Offensive", it was relatively easy pickings for them (well, again compared to the the standards of the boggy trench warfare of the previous 3 years anyways), so much so that even the seemingly impregnable "Hindenburg line" was overrun. All this, plus the those fresh Americans which now bolstered the allied forces, added to how the allies could now bring Tanks, Aircraft, Artillery, Cavalry, Foot-soldiers etc into close coordination (as exemplified in the battle of Amiens) in a way the Germans simply couldn't, all helped contribute to the breaking of German Morale and in places a very rapid collapse of the German army. Surrenders followed en masse:

"The Germans were surrendering everywhere. I saw one Australian private actually prodding the rear of a German brigadier, much to the amusement of everybody else . But it was a morning of victory. You could feel the hair pricking up your spine with excitement because we knew that it was going to be the end of the war" - Major S. Evers. Australian Corps, quoted from Peter and Dan Snow's BBC documentary "20th Century Battlefields - 1918 Western Front " and from Max Arthur, "Forgotten voices of the Great War", p295.

Indeed according to monitors of military mail at about this time, Ordinary German soldiers were beginning to see this the war as a great 'swindle'. instead of fighting on, many were openly deserting and self-mutilation was rife (and they were pretty open about this too.). Arms were being smuggled away from the front lines for the purposes of impending revolution. (See B. Ulrich and B. Ziemann (eds), "Frontallung im Ersten Weltkrieg. Wahn und Wirklichkeit", p199-208. for details)

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to be continued

In my last post i left where i was just prior to the German revolution. As we have already seen the German Army was rapidly imploding during the Summer and going into the autumn of 1918. But they were by no means the only ones imploding rapidly. As Austria-Hungary has already been mentioned in this thread i would like to sidetrack a little bit and comment on it. Perhaps there was no more spectacular implosion than that which befell the Austria-Hungarian Empire at the same time. To understand how it happened, you must first understand that the Austrio-Hungarian empire was, to borrow AJP Taylor's well known phrase about Czechoslovakia "A state of nationalities, not a national state" (phrase found in his "The Origins of the Second World War", p190). Through centuries of Dynastic marrage expanding their material as well as Land holdings, the ruling Hapsburg monarchy had managed to incorporate a variety of differing nationalities under their thumb. Among them Romanians, Czechs, Slovakians, Poles, Serbs via the annexation of Bosnia in 1908, as well as Croatians and Ruthenians. This was also the Era of Nascent Nationalism. When you consider the widespread feeling of persecution in these minorities the idea of Nationalism as a means to gain political independence for you and your people was very attractive. So it was for what are now widely called the "Black Hand", A serbian Nationalist group with dreams of uniting all the Serbian peoples such as the ones in Bosnia under one Serbian nation. Their method for achieving this was political murder. As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the throne in Vienna, so he became the natural target and i think we all know what happened next on June 28th 1914:



Europe by this stage was comprised of a powder-keg of tight alliances (Note: Italy swapped sides during the War) set against one another and all it took to ignite War was one spark, the assasination was the spark and i would argue that it was driven by nationalism.

Again I do not think a complete history of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire's involvement in WW1 ought to trouble me here, but i will state one thing that AJP Taylor points out in Chapter 18 of his book "The Habsburg Monarchy,1809-1918 : A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary" and that is the power-political decline of the Hapsburgs during the War. Their real power had effectively ended by 1915 when Germany "took over the military and political direction of Austria-Hungary" (AJP Taylor, "Op. Cit", p244.) because their own military high command had proved themselves incompetant when it came to dealing with the Serbs and later the Italians. In-fact the Hapsburgs only remained where they were because of the "dynastic sentimentalism" of the Kaiser (Taylor, "ibid", p244.)

Of course, that was not the demise of the Empire itself. As i have inferred above the forces of Nationalism posessed a real appeal to the various minorities within the Empire. It was true for the Serbs as much as it was true for the others. Whilst Nationalism was suppressed to an extent during the War enough for one diplomat to comment:

"Although its [military] personnel consisted of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Czechs, Croats, Italians and Serbs from the different parts of the Monarchy, the service was inspired by a single-minded patriotism, and I remember no single case in which an official ever put the interests of his own nationality before those of the Monarchy." - as quoted in Sir George Franckenstein, "Diplomat of Destiny", p25.

It nonetheless exasperated itself uncontrollably during the latter stages as a result of a developing food crisis within both Germany and the Austria-Hungarian Empire as a result of an effective food blockade conducted by the British in the North Sea as well as the French in the Adriatic sea since 1914 and also Russia early on took control of the two great breadbaskets of Galicia, and Ukraine causing immediate and heavy shortage of grain. Hence why we can find remarks such as the following by Austrian Socialist Otto Bauer:

"In the interior, the Empire was already fully in decay. At the front it still seemed to live in the unity of an army which embraced every nation. The situation of the summer of 1848 [...] was, however, only a facade since the army could no longer remain unreceptive to revolutionary movement" - As quoted in Jean Bérenger, "A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1700-1918 (Translated by C.A Simpson)."

There is a general tendency for people to resort to desperate measures when confronted with desperate situations. There is also a tendency to Blame the govt for when things go wrong (and a good acount of how hunger affected the populace in general can be found in General Ottokar Landwher von Pragenau, "Die erschà¶pfungsjahre der mittlemächte 1917/18". General Ottokar Landwher von Pragenau was the Chief of the Joint Austria-Hungary food commitee.) So here, like what occoured in Russia in 1917 were the seeds of revolution. There was a Naval mutiny at Kotor on Feburary 1st 1918 just like there was at Kronstadt in Russia, (although the Kotor mutiny was quickly put down). It's effect on the nationalities can be seen in the Green Cadres movement for example.

Yet the seeds of decay could be spotted earlier. By January 1918 a massive series of strike action broke out, first in Vienna and then in Germany over the lack of bread and then fed up workers started protesting for peace:

"On 18th January, the ministry of Vienna had a meeting with the chief demonstrators, and affected to regard the matter as of a bread riot. The delegates did certainly discuss a few minor matters with General Hà¶for, the food controller but they warned the government, that the men were striking for peace. On the following days, all work was stopped in Vienna, and Buda-Pesth [sic], and in the munition factories at St Polten, Liutenworth and Roth; and it was not until the ministry consented to engage in a political discussion with the strikers leaders' leaders, that the demonstrators would promise anything. On 20th January the Austrian Premier and Count Czernin met a labour demonstration, and gave formal undertakings about electoral reform, peace without annexations, and the releasing of industries from military control. Then and not before the workmen began to return to their factories. A few days later, the German workmen continued their disturbance:

The masses felt (so ran the report of the German bureau of social policy) that the sucsessful strike in Austria-Hungary was a direct appeal to their honour; to extract from the imperial government the clear promises which they considered to be contained in Count Czernin's words about peace, Thus it came about that the movement borrowed some expressions from Austria and Russia; it was nevertheless a native product.

- A.C Bell, "A history of the blockade of Germany and of the countries associated with her in the great war, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, 1914-1918.", p688.

And whilst the food blockade was clearly having an effect on the lower strata of society by 1918, it also managed to have an effect higher up too, and earlier. In April 1917 for example, Emperor Charles I was warning behind closed doors that his Empire was so near exhaustion that it would be less costly to start ceding territory than to continue the war until some great disaster befell the position of the monarchy, like the one that, at the time was unfolding in Russia. It was in that context that we hear him speaking:

"We are fighting a new enemy, who is more dangerous than the entente. Our eneny is international revolution, which is finding a powerful ally in the general famine. I do swear to you that i am not forgetting how fateful a moment of the War we have now reached, and do beg of you to reflect that, if we end the war soon - even at a heavy sacrifice - we shall [at least] have an opportunity of checking the upheaval that is now happening." - Quoted in A.C Bell, "ibid", p694.

So as we can see the fabric of the Empire was creaking as a result of the food problems driving revolutionary fervor. It was also in the same context of the speech just mentioned that we find Charles I favouring an armistice to restore order in the empire:

Source wrote:The most serious of these peace feelers was communicated to the Entente via Karl's cousin Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, a serving officer in the Belgian army, in the spring of 1917 when the French Nivelle Offensive had just collapsed on the Western Front. The British prime minister David Lloyd George had high hopes for the conversations, which foundered when the Italian foreign minister Sidney Sonnino refused point-blank to countenance any agreement which would obstruct his country's designs on Dalmatia.

Nonetheless, Lloyd George twice attempted to revive the talks, and sent the South African Jan Smuts to Switzerland that December to meet the Austrian envoy Count Mensdorff. This time, the negotiations collapsed when it became apparent that the Austrians would not - or perhaps could not - ask for anything else than a general peace, and Britain seemed implacably opposed to a negotiated peace with Germany.

The Foreign Office had been sceptical even before Smuts left the country, and appeared to be vindicated in the spring of 1918 when the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau quarrelled with Austria's foreign secretary, Ottokar Czernin, and published the so-called 'Sixtus letter' revealing Karl's approach to the Entente, which Berlin interpreted as tantamount to treachery.

Karl was summoned to the German headquarters at Spa in May, forcing him to sign an agreement which bound Austria-Hungary even more tightly into the German military machine. The summer, accordingly, saw Entente commitments to an independent Poland and Czechoslovakia, although - largely thanks to Sonnino - not to Yugoslavia.

So the War progressed, but the internal problems went on. March, April, May and June 1918 were incredibly food-lean even by War Standards. By April there were reports of only 3 days worth of Bread-stock in Vienna and to maintain even that rations had to be reduced and food brought in at the expense of elsewhere. like Croatia where regulations ensuring leftover supplies of food stayed in the region were now being put down and enforced by local authorities. It wasn't the only region doing this either!



Of course it would be folly to pretend that none of this went unnoticed outside of Austria-Hungary. In fact it was these disturbances and the trouble that they were causing that were the reasons why Britain and France sponsored those congresses "of the opressed nations" like the one in Rome VyckRo already mentioned. In exchange of swapping sides and ending the war quicker, the Poles and the Czechs for example could be fully fledged Entente belligerants in their own right. At this stage it was at least better to be on the victors side than be subject to some sort of severe punishment. Afterall these said nationalities were already in a "State of nationalities" that was already letting it's said subject nationalities down. Why continue on with this as some sort of status quo especially when, as fuel for the nationalist fervor, Woodrow Wilson announced his 14 points with the 10th promising the "freest opportunity to autonomous development"? All of this are the reasons why, In the Prague "Congress of Oppressed Nations" of July 1918 we find the words posted on the walls "Long live Wilson!" and "Long live the Entente!"

There actually was promises by Charles I to create local parliments along federalist lines as an antidote to the pro-independance fervor but these measures were too little too late. When the Austrian-Hungarian empire launched one last but doomed offensive near the Piave River in order to salvage the war effort but culminating in nothing which set up their final defeat at "Vittorio Veneto", you could clearly see that the army was already broken. This plus rest of the problems i've mentioned took it's toll. By now as VyckRo has already mentioned the various nationalities were declaring independance. On October 29th 1918 the Austro-Hungarians asked for an armistice. On October 30th 1918 the Austro-Hungarian army was split in two. The armistice was signed on November 3rd at 3:20 p.m., to become effective 24 hours later, at 3 p.m. on November 4th.

So yes, the empire was collapsing before Trianon and i think i might conclude this post with a remark from hungarianhistory.com

hungarianhistory.com wrote:"In the light of these and some other evidences, then, one might say that the collapse of the Monarchy was not entirely self-inflicted. Social and political reforms and federalization probably could have revitalized the Monarchy. Serious discontent existed, and revolutionary movements were encouraged and fomented from outside, but the change of attitude by the victorious Western powers was the decisive factor. The leaders of the various nationalities received encouragement, support, and even instructions from abroad. The chance of being able to switch from the defeated camp to that of the victorious powers had a strong appeal to all nationalities. Under these conditions and prospects the discontented nationalities themselves had no particular reason to remain with the old Monarchy. It is therefore somewhat understandable that most of the nationalities, irrespective of other political considerations, eventually preferred to belong to the victorious Allied nations."

As for the treaty of Triannon itself, i think there is a good superficial comparison for the reasons VyckRo highlighted, but i would not go further than the word "superficial" so one does need a complete history of the Weimar republic to understand why!

to be continued

PS: Apologies for taking so long to post that post, As Prolescum will tell you i haven't had the most of time to do it