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Interesting article in today's WSJ regarding the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his consort which in turn lead to the war which changed Europe forever.
Though WWII receives more media and or other interest, it is WWI that largely reshaped Europe> The Great War destroyed several empires and largely wiped out European monarchies and the old order which had endured for centuries. Created new nations while shrinking other countries and by most estimates set the path for yet another world war that would come in less than thirty years.
Germany and or Germans in particular don't like nor need reminding they launched (and lost) *two* world wars unleashing unspeakable horrors.
Linked article has graphs detailing military losses for countries involved and it seems Russia then Germany suffered the worst of things.
Cannot access the WSJ article unless a subscriber, apparently. I'd love to read it, but...
WSJ has a very nasty habit of placing linked back articles behind pay wall. Article remains up, simply "Google" or search news using keywords "WWI" or "World War I" and it should come up within the first several hits.
Economist Fred Harrison in his book The Predator Culture homes in on the systematic carnage of the 20th century. All for land grabbing - appropriating the wealth of land and its resources. The rentiers. The 1941 German invasion of the USSR was the last great colonial land grab - to create a Greater Germany (a USA of Europe) with an abundance of natural resources.
Fred concludes that the current Capitalist system is a killing machine as the carnage of the 20th century clearly displays. It is difficult to disagree with this. Violence is ingrained into the system although most do not recognise it. It is not difficult to rectify, but those who make the easy and biggest gains stop change.
The current Capitalist system has a major "systemic" flaw. Most do not see it. Pointing that maybe a half-baked Communist system was little better does not negate the flaws in the current system.
The depression of the 1870s caused Europeans to grab for Africa to claw out of the European economic deadlock, even Belgium acquired larges slices of the continent. To get over the slump they grabbed land and its resources - the gains of this land was appropriated for private means not common means. Harrison calls these freeloaders the Predators. Those who take common wealth and the fruits of what others (the Producers) worked for, for private gain. In economic terms titled, "unearned income" and "economic rent".
The British land grabbed at home - the Highland Clearance where Scotsmen were forcibly taken to ships to take them to Canada, and the Enclosures in England. When that land grabbing was exhausted they looked elsewhere creating a massive empire. The USA also did so to its west, the Germans attempted mainly to its east. Spanish, French, Dutch, etc empires were created by grabbing land and its resources.
Harrison points out that the depression of the 1870s eventually caused WW1.Germany and Italy were largely excluded from the Africa land grab, displacing and impoverishing the locals, and the 1929 crash caused WW2. Will the 2008 crash cause WW3? We must work to make sure it does not and that means correcting the current flawed economic system, which also periodically crashes on a world-wide scale.
Harrison concludes that wealth created commonly be used to pay for common services and that private wealth be left alone and left in private hands. Common sense. This means:
No Income tax - a temporary tax to fund the Napoleonic wars, which is a tax on production. The landed in the UK (0.6% of the population own 70% of the land), which also had/has political power, saw Income Tax as a way of taking tax from their lucrative land and onto the working poor.
No Sales Tax (a transaction tax on trade).
Two things you do not want to tax - production and trade. Two negative regressive taxes.
Take away the mechanism that makes private individuals and concerns (these days many corp'ns) pursue "unearned income" and "economic rent" appropriating commonwealth and greed diminishes. People then have to concentrate on enterprise and productive matters as easy pickings on the backs of others are not there. Boom & Bust disappears and the need to steal others land & resources is eliminated. Wars are then very rare. It is all down to having an effective, fair and stable economic system - which the world does not have.
Interesting article in today's WSJ regarding the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his consort which in turn lead to the war which changed Europe forever.
Though WWII receives more media and or other interest, it is WWI that largely reshaped Europe> The Great War destroyed several empires and largely wiped out European monarchies and the old order which had endured for centuries. Created new nations while shrinking other countries and by most estimates set the path for yet another world war that would come in less than thirty years.
Germany and or Germans in particular don't like nor need reminding they launched (and lost) *two* world wars unleashing unspeakable horrors.
Linked article has graphs detailing military losses for countries involved and it seems Russia then Germany suffered the worst of things.
WW1 was a very devastating war on multiple levels. I don't know where to begin about the causes of the war, but it was mainly ethnic tensions in the Balkan Peninsula that added fire to the fuel of a larger war. World War 1 set in motion other wars ahead. The downfall of the Czar Bolshevik Revolutionaires and the Russian Civil War after create the Soviet Union which will be a thorn in the heals of the Western Europe and the United States up until the early 90s. The defeat of Germany and the treaty of Versailles along with the Great Depression destroyed Germanys hope for a better future and laid the foundation for radical Socialism by Fascists and Communists which will dominate Berlin well into the late 1980s with first being the Nazis under Adolf Hitler, and later with puppet Communist government of East Germany after World War2. Italy wanted to grow in the Balkan Penninsula especially in areas where ethnic Italians have lived during the Middle Ages when Italian merchants controlled Mediterranean trade from the Eastern Roman Empire. Italy was Promised Dalmatia but was never given. This lead to the rise of Mussolini. Even in Asia, the Western powers looked at Japan as an unequal even though they participated amongst the Western allies in the pacific.
France and Britain saw their Empires shake but also grow in the Near East with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Britain received Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. Even to this very day Israel has problems with people and Iraq is still problematic. France Received Syria and Lebanon which also struggles to this very day due to religious indifference. France and Britain benefited greatly from World War 1 but for both at an high cost, and for Britain saw its decline as a global economic power shift to the United States which at one a British colony more than a century before. If anything Britain should be thankful that America kept alive Anglo Saxon dominance of the world after the decline of the British Empire.
World War 1 created plenty of future conflicts, many being unresolved to this day, while others just as bloody or more bloody than World War 1. World War 1 created World War 2 with Germany, Italy, Soviet Union and Japan as aggressors. Eventually the West had to align with Soviet Union to defeat Germany. Much off Nazi Occupied Europe exchanged one dictator for another under the Soviet Union. The events of World War 2 created the Cold War which was fought all over the world from Africa, Korean Peninsula, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Latin America and even in Europe. WW2 weakened France which was occupied by Germany but also weakened the British Empire which started to crack after WW1. Both Britain and France had to decolonize its Empires where the USA and Soviet Union fought over economic and political influence of former British, French and Portuguese Colonies.
World War 1 was supposed to be the war to end all wars. instead World War 1 created more wars and will probably do so for years to come, especially with unresolved ethnic issues in the Balkans, Middle East and in Southwestern Russia. Even today, Russia is on the resurgence, and China as replaced Japan as the economic power of Asia. Both Russia and China do not look happily towards America and the West and both countries have been cuddling for over a decade now. 2008 economic downfall showed the world how truly weak the Anglo/American economic system really is. It comes to the point where Russia and China wants to replace the dollar as a global currency. Could World War 3 happen in our live times? Maybe.
Last edited by Bronxguyanese; 06-28-2014 at 01:57 AM..
Scars of WWI Still Haunt Europe As Centennial Approaches
Quote:
Originally Posted by BugsyPal
Interesting article in today's WSJ regarding the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his consort which in turn lead to the war which changed Europe forever.
Though WWII receives more media and or other interest, it is WWI that largely reshaped Europe> The Great War destroyed several empires and largely wiped out European monarchies and the old order which had endured for centuries. Created new nations while shrinking other countries and by most estimates set the path for yet another world war that would come in less than thirty years.
Germany and or Germans in particular don't like nor need reminding they launched (and lost) *two* world wars unleashing unspeakable horrors.
Linked article has graphs detailing military losses for countries involved and it seems Russia then Germany suffered the worst of things.
World War II was certainly the bigger war and it devastated larger areas, notably large parts of Asia, that escaped from the ravages of WW1.
But on the other hand for some reason thinking about WW1 seems to affect me more and more then even WW2. I cannot even tell precisely WHY that is but something about WW1 saddens me in a way that even the horrors of WW2 does not.
World War II was certainly the bigger war and it devastated larger areas, notably large parts of Asia, that escaped from the ravages of WW1.
But on the other hand for some reason thinking about WW1 seems to affect me more and more then even WW2. I cannot even tell precisely WHY that is but something about WW1 saddens me in a way that even the horrors of WW2 does not.
I think largely it's because Hitler and other Axis leaders seemed so insane that something like WWII will never happen again
World War I was a war that was stumbled into by a web of Alliances almost by mistake which seems possible to be repeated, not one designed by 3 crazy dictators.
Simple fact: World War II wouldn't have occurred, if World War I hadn't. No way around that.
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Scars of WWI Still Haunt Europe As Centennial Approaches
