Talk:World War I/Archive1

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Civil rights

WWI also saw dranconian measures to deprive US citizens of civil rights. Just sayin'-- -PalMD ^--Do not read my blog 20:58, 18 August 2008 (EDT)

Well, just say it in teh article eh and quit prettying up the camshaft! ħuman 21:32, 18 August 2008 (EDT)

"The War remained alive through the Rock and Roll era in songs such as the Zombie's The Butcher's Tale (Western Front, 1914) and Passchendaele by Terry Vogel and Ragnar Kvaran."

The "rock and roll era"? So people were still singin' about it after WW2? ħuman 21:33, 18 August 2008 (EDT)

Immediate causes

This section seems written rather haphazardly and the reasons given as well. Here's the text divided into parts and my comments on each part and how I think it should be re-written:

"Things went pear-shaped after the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Franz-Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 28, 1914. The assassin was associated with Serbian military figures, and Austria-Hungary seized this opportunity to gain revenge and crush Serbia[7] at the same time. They cooked up an ultimatum[8] that the Serbs rejected. Russia couldn't stand to see its interests in the Balkans walked over, and decided to back Serbia. After checking to make sure the Germans were happy to support them, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia. Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary in response. "

While Austria-Hungary cooked up the ultimatum, it is my understanding (I read all this from German sources, for what it's worth) that they faced pressure from Germany of posing one that could not feasibly be met. Germany had been itching to start the war, the German generals already having made military plans due to realizing that the two-way power split in Europe meant war was inevitable and Germany should strike first to secure victory. Therefore the assassination served as a Casus Belli opportunity and Germany pressured Austria to start the war asap, thus Austria posited an impossible Ultimatum to initiate the war. (In summation that is what I learned, anyways.)

Now, I may be suffering from confirmation bias, but read this part of a wiki article to understand where I'm coming from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Ultimatum#German_attitude_to_war

What I would suggest is to include in the article Germany's considerable influence in pushing the start of the war asap due to internal military reasoning.

"Both Austria-Hungary and Germany knew that the former couldn't win a war against Serbia and Russia on its own. Germany demanded that Russia stop mobilising against its ally; Russia refused, and the Germans declared war. "

Again, Germany had been pushing the war from the start anyway. That's the real reason behind this, not just that they knew Austria-Hungary couldn't handle themselves.

"For some reason, Germany's plans for war with Russia involved attacking Belgium and France (which was considering not backing up Russia). In turn this provoked Great Britain. The German plans to knock out first France, then Russia in quick succession failed, and literally bogged down in trench warfare. As the war continued, the Central Powers brought Bulgaria and the Ottomans in against the Allies, while the Allies signed up Romania and Italy [9]. After three bloody years of fighting, the Russian Empire collapsed, and the Bolshevik government that emerged made peace with Germany. Meanwhile, the United States, which had enough of Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, and became superpissed when they found out that Germany was trying to provoke Mexico into attacking them, so they declared war on Germany in spring 1917, giving the exhausted Allies the manpower they needed to clinch a decision on points over the equally exhausted Central Powers."

"For some reason" is rather weak reasoning and the sentence after it doesn't make much sense as is. The power split in Europe between allied camps had meant a very long-running anticipation and planning of the inevitable war to come, at the very least on the German side. France was in the opposite camp due to its treaties with Russia and Great Britain along with being neighbours to Germany, hence why Germany sought to strike France out early before they were ready. (Most or all of the following I have read from a detailed WW1 chronology and discussion book in German.) Germany has had pretty long-formulated and planned-out military strategies prepared, the most prominent of which is the Schlieffen Plan. The Schlieffen Plan in its basics is just a hammer-anvil plan, but more comprehensively it basically went like this: "We cannot win a two-front war, so we should focus on eliminating one front asap. We should focus on elminiating our neighbours the French right off the bat with a hammer-anvil move. That way we can concentrate on our eastern front for the rest of the war. The anvil is the left flank that will come into France in the South rather directly. The hammer is the much stronger right flank which will need to move through the neutral Belgium so as to come into France from the North and crush down to the anvil, thus taking France out."

This was the reason they rolled through Belgium, thus violating its neutrality and giving the British their reason for joining into the war against Germany due to their policy of maintaining 'balance in Europe'. Anyways, the SChlieffen plan failed as the hammer was entangled in brutal trench and artillery warfare (a thing that came new in WW1) by French resistance and thus could not crush through to the anvil, thus Germany faced a two-front war anyways.

A very large part also in the collapse of the Russian side was the Bolshevik revolution, which could be more emphasized in that part of the text IMO.

Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare came as a result of British blockading by sea which Germany needed to break out of. As a result American ships got sunk as well and that was, I understand, the main reason the US entered the war.

Again, I suggest using stronger reasoning (than "for some reason", at any rate) in the text, as I have provided. Nullahnung (talk) 08:37, 23 August 2013 (UTC)