Russian trolls

[Montegriffo]

Second most powerful Navy at the time. Built to challenge the Royal Navy.
They didn't build it just to impress granny Victoria.
Germany had been preparing for war for years.
Kaiser Bill looked upon the British Empire with envy and wanted one of his own.

[Smitty-48]

British propaganda, post facto, to justify the total disaster of entering the war over Belgian Neutrality.

Contrary to this myth of Britain and Germany being on the brink of war because Germany had built a navy, the true motivations for Britain's entry into the war do actually start to get into the Nukedoggian theorem zone, the Liberal coalition government actually had no interest in entering the war, they made it quite clear that they were not interested in intervening on the Continent, but then two things happened, one; the British press, controlled by da Joos, started beating the war drums hysterically over "Belgian Neutrality!", and two; Winston Churchill wanted his war, so he threatened to walk across the floor to the Tories if the Liberals didn't give it to him, so they capitulated in order to save their government from collapsing.

All this blather about World War One being some sort of nefarious plot incited by the Germans, is pure balderdash, there was no casus belli for war prior to Russian mobilization, it was not inevitable, the Germans didn't cause it, and the British did not enter until well after it had been caused, not because of the German navy, it was entirely due to British domestic political wrangling over who would rule at Whitehall and the British Press trying to incite a war to sell papers, led by Lord Northcliffe, Lord Beaverbrook, and the Rothchild's.

[Smitty-48]

Moreover, since it did not actually amount to a world war until the British entered, if there is one person responsible for the First World War becoming the First World War, it is again, not Kaiser Bill, but rather Winston Churchill who had final say on the matter.

If Winston Churchill hadn't been such a warmonger looking to drag the British Empire in by hook or by crook, it would simply have been a continental war; Franco-Prussian War Two.

This is of course why the British are prone to making up a lot of bullshit propaganda about it to blame Germany, to distract from their own disastrous warmongering.

They blew their Empire up, and the rest of the world with it, over a scrap of paper, which the government of the time was perfectly willing to walk away from, because they rightly thought it was crazy to put the entire British Empire on the line, for tiny Belgium, as much as it was crazy for the Romanovs to put their entire empire on the line, for tiny Serbia, which of course it was, which, Kaiser Bill and the Germans said so at the time, the only ones who said so in fact.

[clubgop]

Kinda hard to imagine how they started it, on the same day that Austria-Hungary declared war. Keeping in mind that there were no telephones at the time, and "mobilization" took a month or so.

Not only had telephones existed for some time by WW1, but they also had the telegraph.

He really is special isn't he?

[Smitty-48]

On mobilization in particular; rapid mobilization by railway was the "launch on warning" of the day, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 had been won by the Germans largely because of rapid mobilization to the front, so in 1914, a mobilization was an act of war and casus belli, and altho the Russians weren't the rapid mobilizers, the French had adopted the German method, so they most certainly were, so the Germans did not have a month to respond to mobilization against them, in a rapid mobilization war of the era, it literally came down to a matter of hours, otherwise your whole mobilization plan would go awry and fail to be in position in time, which is what happened to the French in 1870, when the Prussians basically beat them to the punch after the French picked the fight, over a Spanish princess trying to marry a Prussian prince.

Thus, upon mobilization of the Russians, the Germans were forced to "launch on warning" to take the French out quickly, so they could swing back around to take the Russians down when the Russians arrived at the front.

The First World War was like a nuclear war in slow motion, World War Three would be the First World War sped up exponentially, launch on warning then and now.

[Speaker to Animals]

Dude, you know what else is crazy? They even had cameras in WW1.

[Okeefenokee]

Dude, you know what else is crazy? They even had cameras in WW1.

Cable dogs!

[Speaker to Animals]

I wonder if, when they got cut off from the main line, sometimes they would get "orders" from a French-accented commander to just surrender.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I don’t accept the narrative that it was Germany’s “fault” that the war happened. But it wasn’t a Great War of Russian Aggression either. It was an epic clusterfuck for all time. The ultimate Left Turn in humanity’s course.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's actually the basis for an argument against the alt-right and various forms of neo-nationalism that are coalescing.

At the same time, the consequences of that war (the western world cutting it's own jugular), are what the nationalists are trying to recover civilization from.

I would very much like to see a debate between intellectuals from each side on that topic.