Could Britain have done more to avoid World Wars 1 and 2?

[uk 75]

As we end the first year of remembering the start of the First World War and begin to think about the end of the Second World War and the world Britain found itself in, many experts have given us their thoughts on TV and elsewhere about Britain's role in both wars and their impact on Britain's place in the world.

So my question for alternate history fans is: could Britain have done more to avoid both or either of the two World Wars?

 

[Reaper]

I think the more interesting question is: why does Britain not avoid any current war?

 

[Orionblamblam]

So my question for alternate history fans is: could Britain have done more to avoid both or either of the two World Wars?

Prior to the invasion of Poland, Germany did a *lot* of things that violated the treaty of Versailles, from re-arming, to building up the Luftwaffe to numerous invasions. In each case, Britain (and more especailly France) could have swooped in, kicked Hitlers ass, and prevented the war.

The lesson there, that if you don't nip this sort of thing in the bud you wind up with a global war, has not been entirely lost. Britains and Frances failures to act and thus prevent WWII was not forgotten in 2003.

One question I've never heard answered: why did Britain go to war after Germany invaded Poland? The official claims is because Britain had a treaty to defend Poland in the event of an invasion... but given that Britain *didn't* declared war on the Soviet Union when the Soviets also invaded Poland, the official story seems suspect to me.

 

[bobbymike]

So my question for alternate history fans is: could Britain have done more to avoid both or either of the two World Wars?

Prior to the invasion of Poland, Germany did a *lot* of things that violated the treaty of Versailles, from re-arming, to building up the Luftwaffe to numerous invasions. In each case, Britain (and more especailly France) could have swooped in, kicked Hitlers ass, and prevented the war.

The lesson there, that if you don't nip this sort of thing in the bud you wind up with a global war, has not been entirely lost. Britains and Frances failures to act and thus prevent WWII was not forgotten in 2003.

One question I've never heard answered: why did Britain go to war after Germany invaded Poland? The official claims is because Britain had a treaty to defend Poland in the event of an invasion... but given that Britain *didn't* declared war on the Soviet Union when the Soviets also invaded Poland, the official story seems suspect to me.

Prescience not to push together/unite Germany/USSR if declared war on both? Germany being so close to France/England/other allies and they were also the belligerent in WWI? Hitler was recognized already as the greater threat? Although the non-aggression pact had been signed a week prior to the invasion so this is dubious as well.

 

[JFC Fuller]

but given that Britain *didn't* declared war on the Soviet Union when the Soviets also invaded Poland, the official story seems suspect to me.

Not that suspect, precisely what was Britain going to do against Russia? It was invulnerable to naval blockade, out of range of the RAF and certainly not a viable invasion target when priority number one was defending France. Britain did not have the land forces to take on the Wehrmacht let alone the Red Army to.

 

[Jemiba]

...Britain did not have the land forces to take on the Wehrmacht let alone the Red Army to.

I think, that there actually were plans/projects by Great Britain and France to destroy, or at
least considerable weaken the Soviet oil production around Baku by air attack.

 

[royabulgaf]

Could Britain have done more to avoid World Wars 1 and 2?

Shoot Winston Churchill in 1910

 

[aircraftguy]

Re “Why did Britain go to war after Germany invaded Poland?”

Speculative answer (based on very limited facts):

Poland surreptitiously acquired a German Enigma encryption device and offered it to Britain, provided Britain agreed to come to her aid in the event of a German attack. The Poles stipulated that if Britain didn’t honor the agreement, they would tell the Germans that Britain had the device, in which case, Germany would change it’s encryption system, leaving Britain with a useless piece of machinery. Britain realized that it would have to fight Germany sooner or later, and decided that it would be better to do so sooner (while being able to read German codes), rather than later (without the ability to do so.)

 

[CNH]

Which would obviously have prevented the assassination of the Archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

Is one allowed to say: 'Idiot'?

 

[alspug]

The only way great Britain could have avoided WW1 is by refusing to take part which means that Germany conquers France after a 3 year war and builds up a navy sufficient to contest Great Britain's fleet . then ten years later sealion is attempted . I mean seriously WW1 was inevitable due to the rise of Germany as a great power and the creation of the German Fleet . England could not afford anyone else having the ability to control the seas. On a different note England could have gotten very rich seling weapons to the French and Germans but would be a loser eventually .

 

[pathology_doc]

I'm not sure France would have lasted three years. It all depends on your interpretation of just how vital the presence of the BEF corps on the French left flank was. Depending on who you listen to, they either were or were not instrumental in slowing the Germans and inducing them (whether as an unforced error or otherwise) to turn inwards too soon. Certainly the British and the Belgians introduced a significant degree of friction into the Schlieffen ideal that helped to bring the whole thing unstuck.


Additionally, every casualty the British suffered was one less the French had to take. Yes, the casualty figures for a lot of the "first days of the battle" were disproportionately weighted against the British, but the entirety of the Somme wasn't exactly cheap for Germany either.


Even if you accept that the Schlieffen plan could never have worked - even with everything going right - expecting France to last alone until August 1917 without the British taking some of the heat by fighting the Somme, Arras and the prelude to the Passchendaele campaign is IMO a pipedream. Others may differ.


I don't think WW1 could have been stopped. WW2 could have been if the specific Germans who'd started WW1 had been the ones signing the documents to end it, as it would have removed or undermined one of the political platforms (the "stab in the back") that the Nazis appealed to. From my readings, British and French land and air power were adequate to the task of stopping Hitler in 1938, but British sea power is another question - the Brits were accepting belt armour for their cruisers from German foundries right up until the start of the actual Second World War, and if they'd concentrated their available ships in home waters to deal with Germany, they would have been faced with a terrible dilemma in the Far East if Japan had taken advantage of their distraction.


Politics is the art of the possible.


I find the suggestion to shoot Churchill in 1910 ignorant at best and distasteful at worst. If anything, someone should have done a better job of killing a certain Austrian corporal before the end of 1918.

 

[uk 75]

Thank you everyone for some interesting contributions. Based on some comments can I pose some additional questions?

Would the deployment of British forces on the Continent in peacetime before either way have made a difference?

Did contemporary suggestions about the shape of the RAF or a Mobile British Army before WW2 have a chance of making a difference?

Could Britain have done more to work with the USA?

 

[airman]

A nice inspiring answer for a possible alternate history tale !!

 

[Orionblamblam]

I find the suggestion to shoot Churchill in 1910 ignorant at best and distasteful at worst. If anything, someone should have done a better job of killing a certain Austrian corporal before the end of 1918.

If you think shooting Churchill to be distasteful... imagine a world where a certain austrain corporal got whacked in 1918. Without Hitler, the Nazis likely would have never risen above the level of minor gang o street thugs. And thus the Communists might well have been functionally unopposed in the contest to dominate the Weimar Republic, so by 1939 Stalin would have been bordering *France.* Note that as previously pointed out the French and British treaty to defend Poland was ignored by them WRT the USSR, so a *joint* German/Russian communist takeover of Poland likely would have gone unopposed.

And with a communist Germany, the communists in France certainly would have been emboldened.

So it seems a fair hypothesis that WWII would have been the likes of the Brits vs a USSR that stretched all the way to Spain. Given that the Soviet dominated parts of Europe would have seen megadeaths even *without* an actual war (death being the one undisputed product communists excel at producing), it's hard to see how this WWII could have been anything other than far more horrific than the real one.

If you *really* want to prevent the horrors of WWII... go after Lenin prior to 1917. If the Tsar gets toppled and replaced by republicans of some reasonable sort, then the Nazis would have never even arisen since fascism was just communism-lite.

 

[steelpillow]

As best I recall, the First War was pretty much an accident waiting to happen. Following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the outbreak of relatively minor hostilities, the German Army mobilised. Part of its mobilisation plan was the invasion of Belgium. The rest followed with inevitability, whatever else went on around it. We could have made more intelligent international treaties, but not done a lot else except welch on the treaties we had made and leave Europe to the Europeans.

We could in have done a lot to avoid a Second War in which we fought against Germany. We could have been less vindictive against the German economy, supporting rather than punishing the people in their postwar hardship. Then, Chamberlain's appeasement led Hitler to misinterpret a later warning over Poland, into thinking that he would be allowed to get away with invading it. Had we made the message clearer, he would probably not have invaded. But once war with Germany was under way, Churchill saw Stalin as an essential ally in the defeat of Hitler. He realised that the Axis pact was a sham and was not keen to drive them closer together by declaring war on both. But as others have pointed out, Stalin was on the warpath anyway and would in due course have attacked Poland and Germany, starting a rather different Second World War in which we fought on Germany's side against the Soviet empire. We might have stopped that by assassinating Stalin, but I can't think of any other way.

Would the deployment of British forces on the Continent in peacetime before either way have made a difference? Ca. 1912 it would probably have hastened the spark. Ca. 1938 it might have helped get the message across to Hitler. Stalin would just have changed tactics and invaded somewhere else first, perhaps Scandinavia.

Did contemporary suggestions about the shape of the RAF or a Mobile British Army before WW2 have a chance of making a difference? Not to the outbreak, as our equipment modernisation was just so far behind, but we could certainly have fought those first couple of years a bit more intelligently.

Could Britain have done more to work with the USA? Probably not. The personal stamp of the president was the key to overcoming widespread isolationism if not downright anti-British sentiment, and - luckily for us - he did all he could.

I opened this post with the remark that the First War was pretty much an accident waiting to happen. The European powers had been bitter rivals, fighting each other for centuries and vying for trade supremacy. Britain's industrial revolution had turned out to be the trump card, with the Royal Navy and "gunboat diplomacy" its agent of delivery. Germany was the first European power to industrialise on anything like an equal footing and it dove pell-mell into its own Navy. The Battle of Jutland, in which two superpowers suddenly realised their supremacy was about to be annihilated in a vast battle of attrition, brought into focus the whole hideous futility of military superpower politics. If Britain had not fought that battle with Germany, it would have fought it with the next pretender to come along - at that time, the American Navy was fast a-building, while Britain was on the verge of bankrupting itself to keep one small island ahead of its vast continental rivals: the spoils of Empire could not sustain it for ever. This was not just any empire, it was the Empire which spanned the globe, the Empire on which the sun never set. Waging war on it could only be done on a global scale. Sooner or later, the Royal Navy would have slipped behind one rival or another and World War One would have kicked off.

 

[CNH]

Well - up to a point.

France and Britain had been enemies for centuries. They only become allies [not friends] because Kaiser Bill was demented enough to build a totally pointless fleet.

Blame the two wars and 100 million+ dead on Kaiser Bill wanting to play with his battleships.

 

[marauder2048]

Well - up to a point.

France and Britain had been enemies for centuries. They only become allies [not friends] because Kaiser Bill was demented enough to build a totally pointless fleet.

Which explains the Anglo-French alliance in the Crimean War?

 

[marauder2048]

If you think shooting Churchill to be distasteful... imagine a world where a certain austrain corporal got whacked in 1918. Without Hitler, the Nazis likely would have never risen above the level of minor gang o street thugs. And thus the Communists might well have been functionally unopposed in the contest to dominate the Weimar Republic, so by 1939 Stalin would have been bordering *France.*

Removing Hitler doesn't remove Hindenberg, Ludendorff, the Strasser Brothers, Goebbels, Rohm, Hess and the other Freikorp leftovers not to mention the military, press barons and industrial backers that bankrolled and supported the right-wing.

And then there's the organic support such groups enjoyed from the German middle class to say nothing of the foreign powers that wanted Germany's war debts serviced.

I don't buy that Soviet influence was that prominent or pernicious after the Treaties of Rapallo and Berlin and the extensive, covert military cooperation that followed.

But I completely agree that going after Lenin and his financial backers (especially Jacob Schiff) would probably have had decisive results.

 

[uk 75]

Steelpillow

Thank you for your thoughtful answers to my additional questions.


As ever on this site we have ranged a lot further and perhaps whackier than conventional media but I have enjoyed it.

On balance we did the right thing in both wars, belatedly and not all the time. Avoiding either of them does not seem to have been a realistic option given the limitations of being a rather lazy complacent but nonethless democratic country under the rule of law. Our debt to the servicemen and women then as now is made greater by the tendency of the rest of us to hope wars will go away until they come a knocking.

Unlike Hitler we did not have any great wonder weapons up our sleeve but those we did have like the air defence network, codebreaking and other stuff did the trick.

Merry Christmas to one and all but especially those in the Forces and Emergency Services.

 

[pathology_doc]

It does remove the unifying presence behind all of them (Hindenburg was pretty ancient by then anyway; he doesn't count so much, while Ludendorff became aware before his own death of just how misplaced his initial faith in Hitler had been and how it would turn out for Germany).


The Anglo-French alliance in Crimea was based on common strategic interests and it soured again afterwards, just as that between the Western Allies and the USSR did in World War 2. The relationship between France and Tsarist Russia is also quite a complex one, seesawing between apparent friendship and enmity of the most bitter kind, cycling slowly back to allied status by the end of the 19th Century.


(Off-topic, it's interesting to note that the Tsarist Russian Navy was essentially French in the design and composition of its major units, that of the Japanese essentially British. While it's a long stretch to argue that Tsushima was a demonstration of how an Anglo-French naval war at the close of the Victorian Era might have turned out, one does at least have actual, hard combat performance data on both shipbuilding philosophies to use in extrapolating a result, as well as the fact that the culture of the IJN was a conscious imitation of the Royal Navy. To what extent the Russians philosophically took a French line, I cannot say. I suspect that the personnel of the French Navy were of a higher calibre and would have given the British more of a run for their money than the Russians gave the Japanese (for all sorts of reasons).)

 

[alertken]

There's a sublety here between: could UK have prevented either War; and could UK have done a Sweden and watched others flail?

Surely we could have stayed out of the (start of the) first one, just as we had stayed out of Prussia's escapades to create modern Germany. The proximate cause of our involvement was the Napoleonic legacy, inventing Belgium as a buffer on the Channel. But that arose in the age of sail. Long range ironclads simply o'erleap a few polders. If we had not committed to the Entente, all Options would have been open to UK. That was truly an "entangling Alliance", dragging us into others' quarrel. Just like Germany's with Vienna.

Surely we could have stayed out of the (start of the) second one, by not scattering unenforceable "Guarantees" in 1939 (not only Poland, but also Greece, Portugal, Romania, Turkey). All were entangling, in that our partner could provoke: the whole point of NATO in 1949, enabling Congress to endorse it, was Committee consensus - no one Member could drag others into a parochial issue.

So, why then did our Statesmen do these entanglements with far-off countries of which we knew little (and for which most folk cared less?) Because they judged that whilst Swedes may be an island intire unto itself (it's a poem), Brits are not. What happens there has ripples here. If you accept that, then better to fight them on (distant) beaches and hills than in Kent.

So, I say, no, we could not have stayed out.

So: could we have separated the first combatants and sent them scurrying back to their tents? Say, landed the Marines to lay a Green Line in Sarajevo, 8/1914; or to enforce a DMZ between Poland and Germany, 8/1939? I say, No. No clout. The World would not shake in awe as we uttered demarches. No reach.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Removing Hitler doesn't remove Hindenberg, Ludendorff, the Strasser Brothers, Goebbels, Rohm, Hess and the other Freikorp leftovers not to mention the military, press barons and industrial backers that bankrolled and supported the right-wing.

While it's true that others might have fulfilled the same role as Hitler, it's incontrovertible that nobody else actually did, or came anywhere close when they tried. It's like if you would go back to when Julius Caesar was fighting Pompey and you tinkered with things so that Caesar took an arrow to the cerebellum, he obviously would not become emperor, and likely neither would Augustus. Would someone else try for the throne? Sure. But without the Caesar example, chances are good that that someone would fail, and Rome might never have become an empire (or might have become a very different one).

So you whack Hitler, someone else tries to lead the Nazis. But Hitler was integral to the rise to power of the Nazi party; his alternate universe replacement might well not have had what it took to do the job. So perhaps the Weimar Republic is replaced not with wacky Fascists, but with more "reasonable" people. But sometimes the best weapon against a monster is another monster. And it's perhaps sadder that as evil as Hitler and the Nazis were, they might well have saved the world from an even worse fate... Soviet domination.

 

[marauder2048]

Funny you mention Julius Caesar. Do you think that if Pompey had prevailed in the civil war he would have been less of a (literal and figurative) dictator than Caesar? Both modeled their careers on the dictator Sulla so the precedent was well and truly set.

Similarly, the rise of Hitler and the National Socialists came at the expense of other nationalist, revanchist, irredentist parties. They didn't differ in their basic aims and AFAIK, none of these parties espoused non-violent means of overturning Versailles. Heck, Hitler's immediate predecessor as Chancellor, Von Schleicher, was every bit the militarist.

Counterfactuals are fun: Would the Soviet Union have embarked on its massive industrial and military expansion if the virulently anti-Soviet National Socialists not come to power?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Funny you mention Julius Caesar. Do you think that if Pompey had prevailed in the civil war he would have been less of a (literal and figurative) dictator than Caesar?

Insufficient data on my part. But my understanding is that JC was very popular in a way that Pompey wasn't. Ability and ambition are often not as important as popularity... as your average election demonstrates.

Would the Soviet Union have embarked on its massive industrial and military expansion if the virulently anti-Soviet National Socialists not come to power?

Probably. Remember, it was *Lenin,* not even yet Stalin, who slaughtered the Kulaks because they wouldn't get with the program. If Germany had gone Commie in the early 1930's, maybe the USSR would have gotten paranoid about Britain or the USA or Japan rather than the Nazis. A system like communism *needs* an enemy to rally the economy around.

 

[Michel Van]

For World War One
Had German Emperor not taken the Schlieffen plan, "we not attacking a neutral Kingdom of Belgium"
This war would be more of a French-German War, while Great Britain would stay neutral.
i guess it would ended in 1916/17 with collapse of French Frontline and a Europe under German Control

For World War Two
of course the British wanted to be neutral and Chamberlain try it best, even selling Czechoslovakia to Nazi
in naive belief it would clam down Adolf Hitler, the warmonger who wanted overtower Napoleon and Julius Caesar
I wish someone had give a English version of "Mein Kampf" to Chamberlain

Even as the Nazi Barbarians stormed true Poland and British contractual declare War to The Third Reich.
Many in British Parlament wanted a truce with Hitler and stay Neutral for rest of the Conflict
Lucky, came with the King George VI speech, a political wakeup call
and new Prime Minster Winston Churchill declare "Britain never surrender !"
the last Britain politicians believing a truce with Hitler is possible, change fast there mind
As the Nazi Barbarians trying bombing Britain into stone age...

Maybe if
Edward VIII refused to Abdication, stay in power and royalist in Army overthrow the British Parlament
in 1938 Great Britain could be Fascistic Kingdom under Edward VIII and Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists
they would stay Neutral toward the Third Reich.
before any one shouts "VATERLAND" nope no Evil Nazi Empire with ICBM and Nukes, not at all !
You see the problem is Hitler the wannabe "Greatest Field Commander of all Time" or GröfaZ
He try to invade with 3 million men with little resource and NO winter equipment the Soviet Union in 1941
Stalin trow everthing he could mobilize to stop them, over 6 million Red soldiers.
in end with Hitler wrong decision and inefficiencies as GröfaZ, the Nazi lost the war
as the Red hordes stormed true east Europe, invade the Third reich and stop at West coast of Europe in 1946...

What for Irony the Democratic USA has to support a Fascistic British Kingdom as last bastion
against a stalinist USSR stretching from West coast europa to Bering Sea coast...

 

[steelpillow]

A bit off-topic, but earlier I wrote, "We could have made more intelligent international treaties, but not done a lot else except welch on the treaties we had made and leave Europe to the Europeans." What if we had done that and tried to remain neutral?

The alliance of Germany with Austria-Hungary would have won hands down on the Western Front. On the Eastern Front they had Russia to conquer, no easy task. The Russian Revolution would probably have ended the war in stalemate a year early, with both war-weary parties agreeing that they had more quarrel with the Tzars than with each other.

With the German Reich now encompassing all of Western Europe, Kaiser Bill would have set his sights on the British Empire, and that meant the Royal Navy. A substantially stronger Germany fighting a forewarned but economically overstretched Britain? He might well have won the day.

Would it have made much difference, really? Not hugely. We would all be speaking German and trading in Deutschmarks, but we were all of the same modern industrial culture and - as Queen Victoria had worked so carefully to ensure - our ruling classes were thoroughly interbred. Germany would effectively have created the EU fifty years earlier.

The Second World War would have been fought against Stalin, the whole thing would just have shifted a little bit eastward and Russia would have been on the losing side. Following the invention of atomic weapons, the Cold War would have kicked off between America and Germany. No partition of Berlin, but perhaps a partition of Singapore or somewhere.

What about Gandhi and the moral collapse of Empire-building? I don't think that would have changed either. In the real world, Rudyard Kipling laid the foundations by popularising the myth that the British Empire was justified because it was a civilising influence on primitive peoples. He would have done the same for Germany. Gandhi would have taken the same exception to this patronising sham and exposed it just the same. The German Commonwealth would have arrived and faded.

Merry Christmas, all.

 

[pathology_doc]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

I believe Niven and/or Pournelle had a short story on just that. The Axis wins WWII in Eurasia, and Gandhi (and I think Nehru) are awaiting the first German troops, wondering if they can finally deal with them in a way they've failed with the Brits. Then they see just how spectacularly awesome the Waffen SS is, and realize that nonviolence only works against an opponent with a conscience.

 

[marauder2048]

Funny you mention Julius Caesar. Do you think that if Pompey had prevailed in the civil war he would have been less of a (literal and figurative) dictator than Caesar?

Insufficient data on my part. But my understanding is that JC was very popular in a way that Pompey wasn't. Ability and ambition are often not as important as popularity... as your average election demonstrates.

I should have clearer with my tone: do you *really*, seriously think that....

In my view, given the precedent established by Sulla the rise of a dictator of an imperial persuasion was inevitable. In a similar vein, I regard
the rise of a militarist German leader post WWI, especially after the various Soviet-style republics in Central Europe were brutally crushed, as an inevitability. That leader may not have had Hitler's world view i.e. one heavily informed by racial theory (rassenkampf in its most extreme form) but none of that was necessary for a violent confrontation to overturn Versailles.

Whether such a confrontation would have led to a world spanning conflagration is a question that I don't think we can answer until we have a better understanding of Soviet inter-war foreign policy aims, intentions and capabilities. Not trying to promote the Suvorov Theory here
but there's a lot of uncertainty on this matter.

 

[steelpillow]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

You mean, like our conduct in Kenya?

 

[steelpillow]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

You mean, like our conduct in Kenya?

Someone mentioned the Waffen SS. Note that this strand of bullying relied on the rise of Hitler and his Nazi chums. In the alternate history I suggest, Germany was top dog and Hitler would have had no axe to grind, he and his bully boys would never have risen to power. There are no swastikas in this Germany. Rather, under whatever Kaiser ruled at the time, Kipling's (and his successors') brand of post-rationalised altruism would have captivated the ''lederhosen''-clad youth in their place.

No, "the Germans" are not, and never were, a stereotype. Anybody who thinks they are has obviously never read Hermann Hesse, Wolfgang Borchert or Günter Grass.

 

[starviking]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

I believe Niven and/or Pournelle had a short story on just that. The Axis wins WWII in Eurasia, and Gandhi (and I think Nehru) are awaiting the first German troops, wondering if they can finally deal with them in a way they've failed with the Brits. Then they see just how spectacularly awesome the Waffen SS is, and realize that nonviolence only works against an opponent with a conscience.

Turtledove, and Ghandi gets summarily shot.

 

[starviking]

Gandhi's techniques would never have cut much ice with the Germans. Even without the Nazi atrocities, their conduct in Belgium at the start of the First World War should be enough to tell you that.

You mean, like our conduct in Kenya?

There is some controversy over the book that claims nazi-like UK actions in Kenya in the Mau-Mau era.

 

[steelpillow]

[I posted this then decided to delete it. How do I do that?]

 

[Orionblamblam]

[I posted this then decided to delete it. How do I do that?]

You can't. Once posted to the internet, every message becomes For The Ages. You have now been archived by Best Korea's Bureau 121 *and* the NSA *and* Google*and* 4Chan.

 

[steelpillow]

The point I was making was that if Germany had not been such a heavy loser, its bully-boys would never have risen to power. Still, I suppose jingoism never listens to reason.

 

[JFC Fuller]

The point I was making was that if Germany had not been such a heavy loser, its bully-boys would never have risen to power. Still, I suppose jingoism never listens to reason.

Germany paying a heavy cost for defeat (though not as heavy as the one it joyously imposed on Russia) in WW2 in no way shape or form automatically leads to a genocidal, imperial totalitarian state with a love of total war and it is silly to suggest otherwise. Jingoism has nothing to with it.

 

[steelpillow]

The point I was making was that if Germany had not been such a heavy loser, its bully-boys would never have risen to power. Still, I suppose jingoism never listens to reason.

Germany paying a heavy cost for defeat (though not as heavy as the one it joyously imposed on Russia) in WW2 in no way shape or form automatically leads to a genocidal, imperial totalitarian state with a love of total war and it is silly to suggest otherwise. Jingoism has nothing to with it.

Did I say "automatically"? I'm sure I meant to take the presence of Mr. Hitler into account. Now, where are all those history textbooks I got that silly idea from...

 

[marauder2048]

The point I was making was that if Germany had not been such a heavy loser, its bully-boys would never have risen to power. Still, I suppose jingoism never listens to reason.

Germany paying a heavy cost for defeat (though not as heavy as the one it joyously imposed on Russia) in WW2 in no way shape or form automatically leads to a genocidal, imperial totalitarian state with a love of total war and it is silly to suggest otherwise. Jingoism has nothing to with it.

The reparations demanded by Versailles were orders or magnitude more onerous than those imposed by Brest-Litovsk. German territorial losses in Europe consisted (especially in the east) of territories with large ethnic German populations. The same cannot be said of Brest-Litovsk i.e. few ethnic Russians were residing in the ceded territories.

Lets not forget that WWI opened with Germany defeating Franco-Russian offensives into German territory.

 

[cherry blossom]

There seem to be ways in which Britain could have tried to avoid WW1 breaking out but there were few obvious ways that did not carry their own risks.

One possibility was to realise that a war starting as a result of a conflict in the Balkans was a major risk and to tell Russia and France that Britain would not be drawn into such a conflict, i.e. that we would only defend attacks on the territory of France or Russia but would not extend a guarantee to their allies. The effect would have been that WW1 as we know it could not have occurred.

However, there was a belief in the Foreign Office that Russia was free to join our enemies. Thus there was a fear that we might find ourselves fighting Russia over Persia with Germany happy to join in against us. Thus, the FO was keen on extending the commitment to Russia and supported, for example, an Anglo-Russian Naval Convention (see http://mentalfloss.com/article/56240/world-war-i-centennial-russia-pursues-naval-treaty-britain). Unfortunately, talk of the negotiations increased Germany's fear of encirclement.

During the July Crisis, British policy can be criticised as being too diplomatic. Britain did not tell Germany quickly and explicitly that we would fight against them. Thus some Germans, a minority but significant, believed that they might only fight France and Russia. Equally, British diplomats seem to have assured France and Russia that they had our full support.