Talk:Gerhard Weinberg/Archive 1

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WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008

Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Czechoslovakia

Did Weinberg really originate (or publicise) the view that Hitler wanted war with Czech'a in 1938? AJP Taylor banged this drum years ago.Keith-264 (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that was a major theme of the second volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, plus his essays "Munich After 50 Years" in Foreign Affairs, “The Munich Crisis in Historical Perspective" from International History Review, and "Reflections on Munich after 60 Years" in The Munich Crisis 1938. Quoting from the latter essay, please see pages 3-5 & 7, where Weinberg states that up to September 29th of 1938, Hitler was serious with going ahead with an attack on Czechoslovakia on October 1st, and only changed his mind literally at the last minute about going to war in 1938. I do believe that Weinberg was one of the first historians to make this point. I must disagree with you about Taylor making the same claim, at least not in The Origins of the Second World War, where Taylor says on pages 191-192 & 207-208 of the 1976 edition published by Hamish Hamilton that Hitler was only bluffing in 1938. I don't believe that is right to put Weinberg and Taylor into the same camp given that the two volumes of The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany were written with the aim in rebutting Taylor's account in The Origins of the Second World War. Give me some time, and will I check if Weinberg was the first historian to argue that Hitler was not bluffing in 1938, but was in fact deadly serious about going ahead with a war, and only changed his mind at the last minute.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the trouble. I haven't read any Taylor for a while, evidently my memory has played me false. I have only recently begun to look at Weinberg who strikes me as a bit of a bruiser in the AJP mould. I was particularly pleased by his apparent anglophobia in the book of essays I got recently though :o). I was a little surprised at his apparent appropriation of the 'serious' view of 1938 but perhaps he's entitled.Keith-264 (talk) 11:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Your welcome. Sometimes, my memory plays me false as while. Yes, I would argee with about your description as Weinberg as a combative historian in the same mould as Taylor. As someone familiar with some of Weinberg’s writings, he can be awfully harsh about those historians who take a contrary line to his own. Through to be fair, at times historians like Andreas Hillgruber do deserve a whack or two for their German apologetics. I was little surprised that you mentioned Weinberg and Taylor as arguing the same case given that Weinberg in the first volume of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany had some rather dismissive and hostile things to say about Taylor. To be fair, Taylor in his review of the same book was not too positive about Weinberg, so perhaps the feeling was mutual. I would agree with you as while about Weinberg’s tendency to be rather curt to say the least about Britain’s performance in World War II, and a corresponding tendency to take the American side as self-evidently right in all of the various Anglo-American strategic disputes, but since I don’t have any sources for that other then Weinberg’s own books and essays, I am rather hesitant to put my gloss on Weinberg’s writings in the article based solely on my own reading of them. Smacks too much of original research, at least for something like that. To take an example, Weinberg always writes about British signet be based upon the work of Polish code-breakers at Bletchley Park, when in fact there were no Poles at Bletchley. To be fair the Poles, ULTRA was based on technology and techniques developed by the Poles in the 1930s, but the code-breakers at Bletchley were British. Thanks for the kind words.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:58, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

'Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History' is the one I've got. Having looked around I realise he's been around for a lot longer than I realised so he may well be the person who took the 1938 war intention seriously. I like foreigners who take swipes at Britain's war effort, particularly Germans who are sucking up to the Americans! His snide remarks about Tobruk and Singapore have been obsolete for about twenty five years though. I like your exposition of the cause of the Great War on that discussion page as well - succinct and erudite. Your opponents have given you a run for your money so I expect that was a creative pressure on you.Keith-264 (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Please accept my most humble apologies for ignoring you for so long. I meant to go to you earlier, but between work, life, research and that hateful, tiresome debate on the Great War page, I’ll not able to get back to you.

Thank you so very much for the kind words about my humble contributions on the Great War page. I’m so glad that at least someone appreciates my work! It is an awful, terrible debate which I sincerely wished I had never gotten into with the German apologists, because all it does is take up my time to no good purpose and it never ends, but it is too late now. I’m a very shy, modest fellow both here and in real life, so I must confess I really not enjoying that debate, but on the other hand, these attempts to bully me into supporting something that I know is untrue is not something I will stand for. In for a penny, in for a pound. That page was outrageously pro-German (through I have cleaned up, at least for the moment). I can fight my own battles, but could you please tell me if you think that my reworked version is better. I know it is much longer and detailed, but given the contentious nature of the subject, I felt really didn’t I had any choice. My favourite part (which I since rephrased into something better) was when the Wilhelm’s rant about how Britain started the war is presented as his “startling observations” about the war began. Observation implies that somebody went, took a look at something and drew a conclusion. I.e. “He observed it was raining” or “She observed the stars”. So in other words, the word observation refers to some sort of objective reality and one’s relationship with it. So, by labelling the Kaiser’s Anglophobic rant as his “startling observations” implies that he is describing the objective reality of 1914, and not only that, but doing it exceptionally well. Both a POV edit and a very false one, to boot. By the same logic, one could speak of Hitler’s “startling observation” that the Jews started World War II. Just because somebody believes something does not make it true, and we should be not presenting people's personal beliefs about as fact like as "starting observations".

Back to Weinberg, yes, I would argee witht that there appears to be a somewhat anti-British bias in a lot of his work. I'm not certain where that comes from. Do somebody insult when he was a refugee in war-time Britain, and he's having an awfully long time getting over it? Through I might not fond of this aspect of his writings, I do regard as a great historian.

Moving the subject to the 1938. I done some checking up, and no, Weinberg, not the first to argue that thesis of Case Green as a serious military operation. I can’t you offhand who was the first (through it seems to be a claim first made by German historians in the 1960s) but one find can the same arguments in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich by Klaus Hildebrand (1970), the 1974 essay "England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion" by Andreas Hillgruber from the Journal of Contemporary History, How War Came (1989) by Donald Cameron Watt, the essay “Germany and the Munich Crisis: A Mutilated Victory?” by Richard Overy from The Munich Crisis 1938 (1999), the essay “Foreign Policy and Preparation for War” by Manfred Messerschmidt from Germany and the Second World W,ar (which is the official German history of World War II), The Hitler of History (1997) by John Lukacs, The Change in the European Balance of Power (1984) by Williamson Murray (through with a completely different and much more hostile interpretation of Chamberlain then Weinberg’s), The Third Reich in Power (2005) by Richard J. Evans, and the second volume of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler (2000)

Personally, I might disagree with you about Case Green as a bluff, but however, one debate at a time! Just a couple of things to work through. At present, I might suggest if still have your copy handy of Hitler, Germany and World War II that you look at the section about Hitler’s secret speech to about 200 German journalists on November 10, 1938 about the need for some hate propaganda to work the German people up into a frenzy of war fever, which something that Hitler felt the German people lacked in September 1938, and that that the next time he risked war, he wanted to see some real blood lust in his people. At very least, I think that the sense that he didn't have his people fully behind him in September 1938 that led to abandon war at the last moment.

There are couple of other things to consider. The first, is until mid-September 1938, Hitler refused to lay claim to the Sudetenland area, and instead only demanded autonomy for the region. If Hitler was bluffing to get the Sudetenland, then he was defeating the purpose of his bluff by refusing to lay claim to the region. But if we accept the idea that Case Green was not a bluff, then his action makes more sense because the idea was to to show the world how reasonable and moderate he supposedly was in only asking for autonomy for the Sudetenland, which the Czechs refused to give. He upped his demand for handing the region over, when in early September 1938 Prague granted for the Sudetelander's demands for autonomy with the so-called "Fourth Plan" under intense Anglo-French pressure, which threantened to deprive Hitler of his pretext for war. Hence, he suddenly laid claim to it in mid-September. Now, of course, one could say he was still bluffing, but that begs the question why he escalated his demands at the Bad Godesberg summit. Under Chamberlain's plan presented at Bad Godesberg, the Sudetenland was going to be his within the next six months, and what more Chamberlain had agreed to the most egregious German demands about was going to be the criterion for deciding what district were to go to Germanly, namely a 50% ethnic German population (instead of 80% as first proposed) on the basis of the Austrian census of 1910 (instead of the Czech census of 1930). If Hitler wanted to bluff his way into the getting the Sudetenland, he could had his way right there and then at Bad Godesberg. There was really no need for him to throw a spanner into the works by demanding that the Sudetenland be ceded no later then October 1st, 1938, and that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia be satisfied also by October 1st. Given that Hitler could really care less about the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia in private, his insistence that he would go to war unless Poland and Hungary were happy by October 1st, 1938 seems like an excuse just to to war in 1938.

Then of course, there is the very intense debate between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938. I think it is noteworthy that Beck seemed to believe that Hitler was serious (indeed he resigned as Chief of the General Staff over the issue, and then was preparded to led a putsch over the issue), and that Hitler never once in his of his debates with Beck said anything about bluffing. Indeed, Hitler never anything about bluffing until Munich. True, a bluffer does not normally reveal he is bluffing until the game is over, but still, Hitler kept on taking about going to war in 1938. True, after Munich, Hitler did say he was bluffing. But I think we have to remember that Hitler was a bit like Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies. Whatever Clouseau falls over, he always says he did that on purpose, and will never admit to making a mistake. Hitler was the same way. It was a big part of Hitler's image, that he was a man of providence, a figure chosen by destiny, fate and by some vaguely higher supernatural power to save Germany. Hitler cared greatly about image, which is why he often to extraordinary lengths to try to deny that he ever changed his mind or made a mistake. I think that the best example of this is Hitler's claim that he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. If Hitler really wanted to let the BEF escape, then why he send the Luffwaffe to bomb Dunkirk night and day? Because he didn't the BEF to escape, and that he only made up the escape story in July 1940 when it became clear that Britain would not surrender, at which point his halt order of May 1940 before Dunkirk was starting to look like a real blunder.

Turning back to Munich, I think that it is noteworthy after Munich, how much he talked in private about how Chamberlain had "cheated" him out of a war at Munich. As late as Feburary 21, 1945 Hitler was still going on in private about how if Chamberlain had not "cheated" out a war at Munich, then he would not be in his present predicament (i.e. losing the war). Now, that claim is nonsense, but I think it reflects Hitler's real bitterness that he didn't have his war in 1938 as he had planned. One might also consider that one of Hitler's big post-Munich initiatives was Plan Z of January 1939, which called for building a colossal Kriegsmarine capable of crushing the Royal Navy by 1944-the first and only time that the Kriegsmarine was given first priority on economic resources during the Third Reich 's entire 12 years. At very least, I think that the Z Plan should be understood as part of Hitler's post-Munich resolve that because Britain was not going to step aside from Europe, that he he needed to destroy Britain. This is my personal theory, but I think we connect the dots, the fact that Hitler regarded Britain as his real enemy in 1939 as reflected in things like the Z Plan helps to explain the pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939.

One of these days, when I get some time, I’m going go and rework the Munich Conference page. At present, that page could use some drastic reworking-there is no mention of the intense debates between Hitler and General Ludwig Beck about the wisdom of going to war in 1938, the attitudes of the Dominions, Japan, Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union and the other Central European states needs some expanding; the section dealing with the problems of the French economy on French decision-making needs particular work, there at present no mention of any of the debates within the French Cabinet. When I am done, I’ll invite you to take a look, and suggest any improvements that are in order. I think that you having probably gotten a foretaste of the sort of arguements that I will be making. Anyhow, through I don't much like debates, but I am prepared to take and consider honest criticism (as opposed to the sort that I'm getting on the Great War page!) Through I must admit I think I your more much reasonable and saner person then my German apologist opponents on the Great War page. Thanks for making my day!:)--A.S. Brown (talk) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Mr Brown, thank you for taking so much trouble.

I wonder if I gave the impression that I thought Hitler's attitude to the Sudentenland was a bluff when I meant to imply that the 'bluff thesis' was the other way of looking at it (bearing in mind that as I had remembered it, AJP was the one who thought it wasn't a bluff). My view at the moment is mainly determined by what I read in Tooze about the economic pressures Germany was under at the time. This favours the idea that Chamberlain thwarted Hitler of his small war in 1938 (Which it appears I erroneously gave to AJP). Reading your comments further it also came to mind that it was AJP (as I remember it) who referred to Hitler's blaming of Chamberlain and Franco as the only people who had bested him - AJP's defence of appeasement is at least implicitly favourable to Chamberlain and Baldwin.

Tooze sees the Z plan as a recognition that the arms race Hitler set off had spread to the USA and that one way or another the USA would support his enemies so Germany needed to prepare for a great air-sea war in the west once the resources of the east had been captured (I think he says that there wasn't enough steel making capacity in Europe to fulfull Plan Z and the other arms programmes).

As for the origins of WWI, I'm ploughing through Stevenson 'Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904-1914' which is full of useful stuff but is as readable as a party manifesto. I haven't made my mind up (Will I ever?) but I find that the view that Austria-Hungary wanted war with Serbia in 1914 (the generals had wanted to settle their hash for a long time and Serbian expansion after the Ottomans were routed made this more acceptable to the diplomats and politicians) and that German support reduced Austrian fears of Russia (recovering strongly from the defeat in the Far East from its lowest point in 1908-1909) thus making a great European war possible suits me. On top of this I think there was a general European crisis of falling expectations, which had gone on for some considerable time, which perhaps the apologists make more of than they should and which possibly tended to make the greater powers increasingly the hostage of parochial events (like Archie Duke getting shot)and the lesser powers' reactions to them. Perhaps the better question is to ask 'why the war didn't begin earlier'? Stephenson is making a good argument that Agadir 1911 is a watershed in the alignment of military, political-diplomatic and economic personnel and structures in favour of war (or of at least war readiness) when such a thing hadn't been the case earlier - possibly a development that had been on the cards since the Russian-French alliance of the 1890's and only delayed by Russia's defeat in Manchuria. Events in the Balkans do seem to have had a profound effect - the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan War(s) and the revolution; similar events in China and Mexico perhaps being a dire warning to Austria-Hungary of the fate of a country which dropped below the level of a great power (albeit as an also-ran).Keith-264 (talk) 07:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank very much for the kind words and thoughtful remarks.

I have not read Tooze, so I am not familar with his arguements. Through I unfortunately inherited a copy of his book through the death of my best friend, my father last year (he was half-way through The Wages of Destruction at the time of his death), so I suppose one day will try to forget my father and read it. Your right about the Z Plan as totally economically unrealistic, indeed aspects of it were economic fantasy and did not stand a chance of being realized. Plus, it was unrealistic even on naval grounds because some of the battleships envisioned in the plan would have been too bad to fit into any dock anywhere in the world. It's only importance is how it was sign of Hitler's foreign policy objectives were going into 1939, as you have quite rightly stated. There is a lot of debate about whatever the Z Plan was a just an anti-British move or both an anti-British and anti-American move. Personally, I think that the immediate impetus for the Z Plan was anti-British (coming as it shortly after Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to start building a stragetic bomber force), but that in long term, such a giantic fleet that Hitler wanted was probably meant to fight both the British and the Americans. At least as an immediate impetus, I think that Chamberlain's warning to Hitler that if you do not accept the terms offered at Bad Godesberg (which gave in to Hitler's ostensible demands about the Sudentenland, and then some), then we will declare war if you attack Czechoslovakia, which is what led Hitler at the last minute to abandon his war is probably what led to the anti-Western orienation in his foreign policy. I remember Father telling me based on his reading of Tooze that the Anglo-American free trade agreement of November 1938 was misunderstood in Germany as marking the beginning of an Anglo-American bloc designed to block German ambitions (which in a way it was, but not in the way the Germans thought about it-secret military clauses and all that). This is my own personal theory, but I think what caused the abandoment of Case Green was the British warning delivered by Sir Horace Wilson on September 28, 1938 that if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honor the Franco-Czechoslovak treaty of 1924, and then Britain would probably come in. The key issue was Germany's oil problem. 80% of German oil imports in the 1930s came from the United States, Venezuela, and Mexico, and all of which would be cut off by a British blockade. And since the synethic oil program, in which Germans produced eratsz oil from coal was still way beyond schedule in 1938 (indeed did not come on line until 1942-two years late), Romania not in the German sphere of influence in 1938, and the Soviet Union unwilling to supply that year, that Germany had enough oil for a small war with Czechoslovakia, but not enough to face Britain and France, hence the climb-down from war. The Germans already a foretaste of what to expect when in September 1938, the British stopped several Hamburg-bound tankers for a couple of days in British ports for spurious reasons, something that caused immediate economic pain. I think that the importance of the oil issue can be seen that with the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939, the Germans got access to Soviet oil, and hence were immune to a British blockade (at least with oil). At very least, I think this explains what Joachim von Ribbentrop meant when he told Hitler that now that we have the Pact with the Soviets, the British will never go to war for Poland-i.e. Germany was now immune to a blockade.

Good luck with Stevenson! I feel your hypothesis about Austria seeking a war with Serbia, no matter sounds acceptable to me. After all, this was the gang that activated War Plan B for a war against Serbia, and that only very belateley discovered that they would have to activated War Plan R for a war against Russia, which led to the mother of a logistical traffic-jams as the Army Group that was supposed to go to Bosnia instead had to be turned around to go to Galicia. That incidentally is the main cause of the great Austrian defeats of September 1914 in Galicia, which cost the Dual Monarchy 50% of its pre-August standing army-the real end of Austria-Hungary as a great power, which thereafter become a German dependency for the rest of the war. Yes, that does seem to be something of that in the air before 1914, namely an obsession with national decay and decline, perhaps reflecting the influence of Social Darwinism. Eugen Weber, through he was only writing about France, claimed that sports and health obsession of the fin-de-siecle era was due to the widespread belief that healthy nations were nations that won wars, and unhealthy nations lost wars. A similar thing happened in Britain with the Boar War where a great many people blamed the early British defeats on the fact that so many British soldiers were the products of malnutrition, which was not the cause, but who can account for public opinion? And this Social Darwnist understanding of the world was much prevelent in the German-speaking world then in the West. As far as I am aware, Social Darwnism did not have much influence in either Russia or Serbia-perhaps the backward state of those countries meant that science and pseudo-science did not enjoy the same prestige as in the Western world. At very least, I think that your right in the case of Austria-Hungary that a great many of the elite there had a morbid fear of national decay (probably made worse that Austria had lost almost every war it had fought since 1815) together with an exaggerated fear of Serbia. Yes, Serbia had doubted in size after the Balkan Wars, and yes, there was far too much nationalist fire-breathing talk from too far many Serb politicans, but the idea that a backward Balkan state that was on the verge of bankrupcty and had taken very heavy causalities during the Balkan Wars was going to bring down Austria-Hungary in the near-future seems to me to be more the product of hysteria in the Austrian elite then a rational assessement of the situation. Through I would agree with you that after the Second Moroccan Crisis, there was a climate of opinion that was more conductive to war, I don't think that one should underrate human agency. There is a lot that is wrong with Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, but he is right about that. After all, there were signs that France was falling behind in the arms race, and that at least a body of French opinion was starting to favor reaching an understanding with Germany, so the claims made by the Germans and their apologists about a obsessive, venegful France being beat on a war of revenge should be taken with a grain of salt. There were options other then war, but unfortunately for the world, those options were not taken.

Thank you for the kind words and interesting conversation!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings again, condolences on your bereavement. I can understand your reluctance to look at Tooze - I have similar feelings about 'Kes' (Barry Hines). Unfeasible withal, a Z-Plan aimed at England would also be implicitly anti-American by existing. US access to Europe is after all something they've gone to war over twice. Tooze takes much of his strategic-political analysis from DRZW which sees Hitler's Russian venture as a response to the need to secure resources before UK-US rearmament matured - the foodstuffs, raw materials and fuel usurped from the USSR would provide the economic infrastructure Germany lacked, bearing in mind that the economic resources of western Europe were near useless without non-European imports barred by Britain's refusal to fold. This doesn't preclude the ideological motives but does explain the timing of Barbarossa. It is instructive that before General Thomas toed Hitler's line he didn't say that Ukraine would get Germany out of trouble, more that if any region could it was Ukraine. Even with the Hongerplan, the transport needed to get Russian commodities to Germany was lacking. Apparently the same was true of oil imports from Rumania - the rail and river capacity needed investment before substantial increases of oil could be delivered to Germany (once the contracts that Britain used to by Rumania's surplus ran out). As usual with nazi wheezes making oil from coal only transferred the problem from one part of the economy to another - synthetic refineries needed huge anounts of steel to build, huge amounts of coal to refine and huge amounts of rail traffic to carry it.

I'm not as seized by human agency as you it seems; a crisis of falling expectations seems to me to lie less in mentalities susceptible to Social Darwinism as a rival ideology to socialism/communism/anarchism* and more in a growing (political) structural impasse as the effects of demographic, economic and technological growth did in Europe something akin to what happened in Africa (more an explosion than an implosion though in Europe, over 40 rather than 400 years) which set off the Scramble. Clearly as interbloc rivalry worsened, the reason for forming them surfaced in an acute form - the gradual collapse of the European political structure of the Congress of Vienna as modified in 1871; note for example that the loss of the Ottoman counterweight in the Balkans seriously upset the military balance between Serbia and the Empire, when from our perspective it seems like a piddling thing. Curiously Vienna doesn't get half as much stick as the Treay of Versailles . . . . I think for example that Britain edged towards Russia and France to exert its independence the better from the inside, having tried unilateral negotiations with Germany - note French acceptance that the British connexion precluded unilateral action in Belgium, despite the strategic sacrifice it entailed, something the Germans could never have accepted. As I recall the Austro-Hungarians were damned if they did, damned if they didn't over Galicia - the transport infrastructure couldn't cope with B-Staffel whatever they tried.

My favourite.

Thanks for comparing notes rather than ranting - there should be more of it on Wiki!

Thank you for the thoughtful remarks and kind words. Through I miss my father, and would do anything to get those awful memories of his corpse being carried away out of my mind, one just has to be tough about these things and carry out. Sorry for not getting back sooner; usually when someone writes something intelligent around here, it takes more time for me to pen a response, and between work and life, I’m being rather hard pressed to find the time.

Moving to on to more happier subjects, finally, a user who appreciates logistics and economics! You could use a lot more people like you, Keith since right now, we have far too pages written by economic illiterates and/or armchair generals. Of course, I would not take an economic determinist approach with economics deciding anything, but I do think that the economic situation does in fact limit a statesmen’s (and I usually that term very broadly here) options. After all, no money means just that, and I do wish that we have more users who pay attention to the economic constraints imposed on various politicians. The same goes with logistics. That’s makes sense with Plan R being doomed anyhow by an inadequate rail network, through I think that that the task of attempting to turn around the B-Staffel army group from the Balkans to Galicia could not have helped the (mis)fortunes of the Austrian Army. Until I got dragged into that debate on the Great Power page back in February, the last time I did any serious reading on the subject was almost 9 years ago, so I am bit rusty. I operating at somewhat of a disadvantage because of that, through I am trying to get caught up, through I am somewhat overjoyed at reading David Fromkin’s 2004 book Europe Last Summer because his version of how the war started is remarkably close to the one I articulated in an essay written in November 2000. There’s an old saying that great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ, and I hope that the fact I independently worked out a similar analysis to Fromkin four years before he published his book is a case of the former, not the latter!

In order to reduce the amount of ranting, which I agree that we have far too much of at present, I think would really like to bring in a licensing system. Right now, we have too many pages written by people who either lacked the necessary knowledge for the subject, have some sort of axe to grind or are just plain insane. Right now, we have people contributing here who would never in a million years ever be published by a reputable publisher, and in some cases, not even a disreputable publisher. To take an example, there was (and still is in some of the section) on the Great War page, a set of statements that subtly implied that was all a case of Allied aggression against the Central Powers such as the remark about the Kaiser’s “startling observations” about how Britain engineered the war. This is all somebody’s lunatic fringe conspiracy theory being dressed up as history. What really bothers me is at the risk of sounding egoistic is why didn’t anybody spot these things? I have taken on the thankless task of purging the page of these German apologetics, but where was everybody’s else? There was that was really wrong with that page such as its statement that Austria actually expected their “unacceptable” (their words, not mine) ultimatum to be accepted by the Serbs. True, the Serbs were not being straight forward in their reply, giving the false impression that they accepted far more in the ultimatum then was actually the case, but my view of the subject is this: If you give a ultimatum that is meant to be rejected, then you really don’t have anything to complain about when your ultimatum is in fact rejected. What we really need is that before somebody is allowed to contribute, they should be subjected to tests to see if they possess the requisite knowledge to write about the subject, don’t any axes to grind and are sane. This goes against the principle of allowing this place being open to all, but I think it solve not all, but at least, a great deal of the of the current problems if such a system were brought in.

It also all seems I’m rather rusty on the origins of the Second World War. Thanks for bringing up to speed up on that subject. That’s interesting that Romanian oil owing to transport problems was not as helpful to the German war effort as I had been led to believe, through that is helpful to hear that the British ‘economic offensive” in the Balkans was damaging to the Reich. I mentioned the “economic offensive” on the Neville Chamberlain page, but since Weinberg does not go into great detail about the subject, there was not much I could add. I know that Joachim von Ribbentrop called an angry press conference to complain about British “economic encirclement” of Germany in June 1939, but given that Ribbentrop was a colossal idiot and an extreme Anglophobe (after about 1937), I was not certain how much of this was due to genuine economic pain, and how much was to feigned outrage over the foreign policy of the country that Ribbentrop loved to hate. Through I am not up to the details of the German synthetic oil program, that’s makes sense that the way that resources allocated to it weakened other projects. The whole German war effort seems to me to be nothing more then a vast, muddled inefficient ball of confusion and chaos. Having said that much, projects like the V weapons and jet fighters were a complete waste of resources on weapons that were not war-winning. This is Richard Overy, and I am writing from memory here, so I may be wrong about the precise numbers, but I remember reading that for the costs of building one V-1, the Germans could have built about 1, 000 FW 190 fighters. Arguably, a 1, 000 FW 190s would have given the Germans a much bigger bang for their buck, so to speak then one V-1.

I would agree with the ultimate anti-American implications of the Z Plan. After all, in his Zwites Buch of 1928, Hitler had spoken of a great war for the mastery of the world with an Anglo-German combination taking on the United States, through admittly Hitler projects this war to sometime in the 1980s. However, there are great signs that by the late 1930s that what Hitler had seen as the work of his successors he himself wanted to do. In his diary, Goebbels speaks of Hitler telling him that he wanted to “see the Great Germanic Reich in his own lifetime”. So, I think that one say that the Z Plan was in part a response to Hitler’s realization that his fanciful project for an Anglo-German alliance was folly, and that he would have to fight Britain, either by herself or in alliance with the United States. This is something that Weinberg is good at pointing out that Hitler held the Soviet Union in complete contempt. Operation Barbarossa was only supposed to be a six-month affair, and then the Soviet Union was going to be finished. One could see how seriously Hitler was in his assessment of the Soviet Union in that on June 20, 1941, two days before Barbarossa began, he cut the German Army’s allocations of raw materials for 1942 in order to provide for a bigger Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe for 1942. There’s a great deal of historical debate about whatever Barbarossa should be regarded as an anti-Soviet move, or as in the case of John Lukacs, an anti-British move. The truth seems to be that Barbarossa was both, and I argue that based on what you told me, that it should be regarded as anti-American move as while.

I’m sorry, I’m afraid I misunderstood you about human agency. Through, he doesn’t use the same terminology as you do about falling expectations, David Fromkin makes the same point in Europe’s Last Summer where he writes about the extremely pessimistic evaluation of the international situation held by the decision-makers in Germany and Austria-Hungary in the last years before the war, and through this is being vigorously contested right on the origins of the Great War page right now, there was a sense that history was against them in all the ways you already mentioned (diplomatic, military, economic, etc), and that only a war could reversal the trend. Actually, Fromkin mentions there were even some contemporaries who felt that way, and talks about the peace mission of Colonel House, President Wilson’s chief political fixer to Europe in 1914. What’s interesting about Colonel House’s mission is not he what he accomplished (which was nothing), but rather the date: May 1914. It’s interesting that even an American isolationist (as Wilson was in 1914) could sense there was something wrong with the fundamental political make-up of Europe, and send out his right-hand man to try stop what Wilson and company feared might be the impeding catastrophe.

A synthesis I think that ties in the falling expectations and human agency might be noting just incredibly mediocre the leadership of Germany, and even more Austria was. You just look at the Austro-German leadership of 1914, and one is stuck by just how second-rate all these men were. I already mentioned at the Great War page about how Wilhelm had almost certainly suffered brain damage owing to his botched birth, which would go a long way to explaining his erratic behaviour, which he displayed right from his earliest days. It was the world’s misfortune that Wilhelm inherited a job that he was supremely unqualified for because almost all of the people Wilhelm appointed to high positions were in varying ways incompetent because Wilhelm him was incompetent. A fish starts to rot at the head, and I think the same thing could be said about Germany.

And even those German leaders that did have some brains like Admiral Tirpitz, the “evil genesis” of the Second Reich as Gordon A. Craig once called him were very good at tactics, and totally wrong about strategy. Tirpitz’s Risk Fleet concept all sounds good on paper, but for it to work two preconditions were needed, namely 1) that the British not notice that the High Seas Fleet was being built against them and 2) that there be sufficient tensions between Britain and other world powers, so the British would have to spread their fleet all round the world, thereby giving the High Seas Fleet concentrated in the North Sea the edge. But of course, London noticed that because building a vast fleet of battleships is something that is very hard to conceal, and as I already pointed on the Great War page, the High Seas Fleet was “short-legged”, and thus could was only operate in the North Sea. And anyhow, the High Seas Fleet was simply way too big for the navies of France and Russia (and in the case of the Russian Baltic Fleet which been sunk by the Japanese in 1905, thus removing any danger for Germany in the Baltic for several years). As an Admiralty report pointed out as early as 1902, any war with the Franco-Russian combination would be primarily a land war, and all these millions of marks going to the Navy could only weaken the German Army (which indeed turned out to the case). And second, it turned out that Britain could settle all of the principle differences with France, Russia, the United States, etc, thus allowing the Royal Navy to be concentrated at Scapa Flow. Once the naval race began, the superior size of the British ship-building industry guaranteed that this was a race that Germany could only lose. So in nutshell, all Tirptiz managed to do was gratuitously alienate Britain before 1914, and commit Germany to spending millions of marks for a white elephant of a fleet whose most notable contribution in WWI was to mutiny and topple the monarchy in 1918. This entire Risk Fleet idea was folly right from the get-go, and that the fact that Germans would commit themselves and continue with the naval race that they were clearly losing even as 1908 speaks volumes about this how inept Germany’s leaders were. Anybody with any common sense would had the foresight to end the naval race once it become clear that they were losing like around 1908 rather then continuing to pour millions of marks into it right up to 1914 (through at a reduced rate after 1912 owning to the insistence of the Army), or better yet, avoid the naval challenge altogether. Admiral Tirpitz was all very clever in getting his way, but his overall vision was grossly defective. This is just an aside, but the fact that the Germans were willing to make the naval challenge proves how little they really felt threatened by Russia/France before 1912-if that had been the case, the Germans would had accepted the British offer of an alliance in 1899 (which they turned down flat) instead of engaging in the naval race. This is just one example, but there are plenty of other examples to support the contention that Germany and even more so, Austria had really terrible leaders. So I think, we can tie in your point about the crisis of falling expectations with human agency by saying that confronted with the crisis of falling expectations, the leaders of Austria and Germany could think of no better way of resolution other then war. Had those countries had more intelligent leaders then what they did in fact actually possessed, I think they could had managed things much better without resorting to war.

Through I would agree with your assessment about the crisis of falling expectations, but I think it really applies to the Central Powers. Certainly with Britain, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Grey felt he could manage whatever crisis that might come up, and through a carrot and stick policy persuade the Germans to stop trampling on everybody’s toes in their quest for world power. Through one would never know so from reading the Great War page as it is currently written, it is the Germans who drove the British into the arms of the French and Russians. Initially, it was British policy to stand in “splendid isolation”, and if they were going to ally with anybody, it was the Reich. There were two British offers of an alliance, one in 1899 and another in 1902, both refused by the Germans, who believed that they would get so more by building their Risk Fleet. Given German antagonism as expressed by such things as the naval challenge, I really do think that they had any other choice, but to reach out to old enemies like the French, and even more so, the Russians to exercise some weight to restrain the Germans. But I don’t think that the idea of reaching an accommodation with the Germans was abandoned. Hence, Grey’s policy at one moment leaning towards France, and the next moment leaning towards Germany-now, there was more leaning towards France that was because the French were more inclined to be friendly and the Germans in the form of the naval race to be less friendly. Through at the same time, Grey in 1914 was offering colonial concessions to try to settle Anglo-German antagonism, and in the July Crisis, was criticized by his own officials, and by the French and the Russians for trying to too hard to work with the Germans. A Russian diplomat was quoted as saying in the July Crisis: “War is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hesitated”. Through a common criticism, I don’t it is warranted since Grey finally did warned the Germans his country would go to war if they went to war, it did not stop them from going ahead anyhow.

I think your right about the decline of the Ottoman Empire as causing a power vacuum in the Balkans. After all, a recurring feature of the so-called Eastern Question, which haunted the chancelleries of Europe, at least since the Crimean War had an on-going rivalry. I have heard the First World War described as the War of Ottoman Succession, through for the life of me, I can’t remember where I read that. That’s probably going a little too far, since there was more at stake then the question of whatever the Balkans were going to be in either the Austrian or Russian sphere of influence. But having said that much, the end of the Ottoman Empire in Europe as occasioned by the Balkan Wars did have the effect of greatly intensifying the traditional Austro-Russian rivalry for spheres of influence in that part of Europe. It is notable the idea of launching a war to destroy Serbia first started to be advocated seriously in Vienna in the fall of 1912-just after the First Balkan War. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence that the Austrians would launched their war in 1912 with German support had it not been for the British warning to Berlin that London would to war with the Reich if they did so. It was the British warning that led to the infamous German War Council of December 1912. Leaving aside the long-term results of the War Council, the consensus that German Navy was not strong to fight the Royal Navy in 1912 led to Germany applying pressure on the Austrians to call off the war. But nature abhors a vacuum. Certainly, the idea of a war was on the minds of the Austrian General Staff, which proposed war against Serbia a good 24 times between January 1913-January 1914. The Balkan power vacuum was still unfilled, and this together with what one could only the Russian war hysteria caused by the Russian Great Military Programme which gripped the German elite from after 1912 all, but guaranteed a war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is only a secondary cause of the war; even if he survived, a war would still occurred.

I would agree that Vienna should get much of a stick then does the much maligned Treaty of Versailles. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, after 1918, the Dual Monarchy was a vanished state. So, there weren’t any contemporary political points to be scored against blaming Austria for the war. Second, as I mentioned elsewhere, after 1918, the Germans undertook a massive deception campaign to re-write history. If interested in the details of this, check Holger Herwig’s essay “Clio Deceived”, which is on pages 5-44 from International Security, Fall 1987. The purpose behind this campaign was to discredit Versailles by proving that Germany was not responsible for the war, which thereby helping to the wider German campaign to do away with Versailles, especially Part V of the treaty, which had disarmed Germany. Most people don’t know, but when they stated everybody was at fault, they are merely repeating German propaganda from the 1920s-30s meant to do away with Versailles. The very fact that the line is everybody was at fault shows its propaganda purposes all too well. One might expect that the Germans would be repeating their WWI line that they were the victims of Allied aggression, but I think the purposes of doing a sales job, the Germans realized that that line would not do. A line that blames everybody for the war was much likely to appeal to British and French public opinion then a line that blames Britain and France exclusively. And of course, if everybody is at fault for the war, then Versailles, which blamed Germany would be in need of revising. A very successful propaganda campaign, whose pernicious effects are still with us today. Finally, I would suggest that there is a peculiar tendency on the part of the Western mind to feel guilt. I’m not certain why this is so, but it is a matter of fact that people in the West are far more likely to feel agonizing guilt over real and/or imagined wrongs then people are in other civilizations. Just look at the entire slavery reparations debate (now I think that slavery is very wrong, and I would be all for paying reparations for former slaves, if they were any still alive). But Muslims were just as active as slavers in Africa as the Westerners were (and indeed for a much longer period of time), but I don’t see any guilt in the Muslim world over this, or any Muslims calling their governments to pay reparations for all the Africans they enslaved in former times. If the United States, United Kingdom, France, etc should pay reparations for slavery, then by the same logic, so should Saudi Arabia and Oman, but I don’t see anybody calling upon those states to make amends for their part in the slave trade. This is particularly egregious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which only got around to abolishing slavery in 1962, so they might very well be former slaves from that country still alive today. Or look at the way people in the United States feel guilty over dropping the atomic bombs on the Japanese vs. the complete lack of any remorse, indeed active denial of all the various Japanese war crimes in Japan such as the Rape of Nanking, Burma Death Railroad, etc, etc. I list endless other examples, but I think you get the point. So, I think that everybody feel guilty over Versailles (which truth be told saved the peace by keeping Germany disarmed, at least until 1935) while letting the Austrians off the hook for the war they helped to cause reflects the peculiar tendency on the part of Westerners to always blame themselves for all the world’s problems. Just a pet theory on my part for what it is worth. Thank you for the thoughtful comments-we use more users like you!--A.S. Brown (talk) 05:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)