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(hmpf - bouncing keyboard - sorry for the repeater)
Well, back to at least one statement of Lichinovsky:
>3. On the 30th of July, when Count Berchtold showed a disposition to change
>his course, we sent an ultimatum to St. Petersburg merely
>because of the Russian mobilization and though Austria had not been attacked;
MERELY?
All militaries KNEW that from all possible situations it was the
RUSSIAN mobilization that would start a war. No potential enemy of
Russia could allow Russia to fully mobilize, and (like many visitors
to Russia have reported) the Russian officer corps where preparing
for a war with Germany.
At this time, the Russian troops directly opposite Germany where already
mobilizing for days, and if you read the Willy-Nilly telegrams (which
where certainly not available to Lichinovsky at this time) you will
see that neither the Czar nor the Kaiser where totally in control of
their respective nations.
>and on the 31st of July we declared war against the Russians,
>although the Czar pledged his word that he would not permit a single man to
>march as long as negotiations were still going on. Thus we
>deliberately destroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement.
Lichinovsky certainly was not introduced into the military necessities.
A peaceful settlement with a fully mobilized Russian army was
certainly no possibility that Bethman-Holweg or the Kaiser could expect.
To the other mail...
>The French had been able to take on all of Europe back in the days of Louis XIV and Napoleon.
>It had now fallen so far behind the other powers that it was too weak to
>even take major initiatives on it's own.
Hardly a statement a French would subcribe, at least not in 1914. They
knew that they where too weak to take on Germany alone.
> ... The French military had a mobilized strength
>of 3.5 million to the German's 3.8 million.
>France had a much smaller population than Germany did (45 million compared to 65 million).
Indeed. And it was Germany who is accused of militarism.
>During this crisis Germany used gunboat diplomacy to obtain a slice of the Congo in e
>xchange for it's acceeding to a French protectorate over
>Morocco.
You think it is NOT gunboat diplomacy to take over another nation?
>The 1911 crisis also resulted in an accelerated arms race: Germany increased the size of
>its standing army from 612,000 in 1911 to 782,000 in
>1913, while the French army increased from 593,000 to 700,000. Germany knew war was coming,
>the whole world knew. Russia's military preparations had an even greater impact on Germany's
>sense of vulnerability. It was projected that by 1917 the French-financed improvements in
>the Russian railway system would allow Russia to mobilize in 18 days. Such speedy mobilization
>would wreck Germany's Schlieffen Plan, which counted on slow Russian mobilization.
Now, given this statement from you together with the "whole world knew war would come",
how comes that you blame Germany alone for the ourbreak of the Great War?
Germany knew that Russia was modernizing its army with French help since 1911, and
that eventually they would loose the arms race. The situation was comparable to the
Cold War, when you just KNEW where the enemy stood. What do you expect then when one
country starts to amass its troops at the border?
When Israel made its strike in 1967 they did so because they could not afford to
wait. The same military situation is true for Germany in 1914.
I repeat: It is NOT my intention to proof that Germany had no fault in this war.
But I do blame France, Great Britain, Russia and Austria for the outbreak, all to
a certain degree, all with enough guilt to actually make the people blame their
own leaders first for all the suffering of this war. When the war ended the leaders
of the victorious nations choose to blame it all on the looser, so that a real
evaluation of the situation leading to the war was not done until it was far too
late.
Long one... So much for now. I will be offline until the 28th, but will surely look
in again then.
Best regards
Axel
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