The second chapter of the Great War got underway.
I think it's arguable that the Second World War, at least in the northern chunk of Europe, was a continuation of the Great War. Much of the underlying enthusiasm for the war in Germany and Austria was nursed butthurt over losing the last one. The Germans persuaded themselves that they had been shived by a Internationist/Jewish conspiracy; forgetting that they had been bled white on the battlefield. The blockades had taken a terrible toll on Germany and its people. They were badly short of food and military matériel at the very same time that the United States was gearing up to send a couple of million more soldiers into the war. The German military was disintegrating in the final weeks of the war as it was.
Negotiating an end to the war, even on unfavorable terms, kept Germany from being turned into a battlefield. One might imagine the vengeance that Allied troops, particularly the French, would have taken. It's even possible that the ending of the war saved Germany as a more-or-less intact state.
But the German far right didn't see it that way. They wanted to even things up. And they did, temporarily.
But the end did come.
Friday, September 1, 2017
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