Today is the 1st of September (WWII start in Poland)

Disagree. While the dismissal of Bismarck indeed destabilized things even further, the situation was already unstable, only held in place by the weight of the military apparatus in all countries, the same machines, once set in motion, were too heavy and too big to stop, even if they wanted to in the Summer of 1914, and they did try to stop them. But once the mobilisation started, it was no longer a matter of Kings or Kaisers or Czars anymore, but from the military. And the military didn't want to stop it.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

Hmm...I wonder about that...
What would have happened if Bismarck would still had hold the reigns? (Disregarding natural facts like age for a moment)
Wouldn't the old master of Realpolitik somehow found a way to avoid the sparking of the fire?
He would had kicked everybody's ass, also the military's, such was his charisma and power.

*you are speaking with a serious Bismarck-fanboy here so be nice* ;)

The GWOTTC would just have been delayed. The machinery was in place and it was good while still in the 19th century, however, with modernisation of time this machinery caused its own demise as it was out of place. It would've happened anyway. Hyptethically speaking, the assasination of FF in Sarajevo would perhaps not be as important a factor as it turned out to be, but if it wasn't this, it would have because of sth else. But it would've happened. Decades over decades of military build-up cannot go unpunished, at least not in those days with no precendent as we have right nowm, no real competent leadership to handle modern machinery in old fashioned days*). Perhaps that's the reason why such a huge war as the GWOTTC probably won't happen again. At least not in Europe. And since the international traffic, control and communication means nowadays, I also doubt if it would happen on such a scale elsewhere in the world. Locally perhaps, but not on a global scale anymore.

*) this was perhaps the biggest reason why the GWOTTC broke out: modern machinery combined with old fashioned handling skills. Old fashioned politics in which a declaration of war was just another means to obtain that what you wanted, not to start a real war. Once obtained, the declaration would've been withdrawn and everybody went along their merry ways. However, this time it went wrong. Badly wrong.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

I'd agree with you on that. Regardless of what we might think about the undeniable influence of prominent individuals, there are 'powers of masses' that push history this or that way. Similarly, we might 'beat foam' for ages what would be the result of 1919 Treaty, were there not one half-sane Austrian handy. The pressure which BB emphasizes was there, but it takes real people to actually direct it in a particular way.

Thus I equally do not agree with the Great Revolution theory, presented by you. There were reasons for the fall of Louis the Sun, and we can trace them down to the very first moment when one ape used a heavy stick to earn a dinner at the expense of the currently less human ape. And whence this focus on the murderous side of the human nature, in the first place?

Lovely discussion but has nothing to do with beginning of ww2 and Poland.

On the topic I''d agree with you. It's a commemoration of the deceased, but it's a bit over the top. Due to the commie propaganda about murderous Nazi/Germans and benevolent Communist/Russians.

However, if you wanted to commemorate the victims, which date would you choose?

It wasn't a Great Revolution that happened in 1914, but the logical consequence of over a hundred years of inadequacy, especially in the decades immediately preceding the Great War Of The Twentieth Century (= GWOTTC).

Incapability to adapt to changing circumstances: A-H, Germany and Russia with their ancient form of administration, ignoring the changing position of classes within society that came with modernisation and industrialisation and ill-equipped to tackle "modern" problems unlike Great Britain and a couple of others had successfully done.

It's not my theory by the way, but was coined by multiple Historians who, imo, rightfully concluded that the period between 1914 and 1945 was nothing more than a conglomerate of events that were deeply related to one and another. Virtually nothing happened in that period of time which could not be linked in one way or another to other events that happened to an earlier point in that period.

The Cold War could be regarded as a 50-year long "tail" of this period, albeit without any major open conflict, apart from localized conflicts like Corea, Laos or Vietnam. But imo it would go too far to incorporate the Cold War completely into the GWOTTC. But then again, during the 80 years war at the end of the 16th and start of the 17th century, a lull of 12 years did happen without any fighting, so Historians are not fully in the clear yet whether to include the Cold War or not.

Btw, Louis Quatorze didn't fall, he just died in his bed in 1715 :) I think you mean Louis 16, his grandson, as this was the one who died under the guillotine.

Murderous nature of Homo Sapiens? Of course, most, nearly all can be traced back to that, but there are ever changing circumstances in which Homo Sapiens shows his murderous nature :)

Edit: the discussion is on topic, as the invasion of Poland was part of the GWOTTC. And besides, my question whether there was a commemoration or not has been answered.

>^..^<

M-G (Louis 14 never washed himself and was the inventor of perfume)

What's wrong with 1st of September?


Oh, come on ... there was never any mention of Russia's attack in commie times so there is probably some overcompensating going on. And how would you describe the attacking German army? Opps, we really didn't mean it, we are really nice guys in bad situation?

Now that's a bit of stretch? It was a century of peace, unparalleled in history. Development of arts and sciences etc. I can see the Clausewitz's professional point of view, but not everybody is supposed to think military, huh?


Well... Russia was changing, fast. GB got a shock treatment by the Boers, and Victoria died as well in the meantime, and I don't really see any class movements there anyway. Why do you say it was only the Axis that was so stiff? And thus responsible for the war, presumably?


Then you say it was a result of the whole previous century. Of course it was, so it seems that creating 1914 caesura between the Great Revolution and the Great War is just as artificial as stating that Middle Ages ended with the 15 century sharp (exaggeration alert). It's not you and your periodization that I oppose to, actually. This tool is obviously useful. It' that BB's infatuation with Versailles and somehow lame attempt to blame the whole Europe for Hitler. BTW, the 1871 event took place at Versailles too... :)


Oh, never mind. Too many of them, and who cares about the French anyway... :)


And that's the fun of it, right :)

What about the promiscuous nature then? Face (let's say it was) that launches 1000 ships? Didn't it start from food and women? Or maybe the vision of a happier smile of My Kids? Isn't it always about that?


Shouldn't we shut up, then. Out of the the respect for principles.


After Kazimir the Great died, Polish nobility sent a delegation to France, to bring a newly elected king. They were appalled with the French barbarism. Dirt, lice, nobody speaking Latin.

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I thought it was you who didn't really like the date.

That wouldn't be Zygmunt August by any chance?

Gee I'm be damned but I have no clue what are you talking about!


Good question, call me stupid but I would say that it is off topic !


lovely !

September the 1St

Jesus Christ, will anybody kick the sh1t out of me today for slightly mixing up some long dead egomaniacs?

People have no consideration these days.

edit:
'everybody'

Nott, this is not your day...

Yeah, those are the worst ;)

The living ones are worse. And I am dead serious now :-|

:-I

:-[

nah...

Well, it was a century that politically was born out of Revolution (the French Revolution) and was maintained by revolutions as well: the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 shaped it. Of course until 1871, there was always the threat of France renewing her aspirations again. The entire concert was built around that effort. Metternich did a great job in juggling to keep the balance.

But nevertheless there were plenty of minor wars and two great wars - perhaps not in Western Europe, but for certain with the participation of at least one of the Great Powers: first of course the Napoleontic wars up until 1815, the Crimean War of 1854 which was pretty huge and the 1877/78 war between Russia and Turkey. There were a couple of wars in which Spain was involved, the German unification wars and a few others on the fringes of Europe. But in all, I agree that it was a relatively peaceful century - in which perhaps the reason also lie for the huge outburst with which the century finally came to an end in 1914. And in 1914 it was shown that the system maintained for such a long time was rotten to the core.


That was perhaps the biggest shock of the Summer of 1914: the speed with which Russia was able to mobilize. All participants expected it to be ready only by early 1915. That turned out to be a bit different :)


They were autocratic régimes. Power mainly revolved around the Kaiser or Czar. Parliaments were mainly mere tools to act on his will. And when you have an incompetent individual on tht position, you probably can imagine that the decisions made were not always in pace with the times. In GB parliament had much more power.

A good example of the difference in approach would be this: in 1916/1917 there was quite some unrest in the diverse populations of the Allied countries: ppl were tired of war and wanted better conditions in return for their efforts. In GB, Lloyd George ordered his negociators to give the protesters everything they wanted and so happened. The workers went back to work and the unrest was curbed. In Russia however, when ppl demonstrated for better conditions and food, the Czar ordered to shoot them as they destabilized the nation. With this order he unwillingly set off the chain of events that led eventually to his own demise and the creation of the Soviet Union. These are just examples, but it shows most definitively the difference in approach and the characteristics of the régime.


Oh, I pertinent disagree with the statement made that the Central Powers were responsible for the war. Each and every belligerent of WW1 carries responsibility. They all had the opportunity to stop the whole thing and yet they did nothing to that effect. They all went into battle with their own agenda and that agenda was in every case not that noble as has been proclaimed. Actually, the only sovereign country that was totally innocent and victim of the war was Belgium. Belgium was not part of any alliance nor did it provoke any of the belligerent parties. It just had the bad luck to be in the path of the von Schlieffen Plan.


Of course, a caesura is always arteficial. According to Eckstein the breaking point in the heads of the population was the realisation that all the new technology wasn't infallible as they had been thinking in the two decades previous. A major milestone to that effect would be, how trivial it may seem, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Although romanticized, this event caused a huge shock in the consciense of the average ppl as it showed that the "unsinkable ship" sank on her maiden voyage. There are more examples, but for that I would suggest you get a copy of "The Rites of Spring - the First World War and the Birth of the Modern Age" by Eckstein. It's a good read.

But politically speaking there are too much cracks and lines in the surface to speak of one clear caesura.


The blanket of civilisation always keeps us from killing our neighbour because he has a bigger car than we have and it would make us and our kids feel better if we had such a car :)


It's my thread :) But besides, this discussion does imo have some relevance.


Yeah, the French always spoke French and refused to speak Latin and the main achievements of their efforts to retrieve hegemony was that from the 18th century on, the diplomatic language in all countries was French.

Some ppl say they would like to travel in time back to those days to see what it was like, but if they would, they probably would be vomiting from the smell as soon as they entered a pub or a house or a city: ppl didn't wash themselves until Victoria introduced it in the 1850's, feces and other nasty stuff were thrown just out of the window into the street (if you were unlucky to pass at that moment...well...:) On the other hand, the approach to getting laid was also somewhat different back then; let's say, it was a bit more direct :)

NB: While I do believe that the Versailles Treaty (which was deliberately held in the Mirror Hall - little idea from the French to get back at the Germans for 1871) is co-responsible for the emergence of Hitler cs, I see it only as part of the conglomerate of events, in this case being both the effect of previous events and the cause of events to follow in the future. But WW2 was caused by much more than just that piece of paper.

>^..^<

M-G (time for a drink)

The French aspirations were mostly manifested by Napoleon, though, and it was him, whose spectre haunted Europe, not Robespierre. 1830 should've pacified those fears, according to your suggestion that more democracy means more peace...


I'd say full of tensions, rather. No tensions in rot. And were it not for the inter-state tensions, each country would've coped with inner tensions in their own backyard. I just can;t see how social development made the war inevitable.

I meant socially, rather. The regime was releasing the screw, thus enabling the 1905 revolution. Typical story. Were it not for the war, Russia might've turned into a modern state with relatively little pain.


But it didn't prevent it from joining the brawl...


You lost me in this. But if they were more democratic, like GB et consortes, then there would be no war, you said? Or the democratization doesn't prevent war, so the existence of the British Parliament and absence of similar bodies in the Axis was irrelevant. I mean, the axis being behind the times had no relevance to the outbreak of the war. Hm?


Could be. But these deep interpretations are always risky. I mean, take this case. People have just got their brand new new technology, it fails once after 20 years, so they go mad and shoot at each other en masse? Imagine the mayhem created by every Windows crash :)


I might, thanks. But after I finish my current reads this thread will be prehistory...


I was being serious. Wars are not just for the fun of it.


Yeah. like that ape stick to Zeppelin.


They didn't 'refuse'. They lacked education. Latin was, so to speak, lingua latina. Heh :)


Well... I don't know about you Westerners, but 'bath' was not unknown in the East before Queen V. Ok, in the UK they invented tourism, went to the seashore, dipped in, hence Bath. We are different, though, no need to build a city to celebrate contact with water...


They dug out that city in the Indus Valley... even further to the East...
:)


So much for the sexual revolution. I don't believe in revolutions, as you know already :)

I don't believe in that anymore.

Most polls during the build up and during the Iraq/Afghanistan war had shown a majority against this.
They still happened....the only consequence for some politicians had been that they lost their jobs after the next voting.
But still the the armies were innit for years.

Democracies are perfectly capable of going to war even if not attacked. Their people don't even have the apology of living in a dictatorship which threatens them if they utter their opinion or of lacking of knowledge about the backgrounds and actual happenings.

Just a quick response to this as I am off to bed: Of course Napoleon was the biggest threat, however, with the ascendance of Napoleon III the same threats which were laid to rest with the death of Napoleon, arose again as Napoleon III was a serious contender with serious aspirations to restore the Napoleontic empire again. Too bad he was also a bit erratic as a person, but this may have caused big trouble in Europe again, weren't he being nipped in the bud by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71.

Edit: with "washing", I meant the personal hygiene as we know it today. Of course, "bath" was known all over the place, but the concept of daily body care was introduced by Victoria cs. Since you're in London, why not take a Saturday afternoon to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, it's free and it gives a nice overview of the history of hygiene :)

I will get back to your other points tomorrow

>^..^<

M-G (tiens and good night)

Germans commemorate the Bombing of Dresden
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4261263.stm

Germans commemorate their WW2 defeat
nytimes.com/2005/05/09/international/europe/09germany.html

Brits commemorate the London terrorist attack
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5153678.stm

Brits commemorate the Dunkirk defeat
telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/britainatwar/7782534/Dunkirk-veterans-commemorate-evacuation.html

Americans commemorate Pearl Harbor defeat
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/12/07/GA2009120702126.html

The Dutch commemorate the defeat of 1940
rnw.nl/english/bulletin/rotterdam-commemorates-nazi-blitz-1940

Japan commemorates their 1945 defeat
voanews.com/english/news/Hiroshima-Holds-65th-Atomic-Bomb-Memorial-100085689.html

Oh, and Jews commemorate their defeat in 1933 to 1945 pretty much every single day, hundreds, or perhaps thousands time over around the world.

So, again, what's the problem with Poles commemorating their September 1. 1939 defeat?

*grin*

The Brits somehow did spin around Dunkirk to a victory or a "miracle"!

True. They're good at spinning history around to the point that one rarely hears about genocide caused by the British around the world not for 5 or 6 years but for centuries. Heck, they're still at it to this day.

I wouldn't say it was a defeat, would you? It was definitively sth else.


Don't be so defensive. The question was whether the Poles commemorate this date or not. That was the only question of this thread and the only reason I started this thread was because I was wondering about this. No attack in there, just curiosity.

>^..^<

M-G (tiens)

What would you call 3 million (alleged 6 million) killed? A victory?


Me defensive? I thought this latest post of yours is defensive. I did not have the OP in mind at all. What I wrote wasn't directed specifically to you, but I thought what I wrote needed to be written to give a chance other non-Poles to look in the mirror.

Hmmm...I would say...since it never was a one-on-one battle in military terms but rather a slaughtering of defenseless civilians it can't be talked about in military terms as in defeat or victory IMHO.

It wasn't a war in military terms as the opponents were unarmed citizen, so therefore there can't be no victory. Do you regard it a victory when you swat a fly with a newspaper?

As for the other remark, it just came across that you felt that any commemoration of Poland at the 1st of September would be questioned by anyone here. That's all.


Agreed. Btw, did you know they now caught that puppy killer in Bosnia? Police announced it today. They are going to arrest her brother and parents too. Ain't that good news?

>^..^<

M-G (anyhow, it's beer time)

Please don't wander off topic, there is another thread for this!

Somehow?

While Goering and the other sycophants were arguing to Hitler against having the German Army finishing the job the Brits were slipping away. The end result was that these troops ended up facing the Germans in battle on a later date.

The Battle of Britain was won by, da da, Britain :) :) (with the able-bodied Poles help)

Bye bye Goering, he committed suicide, right? What a hero!

How convenient that they had an island to "slip away" to....

;)

The miracle of Dunkirk saved the British Army and eventually saved Britain itself. If nearly the entire British army would have been captured, the Battle of Britain wouldn't have mattered anyway. Even if the Germans had lost it, they could just march into Britain in that case as there was no ground army left to defend the island.

The Battle of Britain was a bad mistake made by Göring; if they would just have gotten into their boats and sailed off to Britain, the Island would be theirs before the Summer would be over. Britain was just lucky there.

Speaking of Göring: a Berlin fishmonger once promoted his fish on a market by shouting "Herring! Herring! As fat as Göring!" The police took notice of this and had him arrested. After paying a fine and promising he would not do it again as he would be watched from now on, he went to the market again the next day. This time he shouted: "Herring! Herring! As fat as yesterday" True story :)

>^..^<

M-G (Berliner Humor)

No miracle there, Germans stopped because Hitler was an idiot.


To "march" into Britain they'd have to get through RAF and Royal Navy so yes BoB would have mattered a lot anyway.


No. If they would just have gotten into their boats here's what would happen.

Approximately halfway across the channel they'd meet the RAF and Royal Navy, now because Royal Navy had a monstrous amount of cutters and destroyers as well as quite a few fighters the german airfrorce would be shredded, without the german airforce the british ships would then proceed to massacre every german transport and warship in the channel and that'd be that for invasion.