Blueprint for Armageddon I

The podcast “Blueprint for Armageddon I” discusses various aspects of World War I. Here’s a summary of the main points:

• The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip is highlighted as a key event triggering WWI.
• Discussion on how individuals like Princip can significantly alter history.
• The episode explores the complex web of alliances in Europe at the time and how these contributed to the war’s outbreak.
• Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and other European leaders are critiqued for their role in the war’s escalation.
• The podcast delves into the militarization of European nations and the arms race leading up to WWI.
• The impact of modern technology and industrialization on warfare is examined, including how these factors led to unprecedented scale and devastation.
• The cultural and psychological aspects of the era, including nationalism and the perceived glory of war, are discussed.

This summary offers an overview of the major themes and discussions in the podcast.

• The pre-war social and political climate in Europe, as discussed in the podcast, was marked by intense nationalism and imperialism. European powers were engaged in a race for global dominance, leading to colonial expansions and heightened tensions. Nationalism was a driving force, with countries prioritizing their interests and identity, often at the expense of international cooperation. This fervor contributed to a competitive atmosphere among the major powers, setting the stage for the outbreak of World War I.
• The podcast discusses the complex alliances in Europe before World War I, focusing on how these pacts contributed to the war’s outbreak. Key alliances included the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and the United Kingdom) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). These alliances, initially meant for defensive purposes, created a domino effect; a conflict between two nations quickly escalated into a full-scale war involving multiple countries. This interlocking system of alliances turned a regional dispute into a global conflict, leading to the Great War.
• The podcast highlights how modern technology and industrialization dramatically altered warfare during World War I. Innovations like machine guns, chemical weapons, and artillery led to more efficient and deadly combat. The industrial capacity of nations allowed for the mass production of these weapons, amplifying the scale and devastation of battles. This technological shift resulted in unprecedented casualty rates and introduced a new era of warfare, marked by its brutality and impersonality.

Transcript

1 (1s):
December 7th 1941 its history a date which will live in infamy one false step for man one giant leap for mankind. Advice to the voicemail from this time and place I take pride in the words ich bin. Ein the aleena. Mr.

1 (40s):
Gorbachev tear down this wall. Howard how do I complete collapse I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their presidents have got deep Crystal. I’m not a stroke if we dig deep in our history in our document and remember we are not descended from fearful men. It’s

3 (1m 11s):
hardcore history. I remember a conversation. I had quite a long time ago now with an author of a book. The author had written a book about how John F Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald just like the government always said it happened. And I’ve been asking him a bunch of questions about conspiracies and you know this or that aspect of the Kennedy assassination and only one of his answers in a really stands out in my mind now because it seems in a relevant on so many different fronts and one of the answers on why it was so hard for some people to accept what this guy was purporting as the truth.

3 (1m 57s):
He said was because people are inherently very uncomfortable with the idea that a single nobody can have such an effect on all of our

1 (2m 8s):
lives.

3 (2m 10s):
It’s more comforting. He said to believe that powerful groups of people or conspiracies are actually running things. Even if you think those powerful groups are nefarious. It’s somehow comforting to think that somebody’s in charge that it’s not all just random another plane couldn’t just drop from the sky and land on your house tomorrow. And I thought about this when I was thinking about. you know someone if somebody had asked you a question who was the most important figure in the past hundred years in terms of why the world has gone the way it did, you know, you would think of all these famous people whose names almost anyone who’s a halfway educated would recognize and yet what’s interesting is you could conceivably put the name down of somebody who was historically speaking, you know, and nobody Lee Harvey Oswald on the pages of the history books besides the Kennedy assassination is a nobody didn’t do anything else of importance but that event was huge right if he actually killed John F Kennedy the way the narrative says Lee Harvey Oswald change the world.

3 (3m 24s):
He changed the president instantly, right? I mean how many of us have the potential to change who the president of the United States is that lone? Gunmen did if he was indeed The Lone Gunman? The person who maybe most responsible for the modern world this entire world including the 9/11 attacks that you know many commentators now say shaped the modern world, right? We live in an era of terrorism or the age of terrorism. You’ll hear them say without them seeming to really understand that the age of terrorism supposedly sparked by the 9/11 attacks in the very very very early 21st century were themselves manifestations of an act of terrorism that launched us into the 20th century.

3 (4m 8s):
If we actually live in an age of terrorism as some of these people like to say we’ve been living in it for more than a hundred years. I think you could make the case that the most important individual in the last century is gavrilo princip and Gabriella princip is a name very few of you will recognize. How can a person of so little achievement, you know on the world stage be perhaps credited with creating the entire world around us. I mean if if gavrilo princip doesn’t live is there a 9/11 attack ever and if that was all he did wouldn’t he be important it a lot more than that?

3 (4m 50s):
Gabriella princip is the reason there was a second world war because gavrilo princip is the reason there was a first And to be fair to princip, if you could have gone to him and shown him the ramifications of what that one day would do to the world. I think he’d be horrified. He wasn’t trying to unleash a global World War. He just became the latest example of someone pulling the trigger in a giant historical game of Russian Roulette. A trigger that have been pulled several times already with nothing, you know happening who would have thought that the time that princip pulled it.

3 (5m 33s):
That would be the time that the metaphorical revolver pointed at the skull of the old world shot a bullet into its brain. Perhaps princip and his compatriots would have thought that you know, sometimes when you’re trying to create a new world, you have to utterly destroy the old one. And the people in that old world. We’re not naive about the potential for someone like a prince up to do what they did. I mean Otto von Bismarck, one of the greatest diplomats of 19th century Europe, perhaps the greatest Diplomat Germany ever produced famously said that if there was going to be some giant global conflict it was going to probably break out because of some damn fool event in the Balkans.

3 (6m 20s):
Carrillo princip shot two people in the city of Sarajevo smack-dab in the Balkans a place that Otto von Bismarck had famously said was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier. It would cost a hell of a lot more than that. And princip becomes yet another example in history proving to us that sometimes when it comes to something like terrorism in this era, by the way, when we tried desperately to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the terrorist hands because we’re afraid they’ll be able to kill more people with such weapons. We forget that sometimes it’s not about how many people you kill. Sometimes. It’s about who they are.

3 (7m 1s):
And often it’s not the terrorist act that changes the world. It’s the response of the victims. The does gavrilo princip killed two people and he did so in a way that almost makes you believe in fate. And truthfully I’m not much of a fate believer. But one of the things I like about history is how it forces me to challenge some of my own preconceptions and certainly make me think about other possibilities. I’ve always thought for example that history unfolds for chaotic reasons. It’s somewhat random that millions of people going about their lives in their own ways with Trends and forces acting upon them and people in important positions making decisions and all this together creates a dynamic that’s completely unpredictable.

3 (7m 51s):
As I said somewhat chaotic and random and unfolds into the future. I think my logical side of the brain appreciates that sort of viewpoint. The problem is is that sometimes history confronts us with events were the logical part of at least my brain wants to flip sides and wants to logically defend. What I consider to be the moral logical point of view in this case the logical part of my brain will sometimes shift and try to defend something like fate. Or Destiny or predetermination those to me are the two ends of the scale Chaos on one side and Randomness on one side and fate and predestination on the other and there’s this weird Twilight Zone where the two sort of intersect.

3 (8m 38s):
And that event that happened in late June 1914 is one of the best examples you’ll find from history where you know, the logical side of your brain stands a pretty good chance of flipping and trying to defend the logical position that this is somehow predestined. I mean, let me challenge you with a similar kind of analogy. Take the John F Kennedy assassination for example, and imagine that in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald up at the Texas School Book Depository. You have a another assassin on the grassy knoll as has sometimes been suggested. And that in this JFK assassination attempt Oswald misses and the bullet strikes the ground maybe injured some passers-by and everybody realizes an assassination attempt is happening and the Secret Service get on the car and they speed away past the grassy knoll past the other assassin who never gets a shot at President Kennedy and then President Kennedy’s gone.

3 (9m 37s):
And no one knows what to do. No one’s quite sure what happens and then, you know later on. All of a sudden while the assassin on the grassy Knolls probably trying to just figure out okay, maybe what do I do now the car with the president and his wife show up right down the road again passed the Texas School Book Depository right to the grassy knoll where it proceeds to stall and stop. What are the odds of

1 (10m 5s):
that

3 (10m 6s):
kind of kooky huh? History can be that way. On June 28 1914 gavrilo princip and from six to some sources say 20 assassins. If you believe some of the people who claimed to have taken part in these assassination attempts show up in Sarajevo with murder on their minds. They want to kill the the governing figure in Sarajevo. The person who is sort of the Prince Charles plays the same role Prince Charles plays in the British Monarchy right now in the monarchy of the country that are the overlords in Sarajevo country.

3 (10m 48s):
That doesn’t exist anymore called Austria Hungary and Austria Hungary is led by really old very well-loved guy named Franz Joseph who’s going to die soon because he’s very old and the person who will take over when Franz Joseph dies. Is this guy coming on a visit to Serie A vo the Prince Charles of his country, although unlike Prince Charles whose role is completely ceremonial. This guy will actually have some real power when he gets the throne and for some you know, now when you look back on it looks like a stupid reason this guy whose name is Archduke Franz Ferdinand has decided to go to Sarajevo and watch military Maneuvers which happened to coincide with the anniversary of the most emotionally important.

3 (11m 31s):
heart-wrenching Battlefield loss in all Serb history the Battle of Kosovo way back from hundreds and hundreds of years before this time period Serb nationalists and the serbs are very very patriotic even today even more so back in 1914. Look at this as a slap in the face. Chew them Sarajevo is Slavic and should be part of at least a pan-slavic country or maybe part of Serbia there had been Balkan Wars for the last decade, you know concerned with many of these nationalistic questions who should own these areas and it had been in the hands of the Ottoman Turks who the Slavs definitely feel shouldn’t have been running the place and it was transferred to the hands of the austro-hungarian Empire, which the Serb nationalists still don’t feel should be running the place.

3 (12m 18s):
And now the Archduke was coming on the anniversary of this historic defeat, you know from the Serb nationalists Viewpoint to rub their nose in the fact that Sarajevo is still held by a big non Slavic Empire. They’re going to make Franz Ferdinand pay for that and in the remarkably similar situation to the Kennedy assassination ferdinand’s route for his motorcade is published ahead of time. He’s going to be arriving and going down the main boulevards in an open car with his wife sitting next to him these multiple assassins line themselves up at various intervals along the Parade route and plan to kill the Archduke as soon as they can.

3 (13m 5s):
The archduke’s car is either going too fast, or there are too many other serbs in the crowd nearby the first few assassins. So the first few assassins, don’t try to make a run at him eventually, he passes one guy who runs out from the crowd with a bomb really more of a hand grenade would be a good way to describe it today and he flings this hand grenade at the archduke’s open car, you know, very athletic maneuver the Archduke sees it ducks behind the door of the car the hand grenade thing bounces off the car hits the concrete on the street and the fuse doesn’t detonate until the next car in the motorcade has passed over it. It explodes some 20 people are badly hurt in a blood on the street the whole thing chaos the crowd scatters.

3 (13m 48s):
I mean, obviously they don’t the parade is over. The would-be Assassin shoves a cyanide pill into his mouth and runs down into the side of the street and jumps in the river, but the cyanide pill is defective and only makes him vomit and the rivers only about 6 inches deep. So they capture him very quickly and run him off to be interrogated. And basically it looks like the whole day’s been a failure. The other assassins at least some of them are supposed to have seen the archduke’s car speeding off. I mean, there you go. There goes the day. The motorcade goes in a couple of different directions. Some people are taken to the hospital the Archduke and his wife, you know, go to the town hall to Lodge a complaint.

3 (14m 29s):
They were going to make a speech anyway, but now they have an earful to give the local officials. We come to your town and this is the reception we get that kind of thing. And it looks at least from this point like, you know the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary just dodged a bullet literally. There’s some Talk Amongst the local officials about maybe figuring out a way to provide some increased security, but it doesn’t seem to get very far because within an hour after the first attack the Archduke and his wife and their small motorcade is, you know off to the hospital. Supposedly, you know following an unplanned route for security reasons.

3 (15m 10s):
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of extra in a police protection. We’re told that a an aristocrat counts France Von her Rock was on the running board of the archduke’s car. So maybe a little extra protection. Turns out though that the driver in one of those, you know little screw-ups that affect the entire history of the world turns out the driver of the archduke’s car did not realize they were not taking the original Parade route and makes a wrong turn. And ends up near a street corner where one of the Assassins gavrilo princip maybe the guy on the grassy knoll would JFK has stationed himself in the hopes that he might get a chance, you know, maybe just be in the right place when the Archduke had to come by again perhaps on his way out of town.

3 (15m 52s):
The archduke’s driver makes a wrong turn. He’s told by somebody in the motorcade that he’s made a wrong turn and he has to back up. He stops the car in preparation for backing up right by where gavrilo princip is friendship is on that street corner where the motorcades car takes a wrong turn and then stops while backing up and he sees his Target from less than an hour before. Mere feet from him immobile and slightly below him in an open car. And he whips out his pistol and shoots him and his wife.

3 (16m 37s):
What are the odds of that happening? It’s considered to be one of the most wild coincidences in all human history. How many times do assassins in a failed assassination attempt get a second chance to go after their target? And we sometimes forget because it’s such a Monumental historical moment that this is still a terrorist attack and it was quite upsetting going to either witness or live through. Part of what makes these things seems so unreal is that we only have grainy black-and-white footage of even the events before that.

3 (17m 18s):
You can go see movies where you can see the Archduke and his wife getting ready to go into the motorcade and you get an idea of what they looked like and it’s all kind of moving a little too fast the way those old-fashioned movies were in everything and it just doesn’t look real but you can go in you can see pictures because they have saved the tunic that the Archduke was wearing that day and you can see In Living Color that this was a bright light blue tunic and the feathers on the helmet. He was wearing were bright green. I mean, it must have been the most colorful sight imaginable but after princip fired the most colorful sight imaginable became a lot more gory because there’s a tear in the tunic where the bullet exited the archduke’s neck and the tunic is covered in what is unmistakably even a hundred years later blood.

3 (18m 4s):
And blood has always been one of those things where When You See It In Living Color. There’s nothing like it. I tend to believe human beings are programmed to react to that specific color, you know always and and the difference between seeing blood and black and white and blood and colors. There’s nothing quite like that. The person who was closest to the whole thing was count Von schirach who was on the running board not doing that great of a job apparently at security and he says as soon as the shots were fired, they reverse the car and he later testified this quote as the car quickly reversed a thin stream of blood spurted from His Highness as mouth onto my right cheek as I was pulling out my handkerchief to wipe the blood away from his mouth The Duchess cried out to him for God’s sake what has happened to you at that she slid off the seat and lay on the floor of the car with her face between his knees.

3 (19m 2s):
I had no idea that she too was hit and thought that she had simply fainted with fright. Then I heard his Imperial highness. Say Sophie Sophie don’t die stay alive for the children at that ice. He’s the Archduke by the collar of his uniform to stop his head drooping forward and asked him if he was in great pain. He answered me quite distinctly. It is nothing his face began to twist somewhat. Went on repeating six or seven times ever more faintly as he gradually lost Consciousness. It’s nothing then came a brief pause followed by a convulsive rattle in his throat caused by the loss of blood this ceased on arrival at the governor’s residence the to unconscious bodies were carried into the building where their death was soon established.

3 (19m 45s):
and quote and as a way to sort of prove that the old adage that one man’s terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter is true. You have only to note that a monk’s serbs today many will consider gavrilo princip a heroic figure someone who, you know fired the first shots that started a chain of events that while it will be horrible in both world wars for the Serbian people eventually lead to well now a time when those countries exist without, you know, having to be just simply a province in some other major superpowers

1 (20m 29s):
territories.

3 (20m 31s):
To serbs. This guy was a hero and to his compatriots who all realize that they were like Desperados at the time. They all realized that they would be immortalized

1 (20m 43s):
too.

3 (20m 45s):
And the actual circumstances by the way where this plot was hatched are worthy of a spy novel and it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been romanticized to some degree. But nevertheless if you ever do the definitive big screen dramatization of World War 1 the whole story. I think you want to start your movie off with that scene inside that Belgrade Cafe obscure place kind of run-down lit only by candlelight with a group of 19 and 20 year old guys at a table. I always have to remind myself how young these people are not old enough to legally drink alcohol in the United States is how old these people are and then we’re told by people who were there that what happened is one of their number comes in the door sits down at the table with them and has a package with him and he opens up the package and inside is only one thing a newspaper clipping.

3 (21m 38s):
No note. No not signed it by anybody no directions just a newspaper clipping in the clipping announces. the imminent visit of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Sarajevo one of the people who was at that table and lived to grow older and write about his experiences after he’d had time to go from terrorists to Patriot a guy named board. Jove Jeff catch and if I mispronounced that by the way, let’s just get used to that. This is going to be perhaps the most linguistically and essentially challenging show I’ve ever done and I’m sure to mangle many beautiful languages first and foremost French. So my apologies to all of you in advance. I’m sorry.

3 (22m 19s):
I have limitations and you’re going to hear them all board shove Jeff Cheech wrote years later this about that moment in history that will turn out to be so very important in a way that you can’t imagine anyone at the table. Then would have known they didn’t know they were pulling the trigger again and that Russian roulette game and they certainly didn’t know that if they were that was the time there was going to be a bullet in the chamber Jeff teacher wrote, you know, after the fact quote a tiny clipping from a newspaper mailed without comment from a secret band. Of terrorists in Zagreb a capital of Croatia to their comrades in Belgrade was the torch which set the world afire with war in 1914 that bit of paper wrecked old proud Empires it gave birth to new free Nations.

3 (23m 6s):
I was one of the members of the terrorist band in Belgrade which received it and in those days I and my companions were regarded this desperate criminals. A price was on our heads today. My little band is seen in a different light as Pioneer Patriots. It is recognized that our secret plans hatched in an obscure Cafe in the capital of old Serbia have led to the independence of the new Yugoslavia the United Nations set free from Austrian domination and quote. Now ever since that time people have been wondering how connected that group was to outside entities, you know, they just a bunch of you know, small little self organized Terror groups put together by a bunch of young kids, or are they working for a larger entity today?

3 (23m 53s):
We would ask whether or not they were an example of state-sponsored terrorism. Was there a power behind this group arrival power? I mean in to understand how big of a deal this could be in a Europe that was already kind of unsteady and stressed in terms of Stability imagine the United States President, you know a president or two from now, we don’t want to be controversial down the road is assassinated and we have all the shock and anger and desire for Retribution that comes with that and then very shortly after an assassin is captured. We figure out that that assassin is working with the intelligence service for most antagonistic.

3 (24m 35s):
Enemy. I mean think for a second how America would have reacted if Lee Harvey Oswald had been a hit man for Moscow and that came to light which by the way is not that outrageous a thing to consider when you look at Oswald’s ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Think about how the American people would have reacted regardless of what the facts were if they thought that was the case and it’s interesting to note that that’s only a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis a year after World War 3 is potentially dodged. What do you think? The leaders of the United States after Kennedy is assassinated are worried about in terms of worst-case scenarios.

3 (25m 22s):
Do you think it might have occurred to them men? Who by the early 1960s had grown up during and in the immediate years after the first world war. Do you think they might have been seeing in their minds eye history repeating itself a world leader killed by a gunman in an open car with his wife sitting next to him in public by a young person may be working for a foreign government. And then having the world spiral out of control despite what the major players may have wanted. Do you think the people around Kennedy might have worried a little about how that might have turned out because those guys in that Cafe very well may have been working for the Serbian intelligence service.

3 (26m 11s):
There’s been a lot written about this. No one knows for sure. They certainly have ties to groups that the United States today. If you know we were ranking groups from 1914 would probably call terrorist groups like young Bosnia and another one called the black hand and these groups had ties sometimes to the Serbian intelligence service. So you can believe the historian or the investigator you want to believe. It’s a hot button issue. Nonetheless. It isn’t so important what really happened just like it isn’t so important whether or not Oswald was working for the Soviet Union what’s important is what are the people on the ground affected by this think was happening the US public thought Oswald was a hit man for Moscow what happens then the austrians thought the killing of their heir to the throne was an active state sponsored terrorism, and if it wasn’t they were going to make the case that it was anyway, There’s really no doubt that the austro-hungarian Empire wanted to deal with this Serbian problem that had been bedeviling it for some time once and for

1 (27m 18s):
all

3 (27m 19s):
and to be honest. It’s hard to blame them. I mean the serbians and the Slavs will counter with the idea that the austro-hungarians had not possessed this territory for very long Bosnia-Herzegovina and places like Sarajevo had not been austro-hungarian for a long time. Nevertheless. You try to think of what nation stayed on the planet could put up with the nation over their border fermenting revolution in their country and eventually killing their public figures. I mean, imagine if you’re an American this happening in the United States imagine say, Mexico Creating instability and unrest and fomenting subversion and revolution in places like Southern Texas and southern New Mexico and Southern Arizona and Southern California, and then eventually these revolutionaries that have been egged on by the Mexican intelligence service kill a major US public figure.

3 (28m 14s):
How long do you think the United States would put up with something like that? The reason it becomes so important though is because of all the many controversies in this story. One of the most enduring and important is whose fault everything that’s about to happen is you know, if this is a civil lawsuit trying to figure out who’s responsible for damages is a key part of this story and the austro-hungarian Empire is in a position to decide to go or not to go to war that seems to put them in the driver’s seat responsibility wise. There are austrians though living at the time who basically say what choice did they have?

3 (28m 60s):
Take this Austrian writing after the war is a perfect example. He talks about Archduke Franz Ferdinand is one of the best friends the Slavs ever had an effect Ferdinand actually was counseling his government to treat the Serbian problem more lightly because he was worried about it’s sparking a general War when he was killed. It was seen as an extra perfidious act because the Slavic folks had killed a person who had been, you know, one of their better friends in the Austrian government the Austrian that I was telling you about a second ago after the first world war wrote this quote when the news of the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand arrived in Munich.

3 (29m 46s):
I happened to be sitting at home and heard of it only vaguely. I was at first seized with worried that the bullets may have been shot from the pistols of German students who out of indignation at The Heirs apparent continuous work of slav ization. To free the German people from this internal enemy what the consequence of this would have been was easy to imagine a new way of of persecutions, which now would have been Justified and explained in the eyes of the whole world. But when soon afterward I heard the name of the supposed assassins and moreover read that they had been identified as serbs a light shutter began to run through me at this Vengeance of inscrutable Destiny the greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen beneath the bullets of Slavic Fanatics anyone he says with constant occasion in the last year’s to observe the relation of Austria to Serbia could not for a moment be in doubt that a stone had been set rolling whose course could no longer be arrested.

3 (30m 44s):
Those who today he writes shower the Viennese government with reproaches on the form and content of this Ultimatum It issued do it in Injustice. No other power in the world could have acted differently in the same situation and the same position at her Southeastern border Austria possessed in an ox horrible and mortal enemy who had shorter and shorter intervals kept challenging the monarchy and would never have left off until the moment favorable for the shattering of the Empire had arrived and quote actually agree with that and it makes me uncomfortable because the Austrian writing that statement after the first world war is the man most responsible for beginning the second at off Hitler.

3 (31m 29s):
The one line that I think Hitler aired in though was his line that this Stone had been set rolling that nothing could arrest because something could have arrested it because something had been arresting it there’s a reason that the austro-hungarians hadn’t attacked the serbs already. And the reason was that the serbs had a very powerful friend the Russians who considered themselves, the traditional Protectors of the Slavs and the serbs were not alone. Most of the powers of Europe had at least one and usually more powerful friends and allies. This was the era in European history and it’s often used as an example of one of the main reasons this whole story unfolds the way it does.

3 (32m 10s):
This is the era of a very complex web of alliances that bind European countries to each other. It’s perhaps the most enduring work of Otto von Bismarck who we mentioned earlier the 19th century German Diplomat Bismarck played a very large role in the foundation of modern, Germany. Many but he also played a huge role in creating a system of alliances that both expanded, you know, Germany’s possibilities while at the same time preserving a general peace in Europe. There were Wars between Napoleon and the first world war. There’s no doubt about that and some of them were directly the fault of Bismarck, but there wasn’t a general European conflict involving all the major powers and let’s not forget that this is an era that we would today call a multipolar world, which is hard for us to understand in an era of one or two super powers Europe during this time period had at least five first-rate power States.

3 (33m 10s):
Britain France Germany Russia and the austro-hungarian Empire many people throw in turkey and Italy to which would make seven these states all were bound to each other with complex Alliance systems and complex is the way Bismarck wanted it. Bismarck had set it up so that basically no matter what happened. He was in the driver’s seat. And this worked unbelievably well especially for German interest but for European interests as a whole for a long time, but by the time 1914 rolls around this genius who create this system, that’s so complex. Only he knew how to run it.

3 (33m 51s):
I’ve taken whole courses on Biz Markie and diplomacy from professors who spent their whole life studying it and they don’t know why he did some of the things he did while he was running it. It was fantastic by the time 1914 rolls around he hasn’t been running it for some time. He’d been fired by the leader of Germany. And now this complex machine that the genius of Bismarck had created and run was being run by people who couldn’t you know, carry his jock strap is what we used to say. It was inevitable that something like that would break down. The reason that the austro-hungarians didn’t just March into Serbia, you know the minute they found out that the serbs were responsible for killing their heir to the throne is that they knew that would mean war with Russia.

3 (34m 41s):
And that is something that the austro-hungarians were not prepared for at least not without checking with their main friend on the world stage and finding out you know, what they would do in that situation their main friend on the world stage was the German Empire. Now the German Empires attitude is very interesting. The first thing I have to keep reminding myself about the German Empire during this era is that it’s relatively young. It’s a new country almost there’s only founded in 1871 as I 40 years before this era and it wasn’t just a new country the minute it was proclaimed and that’s how it happened. You didn’t Proclaim England. You didn’t Proclaim France.

3 (35m 22s):
But Germany is a Modern Nation. There was like a day where people signed papers and okay the next day as of tomorrow Germany exists and the minute it existed. It was the most powerful land power in Europe. With a larger population than France traditionally the greatest land power in Europe up till this time period and a larger faster birth rate and more industry and how destabilizing would it be in our world today? If a couple of different nations of moderate power signed a piece of paper tomorrow that United them into one country and that one now combined country was the most powerful country in the world, even if it was just the most powerful land power or the most powerful sea power you can see how a bunch of Nations that really didn’t deserve a lot of the perks that the super great Nations claim for themselves might all of a sudden do that.

3 (36m 11s):
Once they turn themselves into a super nation in 1871 with the creation of Germany the Kaiser Reich. You have an instant great power on the world stage. It was Prussia on steroids with a population like eight times as much and the rest of Germany with the militarized on the Prussian model with the Prussian King. That’s a very destabilizing thing. And when that country begins to demand some of the perks that the other great Powers have you know of their own France Great Britain, they’ve got all these colonies all these are the things little Holland to them looks like they’ve got places all over the world what’s going on sort of a factor of just having been there for a while if you were around during the Age of Exploration and you had a bunch of ships out there.

3 (36m 58s):
You were getting colonies. Germany didn’t come around until most of the good stuff was taken was a cause of instability Germany worried about being encircled that powers all around them. That didn’t wish them.

1 (37m 11s):
Well

3 (37m 12s):
history Niall Ferguson in a thing that I really thought was was quite wonderful because here in the west those of us who fought the German Empire famously said that they had this sort of paranoia about being encircled. They were always worried about being encircled will look at them on a map. They’re born in circled there in Central Europe. They’ve got enemy Powers all around them. Niall Ferguson said they weren’t paranoid about being encircled. They were being encircled. They were worried about an upcoming

1 (37m 39s):
war

3 (37m 40s):
and up until Otto von Bismarck goes away. He had neutralized Russia. That was like one of the main things in his diplomatic Alliance System keep the Russians happy. He said in a five superpower World make sure your country’s one of three, right? So it’s always three against two and Russia was always to be kept on your good side when he is sacked and basically the foreign policy begins to be heavily influenced by the German Kaiser the emperor Kaiser means Caesar by the way. So imagine calling your emperor Caesar in 1914. In any case the Kaiser was a strange guy. He sacks Bismarck because bismarck’s kind of talking down to him and his kind of running the show when he’s an old guy by then and he’s much revered and you know, how do you grow into your own man with that guy hanging over your shoulder?

3 (38m 27s):
So we Tiresome and he allows that machine to make vital mistakes Bismarck never would have made with that diplomatic machine vital mistake. Number one. He lost the Russians. He intentionally drove them away, basically. Right into the hands of the French the historic German. Enemy. The one that they had beaten in the franco-prussian war in 1870 1871 that allowed them to proclaim the German Empire which they did in the French Palace of Versailles, which is sort of a rub your nose in it kind of thing the Germans and the French assumed they’d fight each other again someday. Now, the French were allied with the Russians and now the German fears of encirclement had become a reality the Germans have been trying to plan for what they’re going to do with the war, you know against an enemy to their West and another enemy to the reached at the same time, right?

3 (39m 17s):
How do you do that? And now the situation in Austria boils over and the austrians say to the Germans listen if we get into a war with Serbia, Russia is going to attack us if Russia attacks us. Where do you stand? And the Kaiser this is controversial. But traditionally the Kaiser is supposed to have told the austrians to go for it get Serbia done now and some historians again. This is all very controversial. Everybody has a different opinion. But basically the idea seems to be that the Kaiser believed that if it was done quickly enough, the serbians could be crushed before the situation spiraled out of control in Europe because even as moderately intelligent will put will give him some credit that the Kaiser was he knew that Europe was a powder keg and the key thing that had to be avoided was this process almost a machine the cranking up of a doomsday device that everybody who’d actually been present when the thinkers who dealt with the doomsday device explained what the doomsday device did understood that once the trigger on this thing was pulled it was going to be really hard to turn it off.

3 (40m 26s):
So if the austrians could conquer the serbians before the Russians flip the doomsday device Switch it would all be okay again lot of controversy on this because this is again another one of those places where the war guilt question hinges. Did Germany tell Austria to go Crush Serbia and who cares if the Russians attack everybody, but of course the problem wasn’t that it would just involve the Russians attacking everybody because of that complex web of alliances. We talked about earlier other countries were going to get dragged into the conflict. This was something that was well understood by the intelligent heads of Europe take for example, the British prime minister during this time period Herbert Asquith Asquith wrote a letter private letter that’s come down to the history books right after Serbia receives the ultimatum from Austria.

3 (41m 18s):
That’s so important and asked with writes quote Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia who cannot possibly comply with it and then demanded an answer within 48 Hours failing which she will March this means almost inevitably that Russia will come to the scene in defense of Serbia and in defiance of Austria, and if so, it’s difficult for Germany and France to refrain from lending a hand to one side or the other so that we are in measurable or imaginable distance of a real Armageddon happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than Spectators and quote. Well that turned out obviously to be wishful thinking on the British prime ministers part, but his story is like Neil Ferguson who right revisionist works like the pity of War have suggested that if the British had stayed out we’d have a better world today for all sorts of reasons.

3 (42m 8s):
He’s let me he knocks off many of the biggest events of the 20th century the most horrible saying this never happens that never happens that never happens if Britain stays out of the war Britain can stay out of the war because they don’t have a hard alliance with anyone. They’re not caught up in that web of alliances will not too much. They have an understanding with France and understanding with enough wiggle room so that there was a lot of talk in Britain about do we or don’t we get involved in this whole thing this whole thing was something that hadn’t happened in a hundred years in Europe a general European War. It hadn’t happened since Napoleon since Waterloo.

3 (42m 48s):
And that war was so terrible. Not just that were the entire Napoleonic wars in the wars of the French Revolution that era from like 1789 to 1815. So awful in terms of military destruction that a lesson had been talked to the, you know crowned heads of Europe and the lesson was Wars not as much of a game anymore. It’s no longer, you know, these small private armies that we move around our European chessboard and oh I lost to you so you can have this province in the next time. I’ll beat you and I’ll take that Province back. You know, nobody was trying to topple the regime to it was if anything gentlemanly Warfare if there’s ever been such a thing. It’s been called in the history books limited Warfare or restricted Warfare.

3 (43m 32s):
There was an Italian historian named for raro 1933 who talked about how you know that era of warfare was the kind of warfare where you know, the leaders of countries could actually have fun going to war with something. You just sort of did like pheasant hunting at least in the minds of some of these guys for or writes quote restricted Warfare was one of the loftiest achievements of the 18th century. It belongs to a class of hot house plants which can only thrive in an aristocratic and qualitative civilization. We are no longer capable of it. It’s one of the Fine Things We have lost as a result of the French Revolution and quote.

3 (44m 13s):
The French Revolution was when no Warfare got at least in the minds of the Europeans of this era, you know, really serious. You want a war then we’re going to go to war. The crowned heads of Europe attacked France after France went all revolutionary and you have to understand how much of a shock that was historian Gwen Dyer has a great way of describing it. He says to understand the shock of the crowned heads of Europe when the most Royal of European countries, the French were overthrown by leftist revolutionaries. He says you have to imagine if maoists toppled the US government today now is of course being a very hardcore communist group, imagine them toppling today’s US government and beginning to govern he goes That’s How The crowned heads of Europe felt about the French Revolution and how destabilizing it was seen so inevitably the royalty of Europe which is almost all of you are clashes with this new Republic in France and coalesces into an alliance and everybody attacks France and they do so with their private mercenary armies and they run into the entire French population a people in arms.

3 (45m 27s):
Because France started by losing you have to imagine a state where the entire underpinnings of the state have been broken down including especially the Army and then all mean Prussia Russia Austria and Great Britain all these powers in Europe attack France at the same time and you’re stuck with I mean like a bit of your army left over the artillery stayed with the people. So the old French artillery was good, but you’ve got this mishmash of an army with officers who don’t have any Authority. It’s crazy. And France is about to be defeated and then as only you know totalitarian type regimes can do they basically tell the people of France that the war is now everything our entire Focus the entire Society exists only to win this war the decree of the French national Convention in 1793 said quote from this moment until that in which our enemies shall have been driven from the territory of the Republic all Frenchmen are permanently requisitioned for service in the Army’s the Young.

3 (46m 26s):
And shall fight the married men shall Forge weapons and transport supplies. The women will make tents and clothes and serve in hospitals the public building shall be turned into Barracks. The public squares into munition factories all firearms of suitable caliber shall be turned over to the Troops. The interior will be policed with shotguns and Cold Steel all saddle horses shall be seized for the Cavalry all draft horses not employed in cultivation will draw the artillery and Supply wagons and quote. In other words. The entire Society was mobilized for the war effort. This was not something that the other countries did. In fact most of the royal, you know leaders of Europe could think of nothing more scary than arming and training your population often times.

3 (47m 14s):
They used their professional militaries to put down rebellions by their population. The last thing they wanted to do was give them guns and train them how to use it right train them how to be better Street Fighters wasn’t going to happen, but the French had Different kind of society one that was supposed to be run by the very, you know, lowborn people everybody was in this together and you combine the willingness to throw human life, you know out there on the battlefield in almost endless numbers you didn’t have to pay these people either you could just say, I’m sorry, you’re out of work right. Now, you’re going to the front and the steal some chickens from some Farmer on the way. This was crazy and all of a sudden the French were able to expend lives on a scale that was unprecedented and to create armies that were enormous.

3 (47m 59s):
I mean, look at Alexander the Great probably the greatest conqueror in all world history Alexander conquerors a very large chunk of the known world and a decent sized chunk of the unknown world at the time with an army that numbered anywhere from 40 to 90 thousand men. Okay, and he was obviously a genius in the way. He did it, but imagine if Alexander could have used a historical xerox machine. to duplicate that world conquering Army so that now he’s got to 42 90,000 man armies roughly comparable to each other now imagine he does it again and then duplicate it again and then again and then again, You do that enough times to where you got 1.2 1.3 1.5 million men, maybe eventually closer to three million men and now you’ve given Alexander the Great a 20th century Army.

3 (48m 57s):
A 20th century Army is many many armies from the past. The French Revolution is when that really starts when you start putting so many troops into the field that it doesn’t matter that they’re practically incompetent that their lives are wasted that they’re turned into cannon fodder as Napoleon who will inherit this, you know, People’s Army that will conscript every man. They want to conscripted as long as they need them will say troops are born to be killed. And there’s Napoleon famously said to the Austrian Diplomat count matter Nick. You cannot stop me. I spend thirty thousand lives a

1 (49m 38s):
month.

3 (49m 40s):
If any of the major Powers except maybe Russia in Europe at this time lost 30,000 men in a month. It would be considered quite a blow Napoleon lost 30,000 men a month as a matter. Of course. Because he had a new kind of army. He had a people in arms and in order to beat him the other countries of Europe had to do the same thing. As the German field Marshal blue shirt old the Prussian, you know Government after the prussians had been defeated by Napoleon. Give me a national Army gave me what he has and when he got it, you know, which the Prussian aristocracy didn’t want to do for the same reason that the European leaders everywhere didn’t want to do it.

3 (50m 25s):
They didn’t want to put the people in arms, but when they did they were able to Triple the size of bluchers Army and he took that Army and fought Napoleon with it. The creation of a nation in arms was the first step in creating the modern war machine because now all of a sudden life was cheap. Not only was life cheap, but the modern nation state was now deep enough to be able to truly take a punch and this is what sets the modern militaries off in the modern States off from the ones in ancient times in ancient times very few States could take a punch, you know to use a boxing term many of them could dish it out and you take a state like the achaemenid Persian, you know, the ones who fought the Spartans at Thermopylae and all that the Persians could dish out really good blows, but they couldn’t take very many good blows most nations in the past couldn’t that’s why if you look at a book, you know, the greatest battles in history if it’s beyond, you know about a hundred and fifty years ago, sometimes the great battle is the only battle Wars are won or lost on one big battle because the nation states couldn’t take too many punches.

3 (51m 30s):
They couldn’t re raise armies the state just couldn’t support it. Once France turns the entire nation into the war effort Nations can take punches better and in the past, I mean the Mongols and the Chinese could take some punches the Roman Empire could take punches. That’s what set those nation states in the past apart from most of their enemies, right? They had more staying power. They had modern staying power the French Revolution teaches all these states to have modern staying power. The only problem with modern staying power is that the killing can go on longer in boxing they always feel like an early knockout is more merciful than a long match because in a long match you take a lot more punishment.

3 (52m 11s):
Well in a funny way, if everything could be decided at one big horrific battle, you know at the start of a war that is a lot less costly over time than a four or a five year long conflict where both sides grind each other down to the nub the Napoleonic Wars created multiple States in Europe capable of fighting until they were ground down to the nub. It meant a lot more damage and destruction before these wars came to a halt. The modern nation state provided the support that the military’s that involved entire peoples in arms needed to keep the struggle going, you know for long periods of time one half of the equation necessary to create the modern war machines as military historian Gwen dire rights right after he talks about the human costs of these, you know long Napoleonic Wars.

3 (53m 4s):
He says quote almost as important is the fact that European Society did not break down under the strain there was hardship but no starvation and the warring Powers were able to keep at it and keep their people at it year after year with no end in sight. The European States had developed the wealth the organizational techniques and the methods of motivation needed to fight Mass Wars with a degree of popular participation that no other civilized society had ever even approached all that was lacking. He writes to transform Mass Warfare into Total War was the But the Industrial Revolution was already almost a generation old in 1814 and soon it would begin to fill the last remaining Gap and quote.

3 (53m 51s):
What was missing to make this new deadly machine that the Napoleonic wars in the French Revolution created was the technology to increase the deadliness by exponential amounts. And that was already something that was happening. The 1800’s are in error in military history where the killing power of machines skyrockets and machines have been an important part of battlefields since before there were cities in human societies to Field Mass armies at all think of the bow and arrow that’s a Neolithic weapon. That’s a stone age machine that made man a more efficient killer both in hunting but on the battlefield as well by the time the 1800s roll around the machines killing power skyrockets.

3 (54m 40s):
But because there is no major war involving all the great powers between Napoleon and the first world war the actual demonstration of how this stuff can be used is lacking and the military powers of the world try to examine the conflicts that do happen to see if they can learn any lessons about what the next war is likely to be like there were European observers. For example at the American Civil War to try to see you know, what you could learn from that. The Crimean War breaks out in the 1850s between Russia and Britain and France. There’s a war obviously between the United States and Spain that involve Cuba in the Philippines in a right around the turn of the century going into the 1900s.

3 (55m 29s):
Probably most importantly there’s a war between Japan and Russia in 1905 where some of the use of these, you know new weapons that when fuse together create the modern war machine where some of that was observable. The one thing that seems to be the key element as far as European planners can figure it out though is something that Harkens back to a phrase from a confederate general in the U.S. Civil War who said that the key to Warfare was to get there firstest with the mostest and the idea now of these Mass armies that Europe had created was that you needed to be able to raise them and get them to the battlefield before the other side beat you to it.

3 (56m 18s):
The timetable for mobilization becomes a force that none of the major European powers seem to be anything but a slave to once the Assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo cuts down the Austrian Archduke. When the Archduke is killed by princip, he does the equivalent of pulling a pin on a hand grenade. Imagine trying to hold negotiations to ward off an explosion with a guy who’s already pulled the pin on the grenade, right? You have limited amount of time to convince them of anything Winston Churchill during his life had famously said that jaw jaw was better than war war meaning negotiations always better than War but at the person’s already pulled the pin on the hand grenade you have a very short window of opportunity to avoid the inevitable and that’s where Europe finds itself after the Archduke is murdered.

3 (57m 16s):
Everybody’s worried about the same thing to there’s an old phrase the peace movement used to use in the late 1960s early 1970s where they would say what if they gave a war and nobody came. Well the military planners in Europe at this time period are worried about something a little bit different what if War breaks out and on the days that hostilities commenced only one sides got their army there. I mean if it takes you 30 days to get your reservists in uniform to the mustering point to the battlefield before they’re ready to fight how big of a deal is it if it only takes your opponent 15 days to do the same thing.

1 (57m 57s):
This puts a

3 (57m 58s):
huge crunch, you know TimeWise on everybody in this story and constrains the ability to negotiate your way out of this situation. Everybody feels like okay the first person that flips the mobilization switch we all go because nobody wants to fall behind the Germans have constrained themselves even more time wise, by the way that they have found a solution to their terrible dilemma of how do you fight a two-front war? You know, once you violate bismarck’s dictum of you know, keep the Russians on your side and then the Russians in the French Ally with each other and War breaks out you’re going to be fighting the French in the west and the Russians in the east at the same

1 (58m 36s):
time.

3 (58m 38s):
And in the intervening decades the Fantastic German general staff had figured out a way to not just survive that situation but to win that war, but it involved Exquisite timing. Which further constrained the amount of negotiation room you had before the grenade went off the timing involved taking advantage of the fact that everyone thought the Russians were going to take forever to mobilize. The Russians were seen as a giant somewhat clumsy Colossus less organized than the Germans and the French and people like that. And so by the time the Russians could get their act together and get their monstrous armies in the field ready to fight Germany already would have defeated France their entire plan for action involve throwing almost all their weight against the French immediately and then turning after French forces were defeated and throwing those forces against the now ready to fight

1 (59m 33s):
Russians.

3 (59m 36s):
But this did two things to the Germans won. It meant the Russians could have no Advance time mobilizing. You couldn’t let them mobilize for three or four days while you waited to negotiate putting the pin back in the grenade. You don’t have that kind of time. You were going to screw up your entire plan for winning the war if you did that the other thing that it meant is that if you went to war with Russia, you had to attack France you had to assume that the French would come in at some time. And the only thing you had a plan to deal with was to attack the French first. So if you go into war with Russia, you get to attack France as part of the bargain, but it was even more of a concern than that. It involved attacking countries besides France countries, you had no disagreement with it all neutral countries that just happened to be in the way.

3 (1h 0m 25s):
The Germans had come up with a plan to deal with their encirclement problem, but it involve launching essentially a World War in their own. The other thing that prints up did was provide an opportunity for a lot of these leaders who thought war was coming anyway to decide that now was better than later and this is another interesting side of the conflict. But if you’re part of these many military staffs that are absolutely sure war is coming and you can read accounts from every major military the time period where numbers of their military planners thought war was inevitable.

3 (1h 1m 5s):
The question is if it’s going to be inevitable. Is it better to fight it now than later. The Germans were under the impression that the Russians were on their way to superpower status, which if you look at what happened in the 20th century is exactly how it turned out the Germans felt that by 1917 that was going to be a reality. The Russians were completing major military reforms major transportation reforms. They were taking advantage of huge French bank loans to do this stuff. The Germans figured if War comes in three years. We’re going to be in a much worse situation than we are now. So if it’s here we might as well do Now we have an advantage now we won’t have later. The French felt similarly about the Germans as the Germans felt about the Russians.

3 (1h 1m 48s):
They were looking at the German birth rate in just going we’re going to be swamped. They were looking at the growth in Industry. I mean the Germans were on a tear so if war came in five or six or seven years the French are just going to be worse off. So they figured the same thing. If Wars going to come let it come now. And amidst these interesting conflicts of interest and worries about timing and all this stuff the world sees where it’s heading and tries to pull back from the brink but instead of having, you know, the greatest Statesman Europe can produce during this time period some of these countries are saddled with people who are like millstones around the neck of peace.

3 (1h 2m 38s):
people like Kaiser Wilhelm II the Emperor of Germany and Leadership is such an interesting side of this conflict because I firmly believe had you had a guy of Otto von Bismarck. Skala Burr in a position of authority in Germany when the first world war is on the verge of happening that they could put the pin back in the grenade. You know that gov real. Oh Prince up metaphorically pulled in Sarajevo. I think it could have been done and all it would have required would have been some real, you know, diplomatic quality. Brilliance would have been great, but I don’t even think you needed that just some some high quality workmanship, which the Germans had produced time.

3 (1h 3m 22s):
And again the problem was in this time period they are stuck with a ruler who could not have gotten the job if Merritt had been one of the requirements, you know of having it handed to you. Kaiser Wilhelm II was not a great leader. He represents the most wonderful example, you can easily think of of what a roll of the dice hereditary monarchy is and how sometimes you get a great role and you end up with a gifted ruler and then it almost seems wonderful that they’ve got so much power in their hands, right? Because if someone really knows what to do with it and does good things with it. You kind of say to yourself. I’m glad they had the power to do those good things, but that’s a bit of a roll of the dice isn’t it as often as you get one of those people you get somebody who’s evil or cruel or insane some people throughout history have ruled very badly on the dice far too many times, but it creates good Hardcore History work, you know for us we the ancient elamites used to roll whatever the number is that comes up.

3 (1h 4m 23s):
That means you get yet another insane ruler in your Dynasty’s made for fun reading but I wouldn’t have wanted to live under it in Germany this current leader this current Kaiser Kaiser just like Are in Russia where they have an autocratic King guy to both of those stem from the words Caesar which right there in the 20th century sounds anachronistic doesn’t it? It’s part of this old world that had existed forever mean King and Emperor doesn’t sound anachronistic at any time in history before 1914 going back to like Mesopotamia. Does it just sounds weird in the 20th century shows you how old this world is that is marching into the 20th century.

3 (1h 5m 4s):
Three of the major powers in this conflict are ruled by Emperor’s Kings or czars. Now they don’t have total power will desire almost does really The Kaisers had his chipped away over a couple Generations. He has to share some power with the German legislature which has political parties and they handle budgets and Taxation, but the Kaiser still has a ton of power over war and foreign policy and political appointments and all that and he’s just this below average guy the funny part about the Kaiser is that the best thing that ever happened to his reputation was out of Hitler because when you look at the propaganda and you read the stuff written about the Kaiser before Hitler comes along and the Kaiser is treated as this evil character malevolent, you know, this militaristic want to take over the world blood falling off of the bayonet you see in the political cartoons, and now the attitude that people have towards him is that he’s almost silly.

1 (1h 6m 1s):
Or

3 (1h 6m 1s):
that he’s full of, you know, he just wrapped with inferiority complex. He’s almost to be pitied. He’s a little mentally dull but but there isn’t that malevolent evil sort of thing. And I think part of the reason why is when you have Hitler to compare someone to all of a sudden you see that the Kaiser was just sort of a you know, marginally bad role on the monarchy dice. For what? It’s worth He was tied into all the other great monarchies in Europe one of the funny twists in the story and it actually provides, you know, something of importance because in Europe at this time, the royal families had relatives of other royal families in Europe in their families and these families still communicated with each other which provides like a diplomatic back Channel where these rulers can actually, you know, sidestep traditional diplomacy and just write the family member that rules the other country.

3 (1h 6m 53s):
For example, Queen Victoria who may be the most famous Queen in British history may be the most important ruled forever presided over Britain during the height of Britain’s power when she’s controlling most of the world and the Sun proverbially never set on the British Empire Queen Victoria’s grandchildren are in I mean, well Kaiser wilhelm’s one of them. He’s Queen Victoria’s grandchild. He’s the first cousin of the king of England King George, right? Not just that but the Czar of Russia is married to another Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. So bizarre as her son-in-law, it’s also wilhelm’s cousin and when you know, he gets upset or he wants to talk to the Russians about something he will often sit down and pain a quick note to cousin Nikki.

3 (1h 7m 42s):
That would be Tsar Nicholas II. Now this is our in Russia is another average to low average role on the monarchy dice. It’s perhaps telling and some historians have made it out to be that you end up with such mediocre leadership in such powerful countries during this time period it might account for why you know, these International incidents which could have led to war previously didn’t but now are because the leadership sucks. I mean in terms of what you could expect at these people were merit-based leaders, you know, you can say what you want about a Stalin or Hitler or even a Mussolini who’s been portrayed again in the west like some sort of clown but all of those people were formidable individuals who Rose through the ranks at some level me same thing with American politicians.

3 (1h 8m 29s):
I mean a guy like Franklin Roosevelt you can say what you want about him, but that’s a formidable human being with qualities that allow them to sort of rise to the top that requires a merit-based something being born into the hohenzollern family as the oldest son doesn’t require anything. That’s the luck of the draw if the job of Kaiser had been merit-based Kaiser Wilhelm II wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near it and yet he’s the guy most responsible for putting the pin back in the grenade of Wars going to be avoided here and he famously said after he sacked Bismarck and then sacked another guy. He said I’m I am my own Chancellor meaning. I’m I’m going to run all this myself, but what do you do? When not only are they a subpar in intelligence and Brilliance and all that, but because they’re subpar and if they can’t see that they’re subpart it they don’t even take advice.

3 (1h 9m 17s):
Well, I mean at one point in the story The Kaiser will ask one of his military leaders to do something that is ridiculous stupid lose the war stupid and the military leader will say it cannot be done in the Kaiser will embarrass him and say something to the effect of your uncle who was also a field Marshal would have given me a different answer in other words. He would have done what I wanted him to do. Even if it was stupid. The Kaiser just to show you how it is to so you understand royalty. And you remember in your head you go. Yeah, that’s what royalties like this same military leader. I just quoted a guy named Von moltke will have to change the way that the German war game system works before the first world war and he will have to put his foot down and take a career risking move and tell the Kaiser that no longer can they keep up with the tradition that whatever side the Kaiser is commanding in the German national war games has to win think about that for a second before Field Marshal Von moltke puts his foot down.

3 (1h 10m 15s):
Whatever side the Kaiser is commanding in these war games these National maneuvers of National Security importance, whatever side the Kaisers commanding wins automatically. Come on folks. That’s Goofy and the Kaisers a little goofy. He’s got this one arm that was damaged during his birth, which was withered and had no strength. He couldn’t cut his own food for example, which is so embarrassing to a guy who’s already got an inferiority. Pretty complex. He goes to England to spend time with his cousins and they don’t really care for him too much the British royal family has kind of turned off by William and all William wants his kind of their love and approval and to be like them and what’s funny is in this sort of weird almost like tragic play right kind of way the Kaiser sort of embodies the inferiority complex that his country has at this time to there are new country on the stage and they think they’re being treated like trash they’re mad there.

3 (1h 11m 11s):
There’s chauvinistic. That’s how the British and the French and those people see them as just these upstarts, you know, push their weight around kind of people but as many historians have pointed out there’s no nation in the world that is up and coming that doesn’t start to act like it and when they do the Nations that already have it all don’t like it. I mean, how do how does the United States kind of feel about China today is sort of elbowing its way into the, you know, power structure here. I mean, we all understand they deserve it you look at their economics you look at all the signs. They are there up-and-coming but no Necessarily feels like that person pushing their way into get their own space is anything other than a bit of an upstart during this time period the United States plays a similar role. This sort of elbowing their way into world power whether the people that are already there like it or not.

3 (1h 11m 55s):
Make some room here we come that’s how the German Empire was. They was in a feeling of inferiority and Kaiser Wilhelm held that sort of attitude in spades. But if you read the stuff at the time, she’s portrayed as this militarist and that is the term that is most often used for this German Empire that will be blamed for everything that’s happening here. Okay militarism. The entire latter part of the 1800’s people focused on militarism and the building of these amazingly technologically deadly armaments and the race for power. I mean, it just seems like the world was arming itself to the teeth and it was just going to explode and it was these militarists who were responsible and people who look at Nazi Germany and who are I know people who are enthralled by the ver mocked and the Precision Marching In the uniforms in this whole sort of militaristic fascist attitude that the Nazis portrayed and I always try to tell them that the Nazis didn’t invent this that the Nazis were revitalizing regular German Marshall attitudes.

3 (1h 12m 56s):
That’s the niceties militarism if you don’t like it, it’s Marshall if you do like it, that’s what Hitler and his cabal we’re doing is bringing back traditional Prussian Marshall practices that goose-stepping robotic unbelievably efficient Precision Drilling and all that. Those are Prussian qualities that go back to Frederick the Great. And it freaked out a lot of a lot of the countries in Europe looked at this and it just they look dangerous. They look mean they looked chauvinistic. They looked like they wanted to take over your country and then they were building this giant Navy now all of a sudden out of nowhere challenging Britain because the Kaiser had read that same book that Theodore Roosevelt read did anybody do more damage than Alfred Thayer Mahan when he decides to write a book on Naval History because the Kaiser like Roosevelt read it was enthralled with it made all his you know Admirals read it and then decided he was going to build this Fleet to compete with Britain so that they wouldn’t take him for granted.

3 (1h 13m 50s):
Fascinating character a perfect example of what can happen with the role of the monarchy dice. Now, of course all the government’s in Europe that matter are not all monarchies and autocratic governments. There are the famous governments of France and Britain for example, France is a republic Again by this time having tried out royalty again, after Napoleon decided that they like the Republic idea better and there are Republic and Britain might as well be by this time period they still have the king and the royalty and all that but they don’t have any power any more there. They were during this time period the way the royal family is now maybe more gravitas and maybe more able to shift public opinion one way or the other than the more cynical generation today looks at the current royal family, but at the time that’s about the extent of their political Authority Parliament, the legislature of Britain has the power then like they have the power now, but that creates a dynamic with a French and the British have to worry about things that you know, the country is on the other side of the Ledger or Russia don’t have to worry about the have to worry about the political situation.

3 (1h 14m 55s):
They have to worry about Our political opponents using the war situation as a political issue in Great Britain. There’s quite a bit of division over this whole thing and during this time period between when the Archduke is assassinated which happens on June 28th, 1914 and when the austro-hungarian government issues that famous ultimatum The List of Demands to Serbia, which happens on July 23rd. There’s a big dead zone in there now, it’s not really a dead zone if you were reading the morning papers every morning in that period there be War scares and comments here and there’d be something new every day to keep you focused on the crisis, but historically speaking not much happens what was going on was behind the scenes a ton of diplomacy and one of the main Avenues of diplomacy were the French trying to get the British, you know into some sort of hard agreement for what they’re going to do if this war breaks out in five minutes because they don’t have a heart agreement with the British.

3 (1h 15m 50s):
They sort of have a soft agreement instead of a signed on the dotted line contract. They have a handshake deal. I’m starting to get a little bit worried about the handshake deal and the getting worried that even if the government in charge in London right now will come through on the handshake deal who’s to say they’re going to be able to keep political power their opponents could use this war issue, you know to topple the government take control of the government and then say to France we only have a handshake deal. I’m sorry, the new government will not comply with the handshake deal. Sorry. We’re not getting involved in this war. We’re neutral we have this Splendid isolation and the Navy will protect us because remember folks look at a map of Great Britain. They have a giant moat around their country and the greatest Navy in the world to protect it.

3 (1h 16m 33s):
They have the option of staying out of this thing. If they want to the French don’t have that luxury. They’re on the invasion list there on the dinner menu for Imperial Germany and they’re looking for people to provide some help. They’ve got the Russians but the Russians are a long way away. But not being on the dinner menu for the Imperial German military meant that the British situation was fundamentally different. They couldn’t see a real positive outcome for them if they get involved in this whole Affair. I mean, there are things the French can gain. They got a couple of lost territories. They lost to Germany in the war of 1870 1871. They’d like to get those back in a best-case scenario, you know, if this conflict breaks out, they will get them back the British don’t have anything that wonderfully positive to look forward to yes, they might alleviate the threat of this German Fleet, but by 1912, it was already felt that the British had proven that the Germans could not compete with them in the building of ships not if they wanted to have a great land Army at the same time.

3 (1h 17m 36s):
And so that’s kind of out of the way by this point. So no big gain there and maybe you protect France from falling because if France Falls you get the situation you had in the second world war in 1940 were all of a sudden you have the German staring across the English Channel from you and then all of a sudden that moat doesn’t look that why does it But that’s not a lot of positive stuff to go into the first global conflict in a hundred years for to the British. This looks like a massive disruption of their extremely profitable business ventures. They’ve been snapping up books like the great illusion written by Norman angle wherever historian points out how influential this book was were angle is trying to explain to the people in that time period that this war that continually gets threatened like the Russian Roulette trigger being pulled is never going to happen.

3 (1h 18m 26s):
It can’t happen. The world has become too interdependent in that time period there’s too much globalization. This is the early period were all that starts where you have the telegraph providing instant communication in the railroads in The Shipping Lines and trade had never been higher wealth had never been Grandeur and Europe was at the height of its, you know, Financial power and Britain was at the height of everybody’s Financial power. Why would you mess with that economic situation guys, like angle were saying that what had happened is it was so proud Able to Simply do business as usual that there was nothing worth going to war over. What angle was saying is that anything you would gain by launching? A war would be dwarfed by what you would lose by destroying the system that was allowing everyone to make so much money.

3 (1h 19m 11s):
There’s an old line that when Goods don’t cross borders armies will well, this is the opposite situation. Their goods are Crossing Borders like crazy. So guys like angle tell you that, you know because of that formula and they believe in that formula, you can’t have a war but the British are starting to find out, you know, as this dead zone period from the end of the archduke’s assassination to the ultimatum by Serbia with a pretty sure starting to find out is that angle is at least partially wrong. He may be right that you will destroy a whole system. That’s making everybody Rich he seems to be wrong in thinking that the powers that be will avoid a war because of

1 (1h 19m 51s):
that.

3 (1h 19m 54s):
In the British government is having a hard time selling their people on the idea that this is good for Britain. On July 23rd, finally the long-awaited response from the austro-hungarian government to the killing of their heir to the throne. They send an ultimatum the to the government of Serbia. The ultimatum is one of those documents you can look at throughout history that is obviously designed to be rejected. The demands would have Visser 8 Serbian sovereignty. No sovereign state could agree to this and they’re only given 48 hours to respond to all these different points the rejection of any one of which means war but the day before the 48-hour deadline runs out the Serb government sends a message to the Czar of Russia asking for help and they wrote quote.

3 (1h 20m 42s):
We cannot defend ourselves. Therefore. We pray your majesty to send help as soon as possible. Your majesty has given many proofs of your previous Goodwill and we confidently hope that this appeal will find an echo in your generous slav heart and quote. The serbs send a response back to the austro-hungarians. It’s not good enough the austro-hungarians declare war on July 28th. Exactly one month after the assassination and they’re shelling Belgrade in like five minutes the Russians declare mobilization in response to this. This is the moment when the first outside power turns on their doomsday device is he when the austro-hungarians in the serbians mobilize?

3 (1h 21m 27s):
It doesn’t freak anyone else out because they’re going to fight a little war against each other and they have to mobilize to do that. It’s when the first outside power tied to these Alliance systems flicks on their doomsday device that everyone else is going to feel the pressure to do the same thing. Germany the most pressure because they’re the ones with the very short window of opportunity. I think the designer of the military plans count Schlieffen had figured out it was about 900 950 hours that they had to smash the potential of France. She didn’t have to be mopped up but she had to be smashed within nine hundred and fifty or so hours before the Russians would start to come in from the East with their armies now mobilize if you screwed that up, they could be in Berlin having coffee and cigarettes and poking the Kaiser with a stick in a cage by the time, you know, the Germans figured out what was going on.

3 (1h 22m 21s):
So the minute the Russians mobilize you have this crisis because the Russians have the flexibility if they want to have just sending those people home in a month mobilization doesn’t mean War to them but it does to the Germans because they’ve got to start their plans and every day they don’t that 950 or so. Our window is shrinking This is the point in the story where the military plans begin to take over the political process in a way that makes it impossible for the politicians in the diplomats to do what they need to do to potentially stop this conflict. They need time. They need time on the 26th of July. The government of Britain calls a peace conference is for the major powers of the could hash this out talk it out.

3 (1h 23m 5s):
Nobody’s got the time. Once the Russians hit the mobilization switch. The Germans are under pressure. They tell the Russians to stop the Russians say we’re only doing this against Austria-Hungary. This isn’t meant you know against you doesn’t matter. The Germans have a problem now and they begin going to everyone else and saying are you in are you in they go to the French? Let me say to the French are you in this conflict? That’s about to come out because we’re going to go to war with the Russians if they don’t demobilize. What are you gonna do? The Friendship we’re going to act in accordance with our interest on the German said we’ll listen if you want to stay out of this war. All you have to do is hand us the keys to all your forts on are fortified border until the war in the East is over.

3 (1h 23m 47s):
That’s as a pledge of your good behavior and we’ll consider you out of this war that is as impossible for the French government to do as the demands on Serbia were for the serbians to do French can’t do that. That’s an you know hand over your National Security keys to your most antagonistic historic. Enemy. I don’t think so and the Germans must have known that they knew they couldn’t keep France out of this conflict which is why they had these fantastic military plans to defeat two Powers the country. They were really hoping to keep out of the conflict was Great Britain. And they kept negotiating with Britain saying, you know, you don’t have any deal here. We’re cousins. We’re both Anglo-Saxons were the same race, you know, the French are your historic enemies. Are you really going to work with them?

3 (1h 24m 29s):
On the 30th of July the British prime minister wrote in his diary. Quote the European situation is at least one degree worse than it was yesterday and it is not been improved by a rather Shameless attempt on the part of Germany to buy our neutrality during the war by promises that she will not Annex French territory except colonies or Holland or Belgium. There is something very crude. He writes and childlike about German diplomacy. Meanwhile, the French are beginning to press in the opposite sense as the Russians have been doing for some time the city he means London which is in a terrible state of depression and paralysis is for the time being all against English intervention.

3 (1h 25m 10s):
I think the prospect very black

1 (1h 25m 12s):
today and quote.

3 (1h 25m 15s):
But something will happen that will change the mood in Britain something that will help to create a good guy bad guy narrative in this war, you know as I told you earlier one of the key issues because this war is so important to the rest of the 20th century and 21st century history is whose fault it all is and the British are very concerned during this time period that they be if they intervene intervening on the right side, who’s the bad guy? It’s going to depend on what happens. That’s again where the German war plans put them in a situation where for the war plan to succeed. You have to create strategic problems that are going to cost you the war. The biggest thing.

3 (1h 25m 55s):
The Germans need to do here is keep the British out of this war, but the war plans involve a requirement that will bring the British into the war. The Germans can’t attack the French along their Mutual border that borders full of forts. It’s the most one of the most fortified borders throughout world history ever since Roman times. It’s the same area about a hundred and twenty mile front that will become the Maginot Line after this war and before the second world war during this time period there are fantastically technologically sophisticated forts all through this a hundred and twenty mile border between Germany and France with interlocking fields of fire and large Garrison’s it’s not that the Germans can’t defeat that they did in 1870 1871.

3 (1h 26m 38s):
That was the route of invasion back. Then the problem is the Germans can’t defeat them within that. In 50 or so our window by the time the Germans smashed their way through those forts. The Russians are in Berlin and Silesia and everywhere else, right? So there’s only one thing the Germans can see their way to doing as part of this plan to win the two front war and that’s to smash into France in the part of France that’s undefended. But the reason the part of France that’s undefended or less defended than this fortified border is less defended is because it isn’t on the border with Germany. It’s on the border with a bunch of neutral States. These are going to have to be the highways the German Army uses to get from Germany to France.

3 (1h 27m 21s):
The only problem is that those highways neutrality is guaranteed by the British government and has been for 75

1 (1h 27m 28s):
years.

3 (1h 27m 30s):
What is about to happen as a result of the stipulations of those German war plans is potentially the greatest mistake ever made. I mean, I put it on my top ten list somewhere greatest mistakes ever made. And if you’re a German, I have to believe that I have a hard time figuring out. What is a greater mistake for the entire history of your nation as a unified, you know country since 1871 have a hard time finding something you could label as a greater mistake than this one because so many of the other candidates you might put as your greatest mistake only happened because of this mistake before it the invasion of Belgium is a disaster for Germany on so many fronts and that’s what we’re talking about.

3 (1h 28m 11s):
Here are the originally, you know way back in like the late 1800s early 1900s Holland had also been on the list of countries to be used as a highway for the German Army but since that time and as the war plans were refined, it was just narrowed down to just Belgium and the Germans were sort of naively hoping that the belgians would Step aside like line. There are me up on both sides of the street and watched the Germans March through the British and the prussians, you know who are sort of the forefathers of these Germans were two of the signatories to something called the Treaty of London in 1839 that pledged to defend Belgium’s neutrality in a wonderfully tragic ironic sort of connection to by the way.

3 (1h 28m 52s):
The role Belgium is going to play leading to the first world war is very similar to the role Poland played leading up to the second in both cases. Those countries were the reason Britain got dragged into the conflict before the second world war Britain head and tried to stop Hitler’s seemingly endless ambition by putting a roadblock in his way and guaranteeing the independence of Poland Hitler ignored that guarantee when into Poland and britons in the war in the first world war the same thing is happening with Belgium. The German planners can see no way to win this war without violating Belgium’s neutrality as we said, this is what makes it the greatest. So potentially all German history because violating Belgium ends up taking a Britain that one historian says as recently as two days before they declare war on Germany is leaning toward neutrality.

3 (1h 29m 42s):
That’s amazing to think about two days before they enter the war the government is leaning toward neutrality what changed that the invasion of Belgium The invasion of Belgium does to terrible things if you’re looking at this from Germany’s point of view. The first thing is a changes British political and public opinion almost overnight on a dime. As the British prime minister Herbert Asquith put it he of course wants to get more involved in this looming War because of the handshake deal with France. He said that the ultimatum the Germans give to the belgians simplify matters all of a sudden the people who are trying to convince the rest of Britain that they have a dog in this Continental War looming up have some real ammunition.

3 (1h 30m 24s):
The first thing is a signed treaty with the belgians. That’s not a handshake deal that’s in ink and its long-standing as is the National Security concern that Britain has had for a very long time of keeping the channel ports in Belgium out of the hands of some dangerous hostile power throughout. Most of Britain’s history that dangerous hostile power was France, but they’re calling the Kaiser the new Napoleon and if he goes into Belgium, he’s going to have those Channel ports. So what had been a more sort of highbrow argument that didn’t really, you know peel to the gut is changing because of Belgium the most important appealed to the gut though that Belgium has is the propaganda / PR side of this whole thing Belgium is what destroys Germany’s reputation in terms of global public opinion, I mean, there’s always been people who called Germany this evil malevolent militaristic country and what have you but on the world stage as soon as the Germans invade Belgium they participate in the most aggressive act so far by any of the major powers in this conflict austro-hungarian assaults against Serbia, maybe before this was the most egregious but that was seen as having some sort of connection to events, I mean the Serbian government had maybe been involved in this assassination there was something to do with one another Belgium was an innocent bystander, you know, it’s like a shooting War breaks out between a couple of gangsters on the street and the first thing one of the gangsters His turn to the side and kills an innocent bystander because they’re standing in their way.

3 (1h 31m 56s):
That’s a little like what this is portrayed as by you know, the Allied propaganda Services which make the most use of this Belgium thing you can imagine so much so that it didn’t sense people like out of Hitler who were right later in mind Kampf that nowhere else did the Germans, you know fall so far behind the British and the French later the Americans then they did in the in the realm of propaganda. Hitler says the huge mistake of Germany and Austria-Hungary is propaganda was to portray the enemy as comical and he said that the British and the French the Americans understand that the enemy needs to be seen as vile and dangerous and bloodthirsty in his bad not comical because he said the problem portraying them as comical as you run up against him and they’re tough and that seems to shatter all the propaganda.

3 (1h 32m 46s):
It’s better to say they’re these evil, you know, the 9 Riders of Mordor are approaching he says and then you know, you really get your back into a cause like that and that’s how the Allies which is what Britain France and many other countries. The United States later included will be called in this war there initially called the triple entendre the other side the alliance with Germany Austria-Hungary later turkey and some other countries will be called the Central Powers. And so it’s the triple entendre against the Central Powers or the Allies against the Central Powers and the Central Powers will be portrayed just as Hitler said as these Rapers and pillagers and looters and it will be in Belgium that the Germans will provide their opponents with the raw materials to not have to exaggerate too much at all to portray them as the modern-day version of the Huns.

3 (1h 33m 38s):
Now on August 1st 1914 this small war between the austro-hungarians and the serbs gets bigger because that’s when the German ultimatum given to the Russians telling them to stop their mobilization or else Runs Out historian David Stevenson says that this is a clear sign that the Russians know what’s coming and they’re okay with it. They know that if they don’t stand down they’ll have war with Germany and they don’t stand down. So he says one way or another you have to infer that the Russians were ready for this and okay with it. So on August 1st, the Germans declare war on the Russians that day Italy says they’re out.

3 (1h 34m 24s):
They had a nominal alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, but they choose to use an out clause which may or may not be valid depending on who you’re talking to saying that this appears to be an aggressive war and their Alliance only covers defensive War. So they’re out. They declared that their neutral in this new conflict. It’s just starting the next day in the West Germany invades the neutral country of Luxembourg. The tiny little neutral country of Luxembourg. And at the same time issues this ultimatum to the belgians saying listen, we just need to use your country to get to France. We mean you no harm just let us March through if we break anything will pay for it later and we don’t have any designs on your country long term in response to this the belgians have a heroic moment where the king of Belgium, you know, and the major officials all get together and basically all agree that they’re not going to stand down the attitude they seem to have is we’re screwed either way we might as well go out of this gloriously and they decide to mobilize their tiny little army and fight and at the same time issue the calls to the other guarantors of their neutrality saying, you know, and they waited until the moment the Germans by the way stepped in everybody’s worried.

3 (1h 35m 34s):
Somebody’s going to pull a fast one and try to fit like the French are worried. The Germans are going Try to fake them into going into Belgium first because they think the Germans are coming in and then the Germans can say we weren’t the first people to violate Belgium. Everybody wants to stay on the good side in terms of War responsibility. The French are so worried about falling into a trap like that. They pull the unprecedented move of all time. And on the eve of War pulled their military forces six miles back from the border. Remember that’s not just forward positioning those our troops who picked the spots that they were in because they’re important strategic spots important passes and River Crossings and other things that have been built up with fortifications for years and the French government is so freaked out about possibly being blamed for starting this and the Germans not being blamed for starting this that they pull their forces back.

3 (1h 36m 24s):
The French generals are not pleased about this but the move is intended to also make sure that the British people and the peace faction in Britain have no excuse to say well French violated Belgian neutrality first or shots were fired by the French. First so the Germans are positioned into this thing where they have a time limit on this deal. They can’t sit around and wait around Belgium has to be violated for the plan to work. They can’t get the French or the British to violate Belgium first. They tell the belgians, you know to let him through the Belgian say no and on August 3rd, Germany declares war on France and

1 (1h 37m 1s):
Belgium

3 (1h 37m 3s):
now think about that folks a week ago. Europe was peaceful. Now it’s on the slide to General war and within another week the entire continents going to be flaming out at each other. I mean, that’s crazy to go from Total peace to Total War in less than two weeks. HG Wells writing a year or two after the conflict ends. So he’s right in the middle of the moment. He even says you can’t quite you know, you can’t write about it. Now without the passions in the feelings, you know, totally screwing up your impression of things, but he does talk about how weird the mood was because all this was happening so fast and he was talking about the British public because that’s where he lived and how there was almost this disconnect between the fact that the entire world has changed but it’s happening so fast, we haven’t changed with it yet and he writes quote.

1 (1h 37m 55s):
All

3 (1h 37m 55s):
Europe still remembers the strange atmosphere of those eventful Sunny August days the end of the Armed peace for nearly half a century. The Western world have been tranquil and it seemed safe only a few middle-aged and aging people in France had had any practical experience of warfare the newspaper spoke of a world catastrophe, but that conveyed very little meaning to those For Whom the world had always seemed secure who were indeed almost incapable of thinking of it as anything otherwise than secure in Britain particularly for some weeks the peacetime routine continued in a slightly dazed fashion. It was like a man still walking about the world unaware that he is contracted a fatal disease, which will alter every routine and Habit in his life people went on with their summer holidays shops reassured their customers with the announcement business as usual there was much talk and excitement when the newspapers came, but it was the talk and excitement of Spectators who have no Vivid sense of participation in the car.

3 (1h 38m 54s):
Stuffy that was presently to involve them

1 (1h 38m 57s):
all and quote.

3 (1h 38m 60s):
It’s easy to understand to why the British public really weren’t ready for this. In fact, none of the British were really ready for this. They hadn’t been mentally prepped for the idea that this was coming for all sorts of political reasons. The British government couldn’t declare itself out right and sort of draw a line in the sand and tell the Germans. Listen if you invade Belgium it’s on no ifs ands or buts. The British prime minister didn’t have that power for all he knew the peace faction in his government would topple his government if a statement like that were made and both the French and the Germans for a very long time before this conflict breaks out but especially in the fevered, you know, last month are trying to get some sort of word from Great Britain.

3 (1h 39m 41s):
What the policy is. What are you going to do at the last minute the French are sure the British are going to abandon them. The French foreign minister will sit down and discussed at one point and say they’re going to Desert us and when someone in the British media asked him what he’s doing he says I’m going to wait to see if Britain still has any

1 (1h 39m 56s):
honor.

3 (1h 39m 59s):
The British are waiting for something to happen in Belgium. And so were the belgians they don’t want to do anything until their actual neutrality is violated. So they wait until the Germans arrived when the advanced Cavalry patrols and actually some guys on bicycles believe you’re not paddling to Belgium and give notices to the locals that were sorry that we have to do this and everything will be fine. Just don’t cause any trouble don’t blow up any Bridges don’t sabotage any Railways don’t destroy any tunnels anything we might need to get from here to there leave all that in place or those will be considered hostile acts as soon as it becomes apparent that Germans are on Belgian soil the king of Belgium basically orders that all those things be done and then he contacts the other guarantors of Belgian neutrality and says the Germans are here.

3 (1h 40m 48s):
We need your help. That’s when the British draw up the official sort of ultimatum which people have criticized him for I mean they say if you’d only given that ultimatum For the Germans had gone into Belgium. They might have had more options once they’re in Belgium for them to get out of Belgium because the British told them to was really like a tail between their legs kind of situation and this has happened in history many times in other situations where people have said if you had just said what you were going to do before the enemy did what they did might have been a different outcome in this case. Once the Germans are in Belgium the British ambassador to Germany a guy named sir, Edward Goshen delivers, the British ultimatum to Germany and he delivers it into the hands of the German Minister a guy named Gottlieb Vanya GAO and the German Chancellor guy named Theobald on bethmann-hollweg and Goshen knew that this was a historic meeting and he wrote down what happened and he said the Germans when they received this ultimatum from him freaked out.

3 (1h 41m 49s):
He wrote that the meeting was fraught with Menace quote. I found the chancellor very agitated his Excellency at once began. Harangue which lasted for about 20 minutes? He said that the step taken by the British government was terrible to a degree just for a word neutrality a word which in Wartime had so often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred Nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her all his efforts in that direction had been rendered useless by this last terrible step and the policy to which as I knew he had devoted himself since his accession to office had tumbled down like a house of cards. What we had done was Unthinkable in the minds of the Germans.

3 (1h 42m 33s):
It was like striking a man from behind while he was fighting for his life against two assailants healed Great Britain responsible for all the terrible events that might happen. I protested strongly against that statement and said that in the same way that he and hair Vanya go wished me to understand that for strategical reasons. It was a matter of life and death to Germany to advance through Belgium and violate the latter’s neutrality. So I would wish him to understand that it was so to speak. a matter of life and death for the honor of Great Britain that she should keep her solemn engagements to do our utmost to defend Belgium’s neutrality if attacked that solemn compact simply had to be kept or what confidence could anyone have an engagement is given by Great Britain in the future the chancellor said, but at what price will that compact have been kept as the British government thought of

1 (1h 43m 19s):
that And quote

3 (1h 43m 23s):
and this is an interesting key point because I’ve often wondered if you could take the principal’s who were the decision makers in this, you know conflict into the future and show them some history books and show them what had happened. Even the winners. Do you think they would have found a way to avert, you know, what ended up happening because it was more horrible than any of them envisioned the German field Marshal in charge of the military Affairs at this time Von moltke famously said that this was the struggle that would decide the course of history for the next hundred years, and he was absolutely right maybe more but had he known that this would mean that Germany would be on the losing end of two world wars in the 20th century.

3 (1h 44m 7s):
What do you think he would have done? I mean look at the situation now and imagine Germany without having lost those two world wars and how different they might be today. There are German historians who consider this role of the iron dice as going to war here is often referred to as one of the great irresponsible Gamble’s in all German

1 (1h 44m 27s):
history

3 (1h 44m 29s):
and maybe the key element in the whole Affair was Britain’s decision to involve itself in the conflict because one can make a very good case that if Britain stands aside Germany wins this war that’s about to start. Instead they have perhaps the greatest overall super power in the early 20th century World lining up on the other

1 (1h 44m 53s):
side.

3 (1h 44m 55s):
And to be truthful the Germans weren’t really afraid of the British army. I mean that’s a small Colonial force that by German standards is relatively insignificant or so. They think I mean Bismarck had famously said when an adviser had warned him that if you go to war with Britain, they could use that wonderful Naval power tool and their entire Army on our Coastline and Bismarck famously said if they do that I shall have them arrested meaning he just send the police force out to Corral the British army. That’s how worried they were about this tiny little force that their army dwarfed but they were keenly aware that Britain had the greatest Navy by far in the world.

3 (1h 45m 38s):
They were the greatest Financial power in the world. They controlled a huge chunk of the world Britain and France together owned about 70% of the world at this time period when you talk about all their colonies and everything else and that’s all stuff that they can draw on to fight the war. What’s more that wonderful Navy of Great Britain’s can shut down German shipping, you know in a moment in a stroke of a pen Britain’s foreign secretary sir, Edward grey on August 3rd 1914 when tensions have reached a knife-edge fever pitched moment. We’ll look out the window and see the lamplighters of London lighting the lamps for the evening as was customary at the time and he turned to someone else at the window and famously said the lamps are going out all over Europe.

3 (1h 46m 27s):
We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. The Germans are given the famous ultimatum and it’s set to expire at midnight on August 4th German time, which is 11 p.m. British time Lloyd George. One of The Minister’s says that they were sitting around a table just before the stroke of eleven watching the clock tick away. And he said that his Big Ben’s chime start chiming for the 11 o’clock hour signifying that the deadline is about to expire. He says every ring of the Bell sounded like doom doom doom. And then when it expires Britain declares war on Germany, And it’s worth asking at this point what the people who had just entered upon this course of action thought was going to happen you and Lloyd George.

3 (1h 47m 22s):
Here’s the Chimes of Big Bend sounding and thinks they sound like Doom what does Lloyd George mean? When he says Doom mean this is a conflict of the sort that Europe had not had for a hundred years and a lot of changed in a hundred years. This is like a jump off of a cliff in the dark for Europe and no one knows how long the drop is going to be and they’ve been exposed to a lot of thinking out there by guys like Norman angle. We mentioned earlier you were saying no one’s going to jump. Jumping would be suicidal. Everybody died. The Golden Goose would be killed globalization be destroyed. No one will do it. And now they had just done it what did people think that meant.

3 (1h 48m 3s):
Well as we said earlier, the first world war has so much written about it that you can cherry pick from this or that source and create any sort of impression you want what it really looks like though. If you sum up, you know, I’ve read a bunch of stuff on this and to me what it looks like is that there was a small view among some people that understood the reality and they turn out to be the Cassandra’s in the story the ones who actually prophesize accurately what’s going to happen. Most of these people didn’t have a clue. I think Lloyd George when he hears big been sounding Doom is worried about Britain’s financial sector. And he had every reason to be by the way because a few days before when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia the markets around the world, you know, go crazy and in London the financial capital of the world Lloyd George’s hearing from all the bankers and all the investors and all these people that this is a crisis it will destroy Britain fiscally, which sounds like the worst thing in the world until you fast forward the time machine for years and see what’s really going to happen where you would have paid good money to only have the financial system collapse.

3 (1h 49m 8s):
Here’s the thing though. There were people who turned out to be right about how momentous this leap off this cliff and how long the drop was going to be who turn out to be right and we’re kind of hoping for it we take for example, the guy who along with Karl Marx helped create modern communism Friedrich Engels who in 1887 wrote about this coming conflict and how terrible it was going to be and of course, you know in his mind hoping for an overthrow of all the existing regimes to be Why communism that was sort of the silver lining in this coming Armageddon angles wrote quote? I see a world war of never-before-seen extension and intensity if the system of mutual outbidding in Armament carried to the extreme finally Bears its natural fruits 8 to 10 million soldiers will Slaughter each other and strip Europe bear as no swarm of locusts has ever done before the devastations of the Thirty Years War condensed into three or four years and spread all over the continent famine epidemics General Barber ization of armies and masses provoked by sheer desperation utter chaos in our trade industry and commerce ending in general bankruptcy collapse of the old States in their traditional wisdom in such a way that the Crown’s role in the gutter by the dozens and there will be nobody to pick them up absolute impossibility to for see how all this will end and who will be the victors in that struggle.

3 (1h 50m 36s):
Only one result. Absolutely certain. General exhaustion and the creation of circumstances for the final victory of the working class and quote. So there’s your silver lining if you happen to be a communist revolutionary and you want to see the overthrow of governments and in one sense angles will get what he wants at least in one country, but he’s not the only person that for sees this some of the best military minds of the time see it too. We told you about the field Marshal in charge of Germany’s war effort The Man known as Von moltke, but he is a pale shadow of his uncle The Man known as the Elder Von moltke who commanded Prussian forces in the franco-prussian war of 1870 1871 by this time period he’s retired and he’s on the speaking circuit in 1906.

3 (1h 51m 23s):
He speaks to the German legislature and he warns them what a modern war is going to be like quote. The age of cabinet war is behind us. All we have now is Peoples War gentlemen, if the war that has been hanging over our heads now for more than 10 years like the Sword of Damocles if this war breaks out then its duration and its end will be unforeseeable. The greatest powers of Europe armed as never before we’ll be going into battle with each other. Not one of them can be crushed so completely in one or two campaigns that it will admit defeat that it would be compelled to conclude peace under hard terms and that it will not come back. Even if it is a year later to renew the struggle gentlemen, it may be a wharf seven years or 30 years duration and woe to him who sets Europe a light who first puts the fuse to the powder

1 (1h 52m 11s):
keg end quote

3 (1h 52m 15s):
this long drop in the dark is going to set up the first if you want to use the boxing analogy again, the first heavyweight championship fight the world has seen since Napoleon’s day a hundred years before in the interim. You’ve had a lot of you know, one-sided conflicts, you know a champion like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson fighting a person you’ve never heard of or you’ll have something like the wars between the United States and Spain over Cuba and the Philippines which is a rising soon to be first-class power against a declining soon-to-be third class power or these great Colonial conflicts were a nation like Britain will go in and crush the dervishes or the Zulus with the occasional setback, of course, and they will use Proto machine guns against these natives armed with Spears one of these Proto machine guns, really a Gatling gun was called the Maxim gun in there was a famous colonial-era poem that said whatever happens we have got the Maxim gun.

3 (1h 53m 15s):
They have not in this upcoming War. Both sides will have the Maxim gun. In fact much more deadly modern versions of the Maxim gun that we call machine guns today. No one had ever seen a war where both sides had machine guns. The franco-prussian war saw the French trying to use these Gatling guns these early machine guns as best they could but no one really had any clue what to do with them that had all changed by 1914. We were seeing the most professional armies perhaps that the world had ever seen and certainly the largest that the world had ever seen getting ready to clash in a conflict that was going to be like jumping off a cliff in the dark. Nobody could foresee the end of this one thing was for sure.

3 (1h 53m 58s):
The Army for Germany that is about to enter Belgium is probably the greatest army that the world had seen up until that time. And I say that with everyone knowing what a big fan. I am of the Mongol military science and history and their armies and they’re wonderful but they get respect people understand how incredibly dominant the Mongols were the army of Germany during this time period the Kaiser Reich. This is like the Rodney Dangerfield of armies. They don’t get any respect and yet they are maybe I mean you create your top ten list of the greatest armies throughout all history and I put the Kaiser Reich Army on there.

3 (1h 54m 41s):
I’m not sure I put the German Army from the second world war on there and yet part of the reason we don’t know more about that first world war German armies because the second world war German Army like so many things in that second conflict overshadow it In many ways the very mocked in the second world war is flashier than the first world war German Army, you know, once again to get to the boxing character witcher’s the very mocked is a big heavy hitter knockout artist and they go around and it’s just boom it’s over in one round sometimes and you stand up and it’s thrilling and incredible but you know, once someone hits them back and or beats them up a little it’s a different game and once you start wearing them down and you can continue to wear them down because they’re not strong fundamentally at the core.

3 (1h 55m 23s):
They have a great punch, but they rest sort of on an uneven Foundation. That was really where the strength of the first World War army was it may not have been as flashy with those giant Knockouts and all that, but they had a better chin and they were you know, they rested on firm foundations. It was a fantastic Army. And no one remembers it today and what’s funny is once again, it just becomes another thing that I’d off Hitler was wrong about when he wrote quote thousands of years may pass but never will it be possible to speak of heroism without mentioning the German army in the world war then from the veil of the past the iron front of the gray steel helmet will emerge unwavering and unflinching an immortal Monument.

3 (1h 56m 11s):
As long as there are Germans alive. They will remember that these men were sons of their

1 (1h 56m 15s):
nation and quote.

3 (1h 56m 19s):
It’s a fantastic Army and part of what makes it so great is this natural efficiency that you know is almost stereotypically German is applied to military science during a time period where military science really does become science. It’s become the age of The Bean counters and efficiency experts when it comes to putting an Army in the field. That’s what the Napoleonic era creates where you get this first part of the war machine the ability to create these Mass armies now, imagine a guy like Alexander the Great who I love to mention all the time and you can imagine Julius Caesar two guys who probably never commanded more than 80,000 people ever and who staffs, you know, we’re capable and they could deal with it and they were very efficient logistically and everything for their time period but they were dealing with 80,000 men.

3 (1h 57m 9s):
In this era you’re dealing with 12 to 15 times that amount. What would Alexander the Great had done trying to control one and a half million men. It’s an exercise in higher math to try to do that. And when you hear about how the Germans had prepared minutely for this day that for so long had been called the deidara Tog this attack into Belgium and to overwhelm friends and everything you get an idea of how much actual bean-counting and planning is involved. Now in order to maintain these armies that would have been impossible a hundred and fifty years before because this capability didn’t exist. It’s a function of modern civilization and the era of the 20th century.

3 (1h 57m 54s):
Now they get an idea of size. You have to think about the division, which is the basic unit that these military is kind of operate with goes back to Napoleonic times divisions are still use of course in military’s today. And if you want to think about 15,000 men in a division as a kind of a rough size, it actually fluctuates in different militaries and whatnot. But just think 15,000 men a 15,000 man division is probably more troops than either the Normans or the Saxons had the Battle of Hastings the pivotal 1066 battle that decided the fate of you know Britain at the time England at the time. So each division is is equivalent to a rather nice sized early medieval Army the German Army at the beginning of the war has more than 80 of these imagine trying to control 80 Norman armies and it’s not just about getting each division where it needs to go.

3 (1h 58m 41s):
It’s about syncing what they do together. When you start organizing divisions into Coors and Coors into armies, then these armies have to support each other. They have to travel on different roads and then converge at certain points. You have to think of the incredible math that’s involved in these March columns, and it’s hard to get your mind around but these units are so large and these roads so narrow that when the head of the column starts walking they’ve gone like 29 miles before the end of the column can start walking trying to plan to have food ready for these guys when they stop marching and I mean, it’s the logistics of this is incredible and it’s the main reason why you couldn’t do this, you know ages and ages ago, you just couldn’t support it.

3 (1h 59m 23s):
In addition. All these armies are fabulously trained. The Germans are incredibly trained in terms of having even their reservists on the practice field in Germany doing live fire exercises preparing for this day. This is what Barbara tuchman writes about, you know, it starts with mobilization and you get an idea of how planned every step is in the German Army quote. Once the mobilization button was pushed the whole vast machinery for calling up equipping and transporting two million men began turning automatically reservists went to their designated Depots were issued uniforms equipment and alarms formed into companies and companies and two battalions were joined by Cavalry cyclists artillery medical units cook wagons blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons moved according to prepared Railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions divisions in De Coors and Coors into armies ready to advance and fight one Army Corps alone.

3 (2h 0m 24s):
She writes out of the total of 40 in the German forces required a hundred and seventy Railway cars for officers. 965 for infantry 2960. For Cavalry 1915 for artillery and Supply wagons 6010 in all grouped in a hundred and forty trains and an equal number again for their supplies from the moment. The order was given she writes everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given Bridge within a given time and quote. When you realize how minutely planned and how you know punctual this whole thing must be in order to function you can see why delays of even a few hours will throw your whole timetable off, you know, right before this whole conflict breaks out and I mentioned it earlier the Kaiser will turn to Von moltke and he’s panicking at the last minute the great Supreme War leaders not so tough when it all looks like it’s coming down.

3 (2h 1m 26s):
Unfortunately for him or fortunately for him the staff that works under him are tough as nails again. Another thing is German army of this period brought to the table, which to be honest. The second one did most of the time to is fantastic leadership and the Kaiser one point thinks the war with Britain’s off. He says great we can turn the armies around, you know, just send them to Russia instead of worrying about France and England at all. And Von moltke has to stop him and said you do not improvise the deployment of Millions I think the exact line was the deployment of millions cannot be improvised. But you get the point. This was a an efficient plan to deploy the largest number of people that had ever been sent in a single area for a single purpose.

3 (2h 2m 7s):
Probably in all human history. You think about Napoleon’s greatest outrageous gamble right to invade Russia, utilizing an army composed of many many many different European peoples and he had to scrape Germany and every place else to get enough people to send in to Russia with something that was called the Grand Army, you know in the early 1800s and is this crazy and ever sent maybe 750,000 men into Russia. The Germans were going to invade Belgium with more than twice that in and out flanking maneuver. That’s not even the Army that’s holding the front. That’s just a big wide swinging gate that’s going to smash on top of the head of France.

3 (2h 2m 49s):
How do you control that many people how do you even get them from one place to another we kind of seem to think in our head that they can just march across, you know mountainsides and country lanes and through fields and pastures and sometimes they do but most of the time they get to places the same way most of us do that utilize the road system. Think about what the road system in Belgium tiny little mostly rural Belgium is going to be like with this massive greatest sized Army probably ever put together trying to March through it all in a short period of time there were Witnesses, of course to this actually happening.

3 (2h 3m 30s):
One of the fun ones to read for me is Richard Harding Davis because Davis is one of those guys. He’s an American. He also he basically the war correspondent one of the main ones of his era and he wrote about the deployment of American forces in Cuba, you know at the turn of the century and all this kind of stuff and he’s he’s really a rah-rah Americana kind of guy, you know Americans the best at everything and and that sort of feeling but he was there in Belgium as the German Army comes through and you can I mean, I’m going to read you this extensively because you can hear in his writing his jaw is on the floor and here’s someone who doesn’t think anybody does anything better than America and he’s getting a lesson in what the best army in the world looks like and remember this kind of force at this kind of level and potency hasn’t been on display in anyone’s living memory.

3 (2h 4m 23s):
You’re getting a view of a Nation at War like you would a Napoleonic times but marched and equipped and organized and supported by a modern 20th century State this was what you were beginning to see a tiny little glimmer of what the leap in the dark was going to entail it was going to entail fighting armies like this one Richard Harding Davis writes quote the entrance of the German Army into Brussels has lost the human quality it was lost as soon as the three soldiers who led the Army bicycled into the boulevard du Regent and ask the way to the Gare Du Nord when they passed the human note past with them what came after them and 24 hours later is still coming is not men marching but a force of nature like a tidal wave an avalanche or a river flooding its banks at this minute it is rolling through Brussels as the swollen Waters of the common our Valley swept through Johnstown at the site of the first few regiments of the enemy he writes we were thrilled with interest after three hours they had passed in one unbroken steel grey column We’re bored.

3 (2h 5m 30s):
But when hour after hour passed and there was no halt no breathing time. No Open Spaces in the ranks. The thing became uncanny inhuman you return to watch it fascinated it held the mystery and Menace of fog rolling towards you across the sea and quote. He then goes on to describe the uniforms which are pretty much the same color. The second world war German uniforms are felled growl. I guess is the proper way to pronounce it. But basically it’s just a gray but during this time period most Nations had only relatively recently gone away from gaudy colorful clothing, you know, bright red Scarlet for British troops is only recently given away to khaki and the French army still war stuff that look like they belong in Napoleon’s Army, right?

3 (2h 6m 17s):
They’re going to wear red pants and blue jackets and they’re going to carry Savers and their calvary’s going to have breastplates and horsehair helmets. I mean, it’s kooky stuff most militaries are moving away from that the Ends use of gray Harding thinks is the most fantastic use of camouflage. She’s ever seen the British khaki is often compared to a canary that’s gotten Dusty Davis goes on and on about how the minute these German soldiers get a hundred yards from you. You can’t see him anymore. He says he was watching some German Cavalry ride by and he could see the horses, but he couldn’t see the guys on them because they just sort of blend with the fog and the mist and the Twilight and the early morning hours and that color he goes on and on about how great that is and how scientific it is.

3 (2h 7m 2s):
He goes on quote yesterday Major General von Geraci the German military governor of Brussels assured Burgermaster Max that the German Army would not occupy the city but would pass through it. It is still passing. I have followed in campaigns 6 armies, but accepting not even our own the Japanese or the British. I have not seen one. So thoroughly equipped I’m not speaking of the fighting qualities of any army only of the equipment in organization the German Army moved into this city as smoothly and as compactly as the Empire State Express, there were no halts. No open places. No stragglers this Army he writes has been on active service for three weeks and so far there is not apparently a chin strap or a horseshoe missing.

3 (2h 7m 46s):
It came in with the smoke pouring from cook stoves on Wheels and in an hour had set up post office wagons from which mounted Messengers galloped along the line of columns Distributing letters and it which soldiers posted picture postcards the Infantry here. Came in files of five two hundred men to each company the Lancers in Columns of for with not a pennant missing the quick-firing guns and field pieces were one hour at a time in passing each gun with its ammunition wagon taking 20 seconds in which to pass the men of the Infantry sang Fatherland my Fatherland between each line of song. They took three steps at times 2,000 men were singing together in absolute Rhythm and beat when the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots.

3 (2h 8m 35s):
And then again the song Rose when the singing ceased the bands played marches, they were followed by the rumble of Siege guns the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones and the sharp bell-like voices of the bugles for seven hours the Army passed in such solid columns that not one Smita taxicab or trolley car passed through the city like a river of Steel. It flowed gray and ghost-like then as dusk came and thousands of horses hooves and thousands of iron boots continue to Tramp forward they struck tiny Sparks from the cobblestones but the horses and men who beat out the Sparks were invisible at midnight pack wagons and Siege guns were still passing at 7:00 this morning I was awakened by the Tramp of men in bands playing jauntily whether they marched all night or not I do not know but now for 26 hours the gray army has rumbled by with the mystery of fog and the pertinacity of a steamroller and quote that was a long quote but that’s that’s the German Army of the Kaiser icon campaign the German Army in the second world war is that country’s best attempt to recreate that Now I’ve always believed that the very ferocity in the scariness of this Kaiser, right German Army worked against it at the beginning of the war in a way that heard it throughout the entire history of the war and I think long afterwards helped establish this German reputation as sort of the bad guys because this Army was so intimidating so scary everything from the Precision drill to the equipment to how well organized they were to the logistics to the leadership to the intimidating elements built into it.

3 (2h 10m 22s):
I mean, they had a wonderful unit called the deaths head office ours which goes back to you know, the Napoleonic Wars earlier actually and they where the old-fashioned hussars for helmet. This is in 1914 folks. This isn’t no 1810 to the fur helmet of the hussars and on the fur helmet is a skull Remind you a little bit of the SS forces in the second world war but it shows you that all of this predated. You know, what the Nazis did the Nazis were just updating a lot of classic German traditions and in a lot of cases perverting them and staining them with Blackness and everything but two deaths head to SARS are famous and intimidating as they’re meant to be but then you take that really nasty ferocious intimidating Army that looks like it could take on anyone in the world.

3 (2h 11m 7s):
And the first time you see him in action. They’re taking on God bless him the belgians a tiny little neutral Nation that’s less than a hundred years old and has never fought a war. In fact is so small and is surrounded by great powers that they rationally figured out a long time ago. It doesn’t matter how much effort they put into defense. They can’t win. You know, the belgians totally unprepared for Warfare lose only a little bit faster than the belgians obsessively prepared for Warfare. They put their trust in these International agreements. They had with people who are going to guarantee their security which is how this whole things happening anyway, right?

3 (2h 11m 48s):
But they did build some defenses maybe as a sign that you know, we can’t kill you, but we could hurt you and the defenses are really cool because it’s really right in that period in human history where fortifications forts reach sort of their high water mark mean we still build forts today, but it’s nothing like it was what pretty much from the beginning of human history until what about the time we’re talking about here because then you could base an entire defense strategy. Unfortunately a days we have these special positions where you’ll guard them with a fork but if anybody decides they’re going to start launching missiles and bombs and I mean, it doesn’t matter Force don’t hold up. That’s something we learn very soon in this story.

3 (2h 12m 30s):
But in the 1880s when these Belgian forts are built, this is the period where it looks like modern tech is going to make these things like space-age like something out of Star Wars one of those planetary defenses and they build these wonderful Subterranean forts, Barbara tuchman said like castles. Underground and what they’ll do is, you know, I’m reminded of the old Godzilla films and the monster 0 films were you’d have some planet and he would you know have a gun that would just Rise Up from the planet’s surface shoot and then go back down underground and that’s what happened in these Forts and I have to remind myself how cool that is. This is like steampunk stuff because when they’re building these forts for Belgium, it’s the same time that the United States and Mexico are trying to Corral Geronimo and a bunch of Apaches in the American southwest while that’s going on.

3 (2h 13m 18s):
The belgians are building underground

1 (2h 13m 19s):
forts.

3 (2h 13m 21s):
And you can see some of the stuff on video. If you look at the Maginot Line which comes a generation after this obviously, but it’s the same kind of thing where it’s you know, if you look at it from above ground, you can barely tell there’s a fourth there when in fact underground, you know, massive concrete and you know little railroads underneath moving guns and ammunition around its cool stuff and the way the Belgian designer who was one of the best in the world built this system. He took advantage of the natural River and the slight rise in the hill and everything in there and he built six big forts with six small forts in between and they all cover each other’s fields of fire with their gun. So, you know, what fort a can reach with their guns Fort be can reach with there’s two so they overlap so there’s never a place in the distance.

3 (2h 14m 3s):
Anyway where the guns can’t reach the enemy and in between these forts, the belgians have it so that they’re going to put guys in trenches. So between every Ford our people they’re supported by the guns at this wonderful system and then you throw more troops out, you know, 500 yards a thousand yards ahead to keep enemy artillery. Hillary away and you have this system where maybe you can’t win a war against someone like the Germans but you can give them a bloody nose and maybe say see you really don’t want to do this. The Germans aren’t sure about that when they come into Belgium. They’re kind of thinking the Belgian Army is either just going to stand aside. Like I said earlier or maybe you know few shots up in the air. We protected our honor now, we’re going to stand aside and the first sign that the Germans are wrong about this is that the bridges are blown up when they get to them the tunnels are blown up.

3 (2h 14m 51s):
The railroads are blown up that Madden’s the Germans because they’re on this tight schedule, right? So now they have to deal with at least Transportation Nightmares on this road system that was already going to be clogged terribly. I mean, there’s your first nightmare and then the Germans tried to cross some of these rivers on the frontier in pontoons and the Belgian start shooting at them. So the Germans put into action a group that they have designed specifically to take these Forts and this is the part of the story you have to understand where we are when war was declared. You have a 72 hours where everybody’s trying to get their heads around this idea. And at the same time, they flipped all these switches for mobilization the doomsday device.

3 (2h 15m 32s):
I called it where they’re calling up all these forces and everybody, you know, we don’t have enough stuff here and everybody’s scrambling in what they assume is a race to the front lines, which they don’t want to lose. Remember what if they gave a warrant only one side came. Meanwhile though while everybody is concentrating. It’s called their forces. The Germans have like 30,000 guys that were set up in advance to go out basically in the pregame of the first World War. I guess you could say and take out these forts if they have to because these forts are blocking the roads. You cannot get to that Belgian Road system that you need to get from Germany to France. If you don’t take the forts around a place like Leah Ash or name or And so 30,000 men have been training for years for just this job.

3 (2h 16m 15s):
Like I said earlier the day was called dare tog the day. This has been planned for for a long time and the Germans have essentially a special unit of 30,000 guys whose job it is to take out these forts at the belgians don’t stand aside and surrender them. The belgians don’t stand aside and surrender them. And in fact, the belgians are going to teach the first great lesson of the war about what’s changed since the last time great Powers faced off how much The Killing power that machines afforded mankind on the battlefield how much that had changed the age-old equation of war machines have been taken over for a long time becoming more and more important.

3 (2h 16m 60s):
This is the war where they take over completely and man’s Supremacy on the battlefield, even though they’re the ones who run the machines will always be now secondary compared to the killing power and mechanization that can be brought to bear, you know by modern societies. The technology was devastating when used against tribal peoples and Nations that couldn’t compete militarily. The belgians are going to show what a tiny little army of chocolate soldiers is what the woman’s thought they were going to face what a tiny little army of chocolate soldiers can do to the greatest army in the world because of the deadliness of the weapons at hand and one of the interesting sort of sub-themes of this whole upcoming conflict is how long it takes some people to absorb the lessons that are being taught in this conflict.

3 (2h 17m 55s):
You Know lesson number one is how deadly the weapons are and how you have to account for that some of the generals and Military thinkers understood this going into the war because they had paid close attention to that 1905 War. I told you about the russo-japanese war which by the way American president Teddy Roosevelt won a Nobel Prize for helping to broker the peace for that but that taught lessons about what happens when two sides armed with machine guns and two sides are armed with modern artillery and all that face off. But the lessons were not the kind of lesson some people wanted to learn. I mean if you were a Cavalry commander, for example, your arm of the military is already not looked upon as very survivable. The war is all since Napoleon have kind of shown that listen Cavalry just dies on the battlefield.

3 (2h 18m 41s):
The only thing the Cavalry commander still have going in their favor is Aren’t really automobiles yet. There will be by the time this war is over but they’re a novelty they’ll be used in strange Innovative situations. But militaries of the world don’t have tons of automobiles, you know running. It’s not mechanized like the second world war. Everybody’s using horses. Even if they die on the battlefield, you know, like sheaves of wheat being size down you have nothing to replace that Mobility with but these Cavalry commanders don’t want to hear that it’s even worse than it used to be. Wow, wait till the modern artillery machine guns get ahold of your Cavalry. They don’t want to hear that. So they talk about the results as being on representative commanders who are very involved in the idea of the power of the bayonet and the charge in the offensive.

3 (2h 19m 23s):
For example, the entire French outlook on war right now is connected to this idea that you attack and you know you attack with the band that doesn’t really mean you’re gonna maybe get into hand-to-hand combat, but that aggressive style of warfare is what you want. If you’ve been preaching that and that’s your country’s doctor and your entire military is organized around the culture of the offensive and cran which is the French word. Guess for like guts and it’s all about guts. Nobody wants to hear that machine guns just ripped guts out. That’s the only thing they care about guts and it doesn’t work to have bayonet charges and ridiculous offenses. Well the French would say, yes. Well what doesn’t work for the Russians or the Japanese will work for the French and that’s why we have a great military. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways to rationalize what you don’t want to learn many of the militaries of the world are organized like Napoleonic times.

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They don’t want to hear that that is a completely wrong way to be organized the French Cavalry heading off to War as I said earlier, but you have to imagine this if you want to see what Napoleon’s soldiers looked like go look at pictures of the French Cavalry in 1914 going off to war with metal breastplates and horsehair helmets, and you would have to be an expert to look at a picture of them in 1914 and a picture of Napoleon’s Cavalry in 1814 and find the

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differences.

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the officers are going to go to war and white gloves they’re going to have swords they’re going to stand up and troops are going to March into combat in like billiard ball formations or you know bowling pin formations drill formations from the battlefield none of the people who consider this to be an integral part of military culture want to learn that the rules have changed in 1905 they got one lesson in 1914 they were about to get another and the Germans get there is when they try to take these forts on August 5th 1914 the Germans attack four of these Belgian forts Now between the fort’s the belgians of quickly put some infantry and there are a couple of machine guns around and whatnot in the Germans, you know, they’re in a bit of a rush here.

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They don’t have time to sit there and starve things out this 30,000 Man force with artillery has to go in there and power this through so that the armies behind them can continue their huge assault through Belgium on France and they charge these, you know entrenchments. And the Belgian slaughter them. slaughter them mounds of bodies and the belgians can’t figure out the best way to deal with it because the Mounds of bodies become a problem because the Mounds of bodies become places German troops can hide behind and shoot from behind and launch attacks from behind and the belgians are trying to figure out. Okay, do we shoot through these bodies and create?

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Can you can you create a hole through bodies? If you shoot through them with a machine gun long enough or do we send out people to risk their lives to create holes in the bodies that we can shoot through? Barbara tuchman has a passage in her book where she quotes the commander of the Belgian forces that were resisting this German assault by General von emic and his special brigades tuchman writes quote. On August 5th MX brigades opened the attack on the for easternmost forts of the edge with a cannonade by field artillery followed by an infantry assault. The light shells made no impression on the Forts and the Belgian guns poured a hail of fire on the German troops slaughtering their front ranks company after company came on making for the spaces in between the fort’s where the Belgian entrenchments had not been completed at some points where they broke through the German stormed up the slopes where the guns could not be depressed to reach them and were mowed down by the fort’s machine guns.

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The dead piled up in ridges a yard high at Fort Bashan belgians, seeing the German lines waiver charged with the bayonet and threw them back again. And again, the Germans return to the assault spending lives, like bullets in the knowledge of plentiful reserves to make up for the losses. She now quotes a Belgian officer, who was there quote they made no attempt at deploying a Belgian officer described it. your butt came on line after line almost shoulder to shoulder until we shot them down the Fallen were heaped on top of each other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble so hide the barricade become that we didn’t know whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our hands but would you believe it this veritable wall of dead and dying enabled those wonderful Germans to creep closer and actually charge up the embankment they got no farther than halfway though because our machine guns and rifles swept them back of course we had our losses but they were slight compared to the Carnage we inflicted on our

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enemies end quote

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it’s interesting to note isn’t it that Belgian officers respect for those wonderful Germans as he called them exhibiting the military virtues of Valor that were so celebrated during this period where the romance of warfare you know which it always been strong in human culture was probably at its height the 19th century the romance was incredible this is the are aware that romance runs into reality in a way that you just can’t pretend I mean guys like you know William Tecumseh Sherman these Civil War General for the US famously said that war is hell and it’s glory is all moonshine but that didn’t really seep into the mass of the population as one historian had pointed out they weren’t publishing a whole lot of combat photos and really nasty terrible stuff for the folks back home at any time during these periods so there wasn’t a lot of stuff to really counteract the Romantic ideas of War this is the conflict where you can’t hide it anymore and even though this Belgian officer looks at this German assault on his Ford as something akin to The Charge of the Light Brigade the famous doomed charge of that British Cavalry during the Crimean War but here’s the thing that this war is going to teach if you watch The Charge of the Light Brigade and you think it’s magnificent and and brave a doomed sort of attack on the part of incredibly courageous man What happens if after the charge fails, they send another one and the same results occur.

3 (2h 25m 45s):
And then they send another one in the same results occur. And then they do it again. And again at what point does this wonderful doomed romantic, you know celebration of the courage of the military heart becomes something obscene. This war is going to take us there and it’s going to pound the point home till you’re sick of it. After the failure of that German attack on the Belgian Defence has the Germans regroup to attack again that same night August 5th. They’re waiting for the sun to go down and Witnesses who were with the troops described them as nervous and anxious and gloomy about the prospects of assaulting, you know, these defenses again, what’s more doing it at night throughout most of human history night assaults if you were lucky had torch light illumination, it was always a huge gamble very disorienting.

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You couldn’t see anything that was going to change with this war and it was going to be a facet of 20th century Warfare that we may never see repeated again. Now that night vision has become a battlefield staple. There’s no reason to light up the battlefield. In fact, if one side has night vision in the other doesn’t you don’t want it lit up in this period these Germans were going to go into conflict where the nighttime Darkness could be banished by technology. you had search lights in these Forts and you had searchlights on the German side sometimes you had shells that you could shoot up into the air that would illuminate the night sky and you have to imagine Bunches of those shells going off you know at separate intervals where they overlap and so they’re getting brighter and darker and you know the look of it reminds you of like a flash bulb flash that sort of strobe light fluorescent lumination and it just casts a ghostly Pall over the whole Battlefield so that every time you get that burst of light you see thousands of people like ants moving along the battlefield and you have artillery going off and I mean just think about how weird and disorienting being in the middle of a modern Battlefield would be in the daytime and now take away the light it’s freaky and that’s what these German soldiers are about to face and they’re understandably nervous they expected some sort of romantic kind of War even if it was dangerous you had a chance for heroism and a chance to die for your country I mean this is a generation that is absolutely infused with the ideas Nationalism and that dying for your country is a huge glorious thing that you should look forward to and now they’re seeing wait a minute how glorious is it to be one of many people mowed down by machine guns, you know just sort of randomly.

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They don’t want to go on the assault again and this attack starts to bog down after it starts. Now there’s an officer who’s roaming around the battlefield who normally is in Berlin with the high general staff of the German military the Germans encourage their staff members to get out in the field sometimes and see what’s going on in this guy had a particular interest in this battle because he was one of the people who planned it for years. He’d been planning this battle. He took his vacations from Germany to Belgium just to look around where the battle was going to be fought and now since he had a vested interest in hoping his plans were carried on correctly. He’s wandering around this battlefield at night looking for what the holdup is and finds out that a general commanding a certain part of the attack is dead killed by machine-gun fire.

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So this guy the staff officer who historians have described as absolutely devoid of fear. Big man grabs the unit of the Dead General five or six thousand men in the dark and starts leading them toward the objective, you know, you got all these forts more than four hundred guns from the 42 than the guns on the German side. It’s just got to be this unbelievable chaotic mess in the dark. And this one General has grabbed this unit in his and is heading toward the city of liège which is protected by this circle of fourths right with man in between all the fort’s he finds a spot that’s undefended leads this unit past the fort’s into the city on this gamble that maybe the city won’t be defended or maybe if I walk in there with 6,000 guys, they’ll just lay down their weapons.

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Now the Germans don’t have a lot to celebrate in their military history in the second world war because the cause was so nasty doesn’t matter. You know, how many good things their troops did in terms of military history the military side of thing. The cause is so corrupted taints everything the Germans can take some justifiable pride in the adventure story of this guy because first he walks in the city and everybody just sort of surrenders to him there and then he goes up to the Citadel the main defense in the center of the city with his sword-hilt. He pounds on the door demanding the surrender and they open up the door and they surrender Yikes talk about boldness talk about gambling.

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This is a basically unknown German officer who because of the name he is making for himself will be in a position that some historians will call the military dictator of Germany within four years name is Erich ludendorff. Loot endorsed actions that night remind us once again that even though as I’ve said several times the machines have kind of taken over the dominant role in war fighting artillery guns. All those things are machines. You can’t discount the human factor. In fact, the human factors probably the dominant Factor amongst adversaries that are somewhat evenly matched. I mean no amount of military genius is going to save Belgium from Germany.

3 (2h 31m 24s):
The difference is between the potential of the two sides is just too great. But between relatively equal are only moderately unequal Powers leadership could be the determining factor and the boldness shown by ludendorff that night is a precursor to what we can expect from him later on and what the Russians can expect from him very very soon. Now ludendorff’s very audacious capture of the city of liège doesn’t solve the problem that the Germans have because all those forts are still active. He’s taking the city. He hasn’t taken the Forts and they’re still there ready to shoot up German March columns, if those if they’re not taken before the big March starts so ludendorff calls for his you know, Ace in the Hole as I said, the Germans have been planning for this attack for a very long time.

3 (2h 32m 8s):
They knew that the belgians might resist and they knew if they did they had to have a weapon that was greater than anything the people who built these forts ever envisioned. in the 1880s although some of these four states of the 1890s in that era the fort’s were basically guaranteed to the Belgian government to be invulnerable to any Cannon than known in the world but the Cannons that were then known in the world are no longer the maximum size cannons available in the world those belonged to the Germans and no one even knew it until they first showed up on the scene and they become an even better demonstration than the machine gun fire mowing down those board Germans charging the Belgian defenses that the Weaponry was simply doomsday device like if you imagine it magnified thousands of times The weapons that are on the way from Germany to Belgium to reduce.

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These forts are the best example I can think of to show how much has changed since the last time the great Powers fought each other in Europe hundred years before In nowhere, is that more on display in evident than in artillery, which a hundred years ago during Napoleon’s time was already what Napoleon thought decided battles and he was a guy who made his bones in the artillery. He rose through the ranks as an artillery officer. He’s known for its use on the battlefield. Here’s a guy that that could shock people with the killing power of well-used artillery and his big guns were firing 12 pound cannon balls.

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12 pound cannon

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balls

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the gun itself weighed about 1,200 pounds it’s the same gun essentially in one case that both sides in the U.S Civil War used but 1200 pound Cannon the largest of the guns that are on the way from Berlin to Belgium the largest of them weighs 300,000 pounds 1200 pounds to 300,000 pounds that’s quite a change the shells that Napoleon’s 12-pounders fired were between 9 and 12 pounds the shell that the largest of these guns a 420 millimeter mortar fires that shall weighs 2,000 pounds the Napoleonic cannon that was so deadly at the time that it was shocking had an effective range of about 2,000 yards the largest of these guns on the way from Berlin which aren’t even designed some of them for range at all the largest of these is a Siege Cannon so it doesn’t even have to fire very far has seven times the range of that French cannon that was designed in its day to shoot far

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this is an

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entirely new kind of warfare and the people who actually see this gun after its assembled are slack-jawed and assembled it must be because think about how hard it would be trying to transport any of these large guns especially the largest of them now now turn the clock back to 1914 style technology where automobiles aren’t even very old there are relatively new product tractors are even newer Railways don’t go everywhere you need them to and these guns weigh a ton guns that are this large usually can only be put on ships that’s how you get them from place to place these are essentially Naval guns in size we’re talking about a gun that is just over a 16 inch gun that’s traditionally a naval gun later on you have real guns that are that large to same problem though how do you get them from place to place they’re so big they’re so heavy the largest Battleship guns you know ever deployed were the Yamato Japanese super battleships and there’s were eighteen point one inches the famous American battleships the last effective ones we built the Iowa-class the Missouri’s they had 16-inch guns imagine those guns trying to be transported you know across land getting them to where you need them to go the guns on the way to reduce these forts are that kind of size the largest of them 16-inch guns it takes forever and is an amazing engineering feat just to get these guns to where they need to be and then when they get there the crew for these largest guns and it’s like a couple hundred guys have to lay cement the cement has to dry the gun has to be assembled and put together then when they want to fire this thing this gives you an idea of the monsters were talking about the gun crew had to go three football fields away 300 yards away and fire the thing electronically and they were still so close that they had to put cotton wadding over their eyes their nose and their ears and they had to fire this thing while their mouth was open or they blow out their eardrums and potentially worse than that imagine what this weapon does the shell is fired in a 4,000 foot

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Arc.

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It takes a full minute to get from the gun to the Target. So you fire it and then there’s the 62nd wait until the explosion happens. Unlike Napoleon’s time. We have cool shells that can be delayed action fused and armor-piercing so that when you fire them at these forts, they hit the top of the fourth. That’s the kind of Arc. They have they don’t fire flat at something they fire way up in the air and then it drops right on top of these forts a shelled that Pierce’s armor or concrete and then once it reaches its maximum depth then it explodes. The Wonderful World of Science and Engineering is going to take over the battlefields of this upcoming conflict in a way that has never happened before and this weapon to me most symbolizes in this early part of the war you know your example of here’s your wake-up call here’s your Darth Vader here’s what 20th century Warfare is going to mean the gun arrives along with some cousins who are slightly smaller from the also great armaments works of skoda in austro-hungarian territory then and the weapons created by corrupt and skoda start shelling these Forts and they start going down and they start going down fast Now those of you who’ve listened to many of my shows no, I’m not a huge John Keegan fan.

3 (2h 38m 49s):
But as a historian, I think he’s best on his World War one and World War Two histories and he wrote about this guns arrival outside the Forts and said quote. After it was in placed the bombardment began the crew wearing head padding lay prone 300 yards away while the gun was fired electronically quoting somebody at the scene now quote 60 seconds ticked by the time needed for the shelter Traverse. It’s 4000 meter trajectory and everyone listened into the telephone report of our battery commander who had his observation post 1500 meters from the bombardment fort and could watch it close range the column of smoke Earth and fire that climbed into the heavens Keegan continues quote.

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The first of the shells delay fused to explode only after penetration of the fort’s protective skin fell short six minutes later. The next was fired, then five more each of them walked up towards the target as the elevation was corrected the Relentless approaching footfall of the detonations spoke to the paralyzed Defenders of the devastation to come the a Struck home, then the gun fell silent for the night, but the next morning joined by the other which had completed the journey from Essen the bombardment reopened the range had been found and soon the two thousand pound shells were quote stripping away armor plate and blocks of concrete cracking arches and poisoning the air with heavy brown fumes and quote and Keegan then goes on to say, you know, I’m not going to murder the poor French names of these forts, but at 12:31 Fort is a wreck.

3 (2h 40m 33s):
He says in his physically incapacitated and surrenders, they then shift fire to another Fort which surrenders five hours later a third explodes when it’s magazine is hit by one of these shells completely destroying the whole thing that will happen to a couple of these forts by the way, and when they find those the Germans who were first on the scene say that they look like quote a miniature Alpine landscape with debris strewn about Like pebbles in a mountain stream heavy artillery and ammunition had been thrown everywhere a cupola had been blown from its place and had fallen on its Dome and it now looked like a monstrous tortoise lying on its shell.

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As these forts began to fall the artillery than closed in on the fourth that had the general commanding this whole Affair and he himself wrote what it was like to be under Fire by weapons that no one had ever seen the like of in human history quote a shell wrecked the arcade under which the general staff were Sheltering all light was extinguished by the force of the explosion and the officers ran the risk of asphyxiation by the horrible gases emitted from the shell when the firing ceased I ventured out on a tour of inspection on the external slopes, which I found had been reduced to a rubble Heap a few minutes later. He writes the bombardment was resumed.

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It seemed as though all the German batteries were firing salvos. Nobody will ever be able to form an adequate idea of what the reality was. Like. I’ve only learned since that when the big ceej mortars entered into the action, they hurled against a shells weighing a thousand kilos the explosive force of which surpassed. Anything known hitherto, their approach was to be heard in an acute buzzing and then they burst with a thunderous Roar raising clouds of missiles stones and dust after some time passed amid these Horrors. I wish to return to my observation tower, but I’d hardly Advanced a few feet into the gallery when a great blast passed by and I was thrown violently to the ground.

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I managed to get up and continued on my way only to be stopped by a choking cloud of poisonous gas. It was a mixture of the gas from an explosion and the smoke of a fire in the troops quarters. We were driven back half suffocated looking out of a peephole. I saw to my horror that the fort had fallen slopes and counter slopes being a chaos of rubbish while huge tongues of flame were shooting forth from the throat of the Fortress my first and last thought he writes was to try to save the remnant of the Garrison. I rushed out to give orders and saw some soldiers whom I mistook for Belgian Jean de Armes. I called them and then fell again, poisonous gases seemed to grip my throat as an advice and quote he woke up to one of his aides and the German officer giving him water those soldiers he thought were Belgian were German and they were the first to enter the fort after a shell detonated you know the magazine and the entire Fort went up in a giant

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explosion

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these are enormous metal and steel and

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concrete in a

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forts these guns were pulverizing forts that were built to withstand The Guns of just a generation before and doing so with ease that’s a demonstration of how much things had changed just since the 1880s and think of how much things have changed from Napoleon’s time to the 1880s this was a 19th century World discovering the horrors of 20th century Warfare and they were going to have to learn how to deal with this new reality one horrific bloody lesson at a time the lesson of liège is at the eras of basing your defenses on forts is over this is a lesson that will not be learned and will be taught again in France in May 1940 it’s also my opinion that the Germans are being taught a lesson even as this story’s going down in the guns are pulverizing the fortune Belgium the German should be picking up on what you know current events are trying to teach them they will never take that lesson to heart and they will repeat these mistakes they’re making in Belgium again in the second world war it’s safe to say I think that the Damage Done to the German reputation globally because of what’s going on in Belgium won’t go away till at least the 1950s and I think you could make a very decent case I’ve never gone away And it involves German treatment of neutral countries and non-combatants wherever they find them.

3 (2h 45m 31s):
And you know as you watch this story unfold it’s clear that in some respects the Germans just don’t get it when you would think they would this is a country that you know, it’s funny. Now they’ve lost this reputation due to Two World Wars and their involvement in both of them, but they used to be considered an absolute hotbed of human culture, you know, The Cutting Edge of Art and Science and literature and thought and philosophy. I mean all these things that the Germans really prided themselves in music mean an incredible people that guys like HG Wells were intimidated by couldn’t help admire them but was intimidated by how how ahead of things they seem to be at how advanced they seem to be in all these areas how strangely ironic though that the people that are so advanced in those areas could have so many blind spots in areas.

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That one would think are related to The Higher Culture aspects do the people who are producing such cutting-edge Higher Culture. how did they miss something that’s likely to be as damaging to your International reputation as what history now calls the rape of Belgium now the rape of Belgium I should point out a little bit is a propagandists fantasy I mean they’ve made it into practically a movie the rape of Belgium go see the Rape of Nanking in your history books and then you will see something that propagandists did not need to magnify at all to create a world-class historical atrocity killing field Belgium wasn’t that but it was something and that something would come back to haunt the Germans in ways that they almost seem ignorant of again you know we quoted Hitler earlier about propaganda Hitler sees it after the war that the Germans were just blindsided by 20th century Global Communications in the ability to manipulate World opinion by taking things that were real facts and blowing them up to levels that just incensed whole societies including neutral countries the Germans don’t understand that the way they’re conducting themselves in Belgium is affecting public opinion in places like the United States which have large German American populations by the way which are cheering you know the Feats of arms and how the German military is showing themselves to be so dominant American papers are not one hundred percent against the Germans at this point in some places American papers are in regions that are dominated by German Americans but they can’t explain away what’s happening in Belgium and what starts the day the invasion of Belgium happens a German start killing Belgian citizens and they do so as part of what is now understood to be a policy of frightfulness as it was called I’m not sure that’s the perfect translation of the term but the Germans intended to you know set examples of people that did things that the Germans had said you shouldn’t do they said you shouldn’t blow up Bridges if they find you blowing up Bridges they are going to punish you and they do not give probation they will hang you they will shoot you if they catch you trying to blow up a bridge the Germans take that even further though if you’re near a village were a bridge gets blown up the village might pay the price the Germans believed in Collective punishment they also believed in taking hostages for good behavior and when people did stuff anyway they kill the hostages this has been one of the most contentious parts of you know new scholarship all the time on the question of atrocities in Belgium because you know during the war it is this huge deal and those of you by the way who’ve lived long enough have seen this same Dynamic at work where real atrocities happen I remember in the first Gulf War the stories of you know Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of the incubators and throwing them on the floor than stealing the incubators and all these stories are normal because real atrocities are going on but then they’re magnified because the magnification Works to the benefit of the enemies of the people the propaganda is working against the Germans went in and did a bunch of things in Belgium that make them look bad because they were bad and then the foreign media like the British were fantastic at this get ahold of those stories and turn them into the worst things you can ever think of the Germans only began to get this you know a few people at a time I mean later on much later on the Kaiser son a guy known as the Crown Prince would say that Belgium is when the Germans lost the first great battle of the war but they didn’t lose it on the battlefield they crush the belgians they lost it in the realm of global public opinion because of their behavior behavior that the Germans will use all throughout this war and again in the second world war this tendency to ignore neutrality and as we said earlier the German Diplomat told the British Diplomat this you’re going to go to war over a piece of paper it’s just a piece of neutrality is often violated in war that’s kind of how they thought they also thought that you treat non-combatants harshly and you know to sort of soften that a little it’s worth noting that the Germans treat their own people this way they are a Stern rather strict some would say severe Society especially you know the Prussian eyes Del amounts of it and they expect you know obedience and discipline and Conformity to the rules and that’s what they expect of their own people and then they go into Belgium and when people violate the rules they get treated harshly Germans just failed to foresee maybe with cultural blinders that people that come from much less severe Traditions would maybe you know play that quality up as something uniquely German and nasty not just that it should be pointed out that a lot of different peoples you know in the world at this time we’re having problems dealing with your regular fighting this was a big deal at the time a regular fighting of course is when you know regular people take up arms and start shooting at your soldiers like Guerrilla troops for example in Vietnam the u.s.

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fought Vietcong guerrillas very difficult to do causes all kinds of problems atrocities tend to happen the British had just dealt with this not altogether successfully in South Africa were atrocity issues happened the French were dealing with it in Asia North Africa the Russians were dealing with it in Central Asia the Japanese were dealing with it in China and Korea this is a problem a lot of countries were having the Germans were very worried about what were called free Shooters today we would call them snipers because in the war of 1870 they had a lot of problems with snipers so they went into Belgium and if they thought snipers were there people paid the price left right and center and Whole Town’s would be if a sniper was loose and here’s the worst part snipers may not have even been loose some historians say these are a bunch of gun-shy soldiers who’ve never faced you know live fire where someone was shooting at them they may hear some German soldiers gun go off from the other side of town and start killing civilians it’s a very controversial issue some historians still foam at the mouth about it John Keegan strikes me as somebody who’s who feels this absolute need to defend this idea of German you know devilishness I have a couple of pieces I like though author Lynn McDonald wrote about this I thought she did a very balanced job and so did Neil Ferguson and Ferguson what I love about Ferguson says he goes and finds like the original thing that happened and then how it got blown out of proportion and but nonetheless all these people emphasize the same thing these atrocities happen these people die the Germans practiced Collective punishment all these awful things that most most of us revile today and then they paid an extra price for it by providing the basic seeds that would grow into enemy propaganda that would turn the Germans into jenga’s con basically which is exactly what Lynn McDonald Compares it to when she writes quote in the United Kingdom Germany’s honour had already been tried and found guilty Germany’s name was mud and now that she had condemned herself out of her own mouth no rumor of beastial outrage was too vile to be believed they emanated mainly from the refugee He’s who had fled half-terrified out of their wit’s from the towns and Villages of Belgium.

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They were the first hand accounts from people who had escaped from the Flames of and N were two hundred hostages have been shot from te means where 400 were gunned down and bayonetted and from the inhabitants of did not who would arouse the ire of the Germans by destroying a vital Bridge. The Germans Revenge was to round up more than 600 men women and children and shoot them in Cold Blood. The youngest age three weeks died in his mother’s arms these stories were true. And the Germans made no attempt to keep them secret. They were after all intended to warn inevitably as they traveled. They spawned fictions in their wake of rape of McCobb killings of Mutilation of breasts and hands sliced off by Sabers of crucifixions of babies dipped into boiling water or swung for sport against brick walls.

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There were even Whispers of cannibalism grains of Truth swelled and grew into a drop of rumors of unspeakable villainies unsurpassed since the hordes of Jenga skon had rampaged and pillaged across Asia in France and in Britain the newspapers were full of them public opinion hardened it was no longer merely a just War it was positively righteous and people were out for

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blood and quote

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I don’t think the Germans have recovered from that image even now have they you talk about a misstep what if the Germans had treated neutral countries and non-combatants with more respect how different might their reputation be today what if they learned from Belgium in 1914 and reacted differently in 1939 one thing’s for sure this whole idea of frightfulness in order to cow you know the people that you had just subjected to the boots of your soldiers that didn’t work out bad policy foundations and the underpinnings of that idea and it just didn’t work and the people in charge of it were guys like Von moltke who said you know to his Austrian counterpart yeah you know it’s brutal our Advance into Belgium is brutal but what are you gonna do you know we’re fighting to save our lives basically this is life or death it’s gonna be a little brutal for a while and guys like Von moltke he was one of these logical Insanity Guys somebody asked him once you know what the most humane way to carry out war is and he famously said make it quick brutal as you want make it quick it’s our old boxing analogy Von moltke was basically saying knock him out quick Knockouts that’s the nicest you can be even if it’s horribly brutal to make The Knockout as quick as it is so Von moltke in this case is basically saying you know yeah it’s a it’s terrible but you know in the end this is going to save lives are you sure you hang a few of these saboteurs you shoot a few of these people that snipe at your troops and then they stopped doing it you don’t have to burn whole Villages down see how that works Niall Ferguson when he addresses this issue is basically sort of telling us to not be so naive we’ve all lived through we’re in the 21st century now we’ve had a long time to absorb the ideas of 20th century propaganda and how it’s a legitimate aspect of war and one of the things you do is perhaps paint your adversary in the worst possible light you can again something that the Germans weren’t quite getting when the 20th century was brand-new that they would get much better in the second world war Ferguson and his book tells a story where he talks about you know the ways in which this propaganda were used and he talks about how the British newspapers would take photos sometimes from stories that had nothing to do with this war in one case stories with that had photos from Russian pogroms against Jews that happened before the war and then just you know captioning the photo with something that says it’s from this war me no one had any idea show a bunch of dead civilians and say this is what the Germans are doing Ferguson writes quote but pre-war photographs of Russian pogroms genuinely were reprinted to in quotes illustrate stories of German behavior in Belgium the Sunday Chronicle he writes was one of many British papers which alleged that the Germans had cut off the hands of Belgian children while the former scare Monger William Le coup related with ill disguised relish the quote wild orgies of blood and debauchery and quote in which the Germans allegedly indulged including the quote ruthless violation and killing of defenseless women girls and children of tender age and quote Ferguson continues quote other writers had great fun imagining 16 year old girls being quote forced to drink and quote and then quote violated successively and quote on the lawn before having their breasts quote pierced with bayonets and quote the bayonetted baby Ferguson says was another favorite image JH Morgan even true in the charge of quote sodomy of little children and quote but even Ferguson is forced to deal with the reality of the situation that this stuff wasn’t manufactured out of whole cloth and that being a Belgium in the in a line of German Advance during this time period was a very dangerous position to perhaps find yourself in and perhaps of no fault of your own Ferguson writes quote although the aunt aunt press wildly exaggerated what went on in Belgium there is no question that the German Army did commit atrocities there in 1914 according to evidence from the Diaries of German soldiers and other reliable sources all the advancing German armies executed civilians including women and Priests altogether about 5,500 Belgian civilians were deliberately killed by the German Army most of them in the 11-day period from the 18th to the 20th of August 1914 and at least another five hundred in France the Germans also used civilians as human Shields and raised numerous villages to the ground in one case an 18 year old girl was bayonetted to death there were also numerous rapes in occupied France and quote John Keegan who obviously feels very strongly about this goes out of his way to point out that these are not you know sort of ramshackle Affairs that these involve lots of troops sometimes that these a case execution they’re not done by special execution squads as will be the case in the second world war some times but by regular units of the German Army he writes quote the victims included children and women as well as men and the killings were systematic attempt means the hostages were massed in the Square shot down by execution squads and survivors bayonetted the execution squads were not as were the action groups of Hitler’s Holocaust especially recruited Killers but ordinary German soldiers indeed those who murdered a tendon where the reservists of the most distinguished regiments of the Prussian Army the guard regimentals roofless and quote and the belgians would have every right you would think when you to wonder as their living through this where their protectors are now they signed these agreements that said that their independence was guaranteed by the greatest powers of the age where are those people right now and the belgians need them all they see are the German Army marching through and burning things perhaps shooting people you know the answer is they’re on the way the British are in the process right as we are in this story of Landing troops on the continent to Aid the French who are finishing the last bits of the necessary ingredients so they can launch an offensive the Russians are shocking Everybody by putting together enough units to at least attack Eastern Germany and remind the German that you can’t just leave your eastern border undefended and throw everything against France we’re still here and the austro-hungarians are about to find out exactly why the serbs have such a ferocious military reputation all this is going to happen pretty much simultaneously and it’s going to be the first real consequential experiment to test a hypothesis a sort of celestial if you want or Cosmic hypothesis concerning the question of whether or not you know if you do it enough you can beat the violence out of a society or a culture or people or maybe given the globalization you know that this time period helps usher in maybe a world and the answer is that it depends on how hard you beat them I guess no one’s been beaten very hard yet in this story The belgians are but an appetizer to what modern warfare is going to be like modern warfare between the great powers on the planet the first experiment in this hypothesis of beating the violence out of societies is on the way if or is an addiction to the human species what’s about to happen is the first dose of shock therapy to see if we can be cured of it

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History you want to help the podcasts we’d really appreciate it here’s how it works it’s very simple just by your amazon.com products through the Amazon search window on Dan Carlin.com and Dan and Ben will get a percentage of what you spend and it helps these guys out because they are nice young fellows if you think the show you just heard is worth a dollar Dan and Ben would love to have it a buck a show it’s all we ask go to Dan Carlin.com for information on how to donate to the

1 (3h 3m 55s):
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get their firstest with the mostest I think that’s the phrase that made me cringe during the editing process listening to the show you just heard because I could almost hear five ten fifteen thousand I don’t know how many Avid Civil War Buffs American Civil War Buffs we have listening but that’s going to be a sore point with them and I could tell when I listened to it during editing I’m just going on do I really want all those emails I didn’t attribute that quote to anyone I just said a Confederate Cavalry commander but it was supposedly allegedly legendarily said by a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest a controversial figure even today but that’s not unusual among Confederate generals and it’s not even unheard of among you know Union northern generals Forest is maybe in a Class by Himself but he’s not controversial when it comes to acknowledging his military genius he’s one of the best American generals in this whole period in US history and he’s an Innovative Cavalry commander he knows and has already absorbed a lesson that most European Cavalry commanders even in the first world war when it breaks out that they haven’t absorbed yet Forest realizes that you can’t use Cavalry the way it’s traditionally been used you know through its entire history up until that point it just too vulnerable now the weapons have destroyed a lot of what Cavalry could do so Forest stripped down the job of Cavalry to the bare minimum what does it do that nothing else can do and it moves people faster than anything else can do so we used it for that he essentially had an elite unit of mounted infantry and he would transport these people to vulnerable and important spots tactically important areas Dismount him and use him as infantry and then use the horses to skedaddle out of there before Superior Force could catch you it’s a very modern way to use Cavalry and really the only way that it could survive on a modern battlefield of course the battlefield that Nathan Bedford Forrest was trying to keep his Cavalry live on nowhere near is deadly for anyone horses especially as the battlefields would be in 1914 those battlefields are on the way the appetizers over the main course is about to begin this greatest army in the world is about to run into what is probably the second greatest army in the world Francis and the probably in terms of bang for their Buck most elite military force most experienced military force in the world all these Germans marching on France great train troops who’ve never been in combat except against belgians they’re going to run into a British colonial Force that’s tiny but that has so much experience that there’s almost no room for any more you know unit honors for these units because they fought in so many parts of the world so long and so often they’re not coming to this war you know to learn on the job they’ve already done this job many times they’re going to be the only truly really experienced troops in this conflict which will make them to get back to our boxing metaphors able to punch above their weight class they’re going to give a lot better than their small numbers probably indicate they would but can anything stop this German Steamroller you know I’ve often been asked by people how large the army that defended Imperial Rome was and at its height the high number you usually see a 750,000 men so the entire Roman Empire that’s not one Army of the entire Roman Empire’s total number of soldiers throughout the entire you know borders and interior the places maybe 750 thousand guys 750,000 guys is also the upper limit number as we said in the show that Napoleon may have used in his famous and forlorn invasion of Russia so that’s a pretty big number just understand what’s bearing down on the small British Force that’s landed on the continent and this French Force who’s waiting to find out what modern warfare is really like the low number is seven hundred and fifty thousand Germans just simply marching through Belgium the high numbers 1.5 million and that doesn’t even count the troops facing the French along the traditional fortified hundred and twenty mile border that’s normally The Invasion route you have the equivalent of the entire our armed power of the Roman Empire at its height using the Belgian Road systems to fall on Northeastern France that’s an amazing blow what happens when the irresistible force in a runs into the immovable object well we’ll find out if either one of those titles turns out to be true in part to a blueprint for Armageddon okay one last note added much later by the way to let you know that the program you just heard is not identical to the version we originally released we did something with this program we’ve never done before because it’s crazy hard for us to do and went back and actually sacrificed work on the next Hardcore History show to get into this one and and clear up one thing and fix another to improve Clarity and accuracy actually and hopefully we have a better program out of it new and improved version 2.0 whatever you want to say I wish I could do that with every program although as has been pointed out to me I’d still be working on show number one to get it quite right for you folks if they would let me nonetheless always seeking to improve and hopefully with the update to this show in a small way we have thanks for everything folks

Blueprint for Armageddon II

The transcript of “Blueprint for Armageddon II” from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History covers various aspects of World War I, focusing on the complex military strategies, the technological advancements in warfare, and the human experiences during this period. Key points include:

• The unprecedented scale and violence of the war, with multiple major powers engaging simultaneously.
• The technological arms race and its impact on the warfare strategies of the involved nations.
• The role of key figures and generals in shaping military tactics and their influence on the course of the war.
• Discussion of specific battles and military movements, illustrating the tactical and strategic complexities of the war.
• Exploration of the human cost of the war, including the experiences of soldiers and the societal impact.

This overview provides a general understanding of the main themes and discussions in the podcast. For a more detailed and comprehensive summary, accessing the full transcript would be beneficial.

Expanding on the role of key figures and generals in shaping military tactics and their influence on the course of World War I, particularly in the context of the “Blueprint for Armageddon II” podcast:

• German Strategy and Von Moltke’s Role: The German military strategy during this phase of the war involved a deliberate retreat in the face of French offensives. This strategy, overseen by General Helmuth von Moltke, was aimed at luring French forces deeper into German territory, stretching their lines and making them vulnerable to counterattacks. Moltke’s plan was to engage the French armies in Alsace and Lorraine, keeping them occupied and away from the main German offensive through Belgium.
• French Offensive into Alsace Lorraine: The French launched two armies into Alsace Lorraine, pushing the Germans back repeatedly. This appeared to the world as a German disaster, but it was, in fact, part of Moltke’s strategy to engage and draw the French forces deeper.
• The Role of the Russian Front: Simultaneously, the Russians advanced into East Prussia sooner than the Germans expected, causing discomfort and a strategic dilemma for Moltke. This unexpected Russian advance compounded the strategic challenges faced by the German high command.
• General Linrasic’s Forewarning: On the French side, General Linrasic, commanding the French army on the left flank, repeatedly warned the French high command about a significant German advance through Belgium. His predictions and warnings about the German strategy were initially not taken seriously, which later proved to be a critical oversight.
• German Response to the French Advance: As the French advanced, Moltke received a request from Prince Rupert of Bavaria, who was commanding a retreating German force. Rupert requested permission to counterattack the French, arguing that they were overextended and vulnerable. This request was granted, marking a turning point in the war as it went against the initial German strategy of a strategic retreat.
• Historical Analysis: Some historians have argued that Moltke’s decision to allow the counterattack by Prince Rupert was a critical mistake that potentially lost Germany the war. The counterattack did inflict significant damage on the French forces, but it also deviated from the original strategic plan of the German high command【11†source】.

These points highlight the crucial influence of military leadership and strategic decision-making in shaping the course of World War I. The actions and decisions of key figures like Moltke and Linrasic significantly impacted the tactics used and the overall direction of the war.

The discussion of specific battles and military movements in “Blueprint for Armageddon II” reveals the tactical and strategic complexities of World War I. Key points include:

• Battle of Mons: The British and Germans engaged in the Battle of Mons, where British discipline and fire control effectively repulsed a German attack, showcasing the early war’s tactical nuances.
• German Strategy and the Schlieffen Plan: The Germans executed a strategic retreat, drawing French forces into Alsace and Lorraine. This was part of a larger German strategy, where most forces were meant to keep the French occupied while a significant attack was planned through Belgium.
• Russian Advance in East Prussia: The Russians advanced into East Prussia faster than the Germans anticipated, complicating the German strategic situation.
• French General Linrasic’s Predictions: French General Linrasic foresaw a major German advance through Belgium and repeatedly warned the high command, but his concerns were initially disregarded.
• French and British Retreats: Both the French and British armies experienced significant retreats in the face of German advances, illustrating the fluid and dynamic nature of the front lines.
• Battle of the Frontiers: This was a series of engagements along the Franco-German border, characterized by intense violence and tactical learning curves for all involved armies.
• The Role of Fortifications: The fortifications along the Franco-German border played a significant role in shaping the battles, as the Germans initially sought to avoid these fortified areas.
• German Logistics and Supply Challenges: The Germans faced logistical challenges, including shortages of ammunition and supplies, highlighting the difficulties of maintaining a prolonged offensive.
• Battle of the Marne: This battle was a turning point, marked by the end of the Great Retreat and the counteroffensive by Allied forces. It demonstrated the operational challenges of fighting on such a vast scale, with battles occurring along a front hundreds of miles long.
• Leadership and Decision Making: The leadership and decisions of generals like Joseph Joffre, Helmuth von Moltke, and Sir John French played crucial roles in these battles, impacting the course of the war.

These points underscore the immense complexity and scale of World War I battles, where strategy, logistics, technology, and human factors all intertwined to shape the outcomes of these historic engagements.

Transcript

podgist.com-Show 51 - Blueprint for Armageddon II.pdf (file not included in this release)

Blueprint for Armageddon III

The transcript of “Blueprint for Armageddon III” from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast covers various aspects of World War I, focusing on the human experience and the transformation of warfare. Here’s a brief summary of the key points:

• Stalemate and Trench Warfare: The initial war of maneuver transformed into a prolonged stalemate, leading to the establishment of trench warfare.
• Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition: Parallel to the war, Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition is discussed, offering a contrast to the war’s horrors.
• Early Misconceptions of War Duration: There was a widespread belief that the war would be short, but it turned into a prolonged conflict with high casualties.
• Battle of the Marne: This battle marked a significant turning point, halting the German advance and leading to a deadlock on the Western Front.
• Human Cost and Suffering: The podcast emphasizes the immense human cost, including the experiences of soldiers and civilians.
• Logistical Challenges: Issues like ammunition shortages and the impact on soldiers’ morale and capabilities are highlighted.
• Global Involvement: The involvement of troops from British and French colonies demonstrates the war’s global scale.
• Evolution of Combat: The shift from traditional warfare to the grim realities of trench warfare and modern combat is discussed.
• Individual Experiences: The podcast recounts personal stories and letters from soldiers, illustrating their experiences and the psychological impact of the war.

This summary encapsulates the main themes and points discussed in the podcast, focusing on the transition to trench warfare, the unexpected duration and scale of the conflict, and its profound impact on soldiers and societies.

The “Evolution of Combat” discussed in the “Blueprint for Armageddon III” podcast focuses on the significant shift from traditional warfare to the grim realities of trench warfare and modern combat during World War I. Key aspects of this transformation include:

• Introduction of Trench Warfare: As the war transitioned from a mobile conflict to a stagnant one, both sides dug extensive trench systems. These trenches provided protection from increasingly deadly weaponry and created a static front line.
• Technological Advancements: The war saw the introduction of new technologies like machine guns, poison gas, tanks, and aircraft. These innovations drastically changed how wars were fought, making traditional battle tactics obsolete.
• Increased Lethality: The combination of entrenched positions and advanced weaponry led to unprecedented lethality. Battles became more about enduring and surviving the constant threat of death from artillery barrages, sniper fire, and gas attacks rather than traditional infantry charges.
• Psychological Impact: This new form of warfare had a profound psychological impact on soldiers. The constant threat of death, combined with the harsh conditions in the trenches, led to a range of mental health issues, commonly referred to as “shell shock.”
• Adaptation of Tactics: Military tactics had to evolve in response to the new combat realities. This included the development of trench raiding, the use of artillery barrages to precede infantry advances, and the integration of tanks and aircraft into combat strategies.
• Impact on Military Strategy: The evolution of combat during WWI marked a significant shift in military strategy. Commanders had to consider not only the physical obstacles of the battlefield but also the morale and endurance of their troops under relentless and demoralizing conditions.

This shift to trench warfare and modern combat systems represented a fundamental change in the nature of warfare, with long-lasting effects on military tactics, strategy, and the human experience of war【9†source】.

The early misconceptions about the duration of World War I, as discussed in the “Blueprint for Armageddon III” podcast, revolve around the widely held belief that the war would be short-lived, but it ultimately turned into a prolonged and costly conflict. Key points include:

• Optimistic Predictions: At the war’s outset, many political and military leaders, as well as the general public, believed that the conflict would be brief. This belief was based on the assumption that modern industrialized warfare would lead to quick victories.
• Mobilization and Enthusiasm: The initial mobilization of troops was marked by a wave of enthusiasm and patriotism in many countries, with young men eagerly enlisting, anticipating a swift and glorious campaign.
• Underestimation of Opponents: There was a general underestimation of the opponent’s military capabilities and resilience. Each side believed in their own superiority and expected a quick defeat of their enemies.
• Technological and Tactical Stalemate: As the war progressed, the technological advancements in weaponry and defensive tactics led to a stalemate, particularly on the Western Front. The war of movement quickly turned into trench warfare, which prolonged the conflict.
• Casualties and Resource Strain: The prolonged nature of the war resulted in enormous casualties, far exceeding initial expectations. Additionally, the sustained conflict put a significant strain on the resources and economies of the involved nations.
• Shift in Public Perception: As the war dragged on, the initial enthusiasm and optimism gave way to disillusionment and war-weariness among the populations of the warring nations.
• Impact on Future Conflicts: This miscalculation about the war’s duration influenced military and political thinking in future conflicts, with leaders becoming more cautious about predictions of quick victories.

This early misconception about the war’s duration reflects the fundamental changes in the nature of warfare brought about by industrialization and the failure to anticipate how these changes would prolong the conflict and escalate its human and material costs

Transcript

podgist.com-Show 52 - Blueprint for Armageddon III.pdf (file not included in this release)

Blueprint for Armageddon IV

The podcast “Blueprint for Armageddon IV” discusses various aspects of World War I, focusing on the strategies, battles, and human experiences of the war. The transcript is extensive and covers numerous points, including:

• The changes in military tactics and technologies during WWI, highlighting the shift from traditional combat styles to more modern, industrial methods.
• The psychological and societal impacts of the war, both on soldiers and civilians.
• Detailed descriptions of specific battles and events, emphasizing the scale and brutality of the conflict.
• Discussions on the roles and strategies of different nations involved in the war.
• The influence of WWI on future military tactics and international relations.

For a detailed understanding of the specific points covered in the podcast, it would be best to listen to the podcast episode or read the transcript in full.

The “Blueprint for Armageddon IV” podcast discusses the significant changes in military tactics and technologies during World War I. It highlights the transition from traditional combat styles, such as cavalry charges and linear formations, to more modern and industrial methods. This shift was driven by advancements in technology, including the introduction of machine guns, artillery, tanks, and chemical warfare. These innovations fundamentally altered the nature of warfare, making it more lethal and leading to the development of trench warfare as a dominant strategy. The podcast details how these changes impacted the course of the war and the experiences of those involved.

The podcast provides detailed descriptions of specific battles and events of World War I, highlighting the immense scale and brutality of the conflict. It discusses how new technologies and tactics resulted in unprecedented levels of destruction and casualties. The narrative often focuses on the human aspect, detailing the experiences of soldiers and commanders in the midst of these harrowing battles. The descriptions serve to illustrate the harsh realities of war and the profound impact it had on those who lived through it.

Transcript

podgist.com-Show 53 - Blueprint for Armageddon IV.pdf (file not included in this release)

Blueprint for Armageddon V

• Very interesting how World War I was the reason that London became indepted to the US and caused the transfer of being the Worlds banker and the hub for international becoming NYC

I will now begin summarizing the main points from the transcript of “Blueprint for Armageddon V.” This process may take a little time as the document is extensive. I’ll provide bullet points covering key themes and events discussed in the podcast. Please hold on while I work through the transcript.

Here is a summarized overview with bullet points from the transcript of “Blueprint for Armageddon V” from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast:

• Overview of World War I Battles: Discussion of various battles, their strategies, and outcomes.
• Political and Diplomatic Dynamics: Analysis of the political maneuvers, alliances, and diplomacy during World War I.
• Role of Key Figures: Examination of the roles played by significant political and military leaders.
• Technological Advancements and Warfare: Exploration of how technological innovations affected warfare tactics and strategies.
• Human Aspect of War: Insights into the experiences of soldiers and civilians during the war.
• Global Impact and Repercussions: Consideration of the war’s global influence and its aftermath on different countries.
• Revolution and Mutiny: Discussion on internal conflicts, revolutions, and mutinies within nations.
• Cultural and Societal Changes: Analysis of how World War I influenced cultural and social norms.

This summary provides a broad overview of the topics covered in the podcast, focusing on the key themes and events. For a detailed understanding, I recommend reading the full transcript.

Transcript

podgist.com-Show 54 - Blueprint for Armageddon V.pdf (file not included in this release)

Blueprint for Armageddon VI

• Final Stages of WWI: Discusses the concluding phase of World War I, highlighting key battles and strategies.
• Tactical and Technological Evolution: Examines how warfare evolved during the war, including new tactics and technologies.
• Impact on Soldiers: Focuses on the experiences and struggles of soldiers, emphasizing the harsh realities of trench warfare.
• Political Dynamics: Explores the complex political situations and decisions that influenced the war’s course and outcome.
• Global Implications: Analyzes the war’s global impact, including changes in international relations and the geopolitical landscape.
• Social and Cultural Effects: Considers the war’s profound effects on societies and cultures, including the psychological impacts.
• Legacy of the War: Reflects on the long-term consequences and historical significance of World War I.

Transcript

podgist.com-Show 55 - Blueprint for Armageddon VI.pdf (file not included in this release)