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Laurens said:Who's the dude who claims that WWI and WWII was in actual fact one long conflict with a bit of a breather in the middle?
theyounghistorian77 said:Laurens said:Who's the dude who claims that WWI and WWII was in actual fact one long conflict with a bit of a breather in the middle?
I believe You have in mind Ferdinand Foch who, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles remarked "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years" (Quoted in Winston Churchill, "The Second World War, Vol 1, "The Gathering Storm"".)
Laurens said:I believe there is also a historian who published a book with this as its thesis? Or is this the same dude?
theyounghistorian77 said:Laurens said:I believe there is also a historian who published a book with this as its thesis? Or is this the same dude?
Niall Ferguson's "War of the World" makes out that the 20th century was one single continuous conflict. Is that who you're thinking of?
Laurens said:Yes I believe so, thanks. I've read articles where it was mentioned, I just couldn't for the life of me remember who it was...
australopithecus said:Trouble is though is that if you're going to assert the Treaty of Versailles as the start of the war (hypothetically) then you can equally say it was Hitler's formation of the Stabswache, or Mussolini's March on Rome, or even the failed putsch in 1923. All equally valid candidates but nothing more than major events on the road to the war's declaration.
"Is the history of nations"¦any different [from Darwin's Origin of the Species]? ... No! The fate of those branches of the human family, which, as nations and races, have struggled for survival and progress for millennia now, is governed by the same external, iron laws that have determined the history of the entire organic world which for millions of years has provided life on earth"¦the victors in the struggle for life were not always the nobler or more perfect forms" - Ernst Häckel, from "Die Welträthsel", quoted in Joachim Remak (ed), "The Nazi Years: A Documentary History", p4.
"The entrance of the Jew into European history had, as Herder said, signified the entrance of an alien element , alien to that which Europe had already achieved [...] If we look around, we see that the importance of each nation as a living power to-day is dependent upon the proportion of genuinely Teutonic blood in its population. Only Teutons sit on the thrones of Europe."
"The Germans were surrendering everywhere. I saw one Australian private actually prodding the rear of a German brigadier, much to the amusement of everybody else . But it was a morning of victory. You could feel the hair pricking up your spine with excitement because we knew that it was going to be the end of the war" - Major S. Evers. Australian Corps, quoted from Peter and Dan Snow's BBC documentary "20th Century Battlefields - 1918 Western Front " and from Max Arthur, "Forgotten voices of the Great War", p295.
"Although its [military] personnel consisted of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Czechs, Croats, Italians and Serbs from the different parts of the Monarchy, the service was inspired by a single-minded patriotism, and I remember no single case in which an official ever put the interests of his own nationality before those of the Monarchy." - as quoted in Sir George Franckenstein, "Diplomat of Destiny", p25.
"In the interior, the Empire was already fully in decay. At the front it still seemed to live in the unity of an army which embraced every nation. The situation of the summer of 1848 [...] was, however, only a facade since the army could no longer remain unreceptive to revolutionary movement" - As quoted in Jean Bérenger, "A History of the Habsburg Empire: 1700-1918 (Translated by C.A Simpson)."
"On 18th January, the ministry of Vienna had a meeting with the chief demonstrators, and affected to regard the matter as of a bread riot. The delegates did certainly discuss a few minor matters with General Hà¶for, the food controller but they warned the government, that the men were striking for peace. On the following days, all work was stopped in Vienna, and Buda-Pesth [sic], and in the munition factories at St Polten, Liutenworth and Roth; and it was not until the ministry consented to engage in a political discussion with the strikers leaders' leaders, that the demonstrators would promise anything. On 20th January the Austrian Premier and Count Czernin met a labour demonstration, and gave formal undertakings about electoral reform, peace without annexations, and the releasing of industries from military control. Then and not before the workmen began to return to their factories. A few days later, the German workmen continued their disturbance:
- A.C Bell, "A history of the blockade of Germany and of the countries associated with her in the great war, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, 1914-1918.", p688.The masses felt (so ran the report of the German bureau of social policy) that the sucsessful strike in Austria-Hungary was a direct appeal to their honour; to extract from the imperial government the clear promises which they considered to be contained in Count Czernin's words about peace, Thus it came about that the movement borrowed some expressions from Austria and Russia; it was nevertheless a native product.
"We are fighting a new enemy, who is more dangerous than the entente. Our eneny is international revolution, which is finding a powerful ally in the general famine. I do swear to you that i am not forgetting how fateful a moment of the War we have now reached, and do beg of you to reflect that, if we end the war soon - even at a heavy sacrifice - we shall [at least] have an opportunity of checking the upheaval that is now happening." - Quoted in A.C Bell, "ibid", p694.
[url=http://everything2.com/title/The+collapse+of+Austria-Hungary+in+World+War+I said:Source[/url]"]The most serious of these peace feelers was communicated to the Entente via Karl's cousin Prince Sixte of Bourbon-Parma, a serving officer in the Belgian army, in the spring of 1917 when the French Nivelle Offensive had just collapsed on the Western Front. The British prime minister David Lloyd George had high hopes for the conversations, which foundered when the Italian foreign minister Sidney Sonnino refused point-blank to countenance any agreement which would obstruct his country's designs on Dalmatia.
Nonetheless, Lloyd George twice attempted to revive the talks, and sent the South African Jan Smuts to Switzerland that December to meet the Austrian envoy Count Mensdorff. This time, the negotiations collapsed when it became apparent that the Austrians would not - or perhaps could not - ask for anything else than a general peace, and Britain seemed implacably opposed to a negotiated peace with Germany.
The Foreign Office had been sceptical even before Smuts left the country, and appeared to be vindicated in the spring of 1918 when the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau quarrelled with Austria's foreign secretary, Ottokar Czernin, and published the so-called 'Sixtus letter' revealing Karl's approach to the Entente, which Berlin interpreted as tantamount to treachery.
Karl was summoned to the German headquarters at Spa in May, forcing him to sign an agreement which bound Austria-Hungary even more tightly into the German military machine. The summer, accordingly, saw Entente commitments to an independent Poland and Czechoslovakia, although - largely thanks to Sonnino - not to Yugoslavia.
[url=http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/tria/tria05.htm said:hungarianhistory.com[/url]"]"In the light of these and some other evidences, then, one might say that the collapse of the Monarchy was not entirely self-inflicted. Social and political reforms and federalization probably could have revitalized the Monarchy. Serious discontent existed, and revolutionary movements were encouraged and fomented from outside, but the change of attitude by the victorious Western powers was the decisive factor. The leaders of the various nationalities received encouragement, support, and even instructions from abroad. The chance of being able to switch from the defeated camp to that of the victorious powers had a strong appeal to all nationalities. Under these conditions and prospects the discontented nationalities themselves had no particular reason to remain with the old Monarchy. It is therefore somewhat understandable that most of the nationalities, irrespective of other political considerations, eventually preferred to belong to the victorious Allied nations."