If a Prince Fell, Would Anyone Notice?

Excatly you take it behind the shed and put on in it. Plenty of old yellas being supported by good tax dollars. However much your round of choice is just donating ammo to the cause would help reduce taxes. No sarcasm here dead serious.

“Briton could have stayed out of the war…”

Yes, they *could* have, couldn’t they? So please remind me again who the war-mongers are…

At least Germany had the obligations of a mutual defense treaty with Austria; what is Great Britain’s excuse?

And for the historical ignoramuses who think the arch duke’s assassination had nothing to do with the war, let me remind you he was next in line to the throne. In essence, the equivalent of a president-elect, for us.

If an assassin, backed by a foreign government, had killed Obama before his inauguration, do you really think we would have done nothing in response?

Learn a little history buddy. Austria wanted to destroy Orthodox Serbia. Russia could not let Austria control Balkans. Germany gave Austria a “blank Check.” France gave Russia a blank check. The UK tried to stay out and even went so far as tell the Germans that if they stayed out of the Channel and at worst technically violated Belgian neutrality they would stay neutral. Germany did more than a technical violation of Belgian territory. This triggered the treaty guarantee of Belgian sovereignty.

You made it too complicated. It was nothing more than a family fued. Same family in Germany Russia and england a bunch of Jewish Germans. Not to say the UK royal family is Jewish they clearly are not but their ancestors were.
It is ironic how they even got into power but then again the helzberg clan was partners with the rothchilds

Wow I didn’t know that Kaiser Bill was a Jew! The crafty Jews stabbing themselves in the back in 1918.

SD3, by your logic it was America and it’s coalition of allies that were the war mongers when we pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. You’re ignoring the invasion and brutalization of a neutral country (Belgium) allied to England. And you’re ignoring the same in Serbia which brought Russia to declare war on Austria. There’s a reason they called them the German and Austrian EMPIRES. In order to be an empire you need to conquer and subjugate other nations. Germany and Austria wanted to seize the Balkans. Small nations cannot exist without being allied to larger nations. England, France and Russia had no interest in expanding their territories.

I’d also add that while the Archduke was the heir to the throne held by his 83 year old uncle, he was not very well liked among the royals at all. He was considered weak for wanting to give the subjugated peoples a greater voice in governance and worse, he married below his station. He was the black sheep of the family. The assassin and his co-conspirators had been captured and brought to justice. There was no reason to invade a foreign country over his death.

Pretty much agree with what you say but Germany called itself and Empire because it was cool. They had little ot no interest in Balkans for its own sake. The Kaiser did hesitate in the end but when Russia mobilized he gave in to the Generals who were working to a very complex railway timetable. Max Hastings tried to prove Germany at fault after all because of the so-called blank check to Austria. His case fails because the French had no real interest in the Balkans but gave Russia and equally blank check to respond to Austria..

Bear in mind the German nation was in itself a Prussian empire. The Kingdom of Prussia had fought for 3 centuries to conquer it’s Germanic neighbors, and that process was only completed with the unification in 1871. Aside from Alsace-Lorraine, Germany’s colonies were overseas, unlike Austria-Hungary which subjugated a number of it’s European neighbors. But it was just as much an Empire as England was.

Germany’s interest in the Balkans centered around the Berlin to Baghdad railway. They didn’t care if the Balkans belonged to them or their ally, Austria. The railway secured Germany’s access to oil and needed to be controlled in it’s entirety by Germany and it’s allies, Austria and the Ottoman Empire. Depending on their ports was problematic because they could easily be closed off by the superior British navy. Serbia needed to be secured.

As far as France’s blank check to Russia, it was a check that probably had to be granted. Even if France and Russia hadn’t been allied it wouldn’t change the fact that Germany was a nation sandwiched between two adversaries with no natural barriers to invasion. France could mobilize much faster than Russia. Germany couldn’t risk peace with France while waging war with Russia for fear that France could wait until Germany was weakened by the Russians and jump in. And France knew Germany couldn’t risk it. A similar situation came up when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union. After the failure of the Battle of Britain, Hitler figured he had 2 years (he actually had 3) before England and America invaded France. After they had established a front he figured Stalin would smell Germany’s weakness and invade. So he thought he could take out Russia before the allied landing. This was before we even entered the war, btw. So much of history is dictated by geography.

Sorry, but France did not have to go war over the Balkans. Germany mobilized in response to Russian, not French mobilization. A German move to the West not inevitable if the war was confined to Eastern Europe. It would have been like the Crimean War without French or German involvement. Both Russian and Austria were military incompetent and the war would have bogged down very quickly leading brokered peace. The only competent player in the Balkans was Serbia and the kicked Austria’s butt `1914. Austria moved because the Kaiser said he would back them and Russia mobilized in surety that France would follow suit thus forcing Germany to fight on two fronts.

Now that we, in our superiority, have gone beyond such silly little wars, we have completely unencumbered population growth instead, setting us up for either a pandemic, global starvation, or nuclear war to decrease the number of people on the planet, previously controlled by pissant wars and minor epidemics. Let’s not congratulate ourselves too much, until we discover how much our wonderfulness is going to cost.

Sorry tdiinva, the German Empire was invading France with or without a declaration of war from France, just as surely as it invaded Belgium without a declaration of war from that nation. It was called the Schlieffen Plan. Germany was stronger than France and stronger than the Russian Empire, but wasn’t strong enough to take on both at the same time (which is why France and Russia allied themselves to each other in the first place). However, mobilizing the Russian army would take so long that Germany figured it could crush the French before they could mobilize, avoiding a two front war. The plan would have worked if not for the tenacity of the Belgian forces and the small but well trained British Expeditionary Force. Perhaps if the Prussians had been more conciliatory in 1871 there could have been friendly relations and trust cultivated, but as it was, France and Germany and Russia and Germany had adversarial relationships. France couldn’t trust in Germany’s good will because Germany couldn’t afford to have any.

As far as comparisons to the Crimean War, well there just aren’t any. Russia’s relationship with Turkey was not, is not and can not be anything like Russia’s relationship with Germany. Russia has year round ports in 3 locations, the Baltic – which can be cut off by either Germany or Britain, Vladivostok – 6,000 miles from the European theater, and the Black Sea – at the mercy of Turkey cutting them off at the Bosphorus. France and Britain came to the aid of the Ottomans out of fear that Russia would become too powerful, a reasonable fear given Russia’s advantage in population, territory and natural resources. By 1914 though, Russia had grown weak. When two of your natural adversaries fight one of your other natural adversaries, it’s best to let them duke it out.

eat a snickers. you lose your sense of humor and ability to recognize tongue in cheek when you’re hungry.

I’ve heard people use that as a serious argument, so that was the context I read it in.

As great and insightful the founding fathers were, they somehow neglected to make the article to ban from presidential office direct family relatives and offspring from a previous president. It would have seemed to be even been more relevant back in their era. I wonder if it was discussed.

I’d back that new amendment in a heartbeat.

As brilliant as the founders were, they were blinded by their republican ideals in some ways. I don’t think they saw much problem with family members being elected to the same office, as they assumed the electoral system they designed would prevent dynastic abuses. Also, the office of the President didn’t hold nearly as much power back then – the founders always saw the Congress as the real heart of the government.

I think it would’ve been much more helpful if they had codified their dislike of political parties into the Constitution somewhere. The two-party system has done far more damage than the little bits of nepotism we’ve seen.

John Adams saw the writing on the wall in 1780: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”