The last is more about geography than punishment. Easy and West Germany were simply where the front lines were. If it was a Nazi France and the lines somehow ended where they did they still would have wound up as being where most troops were.
Does a more lenient Versailles treaty really prevent the rise of Nazism and WW2?
- Thread starter Mitchell Hundred
- Start date
... somehow this reminds me of a prayer's wheel ...
From wiki
Such annexionisrt wish- and pipedreams were well known to certain power groups in otherwhere as well
It was notoriuos Fritz Fischer - possibly along with pro-entente propagand... erhm historians - who used/abused this and declared/disinterpreted it out anything but his very own feelings alone it were longstanding official political aims (as he did with many other sources to fit 'his' interpretation of history).
For the - felt - umpteenth time:
The "September-program" was never s source or agreed on official politc by Bethmann-Hollweg, the german goverment or any other body of the 'Reichsleitung' (Realms Leadership).
From wiki
It was a compilation of ideas of admitted mainly 'rightish' power groups made by the chancellors secretary. If on demand by Bethmann or on his own initiatuive is something unknown and still debated.
Such annexionisrt wish- and pipedreams were well known to certain power groups in otherwhere as well
It was notoriuos Fritz Fischer - possibly along with pro-entente propagand... erhm historians - who used/abused this and declared/disinterpreted it out anything but his very own feelings alone it were longstanding official political aims (as he did with many other sources to fit 'his' interpretation of history).
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Or equally even without that myth
The dolchstoss myth was a result of the resentment, not the cause of it.
TDM
Kicked
True it was never official adopted policy, but neither was it written by some completely out of touch low down member of the Government establishment, Kurt Riezler wasn't just Bethmann Hollweg's private secretary*, but was also heavily involved in foreign policy
Riezler's duties in the chancellor's office concerned primarily, but not exclusively, foreign policy. In 1914 he authored the September Program which proposed as possible German war aims limited annexations, a hard peace for France, and a Belgian vassal state.[2] In October 1917 he was posted to the German embassy in Stockholm to arrange a cease-fire on the Eastern Front, and then to Moscow as the top aide to Germany's ambassador to Russia, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. Riezler was an eyewitness to Mirbach's assassination by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries on 9 July 1918, having unwittingly ushered the gunman Yakov Blumkin into Mirbach's presence.
During this period, Riezler served as the conduit for German subsidies to the Bolsheviks and personally negotiated these with Lenin's representatives Karl Radek and Alexander Parvus. Riezler later claimed privately that it had been his own idea to transport Lenin in the famous "sealed train" from Zurich through Germany to Russia in April 1917.[3]
Also the fact that the September programme seems pretty similar in feel and scale to the later treaty of Brest-Litovsk (see above Riezler being involved in the east, probably not a coincidence) suggests it wasn't some mad out there idea when it came to what the German government were thinking in case of victory in the west.
*which is actaully a pretty significant position with power and influence and very telling of Bethmann Hollwegg's thinking anyway (and sorry the idea he just upped and researched the programme off his own bat without the knowledge or input of Hollwegg is naive in the extreme).
After working as a journalist for the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, a semi-official newspaper, he joined the press section of the German Foreign Office in 1907 and attracted the attention of Wilhelm II.[1] When Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg became chancellor of Germany in 1909, Riezler became his chief adviser and confidant.
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FairlyUninformedGraduate
Gone Fishin'
Given the date and time:
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."
"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Alex Watson - Ring of Steel
"German leaders entered the conflict with no firm goals, but their army's rapid advance through Belgium and into Northern France soon focused minds on the fruits of victory. Already on 9 September 1914, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg approved the first highly secret but still provisional war aims programme. Written by his principal assistant, Kurt Riezler, this document stated boldly that 'the general aim of the war' was 'security for the German Reich in west and east for all imaginable time'. This disarmingly simple aim was to be the basis of German policy throughout hostilities. While it was defensive in conception, the intention to achieve everlasting security as a zero-sum game to be won through domination not cooperation., it soon slid into aggression. To secure Germany 'for all imaginable time' could not, even in Bethmann's mind and certainly not for the more hawkish elites around him, mean merely a return to the unstable status quo of the last peacetime years. Instead it required permanent control of invasion routes and the subjection of dangerous neighbours: 'France must be so weakened as to make her revival as a great power impossible for all time. Russia must be thrust as far as possible from Germany's eastern frontier and her domination over the non-Russian vassal peoples broken.'
"The September memorandum was a list of maximum demands to be imposed if the German army succeeded decisively in beating the French in the west. Two broad themes ran through it. First was security. France was to be eternally exposed to the threat of invasion through possible border adjustments in the Vosges, the seizure of the Belfort fortress in that region, and the razing of other frontier defences. Her military potential would be eliminated by a war indemnity 'high enough to prevent [her] spending any considerable sums on armaments in the next 15-20 years'. Belgium was to be 'reduced to a vassal state' and like France made vulnerable by the confiscation of the fortress and city of Liege that the German army had found so difficult to defeat one month earlier. The memorandum was intent on establishing, along with the enduring security of the Reich's western border, a base for continuing war against its most formidable enemy, Britain. The maritime power's perfidious influence on the continent would be negated through the occupation of Belgium's naval ports. The taking of the French coast from Dunkirk to Boulogne, possibly joined to the new submissive Belgian state, would enable the Kaiser to station his navy opposite Dover, permanently threatening the United Kingdom's southern coast.
"The second preoccupation in the September memorandum was economic. It emphasized and furthered German peacetime imperial goals in seeking 'a continuous Central African colonial empire'. However, the document mostly broke with the past in focusing less on overseas possessions than on formal and informal economic expansion in Europe. The Germans planned to grab some valuable economic assets from their enemies. The Longwy-Briey mines, which yielded 81 per cent of French iron ore and were already in German hands, were to be permanently annexed. Avariciously, the Chancellor's memorandum also envisaged taking the premier commercial entrepot of Antwerp. A German-owned corridor would run from the city south-east to Liege, which would become German Luttich. However, the keystone of the new economic order envisaged in the September programme was a more subtle 'central European economic association through common customs treaties to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway'. Here lay the beginnings of Bethmann Hollweg's infamous Mitteleuropa project."
Not claiming that this is why Germany entered the war (I certainly don't believe it to be the case) but I leave it to you to decide if this could be described as "serious ambitions for territorial expansion on the part of either A-H or Germany in 1914".
"German leaders entered the conflict with no firm goals, but their army's rapid advance through Belgium and into Northern France soon focused minds on the fruits of victory. Already on 9 September 1914, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg approved the first highly secret but still provisional war aims programme. Written by his principal assistant, Kurt Riezler, this document stated boldly that 'the general aim of the war' was 'security for the German Reich in west and east for all imaginable time'. This disarmingly simple aim was to be the basis of German policy throughout hostilities. While it was defensive in conception, the intention to achieve everlasting security as a zero-sum game to be won through domination not cooperation., it soon slid into aggression. To secure Germany 'for all imaginable time' could not, even in Bethmann's mind and certainly not for the more hawkish elites around him, mean merely a return to the unstable status quo of the last peacetime years. Instead it required permanent control of invasion routes and the subjection of dangerous neighbours: 'France must be so weakened as to make her revival as a great power impossible for all time. Russia must be thrust as far as possible from Germany's eastern frontier and her domination over the non-Russian vassal peoples broken.'
"The September memorandum was a list of maximum demands to be imposed if the German army succeeded decisively in beating the French in the west. Two broad themes ran through it. First was security. France was to be eternally exposed to the threat of invasion through possible border adjustments in the Vosges, the seizure of the Belfort fortress in that region, and the razing of other frontier defences. Her military potential would be eliminated by a war indemnity 'high enough to prevent [her] spending any considerable sums on armaments in the next 15-20 years'. Belgium was to be 'reduced to a vassal state' and like France made vulnerable by the confiscation of the fortress and city of Liege that the German army had found so difficult to defeat one month earlier. The memorandum was intent on establishing, along with the enduring security of the Reich's western border, a base for continuing war against its most formidable enemy, Britain. The maritime power's perfidious influence on the continent would be negated through the occupation of Belgium's naval ports. The taking of the French coast from Dunkirk to Boulogne, possibly joined to the new submissive Belgian state, would enable the Kaiser to station his navy opposite Dover, permanently threatening the United Kingdom's southern coast.
"The second preoccupation in the September memorandum was economic. It emphasized and furthered German peacetime imperial goals in seeking 'a continuous Central African colonial empire'. However, the document mostly broke with the past in focusing less on overseas possessions than on formal and informal economic expansion in Europe. The Germans planned to grab some valuable economic assets from their enemies. The Longwy-Briey mines, which yielded 81 per cent of French iron ore and were already in German hands, were to be permanently annexed. Avariciously, the Chancellor's memorandum also envisaged taking the premier commercial entrepot of Antwerp. A German-owned corridor would run from the city south-east to Liege, which would become German Luttich. However, the keystone of the new economic order envisaged in the September programme was a more subtle 'central European economic association through common customs treaties to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway'. Here lay the beginnings of Bethmann Hollweg's infamous Mitteleuropa project."
Not claiming that this is why Germany entered the war (I certainly don't believe it to be the case) but I leave it to you to decide if this could be described as "serious ambitions for territorial expansion on the part of either A-H or Germany in 1914".
Dmz
Banned
Germany didn't start the war. It was a localized war: Austria-Hungary vs. Serbia until the allied backed Russia ordered a general mobilzation. Both France and Russia rejected German demands for neutrality instead France followed Russia and ordered a general mobilzation which exploded the localized war into a World War.
For those asking what the SeptemberProgramm actually entailed:
[link] [/link](MittleEuropa)
(West)
(East)
(Brest-Litovsk)
[link] [/link](MittleEuropa)
(West)
(East)
(Brest-Litovsk)
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For the context of the treaty and this timeframe in history does it really matter who started the war but who won it? France and the Allied powers were the victors and the deadliest battles were all fought on French territory.
Dmz
Banned
It most certainly matters especially when Germany was forced to accept sole blame for the war which was the basis for such a harsh treaty.
FairlyUninformedGraduate
Gone Fishin'
Germany and Austria declared war knowing russia would intervene on Serbia's behalf. They knew also that this would bring in France . They had a plan to neutralise france ready to go. The basis of the war was the invasion of a small country by an empire which wanted to control it.
Done with this thread, going in circles.
Garrison
Donor
No, the basis for the harshness of the treaty was Germany's actions during the war. The invasion of neutral Belgium, wholesale looting and destruction in the occupied territories, slave labour, and the fact that they introduced the world to chemical warfare, aerial bombardment of civilians and unlimited submarine warfare. It was also inevitable that Alsace Lorraine would be returned to the French since the Germans had emphatically lost the war. The war guilt clause was actually intended to limit reparations. Also all of the most onerous provisions had been rolled back by the time the Nazi's came to power and WWII happened because alone among the leaders of Europe Hitler wanted a war.
They did not know that Russia will intervene. Russia did never make it clear. Also if Austria knew that Rusia was going to protect Serbia why did they start the war with the war plan that was ment for the case of "war against Serbia only" and tried disastrously to switch to the "against Russia and Serbia plan" later when Russian involvement became a certainty?
kham_coc
Banned
Well that's nonsense. The Germans could have been Angels, it wouldn't have changed a singular thing.
Greece.
The one most inimical to revanchism wasn't.
That's Austria and the other German areas. At it's core Germany was simply never ever going to accept the rank hypocrisy of the Versailles order.
Garrison
Donor
Because they made a serious error in their strategic assessment based on bad assumptions? Which would hardly make them unique in either world war.
Here's the original site:
What were Germany's long-term aims in World War I?
In World War I, according to the Schlieffen Plan, Germany aimed to defeat France in several weeks, before freeing up soldiers to fight on the front against Russia. Suppose their plan would have
history.stackexchange.com
Dmz
Banned
Ban
France and Russia mobilized first that was the precursor to the World War. France wanted war with Germany ever since the end Franco-Prussian War.
No, the actual reason was the allied countries were terrified of Germany's stunning growth after it's unification. The Treaty Versailles was the perfect excuse to financially destroy Germany.
Hitler wanted war? Germany was invaded twiced during the interwar period. How many times is France allowed to invade before Germany is allowed to defend itself?
Someone had the audacity to defend Hitler here. That's something you don't see here often.
Edit: needed better word choice
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