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[FONT="]Guns, Bombs, Germs and Steel
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[FONT="]All Are Equal: 1914-1916[/FONT]
[FONT="]The Second World war grew out of European imperialism and lust for war. After Serbian nationalists assassinated Austrian Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand and Austria invaded Serbia the old European alliance system ran together like clockwork to create two vast opposing alliance blocs. When the two blocs met on the battlefield the result would be near instantaneous quagmire. As 1913 drew to a close the Great war predicted by many seemed to have flagged and faltered in the mud of France. Despite a brief and heart warming truce on Christmas day 1913 the war was one of unspeakable brutality and pointlessness. For three more grisly years this evil conflict dragged on till at last on the 1st of May 1915 the British Army made a breakthrough. On the river Somme German forces were seriously exposed and it was predicted that if the allied powers launched successive attacks to draw off German forces in Europe a successful strike could be made through German lines in France. A massive Franco-British force attacked on the 12th of May and the force immediately struck through German lines, aided by tanks and several bombing runs conducted by the Royal aviation Corps earlier that day. With the Somme line broken Germany staged a haperdaper retreat north to the Hindenburg line trying desperately to salvage the situation however a massive landing by South African and Rhodesian Forces in Antwerp and a Belgian uprising sponsored by the Allies in Brussels caused the entire German Army in France to become overstretched and dangerously undersupplied. By June 1916 the effort of battle had exhausted the Armed forces and the will of their Supreme Commander General Ludendorff. By December Ludendorff saw a window of opportunity to seize back the initiative as the French approached Strasbourg. He gave the order for the German Army to march on Heidelberg and then on to Berlin to depose the Kaiser. The army collapsed into bickering and in-fighting and as Ludendorff's putsch went up in smoke the Allies were able to push on to Berlin.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The peace treaty that ended the war, the Treaty of Hamburg, was firm and un-fair. Germany was to be crippled militarily, her once mighty army stripped down to a mere million men. Her navy the Kriegsmarine was permitted a mere 25,000 sailors and 9 battleships. Her political system was also bastardised, removing the elected Reichstag and replacing it with an officious "Cabinet of the learned" of "Cabinet of the Monocles" as it was referred to by the disgruntled masses of Germany for most of this cabinet were upper class aristocrats. The Rhineland would also be occupied by the French military, who would extract any and all material wealth they needed in order to restore Northern France to prosperity after three years as a war zone. The treaty was condemned by the Russians and the Austrians but owing to the fact that both these states had collapsed into civil war made their bargaining power slim to none. Austria lasted a few more days before collapsing entirely. The Ottoman empire survived as a rump state buoyed up by infusions o western oil money and the astounding general ship of its Grand Vizier Mustafa Kemal. Bulgaria declared its neutrality and was occupied briefly by its neighbour Rumania. Europe's most deadly war had come to a devastating end, not with a bang with a brief whimper.[/FONT]