Okay Austria we handle France while you keep Russians off our backs

Not meaning to come off like that, I would love to talk about ww1.

One of my mayor thoughts about the war is

1) Was it capitalism/factory owners which would profiteer from a great war that was one if not the most leading factor to the war?

And second, is it not true that all the monarch where like cousins? Why didn't their grandmother forbid it or they would not have given Christmas presents that year?

War profiteering is something that certainly happened during the war, to the point where nearly every country involved in the conflict introduced legislation to clamp down on it at some point or another. Plenty of well-positioned individuals made quite a bit of money by filling contracts for the various armies involved in the war. But those people didn't start the war. There was no dark cabal of industrialists whispering into the ears of military and political leaders that they must mobilize and declare war. That happened on its own.

Of course it happen during the war, that's when the goods where needed.

What I was trying to talk a little about is how much of the industrial revolution of later 1800s which created a pre modern MIC if you will.

What was there role leading up to the war? Would it not be for the best interest of the factory owners which sells army materials to try incite a war by rising global tension?

>lets just march into this tiny country next to us with its capital on our border and take control of it
>no wait lets surprise them by attacking them from their western mountainous border

>whereas Austria had no such reserves.

Yes they did, tard
Pic related
Stop looking at Austria as if it had always been the small country it's now

Wilson did have a point. He was too ahead of his time.

Did the french colonies assist in ww1?

Barely (7.8 millions out of the 8.6 millions troops France used were from he mainland)

British colonies however made up for half of Britain's forces

How come the Austro-Hungarian could not launch some offensive after peace with russia in 1817? Or where they already entrenched that far south? And Englands naval supremacy would set a stop to any naval endeavors i suppose?

Because A-H had already lost so many troops that they simply no longer had the capacity to launch offensives.

>French Army: 3,700,000
>Austrian Army: 800,000

I think you kind of proved my point, thanks.

They did in their last remaining front in Italy, but it ran out of steam after initial success. They won in Caporetto, where the Italians retreated to the Piave River, but they defeated an Austrian attack there and followed up with a counterattack at Vittorio Veneto, which was a colossal disaster that forced the collapse of the empire.

Austria Hungary was simply exhausted by the end of 1917 and couldn't stage any offensives large enough to win on the Italian front.

>this meme again

Austria was hampered by its own union with H*ngary which continually try to undermine their own war efforts because they're afraid to lose their power
Its funny because it came to bite them in their arse when they were partitioned

They were too busy fighting the 12th battle of the Isonzo.

Imagine if Franz Ferdinand survived and became emperor
the dude had a pathological if not autistic hatred for Hungarians
Austria-Hungary would have ceased to be an entity for sure. in fact I wouldn't be surprised if FF created a tripartite monarchy with the Slavs (as ridiculous/unlikely as that is) just to fuck over the Magyars

>tripartite monarchy with the Slavs

That's more or less exactly what he planned on doing as soon as he inherited the throne from his seemingly immortal father.

there was actually a scandal in A-H over the exposure of Franz Ferdinand's plans to instigate a civil war to crush Budapest manually

Why haven't I heard about this before? That sounds important. Most of things I've read about Ferdinand make him out to be a somewhat boring (uncharismatic) but ultimately good and forward-thinking person.

He was. The H*ngarians opposed the idea of any other nationalities having power besides them and the Austrian Germans and would have blocked a reform of the empire.

The actual plan was to knock France out before Russia could mobilize. Russia actually mobilized faster than Germany and was already invading East Prussia when the Schliffen plan was initiated.

This is why Germany is so retarded, they stuck to a strategy that already had expired and failed.

god i hate the m*gyars

How close did it come to working, lads?

what I don't understand about the tripartite system is what exactly the third monarchy is
Croatia (I've heard this the most)? Bohemia (probably the most powerful)? ALL the Slavs (would this not legitimize Pan-Slavism and their particular nationalism)?

>somewhat boring (uncharismatic)
well in Habsburg terms, the dude was a social firecracker
the whole 'Franz Ferdinand the progressive/reformer' is a little reductionist imo. he did want change...cause he hated the fact HUNgarians had so much power. I think his ideal state would be an Austrian Empire that happened to control all of Hungary's territory too.
dude was pretty traditionalist/reactionary, and probably (though this is my projection) wanted a return to the pre-1867 system.

if he went forth with his plans, it would be 1848 (the failed magyar revolution) all over again...likely without Russian help unless Austria gave up Bosnia and maybe more. in which case I'd think Austria would appeal to Germany (FF was good friends with Willy 2)

My honest opinion is that you wouldn't have to change very much to create a scenario where Germany would win WW1. With a few generals making better decisions here or there could have added up to a German victory. The biggest mistake, however, was resuming unrestricted U-boat warfare, which brought America into the war.

they risked the chance of cutting deep through French and getting overran
imagine Marne happening except 3 German armies getting boxed inside France and the supply problems

That was before the war.

It was doomed because Russia mobilized too quickly to pull it off. The entire concept was that Germany would be able to focus almost all of its troops on France and Belgium during the opening days of the war, before the Russians could mount any serious offensive. It turned out, the Russians were launching major offensives within the first 5 weeks of the war.

Victoria was long dead by then. It's unlikely she'd have been able to do anything about it either way, but it's an amusing thought.

>is it not true that all the monarch where like cousins?

I don't think they were actually related, but Wilhem and Nicholas could easily be mistaken for twins.

Meh, the allies were about to break the Germans anyway.

You're thinking of George V and Nicholas, and, yes, they were all three cousins.

Alright boys, see that heavily fortified position across the river? We're gonna just straight up charge the damn thing, and if we fail I'll kill every tenth man and then try charging it again! One day we'll win, right?

ITALY WOULDVE REACHED VENETIA BY 1917 IF IT WASNT FROM HIM

Nivelle, Joffre, and Haig were often just as bad, if not worse. Cadorna is just more memeable because he launched all his disastrous offensives in exactly the same place, the absolute madman.

>lowest man power of all European powers
>fought on most fronts
your picture proved you wrong

Is it fair to say that Petain was the only Entente general who had any clue what he was doing? As far as "A World Undone" is concerned, the author seems intent on characterizing Petain as the only sane man and the other Entente generals as mental midgets, completely unable to adapt to modern warfare.

How the fuck did Russia mobilize so fast?

It was kind of dumb luck. Russia happened to have a lot of troops in what we'd now call Poland at the time war broke out. The General in charge also kinda rushed them out because he'd made a personal promise to France that he'd attack Germany within 2 weeks of war breaking out, and he kept that fucking promise, even though it meant leaving behind a lot of essential equipment. His army was painfully under-equipped because he refused to wait for more supplies to arrive, but it was still dangerous enough to require a German response, and Kaiser Wilhem had something like a nervous breakdown when he found out that there was already a Russian army breaking its way in.

Why were those dudes in Poland? Why were the germans so surprized if the russians literally had a massive army chilling in the neighbouring region even before the war? Was german intelligence service just crappy?

>Was german intelligence service just crappy?

More like it was almost non-existent, the army had just one small department dedicated to counterintelligence only since most of the german high command didn't care much about espionage, Russia and the UK had much better developed intelligence organizations with a secret police and everything.

They got somewhat better as the war went on and the generals got their heads off their asses and realized that the old prussian strategies wouldn't be enough anymore but the damaged had already been done at that point.

>Why were those dudes in Poland?

Knowing Tsarist Russia, they were probably there to pogrom polish Jews most likely, a not uncommon occurrence in those days.

>This time I will have the last laugh
t. Loogi, 1918

It's true that Petain seemed to grasp how to use tanks for a pincer attack.

"This fucking sandwich..."

Once the initial attack on France failed, there are lots of reasons why it became a long war of attrition.

You'd have to change something that would make that attack succeed. At some point, anything you did would come up against the wall of making the German army march for a month without sleep, while the French could redeploy by rail.

>Be Woodrow Wilson
>send American soldiers to finish off the Kaiser because the rest of the Entente couldn't do it
>go into the postwar negotiations assuming you'll be dealing with rational human beings
>it's all just Europeans REEEEEEEEEEEEing over 300-year-old border disputes that they've had 10 wars over and their alleged ethnic majorities in in other nation's cities meaning they deserve them more

Be a French or British politician at the time.

Try to tell the voters that they lost a whole generation of young men for no territorial gains.

>"we lost millions of men everyone, but it's alright! we've got Alsace-Lorraine again! IT WAS ALL WORTH IT"

that was not a bad plan desu as no one thought that Serbia would put that strong of a defence and it was done to prevent a Serbian uprising in Bosnia , they just put the wrong man in charge of it, Potiorek was possibly the worst general of the war

Roman Empire 2.0

Oh yeah, and we took German East Africa!

Ill mannered kids can't even stop bickering in their old age.

England, Germany and Russian monarchs where all related as cousins I know, I dont know about France or austro hungarian.

I would beg to differ, the Germans where forced to send huge amount of soldiers to assist Hungary in the east and fend them off, and after prussian poland where secured they later even had to send troops there.

But most of what saved the allies where the brittish colonies, noone can argue that, otherwise no food, a lot fewer soldiers and so on.

My history teacher went so far to claim that after Russia didnt want to play anymore that the centralpowers actually where on the offensive but it was not until the american troops landed that they gave up.

Dont forget that it would also take two years for the Russian industry to catch up with the supplies manufacturing.

I'm pretty sure poor old Franz Joseph died knowing that all he had worked for was about to come crashing down. Not the best way to face the end

When are the conspiracy theories about the archduke where actually assasinated by jews/reptilians and such?

American troops had barely begun to take part when Germany collapsed from within.

The Germans produced maybe 25 tanks the whole war. The Brits and French made thousands, and were learning how to use them when the war ended.

>the Franco-British tank formations decisively crushed the Germans, ending WW1 by forcing their way through the trenches!
are you writing alternative history now?

>The Brits and French made thousands of tanks in WW1

what the fuck am I reading

>implying this momentous gain didn't change the lives of ordinary Britons massively

how dare you, dun u even kno MUH EMPIRE?

landships.activeboard.com/t35439129/total-number-of-tanks-usedproduced-per-nation-1916-1918/

A little straw man there, maybe?

It's a good example of how once the war started, it became self-sustaining. Every nation involved was desperate to get SOMETHING out of it, something that might justify the sacrifice of millions of young men. Towards the end, Erich Ludendorff was insistent that he would not consider any peace agreement where Germany would not be allowed to keep Belgium, because apparently in his mind, conquering fucking Belgium was enough to justify the thousands of men that Germany had lost in the war. Ludendorff's insistence on holding onto Belgium at all cost killed any chance of a "peace without victory" because of course Britain was equally unwilling to let go of Belgium after having also sacrificed thousands of soldiers.

>*teleports behind you

Pshh, nothing personal Austria

It wasn't about winning, it was about not losing it. Look at what happened to Russia, Austria Hungary.

>1)
>And second,
dear god why

France wasn't a monarchy. Franz Joseph of A-H probably wasn't so directly related with the others, considering that he was much older (like only 10 years younger than Vicky). But he probably had some indirect blood bond as well.

>Implying Italians

at least he kept them occupied

Yes, only a true tactical genius could manage to outsmart conrad.

The Lusitania did not bring America into the war. The fuckery with Mexico did.

Through sheer probability, there must be a handful, not many but a handful, of enlisted Italian soldiers who fought through every one of those battles. Imagine being one of those men. Reactions must've ranged from hopeless alcoholism to feelings of invincibility, perhaps in the same individual.

>We must attack the Ottomans through Gallipoli, the soft underbelly of the Central Powers!

HOWEVER

H

Wasn't it von sanders and the german equipment that won gallipolli though?

It would be essentially false to say that Atatürk wasn't a central figure of the campaign.

I mean it kinda comes to the point of if it wasn't for the germans gallipolli wouldn't be that fortified and the ottomans wouldn't have enough guns to defend anyway.

These things aren't mutually exclusive.

How is it not mutually exclusive?

>germans don't fortify gallipolli
>there's no artillery to defend the crossing
>germans don't arm the turks
>turks don't have any guns to use

I think that you should actually read about the various thinks that Kemal did during the battle. There were points where the ANZAC's were literally seconds away from capturing the high ground, only for Kemal and his soldiers to get there just a few moments faster and then bayonetting the ANZAC's back down the hill. He went over a week without sleep being the battle.