Why are the Germans generally seen as the bad guys in WW1?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrecklichkeit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Belgium
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Kalisz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Border_Strip

Alright with these together I got my answer. Thanks, guys

The situation evolved very quickly. After the assassination, Wilhelm sent a telegram to the Austrian government that strongly suggested he wanted the Austrians to take military action against Serbia. The Austrians were thrilled to hear this, because that is exactly what they wanted to do in the first place. Then as the situation progress, and Wilhelm became more informed about the specifics of the situation, he eventually sent another message which strongly suggested that he wanted the Austrians to delay military action. This baffled the Austrians because they thought they'd been given a definitive green-light to go ahead and squash Serbia once and for all.

By this point in time, public opinion in the European press was rapidly shifting in favor of Serbia. The Austrians were aware of this, and they wanted to commence with military action as rapidly as possible because of it, because in their minds, their window of opportunity was soon going to evaporate. But then something happened which radically raised the stakes of the situation; Russia started mobilizing their army. Nicholas II had been convinced by his ministers, and by the French ambassador to Russia, that mobilizing the Russian army would cow the Austrians into backing down.

The beginning of Russian mobilization terrified the German military to a degree that would be difficult to exaggerate, and at this point, Moltke and Falkenhayn started practically begging the Kaiser to order a full mobilization of the German military in response. To his credit, Tirpitz urged caution and said that it would be better to wait, but he was alone in saying this. The problem was that for Germany, mobilizing the army meant automatically invading France through Belgium. Imagine a gun that can't removed from its holster without automatically aiming and firing it. The Kaiser was eventually cajoled by his generals into mobilizing, at which point the the Schlieffen Plan was automatically put in motion.

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I always thought the 'blame split' should go something like
-Austria-Hungary - 60% for making stupid demands
-Russia - 20% for backing up Serbia because "pan-slavism"
-Germany - the last 20% for Willy just wanting another war

It wasn't a 'deranged single individual', it was a terrorist attack premeditated by a group which received funding from figures highly placed in the Serbian government.
Was it Austria's fault for offering the Serbs the ultimatum, or the Serbs' fault for offering strong provocation for war, knowing that Russia would offer them support?
Serbia is responsible for WW1.

>Why is the country that killed, raided, bombed; took the most causalities, was raided and bombed the most blamed for the conflict?

Knowledge is knowing that Austria-Hungary started the war with Serbia.
Wisdom is knowing that Germany was the true Eternal Gaul and made it the real Great War.

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Rape of belgium and other british propaganda

I don't get why Germany suddenly wanted to attack everyone in 1914 when they had a better chance to win during the Moroccan crisis in 1905 but chose not too

The invasion of Belgium. And then the rape of Belgium.

>being this much of a liar
>The German shipping tycoon Albert Ballin recalled that when the German government heard a misleading report that Serbia had accepted the ultimatum, there was "disappointment", but "tremendous joy" when it learned that the Serbs had not accepted all of the Austrian terms.[102]
The Germans wanted war and the Germans started the war, stop being contrarian faggots

The demands were fucking fine. They boiled down to “stop the fucking terrorists” and “bring the killers to justice”. Reasonable demands considering their heir had just been assasinated by a Serbian supported terrorist organization. Austria would have been justfied in declaring war on Serbia without issuing an ultimatum, the fact that they issued one anyway just puts Serbia more in the wrong.

Germans were scared of Russia

In 1905 their Army wasn't ready to take on both France and Russia. In 1914 it almost was...but they were getting more and more scared of the Russian armaments programme. They knew that Russian population growth and industrialisation meant that soon it would be impossible to win against Russia

This. The eternal slav needed a good hiding, and should have received one uneventfully.

No they weren't wtf is this trend of blatantly lying about basic knowledge on this retarded board. Read a book, the Austrians demanded not only that the perpetrators would be brought to justice, but that suspects and nationalists would be too. The Austrians also demanded control of media and called for the dismemberment of nationalist parties. They also called for Austrian detectives in Serbia and Austrian forces controlling the country. The demands were literally described as designed to be unacceptable and strip all dignity from Serbia by the same people who called for them. And don't pretend a monarch being killed is something odd, Serbia lost 1/4 of it's population in that war out of no aggression of it's own government, go be autistic on /pol/.

Austria never actually offered any proof that Serbia was behind the assassination. It was just a thinly-veiled excuse for military action against Serbia.

Because in 1905, Germany still felt very secure about their position in Europe, and so they didn't feel the need to lash out. By 1914, the situation had changed drastically, with both Russia and France becoming much stronger, and certain people in the German general staff were very concerned that Russia might become unstoppable if something wasn't done about it in the very immediate future. These individuals pounced on the July Crisis as an opportunity to finally do something about Russia.

Also, Germany already had plans of engaging in war with France and Russia to chip away some of Russia's Polish territories and France's colonies.

In short, Germany used the Austro-Serbian situation as a means for fulfilling their plan of making themselves the number one power on continental Europe and kickstart the process of becoming a massive colonial power. It was also Germany who turned the war from an Austro-Serbian one (Austro-Serbian-Russian one in reality) into a world war by attacking France, and by doing it through Belgium.

France had plans to team up with Russia to regain Alsace-Lorraine. France and Russia could have easily kept the matter solely between Austria and Serbia, but they refused to.

The blame breaks down as follows:
>50% the Russians mobilized fully, which was an act of war, the first of the Great War
>5% the krauts responded to the Russians mobilization by attacking them and their frog allies as was always planned
>20% the frogs egged on the Russians to mobilize and assured them they'd be with them if it came to war with Germany, which they were ravenous for
>20% the bongs publicly played the peacenik, but quietly assured the frogs and slavs that they'd join them if push came to shove, meaning they wanted them to go first and fight the war with the krauts that they were also ravenous for
>5% the slav secret service murdered the archduke and the ausfags were about to give them the requisite beatdown, just as each of the above imperialist fuckwits always did in all the places they murdered people.

Every country makes plans for potential invasions of their neighbors.

The US. had plans for invasion of the the British Empire before WW2 but that doesn't mean they were going to do it

Mobilizing isn't an act of war. Sending armed soldiers into another country's territory is an act of war, but just getting soldiers ready for a possible war isn't an act of war.

>Hitler planting countless troops on the borders with the sudetenland wasn't an act of war

Yes, all those countries had plans against each other, but it was Germany who first acted upon those plans when they invaded Belgium and tried to Schlieffen plan. The point I was making is that Germany is seen as the perpetrator of the war, because they used the Austro-Serbian crisis to enact their planned war vs France and Russia. Neither France nor Russia drew first blood; Germany did.

The Eternal G*rman can't wait for the latest opportunity to destroy civilization

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>Mobilizing isn't an act of war.
Yes, it is, and has always been considered an act of war. If you point a gun at somebody's head, it is an act of war. Educate yourself, young man.

Nice try Klaus

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Well, France and Britain didn't declare war until Hitler invaded Poland, so yea it's not an act of war.

>The US. had plans for invasion of the the British Empire before WW2 but that doesn't mean they were going to do it
Au contraire, they did it. The bongs invited them in, just like 1688.

Its a real shame posts like this are ignored. You're obviously well informed on the topic so thanks for your post user. I wish the Krautboos would just accept blame for declaring war on two other great powers and invading neutral countries. The blame Austria/Russia posters have always got an emotional investment in defending Germany.

For sure. If you're having a shouting match with somebody and they suddenly pull a gun what the fuck are you gonna do?

>he doesn't know about the appeasement policy and the betrayal of Czechoslovakia
When you're done with primary school lets chat

fix your teeth, nigel

Except its well known the Russians were trying to scare the Austrians in to backing down and that telegrams between Germany and Russia said as much. Germany knew Russia didn't want war but they ignored it because Germany wanted war.

I know about it.

Lad, your fantasies don't really count for much. That slav mobilization spoke all the words that were important. It was an act of war. End of.

Then stop being so autistic as to imply that "acts of war" can only be identified as such only when they directly cause a war.

>Be Germany
>Promise Austria help if they start trouble with my rivals little friend Serbia
>I know Serbia is under Russian influence but I want war with Russia
>I know Russia is under French influence but also want war with France
>I have already ruined diplomatic relations with Russia and Britain in the proceeding years by essentially promising things and breaking my promises and so Austria is my only friend left and I can't break my promise this time because I would be alone diplomatically
>Russia asks me to break my promise so they can frighten Austria in to not attacking his friend
>Say no
>Declare war Russia
>Invade Belgium and Luxembourg, two neutral countries, politically isolating myself even more
>Declare war on France
>Lose war, everyone hates me
>Blame Austria

Attached: german foreign policy.png (645x729, 77K)

>they were trying to scare the austrians into backing down

considering it supposedly wanted war so much the Germans waited 3 days after Russian mobilization began to mobilize their forces and that's huge when you take in to account how much the Germans were afraid of the Russians. It was a race to be mobilized and the Russians started first so it put a time pressure on the Germans

And Germany knew Russia would mobilize with an Austrian invasion of Serbia, you don't bait a fish then complain it took the bait. Russia explicitly told Germany it was mobilizing against Austria and not Germany, if it was a declaration of war it was against Austria and not Germany.

In the end it was Germany that declared war on Russia, it took Austria a week to actually catch up with Germany and also declare war. Russia didn't declare war on either Austria or Germany, it isn't fantasy and they events have been recorded and can be found easily online, you just need to will to use google and accept that Germany started the war.

The militarization of Russia's western borders clearly weren't seen as an act of war, and the Germans knew that Russia was doing it to get Austria to back down. Furthermore, it the militarization of the border truly was an act of war, then why did Germany attack France first when France hadn't declared war or begin full mobilization yet? Germany wanted a war and fully acted under the pretence of engaging in a war. They and the Austrians were the only ones who really really wanted a war.

>Russia explicitly told Germany it was mobilizing against Austria and not Germany
False, it was a full mobilization, and thus an act of war... AGAINST GERMANY.

You really are just making this up as you go along, lad. You should stop now.

That is the idea, politically the same thing had happened during the Russo-Japanese War, Russia was at war with Japan and Germany seemed geared to actually join the war against Japan. Britain and France (wanting to keep Russian ambitions in Asia in check) publicly supported Japan, lo and behold Germany backed down like a whipped dog. No doubt Russia was imitating such a political move albeit at a much faster and aggressive pace.

>“It is technically impossible to stop our military preparations which were obligatory owing to Austria’s mobilization. We are far from wishing for war. As long as the negotiations with Austria on Serbia’s account are taking place my troops shall not make any provocative action. I give you my solemn word for this.”

Nicholas to Wilhelm directly, if it was an act of war it was against Austria and not Germany. The Russians and in fact the rest of Europe were sympathetic to Serbia and wanted a diplomatic solution.

>If you point a gun at somebody's head, it is an act of war.
That's not a good analogy. Mobilization is more like a frontier sheriff loading his rifle and gathering his deputies because he heard a rumor that a gang of bandits was about the rob the local bank. It doesn't necessarily mean he's going to shoot somebody, he's just getting ready, in case the need does arise.

>have a clear alliance with Austria
>"don't worry bro we just want to attack your ally, carve up their empire, and leave you diplomatically isolated"
>"whoa what the fuck why are you defending your ally?????? you guys are literally worse than hitler for creating the conditions that allowed hitler to take power"

This image is fucking trash. It doesnt include the order in which nations mobilized. Austria -> russia -> Germany

>french siding with the aggressor instead of your ally
with friends like these

Rape of Belgium really didn't help

They tried to ally with M*xico. Of course they're the bad guys.

More like
>Don't worry bro, we just want to be sure your ally doesn't annex our ally

>"bro why are you attacking our ally"
>"your ally funded terrorists in our country which led to the death of our crown prince"
>"lmfao sucks to be you, gas the german race war now"

>"your ally funded terrorists in our country which led to the death of our crown prince"
>"oh wow do you have proof of this?"
>"Too late, we already invaded France through Belgium, rendering this entire discussion pointless."

germany was chimping out as usual

Holy shit lmao
Eternal Hapsburg using the g*rmans as their cannon fodder

...

I remember the story too of when Wilhelm returned from his annual cruise, one of the men he left in charge tried to resign because of his decision the war had started. And Wilhelm told him "No you started this mess, you're staying till the end" or something along those lines. Who was the guy?

They were fine though. Besides having Austrian agents involved in the investigation, the Serbs were prepared to accept all other demands.

If some country that was essentially a pariah on the international stage that had been also been no end of trouble for you for years, possibly had an involvement in killing some important figure, surely you wouldn't leave them to conduct the investigation themselves.

I don't know that story, but if I had to guess, I'd guess Moltke. "A World Undone" describes a very important meeting that took place very soon after the German government became aware that Russia was starting to mobilize. Kaiser Wilhelm was present, as was Bethmann-Hollweg, Falkenhayn, Moltke, and Tirpitz. Hindenburg and Ludendorff might have also been there but I'm not certain. Specifically, the purpose of the meeting was to discuss how Germany should respond to Russian mobilization. Wilhelm II was emperor, so he had the final say, but he was surprisingly conflicted about it. Kaiser Wilhelm is most remembered for his impulsive personality and his incessant saber-rattling, so it is kind of remarkable that he was so resistant to actually pulling the trigger when the time came. Perhaps part of him still saw Nicholas II as a friend, or perhaps he simply understood that it would be very dangerous for Germany to enter into a war in a situation where she could easily be pinned as the aggressor.

Whatever the reason, he needed to be talked into ordering a mobilization of the German military. Germany was unique in that their mobilization plan included an automatic invasion of another country. The Schlieffen Plan was directly baked into the mobilization plan. Instructions for carrying out the plan were kept in sealed envelopes which were automatically handed out to soldiers during mobilization process. Kaiser Wilhelm even asked if it would be possible to mobilize without immediately invading France through Belgium. Moltke was very upset by this question, saying that plan was so complicated and intricate that trying to revise at the last moment would only cause chaos. Tirpitz was the only one who argued for delaying mobilization, saying that they should wait until every diplomatic option had been exhausted. Moltke and Falkenhayn reacted with disgust to this suggestion and stormed out of the meeting.

Serbia wasn't a pariah state. It was backed by Russia, and France to a lesser extent.

Threads like this are always a complete waste of time because the OP dishonestly feigns ignorance and pretends as though he just wants to know the facts when in reality he's already made up his mind. There's actually a term for it but I can't remember off the top of my head.

good post, it's not usual for people to have read books on this shithole of a board

Austro-Hungary cannot be blamed for this shit. The trouble with Serbia started BEFORE the assasination or even its plans. Serbia was constantly agitating the Slavs within the Monarchy, mostly unsucessfully apart from some fringe separatist groups. It was a source of instability for the Monarchy, a North Korea of sorts. The assasination was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

To note:

- Austro Hungary had no colonies and didn't want them.
- Austro Hungary had no autistic world domination plans
- Austro Hungary never was, wanted to be, or saw itself as a miliary superpower or had such a reputation.
- Germany weaseled AH into this mess and used it as cannon fodder, just like the Ottoman empire
- Austro Hungary had ZERO open questions with France, Britain, Russia, USA or any other country. They were big into diplomacy and didn't shitpost about other countries.

Basically the more I read and discover stuff about AH the more fascinating it becomes. Its death was nothing short of an unmitigated tragedy. It wasn't a "prison of nations" or backward. The government did its absolute best to accomodate every nation within it and what we saw in 1914 was AH caught in a transitional state, and its transitional states were always slow and careful. Hungary was lagging, but Austria?

>Article 19 of the 1867 "Basic State Act", valid only for the Cisleithanian (Austrian) part of Austria-Hungary, said:

>All races of the empire have equal rights, and every race has an inviolable right to the preservation and use of its own nationality and language. The equality of all customary languages ("landesübliche Sprachen") in school, office and public life, is recognized by the state. In those territories in which several races dwell, the public and educational institutions are to be so arranged that, without applying compulsion to learn a second country language ("Landessprache"), each of the races receives the necessary means of education in its own language.

Entente propaganda.

Austria gets a bad rap but the Hungarians were a huge dead weight. Not so much economically but politically they were cack-handed and useless.

Schlieffen Plan (Led to a pretty harsh occupation of most of a neutral belgium) and French Revanchism about the franco-prussian war made sure that germany was going down as the aggressor even though they didnt actually start the war and it was the austrians who appealed to the germans asking for their backing to attack serbia so they could withstand a russian intervention. Turks were the real "bad guys" if you can oversimplify like that ever, genocide of their armenian and assyrian christians was pretty fucking bad

>kills leader
>not the one who provocated
Hmmmm

>It wasn't a "prison of nations" or backward.
Don't fall for the memes, it was both.

>Its death was nothing short of an unmitigated tragedy

This so fucking much, and the fact that literal propaganda about has formed the popular consciousness is infuriating.

>Germans dindu nuffin they gud boyz
>Not like those Turks, who killed innocent people

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_from_East_Prussia_during_World_War_I
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baralong_incidents
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abschwangen_massacre
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urkun

entente btfo?

>Whataboutism
Yeah, Germans are still bad. And try a little harder, destruction of Kalisz claimed more lives than all your mentioned events together, and it's even better when you consider that Germans had no reason to massacre Poles, except extreme autism related ones.

>death of the archduke as a scapegoat
It can’t be a scape goat if it’s the literal reason they went to war you retard

Rape of belgium and such isnt even in the same league as Armenian genocide. A lot of the belgium stuff was blown out of proportion by the british (The Edith Cavell stuff for instance) to influence neutral nations (chiefly america) and their own citizens that they were fighting for something more noble and tangible than something that seems irrelevant like the assassination of some austrian prince in the Balkans.

Rape of Belgium didn't happen, but I wish it did.

Kalisz was pretty much caused by the extreme autism of the commanding german officer and was an anomaly on the eastern front. The Germans were really paranoid about potential enemy partisans and a friendly-fire incident sort of set things off

>Germans killing civilians is an anomaly

the absolute state of /pol/

>German leaders had even suggested to the Belgian government that in the event of war, the Belgians should just line up along the roads and watch the Germans march through. Belgium's refusal to accept these German presumptions and its resistance to the German advance came as a surprise, and disrupted the German timetable for advancing into France.
>This frustration was communicated to the German troops in Belgium. Anything which delayed the German advance was to be crushed mercilessly. The Belgians were viewed as irrational and even treacherous for their opposition.
>The Belgian city of Leuven was largely destroyed.[1] One German officer later wrote about the town, "We shall wipe it out...Not one stone will stand upon another. We will teach them to respect Germany. For generations people will come here and see what we have done".[1]
God, I hate Krauts.

Nobody that has done basic 20th century history and has a bit of a brain thinks that Germany was the bad guy.

You surely mean that everybody, at any stage of education and who is not in denial, knows Germans were the bad guys in both world wars.

How was Edith Cavell blown out of proportion? Fuck's sake they could've at least just interned her or something.

>Germany
>gauls

Because they lost

WW1 was a bit more ambiguous.

>if only this country which was fearing annexation let another state investigate crimes of a (Bosnian) Serb there never would have been a July crisis or protests against these inspectors
You’ve seen how well the UN is treated, let alone the Ayatollah getting cancer treatment in America

>Willy was a talk but no game
Really was a Vicky player
No he just watched The Great War (how terrible war is and how evil nationalism is) or googled it to sound better
The fault lay on Wilhelm for not defying his general’s reccomendantions and doing the right thing for once
Before he had ignored his ministers when he gave the controversial telegraph interview which put Europe into this powder keg

Tbh AH would have done better if IT HADNT ALLIED FUCKING WILHELM
That is what gets them into the shitter, that or reforming the three emperor’s pact
And don’t be such a revisionist, it still lacked a proper middle class but given time it could have become something like the commonwealth but this recquires better ministers than it did

Nope, everything was already there. Smallest scale given they lost. But still there.

The only people who see germany as being the bad guys in ww1 are on Veeky Forums. People take a much more nuanced approach to these matters IRL when they aren't engaged in an eternal slapfight with their internet adversaries(/pol/, for those of you who cannot pick up on the obvious).

How did Germany provoke the conflict? Germany proposed for Austria-Hungary and Serbia to handle things on their own while everyone else declares themselves neutral.
It was Russia who mobilised their troops on the German border.

Germany had been itching for a war for decades since they thought if they waited too long the Russians would become too powerful.

Also, they gave Austria a "blank cheque" when dealing with Serbia, even though Austria intentionally gave Serbia a list of demands that were too unreasonable to met.

>it was Germany who first acted upon those plans
Russia mobilised first.

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