Under a Spell – The Armistice at 100
unintendedconsequenc.es
unintendedconsequenc.es
Ghosts of the Ostfront similarly cannot be recommended enough.
This section was the stand-out for me. Some things haven't really changed very much, have they?
This rarely happens after a war. A lot of wars are fought over ideological reasons: Crussades because the Cristians hated Muslims, lots of medieval European wars because Catholics and Protestants hated each other, the Napoleonic wars because monarchists hated republicans, etc.
In my opinion WW1 was different because the cause of the war was not ideological, but more materialistic: Germany had perceived that it had achieved technological military parity with Great Britain. They did that after a phenomenal 50-year burst of productivity advances that rivaled the advances seen in Great Britain roughly 50 years before. They probably had the feeling that everything is possible. So any spark could, and did trigger a war. The people in the trenches though, had nothing agains each other. They fought because they would be executed if they didn't, but otherwise it was natural for them to be friends once the war was over.
Well, I guess in part, in that Eastern Christians hated being conquered by Muslims, and so called out for help. On the Catholic side, though, it was more that the nobility has a whole bunch of second sons without acceptable prospects (yay primogeniture), whose skills were primarily military, so really any pretext to get them fighting a war far from home was welcome, and opportunity for conquest that wasn't at the expense of close family was a plus.
> lots of medieval European wars because Catholics and Protestants hated each other
Protestantism didn't even exist until the very end of the medieval period even by the broadest interpretation of “medieval”; the Catholic/Protestant Wars of Religion were in (and after) the Renaissance.
There were lots of reasons (mostly materialistic) for medieval wars, the Catholic/Protestant dispute really wasn't among them.
> the Napoleonic wars because monarchists hated republicans, etc.
France v. Everyone else predated th revolution (one of the charges against the King was that he was playing for the wrong side in that pre-existing conflict.)
And Napoleon I, Emporer of the French, King of Italy, etc., wasn't exactly a Republican.
Most medieval wars were fought over very materialistic concerns. The 100 years war is basically a "dynastic war". Most important wars in the middle ages or the Renaissance were conquest wars that had nothing to do with religion.
And also, Muslims probably hated Cristians just as much.
Indeed. Though, religion can be a very useful ideological pretext for getting you to do something that materially benefits me.
Surprisingly, not as much as you'd think. In most of medieval Islamic lands, non-Muslims were second-class citizens, but they were generally allowed to worship as they pleased. You didn't get large-scale pogroms like medieval Europe.
Edit: It's telling that people are downvoting this.
Or, if you want to be direct a d literal, you can note that a key feature of great power relations was belief in (what is now recognized as the myth of) offense dominance—the belief that the technology of the day rendered the power that attacked first an overwhelming military advantage, such that in the face of likely impending war it was critical to attack first. It was literally an inverse of MAD.
It brings insight on a WW1 reporter who most people know nothing of and could be enlightened by. A true literary gem is here.
Had there been a post on something really vital such as that newish function key strip thing they have on those Apple computers these days then there would be 480 comments on how to customise it best for Vi/Emacs.
And then we wonder why we - us - human beings - fall into the same traps of propaganda and war every time.