BS: Armistice Day (debate)

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 06:11 AM

There were those in Britain who favoured a war with Germany before that country became too strong; there were those in France who wanted revenge for the war of the 1870s

No doubt there were all sorts in all countries, but they did not lead France and Britain into war.

Germany attacked and invaded.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 06:20 AM

I am not up for denigrating anyone.

But if the answer was millions of dead what on earth was the question.

Was this war a good idea? Was it what everybody wanted? Did it have a good and useful outcome?

Who's idea was it?

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket evolving slowly
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 08:30 AM

Many did question. Conscientious objectors existed.

Many did question. Middle class women were encouraged to hand out white feathers.

Many did question. The padres were on hand to help them see the error of their ways.

Many did question. Firing squads were on hand to ensure others stopped asking.

Many did question. The poems of Wilfred Owen were not scrutinised as he was seen as from the establishment.

Many did question. But didn't return.

Many did question. But their lost limbs eyes and minds insulted the "Glory pomp and circumstance of glorious war. " So were left to beg.

Many do question. And they are getting louder than the revisionists amongst us.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 08:41 AM

Firing squads were on hand to ensure others stopped asking.

No-one was shot for questioning the war.
They did not have to be threatened with shooting.
Most were volunteers.
Not jingoistic fools.
Not dupes of the church.
Men most remarkable like you, except that they understood that Germany had to be stopped and it fell to them to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 08:52 AM

""Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T - PM
Date: 11 Nov 13 - 08:14 AM

The BBC series on the subject identified four underlying causes of WW 1, as follows:

    ""Nationalism - the belief that your country is better than others. This made nations assertive and aggressive.
    Imperialism - the desire to conquer colonies, especially in Africa. This brought the powers into conflict - Germany wanted an empire. France and Britain already had empires.
    Militarism (Arms Race) - the attempt to build up a strong army and navy gave nations the means and will to make war.
    Alliances - in 1882, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. This alarmed, France, Britain and Russia. By 1907, they had all joined the Triple Entente. Europe was divided into two armed camps, to help each other if there was a war.""

Then of course, the spark that set off the kindling, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, often mistakenly quoted as the reason.

As to whether those who died knew why, of course many of the better educated did, but there were hundreds of thousands of young men who joined up in an enthusiastic desire for adventure, travel and glory, whose knowledge of the reasons was minimal at best.

In an era when news travelled slowly, many men had never been more than a few miles from the place of their birth, and recruiters didn't care to inform, how was a young farm lad to know about international politics?

If asked why they were there, many would say simply "Somebody's got to give the Hun a bloody good kicking". It was what they were told! It was exactly the same on the other side too.

So Eric wasn't, I think, patronising too many people. If he had written the same about WW 2, that would have been patronising.

However, aware or not, they deserve our respect and they deserve our continuing remembrance. Whichever war they died in, they did it for us.

Don T.""

Keith calls that denigrating the soldiers!..It isn't!

It is facing the truth that Britain's motives in the lead up to WW2 were not pure as the driven snow, and the invasion of Belgium was the perfect opportunity to act to prevent Germany gaining an imperial foothold in Africa.

The senior officers, mostly public school educated, knew what was going on, but most of the cannon fodder, farm and factory workers, knew only what they were told by government propaganda and posters, and if you take the trouble to look at what was recorded of the comments of ordinary soldiers, they are larded with such remarks as I quoted about "The Hun".

Also, listen to the Music Hall songs of that time.

The point is that Keith's view of these events isn't just "My Country, right or wrong!", It is "My Country cannot be wrong.

I'm sorry but it can, it often has, and it most likely will in the future.

That is FACT! But it takes nothing away from the brave men who lay down their lives in defence of that country, which incidentally I love, but without the rose tinted viewpoint.

I love my country warts and all!

Those who died in all her wars and police actions deserve our utmost respect and admiration and should be remembered.

I firmly believe that the day we forget, we open the door for history to repeat itself.

As for Max Hastings, while he may be right in saying that Germany bears most blame, he cannot imagine the effect on Wilfred Owen or the other war poets of watching a constant stream of young men, many in their teens, arriving at the front to be sent "over the top" and slaughtered like cattle in an abbatoir. He wasn't there and has no right to judge those who were.

In his ranting about embracing German remembrance, he forgets that most of the Germans killed were no different than ours, "Husbands and Brothers, Fathers and Sons" (Whitsun Dance), and there were villages without men in both countries.

Hastings is a bitter bastard, who has forgotten that the soldiers don't start wars. He has also forgotten that one can forgive without forgetting.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:09 AM

If asked why they were there, many would say simply "Somebody's got to give the Hun a bloody good kicking". It was what they were told! It was exactly the same on the other side too.

How do you know that Don?
How can you accuse those dead young men of believing shit because they were told to?

Hastings was not there, but historians use sources.
The IWM has thousands of ordinary soldiers' war diaries and letters.

He says,"Most veterans rejected the 'poets' view'. One old soldier, named Henry Mellersh, declared in 1978 that he wholeheartedly rejected the notion that the war was 'one vast, useless, futile tragedy, worthy to be remembered only as a pitiable mistake'.
Instead, wrote Mellersh: 'I and my like entered the war expecting an heroic adventure and believing implicitly in the rightness of our cause; we ended greatly disillusioned as to the nature of the adventure, but still believing that our cause was right and we had not fought in vain.'

That view was far more widely held by Mellersh's contemporaries than the 'futility' vision of Owen, Sassoon and their kin."

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:12 AM

I've always thought Max Hastings to be a pompous, arrogant twat, and his jingoistic article in the "Daily Mail" confirms this.

He calls any rapprochement or concord with Germany as "sucking up" to the Germans and claims it dishonours the millions who died and who he believes sincerely supported the war.

Well, that support and belief was then, by the soldiers of the time - and it was also almost 100 years ago. Perspectives alter. I would ask Hastings this" Is it, in the long run, more sensible (a) to refuse any friendship, rapprochement or political alliance with Germany and keep old grudges going in Europe, or (b) to find ways of building friendship and alliances within Europe and, without forgetting the events of the past, try to ensure that such events don't happen again?

I'm sure the old soldiers of 1914-1919 would never want the events of those days to be repeated, and it's surely possible for alliances to be forged without dishonouring the memories of those men. As it happens, the hard-nosed terms of the Treaty of Versailles, with the consequent economic and social effects on 1920s Germany, were a major contributor to the rise of the Nazis. Grudges beget grudges.

I recall my grandfather telling me of a conversation with his own father in the 1920s. "Son", old George said to my grandad, "you mark my words - our natural enemies are the French. In the next war, it'll be us and the Germans against them." How wrong can you be...

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:32 AM

I find this deleting messages thing a bit strange to say the least. One post states that there "was as a disproportionate contribution (and sacrifice) from the Anzacs in WW1. as the Aussies and Kiwis went off to do their bit for King and Empire and the 'pride of the British race'."

I simply asked the question disproportionate compared to who? It is a fair question as the statement is misleading as that all the major combatants from Europe had greater losses per head of population than either NZ or the Aussies did. The UK included. Not denigrating anyone as of course all the countries suffered a great loss but there is nothing wrong with getting basic facts right! If we are to have perfectly polite posts deleted for questioning statements then shouldn't the original statement be deleted too?

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:47 AM

Another historian then.
Dr.Dan Todman

"Notwithstanding the enormous casualty lists, in 1918 many Britons thought they had achieved a miraculous deliverance from an evil enemy. They celebrated a remarkable military victory and national survival. For those who had served in the trenches, and for those left at home, the war experience encompassed not only horror, frustration and sorrow, but also triumph, pride, camaraderie and even enjoyment, as well as boredom and apathy."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/perceptions_01.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:54 AM

Dr. Gary Sheffield.
" popular opinion: that the issues were not worth the ensuing bloodbath. Most modern scholars would not agree. Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) are seen, at the very least, as creating the conditions for conflict. Some go much further, blaming Germany for planning and waging a deliberate war of aggression."

"Britain and France came to be led by Lloyd George and Clemenceau, popularist democratic leaders, while Germany was ruled by a military dictatorship that sidelined the constitutional leader, the Kaiser. An Allied victory led to the maintenance and even extension of liberal democracy in Europe. A German victory would have snuffed it out. When the German army appeared to be on the verge of victory in spring 1918, the Kaiser crowed that this was the vindication of monarchy and autocracy over democracy."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/origins_01.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 09:56 AM

Sheffield again, same link.
"Far from being fought over trivial issues, World War One must be seen in the context of an attempt by an aggressive, militarist state to establish hegemony over Europe, extinguishing democracy as a by-product. To argue that the world of 1919 was worse than that of 1914 is to miss the point. A world in which Imperial Germany had won World War One would have been even worse."

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:01 AM

> There were those in Britain who favoured a war with Germany before that country became too strong; there were those in France who wanted revenge for the war of the 1870s; and pan-Slavism was as much a problem as pan-Germanism.

But none of those nations took those steps. Nothing done by the other countries over previous decades even begins to match the policies and *actions* of Germany in 1914. Austrian designs on Serbia were Germany's perfect opportunity to launch the war it had decided was inevitable and that it would win.

I can't imagine a political situation in 1914 that would have prompted Britain, France, or Russia to launch a war in Europe while Germany remained peacefully within its borders. It was widely realized that Europe was so reliant on mutual economic and financial ties that any big war would result in national economic collapses. As it did.

Those predictions didn't stop the Kaiser. He and his generals thought Germany could win "by Christmas."

Unlike Britain, Germany and Austria had long had universal conscription and a truly pervasive militarist bent. (In Germany, pacifist organizations were banned by law.) Germany believed its "destiny" as the "bravest" and "most highly civilized" nation was to control Europe. When Russia surrendered early in 1918, Germany seized most of European Russia and its resources. For Berlin, the case for innate German superiority had been proved.

Germany did "fear" France, Britain, and Russia, in more or less that order, mainly because their geography stood in the way of German expansion. And that expansion (according to the incredibly influential philosopher Hegel) was required for the "health" of the nation and (once pseudo-Darwinism got mixed into it) was actually demanded by "survival of the fittest." Nietzsche's writings are filled with ignorant praise of war - in the abstract.

No nation was immune from these influences, and colonial wars were partly based on similar assumptions. But nowhere outside of Germany did warlike ideals turn into reckless policy against populous, neighboring, sophisticated, technologically and industrially advanced, and culturally related European states. And nowhere else was the risk of a continent-wide explosion thought to be a perfectly reasonable policy choice.

Even more amazing is that the later followers of Mussolini and Hitler seem not to have learned anything from it.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:04 AM

All this is very well, Keith - and I'm not querying it - but the point is: despite what Hastings says, for Britain, France & Germany to get together now and in the future, and to put the grudges and problems of the past to one side, does not necessarily mean that we dishonour the memories of the men and women - soldiers and civilians - who died in WW1, or forget them.

Such jingoistic crap does no-one any service these days. By all means remember the events of the past - and try not to repeat them ad nauseam

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:13 AM

But no-one is saying that.
What they are saying, and I am denying, is that our people fought a futile and pointless war, without knowing what it was supposed to be about, because they were such pathetic jingoistic dupes and dummies.

I find that a disgraceful and disgusting slander on their memory.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:16 AM

It's interesting to recall that the plot of "The Riddle Of The Sands", by the Irish writer Erskine Childers, is based on the concept of Germany using the channels between the Baltic Islands as grouping and embarking points for wave upon wave of barges to be towed to the UK as part of an invasion programme.

"The Riddle Of The Sands" was written in 1910 so, presumably, German's intentions or possible intentions were common knowledge at that time.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:17 AM

last night Mike was watching a show about a group of researchers and veteran sailors who went out to the sites were the Hood and Bismarck were sunk during WWII and sent submersibles to observe the wrecks.

Not just Bristish sailors, but German survivors as well. Men who had been 18 years old and had grown up with the rise of Nazism. Men who had cheered when the Hood sank and now returned with a better understanding of what they had done and all saluted those who were lost. Like the monument at Gallipoli dedicated to ALL those who died.

I think that we can take a lesson from their example. Regardless of the causes... it is the fighting men and women who bear the brunt of the cost of war... and those unfortunate civilians caught in the path. We can acknowledge that sacrifice.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:26 AM

Obviously Keith is as knowledgeable about history as he is about science, evolution, and "Christians"[sic].

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:45 AM

Very sorry for the near-duplicate posts. (Long too!) I hope the second one is clearer and better written.

Few here think Allied involvement in World War 2 was pointless or jingoistic. But except for the fact that Hitler and the Nazis managed to be even viler than the Kaiser and his generals, a comparable German expansionism was the cause of the second installment as well. Poland in 1939 played roughly the role of Belgium in 1914.

The biggest difference was that by 1939 there'd been several years of warnings - and desperate attempts to avert the inevitable.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (moderated)
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 10:45 AM

If you haven't experienced it, I suggest you read about it AND UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU READ. Here are some suggestions:

Grossman, Dave. On Combat.
Grossman, Dave. On Killing.
Keegan, John. The Face Of Battle.
Holmstedt, Kirsten. Band of Sisters.
Holmstedt, Kirsten. The Girls Come Marching Home.
S. L. A. Marshall. Pork Chop Hill.

But I doubt if you'll take my suggestions. Perhaps its better if you don't.

And for all of us who ARE experienced...thanks. You're the best there is.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket being patriotic
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 11:06 AM

This disgraceful crap about it being a slur on the memory of the fallen when you analyse war. ...

Could have come straight from the appalling pages of the Hitler appeasing stain known as The Daily M*il." Oh. Many of his quotes did. Normally do in fact.

The more I read the more I sadly feel vindicated in being cynical when I read his posts.

Don't worry Keith, I can hear your usual two apologists typing their defence of you.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 12:16 PM

You did not "analyse" anything.
Just made up shit about why in your worthless opinion people fought.

The Daily M*il." Oh. Many of his quotes did. Normally do in fact.
More lies.
I quoted 3 historians to support everything I have argued.
Count them.
Hastings was published both in the Telegraph and the Mail.
I quoted him not any newspaper or hack.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,musket and Keith Show
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 12:33 PM

Sorry about this everyone.

Hastings fits the description of hack. Writing to the political and social colours of the rag paying your fee makes you a hack. Insisting you are writing as a historian makes you a disingenuous hack.

Why don't you cut and paste some David Irvine and have done with it?

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 12:35 PM

You will find no Daily Mail quote from me in any recent post, apart from that Hastings piece.
You know this, because you would have used it against me before.
You attempt to discredit me by telling lies about me.
Pathetic.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,someone else
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:14 PM

Me really.

Recent= a few days if anyone is interested.

The problem as ever is that remembrance is noting that people died. It started out if the documentary on BBC2 last week is accurate, as celebrating how good we were at war. By the end of the second world war it had become a way of saying how fed up people are with war and killing. Commemorating subsequent conflict therefore is valid as the men dying now are not pushing an imperialist agenda, not protecting our shores from invasion and not making Col Blimp look good.

They are dying trying to protect innocent civilians from conflict in a humanitarian gesture in most cases. Very different from the gung ho jingoism the Tommies were bombarded with from the despatch box, from the pulpits, from the Kitchener posters, from the marches through their towns and villages followed by the recruiting sergeants.

Remembrance is about death. Whether the fallen believed in their cause or not. Attempts to say it is only about those who saw reason in war is a bit much. Especially for the millions caught up in it.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:23 PM

""What they are saying, and I am denying, is that our people fought a futile and pointless war, without knowing what it was supposed to be about, because they were such pathetic jingoistic dupes and dummies.

I find that a disgraceful and disgusting slander on their memory.""

As pretty a piece of answering what was never said as you have managed yet.

1. How much knowledge of international affairs do you suppose farm labourers and factory hands possessed at a time when only the wealthy had radios and only the well to do had any formal education beyond reading writing and arithmetic at the most basic level?

They weren't stupid, but they had this notion of the evil Hun drilled into them long before the war started.

Instead of reading the skewed interpretations and xenophobic rants of those self styled modern historians, try reading the accounts of the time as they were happening. There are plenty of books available, if you can be bothered.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:27 PM

Rap, there is also Gwynne Dyer's "War" which is on par with those you mentioned.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:28 PM

Recent= a few days if anyone is interested.
I am. Put it up!

Now you suggest that Sir Max Hastings would write shit just to get published in the Mail.
You are desperate.
He is not.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 01:36 PM

Those lucky rich people with radios in 1914!

People from all levels of society volunteered, not just ignorant peasants.
The ignorant peasants could read as well as you and had access to a free press like you.
You might like to think yourself superior to those ignorant dupes, but you are not.

And, the historians agree with them, not you Don.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 02:02 PM

This thread is proof positive that war will always be with us.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 02:31 PM

Branno: there was a disproportionate contribution (and sacrifice) from the Anzacs in WW1. as the Aussies and Kiwis went off to do their bit for King and Empire and the 'pride of the British race'.

How do you work that out? The proportions of the UK male population killed and injured in WW1 are very similar to those of the ANZACs. Almost identical in fact.

My grandad was category "C" when he went for his initial medical...flat footed, poor eyesight and weak chest. Also married with 2 young children. When we was recalled for a medical in 1916 he was miraculously re-classified A1!

I have his diaries....a set of 4 exercise books detailing his training and his experiences in France. I've often thought of having them published. However, they don't read well. Poor grammar and spelling and a lot of repetitive "we did this, we did that....". He was an uneducated private with relatively poor literacy, not a "gentleman ranker" so not sure there'd be a demand.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 03:04 PM

Fun fact:

Kaiser Wilhelm II himself is responsible for the "Hun" business. As he exhorted his troops in 1900 as they departed for China,

"When you meet the enemy,... you will give no pardon and take no prisoners. ...As the Huns a thousand years ago under King Etzel [i.e., Attila] made a name for themselves that has lasted mightily in memory, so may the name 'Germany' be known in China so that no Chinese will ever again even dare to look askance at a German."

From Isabel V. Hull's "Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany" (Cornell University Press, 2005).

Attila the Hun: role model.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 03:14 PM

what if they gave a war and nobody came?

while i have some respect for and pity anyone who has lost their life or loved ones in a war - in every case (the world over) it is not good enough to just blame the kings and generals and media. all men - apart from the virtuous ones- join up. whether it is for the trenches in WW1, a colombian drugs gang, as crew on a pirate ship, al-quaeda, a school bullying group (here, at least,women -or girls- have achieved equality), to fight for an african war lord or george bush, to fire american drones or to fight with the british in iraq.... etdepressingcetera. in each case we commit to doing harm to whoever the commanders tell us to and choose to ignore our own feelings and judgment.

we all have the mental capacity to reject jingoistic or racist justifications for conflict but choose to fight instead. ww1 is particularly tragic because there is no agreed cause or purpose for the event (see above)ultimately, you would have to conclude it was because men (around the world) like fighting. and can hardly complain when it turned out to be a hell.

there were (and are) instances of conscientious objection, desertion, co-operation between enemies and informal agreements to shoot to miss. these men for me are the true heroes.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 03:45 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 05:56 PM

Rob Naylor said, 'He was an uneducated private with relatively poor literacy, not a "gentleman ranker" so not sure there'd be a demand.'

Maybe not a best seller, but it's certainly something I would read. I like 'history' that was written by people who were there. People who didn't have editors. My own grandfather had a grade four education and his stories about historical figures and events still are more meaningful to me than most official histories.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Nov 13 - 07:15 PM

My post disappeared.

Essentially it said what GUEST just said.

Nowadays the journals of an "uneducated private" could be of great interest, regardless of the grammar. It all depends on what they include.

Rob might consider xeroxing some sample pages and sending them off for a reaction to someone who teaches about the Great War at a nearby university. There's nothing to lose. Here in the US, Civil War letters and diaries are still being found and published.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 02:57 AM

The Imperial War Museum in London keeps an archive of ordinary soldiers' war diaries.
They would welcome such an addition.

ww1 is particularly tragic because there is no agreed cause or purpose for the event (see above)
If you saw the historians quoted above you would see that there was a clear cause and purpose.
That of saving Britain and Europe from a tyrannical aggressive invader.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket popping up
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 03:50 AM

Saving them, and therefore allowing them to carry out their own imperialistic aggressive invasions around the globe.

C'est le guerre

As Sven Hassell used to say in the words of his characters.............

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 04:08 AM

and therefore allowing them to carry out their own imperialistic aggressive invasions around the globe
So says the ignorant Musket spouting shit he has just made up.
Here is an historian.
Contrast and compare.

Dr. Gary Sheffield.
" popular opinion: that the issues were not worth the ensuing bloodbath. Most modern scholars would not agree. Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) are seen, at the very least, as creating the conditions for conflict. Some go much further, blaming Germany for planning and waging a deliberate war of aggression."

" Germany was ruled by a military dictatorship that sidelined the constitutional leader, the Kaiser. An Allied victory led to the maintenance and even extension of liberal democracy in Europe. A German victory would have snuffed it out. When the German army appeared to be on the verge of victory in spring 1918, the Kaiser crowed that this was the vindication of monarchy and autocracy over democracy."

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 04:17 AM

Ok. I'm a historian.

Beat that.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 04:38 AM

Of course you are.
You are anything you want to be.
But these are REAL ones.
They do research and stuff.

Dr. Gary Sheffield.
"Far from being fought over trivial issues, World War One must be seen in the context of an attempt by an aggressive, militarist state to establish hegemony over Europe, extinguishing democracy as a by-product. To argue that the world of 1919 was worse than that of 1914 is to miss the point. A world in which Imperial Germany had won World War One would have been even worse."

Dr. Dan Todman.
"In the last quarter of the 20th century, the modern mythology of World War One became firmly established. In a society increasingly distant from the experience of war, 1914-1918 became more important as a symbol for tragedy and suffering than as a triumph or as a complicated and ambiguous event."

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 04:47 AM

The Daily M*il." Oh. Many of his quotes did. Normally do in fact

How are your researches to find any such going Musket?
Or those posts where I linked myself to UKIP?

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket the historian
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 04:54 AM

I am involved in post graduate management courses via our deanery, and one lecture I give each year for the MBA module in transferable skills , (the third one is next week by coincidence) is the HISTORY of six sigma approach.

I reckon that, with glasses pushed up to to bridge of nose accordingly, that makes me a historian every bit as much as a hack writing history. Real historians would weep at the thought of either Hastings or me, but as it isn't a protected title, a hell of a lot of people spout shit on a self titled or lazy association basis.

Do you wish to enrol for Module 101 Revisionist skills? Past experience taken into account, you already have half the points so won't need to do the foundation course. You won't need to trawl the internet for articles to cut and paste either. (Here's a thought. Read them first. Dr Sheffield makes a case in one of them that runs fully contrary to your general thrust.)

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 05:18 AM

So you teach management!
(Here's a thought. Read them first. Dr Sheffield makes a case in one of them that runs fully contrary to your general thrust.)
Perhaps you could produce some quotes?
(Quite a backlog now!)

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 05:40 AM

Sir Max Hastings, Military Historian.

He has presented historical documentaries for the BBC and is the author of many books, including Bomber Command which earned the Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction in 1980. Both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year prize. He was named Journalist of the Year and Reporter of the Year at the 1982 British Press Awards, and Editor of the Year in 1988. In 2010 he received the Royal United Services Institute's Westminster Medal for his "lifelong contribution to military literature", and the same year the Edgar Wallace Award from the London Press Club.[2]
In 2012 he was awarded the US$100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award, a lifetime achievement award for military writing, which includes an honorarium, citation and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation.[4]
Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the Royal Historical Society. He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England from 2002–2007.
In his 2007 book Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45 (also known as Retribution in the United States), the chapter on Australia's role in the last year of the Pacific War

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 05:45 AM

No.. I teach some management. The lecturers teach management, but as a retired CEO with public sector chairs in the old CV, they reckon my rambling is worth listening to. (Also, the teaching trust I am a director of has it in director contracts to lend themselves to both the medical school and the management faculty.)

Why?

Does context of where a person is coming from alter your approach?

If so, I would like to add bear wrestler, porn star, wringer outer for a one armed window cleaner, rock god, backlog supplier, iPad typist extraordinaire, racing driver, carrier of a greyhound's poop bags, still art model, jelly baby taster and all round good egg.



If you need people to point out where your cut and pastes differ from your points, you possibly aren't able to notice them anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 05:56 AM

My point is simply this.

The invading German armies posed a real and terrible threat to freedom in Europe.
Historians are quite clear that the threat was real.
Britain had no choice but to stand against them.
People understood that and responded.
They were not duped.

That makes you and Don wrong.
Again.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 06:00 AM

From Telegraph review of Hastings' WW1 book.

However, Hastings's recent massive volumes on his specialist subject, the Second World War, have shown why his position as Britain's leading military historian is now unassailable.

In this enormously impressive new book, Hastings effortlessly masters the complex lead-up to and opening weeks of the First World War. As a historian, his objective is twofold: to pin the principal blame for launching the catastrophic conflict where it rightly belongs: on Austria and Germany; and to argue unashamedly that Britain was right – politically and morally – to fight it.

Hastings's second adversary is more amorphous: what he calls "the poets' view" of the war as a futile struggle for a few blood-drenched yards of mud, which wasted a whole generation, solved nothing and which Britain should have steered clear of, allowing those funny foreign fellows to slaughter each other without compromising its splendid isolation.
This view, propounded by various powerful voices from the great economist John Maynard Keynes in 1919 down to the scriptwriters of the television comedy Blackadder Goes Forth, has been hammered so relentlessly into our heads that it is now the received opinion on the war. So much so that the government seems unsure how to mark next year's centenary of the conflict, both for fear of upsetting the Germans and because British public opinion generally regards it as a senseless, unmitigated tragedy.
Hastings, who received a knighthood in 2002, will have none of this.

Hastings pushes the parallels between the two world wars even closer. He details the barbarities perpetrated by the Kaiser's armies as they marched through Belgium, showing that such atrocities, though smaller in scale than the Nazis' crimes in 1939-45 (6,000 civilians murdered rather than six million), were inflicted in the same wanton spirit. With irrefutable logic Hastings argues that if it was right for Britain to wage war in defence of Poland in 1939, then it was also correct to take up arms in defence of Belgium in 1914.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 06:17 AM

A historian can and will describe events, as they happened and what effect they had on the future, suggesting the past as reason.

Hastings can do that and does.

He also commentates on the social setting, impact and rationale. That is using his historian credibility to put a particular slant on things. Professionally known as a hack.

The threat was real. The ensuing carnage was tangibly real. The drift into war for all sides was inevitable.

But the reason for war was incompetence and jingoism from all sides. Hence the war to end wars was a sop to the men to justify their slaughter, and that was wrong. Pushing men over the top to try and swamp the opposite trenches was dereliction of duty to their men. Men died through awful decisions.

You seem to propose that reminding ourselves of this shows disrespect to the dead? Kidding ourselves that war is just, that parochial interests are paramount to the effect of killing your people to achieve it. THAT is disrespect of the dead.

Lest we forget? Lest we forget why it shouldn't happen again, not lest we forget how brave the poor buggers were.

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 06:31 AM

It was an entirely new kind of warfare.
Mistakes were made, but the war did have to be fought.
It did.
The soldiers knew that.
They were not ignorant, they were brave.

That is the historians' view.
What is yours worth?

Subject: RE: BS: Armistice Day (debate)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 13 Nov 13 - 06:40 AM

100!

Dr Sheffield again.
"Haig, however, was no technophobe. He encouraged the development of advanced weaponry such as tanks, machine guns and aircraft. He, like Rawlinson and a host of other commanders at all levels in the BEF, learned from experience. The result was that by 1918 the British army was second to none in its modernity and military ability. It was led by men who, if not military geniuses, were at least thoroughly competent commanders. The victory in 1918 was the payoff. The 'lions led by donkeys' tag should be dismissed for what it is - a misleading caricature."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/lions_donkeys_01.shtml#one