Happy Armistice Day!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Really? So what's the difference?

Is this a trick question? You seem intelligent enough to know that "popular" and "populist" are not the same thing, so...?

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Ah, right. Caricature it is then. Right down to my personal habits, apparently. I'm impressed.

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Er, no? And I don't think that I ever wrote such a thing. But you can have religious conflict without nationalism, you can have resistance to imperialism without nationalism (you can certainly have imperialism without nationalism, before you bring that one up).

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I don't quite see what nationalism has to do with the rise of Christianity in Europe unless you're using the word in a very, very strange way.

[Platypus]

This is inappropriate. By all means continue the discussion, but do it in the history board, away from this thread.

[Хahar 🤔]

I do wonder what would have happened had Germany stayed out (IIRC, they weren't obligated to fight). In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which I'm reading right now, Kennedy argues that Russia would have easily steamrolled Austria-Hungary. A cursory glance at their respective power would confirm that, but the Habsburgs had a certain way of surviving.

[Lief 🗽]

I do wonder what would have happened had Germany stayed out (IIRC, they weren't obligated to fight). In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which I'm reading right now, Kennedy argues that Russia would have easily steamrolled Austria-Hungary. A cursory glance at their respective power would confirm that, but the Habsburgs had a certain way of surviving.

I'm reading that book for class (well, the parts that have to do with the United States, at least). I seriously doubt that Germany would have let Austria be crushed by the Russians; they'd be completely surrounded by enemies if that were the case. Plus, Germany wanted a war the most all of the antagonists. They wouldn't have thrown away the opportunity.

[dead0man]

I'm starting to wonder if what's his name has ever been wrong about anything.  WAIT! Are we sure Einzy isn't a lady?

[Mechaman]

Armistice Day, how appropriately named.

Yes I shall remember that day to honor those unfortunate souls who threw away their lives to satisfy the War of the Egos.

[Хahar 🤔]

I do wonder what would have happened had Germany stayed out (IIRC, they weren't obligated to fight). In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which I'm reading right now, Kennedy argues that Russia would have easily steamrolled Austria-Hungary. A cursory glance at their respective power would confirm that, but the Habsburgs had a certain way of surviving.

I'm reading that book for class (well, the parts that have to do with the United States, at least). I seriously doubt that Germany would have let Austria be crushed by the Russians; they'd be completely surrounded by enemies if that were the case. Plus, Germany wanted a war the most all of the antagonists. They wouldn't have thrown away the opportunity.

Of course the Prussians were far too belligerent to let that happen. But I'm not entirely sure Austria would've been snuffed out if it did.

[Serenity Now]

Posting this is sort of obligatory, so... (and if you don't know what it is, you shouldn't be posting in this thread)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Only one of the best poems ever..

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is inappropriate. By all means continue the discussion, but do it in the history board, away from this thread.

I don't know - it seems quite appropriate in a sick way.

[Hash]

The school got two Canadian navy commanders to come in and give us a propaganda/indoctrination session. "We defeated Germany yay!", "We killed a bunch of Italians yay!", "ooh evil Imperial Germany", "ooh evil Nazis", "We're in Afghanistan because the Afghan government asked us to help", "We're on a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan". The latter two pissed me off, and most other people were equally pissed off. I'm also pissed off at the fact that they've turned a day like that into a nationalist day where we remember how we ed the Nazis in 1945 or something. Seriously, it's a solemn day, and I make a point of remembering all the dead, enemy or not.

Yay Canada, you fail again.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Einzige really knows how to take indefensible arguments and act like any schoolchild would be able to recognize their inherent validity.

The Central Powers included an Islamic Theocracy (ruled by a sultan who also claimed the title of caliph!) and an Empire ruled by the House of Habsburg, an institution that had been joined at the hip with the Roman Catholic Church for nearly a millennium (don't be pedantic and post links like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527), I know).

And this is supposed to disprove my point?

Methinks you need to learn about the volkisch movement, and its intellectual origins.

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I never said the Kaiserrreich was explicitly anti-Christian. I said it was innately anti-Christian. Learn the difference.

So you're saying that Germany had internalized ancient Teutonic cultural touchstones that had no real relevance to their daily lives to a greater extent than the Lutheran Church that it prayed at every Sunday?  Are you the reincarnation of Richard Wagner or something?

And, by the way, you didn't answer about the Central Power's third member, the Ottoman Empire, the most closely clerically-linked of all the major belligerents.

Also, isn't a religious framework just about the worst one possible to use to examine the First World War?  I'm eagerly awaiting to hear your explanation of the glories of Shinto next time the anniversary of Hiroshima comes up.

I don't think you can call the Ottoman Empire a theocracy really. Not without getting into alot of complications regardless of the religious hierarchial nature of the ruler. You could say it leaned that way during the rule of Abdul Hamid II (but not totally o/c) but after that, the revolution of 1908 and during WWI, no way - Hardline Islamists (or Proto-Islamists) were among of some the empire's biggest internal enemies by then. The Committee of Union and Progress always treated religion as a tool to be used; they were more Pan-Turkish nationalists than theocrats.

Einzige's posts are truly ridiculous on the other hand.

[The Mikado]

Einzige really knows how to take indefensible arguments and act like any schoolchild would be able to recognize their inherent validity.

The Central Powers included an Islamic Theocracy (ruled by a sultan who also claimed the title of caliph!) and an Empire ruled by the House of Habsburg, an institution that had been joined at the hip with the Roman Catholic Church for nearly a millennium (don't be pedantic and post links like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527), I know).

And this is supposed to disprove my point?

Methinks you need to learn about the volkisch movement, and its intellectual origins.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I never said the Kaiserrreich was explicitly anti-Christian. I said it was innately anti-Christian. Learn the difference.

So you're saying that Germany had internalized ancient Teutonic cultural touchstones that had no real relevance to their daily lives to a greater extent than the Lutheran Church that it prayed at every Sunday?  Are you the reincarnation of Richard Wagner or something?

And, by the way, you didn't answer about the Central Power's third member, the Ottoman Empire, the most closely clerically-linked of all the major belligerents.

Also, isn't a religious framework just about the worst one possible to use to examine the First World War?  I'm eagerly awaiting to hear your explanation of the glories of Shinto next time the anniversary of Hiroshima comes up.

I don't think you can call the Ottoman Empire a theocracy really. Not without getting into alot of complications regardless of the religious hierarchial nature of the ruler. You could say it leaned that way during the rule of Abdul Hamid II (but not totally o/c) but after that, the revolution of 1908 and during WWI, no way - Hardline Islamists (or Proto-Islamists) were among of some the empire's biggest internal enemies by then. The Committee of Union and Progress always treated religion as a tool to be used; they were more Pan-Turkish nationalists than theocrats.

Einzige's posts are truly ridiculous on the other hand.

That's a totally fair point, and you're right that the Young Turks weren't Islamists.

On another note, this thread is now closed.  May it rest in peace along with the dead of the Marne, the Somme, Verdun, Ypres, Gallipoli, Tannenberg, Armenia, etc.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...and all the civilians who died in both Wars. And, if I'm allowed to stray onto family territory, with all of those old soldiers who died of their injuries years and decades later and who were betrayed by veterans organisations, with those promised "Homes Fit For Heroes" and didn't get them, and with those made to suffer on the home front by crazed jingoists.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

...and all the civilians who died in both Wars.

Yes, as i pointed out in one of my posts here, the German occupation of France during WW1 is often forgotten, focusing of the one during WW2, while the first occupation has been at least as nasty than the second toward civilians (the fear of camps in less maybe). I'm not saying this to go against Germans in general, just to point out something often forgotten and also to say that you don't need to belong to a "nazi army" to be an awful soldier. War uses to lead men to be awful and nasty with civilians, it is better to keep that in mind rather than to think that nazis had the monopole of the nastiness...