"Outbreak of War in 1914: A New Look at an Old Problem" by Dr. Michael S. Neiberg

[@Stalley75]

Interesting. Always lots to learn more from 1914-1945. Strange and awful events.

[@scottn7cy]

Very intelligent presentation. This is the first really fresh thinking I have heard of the Great War in a long time. I appreciated the discussion of motivations and not just presentation of facts.

[@naturamix5786]

Fuck WWI, I want to hear more about madame Caillaux

[@ralphbernhard1757]

Left, right and center, leaders on all sides fairly accurately predicted that a great European war would end in disaster... "In 1888, German Philosopher Friedrich Engels predicted the extent, destruction and occurrence of First World War. In a letter to his colleague, Friedrich wrote, “Finally, no war is any longer possible for Prussia-Germany except a world war and a world war indeed of an extent and violence hitherto undreamt of. The devastations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed into three or four years, and spread over the whole Continent; famine, pestilence, general demoralization both of the armies and of the mass of the people produced by acute distress; hopeless confusion of our artificial machinery in trade, industry and credit. Germany would put about five million armed men into the field, or ten per cent of the population, the others about four to five per cent, Russia relatively less. But there would be from ten to fifteen million combatants. I should like to see how they are to be fed; it would be devastation like the Thirty Years’ War. And no quick decision could be arrived at, despite the colossal fighting forces. “ All these predictions turned out to be precisely correct." [From nationalistinterest dot org] Churchill said in 1901 that a war in Europe would end in the disaster for the losers and the complete dislocation of the winners. *In other words there would be no "winners", but only losers..*

[@douglasstrother6584]

The A/V work on many of these lectures is an insult to the high caliber of their content.

[@huma474]

Its a factor of the age of the lecture, this is from 2010

[@Tyrs_Finox]

Interesting presentation. It brought up questions about what was going on in Austria-Hungary between mobilization and the assassination though. I will have to see if his book answers that, but the general thesis that everyone kind of had blame in it more or less is quite sensical.

[@gravityd9]

Really enjoy Dr. Neiberg's lectures. In this case, I'm still left with the burning question of why Czar Nicholas decides to mobilize the Russian Army? It seems to me that was the true trigger for the outbreak of total European war across the entire theater. Otherwise, I feel like we get a second Balkans War since 1912, but not a total European war.

[@jyrijk8867]

I recommend Sean McMeekin's book "The Russian Origins of the First World War." Should give some answers.

[@nirfz]

Or christopher clarks Sleepwalkers. My opinion: Basically because he was persuaded by his politicians that there is no other way to make russia not look like a coward and "protect" russians interests. => More influence on the balkan (which those politicians misinterprated to be in danger by Austria-Hungarys quarrel with Serbia) and more quiet: getting control over the dardanels. Russian people didn't want war, but some very influencal polititians did. (like in most participating countries.)

[@michaelredick8898]

The Czar backed down in 1908 when Bosnia was annexed and in 1912 when Albania was created. They weren't going to sit and watch allies in Serbia be squashed.

[@graemebdh2172]

Mobilisation for Russia would take weeks. With Germany backing Austria, Russia could not afford to wait to see how it played out. Had to mobilise to be ready. But then Germany mobilised in response and the doom-laden path was trod.

[@4OHz]

8:31 Was Princip the actual lead planner in the assassination or were there more sinister higher ups that want FF killed?

[@koko2bware]

Good Question! Everyone knows now WWI was plotted by Bankers and Wallstreet Mafia in New York and London!!

[@sirllamaiii9708]

I reckon it was just princip. There's a quote, never let a good crisis go to waste, and I think it's really fitting. It's just a fortune event for Austria, not some grand conspiracy

[@4OHz]

@@sirllamaiii9708 I think Princip a 19 y.o. tool of The Black Hand. It was Serbia the fiercest of the Balkans looking for national independence and control

[@sirllamaiii9708]

@@4OHz Oh yeah the black hand was associated with the death for sure. I thought you meant the Austrian government was in on it

[@92100mark]

Neiberg is mostly subtle and pertinent in his approach with one major exception (which is beyond the point of his presentation) when he misrepresents article 231 "guilt clause" which does not mention guilt but only responsibility for the war damages. The US delegates who drafted the article as an introduction to the section on reparations did not in any way intend to put blame on Germany, they only wanted to point out that the damages - still very visible a century later - were caused by Germany in foreign countries. This was and remains a fact, not a moral judgment. To make a parallel with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, isn't it obvious that Russia is responsible for the destructions in Ukraine, whatever the reasons for this conflict? The other missing point is to avoid analyzing the role of the military in the decision making processes, and to skip the arms race element.

[@IrishCarney]

Wasn't there a pre-war French saying about Alsace-Lorraine: "Think of it always, speak of it never"? So pointing to a lack of written proof of a burning desire to re-take it is not exactly proof...

[@AhmetwithaT]

Where did you get that saying if they were meant to "speak of it never"?

[@IrishCarney]

@@AhmetwithaT I didn't remember where I'd first come across it. Searching for it now brings up results like this: "The loss of Alsace and Lorraine continued to gnaw at the French body politic. “Let us think of them always, speak of them never,” the statesman Léon Gambetta had said in 1871" "www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/france-holds-its-fire-in-the-blame-game-1.1786645

[@AhmetwithaT]

@@IrishCarney The problem with this and that one drawing of a school teacher teaching about this loss is that these are both shortly after the loss whereas WW1 İS three decades later. The sentiment would have died down considerably by that time.

[@IrishCarney]

@@AhmetwithaT Yes that's a good point and as the lecturer says, by that decades-later point young people expressed indifference on the issue. My main point was simply that that saying of "speak of it never" existed which is the asterisk to keep in mind if you point to a lack of written evidence of public motivation on it.

[@JustMe00257]

That's a good point as seen from France. The lecture is interesting but I do believe that it is somewhat disconnected from reality. For instance, why do you think Germany and France alike had war plans ready and had started a military surge long before the outbreak of the war? They had been natural ennemies since 1870. Nationalism being a consequence of WWI? Huuuum, don't buy that. Look at what the Germans did on the Eastern front during WWI. That was already the idea of the Lebensraum. And if Ludendorff wasn't a nationalist with ideas close to what Hitler's ideas would later be, what was he? If hostilities started without apparent warning in August 1914, war actually didn't start completely out of blue. Deep rivalries and hatred existed long before and the system of alliances that eventually served as a catalyst was a direct consequence of it. The eventual disappearance of Prussia in 1945, the chaos suffered by Germany as a result of WWII was the cure for German militarism and appetite for conquest. Germany invaded France 3 times in 74 years (1870, 1914, 1940). Now it hasn't happened since WWII...

[@davidtrindle6473]

Excellent

[@coyote10119]

Very edjucational.

[@gagamba9198]

Dr Neiberg tells us the War was not waged "equitably" and mentions industry owners made money. First and foremost, it appears he has fallen for the discredited labour theory of value. Yes, industry owners (whether a privately held firm or one that's publicly listed) _may_ make more profit than the workers, but they _may_ lose more money than labour as well. Why? They've taken on far more risk than the workers. Workers are paid their wages whereas owners may not achieve a return on their investment - owners are paid last after the those who hold collateralised debt, workers, the taxman, suppliers, etc. Owners have put up their own capital to build the factories and supply them with tools, machines, utilities, designs, etc. Without them labour is standing in an empty field. And without workers, investors will neither build those factories nor equip them - they'll hold on to their capital or invest in something else. The owner-worker relationship is a symbiotic one of mutual dependency but not shared mutual risk. Further, factory owners may also see their factories destroyed by war as they are often targets. Secondly, if you look at casualties, for example Britain's, the bourgeoisie middle and upper class, who made up almost all the officers, were killed disproportionately more - 17% vice the 12% of the British army's ordinary soldiers. The bourgeoisie also served in the enlisted ranks. And there was no way that one could pay to get out of service. For the bourgeoisie and, especially, the aristocracy, there were severe social consequences for those who sought to evade service. Rudyard Kipling pulled strings and broke rules to get his myopic son _into_ a fighting role in the War. Public schools had been fighting on Britain’s battlefields for centuries. For Germany, 14 per cent of all enlisted men were killed, but about 23 per cent of officers. I would not be surprised that this holds true for Russia, Austria-Hungary, and any other country rooted in the Medieval system, whereby those who supplied weapons and military equipment and risked their lives fighting for their lord/crown were rewarded with lands and titles, to be enjoyed also by their descendants. Russia was more a mixed bag, though. In 1916 there was a large, popular uprising in Central Asia sparked by the conscription of Muslims into the Russian military. That said, Muslims from Crimea and the Caucasus were more integrated into Russian society and served the Empire, for example the Bashkir squadron. Better known are the service Tatars.

[@andzzz2]

I think you are confusing a number of things. Firstly, he's talking about perceptions of people on the ground based on imperfect knowledge. It is true that unlike today the sons of the wealthy served and died at higher rates, however this wouldn't be as visible to civilians as differences in privation. Soldiers were more aware of the priveleges and high-handedness of officers than their higher death rate, which, if noticed at all, was ascribed to the stupidity of their misplaced gallantry. In general, the massive changes in people's lives, both at home and on the front, made the once tolerable class diffences intolerable. What you say about industrialist may make some sense in peace time, but makes no sense in war time. If you produce war materiel government demand and desperation is such that you will make massive profits at zero risk. Even if your factory is destroyed, which was very unlikely in WWI away from the front, the government would pay for a new one as fast as possible. It is not true that the Russian and Austrian militaries were feudal in WWI. Both had adopted the general staff system, short conscription and reserve armies (hence mobiliisation) and were supplied by the state. The aristocracy may have been over-represented in the officer corps, but were certainly not recruiting or supplying the troops under their command. Succesful generals would receive honorary titles, but not the land formerly associated with them.

[@gagamba9198]

@@andzzz2 _If you produce war materiel government demand and desperation is such that you will make massive profits at zero risk._ That old chestnut. The performance of the London Stock Exchange between 1913 and 1919 shows your claim to be wrong. Stocks lost value continually during the war, hitting their bottom in 1918, despite the general inflation that occurred in Britain during the war, which normally would have carried prices upwards. This was was due not only to the decline in earnings that occurred and general selling of shares to raise capital, but just as importantly, because of the lack of new buying and the shift of capital to government war debt. In the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average almost doubled in price in the year following its bottom in November 1914. The market paused, then had another rally into 1916 before falling back once investors realized the strong profits they had predicted from the war would not be realised. Governments then often institute boards to fix prices to prevent the "massive profits" you claim. On 18 July 1917, the US Council of National Defense, created by the National Defense Act of 29 August 1916, established the War Industries Board to co-ordinate the war effort and gave it specific directions "to consider price factors." The General Munitions Board, created on 31 March 1917, had been authorised, by the Secretary of War to determine fair and just price to be paid by the government, and in emergencies had fixed specific prices. The War Industries Board went further and exercised price controls over a number of basic raw materials, including copper, iron, steel, cement, lumber, zinc, and aluminium. Gov't also had the powers requisition goods, take over plants, and to place commandeering orders. It went beyond what we think of war material. On 19 August 1918, the Fair Price Committee by order fixed maximum prices on _woolen rags_ . Control over food was delegated by the US President to a Food Administrator, who operated through federal food administrators in each state and county. The licensees would not receive more than a "reasonable margin of profit" coupled with the fixing of this profit margin by the Food Administration, and the widespread publicity given "fair price" schedules established by price interpreting boards and fair price committees, resulted in fact in effective price control. Further, not all businesses produce war material. Companies cut off from markets and suppliers take a hit. Companies also engage in activities trying to shore up their supplies. For example, Pepsi Cola gambled on the fluctuations of sugar prices during World War I, believing that sugar prices would continue to rise - but they fell instead, leaving the company with an overpriced sugar inventory. In the US, farmers anticipated greater demand. This led to increased prices for farmland, even marginal farmland that was low productivity. This debt and the lack of the massive profits to be earned led to a large number of farm bankruptcies. This phenomenon was also seen globally during the US Civil War. After US cotton largely disappeared from the global market the price spiked. Businesses in countries such as Australia, India, and Egypt all sought to earn what they perceived to be a windfall. They failed. In the case of Egypt, the government invested so much on the anticipation of future cotton earnings that it went bankrupt.

[@phildyrtt6433]

My impression is that this speaker is rather leftist yet not currently a traditional bolshevik. He does manage to assemble and disperse valuable documentary tidbits in spite of his understandable bias. One must always tread waringly given some non-medical élite agent posing with that ,,doctor" title. 😎

[@veritas6335]

Like all talks like this, it is poorly filmed. Half the benefit of a lecture like this is in seeing the slides presented. No one made any attempt to show the slides the speaker is using to illustrate his talk, so the talk suffers. Too bad.

[@douglasstrother6584]

The A/V work on many of these lectures is an insult to the caliber of the content.

[@rocketpig1914]

Well, they did make an attempt because we see some slides

[@cutsrosescents4950]

Well at this point if nobody wanted the fight. Who would? Who would profit? How about a factual account of those that would and did profit from this conflict.

[@TheMarkJoergensen]

It's more complicated than such. The industrialists in the major states were not pushing for war, and infact were against it. The acquisition of oil only comes into it rather late into the war.

[@Isaaxz123]

At the time, the major industrialists and bankers of every European scrambled to prevent a war. The dominant theory at the time was that a world war would lead to the collapse of international trade and International banking.

[@just_one_opinion]

why would zionist speak of who profited from the war LOL?

[@lienlawmaven7967]

Can you speak without your hands and can you stand still??

[@AhmetwithaT]

Are you new to seeing humans speak?

[@boonedockjourneyman7979]

This guy is the worst speaker I’ve heard in years. He simply can’t speak. Right. Right. Right. Do better than this.