MovieChat Forums > 37 Days (2014) Discussion > Who orders a war and then goes on vacati...

Who orders a war and then goes on vacation?

posted 10 years ago by demon-62
6 replies | jump to latest

I absolutely loved this series. I already knew the basics of how the first world war began but never had the interest to really delve into it, so this series gave me a lot of information that I did not know. Such as, the Kaiser ordering the invasion of another country and then goes on vacation hoping his underlings will carry out his plan. That sounds so unbelieveable to me. Beyond crazy. That was the most shocking bit of information I learned after watching the series in it's entirety.

+----------MOST AMAZING BLOG EVER----------+
www.sociallyurban.com

[–] !!!deleted!!! (41638798) 10 years ago

Yes, indeed that was crazy!

I too learned about that by watching this finely detailed series. Of course the poor Kaiser WAS crazy. Absolutely mad, from all the teutonic tortures he underwent as a child due to his withered arm...trussed up in torturous straps, bullied by misguided staff hired to "fix him" and being forced into trying to use his arm that was so badly damaged at birth.

The man was a textbook study in how to create an insane leader who has no empathy and lives in a god like state of delusion.

What I always found absolutely gobsmacking about the entire situation was that the three leaders clashing to create this cataclysm were two first counsins and an uncle! Three men who essentially grew up in contact with one another.

And there are photos of their families mixing during summer holidays in the earlier part of the century having grand times as a family.

If that doesn't define "absolutely insane" (for all THREE of the men) then I don't know what does!

Why the three men, all immediate family members, never sat down around a table to sort things out the way they did during their own family holidays is beyond belief.

Queen Victoria has a lot to answer for. Her and Albert's dreams to create their dynasty backfired into the incineration of Europe.

[–] peter-501 10 years ago

I don't know if it is fair to blame Queen Victoria or Prince Albert. She did hope for peace in Europe, but it was a European tradition to install monarchs in other countries.

First, consider that that Queen Victoria was daughter of Prince Edward, son of George III. George III was of German descent. Her mother was Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, also German. So Victoria was English only in that she ruled the British throne. Albert was also from Germany.

Their son King Edward VII was essentially German, and he married Alexandra of Denmark - that actually caused friction because Prussia defeated Denmark in a war in 1864. At the same time Princess Vicky (the daughter of Victoria and Albert) married the Prussian prince.

This is why the British Royal Family is today Windsor. They literally had to change it! Only Princess Diane and now Kate Middleton have actually brought some real English blood into the mix.

Yes, in a way there was a dynasty around Europe prior to World War I - King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II were first cousins. But it was common for another prince to take a throne. The Greeks and Romanians had German princes as Kings for example.

Actually Victoria probably kept the peace because of the relations. The situation broke down for other reasons, including the treaties, etc.

The issue I see is that Emperor Franz Josef, who was not directly related to any of the other rulers, refused to have a state funeral for the assassinated Franz Ferdinand. That might have allowed the people to sit down around a table as you suggest. So the villain here is actually Franz Josef.

The other part to consider is that Germany (Prussia) and Austria had been traditional British allies. They sided with the British against Napoleon 100 years before WWI. The alliances shifted as Germany became powerful. Hence the French looked to their Russian rival.

At the same time Victoria made a mistake in trying to get her grandson Willie to like the navy. He was given toy warships as a child and as a man he built the German High Seas Fleet, which presented a problem to the British, and moved the British closer to the French and the Russians.

[–] Stanley-6 10 years ago

It was a different time. Armies were big and lumbering back then. Once orders were given, mobilization was hard to alter or stop. It was very different from this current age of instantaneous communication and transport.

[–] NewCliches 10 years ago

Who orders a war and then goes on vacation?

Someone who does not want other people to realise he is behind the war. Or someone whose vacation has already been scheduled, and doesn't want to make it look like something is up by cancelling it.

I assume there can be other motivations as well, but those are the first to occur to me.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] franklinlj 8 years ago

The vacation story is: the Kaiser did expect Austria to crush Serbia while he was away. BUT, the German General Staff, headed by Moltke, decided to use the occasion to crush Russia, either by detaching her from France or beating her in battle. The series does not make it quite clear that the military was looking for a war, or quite ready to follow a strategy with a high risk of war.
They had already helped draft an impossible ultimatum to Serbia (not entirely the Kaiser's idea,as this show says). The General a Staff then forced France into war by giving *her* an impossible ultimatum. The TV show tries to say this was an isolated move by some rogue general, but most historians think not.

In summary, it was :

"We don't trust you to be neutral. Hand over the fortresses of Toul, Belfort, Epinal and Verdun and a ten mile strip of land next to the Franco-German border to be occupied by Germany, to keep you harmless After the War is over, we'll give it all back, honest!"

The General Staff knew very well that a France still smarting over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine would never accept such a humiliating ultimatum. But if they did, Germany would get immense benefit without war, the savings in men and munitions would make the next gamble they might make even better.

The Army was the real power in Germany. When the Kaiser expressed doubts about invading Belgium, he was told it was going ahead, with or without him - that is, agree or be deposed. By war's end, the military men Hindenburg and Ludendorff were the virtual dictators of Germany, and the Army deposed the Kaiser in 1918 when they thought it would get them better peace terms from the Allies.

The war guilt clause of the treaty of Versailles was not as far adrift as a disillusioned post-war generation thought. If "Germany" may be defined as the militarist Junkers of the Army - and they certainly thought it was - then the First World War was made in Germany.