What was the cause of World War One? The correct description, thus lesson, has not been drawn, because the most significant cause has not been exhibited, let alone analyzed. The cause was plutocracy, and its associated fascism. As fascism and plutocracy impose their ways again, it’s timely to revisit what really happened in 1914.
Here is the official history: WWI was an accident caused by too much militarism, imperialism, and a tangle of alliances. Right. But not the most significant cause, which is swept under the rug of consciousness: the official version elides the fact that Germany was ruled by a gang of mass murdering fascist plutocrats refusing elementary rights to their population has nothing to do with a World War.
There is a lesson there, according to the official propaganda: if a powerful country is ruled by a gang of fascist, criminally inclined plutocrats, resting on the military while refusing elementary rights to the population, it has nothing to do with a potential world war, it’s safe for the rest of the world.
That fascism and plutocracy have nothing to do with war is the mightiest, and most lethal, myth of the Twentieth Century.
And then there is my version of history, reflecting ALL known facts, of how World War One was generated. According to which the war was the ineluctable result of the political system in Germany in 1914, and the generations before.
The crucial observation is that Russia is in a similar situation today to that Germany was in, a century ago. Russia is ruled by a Caesar (= Kaiser, Czar), Vlad the Mad Bomber, supported by a horde of plutocrats. Western plutocracy has been an accomplice, as it profits from Russian plutocrats squirreling away, and buying influence, by storing their criminally generated gains in the… European Union (mostly).
My friend Paul Handover, author of the web site “Learning From Dogs” chimes in: “There is a new, compelling and very frightening series on BBC television called 37 Days, about the days leading up to the First World War.
Episode One shows, presumably accurately, the wheelings and dealings of leaders, politicians, ambassadors, and more without any thought for, or care of, democratic principles.
One hundred years on, has anything changed?”
My (expanded) answer: I have not seen the series. However, this is of crucial importance as we confront a crisis reminiscent to that in Munich in 1938. Except, this time, Hitler attacked first, and talked later.
The title of the series, by itself, is misleading. 37 days since what? The assassination in Sarajevo? That’s what the title implies. Thus it feeds the myth that World War One was accidental. Just like Putin’s serial invasions, and massive re-armament, there is nothing accidental about it.
Those who claim that World War One was accidental are poor scholars, idiots, or the agents of vested interests (that could be as simple as their university, say Harvard, want them to teach and preach lies about the goodness of fascism and plutocracy, throughout the ages).
Claiming World War One was accidental misses three ULTRA MAJOR FACTS:
1) On December 11, 1912 (it was a Sunday), after talks at the highest level, it had become Klar to the Kaiser, that Great Britain would not stop being friendly to France. Thus WORLD war was decided within two years. It sounds incredible, but that’s what happened.
The Kaiser and his top generals agreed more “work” had to be done with the German media, so it would not appear as if they, the leaders of Germany, had attacked the world deliberately.
2) On June 1, 1914, exactly two months before the Kaisereich’s invasion, the envoy of the USA president, Colonel House, proposed an alliance to the Kaiser, with Britain, against France. At that point the Kaiser knew the USA would stand by him, and feed him during the war. They did.
Selling directly to Germany and using the fake neutral Netherlands, the USA made a fortune supporting the Kaisereich by selling it all it needed, for years, including material to make explosives.
When it became clear that the French southern strategy of attacking through the Balkans was going to cut-off most of Germany and Austria food imports, and thus victory was coming to the democracies, the USA joined victory (in the all-out Second Battle of the Marne, in July 1918, a couple of USA divisions were engaged (and forced to attack in a corps comprising a French Senegalese division. The American divisions were completely destroyed, but picked up the Senegalese habit, well reciprocated by the Germans, of making no prisoners whatsoever).
At that battle, the German army was led in by a tactical retreat of the French, before being destroyed by French artillery, and counter-attacked in a double pincer with 50 divisions (the Americans known the battle as “Soissons”, per the locale of the US divisions).
Thus, just the title the BBC chose, 37 days, is full of propaganda and massive deviation from the truth. But it is of the interest of the commanding elite to claim that past commanding elites (even if Prussian) did not deliberately plan a WORLD war (although they did, explicitly).
The truth is that the Kaisereich was a fascist dictatorial plutocracy, and hated the democratic French Republic next door, doing all it could to destroy it, before, from its own secret assessment, France, with the help of its democratizing ally, Russia, would leave fascist Germany so far behind economically, that there would have been no hope to win a war.
I have written about this many times before, for many years.
Here is a recent essay:
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/1914-imprinting-emotions-rule-iii/
Unsurprisingly, this all encompassing point of view is not taught in Harvard.
What is taught, instead, on most “left”, “progressive”, “liberal” propaganda centers is that, in World War One, just as in World War Two, there were “no bad guys versus good guys”… As some self glorifying smart fascist heading the ANC, Anti-Neo-Con network put it. The same fascist, and many like him, claim the USA has killed 200,000 in Syria, and Putin did not invade Crimea.
Unbelievably, the same creep, Ray Dawdson, or whatever he is called, and his accomplice, added that “29 journalists were assassinated under Putin’s reign, and apartment buildings bombed is disturbing. So is the open alliance between Putin with organized crime. He sold his soul to the devil. Putin is not clean. It compares to Bush Senior, who also got people killed.” Then the same “ANC” smart ass, presenting himself as a specialist of Eastern Europe adds: “I dropped stories about Putin because I did not want to be killed.”
And he adds: “People sleep-walked into WWI… The USA gains nothing. The USA failed in Syria. It’s almost as if they wanted to restart the cold war.
I don’t know what’s making the foreign policy in the US. This is not going to come out well. Give away sections of Ukraine like it was done in Georgia: that is the less bloody answer.”
Well, there are more important things than blood. I believe that such pro-fascist guys are actually well financed pro-plutocratic plants (deep down, their reasonings are in no significant way different from the Vichy propaganda). They are all over the left, and, to a great extent, the New York Times is culprit in the same way.
Who is making the foreign policy of the USA? What about smart philosophy, for the grandest schemes? Even Hillary Clinton compared Putin’s train of thought to Hitler’s, exactly as I put it on this site. That’s smart, accurate and deeply human. (That is much more human than seditiously supporting the Kremlin’s dictator.)
With the sort of attitude stridently proclaimed by much of the pseudo-left, had it ruled our ancestors’ behavior, we would all have remained chimpanzees. It is as inhuman as one can get. Instead, the correct, and wisest morality, when Pluto, the Darkest Side of horror, tries to rule, the best side of the genus Homo has to rise in arms.
Seditiously pleasing Putin is not just a betrayal of democracy, it’s a betrayal of humanity.
Just as it was a betrayal of humanity to serve the Kaiser in 1914, or Hitler in 1939.
Patrice Aymé
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 