Neutrality was a fiction and Lusitania was a false-flag. They intentionally didn't escort the ship. Germans warned they would sink it and the ship sailed to deliver hostile supplies with the hope that it would be sunk so we could join the war.

It seems like the only reasonable wars are the ones where I can't see through the excuse and lies in the lead up.




It also has later turned out the German claims that there were explosives on the ship were true and covered up as an excuse for the war. I wonder how much better off humanity could have been without the rise of The U.S. war machine?

2/1/2018 10:53:02 PM

They also literally cut the transatlantic cable to europe meaning that all war-time news came directly from britain.
https://warandsecurity.com/2014/08/05/britain-cuts-german-cable-communications-5-august-1914/

2/1/2018 11:11:25 PM

ffs earl

2/1/2018 11:15:38 PM

But why male models?

2/1/2018 11:19:07 PM

^LOL

^^^^I mean isn't that basically common knowledge at this point?

2/2/2018 1:25:56 PM

I hope he does the Spanish American war next.

2/2/2018 1:58:30 PM

i'm still waiting for the grenada episode in season 3

2/2/2018 2:51:36 PM

im sorry but i went to a high school that taught fiction in hisotry classes so i know the things i took college courses on and researched on my own but am still behind. ww1 was never something i looked deeply into until now.

the story was more like "evil germans sunk civilian cruise ship by surprise because they were evil"

[Edited on February 2, 2018 at 4:22 PM. Reason : i doubt schools are talking about saudi arabia when they teach 911]

2/2/2018 4:21:05 PM

I don't know about false flag, but as I understand it something similar went on in the Pacific during World War II, where the Japanese were storing prisoners of war on actual warships hoping the US would not attack them. The US attacked and sunk them anyways because they did not want the Japanese using POWs to prevent us from destroying their capacity to wage war.

I thought I had heard some of this about the Lusitania before as well, though.

That being said, as I'm sure is already clear, I'm not exactly moved by this whole US war machine argument, but that's all I say on that.

2/2/2018 4:25:54 PM

.

[Edited on February 2, 2018 at 4:39 PM. Reason : actually i think i remember that wrong nvm]

2/2/2018 4:31:17 PM

^lmao

2/2/2018 4:44:54 PM

How about FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack but let it happen so we could enter the war.

2/2/2018 5:59:06 PM

I'm sorry you went to Slack Jawed Yokel High, but that exact notice was in my AP Euro History class junior year.

It's worth noting that we didn't get involved in WWI "because of Lusitania." We got in because of unrestricted submarine warfare generally, and to a lesser extent because of the Zimmerman telegram.

More to the point, if you want to talk about the idiocy of WWI, the things you're talking about don't even make the greatest hits album. From the bungled assassination of Franz Ferdinand, through the imbecile mobilization policies that made grand-scale warfare inevitable, to the lack of diplomatic machinery to deal with any of this, to the lack of a diplomatic mechanism for stopping things...not to mention later genius moves, like smuggling Lenin into Russia or deciding to delay the hostilities for a symbolic 11:11 on 11/11 at the cost of who-knows-how-many lives...WWI is just an unrelenting torrent of stupid.

2/2/2018 6:03:36 PM

Love some Zimmerman telegram.

2/2/2018 6:13:11 PM

Russian and Iranian planes mysteriously crashing in the last few days. Curious...

2/18/2018 6:42:21 PM

^^^

2/18/2018 10:33:41 PM

This thread would be better served as a dissection of the month leading up to WWI and the month thereafter.

Such fascinating material. Grumpy hit the nail on the head.

WW1 basically started with a wrong turn.

And if you haven't studied the mobilization plans by all of the major players, you should.

2/19/2018 9:12:42 AM

turns out...the civil war wasn't about slavery!

2/19/2018 10:34:48 AM

YES IT WAS

2/19/2018 3:42:21 PM

Y'all gettin played by a fuckin Earl thread

2/20/2018 12:40:05 PM

nah, b. I stopped paying attention when he used the phrase "reasonable wars"

2/20/2018 4:41:59 PM