I never understand why Krigersmarine don't request they terms from France

[moscowexile]

Pablo:

"Without the invasion of Belgium, I think it's pretty likely Britain would not have intervened in August 1914, just as it had not intervened in the Franco-Prussian War, when Bismarck specifically assured Prime Minister Disraeli that Germany would not attack Belgium. The German General Staff knew attacking Belgium would bring Britain into the war, but they just didn't care since they felt its army's contribution would be minimal at best. Oops."

I agree: a major miscalculation.

The much modified German General Staff's Schlieffen plan, a sweeping "right hook" through Belgium of the German 1st and 2nd armies in their march on Paris whilst the majority of French divisions, chasing after revengeful glory in their lust to regain those territories, Alsace and Lorraine, lost to the German Empire in 1871, hurtled headlong into the wrong direction necessary to counter this sweep, took little or no account of those French divisions that would oppose them on the Franco-Belgium border and treated with disdain any contribution that any paltry British expeditionary force could contribute to resisting the invasion of France through Belgium . Hence Kaiser Bill's alleged comment at the the time about Britain's "contemptible little army".

There is no German record of the Kaiser describing the British Expeditionary Force 1914 as "contemptible", though he did say that it was "a contemptibly small" army. Whatever, the name stuck and veterans of the 1914 BEF to France and Belgium called themselves with pride: The Old Contemptibles.

They were so "comtemptible" that although greatly outnumbered, in August 1914 they dug themselves in along the Albert canal at Mons, Belgium, where they waited for the leading divisions of Kluck's 1st army:

"Kluck determined to take on the BEF and they first engaged the British in battle on August 23rd, 1914. French [BEF commanding general] had deployed his men across a 40 kilometre front. The BEF was heavily outnumbered. The BEF had 70,000 men and 300 artillery guns whereas the Germans had 160,000 men and 600 artillery guns.

Despite such overwhelming numbers, the Germans did not do well at the start of the battle. The BEF may have been referred to as a bunch of “contemptibles” by Kaiser William II, but they were professional soldiers. The Germans believed that they were facing many British machine guns at Mons. In fact, they were infantry men firing their Lee Enfield rifles, but at such a combined speed that they gave the Germans that impression. German intelligence later estimated that the BEF had 28 machine guns per battalion at Mons - whereas each battalion only had two. After his experiences of the BEF at the Battle of Mons, Kluck, after the war had finished, described the BEF as an 'incomparable army'."

The fact was that the British had learnt the hard way during the Boer War what rapid, accurate rifle fire from entrenched positions could do to advancing columns. Nevertheless, Mons was not a victory and the British had to retreat because of the overwhelming numbers of German infantry.


My great granddad was one of those BEF riflemen.

[Catfish]

Hello,
sorry for being OT, WW1 and such, but this is really interesting - while i always thought to know why WW2 began, the First world war and its beginnings is somehow foggy to me. Sarajevo, yes, but I realized that some historical background was never taught in school here in Germany after WW2, maybe due to the reeducation project, or because the good post war germans wanted some distance to their/our predecessors. And then there was the cold war ...

Kaiser Bill may not have been too intelligent, or witty, but he was also let down by his own advisors - and he himself certainly had let go Bismarck, what was described as "the pilot leaving the ship", which was even translated and printed in the british "Punch".
But after all it was obvious Germany would have had no chance in fighting a two-front war against Russia AND France, so the Schlieffen-plan seemed the only solution - fight France and win as soon as possible, and hold the lines in the east until men from the west become available. It did not turn out that way as we all know.

The British Expeditional Forces were tough, and even if a prussian general (Clausewitz?) had said any army needs a ratio of 3 to 1 to attack anyone successfully, the even much bigger german army did not succeed instantly, and got the first impression of what was to come. Moscowexile, please accept my utmost respect for your great grandfather having fought in this war.

As Moscowexile wrote even before the first battles in the north there was already the french armies who tried to get back the Alsace region they had lost in the prussian-french war of 1871, but they failed here, and left a big gap in the north.
Regarding the Royal Empire it had an uprising rival in Germany, which needed a fleet to support and control its own colonies in Africa, and Asia. There was a real conflict trade-wise, with the invented "Made in England" sign that should represent quality and such, but the products "Made in Germany" suddenly surpassed those products, maybe because Germany had a technological advantage with dynamoes and other technical products back then.

Additionally Germany was building the Baghdad - railway, which would have connected Germany directly to its african colonies, and which the British tried to interrupt, not without success if you think of "Lawrence of Arabia". With a functional railway the Suez canal would have been almost useless.

Anyway Germany's cannon-boat politics were not so successful as what the British Empire or the US did - certainly lack of experience in running overseas countries politically. My personal theory is that our Kaiser was angry for he was not wanted becoming a member of the British Royal Yacht Club - hence his own huge fleet

Greetings,
Catfish

[moscowexile]

Off topic maybe, but this thread has progressed from a question posed about the Kriegsmarine in WWII after the fall of France...

Old Kaiser Bill was really an English gentleman in Prussian uniform!

What always intrigued me about him was that when revolution hit Germany in 1918, like the majority of the German aristocracy, he just packed his bags and left the Fatherland. Wilhelm II spent the rest of his life in Doorn, the Netherlands, where he died on June 4th 1941, just 18 days before Barbarossa, the attack on the USSR, was launched, which attack spelt doom for the Third Reich.

See:

http://pierreswesternfront.punt.nl/i...&tbl_archief=0

The old Kaiser died when the born-again Reich was at its most successful and powerful. I often wonder what he thought about all of this when he was breathing his last. Needless to say, he despised the Nazis, who, as national socialists,held the old order in contempt, but I reckon the old man could not have been more than a little proud when looking objectively at the success of the Wehrmacht.

I still think that it was a disaster for the United Kingdom, a disaster for Germany, a disaster for Europe and a disaster for the world when the British government, after several days of hesitation, decided to throw in its lot with the Entente powers.

The world situation as we see it now all stems from that fateful decision made on August 3rd 1914.

[Catfish]

Hello,

thank you for the link, never saw this page before.

I also wonder why the Kaiser left Germany, but times were different. Anyway a lost war does not mean an instant danger for a government (not even today hrrm). But apart from fear maybe the aristocrates did not want to live in a Germany now ruled by a democratic or socialist force, even if there was no real revolution, as had been in France long before, and Russia. And the years after the war were hard for aristocrates in Germany, but especially for the former soldiers, who were looked down upon, and despised, some even killed by the mob. The situation in Germany after the war, with the Freikorps etc. battling in the streets against the socialists and communists was a mess. And maybe Wilhelm felt indeed responsible - and maybe he did not want to be accused for it, hence his exile (?).

I also never understood why England did not intervene when the plan for the Versailles treaty became apparent, heaping all the guilt of the war alone on Germany. This had been the idea of the french politician Clémenceau, and it was not as widely accepted as it is told to us today. Maybe the British Empire was satisfied to have won the war, and established trade supremacy again (?).

Anyway this treaty and its results were felt as inquitous even by the german socialists, but their comfortable scapegoat for the situation certainly was Kaiser Wilhelm, and they blamed him alone. The politicial right force (nationalist/monarch) instantly invented the legend of the stab in the back, done by german socialists and communists, and blamed them for the outcome of the war.

"I still think that it was a disaster for the United Kingdom, a disaster for Germany, a disaster for Europe and a disaster for the world when the British government, after several days of hesitation, decided to throw in its lot with the Entente powers. The world situation as we see it now all stems from that fateful decision made on August 3rd 1914."

Well said, but maybe the British Government could have still helped defusing the situation right after the war, in refusing or denying Clémenceau's plan of the Versailles treaty, but however they did not. Maybe they had become a victim of their own propaganda.
Since Germany's unconditional surrender it was not in a position to intervene. It was definitely WW1 and its fortthcomings that laid the foundation for Hitler's dictatorship and the second world war. I wonder what will shop up in the british archives after 2018, when the locked-up archive files will be made available.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by moscowexile

When I said that the British Empire was the raison d'etre of the Royal Navy, I had in mind the twice-as-big-as-the-next-two-combined-fleets navy patrolling the sinews of British seaborne free enterpise trade and not King Harold the Great of Wessex's or Elizabeth I's wooden walls.

Hi!

My point was that the Royal Navy's raison d'etre was to protect Britain from invasion, long before there was a British Empire. The Empire came about because of British naval superiority, not the other way 'round.

'We are entering a general European conflict because of German beastliness in its rape of poor little Belgium" was the cry of the British government in August 1914 and I still maintain that it was largely propagandist in nature: witness the British political cartoons of the time.

Hmm... You might want to review Foreign Minister Grey's speech to Parliament on August 3, 1914, where he outlined why a German attack on Belgium would be sufficient reason to enter the war against Germany, and the Parliament agreed.

Furthermore, Britain's noble defence of Belgium neutrality in 1914 was contradicted somewhat by the Salonika expedition of 1915 when French and British forces landed in Greece in order to bolster up Serbia by attacking Bulgaria. In that year, Serbia, whilst having bravely defended herself against the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Serbs suffered the greatest losses in relation to population size of any participant in World War I), faced imminent defeat after having been attacked by Bulgaria, which had joined the Central Powers in order to expand, at Serbia's expense, in the Balkans. Problem was: Greece was neutral. Lloyd George disingeniously argued at the time that "there was no comparison between going through Greece and the German passage through Belgium."

Actually, Lloyd George was correct: the troops landed in Salonika at the request of the pro-Allied Greek Prime Minister, Elefthérios Venizélos. It is true that Greece was not of one mind on this question, since King Constantine I was pro-German, and that the resulting disagreement and all that followed is known in Greece as the "National Schism" (Εθνικός Διχασμός, Ethnikos Dikhasmos), but the offer was made by the Prime Minister and legitimate head of government.

The all too prescient Jackie Fisher hit the nail right on the head at the beginning of the 20th century when asked for a possible date for the outbreak of a general European conflict: his answer was that a general European war would start when the Kiel canal had been widened to facilitate the passage of dreadnoughts. He was almost spot on in his prediction. The canal widening began in 1907: it was completed in June 1914. A Royal Navy squadron was invited to the re-opening of the widened canal by Kaiser Wilhelm II, a grandson of Queen Victoria. The celebrations were cut short by the announcement of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg Empire, in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist.

The Royal Navy squadron promptly left Kiel to take up war stations. On leaving Kiel the squadron signalled to the Kaiser and his fleet: Friends today; friends in future; friends forever.

It was my understanding that the Royal Navy's Second Battle Squadron left Kiel to continue its scheduled cruise through the Baltic, and returned to Britain for the annual royal review by King George V on July 20, followed by fleet exercises. The Royal Navy did not begin moving to its war stations (i.e., Scapa Flow) until July 28-29, after Austria had publicly rejected Serbia's response to its ultimatum and was mobilizing for war.

Pablo

[Pablo]

Originally Posted by moscowexile

I still think that it was a disaster for the United Kingdom, a disaster for Germany, a disaster for Europe and a disaster for the world when the British government, after several days of hesitation, decided to throw in its lot with the Entente powers.

The world situation as we see it now all stems from that fateful decision made on August 3rd 1914.

Hi!

I think they knew they were in for a disaster. The only choice was whether the disaster would be the creation of a continental hegemon, which Britain had fought to prevent any nation from doing for 350 years, or a war fought with 20th century weapons using 18th century tactics.

Pablo

[moscowexile]

But surely, with the benefit of hindsight one can say that the British opposition to German hegomony in Europe was a failed and possibly mistaken policy; can it not be said that there exists now a European hegemon in the shape of the European Union and, furthermore, that that hegemon has as its economic powerhouse, its control centre as it were, the economic clout of the Federal Republic of Germany, which state also is the most populous in the EU?

Indeed, the defeated Germany of 1918 was in a far stronger position than any of its "victorious" wartime adversaries: Britain was near bankrupt and eventually had to default on its war debts to the USA; France had not only been "bled white" because of the carnage that had taken place on its territory, but the major battles fought in France, having also largely taken place in the industrial regions of the French Republic, had laid those regions waste; the Russian Empire no longer existed and was being torn apart by civil war; the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that state, that should surely be judged the most guilty of all, should one wish to label any World War I belligerent as being responsible for the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, or at least its Foreign Minister should have been so judged, had fragmented into its ethnically differentiated regions, the result of national self-determination, that very thing that Austria-Hungary had most feared in its multi-ethnic empire and which had caused the spark at Sarajevo that had ignited Europe.

Defeated Germany was still, more or less, in one piece in 1918, apart from the Danzig corridor and bits of Silesia ceded to Poland and the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. Germany throughout the war had - apart from the sudden incursion of the Russians into East Prussia in 1914, whence they had promptly been despatched after their defeats at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes - never had its territories invaded and occupied by foreign armies, had not had its industrial regions reduced to ruins and had a population that, despite the hunger caused by the Royal Navy blockade that continued from the armistice of November 1918 until the signing of the Versailles Treaty the following year, was still growing and rapidly outnumbering that of France, proud claims of French fecundity notwithstanding.

True, British policy for 300 years or more had been to prevent the existence of a European hegemon: the threat usually came from France. So the UK did an about face in 1914 and allied itself with France in a struggle against the potential "threat" of German domination of Europe. But is that not what has, in the end, eventually happened? Germany has at last found its "place in the sun" that it had yearned for in the first flush of its successes during the last quarter of the 19th century; Gemany's place in the sun has, however, not turned out to be an overseas empire that would challenge those of the British and French: Germany is now boss of the European Union, a union that that self-styled emperor of the French, Buonaparte, would have been proud of.

In the meantime, along that route towards that German hegemony that we now witness, there have been two world wars fought to prevent its occurence; there has been the destruction of most of old Europe, the loss of millions of lives, the collapse of empires and the rise of Bolshevism and its counterpoint, Fascism, Stalinism and subsequent wars both hot and cold.

When British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey supposedly said on the eve of the outbreak of World War I, apparently as he watched lamplighters lighting the gas lamps in the street below his Westminster Foreign Office window: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit gain in our lifetime" he could certainly have added that he had been one the parties that had helped put them out.

Sir Edward had by that time realised that he had failed to clearly communicate to Germany that a breach of the treaty not merely to respect but to protect the neutrality of Belgium - of which both Britain and Germany were signatories - would cause Britain to declare war against Germany. When he finally did make such communication, German forces were already massed at the Belgian border and the German High Command convinced the Kaiser that it was too late to change the plan of attack.

So the United Kingdom declared war on the German Empire because of "a scrap of paper" as the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg had labelled the broken treaty.

As regards Sir Edward Grey's speech to parliament concerning the necessity for a declaration of war against the German Empire, in 1915 Bethmann-Hollweg described to an American newspaper journalist his final meeting in Berlin on August 4th 1918 with the departing British Ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen: "The day before my conversation with the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Grey had delivered his well-known speech in Parliament, wherein, while he did not state expressly that England would take part in the war, he left the matter in little doubt. One needs only to read this speech through carefully to learn the reason of England's intervention in the war. Amid all his beautiful phrases about England's honour and England's obligations we find it over and over again expressed that England's interests - its own interests - called for participation in war, for it was not in England's interests that a victorious, and therefore stronger, Germany should emerge from the war...England drew the sword only because she believed her own interests demanded it. Just for Belgian neutrality she would never have entered the war. That is what I meant when I told Sir E. Goschen, in that last interview when we sat down to talk the matter over privately man to man, that among the reasons which had impelled England into war the Belgian neutrality treaty had for her only the value of a scrap of paper."

So "England" went to war over a point of principle? John Keegan, in his book The First World War (published on the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of WWI), concluded: "...principle...scarcely merited the price eventually paid for its protection." One could, for sure, retort to Keegan's opinion concerning principles: What do principles represent if they are not worth fighting for? However, the "fight" in question involved the deaths of millions.

And I still say that the real reason why the UK declared war on Germany was to protect British economic interests: a German Weltmacht supported by a powerful fleet and German domination of Europe were definitely not in the best economic interests of the United Kingdom and the British Empire.

As they say: It's the economy, stupid!

And as Groucho Marx once said: These are my principles: if you don't like them, I have others!

The idea that British participation in the Great War was a bad idea has also been mooted by Scottish economics professor Nial Ferguson in his book The Pity of War. One mentioned earlier on this thread that it would be interesting when the foriegn office and MOD files are released in 2018 but there is a some pretty solid evidence (see Winter Haig's Command and Gordon Rules of the Game) that large quantities of WW1 documents were purposely destroyed in the twenties. Ferguson also discovered that, as early as 1912 the British War Office in the event of war with Germany, planned to invade Belgium if the latter refused to grant free passage to British arms. Assuming the the Germans knew this already, then Bethmann's surprise at Grey's speech is really justified.

Any of this sound familier? Also there is evidence that elements of the Belgian General Staff had conducted secret official talks with their British counterparts in violation of the multi-national neutrality treaty. If accurate, it places much of what "moscowexile" writes on pretty firm ground.

Putting a modern perspective on the Great War, Serbia of the day was a defacto terrorist state, ruled by a regicide royal house with a very aggressive military that often operated outside of national juristiction. Twice in the preceding years they had had wars of conquest (both Balkan wars 1912-13) and they supported and exported terrorists and assassins to their nieghbour, Austria-Hungry. That British political spin turned them into poor innocent victims of Austrian aggression is a pretty good indicator of how much Britain wanted to prevent German domination of continental Europe.

English language accounts of WW1 tend to portray the Kaiser as some sort of proto-Hitler and of course German militerism is constantly played up as a factor. None of this survives close scrutiny, though: Wilhelm was a constitutional monarch and may have been many things but never a ruthless dictator totally lacking in morals. Likewise in 1914 France spent more on her military in relative and per capita terms than Germany and actually had a larger peace time army. So who was really more militerized? Britain's per capita defence spending was almost as great as that of Germany and when the Empire is included, total defence spending was greater in absolute terms.

The Great War has been called the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century, so many of the international issues effecting us today can be traced directly to 1914-18. It is a facinating subject, even though it has drifted so far off topic. Hope the mods don't shut it down.
Good Hunting

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Randomizer

And lastly, I'll probably get flamed for this as well, but the French Navy does have a long and honourable history behind it even if it lacks the tradition of victory that the RN has.

Sorry I missed this part earlier. It makes me sad any time anyone is afraid of being flamed for making a point. Even when I think the poster is wrong I wouldn't think of actually attacking while disagreeing. And I'm not disagreeing.

When Germany decided to seize the surviving French warships after occupying Vichy, many were scuttled by their crews. There is no reason to doubt that most ship captain's would have done the same in 1940.

The Germans had already done much the same in the great scuttling at Scapa Flow in 1919. They ultimately agreed to sink their own ships rather than let a former enemy have them.

I would like to step aside from the discussion for a moment to praise the educated and thoughtful students of history who post on discussions like this. I've read a lot on both World Wars, and I'm still amazed at the things people mention that I never knew. I consider myself lucky to be able to read and take part in threads like this one.

[predavolk]

And I'd like to steer this back to the same period as the initial question and ask a "Why Not?" question of my own. It seems obvious to me that Hitler's weakness would always be the Med. Italy was soft, and he knew it. Why the hell didn't he say, "Screw You" to Spanish neutrals (who owed him), steam roll them, and then (literally if need be) bury the tough nut that was Gibraltar? With control of the Herculese Straight, backed by Luftwaffe and the Vermacht, he would've had control of the Med (take Portugal too-Swiss or Swedes don't like it? threaten them). And then North Africa becomes an easy gain. Then you REALLY hurt Britain's supply efforts. Then you can focus on all of the Atlantic as it becomes the sole route for Britain to supply herself. And with sub bases in Spain as well as France, you could really have England on the run.

The only answer I can think of is that he was a) delusional enough to believe that peace with England was still possible (improbably after the Battle of Britain) or b) that he decided to ignore England and focus on Russia (I think the latter, and misguided optimism, is what happened). True, the threat of English attack was minimal (on its own), but the possibility of England cutting off Germany from the Med was very real. And it happened. And, after provoking Russia, I think it was the #2 reason for Germany's demise (with the US's direct involvement a distant 3rd).

But if they'd taken Spain (and Portugal), they would have had a huge gain in the Atlantic, and would have also insured the continued flow of precious war material (including critical fuel) from the Med. They also might have been able to free up Italian troops given that they were protected by the Germans at Gibraltar. Then, and only then, might Germany have had the faintest hope of beating Russia. Probably not, but certainly much more likely then when they left Britain to build up its invasion force and its control of the Med and Atlantic.

I do not believe that adding to the list of Germany's enemies to get Gibralter was a good idea. Franco's Spain made a neutral conduit to the world not at war with the Reich and reduced the amount of coastline that needed to be defended. A neutral Spain preserved access to the Atlantic from the captured French Biscay ports but if hostile then the Bay became another choke point, easier channeling of the U-Boats into a Royal Navy killing ground. Franco provided markets for export (commerce did continue after all) and some few soldiers for Hitler's passion, the Eastern Front (Infantry Division 250, the Spanish Blue Division). Invading an Facsist Spain promised much cost with little strategic gain.

Germany could never win WW2 in the Med nor could anything that happened there be decisive in itself and so the forces committed there were drawn from where they were really needed. The Med wasn't even a deal-breaker for the Brits other than for morale and in Churchill's Imperium Britannica mindset. Better for the Nazi's had they allowed the Italians to sink or swim on their own, better for the Allies that they didn't.

As for Gibralter, driving an armoured column through the Iberian penninsula, even with Spanish permission would have been a formidable logistical exercise that would have taxed the Wehrmacht to the fullest without fighting. The attrition and wear and tear just motoring to the Rock would have been significant. Given the already overworked German supply system and marginal Spanish infrastructure still trying to recover from their Civil War the entire effort would have been much pain for little gain. Hitler warped history to suit his ends but he would have known how Napoleon's decline started with the Spanish Ulcer and it's unlikely he wanted to follow suit.
Good Hunting

[predavolk]

If he knew anything about Napoleon, he would've stayed the hell out of Russia!

Originally Posted by predavolk

If he knew anything about Napoleon, he would've stayed the hell out of Russia!

Hitler was a Napoleon fanboy and the highlight of his 1940 trip to Paris was visiting Bonie's tomb. He also visited the Waterloo battlefield during the 1940 campaign in the West.
From the earliest days of the Party, the "Drive to the East" was an integral part of Nazi strategy. Bolshevism had to be destroyed and that meant attacking the Soviet Union; National Socialism could not co-exist with Communism. That was the historical role that Hitler cast for the Third Reich, it overshadowed almost every other consideration, at least until after Kursk. See Allan Bullock Hitler and Nial Ferguson The War of the World.
Good Hunting

[Sailor Steve]

I see I'm running behind the curve again.

Originally Posted by moscowexile

Indeed, the defeated Germany of 1918 was in a far stronger position than any of its "victorious" wartime adversaries...

Were they? I'm going strictly on memory, but I thought that part of Germany's "punishment" was to have to "repay" all the war debts Britain and France claimed they owed. One of the results was that for Germany the Great Depression started a full ten years before it affected the rest of the world. Britain may have been near bankruptcy, but Germany was already far over that line.

[moscowexile]

The Germans were hammered at Versailles with reparations so enormous that, had they paid them, they would have still been paying them out in instalments until about 1956, if my memory serves me right.

The German federal bank allowed hyper-inflation to take place so as to make their repayments to the victorious entente powers worthless. Often they just did not pay. After one major default, the French occupied the Ruhr so as to ship out coal and steel: French industrial regions were toast at the time because of the war. The German Ruhr industrial region was unscathed by the hostilities.

All the former belligerent countries suffered a huge post-war economic depression and there were strikes and workers' protests and communist agitation everywhere, even in conservative England; there were even occasional short-lived communist republics in some places.

From a geo-political perspective, however, Germany was in a much stronger position than before the war and its former enemies were much weaker: the UK was almost bankrupt and war weary; the French were even more so; the Russian empire was out of the game, its territories fragmented - though they would re-consolidate as the Soviet Union and undergo forced industrialisation under Stalin - and torn by civil war; its former contender for the control of central Europe, the Austrian Empire was out of the game as well - it no longer existed.

Although allies in WWI, albeit that the Austrians were in 1914-1918 more of a burden than a help to the German Empire, rather as were the Italians to Fascist Germany in WWII, most northern German states under Prussian leadership had fought two wars with the Austrian Empire in the 19th century over the control of the Reich: the question was whether Germany be led by Prussia and the Hohenzollerns from Berlin or the Austrians and the Hapsburgs from Vienna.

For several hundred years the Kaiser had been elected by other German kings, but in the end it had become tradition that a member of the Hapsburg dynasty be Kaiser. This continued until Buonaparte defeated the Hapsburg Kaiser (the Austrian Emperor) and the Russian Czar at Austerlitz in 1806, forcing the defeated Kaiser in that same year to renounce the title and abolish the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation): the Corsican was boss in Europe now.

The struggle over control of Germany then came to a head in the middle of the 19th century when the Austrians got bounced twice by the Prussians in short order - most effectively at Königgrätz in 1866 during the so-called Brüderkrieg (Brothers' War) - all this leading up to the 6 week long thrashing of the French Empire armies in 1870 and the founding of the Second Reich by Bismarck.

After WWI, the new states formed as a result of the fragmentation of the Austrian and Russian Empires and bordering on Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland, would have eventually fallen within Germany's sphere of influence without Hitler's aggression: they had the Soviet Union at their backs and a democratic, wealthy Germany would have been their protector. Likewise Hungary and Rumania and Yugoslavia, all former Austro-Hungarian Empire territories. In fact, Hungary and Rumania were to throw in their lot later with fascist Germany and to become her willing allies: it was the Rumanian "weak link" in the German 6th army defensive semi-circle around Stalingrad that the Red Army chose to attack and break.

Germany is centrally placed in Europe and populous: the Germans are hard working, thrifty, God-fearing etc. And war weary though they may have been, they certainly bore a big enough grudge concerning what they saw as the raw deal handed out to them at Versailles as to answer a call to arms again, unlike the British and the French.

All this leaves out the USA, of course, another victor in WWI. But after Woodrow Wilson's peace brokering and highly moralistic lecturing to old Europe concerning its wicked ways of alliances and treaties that had led to the worst war in human memory, the USA retreated into isolationism, determined never to become involved again in European politics, thereby following the advice that George Washington had given them on his retirement from public life.

After the 1929 Wall St. crash, the whole industrialised western world suffered a huge economic depression, but the first to bounce back to full employment and the good times was Germany. And its Chancellor when the "happy days were here again" was Herr Hitler.

Hitler was not an economist. In fact, he was a nothing: he was an idle dreamer that had led a Bohemian "artist's" and wastrel's life, living on his his deceased father's state pension and, when that ran out, as a bum in Vienna. Then he found the only real occupation that he had ever had up to that time: corporal in a Bavarian infantry reserve regiment from 1914 to 1918. He was an exceptionally brave and dutiful corporal.

In 1919 he was unemployed again and became a political agitator, eventually joining the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party), of which party he rapidly became the main crowd-puller and , on Hitler's insistence, had its name changed in 1920 to Nationalsozialistische Deautsche Arbeiterpartei the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

I have lost count of the number of times that old Germans (all dead now) who used to tell me about the economic miseries of post-WWI Germany and how that man was responsible for the good times coming.

That was Germany's tragedy, because just before the good times began to roll, the Nazis had been losing popularity. The good times returned and Hitler was chancellor and he received credit for it. He also sorted out the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) in a way that seemed to please most folk, namely with his own army of street fighting tough-guys, hooligans, and thugs: the "Brownshirts" or S.A. (Sturmabteilung - party stormtroopers).

The rest is history.

The 1930s was a time when dynamic, vibrant, industrious Germany was casting the rest of Europe into its shade, but the steel mills were not beating out ploughshares...

It needn't have been so, though...

And the Germans did the same after Jahr Null, Year Zero of 1945, when Germany was flattened: they bounced back again with their Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle).

And who owns Rolls-Royce motors now?....

You've got to hand it to old Fritz, you know!