The pity is that Strachan never finished volumes 2 & 3, but he is so thorough in his book. John Keegan’s WW1 and WW2 books are also quite good.
I have my great uncles watch, he served in WW1 (even though he was born in Slovakia) in the US army. I won’t get into Trump’s remarks…nothing good comes from political discussions on chat boards.
Why on earth did Germany and Russia fight? Was it that Germany chose Austria and the Turks? Was it Wilhelm’s arrogance?
It seems that Russia had much more in common with Germany than France and England. Also Wilhelm and Nicholas were cousins (corresponded with each other) and Alexandria was German.
That’s one of the biggest things about WWI I’ve never been able to wrap my head around.
Great questions, not easy, but in a nutshell, Russia supported Serbia (vigorously after 1908) and Austria threatened Serbia to which Russia responded. Germany, allied to Austria, supported its weak friend and threatened Russia with intervention if Russia attacked Austria to defend Serbia. France was allied with Russia and supported its ally. Alexandra despised Wilhelm, even though they were cousins (she was raised in the British court, so German through marriage rather than culture). Britain was hostile to Germany and the aggressive foreign policy under Wilhelm (the British feared Germany military and economic power). Russia desperately needed to appear strong, following recent diplomatic and military failures, and Germany sought to weaken France’s alliance with Russia through its aggressive diplomacy that further frightened Britain. Austria and Russia were both generally weak and needed strong allies (you want to look strong by having strong friends), both pursued somewhat reckless policies in the Balkans and France and Germany, desperate to maintain an appearance of strong alliances, supported their weaker friends and, to a degree, abdicated their foreign policies to support their weak friends.
Nutshell version.
Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary had a treaty engineered by Bismarck, The Three Emperors League. Important to remember AH just got their asses handed to them by Prussia (Germany) and Italy, so they were happy to have some peace for a while to settle internal strife and a little breathing room between them and the Russians in the Balkans. Alexander II was Wilhelm I’s nephew by blood, being Wilhelm’s little sister’s son.
Alexander was promulgating a British style constitution for Russia when he was assassinated. His son Alexander III went full on the opposite direction and threw the constitution in the trash. He also didn’t like the Three Emperors League because he thought the Balkans belonged to Russia, so after Wilhelm I died and Bismarck was ousted the treaty wasn’t renewed.
Instead the French, wanting a strong ally to counterbalance Germany, pretty much offered to build or pay for anything the Russians could possibly ever want so long as they signed a mutual defense treaty. Alexander, very interested in money and weapons, said, “okay, sounds good”.
And thus we have the basic alliance structure that led to WWI.
Also worth noting that Wilhelm II’s mother Victoria was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In fact, Wilhelm was their first grandchild.
Nicholas II was related to the British monarchy through an aunt on his mother’s side of the family - Danish princess Alexandra - who was married to Edward VII. The latter was an uncle of Wilhelm and brother of the aforementioned princess Victoria etc.
Thanks for the responses, I’ve read a couple of books about Rasputin and Nicholas and Alexandra, Russia had so little in common with France hard to wrap my head around someone like Nicholas bleeding for the French. I guess no one knew what they were getting into though.
Alexander wasn’t quite thinking along the lines of the constitutional monarchy similar to Britain, but he was discussing with various ministers possible extensions of the “land councils” (the Zemstvos) and perhaps the Zemsky Sobor and some sort of popular political participation (not quite a Duma), though some made proposals for expanded, codified rights. Some proposals looked to Poland and Finland and their traditions, even Austria-Hungary, but many scholars question whether Alexander II seriously considered these reforms. He seemed to desire something that provided some limited form of political restructuring, with qualified participation, but the sad thing is we’ll never fully know because he was assassinated after leaving a meeting where some of these discussions took place. Many scholars suggest he wanted some sort of constitutional monarchy, but those interpretations seem more influenced by Alexander III’s reactionary policies in light of his father’s reform tendencies.
Best known is Massie’s “Nicholas and Alexandra,” quite sympathetic to the tsar, but so readable. One of the most ironic images of the July Crisis is Poincare’s visit to Russia and Nicholas standing at attention during the playing of the “Marseillaise” and its joyful notion of despots and tyrants…Nicholas never flinched.
Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton has an entire album devoted to WWI, appropriately titled The Great War.
Plus a Lego-like video that pays tribute to the Battle of Flers-Courcelette of 1916:
Well, you know you’re a legit war when Lego gets hold of it…makes me laugh.
Watching the 1964, 26-part BBC documentary now…really interesting to get that 50-years later perspective.
Just finished reading Strachan’s The First World War. Excellent history!
Also need to offer a correction to an earlier comment that I made about Nicholas II and his connection to the British monarchy. Wife Alexandra’s mother was Princess Alice, the third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Alice was married to Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, a German duchy.
Finally, as a registered independent, I get all sorts of political mailings. Today received one with WWI imagery etc courtesy of the Lincoln Project.
Strachan is excellent…no doubt. Funny about the monarchs of Europe being such inbred sods…and we tease Appys about it. Small tidbit, the Romanovs spoke English at home because that was the language Alexandra was most comfortable with…I read in one Soviet journal a comment that her Russian was horrible (can’t confirm obviously), but it added some ammunition to her critics when she spoke in public about being “pro-German” (which she wasn’t).
Just remembered that actor and Charlottean Randolph Scott served in the AEF during WWI in France. And when thinking of Scott, I always think of this scene from Blazing Saddles :
He grew up in 4th Ward, on 10th Street near Graham. After he was an adult, his parents moved to a mansion in Dilworth. His father was on the Charlotte City Council.
He’s buried in Elmwood Cemetery.
That’s really interesting…had never thought about ducks contributing to it, but certainly the wet weather has been long documented.
Seems to me that when the head of the family abdicated the crown, he abdicated property and goods. I doubt any court will restore those things…they belong to the “state” now.
They didn’t though. Kaiser Wilhelm very famously loaded up a full freight train of goods from the Neues Palace and took them straight to Haus Dorne. The Hohenzollerns owned every house they had before the abdication except for the Berlin City Palace. The Crown Princes’ family lived at Cadinen, Oels, and the Cecilinehof at Potsdam right up to the Red Army rolling in in 1945, that’s 23 and a half years after the abdication. Georg Friedrich has some solid ground to stand on when he says his family’s PRIVATE property was stolen from them by the Soviets and East Germans, since the Weimar Republic acknowledged their ownership of said properties and goods.
The counter argument all rests on whether his Great Grandfather, the Crown Prince, actually helped the Nazi’s in a significant manner. Since CP Wilhelm quit any public activities after his friend former Chancellor Kurt von Schliecher was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives, and he was mentioned as a potential participant after the fact in the July Plot, seems they are really going to have to work hard to show he was significant to the Nazi’s rise to power.
From a legal perspective, I don’t disagree, don’t disagree with the historical argument, but my point is I think this will be a hard emotional argument to win…Weimar doesn’t win a lot of points with Germans now, and its issues in the 1920s, it seems me, was a decision to move on from the imperial era to construct a feeble democracy. And, let’s face, it Russians aren’t particularly well known for restoring goods looted/borrowed/preserved/safeguarded etc. following WW2. Many Germans I know think Wilhelm looted rather than owned…does that win the legal argument? Perhaps. Will he win in court? Perhaps, but I would be quite surprised.