RockneCAST

My Review of A World Undone - The Story of the Great War by G.J. Meyer (#243, 4 Sept. 2024)

If you're like me, your knowledge of WWI was fairly shallow. It started in Sarajevo and ended on November 11, 1918 followed the Treaty of the Versailles. You probably know about the Western Front and the large number of casualties. That's about it.

If that's your knowledge level, you absolutely must read A World Undone, which provides a readable and in-depth analysis of WWI from its causes, to its tactics to its aftermath.

I loved this book! In this episode, I primarily focus on the why the lesson of Sarajevo is a much more apt precedent to govern US decision making rather than the lesson of Munich, the often cited lesson of appeasement that our inept leaders commons cite.

This is required reading for anyone who wants to really understand the world today. WWI, in my view, had a much greater impact upon our world than even WW2. Indeed, some of those battles are still being fought in Palestine for example. All of the conflict of today was set in motion by WWI and what happened in Sarajevo in 1914.

I also gained a new appreciation for Neville Chamberlain and do not think he has been given his due, in light of what had actually happened during the Great War, the war to end all wars. The decision to mobilize was not quite as easy as our modern leaders make it seam. He had his reasons for slowing the road to war and avoiding the mistakes of Sarajevo in 1914.

Broadcast on:: 04 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

What is going on due to the rugby cast? I just read the most amazing book about World War I. You've got to read it. It's called A World Undone, The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918. I'm not gonna give you a deep dive into this book in terms of individual battles that's virtually impossible, but I'm gonna give you a little taste of it. And I'm gonna talk about why it's so important to understand World War I and why I think it's even way more important than the consequences of World War II and particularly the events leading up to World War II with the now famous Munich Peace Agreement that was entered to in 1938. So dudes, you've totally got to read this book of World Undone by G.H. Meyer. G.J. Meyer, a journalist who I had never heard of, but you totally have to read this book because this is one of the best and most important historical books I think that I've ever read. And I think all of our national leaders should be reading this book by G.J. Meyer. So dudes, for this episode, here are the topics we're going to cover. We're gonna cover whether Munich and we are gonna get into a little bit into the Ukraine war because Munich is constantly cited by our idiot leaders like Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken and various other quote-unquote thought leaders as justification for our support for United States, support for Ukraine in the Ukraine Russian War. So we're gonna cover whether Munich or Sarajevo is the more important historical president precedent to guide our decision making. We're gonna do a little bit of a deep dive into the Munich Peace settlement. For those of you who don't know, I'll give you a little thumbnail sketch. We'll talk a little bit about the events that led into World War I and why I think that is actually very analogous to what's happening right now in our world and a lot of the mistakes that we're making now. We're the very same mistakes that were made by the leaders of World War I. We're also gonna cover a little bit of just the sheer breadth and the consequences and how awful this war was. Both in terms of its consequences in terms of the immediate aftermath and in terms of the breathtaking scope and depth of the killing and misery that occurred so very recently. It's easy to think about this war. I think this war, the war to end all wars, gets lost in the shadow of World War II because World War II has a huge impact obviously as well but we almost kind of forget about World War I. So we're gonna talk about that, the depth and the scale of the killing and then the consequences after World War I in terms of what happened. So let's get started and talk a little bit about how I actually discovered this book. And if this isn't a good reason to go to bookstores, I don't know what is because if this podcast can influence one thought leader, all 10 of you, maybe there will be some famous thought leader that will tune into this episode. But if it can influence or change your thinking or illuminate and make sure that we don't forget what happened in World War I, both leading up to World War I, the war itself in terms of how awful it was and in terms of the consequences afterwards because it absolutely set the framework for World War II and we're living right now in the shadow of World War. There would be no NATO without World War II. NATO would never have expanded. There would be no Soviet Union without World War I. There would have been no Cold War without World War II. So you have to be able to understand these historical events and this book, will you be an expert after reading this book? No, you won't. But you will have a sense of breadth and a enough detail for you to form a learned opinion on this particular topic. And I think this is extremely important in our current history. So I was at a bookstore, actually Barnes and Noble just kind of hanging out. And I saw this book and I saw that it was, I'd never heard of G.J. Meyer before, but I had seen that he had some experience as a journalist. He had a masters in history from the University of Minnesota and he had taught at various places like I think he taught in Des Moines, Iowa. So I don't know if he's one of the top scholars but God, he's a good storyteller. And by the way, parenthetical note, this is the second time that an Iowa has a huge awesome book on various World War I. He had a connect, I don't know if he's an Iowa but he had actually taught in Des Moines for a little bit, so that counts. So I'm claiming him. But then the other great author of World War II was William Shire who wrote Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, one of the best descriptions of the German Empire during World War II. So I picked up this book and I'm like, God, this seems like a really good book. I totally have to read it. I like a lot of my books. I read probably 50 books a year from cover to cover. But this one kinda, I think just because of it's, it's like 800 pages. I'm like, when the hell am I gonna have time to read 800 page book? But I'm glad that I did. So I got it, but it probably took me like two or three years to actually read it. Not two to three years to actually get through the book. But two to three years to actually pick it up. And I'm so glad that I did because World War I is probably, I think, one of the greatest, even I think far greater impact on a world today than World War II, whether it's Gaza, whether it's Israel, whether it's the conflict we're right having with Russia, with Japan, China. All of the groundwork was set in World War I. And I think after reading this book, you will be able to have a sense of appreciation one for what happened. There's a reason why they said it was the world that the war to end all wars. But I think probably one of the saddest things, as a son of historian, one of the most important things is to remember, is to remember what has been lost, to remember what had happened. And most importantly, not to repeat the same mistakes. I think that that's a famous phrase to justify all of the money that we spend on history. Those that do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. It's a lot of reasons to study history. It's interesting. It helps forms the identity of a nation, but it is absolutely important to get it right and to understand what happened because human beings were human beings then. That's the key. And yes, times change. But if you look at what's happening now, I think what's happening now is very similar to what happened in World War I. So let's set the stage with our study of this book. We're gonna start with the current Ukraine war. And how am I gonna connect that to World War I? Well, a lot of our thought leaders, including John Bolton, including Joe Biden, including Lindsey Graham, including a lot of Republican and Democrat thought leaders have used the precedent of Munich to support United States militarization of Ukraine to prevent, and what do they mean by that? Well, they're referring of course to the Munich peace agreements. We'll explain what it was. The Munich peace agreement was an agreement between Great Britain, France, and Germany in 1938. And here's the thrust of that agreement. In exchange for Hitler, promising not to do any more invasions, Great Britain and France allowed Hitler to take over Sudeten German, Sudetenland, which was a German speaking part of Czechoslovakia. And of course, we all know what happened. Hitler made a promise. He signed it. Neville Chamberlain got off the plane in Great Britain, waved around to piece of paper and said that I have achieved peace in our time while Winston Churchill is sitting in the background who subsequently became prime minister later on saying you're a fool, you shouldn't sign this agreement. He's tricking you. Of course, we all know what ended up happening. September 1st, a little over a year after Neville Chamberlain waved that paper around and we're gonna connect it to World War I. So keep listening, after waving that paper around in London promising that there would never be any war. Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st of 1939 and ever since that time, the lesson of Munich is used to cite aggressive and reckless foreign policy. And what is the lesson of Munich? By our thought leaders that are used to justify our funding for the war in Ukraine, a lot of our policy during the Cold War, including our support for South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. What is the lesson of Munich? If you don't punch the bully in the nose right now, you'll only have to do it later at a much higher cost. And so Neville Chamberlain comes through history as a total and gigantic fool number one because he trusted Hitler. And number two, a gigantic pussy. A person who didn't know what was going on was not tough, so we had to fix it later on at a much, much higher cost. So the lesson of Munich, as cited by a lot of our leaders, including to justify our support for the war right now in Ukraine, if you don't start now, it's scary to have conflict. But if you don't address it now, it's only gonna become 10 times worse. Or it's using the medical analogy. It's just like seeing if you don't address the melanoma on your arm, it's just gonna get 10 times worse. So deal with it now or pay for it later, but that's your choice. And that's the lesson of Munich. And that is the, as it were, basis, almost 100%. That's been articulated as the best our government can do to justify all the tens and thousands of Russian and Ukrainian men that have been killed. That is their basis. That if we don't support Ukraine now, we will pay a much higher price later on. And if you ask why they're doing that, that's the first thing that will come out of their mouth. Those that do not know the lessons of history shall be doomed to repeat it. And this is a fair enough lesson because I think that this absolutely is a lesson that we should all take into account. So I am in no means saying that the lesson of Munich is totally irrelevant and that we should discard it as a historical precedent. But in here, I'm getting to why we need to study World War I. Because I don't think you can have a view and cite the lesson of Munich without also citing the lesson of Sarajevo. And that was the match that led the powder keg to World War I. And if you can study World War I through a book like this, this is equivalent. If you read this book, if you read it twice, it's equivalent to an entire class on World War I that will give you confidence to understand this and will help you assess for yourself whether our current foreign policy that's based upon the lesson of Munich, whether we should place greater weight on Munich or Sarajevo in terms of our foreign policy. You know, the Jesuits are the intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church, and they loved analogous reasoning. I think they called it Kazuistry or something like that or if you come up with a particular sin, you're like, well, is it more like this sin or that sin? And then they would argue about it. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of the Jesuits became some of the followers of the Jesuits became great lawyers because there was this analytical reasoning and as a practicing lawyer during the day, this is something we do literally every day of the week when we're looking at cases. Is it more like this case or is it more like this case when you have your own case and you try to find historical precedent as to what's it more like to guide not only your decision-making in terms of predicting the law, but also the judge to see whether the judge is gonna find it more persuasive. And that's why people pay so much money because of this analytical reasoning. And so I've come to the conclusion that our situation today is much more like the situation of Sarajevo in World War I than the lesson of Munich of 1938. And it's also given me a new appreciation for Neville Chamberlain. Well, unfortunately, has been derided as this gigantic pussy. So if you're at a bar and you have two people, Neville Chamberlain has been portrayed as the guy that's like kind of a wuss and just walks away and kind of cowardly and doesn't take on the bully. Whereas Winston Churchill is considered the guy that has a big pair of balls and is ready to punch a bully in the nose. But I think this has given me a new appreciation for exactly what Neville Chamberlain was trying to avoid. And it's hard to say in terms of how it would have ultimately ended up playing out, but it does give me an appreciation like study of Sarajevo, gives me appreciation for what Neville Chamberlain was trying to avoid when he tried to secure peace in 1938. So at this time, you're probably wondering, oh my God, are you ever going to get to the actual lesson of Sarajevo? Yes, right now. Now, of course, I'm not going to be able to cover all the details. You're going to have to read a world undone, the story of the Great War to truly get a sense of this particular battle and what led to World War I, what was the lesson of Sarajevo? Prior to World War I, there was not a lot of armed conflict between various European powers. Probably the greatest last big land battle on the European continent was between the great powers, was probably 1815, the Battle of Waterloo. And that essentially after the Battle of Waterloo, there was a treaty in which essentially the Europeans, there were still some battles, but for the most part, they turned their militaries to expand outward. Now, there was notable exception to this. This was the Pruschow-Franken war that occurred in 1870, and there were a significant number of casualties, and this was the war between Germany, then Germany, which was called Pruschow and France. I'm going to give you the details on that, but that was a major set of land battles that occurred during that time. And the rest of that particular period of the 19th century leading up to World War I was sort of these great powers getting stronger and stronger. The great powers were Britain, Great Britain, France, Germany, the Russian Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire in present day Turkey, Italy, which had only recently been unified, I believe in the 1860s. Germany itself was kind of this new kid on the black who had unified a lot of various kingdoms in 1870 and unified them and became a nation. And that version of Germany was much bigger than the Germany you see in the map right now. In particular, they had a place called East Pruschow that extended way east of where the current borders of Germany are right now. And so leading up to, and so all of these great powers became stronger and stronger and stronger, and that all the politicians started wondering about, what happens if we ever got into war with these other big powers? All these big powers like France, Britain, Germany, were all starting to industrialize. They were getting bigger and stronger armies, so they formed a lot of alliances because they were all kind of scared of one another. So Britain and France developed an alliance as well as they had also aligned with Russia. Russia was of course the great power to the east of Germany. Britain and France were obviously to the west of Germany. These are called the Triple Entente powers. Wave against the Triple Entente was the German Empire, which as I said was much bigger than the present day, and Austro-Hungary Empire, which was a kind of a multi-ethnic kind of dual state of Austria-Hungary that was focused in on Vienna. It also had a lot of other nation states, modern-day nation states that you wouldn't necessarily consider as part of other empire, but there were places like Slovakia to check the public for even little small slices of present-day Poland that were part of this empire. And there was also this little former Ottoman Republic called Bosnia-Kirxio, where Bosnia-Kirxio, I can't say it right, but Bosnia was in the former country of Yugoslavia and its headquarters was Sarajevo. And this little place called Sarajevo, so setting up to June 28th of 1914 was a capital in Bosnia that was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but that had only recently been annexed into the Austrian Empire. This particular area was primarily Muslim. It was formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. It also had a large Serbian population, which was primarily Orthodox Christian. The Serbs were Slavic, the Bosnians were primarily Muslim. The Bosnians were part of Austria-Hungary. The Serbs did not want Bosnia and especially Sarajevo to be part of Austria-Hungary. They wanted it for themselves. The Serbs were aligned with Russia because they were both Slavic. They both had a strong Orthodox Christian faith. And so that's kind of leading up to, so leading up to June 28th of 1914 in Sarajevo, you had the Triple Unplacant powers that all agreed to kind of defend one another. And then you had the Central Powers, which was Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. And basically it was both an economic and a military alliance, but it was primarily a military alliance. And so you had these great powerful armies with huge armies, they had huge standing armies, but they had huge numbers of reserves if they ever decided to mobilize for war. So leading up to June 28th of 1914, you had had a set of European military powers with extremely strong militaries. Most of the generals of this era had as their precedent the Franco-Prussian war and previous wars throughout that they had experienced, but in terms of living memory, in terms of the European continent, it was basically that war, the Prussia-Franken war, and some of the current generals of 1914 had actually fought in that war. And that was their template for how the wars were going to fight. And so why am I focusing so much on Austria-Hungary and empire and Sarajevo? Because there was this second in line to the Austrian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, who realized that Serbia was a problem. And also Bosnia was kind of a rest of population that was getting harder and harder to control. There were a lot of Serbian Bosnian Serb nationalists that wanted Bosnia to be part of Serbia and met the Austro-Hungarian empire. They formed a nefarious terrorist organization called the Black Hand. Archduke Ferdinand was going to visit Sarajevo and there was a parade route that was destined and there were several people lined up there that were gonna assassinate him. A couple of young members of the Black Hand tried to actually fight and throw a bomb or a grenade at mist him, but then threw a relatively chance encounter this Bosnian Serb nationalist called Gavrilo Principipip, Princip shot and killed Archduke Ferdinand and the rest is literally history. Within a month of that, all of the great powers began mobilizing for war. And within a month, a little over a month, they actually started fighting the war in early August of 1914. So why is this lesson of Sarajevo? A lot of you probably know that, that's when the war started and a lot of kind of know generally that the World War I had these kind of static fronts with large numbers of casualties. A lot of you probably know that. A lot of you also probably know that Kaiser Wilhelm was in charge in 1914 in 1918 ended up having to abdicate the throne and then there was the Weimar Republic and we all know what happened with that. But this period of time from June 28th, 1914, until early August of 1914, is where all of these actions are set and in terms of the motion to go to war. Now the saddest part of this is that none of this was inevitable. None of the key players necessarily thought that they were unleashing what they were unleashing. All of them were extraordinarily confident of their offensive capabilities and nearly all of them thought that it was going to be an intense but brief war in which they would be able to win and achieve their war aims. So what happened after, and the reason why I think that's so important as to today is that if you're going to talk about if you don't tackle aggression, it's only gonna be 10 times worse later on. Keep in mind that the leaders of World War I were acting as the lesson of Munich would dictate. They were acting very aggressively. They were mobilizing, they weren't gonna go on defense. They were being very proactive and aggressive. In fact, in both the French and the German militaries, all of them had developed very elaborate theories of the virtues of offensive warfare leading up to 1914. Nearly all of them felt that yes, there were benefits from being on the defense, but if you wanna win, you gotta be aggressive. You gotta, you cannot be cautious. You have to attack first or it will be 10 times worse. So fair enough with the lesson of Munich that if you don't attack now, it's only gonna be 10 times worse in the face of aggression. And that fair enough, that is a lesson sometimes. But the events that happened after June 28th, 1914 in Sarajevo should at least be a counterweight. So when you're thinking about is this situation more like Munich of 1938, or is it more like Sarajevo of 1914, you should be thinking about this? Because what happened after, so let's just dive a little bit into what happened after June 28th of 1914, is that Austro-Hungary, of course, wanted its revenge. Who did they blame? They blamed the government of Serbia as responsible for the actual assassination. And it seems that the evidence of actual Serbian involvement in terms of the government of the assassination of Archdupe Ferdinand was relatively minimal. Now, of course, I don't think they were going out of their ways to hunt down Serbian nationalists, but they absolutely did not want to go to war with Austro-Hungary, because at the time, in terms of the power players of Europe, in order of progression, it was probably Germany, then Britain, then France. I would say probably Austro-Hungary was probably number four, but what if Austro-Hungary had going for it? He was an ally probably with the strongest standing army of all of Europe, and that would be Germany. They had a military alliance. So they were acting, that is Austro-Hungary, after the assassination of Archdupe Ferdinand, very aggressively. Why? Because they knew they had the backup of this really powerful military ally to backstop, anyone that attacked them through their own aggression. So after the actual assassination, they issued a series, this is July of 1914. Now, no one was calling for war at this time, but of course, Austro-Hungary had had their second in line to the throne assassinated, so they were acting like a tough guy. Hey, you assassinated one of us, we're gonna kick your ass, and we know that we got a backup of Germany on our side. So they start issuing a series of 10 demands to Serbia, knowing that Serbia, under no circumstances, is gonna be able to accept all of them. And one of them was, is that Austro would be able to conduct its own investigation and prosecution of all participants that were involved. There were several other demands that were given, but it would have been impossible for Serbia to accept all 10. Austria knew that, because they knew they wanted to go to war. They also felt like, in order to have a strong, south part of their empire, they had to deal with Serbia. They also knew that they had the backing of Germany, so they were very aggressive. They thought they could kick Serbia's ass, and so they issued these demands, knowing that it would likely lead to war. Now, one of the interesting things, if you go back and look at the decision-makers, so they're acting aggressively in the efface, they're not doing appeasement by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, that's one of the lessons that we constantly get from Munich, appeasement. That is, if you appease your enemy, it's only gonna be 10 times worse later on. None of the powers, after the assassination of June 28th of 1914, none of those powers believe were acting with appeasement. They were all acting extraordinarily aggressively. They weren't gonna put up, they were not going to appease their enemy. So, Serbia, they either probably thought Serbia was either directly involved, because they wanted to reconquer areas of Bosnia and expand the Orthodox Christian religion there, or willfully ignorant of all the terrorist elements within Serbia that were directly undermining Austria-Hungarian sovereignty over the Bosnia territory. One of those two things, either way they didn't give a shit. Sort of like after 9/11, what were the Taliban absolutely involved, probably not, but they were covering up for the people that were and acting blindly to this menace in their own country. So, none of the actors, including Austria, which if you're looking at the clause of the war, their behavior, more than any other country, directly led to this conflagration, which led to millions of untold death, both civilian and military, for almost no military benefit. They were acting extraordinarily aggressively. That is Austria to Serbia. They issued these demands knowing that Serbia would reject the demands. Russia had committed to defend its own ally, its Slavic ally, its Orthodox Christian ally. They were ready to war. They wanted to do a tussle. They would not appease Austria. Germany was a little more nuanced here. There were several famous letters between Kaiser Wilhelm and Nicholas II in prior to World War I, where they were basically saying, "Hey, we probably don't want war, but they weren't really sure." So, Germany is a little bit ambiguous during this period, but they had committed to defend Austro-Hungary, Hungary, and they had to be on good terms with Austro-Hungary, because they were adjacent to the German Empire, and were they not in good terms? That would not have been good for Germany, and they had a peace treaty. So, even though Germany did not give a shit about Belgrade, Serbia, or Sarajevo, Bosnia. Germany could care less. They would not have gone to war over this issue, but even though it wasn't in their national interests to go to war with Serbia to protect Austria-Hungary, they did it anyway because they were told that they had this treaty that they had to follow. Even though it wasn't in their interests, they had a treaty, and it wasn't their interests to follow this treaty that they had had with Austria. So, Germany enters the war, knowing that Russia is going to, and of course, Russia knew that Germany was an ally of Austria. And so, Russia thought, well, gosh, if we're gonna go to battle with Austria-Hungary, we know we're gonna have to take on the Germans, so they started this process of mobilization. And mobilization isn't something like pulling out a gun, right? There's the regular units, and then there's the reserved units. There's the logistics that you have to get moving, and you can't just snap your fingers. It takes time. So, all of these, so it's not like you just cock a gun and pull it. In order to cock the military gun, it takes weeks, and once you do it and you've mobilized all this other people, you don't wanna be, and of course, you don't wanna be a giant pussy, you don't want to appease, you wanna attack, because a lot of these generals want glory. And at the time, they're precedent for casualty rates. Yes, they were aware that people died during the military engagements, but not huge numbers. And yeah, you're gonna have some people that are gonna die, but they're gonna be sustainable. You've got plenty of men to fight for you. So, Russia mobilizes to protect Serbia, knowing that Austria-Hungary is going to attack Serbia. It all starts with Austria-Hungary, and yet, Germany basically feels, well, we know that Russia's going to attack us. We have to mobilize. Now, what's the issue there once they start mobilizing? If they go to war against Russia, Russia is part of the triple untaunt. The triple untaunt consists of Great Britain, France, and Russia. Germany, of course, knows this. And so, Germany, knowing that it's going to get into war with one of the triple untaunt powers probably believes that France is going to enter the war. For two reasons, one, they're allied with Russia. And so, they're treaty-bound to defend Russia. And number two, Great Britain is gonna get into the war because they don't want an aggressive hostile power on their shores, and they had all sorts of connections to France. And so, Germany, of course, realizes this. So, they didn't want to appease France, and, of course, France was also still smarting because Germany kicked the ass of France during the Franco-Prussian war, and Germany obtained the Alsace-Lorraine region of France and kept it for themselves. So, France also wanted to get this back. So, they also had territorial reasons to support this. Germany, of course, knows this. And so, Germany, not appeasing any way, acting very aggressively, knew that they were going to be in a two-front war. They knew this. They would have to be with Russia and Germany. They knew that France had a better army, but Russia was huge. And they basically knew, in the long term, they knew, Germany knew that they could not win over an extended period of time, a two-front war. So, they developed something called the Schlieffen Plan, and that envisioned an offensive, aggressive posture in which you would, if you knew you're going to get into a two-front war, you had to attack and subdue France first. What would that do if you subdue France, how the hell would Russia be able to attack, or would Great Britain be able to attack because they couldn't be able to access the shores of France. It would be very difficult, logistically, to do. If you couldn't access the ports to supply your army, you could not be able to get a start award. You would essentially checkmate them. And at the time, Great Britain was a great naval power, but as a army, they were kind of pussies. I mean, they had these small-standing armies, are armies. Armies, they had barely beaten the boars and they basically had to go in a whole barn against the boars in South Africa. And they barely beat them. They basically had to use concentration-type camp tactics in order to be able to win. They did not have a large-standing army, but they had this incredibly powerful navy. But Germany thought, "Well, gosh, if we can control France, Britain doesn't have the army to be able to beat us on France, if France is subdued, we have to get to Paris. We can't appease France. We have to strike first." So they were all very, very aggressive. So Germany, knowing that Russia was going to attack Belgrade, or not Belgrade, but Bosnia, knew that they would then eventually get into a war with Russia and if they were gonna be in a war with Russia, they had to beat France first and they had to be aggressive to take away the ports of Belgium and Holland. They had to cross that. Well, what was Britain's red line? Britain's red line was Belgian neutrality because they knew that that was crossing the Rubicon. You crossed Belgium, which was considered to be neutral. You were directly encroaching on our territory in terms of what we had said. And of course, France is gonna be at risk and they knew that they would then essentially lose all influence over continental Europe. So this one act, this one act that occurred in June 28th of 1914 that is the assassination of the Arstuk Ferdinand led to this cascading series of events, but here's the key point as it applies to Munich. And appeasement, none of the great powers acted or appeased their enemy. In fact, all of them were very, very aggressive. They were not appeasing their enemies. Austria-Hungary was very aggressive towards Belgrade and Serbian nationalists. Russia had no problem going to the defense of Serbia and had no problem deciding that it needed to attack Russia or it had to do attack Germany. Germany, knowing that it was gonna defend and support the interests of Austria-Hungary, had no issues whatsoever about not appeasing France or Britain and crossing Belgian neutrality and attacking France, knowing that in order to win a two-front war, they had to knock France out of the war. And by the way, they very nearly did in 1914 and almost came within shelling distance of Paris. They nearly won the war and the Schlieven plan nearly worked. But here's the key point. All of them were, none of them appeased. None of them took time to negotiate, took time to think about the consequences and to think about whether this war really was going to be like the Franco-Prussian war. None of them thought about that. And most importantly, I don't think any of those particular leaders in 1914, if you pull cold Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas, the Archduke or the king of Austria-Hungary, none of them probably would have thought that they would have to, that they would abdicate or that they were gonna actually lose the throne. Tsar Nicholas almost certainly did not think that he and his entire family would be wiped out by Bolsheviks. Kaiser Wilhelm never thought that he would have to abdicate the throne and lose the German monarchy. The leader of Austro-Hungary probably didn't envision in a million years that the entire empire would collapse. But they did this through a series of overly aggressive movers. So here's sort of the lessons that we can learn from Sariovo after Sariovo. You had a series of very aggressive movers by all parties in which no appeasement was done, no negotiation was done. Every side felt they had to act aggressively or their opponent would act even more aggressively first. You had a lot of nations going to war when their interests themselves were not directly threatened. France was not planning to attack Germany. Great Britain did not have the army to be able to attack Germany. Russia knew that Germany wasn't necessarily its enemy. I think Kaiser Wilhelm and Nicholas may have been like second cousins. Kaiser Wilhelm, I think, is either his mom or dad was related to English loyalty. These people all knew each other. None of them thought that they were necessarily enemies. None of them were planning to go to war, none of them were mobilizing to go to war prior to June 28th, 1914. But all of them couldn't take time to pause, to negotiate, to consider whether the risks that they were taking through these provocative acts. That's number one. Number two, you all in a situation where individual nation states were acting very aggressively, more aggressive than they otherwise would be because they knew they had a stronger ally that was going to back them. Austria-Hungary probably would not have acted that aggressively if it knew it had to fight Serbia on its own and fight against Russia on its own. It would not have acted that aggressively. Russia, France, Britain, probably would not have come into the war if it did, and Germany probably would not have attacked France if it didn't think that France was going to have to attack Russia or attack Germany due to its own fears. So they were all extremely afraid of each other, but they were acting extraordinarily aggressively. And so in terms of reading this book, A World Undone, you will see what happened when they didn't take the pause button. So first, let's just kind of talk about, and I can't do this book justice. I'm trying to give you a 30,000 foot view of this. But one of the biggest mistakes that they had made was is all of the expert generals, all of them had had their military training based upon the old technologies. All of them had their military experience in France and Britain and France and Germany through the Franco-Freshmen War in which the guns and the casualty rates were high but not catastrophically high. And so here basically what they had said is none of them had anticipated that the technology had advanced farther than the tactics. And here's what it says in this book, "The armies that mustered after Sarajevo "did not understand the potential of the weapons they already possessed. "Did not know the tactics that they had learned in school were obsolete. "The stalemate could not be broken until two things happened. "The generals figured out what to do with the power "of the Industrial Revolution if they had placed in their hands "and found solutions to such innovations as the machine gun "and the submarine." So they all acted extremely aggressively, and what happened? Essentially a stalemate, a stalemate almost on all fronts. No side achieved any significant breakthroughs and you need to look no forward no farther than the Western Front. So eventually the French pushed the Germans back from Paris. Eventually they pushed them back and then they settled in on the Western Front. And from there basically there were all these huge battles that accomplished virtually nothing except millions upon millions of death. I'll give you an example of one famous battle that you've probably heard of, but it just gives you some kind of context about how bad it was. None of these generals thought about this. So this is the battle of Verdun. I'm not going to get into the details of it to just give you an overview. This dynamic develop along the Western Front between France and Germany. But they thought the other men, they were killing so much that the generals figured at some point they're going to run out of men. And so if we just kill even though we're losing a lot, they're going to lose even more. And so the battle of Verdun was fought in northeast, northeastern France. And here are the casualty figures that you can learn from this book. But during the course of the battle of Verdun, which is considered to have taken place between February of 2016, through December of 1916, so it was about a nine month battle. The Great Powers Lost, Great Britain and France lost 143,000 dead and nearly 400,000 casualties. The Germans lost 163,000 dead. And nearly 216,000 wounded. That's in one battle. And to give you some scale of the magnitude of that battle, that 143,000 dead on the part of Great Britain, was probably triple of the number of American and British dead during the American Revolutionary War. And accepting the Civil War in the American, the United States had never had any comparable casualties ever in all the wars combined prior to that particular time. And this was just one battle in World War I. And then these insane tactics developed, where on the one hand you felt you couldn't be a pussy. You couldn't just fight a defensive war. You had to break through it, because all of these generals had been taught not to appease their enemy. And to be aggressive, battle goes to the aggressive person who has the guts and the determination to fight and to be brave. So on the Western Front, we had these generals that said, if only we throw enough men, we can break through. But there were several times when you get a sense of this book, when this insane dynamic would happen, the goal was to break through, which was extremely difficult. Occasionally, there would be, say, a front would be 40 to 50 miles wide in terms of the actual scope of the battle. And a little portion of the army would break through, right? And they would call these salience. They'd heard about the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Well, the language that's used here is the salient, a much smaller bulge that would develop. Do you fight to try to get this salient, a posture? And you would lose a lot of men in the process. But then something would happen. You might get a report down the line that your other colleagues farther down along the line weren't able to push the Germans back. So there was a bulge developing. What's the fear of a bulge? If you then get too far into your enemy's lines, what if all of a sudden your enemy can turn right and then outflank you and basically cut you off and decapitate the salient and corner you and capture you? See, a lot of, and of course, the generals were aware of this. You had a lot of times they would lose all these men to try to capture a strategic objective. But then they would pause because the other line did not achieve similar levels of victory. And a lot of times when they would pause, they could have broken through because they, in fact, were very close to victory. But then they would pause and then wait until the other person. And then if they determined that the other part of the line didn't advance, they would then retreat. So you had a lot of times where the aggressive behavior didn't pay off and this led to millions of casualties, millions of dead, untold, unforeseen consequences that no one wanted, no one thought. There would have but not been one expert. Let's say you take the leading expert in Germany, Britain and France in 1914 and all their populations to think that they're going to have millions of people die. No one thought that would happen. The best of the best. If you were to ask them what they thought would happen, they probably would have predicted similar casualties to what happened during the Franco-Prussian war. So yeah, we're going to have some casualties, but it's not going to cause catastrophe on the scale. It's just almost unimaginable, both military and civilian. The other aspect of the war that I did not fully appreciate in terms of reading this book was the scale of human suffering towards the end of the war. At the beginning of the war, of course, Britain had a much stronger navy than Germany. And Germany did have some U-boats and things like that, but they did not have a great naval fleet. In the extent they did, Britain was way, way stronger. And so one of the things that Britain did is they basically laid siege to the entire German state. That is naval ships blocked food to the German people and all necessary medical supplies to the entire German population. Now, Germany obviously has its own agriculture, but it relied on imports. So during the beginning of the war, they could sustain that. They had Austro-Hungary. They had parts of the East Prussian Empire. They had food production that they could do. But eventually towards the end of the war, there was no food left. And a lot of the troops that had reached the front, some of them were malnourished. No one anticipated that. So you lose all, so the entire population was starving. All these people, none of them would have predicted the consequences of this reckless action. All of them were extremely aggressive. The other part that I think is very interesting about this war is that none of the individual generals sought direct combat themselves. So it's kind of like Biden. He's acting on the top of people like Biden, John Bolton, Victoria Newland, acting very provocatively towards Russia. But they themselves are not exposing themselves to danger. They're not the ones fighting it. Someone else's kids are. And so they're not bearing the deck consequences of that. And the other interesting thing that I learned from this book that I just kind of fascinated. I always wondered, like, what happened to Kaiser Wilke? So let's just talk a little bit about the aftermath. As the war progressed, you learned this in the world and done it so good. You had lost so many men by France, by Germany. And they started thinking about, like, OK, well, maybe we should try to sue for peace, because both sides felt this. But they had felt at some point, we have done and lost so many men, we have to show something for it. So in the case of Germany, they had lost so many men in the Western Front, you'll at least have to allow us to control Belgium. Because we have to keep, I'll say, so Lorraine, because we won that fair and square in the Prussian war. But they couldn't do it. Because both sides felt this way. And said, well, if we've lost so many won, we can't end. So finally, what ended the war? It's kind of interesting. What ended the war wasn't some great military state loss. Millions upon millions of casualties. Let's just talk about the casually numbers in the book. And I think you're just going to be breathtakingly sad after hearing this. Because this is the consequence of the reckless actions that led up to this unnecessary war that were still dealing with the consequences. And here's the lesson of serieables. They've lost all these men. Was it worth it? Here's what happened. And here's what Meyer writes. Whatever it was that followed the armistice of November 11, 1918, it was not peace. Something on the order of 9.5 million men were dead. 4 million from the Central Powers, almost a million more on the ally side. There were 1.8 million Russians dead. 1.4 million French, 800,000 Turks, 723,000 British, 578,000. These are dead Italians and 114,000 Americans. Romania and Serbia each lost twice as many men as the United States. Let me just stop a minute. The United States only started active fighting in the war in the spring of 1918. So the United States, from that time up until November of 1918, lost 114,000 dead in six months of fighting. That was more accepted in the Civil War than all of the other casualties in previous wars combined. The tally was for the Central Powers, 2 million dead for Germany, 1 million for Austria-Hungary. Germany had lost 55 men for every hour, 1330 for every day of the 52 months of the war, one in every 50 citizens of the Habsburg Empire had been killed. And these numbers do not include the more than 15 million men wounded or the nearly 9 million who had become prisoners of war. Nor do they include the numberless millions of civilians who had died in every imaginable way. Whatever it else did, the armistice did not end the killing. Life in the Europe had become deranged. Too many things remained unsettled. Too many men who had knew nothing but found war, there was nothing for them to go home to and be possible. Russia proceeded seamlessly into its own Civil War. That would go on for years to kill more people of the Great War, draw on troops from Western Europe in the United States and end with the commies in control. Just weeks after the armistice, an uprising aimed at establishing the Bolshevik in Germany, erupted in Berlin and was bloodily subtressed but suppressed by the civil authorities but by a rough military free course made up of demobilized German soldiers unwilling to lay down their arms. Communist governments are briefly erupted in Budapest and Munich fighting over territory erupted the newborn nations of Poland and Czechoslovakia in Transylvania in Ukraine and the Thokuses in the disputed borderland between Turkey and Greece. Central Europe is a flame with anarchy. The people see no hope. Most importantly, they had essentially unleashed a Pandora's box. The disorder was beyond anyone's power to control and the soldiers who had won the war had little interest in trying, they wanted to go home. When troops based and folks don't have written learn to plans to send them the Russia, they mutiny, whose friendships in the Black Seas did the same things. So they had unleashed to hear the consequences of this war. And first off, how did it end? Kind of interested was kind of a thud. So they lost all these millions. When France and Britain get a great entrance into Berlin, no. They essentially ended the war on the 11th hour of the 11th day, November 1918. And how did it end? Basically, the civil authorities in Berlin, the German people were starving and they basically required Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate the throne. And he wanted to keep the throne and he pulled his army generals to see whether they would come back to fight for them. There's only one division that was really willing to fight for the Kaiser. All the rest of them were basically like, I think there were like 12 that were neutral, and maybe 23 that were basically the Kaiser Wilhelm. Like, don't fuck yourself. The German people were absolutely starving. And basically were willing to do whatever it took to get peace because they were starving. They could no longer tolerate the suffering. So they basically said we want peace and we'll accept almost any terms. And so they basically had to take it up the ass. They got whatever terms. And here are the terms that were laid down. I'm going to read through this and then we'll be done. If you're still listening, you are my friend. Send me an email at rackecast@gmail.com because I'm very impressed. But this is an important topic because then we'll wrap up with the lesson of Sarajevo and apply it to Munich. So here are the consequences. So it just ended with a thug. Germany and France did not really conquer Germany. They did not set foot in Germany. Germany probably would have that would have been their fate, but there would have been tens of thousands more dead, more starvation. So here's what happened with the Treaty of Versailles of '19 and '19. And the leaders are Lloyd George of Great Britain, Clement Sow of France and, of course, Woodrow Wilson United States. Germany acknowledged that it was solely responsible for the war. Germany was excluded from the League of Nations. The return of Alsace and the reign of France without a plebiscite in either province. The surrender of small amounts of German territory to Belgium. French occupation of the Colerich Tsar for 15 years. Allied occupation of German territory west of the Rhine for 15 years. No union of Austria and Hungary. The award of Sudetland, a region whose population was overwhelmingly Germany. Two Czechoslovakia. The award of German port cities on the Baltic to the new nation of Poland, creating a Polish corridor that would separate East Germany from the rest of Germany, East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The surrender of Upper Silesia, along a part of Germany, two Poland. The surrender of Northern Shellswick to Germany, to Denmark. And the limitation of the Germany to 100,000 also, they had to pay reparations. But let's focus on two parts to this Treaty of Versailles. The award of Sudetland, a region whose population was overwhelmingly Germany. Two German, two Czechoslovakia. And the award of German port cities to the Baltic to a new nation called Poland. The surrender of Upper Silesia, long part of Germany to Poland. So keep in mind, Sudetland was part of Germany. This part that was awarded to the newly created nation of Poland was part of Germany. Silesia, which was also part of the German Empire, was awarded to Poland. Now, I know there's probably some Polish scholars that are going to say, well, we had historical claims there. I'm not arguing that. I think all of these lines on a battle map in terms of who controls what is always a function of power. The point being with this is the consequence of this war and the consequence of the Treaty of Versailles is a direct link to 1938. And yes, Hitler was an absolute evil son of a bitch. No one's claiming he wasn't. But when he was talking about recovering Sudetland, he was talking about recovering territory that they had lost only 20 years earlier. That was part of Germany, and not only was it part of Germany, we're talking about Germans who consider themselves German, who wanted to be part of Germany. There were German-speaking parts of Poland that have also recently been part of Germany. So when he's acting very provocatively, he's essentially restarting to reclaim nearly what they had lost. So I'm not justifying, there was an idiot on Tucker Carlson, I'm going to do a separate podcast on this, that basically was like Churchill was worse than Hitler. And that Hitler had promised that he really wouldn't do an invasion. They should have trusted Hitler's declarations to Germany and Great Britain that he wouldn't attack them. But this is the posture of Germany in 1938, is they were trying to recover lost territory. Now again, I'm not defending Hitler, but Hitler would not have been able to exist had World War I not happened. That's just a fact, no World War I, no Hitler, no Holocaust, none of that. The other consequences is if you look at Neville Chamberlain, what was he thinking? So instead of looking at Neville Chamberlain as a giant pussy, as this total wimp, he obviously was thinking about the staggering casualties of the World War I with no corresponding benefit. It wasn't good for France, it was not good for Britain, it was a disaster for all parties, all of the arms were starting to mutate and as close as I can think of was Mad Max. Europe became a total hellscape, total disorder and anarchy after this war. And so he was trying to avoid and at least pause before going to war right away like it happened in July of 1914, the lesson of Sarriovo, he was trying to pause, he was trying to figure out a solution that did not involve losing millions and millions of men for no purpose, that with no corresponding benefit. And I think Hitler was also aware of that too, but he knew that he needed to recover the lost territory of the Germans. Now again, I'm not siding with where I'm not supporting that. All I'm saying is I believe as to this position, the Sudeten German position that if you were to pull Germans at the time, dollars to donuts, the vast majority of Germany supported Hitler's position in terms of the Sudeten Germans, number one, number two, the vast majority of Germans would have, would have supported recovery of the territory that they had lost during World War I, which of course they never would have lost had the war not been fought, it would still be part of Germany. So you would not have had all of those things. So the lesson of Munich is, is that Neville Chamberlain absolutely did right by trying to find an exhaust and consider the lesson of Sarriovo in preventing another unforeseeable and unknown conflagration with consequences that you could never imagine. So read this book. I think this is staggeringly sad. It is very well done. It's very entertaining. I think sometimes you're going to be pounding the table because you just can't imagine the Germans could have been so pointless. Now the other thing that I'm sure that Neville Chamberlain was thinking about at some point, I'm not a demographer, but I don't know that Europe has really recovered demographically since World War I and World War II. What are the consequences in terms of its population losing that many men, number one, and number two, that many injured men that they had? What are the consequences? I don't think he had the manpower at the time. And it turns out he really didn't think it's because they got their ass kicked by the Germans and no one can blame them because they were still recovering from the war. So I think Neville Chamberlain, you talk about the lesson of Munich, you absolutely have to give him his due in terms of the circumstance that he was in. And regardless of what you think of Adolf Hitler, I think it hadn't been another leader. I think Germany would have had a similar consequence. They were trying to recover, lost territory. So I'm not here to settle whose right the Germans are the Poles on this question. So if you're some sort of Polish historian, don't tell me, oh my God, well Poland had their own rights. The point is, is anytime you have a border, both sides have a claim to it. That's for those parties to decide through aggression if need be, but only a fight between those two sides. So that gets me a long way back to if you're going to talk about the lesson of Munich. That if you appease, it just only leads to greater consequence, you have to consider the lesson of Sarajeville. None of those powers, none of those powers, acted with appeasing them. All of them were highly aggressive and it led to a horrible consequence. So right now this war in the Eastern Europe has been simmering for about two and a half years. I have a lot of very intelligent friends that are learning about the arguing based upon the lesson of Sarajeville or the lesson of Munich saying, hey, we have to do this aggression. I'm firmly in the Tucker camp, the JD Vance camp, but this is a fight regardless of the cause or the justice of the business between Russia and the Ukraine and that that should be decided by those countries. We have no interest in this. We should explore all peaceful options. We should recognize Russia's status as a great power. And it's in my view, much more similar to the circumstance we find ourselves following Sarajeville, even though we have a little bit more time to think than Munich, because we have acted very aggressively, very provocatively. At least we haven't committed truths. But in the age of nuclear war and roles and all these sorts of things, the casualty rates would be much higher than World War I. We can talk about hundreds of millions of deaths rather than maybe a billion, maybe we can have a first billion casualty level event. And when you're talking about two nuclear armed powers going to war that don't trust each other that are acting provocably, that's the risk. And the question is, is that risk worth it? If you ask all the leaders of, ask them that same risk calculation, the consequence they paid for their hubris, Kaiser Wilhelm, collapsed the German Empire, caused mass starvation, lost the throne. The king of Bostur-Hungary destroyed his empire, broke it up into little pieces, lost the throne. Nicholas II, Tsar Nicholas, Tyre family abdicated the throne, Empire collapsed, the Soviets came into power, and he had his entire family executed. Germany and France survived thereafter, but they set the stage for the rise of Adolf Hitler, which of course we all know what happened there. The other interesting kind of footnote to this is what happened in the Middle East, because the Ottomans Empire also lost. And what happened there? Well, the British maintained control over British Palestine, and they had a mandate to rule. There was also something called the Balfour Declaration, recognizing the Jewish right to a homeland. So that's set into stage and process in motion, the conflict we have today in Israel. The great powers also created a new state called Iraq. Have you ever heard of that one? That I believe was under British sovereignty. The French kept Lebanon. Have you ever heard of Lebanon? That ended up being a total cluster fuck disaster, and I believe they also were responsible for administering Syria, which had its own set of issues. And then the British had close relationships with the Wahhabi Arabs in Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. And so there was just a whole set of consequences that were set in motion by the hubris of these men that did not act with appeasement, that should have expressed caution, that led their nations and were still carrying the consequences of this war. I hope you get the opportunity to read this book. It is so good. I can't do it justice in one particular podcast, but I can almost do a World War I podcast. This book, A World Undone, The Story of the Great War from 1914 to 1918 by G. J. Meyer. It is so good. So I hope you are still here. If you are, definitely give me a good record with you on Apple Spotify and all places where podcasts are heard. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, you and I see each other on the rocket cast.

If that's your knowledge level, you absolutely must read A World Undone, which provides a readable and in-depth analysis of WWI from its causes, to its tactics to its aftermath.