Nonfiction

[desdemona222b]

Wilhelm....there are times when I've been thinking that it is clear that Carter is British.   I'd like to read some other sources on Wilhelm.   But he comes across here as verging in madness.   

The Treaties...now here is sheer lunacy.   The initial skirmish between Austria-Hungary and Serbia seems as if it could have been a seven days wonder, but then you have all the more powerful countries drawn in.   Russia bound to back Serbia; Germany behind the Austria-Hungarians.   Britain and France pulled in.   

And is it certain that the assassin was an agent of the Serbian government?   

That's an interesting question, Laurie. I've never seen anything that even questions that assertion and I'm wondering if much research has gone into it.  I think, personally, that the Hapburgs and Hohenzollerns were both just itching for a war.  I am reminded of a famous photograph of Hitler in a large crowd at the Odeonplatz when it was announced that the war had begun.  Everyone in the crowd looks so happy and Hitler looks positively ecstatic.  A strange bunch of people, to be sure.

[desdemona222b]

Possible every one here but me already knows this, but I didn't and I find it quite interesting.   

After the war and the Treaty of Versailles, the German government set up a new branch of the Foreign Office, The War Guilt Section.   The section was organized under two departments:  Working Committee of German Associations for Combating Lies Concerning War Responsibility, which created pamphlets and such for people in trade unions and the working class;  Centre for the Study of the Causes of War, which focused on more intellectual aspects of the war history and was staffed by teachers and scholars.

I imagine that was forced down their throats by the allies.  If you haven't read much about Weimar Germany and Hitler's rise to power, you would probably find it fascinating. 

[Lhoffman]

Wilhelm....there are times when I've been thinking that it is clear that Carter is British.   I'd like to read some other sources on Wilhelm.   But he comes across here as verging in madness.   

The Treaties...now here is sheer lunacy.   The initial skirmish between Austria-Hungary and Serbia seems as if it could have been a seven days wonder, but then you have all the more powerful countries drawn in.   Russia bound to back Serbia; Germany behind the Austria-Hungarians.   Britain and France pulled in.   

And is it certain that the assassin was an agent of the Serbian government?  

That's an interesting question, Laurie. I've never seen anything that even questions that assertion and I'm wondering if much research has gone into it.  I think, personally, that the Hapburgs and Hohenzollerns were both just itching for a war.  I am reminded of a famous photograph of Hitler in a large crowd at the Odeonplatz when it was announced that the war had begun.  Everyone in the crowd looks so happy and Hitler looks positively ecstatic.  A strange bunch of people, to be sure.

I have seen work which theorizes that the leader of the Black Hand (who was also the head of the Serbian military Intelligence) was working independently of the Serbian government, but perhaps not independent of the military.   I don't know how reliable the work is, though.

I think, given the instability in the region at the time, that it would be reasonable to ask what the motivation of the Serbian government might be.  Doesn't seem reasonable that they would want a large scale war.   Possible they didn't put much stock in the treaties which required the more powerful countries to get involved?   

Is this the photo you were thinking of?

[desdemona222b]

Yep, that's it. 

What was Serbia thinking?  My gosh, again - good question!  I'm afraid that the simple answer may be, they weren't.  Perhaps they felt Russia had all the might necessary to beat down the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  It was an astonishingly naive time, needless to say.  People in that time period were so much more unsophisticated than we are now that it's hard to imagine what kind of thoughts people in areas like Serbia had, let alone why.  That's what is so interesting about history to me - trying to have imagination enough to evoke a realistic minds' eye view of the mindset of the populace in these various, vastly diverging cultural communities.

[Lhoffman]

Not quite on topic, but I received these in my e-mail today..1930's Berlin.   The color photos of Hitler are quite rare.   Thought you might enjoy.


http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/Photos_3eReich_RevueLi_.pps

Back to Ms. Carter...

[Lhoffman]

I'm getting tied up on the question I asked earlier, that of Serbian responsibility in the Arch-Duke's assassination.   Two sources, Hew Strachan and G.J. Meyer are iffy.   Dimitrijevic, who was the leader of the Black Hand and also the head of Military Intelligence was part of a group responsible for the murder of the king in 1903.  Military-civil relations were at low ebb,  Dimitrijevic considering the Serbian Prime Minister Pasic an enemy.   Pasic was forced from his position in June, 1914, his position restored at the insistence of the Russians and the French.

Meyer speculates that the military may have hoped the assassination of the Arch-Duke would cause a crisis that would force Pasic's permanent removal (although my question there would be why not assassinate Pasic or stage a coup).

Pasik did hear of the plot, and expressed strong disaproval (although this disapproval seems to have been sent on through various channels rather than direct confrontation.)  Pasic then sent out an order that the conspirators should not be allowed to cross the border, but the order was issued too late.   He directed an ambassador in Vienna (apparently a Serb nationalist who lacked motivation to act) to issue appropriate warnings, but the ambassador's response was to discuss the matter with Austria's minister of finance.     The warning was rather vague.

Two weeks before the assassination was to be carried off, Dimitrijavic presented the plan formally to the Black Hand, who voted that the plot be called off because they feared it would lead to war.   Dimitrijavic ordered his assassins to abort the mission, but they ignored him.

  

[Lhoffman]

I checked Tuchman's Guns of August, can't find that she spends much time on the issue.

But her book does begin wonderfully, addressing the beginning of the fall of the royals.   (Carter more and more brings to mind the Gotterdammerung with her writing on Wilhelm.)

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration.   In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun.   After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens--four dowager and three regnant--and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries.   Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last.   The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

[nytempsperdu]

I was so happy when my older daughter's high school history teacher assigned Guns of August. Tuchman is, as her younger sister might say, my favorite historian, ev-ah.

[Lhoffman]

Interesting about the Guns of August...Tuchman didn't even want to write it.   She wanted to do work on the Battleship  Goeben while her publisher wanted a book on the Angel at Mons.

[Lhoffman]

Carter ends with a sort of a good king/bad king fairy tale quality....

Bad Old Kaiser Wilhelm went off to exile alone, lacking even the support and company of his children (some of whom became "mixed up" in monarchist and far-right circles.

.....Wilhelm monologued over and over about how Edward VII had conspired against him; how Tirpitz and Ludendorff and Hindenburg an Max von Baden had betrayed him; how George had gone to war to further Edward's encirclement plans; and how the Freemasons, the Catholics, the French, the British, the Bolsheviks and, increasingly and more darkly as the years passed, the Jews expecially had plotted to destroy him.  Reading Bernhard von Bulow's memoirs in the late 1920's, Sigurd von Ilsemann, the endlessly patient young aide who had followed Wilhelm into exile after only a few weeks of service in 1918, was "struck over and over again by how little the Kaiser had changed since those times.   Almost everything that occurred then still happens now, the only difference being that his actions, which then had grave significance and practical consequences, no do no damage."  

In the end, his valet of twenty years, unable to bear it anymore, ran off in tears.....


-----------------

While King George remained, "a good sportsman, a hard worker, and a thoroughly good man."

---------------------

Nicholas, of course, was a Saint.

 

[madupont]

Wry humour?

[Lhoffman]

Excellent on-line exhibition commemorating the 80th anniversary of WWI.

http://www.art-ww1.com/gb/present.html

[desdemona222b]

Carter ends with a sort of a good king/bad king fairy tale quality....

Bad Old Kaiser Wilhelm went off to exile alone, lacking even the support and company of his children (some of whom became "mixed up" in monarchist and far-right circles.

.....Wilhelm monologued over and over about how Edward VII had conspired against him; how Tirpitz and Ludendorff and Hindenburg an Max von Baden had betrayed him; how George had gone to war to further Edward's encirclement plans; and how the Freemasons, the Catholics, the French, the British, the Bolsheviks and, increasingly and more darkly as the years passed, the Jews expecially had plotted to destroy him.  Reading Bernhard von Bulow's memoirs in the late 1920's, Sigurd von Ilsemann, the endlessly patient young aide who had followed Wilhelm into exile after only a few weeks of service in 1918, was "struck over and over again by how little the Kaiser had changed since those times.   Almost everything that occurred then still happens now, the only difference being that his actions, which then had grave significance and practical consequences, no do no damage."   

In the end, his valet of twenty years, unable to bear it anymore, ran off in tears.....


-----------------

While King George remained, "a good sportsman, a hard worker, and a thoroughly good man."

---------------------

Nicholas, of course, was a Saint.

 

Easy for Nicholas to be a saint as he was dead.

[madupont]

Desdemona222b

Some years ago, probably before 9/11, I went to an exhibition down in Delaware at their Art Center on the River, I can't remember how they titled it but hope it was not Nicholas and Alexandra.

It was a well-planned showing of artifacts(the Russians were trying to get along with us at the time, so you had the usual Faberge eggs....) also with the usual crowd, not too oppressively thick so that you couldn't see what there was to see; but, inevitably the well-lighted glass  cases gave way to a dimmer and more dim atmosphere where photographs began to be suspended on room dividers and you were entering the last residence and finally the photograph of the hidden burial place under logs in a forest where the slaughtered family had been carried.

This has its effect of deepening depression that you carry away with you,discovering you immediately become a "surviving Anastasia" believer as you go outside to the sunlight, by-passing all the museum-shop kitsch Russian tschotshkes

[desdemona222b]

All hope of Anastasia's survival was crushed about a decade ago when the location of the remains was finally revealed and a forensic team was able to identify everyone in the royal family.