Against Germany

Made by: Carmen Kreutzelman, Daniël de Haas, Derek Steendijk,

Gido van Heeswijk, Indy van Kuringen, Jasmijn van der Meer, Lena Sandmeier,
Mayke Kreutzelman, Nanette Panhuizen, Selina Mennes and Lisa Klessens
Class: TA3B
Subject: ELC

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 Content
Introduction………………………………………….………………………………………..………………..3
Revanchism………………………………………………………………………………………………………4
The blank check………………………………………………………………………………………………..5
Kaiser Wilhelm ll……………………………………………………………………………………………….6
What if Germany won WW1…………………………………………………………………………….7
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8
Prezi…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………9

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 Introduction
In front of you, you’ll be able to find some personal stories of people who experienced the
first world war. For example the story of Robert Philips, who survived some German cruelty
at its worst. Feel free to look at their stories and conclude for yourself whether Germany’s
actions in the first world war were worth it.

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 Revanchism
Revanchism, from French Revanche or like you probably know it, revenge! Let’s look at the
explanation of this word. A policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory.
This may sound meaningless to you. But for the first world war, it wasn’t meaningless at all.
Not even 150 years ago, Germany became the country is it nowadays by waging three wars.
With Denmark, Austria and France. That last one, is the most important one. Because when
Germany won the war with France, they took Alsace Lorraine. Now you may have the
question, why did they do that? Which is a very good question. It’s even such a good
question, that we don’t know the answer. Honestly there was really no good reason for
Germany to take that part of France.

Germany pushed others to make the first move and start WW1, for example France.
Bismarck which is a real politics wanted success, pride and nationalism in Germany. To unite
the German states, Bismarck wanted to start a war against France ‘’the Franco-German
war’’. Because Bismarck wanted to rally the German people by using a war to stir up
nationalism. So that the southern German states would join. The France thought that the
united Germany would be to strong and that it would change the balance of power. So the
French declared war against the Germans, Bismarck provoked it!

Any attempt to shift blame for World War I from Germany onto the French-Russian alliance
has to deal with Germany’s responsibility for creating that alliance in the first place. If France
wanted Alsace and Lorraine back, it was only because it had lost the territories in a war
engineered by Germany.

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 The blank check
While Serbia definitely wanted to dismember the Austrian empire, the same was true in
reverse. Austria wanted to dismember Serbia, and was devising plans to do so long before
the assassination. Within a week of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, Germany had agreed to
back Austrian military action against Serbia, even if this resulted in war with Russia. After
some characteristic dithering, Austria then decided to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, making
demands the denial of which would provide the pretext for war. Serbia agrees to most of the
terms but wants to negotiate others. Austria however, does not see this as an option.

This term 'blank cheque' was also used to describe how Germany dealt with Austria-Hungary
in the aftermath of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination by Serbians. Austria-Hungary
would never wage a major war without Germany's backing. But instead of restraining
Austria-Hungary from starting WW1, Germany simply allowed Austria-Hungary to start WW1
and do whatever it wanted, thus Germany gave Austria-Hungary a 'blank cheque' to start
WW1. This is the argument used by many to blame Germany for starting WW1.

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 Kaiser Wilhelm II
Kaiser Willhelm II wasn’t only a disaster for to other countries, His incompetence destroyed
his empire.

At WWI, Germany started at the worst possible situation. Fighting together with Austria
against: Great Britain, France and Russia. And of course, he was known for having mental
breakdowns.

Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann did more than give Austria-Hungary a free hand. They
encouraged the Austrians to start a war and to risk the consequences. If it came to world
war, they were confident of winning now but less confident of winning later. If they had
wanted a peaceful solution, they would have approached the British at once. Instead, they
did nothing, hoping to keep Britain neutral in a continental war.

But also, he wanted a huge navy. If Germany had not built the navy there would have been
no WWI. Great Britain would not have felt threatened by Germany. France would have
avoided the war without support of Great Britain. Russia would have avoided the war
without support of France.

Kaiser Wilhelm ll

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 What if Germany won WW1
Professionals have had many discussions about this matter. But all of them basically came to
the same conclusion. Germany could have probably won the war if they wouldn’t have
invaded Belgium. Because that would have meant that both Britain and America probably
wouldn’t have joined the European conflict.

So the question is, what would have happened if this was the case? What would the world
look like now if Germany won the very first world war?

Of course, Europe would have been different if Germany had won the war in 1918. It would
have been grim, repressive and unpredictable in many ways. If Germany would obtain
control over seas, then Western front would be in very tough situation without colonial raw
materials. Most likely French would cede some territories in Europe and colonies and
conclude separate peace.

One other point of discussion is the Treaty of Versailles. Germany gets the blame for almost
the complete war. Which is obviously unreasonable because none of the countries deserves
that. But I mean, do any of you honestly believe Germany would have done something
different if they were in the exact same position?

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 Conclusion
After we defended ourselves in our recent debate we got from several people the question,
but if there are no good or bad guys, how can you be the good guy ? and personally, I
thought this was a very good question. Every country has done several things I’m sure
they’re not proud of. So how exactly can we be the good guys. It kept me thinking until I
finally realised it. We aren’t. Germany is absolutely no good guy, just like America , but
Britain and Russia aren’t either. So that leaves the question, is everybody than responsible?
Yes and no. because there are also countries who just simply got involved in the whole mess
while they really wanted to remain neutral themselves. But when you just talk about the
four countries we’re debating about. It’s safe to say that they’re all responsible for this war.
But, some just simply more than others. Some wanted this war while others like Britain got
dragged along.

Plus, it’s not only about the way the countries got involved in the war it’s also a little bit
about how they fought in the war. For example, was it self-defence like Britain, or was is
more in an attacking way like Germany?

But anyway, we’ve said what we wanted to say so now we’ll let you come to the conclusion
which we’ve already came to. It was definitely justified for Britain to go to war in the very
first world war.

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 Prezi

https://prezi.com/view/kt95C947gWTHL4zAjx0f/