I read the book as a teenager but seeing it in live-action was brutal. You forget that soldiers used gas and fucking flamethrowers on people, and they did it so their ruling class can get even wealthier.
Remembering that the causes of that war were about European empires trying to carve up Germany because capital had reached its zenith under the pre-war status quo unless it acquired new markets and territories to expand into was just eye-opening.
:eu-cool: :germany-cool: :france-cool:
:ukkk:
I'm about halfway through imperialism the highest stage of capitalism and it completely broke my brain that WWI was just monopolies needing to carve up other nations for money. Not that an oopsie occured due to alliances and things just got out of hand.
The Great War was your standard imperialist war, but instead of picking on defenseless nations, the imperialists set on each other.
Politicians like Otto von Bismarck knew that they must not fight among themselves and tried to keep the peace, but stony-hearted sociopaths like Wilhelm II would have no part in it and would never be happy unless they could read about their pissing matches in the newspapers.
It was a little bit an oopsie as none of them anticipated the war getting as out of hand as it did. What upset the apple cart was German midwar discovery of the haber process which allowed them to continue manufacturing explosives and fertiliser long after the other powers had projected they would run out of nitrates
Wasn't that Haber also jewish, and his work would later be used to make Zyklon B? Or am I thinking of a different German chemist who contributed heavily to the war effort in WWI and then had most of his family sent to Dachau?
yeah but part of his contribution to the war effort was the invention of chemical warfare so he's still a controversial figure
fun fact: so disillusioned with her husband's zeal for using science to contribute to the war effort, his wife killed herself with his service weapon.
that fact wasn't fun at all