Not easy to maintain your audience's attention for this sort of period of time with this sort of difficult material. Prof Weiner has a great gift for lecturing. If only we could bottle it.
More of an entertainer than a historian. He just repeats the old narrative and some old myths. Good for a somewhat ignorant american audience i suppose but he has nothing original to contribute...
I wish a reading list was posted. I recommend to anyone watching, the hardcore history podcast on ww1 called Apocalypse. Use to be free 5$ now, I listen to it often it is overall one of the best lectures on the war.
I agree. WW1 still has effects on todays world. Am from Africa and my very existance is related to it as when Belgian Congo went to fight Germans in East Africa, part of the german territory in East Africa was under occupation in 1916 and then was removed and attached to Belgian Congo in 1919 (Versailles treaty)hence my grand father moving in later on in 1942 as a Congo Belgian soldier. This move lead to settling in Burundi and thus me coming to be. Even more important, the current Congo war is a direct result of border drawing between Rwanda and Congo and these borders are a result of WW1. If that partition didn t happen, Rwanda would have never existed as a country and this would have never generated the wars we have seen both in Rwanda and Burundi as well as Congo today
I think it is the Nial Furgason book‽ He is Ayan Hirsi Ali's husband. And he narrated and maybe wrote a documentary series possibly called The History of Money.
Outstanding lecture, answer to why the German soldierskept fighting was dead on the money! We ultimately fight only for the people in the foxhole with us, even though we all joined for other unique reasons. When we fight no matter the war, we are only aware of what the situation is around us. Seems to be the reason so many Vets have so many strong divergent views about he same conflict. USMC 72-74!
Just at the beginning he states 60.000 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties Grand total of war deaths: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (1954-75) between 1.45 and 3.6 million!
@@UselessHumansMusic More than 68,000 US soldiers (mostly Christians) were sent to their graves in Vietnam by those Politicians and Army Generals of a certain "tribe" to fight Russia ... which he is not telling you about... conveniently!!
My man Dr. Bobby Dubs! I would love to see more of his lectures. He reminds me of a few of my favorite profs from college. A professor who actually likes to teach and doesn't see it as a nuisance to be put up with between research papers.
It was red trousers, not red hats that the French infantry are more famously associated with. Probably most of their hats were blue. There is much to like in this lecture, it is excellent “domino effect” stuff, but if you want to see some incredible lectures on the subject, head to the ones at the WWI museum. The Good Professor seems too aghast at war, too eaten up with statistics, and I must admit those of WWI are awesome indeed - I’m surprised he didn’t point out that more British, French, and Italian soldiers died in that war than were lost in WWII. But I submit to you the Napoleonic Wars. The Civil War. The Peloponnesian War where those who were born when it began would fight in it when they became older (see Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other” here on UA-cam). Yes, technology changes everything, it’s no different than when the short bow fired from horseback was the nuclear weapon of its day. Or that the invention of the stirrup and it’s impact on one battle is the reason we’re all speaking English today. The Good Professor is a little too aghast. Sure it was ghastly. Victorian strategy and tactics ran into Industrial Age War, why wouldn’t it be??
Right at the beginning, he says that 60,000 were killed / maimed on the first day of the Somme offensive. It was much worse than that as the British casualties are usually given as 60,000. The Germans lost much fewer than this (since they were defending from prepared trenches) but the total casualties were higher than 60,000.
It's directed at older alumni. I doubt it's an accredited course, but more likely a series of lectures for their own sake and it's at the intro level to account for the fact that they graduated at different points and their levels of familiarity with the topics differ. The fact that they are alumni is likely why they know the answers already (not that one needs to be to know that Mussolini came to power in '22 or what the Maginot line was; just that it demonstrates the group's general interest in history). Not to mention the fact that he's an entertaining instructor.
@@anitawilliams-macleod7400 ok, th as t explains it. I can remember what year the national education act was in the late 80s or early 90s, but this changed it to where 6th grade was state history, 7th was world history/social studies and 8th was American. Prior to that most history was state and national, and prior to desegregation just a few years before you were there, there were wild fluctuations in curriculum between schools and districts. Since all of these things were with "all deliberate speed" it happened faster some places rather than others. Now state history is not even offered in most places as it's not part of the required courses
These lectures are great but I have to disagree with the Profs. at around 22 minutes. Germany was in no way able to match the western allies war production towards the end of the war (granted he was referring more to 1916) but before the US was involved, lead piping was being dug up from the streets to make bullets and church bells were collected for their metal. The last big offensive conducted by the German army stalled partly because the soldiers stopped to eat and drink the newly captured towns dry as they were so poorly supplied.
This is something of an aside, but if you like horror movies, the "Hellraiser" series has a connection to "The Lost Generation." It describes how a British officer became a demon.
+Mark Stuber... not really. The russo-japanese war was considered in that time an atipical case of war, fought over specific land objective, Port Arthur. It was a siege in classical way. And the sieges always employ trenches. The besieged city would not move. :-). (The same case about Crimeean war and the siege of Sevastopol) But what the generals had in mind in 1914 was an all-out war, in which the goal is not this or that city or fortress, but subduing the ennemy. This include all his (and yours) forces and territory. And for this kind of war they looked at previous such "total wars": Austro-German war (1866) and Franco-German war (1870-1871). And those wars were swift and short wars of manoeuvers, never using trenches. These generals never conceived trenches outside a siege.
I like Orin from the Traveling Israel UA-cam channel, he could be a powerful replacement for Netanyahu, he's an outsider but has Mossad credentials, and I think he has more credibility with US conservatives than Netanyahu. I think Trump should make Ron Paul the CIA director, and then William Burns can prepare for a 2028 presidential run as a centrist Republican.
Prof. Weiner talks about the brutalization of modern culture that resulted from WWI. Interestingly, I would say that WWII resulted in a softening of modern culture to some extent, ironically because it was *so* extreme and utterly depraved that it shocked people into realizing they could never go down that road again. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't, people being what they are, but WWII did mark a fundamental shift towards civilizing attitudes in certain ways, such as, for instance, in the first war crimes trials, the massively increased awareness of genocide (not to mention the invention of the word itself), and antisemitism and other forms of racism becoming more and more universally regarded as stains upon society.
I see this guy buys into the feminist revisionist history. In the West, women were never "oppressed" any more than men were. And while European fascism of the 1930s was many bad things, it wasn't misogynistic, it was traditionalistic. There's a big difference, and that big difference is what fascist parties were popular among both men and women.
He knows the past very well, but he is naive about the present. He thought in 2010 that this economic depression was in its end, when it was obvious that we were only in the begining. He needs to read a little about the history we are writing today.
From the perspective of France, the Great War is the greatest pyrrhic victory of all time. They won the first round, but at such a cost that they were mopped in the second. It doesn't entirely explain France's collapse, after all the Germans had a say, but if you view the two conflicts as one with a 20 year armistice it's easy to view the first half as a classic pyrrhic victory.
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I find it comical that people argue it was a good idea for Britain to enter WW1. Yes, France would've been smashed, but you know in the overall sum of things not having the events that occurred after seems like a good thing-- as it's hard to imagine a set of events worse.
The lecturer fails to refer to the effect of the blockade on Germany. The addition of US troops was not the cause of Germany's surrender. If the USA had not joined the Allies, the war would have continued for longer - but with the eventual occupation of Berlin.
@@planetcaravan2925 Yes. One of the reasons America dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just days after the one on Hiroshima was to get Japan to surrender before the Russians got there. The U.S. didn't want Japan divided after the war between Russian-controlled and American-controlled areas, and the Russians were already advancing quickly toward Japan. Perhaps it wasn't the main reason for the decision to bomb Nagasaki, but it was a major consideration in the decision to do so.
You forgot to add, "The enemy is a Boche!" And every English person, knew, of course, that in Belgium, German soldiers used Belgian babies for bayonet practice!.....just as Americans knew that in Kuwait, Iraqi troops cut off the electricity to incubators, in Kuwaiti hospitals.
That is true, but then Germany would've defeated France and dominated Europe. It's unreasonable to expect England to sit back and allow that to happen even though Britain had the world's best navy. The English Channel isn't wide enough for the British to have felt secure. England indeed lost a lot by entering the war. Still, they likely would've lost more had they not entered the war, as they would've faced the constant threat of being invaded by Germany.
Professor Weiner doesn't deal with the economic and political ambitions of all those empires. It's like the war is a mistake. But wars aren't mistakes. They are the result of greed. Empires all want to expand. They literally intend to take the land, resources, and labor of their neighbors. He makes it unnecessarily complicated by ignoring the obvious, though he has many good point.It's no different today. The US destroyed Iraq to control the oil and be the toughest guy in the neighborhood. But the given reasons were WMD (though there weren't any), Democracy (your don't get democracy by destroying the infrastructure), and to take out Saddam. Life under Saddam would be pleasant compared to what my leaders left behind in Iraq.
+Jeff Moore He does list imperialism as one of the potential causes of the war. But it was also a release valve, as the Great Powers spent the second half of the 19th Century and first years of the 20th putting their energies into colonial expansion in Africa and Asia. Bismarck deliberately encouraged this as he believed the same thing. The causes of WWI and which was more important than the others are one of the most debated topics in history. You could point to imperialism and greed. But it's hard to make a case for that alone, amongst all the others. Europe was experiencing unprecedented prosperity in the early 20th Century. Living standards were rising even for the lowest classes and the consumer society was making its appearance. There was extremely rapid technological progress. Even Russia was playing rapid social and economic catch-up to the rest of Europe. In other words, each nation was doing quite well on its own. I realize greed is wanting more when you already have enough. But it is one thing to be greedy about the resources of a defenseless state and another to want the resources of a powerful state; the cost of taking them could be very high. In this case, of course, it was much too high, as the only real victor of WWI is the country that stayed out of it until near the end. Perhaps this is explained by the miscalculation of a short war that all the Great Powers made. Even so, I don't think greed by itself is enough.
+valinor100 Your arguments are well put, but I don't think greed is as one dimensional as you've stated. When you say "Europe was experiencing unprecedented prosperity", your right of course but within Britain alone the division of the very poor and hopeless and the rich has to be taken into account when trying to understand each "nation". The friction of inequality within a nation and between that nation and a dominant neighbor both contribute to the need for war as a means to both unite and discipline the poor within Britain towards "national" (the wealthy policy makers) goals besides the dominance over a foreign economy that is the desired outcome of war. More obvious is that war externally provides the possibility of dominating or setting the terms for exploitation of other peoples and their economies. The Versailles Treaty is a case in point: demanding huge sums from Germany for France, with little thought to the risks of devastating Germans and the response. The fact that some peoples living standards in the victors country increases is also a function of greed. In the times we're talking about, the industrialists (the folks for whom policy is a service) found the pressure for unions and increased wages were unstoppable, the elites gained one of the most pernicious and largely unspoken benefits from the increased value of "middle class" workers. This was the fact that in a highly industrialized economy a well educated (and comfortably paid) engineer can generate vastly more profit than a janitor or riveter. The cumulative effect of mollifying and politically unifying labor at home, smashing your competitors abroad, and expanding the influence and geographic scale of your market both to your "allies" and the defeated areas is tantalizing if risky. Talking about a "nation" as a unit, without looking at the inequalities within, both politically and economically, can lead to confusion when trying to get at the underlying value of wars. Of all the policy matters that our limited democracies consider, war and "foreign policy" in particular get the least input from the public (assuming Western democracy). Using the US example, even the information concerning where our troops are at the moment, who is receiving weapons from us, and what kinds of negotiations are in play, are largely unavailable to the voting public. We working folk get the jingo ("terrorist", "failed state", "serving your country", etc....) but understanding the "cause" of WW1 or any war requires an understanding that's larger than the one used to justify the war. The jingoism really works. It's hard to find anyone who can usefully define their own use of the word "terrorist". For this reason, I accept the broad use of the word at face value, and my bumper sticker says "War is Terror". Whether my income goes up or down as a result of a war scarcely matters compared to the overall effect of any given war on my only planet. If you accept war as inevitable, just the consequence of "mistakes", a function of human frailty, or the highest calling of mankind's service, your missing the selling point.
Jeff Moore Well, when it come right down to it, the ultimate cause of war is our primordial brains, which still think we are living on the African plains or in Ice Age caves 40,000 years ago. We see threats everywhere where none actually exist, and can't shut off the racket in our heads. Just look at the evidence from all the studies of meditation lately and how people living in even miserable physical conditions can be quite happy if they have done enough mind training. But that's a whole other subject, and a huge one. On a more proximate level, the causes of WWI really are to this day one of the most debated in history, so I don't pretend to believe either of us has 'the answer' to why it happened if hundreds of brilliant historians working for a century have never been able to agree. Was it a) Imperialism b) Nationalism c) Militarism d) The alliance system e) The insecure Kaiser and the naval arms race between Germany and Britain f) The fact that no one alive in Europe remembered what a truly massive war was like g) The moribund empires of Austria-Hungary and Russia making very poor decisions... h) The belief in a rapid victory i) A lack of understanding how industrialization had changed war forever...I mean, good lord! One intriguing theory put forward by the book 'The Vertigo Years, 1900-1914' is that the machine age produced a decline in dependence on muscle power and a corresponding rise in the status of women, resulting in a crisis of masculinity, and the all-male leadership and elements of the general male population responded with fear. The author cites the macho tenor of the dialogue between the leaders of Europe at the time, fighting a losing battle against modernity. One thing I find intensely fascinating is that the early 20th Century mirrors the early 21st in the incredible speed of technological and social change, with both a fear of things spinning out of control and an exhilaration at the miraculous developments that seem to take place every time we turn our heads. Do I think this will result in another world war? No. I think we see the dangers in, for instance, the sudden appearance of entities like Islamic State, which use instant communication as a weapon by organizing strategy and gathering recruits from all over the globe, and using social media as a form of spreading terror through displaying their outrages. Or the development of technologies to directly manipulate and alter the mind, the potential of robotics, etc. But we have also come to grips with a lot of the issues that we were struggling with prior to WWI. This besides the overriding fact that everyone but everyone knows unleashing another world war would be mass suicide.
valinor100 I think we and you suffer from "it's alway been this wayism". That is, we look around and make statements like "primordial brain". But, aren't we at war everyday. The Apache (pre-contact) are believed to have only been interested in keeping the land they had had for the last thousand years. When they did go to war it was ritualized. Few died. Look at the tribes with little contact. What is their nature. Really innocent, maybe overly magical, but who are we to judge. Now look at the people around you. The cars and pedestrians. The great majority take no interest in killing, robbing, betraying, or arming anyone. Isn't the primordial brain one primarily of cooperation? In boot camp men must be "broken down" and dehumanized to kill on command. The same men would hug any number of people before and after boot camp, without training. We're told that competition is the natural mode of existence. We're told people wanna pounce on opportunity, even if they have to steam roll someone else. But doesn't this characterized big business better than your neighbors? When the kool aid of competition was handed out, I drank, until Vietnam, when I evaded the draft as if my life depended on it. It did too! It wasn't fear of dying, it was fear of killing the wrong people. I was literally shaking when I took my draft physical and tried everything I could think of to fail. A sargent who gave me my hearing test either didn't or did see through my attempt to fool the test. Either way he flunked me! I wan't in shape to lie well, so I think he felt like I did, but no words unrelated to testing passed between us. The fundamental characterization of humans is that we're herd animals, quick to make social space for others. WW1 and all wars are about profit.
Jeff Moore Well, let me congratulate you on your pacifist stance during Vietnam. I am from another generation but have always been fascinated by the counterculture and the immense social changes of the 1960s-70s, most of all the refusal to fight in a war that was a terrible mistake. I can't pretend to agree with you on everything your wrote, but I will agree that the violent tendencies of humans get far too much press and our tendencies towards cooperation - which I also believe are more powerful - do not, because peace isn't news, it's just peace. It doesn't sell books or make headlines.
Europe conquered the world but failed to conquer itself, and in the failing; 1815, 1870-71, 1989 Boar War), 1914, 1939, it had destroyed its sovereignty, only regaining it back in 1991 fall of the USSR. Policies were made in DC & Moscow post 1991....30yrs later and the U.S. wants to go home, leave NATO, the EU is frozen in fear it can't handle a crises. Post 2008 the EU has been a klusterphuk.
"stuck the women back in the barn." Interesting, I could have sworn that the right to vote was extended to women right after WWI. Odd bit of barn stuffing by those wretched men WHO WERE THE ONES WHO VOTED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. The rest of his lecture is about as sketchy.
Thank you so much for sharing with me this fragment of history. The Bible foretells a time when peace will be achieved not through mankind. Psalm 46:9 says regarding the Creator, Jehovah God: “He is making wars to cease to the extremity of the earth.” Jehovah God will accomplish true peace by means of his Kingdom, for which many sincere people have repeatedly prayed Matthew 6:9, 10: "Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth." His Kingdom is not an elusive condition of the heart; it is a real government through which God will establish peace from one end of the earth to the other. The inspired prophet Isaiah foretold that subjects of that government will not “learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4) By means of a worldwide educational program, people will learn to live in peace and thus “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears.”
Of course when he talks about the dead from the Vietnam war he only mentions the American dead. No mention of the 3,000,000 Vietnamese who died. Decent lecture otherwise.
@@Michael-ku6dp As usual, long biased lectures and Yada Yada about jew sufferings, ... never mind millions of innocent village people got massacred and incinerated by napalm bombs in Vietnam!! Not even a word of remorse or apologies, as though those lives don't matter, ... just Typical!!
I regret not having found this man before, and feel so fortunate. To have him now!!!
I am so glad to have experienced this gifted man.
Great lecture and speaker ... authoritative ... better delivery than 99 percent of professors on the internet giving lectures.
Thanks for the lesson Larry David
Not easy to maintain your audience's attention for this sort of period of time with this sort of difficult material. Prof Weiner has a great gift for lecturing. If only we could bottle it.
I wish more of his lectures were uploaded. I would watch them all multiple times.
He did a lecture series for The Great Courses called The Long 19th Century.
They used to run Steven Ambrose's UNO classes on TV here in New Orleans, including his WWII class. I watched that every time they ran it.
1000% agree..how good is it. Good stuff ..Will
Same here. He’s very likable.
More of an entertainer than a historian. He just repeats the old narrative and some old myths. Good for a somewhat ignorant american audience i suppose but he has nothing original to contribute...
I wish a reading list was posted. I recommend to anyone watching, the hardcore history podcast on ww1 called Apocalypse. Use to be free 5$ now, I listen to it often it is overall one of the best lectures on the war.
This is great lecturing. Engaging and spontaneous, without being confusing. And informative to boot.
Weiner is the man. I only wish that I took more classes with him when I was a student at Lafayette.
A brilliant historian explaining the social political reasons for Second World War
I agree. WW1 still has effects on todays world. Am from Africa and my very existance is related to it as when Belgian Congo went to fight Germans in East Africa, part of the german territory in East Africa was under occupation in 1916 and then was removed and attached to Belgian Congo in 1919 (Versailles treaty)hence my grand father moving in later on in 1942 as a Congo Belgian soldier. This move lead to settling in Burundi and thus me coming to be. Even more important, the current Congo war is a direct result of border drawing between Rwanda and Congo and these borders are a result of WW1. If that partition didn t happen, Rwanda would have never existed as a country and this would have never generated the wars we have seen both in Rwanda and Burundi as well as Congo today
Professor Weiner enjoyed and got a lot out of your Teaching Company lecture series
The Long 19th. Century 1789 to 1917
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David A.
This is so timely now in 2020 during the "fruitful" conditions of our present "lockdown". Hooyah namaste!
this guy has a similar talent for historical storytelling as Dan Carlin. He should make a podcast too!
He's one in a million.
52:30-Social Darwinism was almost universal among the government elites and played a big part in making war attractive rather than feared.
Brilliant lecture 👏
Good lecture. Another of my favorites is "The World at War" lectured by Ralph Raico.
thank you. 2020 has been long and WW 2 is my escapism.
I wish this lecturer would STOP WHISPERING!!!
1:01:30-no, Germany did not inflate their currency to avoid reparations, which were in gold marks at prewar parity, postwar inflation was irrelevant.
Excellent lecture
I wonder what Professor Weiner thinks about the Pike/Mancini letter?
Can someone please identify the book held up at 41:45 please?
I think it is the Nial Furgason book‽ He is Ayan Hirsi Ali's husband. And he narrated and maybe wrote a documentary series possibly called The History of Money.
Excellent lecture!!!
I'm a life long lover of history, he reminds me of my old teachers, I'm 55yrs young.
Awesome I love his lectures
Outstanding lecture, answer to why the German soldierskept fighting was dead on the money! We ultimately fight only for the people in the foxhole with us, even though we all joined for other unique reasons. When we fight no matter the war, we are only aware of what the situation is around us. Seems to be the reason so many Vets have so many strong divergent views about he same conflict. USMC 72-74!
great lecture! most informative! I just whish they would pay more attention to soundquality- it can't be that hard to pin a microfone to his lapel!
We need a course on China. They’re rising on the horizon and we need some understanding of this situation.
I love this stuff
Just at the beginning he states 60.000
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
Grand total of war deaths: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (1954-75) between 1.45 and 3.6 million!
He was referring to U.S deaths.
@@UselessHumansMusic More than 68,000 US soldiers (mostly Christians) were sent to their graves in Vietnam by those Politicians and Army Generals of a certain "tribe" to fight Russia ... which he is not telling you about... conveniently!!
His whispering for dramatic effect is inaudible on my phone
It is interesting how the US interprets. (Not all correctly the lecturer did not study the archives)
My man Dr. Bobby Dubs! I would love to see more of his lectures. He reminds me of a few of my favorite profs from college. A professor who actually likes to teach and doesn't see it as a nuisance to be put up with between research papers.
58,220 killed in Vietnam...
2 million Vietnamese civilians and 1.1 million NVA and Viet Cong.
It was red trousers, not red hats that the French infantry are more famously associated with. Probably most of their hats were blue. There is much to like in this lecture, it is excellent “domino effect” stuff, but if you want to see some incredible lectures on the subject, head to the ones at the WWI museum. The Good Professor seems too aghast at war, too eaten up with statistics, and I must admit those of WWI are awesome indeed - I’m surprised he didn’t point out that more British, French, and Italian soldiers died in that war than were lost in WWII. But I submit to you the Napoleonic Wars. The Civil War. The Peloponnesian War where those who were born when it began would fight in it when they became older (see Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other” here on UA-cam). Yes, technology changes everything, it’s no different than when the short bow fired from horseback was the nuclear weapon of its day. Or that the invention of the stirrup and it’s impact on one battle is the reason we’re all speaking English today. The Good Professor is a little too aghast. Sure it was ghastly. Victorian strategy and tactics ran into Industrial Age War, why wouldn’t it be??
And white gloves for the Calvary
Right at the beginning, he says that 60,000 were killed / maimed on the first day of the Somme offensive. It was much worse than that as the British casualties are usually given as 60,000. The Germans lost much fewer than this (since they were defending from prepared trenches) but the total casualties were higher than 60,000.
It's much higher than that and they all died for those vicious greedy Wall Street thugs and Bankers in New York and London!!
Most people don't even know what auto-genocide means.
So what does it mean...?
That's going on right now all over UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and Europe under the disguise of refugees and diversity!!🤪
What were the books he mentioned for this discussion?
This is 8th grade level history. Can we teach it there instead of waiting until college?
It's directed at older alumni. I doubt it's an accredited course, but more likely a series of lectures for their own sake and it's at the intro level to account for the fact that they graduated at different points and their levels of familiarity with the topics differ. The fact that they are alumni is likely why they know the answers already (not that one needs to be to know that Mussolini came to power in '22 or what the Maginot line was; just that it demonstrates the group's general interest in history). Not to mention the fact that he's an entertaining instructor.
I never learned this in 8th grade. All I learned was American history, not World history.
@@anitawilliams-macleod7400 what year did you go to 8th grade if I might ask? What school district? ( city and state)
@@richardtaylor6341 they year was 1974 and it was the Waterford School District, Waterford, MI
@@anitawilliams-macleod7400 ok, th as t explains it. I can remember what year the national education act was in the late 80s or early 90s, but this changed it to where 6th grade was state history, 7th was world history/social studies and 8th was American. Prior to that most history was state and national, and prior to desegregation just a few years before you were there, there were wild fluctuations in curriculum between schools and districts. Since all of these things were with "all deliberate speed" it happened faster some places rather than others. Now state history is not even offered in most places as it's not part of the required courses
These lectures are great but I have to disagree with the Profs. at around 22 minutes. Germany was in no way able to match the western allies war production towards the end of the war (granted he was referring more to 1916) but before the US was involved, lead piping was being dug up from the streets to make bullets and church bells were collected for their metal. The last big offensive conducted by the German army stalled partly because the soldiers stopped to eat and drink the newly captured towns dry as they were so poorly supplied.
This is not a counter Darwinian war. It's exactly what Darwinian evolution would predict
It’s counter Darwinian because it killed the young and healthy first.
This is something of an aside, but if you like horror movies, the "Hellraiser" series has a connection to "The Lost Generation." It describes how a British officer became a demon.
The Best.
THat question at 1:34 where the guy was asking if the stalemate trench warfare was forseeable. Yes. It was. The Russo-Japanese War.
+Mark Stuber... not really. The russo-japanese war was considered in that time an atipical case of war, fought over specific land objective, Port Arthur. It was a siege in classical way. And the sieges always employ trenches. The besieged city would not move. :-). (The same case about Crimeean war and the siege of Sevastopol)
But what the generals had in mind in 1914 was an all-out war, in which the goal is not this or that city or fortress, but subduing the ennemy. This include all his (and yours) forces and territory. And for this kind of war they looked at previous such "total wars": Austro-German war (1866) and Franco-German war (1870-1871). And those wars were swift and short wars of manoeuvers, never using trenches. These generals never conceived trenches outside a siege.
Fantastic :)
Great lecture. One point of fact my great grandfather was French and fought in WWI and did not get injured, that bad at least.
Good video but the speaker goes from shouting to whispering.
Prof of His Story ! 🥳
Maybe the Ukraine was independent when those colors were chosen. Long live Makhno!
I like Orin from the Traveling Israel UA-cam channel, he could be a powerful replacement for Netanyahu, he's an outsider but has Mossad credentials, and I think he has more credibility with US conservatives than Netanyahu. I think Trump should make Ron Paul the CIA director, and then William Burns can prepare for a 2028 presidential run as a centrist Republican.
Did he say “towel heads”? Wow, that could trigger. I remember hearing it only on “John from Cincinnati” back in those days.
Prof. Weiner talks about the brutalization of modern culture that resulted from WWI. Interestingly, I would say that WWII resulted in a softening of modern culture to some extent, ironically because it was *so* extreme and utterly depraved that it shocked people into realizing they could never go down that road again. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't, people being what they are, but WWII did mark a fundamental shift towards civilizing attitudes in certain ways, such as, for instance, in the first war crimes trials, the massively increased awareness of genocide (not to mention the invention of the word itself), and antisemitism and other forms of racism becoming more and more universally regarded as stains upon society.
*****
What?
I think nuclear weapons and economic development have far more to do with why we live in the world we live in today than what you’re talking about.
I see this guy buys into the feminist revisionist history. In the West, women were never "oppressed" any more than men were. And while European fascism of the 1930s was many bad things, it wasn't misogynistic, it was traditionalistic. There's a big difference, and that big difference is what fascist parties were popular among both men and women.
"Minority cranks": looking at you DJT.
Still?
Sir, better lesson what happened for America’s withdraw from Afghanistan , and what happening on putin’s war on Ukraine and nato’s posture on it.
He knows the past very well, but he is naive about the present.
He thought in 2010 that this economic depression was in its end, when it was obvious that we were only in the begining.
He needs to read a little about the history we are writing today.
kostas1x2 No we weren't. It ended a couple of years after he predicted it.
Gosh.....
Hernandez John Gonzalez James Miller William
From the perspective of France, the Great War is the greatest pyrrhic victory of all time. They won the first round, but at such a cost that they were mopped in the second. It doesn't entirely explain France's collapse, after all the Germans had a say, but if you view the two conflicts as one with a 20 year armistice it's easy to view the first half as a classic pyrrhic victory.
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Great class, terrible sound.
Johnson Thomas Williams Jose Lopez Ruth
Did he refer to Muslims as Towell heads? 🤔
Hitler was just politician molded by public opinion.
I find it comical that people argue it was a good idea for Britain to enter WW1.
Yes, France would've been smashed, but you know in the overall sum of things not having the events that occurred after seems like a good thing-- as it's hard to imagine a set of events worse.
The lecturer fails to refer to the effect of the blockade on Germany. The addition of US troops was not the cause of Germany's surrender. If the USA had not joined the Allies, the war would have continued for longer - but with the eventual occupation of Berlin.
Yes, there was a race for berlin between the west and russia. That started soon the cold war
@@planetcaravan2925 Yes. One of the reasons America dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just days after the one on Hiroshima was to get Japan to surrender before the Russians got there. The U.S. didn't want Japan divided after the war between Russian-controlled and American-controlled areas, and the Russians were already advancing quickly toward Japan. Perhaps it wasn't the main reason for the decision to bomb Nagasaki, but it was a major consideration in the decision to do so.
@@abc_13579 they also knew japanese would be a pita to fight againts..all island filled with them would mean big casualties for attackers
@@planetcaravan2925 Yes, most definitely. Agree. 👍
Basically ignoring the Naval Blockade is like ignoring the Battle of Britain.
The lecturer yet another Hollywood historian
You forgot to add, "The enemy is a Boche!" And every English person, knew, of course, that in Belgium, German soldiers used Belgian babies for bayonet practice!.....just as Americans knew that in Kuwait, Iraqi troops cut off the electricity to incubators, in Kuwaiti hospitals.
Lewis Helen Jackson Jessica Robinson Lisa
The French gnna do the same thing. Attack from the south! But with red hat on.
I'm dead lol.
White Gary Allen Melissa Martinez Scott
Lee Scott Young Jessica Hall Betty
It would have been a short war if the British had stayed out of it.
Ooops!!!
That is true, but then Germany would've defeated France and dominated Europe. It's unreasonable to expect England to sit back and allow that to happen even though Britain had the world's best navy. The English Channel isn't wide enough for the British to have felt secure.
England indeed lost a lot by entering the war. Still, they likely would've lost more had they not entered the war, as they would've faced the constant threat of being invaded by Germany.
@@abc_13579 Germany dominates Europe now you silly-person.
Professor Weiner doesn't deal with the economic and political ambitions of all those empires. It's like the war is a mistake. But wars aren't mistakes. They are the result of greed. Empires all want to expand. They literally intend to take the land, resources, and labor of their neighbors. He makes it unnecessarily complicated by ignoring the obvious, though he has many good point.It's no different today. The US destroyed Iraq to control the oil and be the toughest guy in the neighborhood. But the given reasons were WMD (though there weren't any), Democracy (your don't get democracy by destroying the infrastructure), and to take out Saddam. Life under Saddam would be pleasant compared to what my leaders left behind in Iraq.
+Jeff Moore He does list imperialism as one of the potential causes of the war. But it was also a release valve, as the Great Powers spent the second half of the 19th Century and first years of the 20th putting their energies into colonial expansion in Africa and Asia. Bismarck deliberately encouraged this as he believed the same thing.
The causes of WWI and which was more important than the others are one of the most debated topics in history. You could point to imperialism and greed. But it's hard to make a case for that alone, amongst all the others. Europe was experiencing unprecedented prosperity in the early 20th Century. Living standards were rising even for the lowest classes and the consumer society was making its appearance. There was extremely rapid technological progress. Even Russia was playing rapid social and economic catch-up to the rest of Europe.
In other words, each nation was doing quite well on its own. I realize greed is wanting more when you already have enough. But it is one thing to be greedy about the resources of a defenseless state and another to want the resources of a powerful state; the cost of taking them could be very high. In this case, of course, it was much too high, as the only real victor of WWI is the country that stayed out of it until near the end. Perhaps this is explained by the miscalculation of a short war that all the Great Powers made. Even so, I don't think greed by itself is enough.
+valinor100 Your arguments are well put, but I don't think greed is as one dimensional as you've stated. When you say "Europe was experiencing unprecedented prosperity", your right of course but within Britain alone the division of the very poor and hopeless and the rich has to be taken into account when trying to understand each "nation". The friction of inequality within a nation and between that nation and a dominant neighbor both contribute to the need for war as a means to both unite and discipline the poor within Britain towards "national" (the wealthy policy makers) goals besides the dominance over a foreign economy that is the desired outcome of war. More obvious is that war externally provides the possibility of dominating or setting the terms for exploitation of other peoples and their economies. The Versailles Treaty is a case in point: demanding huge sums from Germany for France, with little thought to the risks of devastating Germans and the response.
The fact that some peoples living standards in the victors country increases is also a function of greed. In the times we're talking about, the industrialists (the folks for whom policy is a service) found the pressure for unions and increased wages were unstoppable, the elites gained one of the most pernicious and largely unspoken benefits from the increased value of "middle class" workers. This was the fact that in a highly industrialized economy a well educated (and comfortably paid) engineer can generate vastly more profit than a janitor or riveter.
The cumulative effect of mollifying and politically unifying labor at home, smashing your competitors abroad, and expanding the influence and geographic scale of your market both to your "allies" and the defeated areas is tantalizing if risky.
Talking about a "nation" as a unit, without looking at the inequalities within, both politically and economically, can lead to confusion when trying to get at the underlying value of wars. Of all the policy matters that our limited democracies consider, war and "foreign policy" in particular get the least input from the public (assuming Western democracy). Using the US example, even the information concerning where our troops are at the moment, who is receiving weapons from us, and what kinds of negotiations are in play, are largely unavailable to the voting public. We working folk get the jingo ("terrorist", "failed state", "serving your country", etc....) but understanding the "cause" of WW1 or any war requires an understanding that's larger than the one used to justify the war. The jingoism really works. It's hard to find anyone who can usefully define their own use of the word "terrorist". For this reason, I accept the broad use of the word at face value, and my bumper sticker says "War is Terror". Whether my income goes up or down as a result of a war scarcely matters compared to the overall effect of any given war on my only planet. If you accept war as inevitable, just the consequence of "mistakes", a function of human frailty, or the highest calling of mankind's service, your missing the selling point.
Jeff Moore
Well, when it come right down to it, the ultimate cause of war is our primordial brains, which still think we are living on the African plains or in Ice Age caves 40,000 years ago. We see threats everywhere where none actually exist, and can't shut off the racket in our heads. Just look at the evidence from all the studies of meditation lately and how people living in even miserable physical conditions can be quite happy if they have done enough mind training. But that's a whole other subject, and a huge one.
On a more proximate level, the causes of WWI really are to this day one of the most debated in history, so I don't pretend to believe either of us has 'the answer' to why it happened if hundreds of brilliant historians working for a century have never been able to agree. Was it a) Imperialism b) Nationalism c) Militarism d) The alliance system e) The insecure Kaiser and the naval arms race between Germany and Britain f) The fact that no one alive in Europe remembered what a truly massive war was like g) The moribund empires of Austria-Hungary and Russia making very poor decisions... h) The belief in a rapid victory i) A lack of understanding how industrialization had changed war forever...I mean, good lord!
One intriguing theory put forward by the book 'The Vertigo Years, 1900-1914' is that the machine age produced a decline in dependence on muscle power and a corresponding rise in the status of women, resulting in a crisis of masculinity, and the all-male leadership and elements of the general male population responded with fear. The author cites the macho tenor of the dialogue between the leaders of Europe at the time, fighting a losing battle against modernity.
One thing I find intensely fascinating is that the early 20th Century mirrors the early 21st in the incredible speed of technological and social change, with both a fear of things spinning out of control and an exhilaration at the miraculous developments that seem to take place every time we turn our heads.
Do I think this will result in another world war? No. I think we see the dangers in, for instance, the sudden appearance of entities like Islamic State, which use instant communication as a weapon by organizing strategy and gathering recruits from all over the globe, and using social media as a form of spreading terror through displaying their outrages. Or the development of technologies to directly manipulate and alter the mind, the potential of robotics, etc. But we have also come to grips with a lot of the issues that we were struggling with prior to WWI. This besides the overriding fact that everyone but everyone knows unleashing another world war would be mass suicide.
valinor100 I think we and you suffer from "it's alway been this wayism". That is, we look around and make statements like "primordial brain". But, aren't we at war everyday. The Apache (pre-contact) are believed to have only been interested in keeping the land they had had for the last thousand years. When they did go to war it was ritualized. Few died. Look at the tribes with little contact. What is their nature. Really innocent, maybe overly magical, but who are we to judge.
Now look at the people around you. The cars and pedestrians. The great majority take no interest in killing, robbing, betraying, or arming anyone. Isn't the primordial brain one primarily of cooperation? In boot camp men must be "broken down" and dehumanized to kill on command. The same men would hug any number of people before and after boot camp, without training.
We're told that competition is the natural mode of existence. We're told people wanna pounce on opportunity, even if they have to steam roll someone else. But doesn't this characterized big business better than your neighbors?
When the kool aid of competition was handed out, I drank, until Vietnam, when I evaded the draft as if my life depended on it. It did too! It wasn't fear of dying, it was fear of killing the wrong people. I was literally shaking when I took my draft physical and tried everything I could think of to fail. A sargent who gave me my hearing test either didn't or did see through my attempt to fool the test. Either way he flunked me! I wan't in shape to lie well, so I think he felt like I did, but no words unrelated to testing passed between us.
The fundamental characterization of humans is that we're herd animals, quick to make social space for others.
WW1 and all wars are about profit.
Jeff Moore
Well, let me congratulate you on your pacifist stance during Vietnam. I am from another generation but have always been fascinated by the counterculture and the immense social changes of the 1960s-70s, most of all the refusal to fight in a war that was a terrible mistake.
I can't pretend to agree with you on everything your wrote, but I will agree that the violent tendencies of humans get far too much press and our tendencies towards cooperation - which I also believe are more powerful - do not, because peace isn't news, it's just peace. It doesn't sell books or make headlines.
Europe conquered the world but failed to conquer itself, and in the failing;
1815, 1870-71, 1989 Boar War), 1914, 1939, it had destroyed its sovereignty, only regaining it back in 1991 fall of the USSR.
Policies were made in DC & Moscow post 1991....30yrs later and the U.S. wants to go home, leave NATO, the EU is frozen in fear it can't handle a crises.
Post 2008 the EU has been a klusterphuk.
latin america wasn't beliigerant or affected by military conflict but it was affected brutally after WW1 culturally and economocally
I'm really bothered by the guy in the audience at 1:28 who insists on using the term 'towel-heads' because apparently explicit racism is funny to him.
I Call them oileyes, sounds less racist.
"stuck the women back in the barn." Interesting, I could have sworn that the right to vote was extended to women right after WWI. Odd bit of barn stuffing by those wretched men WHO WERE THE ONES WHO VOTED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. The rest of his lecture is about as sketchy.
Women have the right to vote?
Smith Anthony Johnson George Jackson William
And we criticize lemmings….
this"central pwrs almost won Spring1918"is just silly.
an all in attack,w/a losing hand,period.
Thank you so much for sharing with me this fragment of history.
The Bible foretells a time when peace will be achieved not through mankind. Psalm 46:9 says regarding the Creator, Jehovah God:
“He is making wars to cease to the extremity of the earth.”
Jehovah God will accomplish true peace by means of his Kingdom, for which many sincere people have repeatedly prayed Matthew 6:9, 10:
"Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth."
His Kingdom is not an elusive condition of the heart; it is a real government through which God will establish peace from one end of the earth to the other. The inspired prophet Isaiah foretold that subjects of that government will not “learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4) By means of a worldwide educational program, people will learn to live in peace and thus “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears.”
Didn’t take long to get into bullshit
great(!)talk.crap"microphone choreography"...
Of course when he talks about the dead from the Vietnam war he only mentions the American dead. No mention of the 3,000,000 Vietnamese who died.
Decent lecture otherwise.
Who freedom did they for??
@@Michael-ku6dp As usual, long biased lectures and Yada Yada about jew sufferings, ... never mind millions of innocent village people got massacred and incinerated by napalm bombs in Vietnam!! Not even a word of remorse or apologies, as though those lives don't matter, ... just Typical!!
Exactly 💯 Another " selective lecture of convenience" !!
War is horrible. Been there but some good can come from it
Our way not ideal. But we never shot people that want to leave , look up boat people. Mhoug fishermen
russia ,must begin show competen ce in war,IQ and power.
The absolute worst sound I've listened to. If you get past that good information
This guy speaks like he's talking to children. *Young* children. It's very irritating.
Middle age men giggling like children at a simplistic high school like presentation.
Fantastic lecture!