[stctw]

It's easy to say that now. Have you lived through unrestricted, total warfare, where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war. How many of your country's people should you sacrifice to end a war of aggression started by the enemy? Should you not use the means that will preserve as many of your lives as you can?

This century has yet to see anything like WW1 and WW2, and those who are alive today are incredibly disconnected from our recent past.

[meigwilym]

The firebombing of Dresden needlessly killed thousands of civilians, and arguably did nothing for the war effort. With the posisble exception of bolstering the resolve of front line German soldiers.

Had the axis powers won the war I'm certain it would have been classified as a war crime and Bomber Harris would have been the first against the wall.

[arrowsmith]

Lol, what did the Axis powers care about "war crimes"? If they'd won they'd have had every Allied leader up against the wall on day one of the occupation, even if we hadn't killed a single "innocent" civilian. Why would they have needed a pretext?

Both sides were not the same.

[amanaplanacanal]

I understand what you are saying, but how does killing innocent civilians that have no say in the running of the war help?

[Aeolun]

We will never know, but I think it’s arguable that most of the terror campaigns by the allies came at the tail end of the war and were of questionable military effectiveness.

[incompatible]

WW2 became a world war when Britain and France declared war on Germany. Of course, they could have stood back and let the Nazi's carry out their plan of annexing Eastern Europe, but they drew the line at Poland.

[philwelch]

No, that’s when WW2 became a pan-European war. It became a world war when Japan attacked the British and Americans, thus combining the Anglo-German and Sino-Japanese wars into a single conflict.

[incompatible]

It's arguable, WW2 is typically dated from the German invasion of Poland. By then, the war in Asia was already underway with the Japanese fighting in Asia. So with the British Empire, Germans and French and the Soviet Union also starting hostilities, much of the world was at war.

[philwelch]

This is because the history of WW2 is usually told from a Eurocentric perspective. The Soviets weren’t fully involved until 1941 either, since that’s when Germany invaded them.

[me_me_me]

Calling it a single conflict is bit of hair splitting, japan had almost nothing to do with germany, especially after war started. Those were 2 separate conflicts happening at the same time.

[philwelch]

Part of what combined the two conflicts, aside from Allied questions about resource allocations and priorities, was the supply lines of the British Empire. There was a continuous series of supply lines running all the way from England to Burma, through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal and down through South Asia. The Suez Canal (under threat from the Italians and Germans) was part of the exact same supply line as the Burma Road (under threat from the Japanese).

[mr_toad]

Does anyone seriously think that the Nazis would have stopped at Eastern Europe?

[incompatible]

It's what Hitler was saying he wanted, Lebensraum for a new German empire by conquering the "inferior" people of Eastern Europe. Western Europe probably didn't expect to be invaded, and who knows what kind of alternative history would have taken place if Britain and France hadn't got involved. Perhaps the Nazi's would never have been satisfied unless they were at war somewhere, or perhaps they would have had their hands full in the east. Nato countries today probably assume that Russia invading Ukraine isn't a prelude for Russia attacking Nato countries.

[pfannkuchen]

> where one side intends to conquer a continent or the world

I believe this view indicates you may have drunk a bit too much of the kool aid. Germany had zero ability to hold all of Europe longer term, let alone the entire world. This is a comic book tier view. Any end to the war would have had concessions and land transfers but there is no precedent to suggest that even France would have remained under Germany longer term if the Germans had won. Western Poland and bits of other nations, sure, but that is hardly an entire continent or world. The notion that they were a serious threat to occupy the US is hilarious and goes to show how effective the fear mongering propaganda was and continues to be to this day.

> The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war

England and France declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Arguably the whole thing could have been avoided if England and France hadn’t backed Poland, which would have likely caused Poland to negotiate on the original land bridge problem rather than dig their heels in. It’s eerily parallel to the situation with Ukraine today, in fact.

[wewtyflakes]

> Western Poland and bits of other nations, sure

You say that as if it is meaningless. How about just not invading your neighbors?

[pfannkuchen]

“The entire world” down to “half of Poland” may be the theoretically largest goalpost move possible (on Earth, anyway).

[Aeolun]

That’s only if things actually stop at half of Poland, which is hard to imagine with a facist state. You kinda need (plausible) external enemies to keep your power.

It also just sets a bad precedent to let the bullies have their way. Though I’ll admit that it’s questionable whether it was worth it in hindsight, we have only one possible branch of history to compare.

[wewtyflakes]

How about "don't invade your neighbors" to "half of Poland" itself being an absurd goalpost move? The default is to _not_ invade.

[pfannkuchen]

The topic of discussion isn’t whether to invade! It’s whether there was a realistic threat of Germany invading either all of Europe or the entire world, and separately whether the allies were in fact practicing what they preached. That is what I was replying to in the GP, which I explicitly quoted! The goalpost move was the topic being changed from world invasion to Poland invasion.

[wewtyflakes]

Seemed like it was a realistic threat considering Germany did exactly that; invade all of Europe.

[vlozko]

> It’s eerily parallel to the situation with Ukraine today, in fact.

I'm sorry, but this is not a realistic view of what transpired. Russia was and continues to be an opportunistic colonialist. They keep moving territory markers overnight in Georgia. Crimea/Donbass didn't happen because of some breakdown in some peace treaty. The last minute deal offered and wasn't accepted right before the 2022 invasion that some blame Ukraine on was awful in every possible way. It would have neutered Ukraine militarily and required a puppet government subservient to Russia be installed.

[robbiep]

Are you advocating for a view of history that paints Germany as a victim?

[pfannkuchen]

Definitely not. Just one that depicts actual humans and not comic book villains.

[pdonis]

> one side intends to conquer a continent or the world, invades without provocation, and won't stop until brought to submission through extreme force? The Allies did not initiate war and did not want war.

"The Allies" included the Soviet Union, which did initiate war--against Finland, against Poland, against Japan (this in the 1930s, before historians say WW II started)--and wanted even more war, hoping that all of the capitalist countries would destroy each other and leave the USSR to take over. And as others have pointed out, the USSR ended up in control of Eastern Europe, which was supposed to be liberated from tyranny--that was the original reason for Britain and France declaring war on Germany when Poland was invaded--so WW II actually failed at its primary objective. Even if you make the argument that Allied firebombing raids were a justified war measure, that argument only works if the war succeeds at its objective. If it fails, that argument falls to the ground.

[lupusreal]

Is that meant to be an oblique reference to the meme that America "initiated war" with Japan by choosing not to literally fuel Japans imperial ambitions? This reddit take is the most moronic of them all (and if this is what you're talking about, you got the decade wrong.) Japan was not entitled to foreign oil, nor the foreign land they intended to take by force using that oil, and America choosing not to give it to them was not a declaration of war. The war between Japan and half the world was started by Japan's own ambition.

If you wanted to make the case that America started it you would have to go back to the 1850s when America rudely introduced them to modern gunboat diplomacy. But for that argument you would need to read a damn book instead of parroting any fool opinion you learned on Reddit.

[pdonis]

> Is that meant to be an oblique reference

No. I meant exactly what I said. I didn't say anything about Japan except that the USSR attacked them--more precisely, they attacked the Japanese troops in Manchuria. Not just in 1945--in the late 1930s.

[lupusreal]

Okay, so the Soviets attacked the Japanese after the Japanese started their invasion of China, and that is meant to somehow reflect poorly on America? Get a fucking grip, stop huffing weeb fumes.

[adrian_b]

Well said.

It is indeed very weird to claim that UK and France have won in WWII, when they had initially declared war in order to fulfil they alliance obligations toward Poland and Czechoslovakia, but the result of WWII was that both Poland and Czechoslovakia have lost large parts of their territories (like also others of the former allies of UK and France that happened to be neighbors of the Soviet Union).

UK did not won anything in WWII. They have just preserved their integrity like someone whose home was under attack by a gang of robbers and murderers, but they got rid of the attackers by paying another gang of robbers and murderers to do most of the work, and the payment was done not with their own money, but with money stolen from other assault victims (i.e. by giving to Stalin the Eastern Europe, which was not the property of Churchill, for him to have any right to give).

Poland was much luckier than all the other neighbors of the Soviet Union, because much of its territorial loss has been compensated with territories taken from Germany. Therefore, when one compares pre-WWII with post-WWII Europe maps, at the first glance Poland does not seem to have changed much in size. However, after a more thorough look, it becomes obvious that Poland has moved on the map from east to west.

[xcv123]

Japan was already trying to negotiate conditional surrender when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. The US demanded unconditional surrender, and they nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians to force that demand.

The bombing of Dresden is arguably a war crime by todays standards. It was unnecessary.

Remember that we were allied with the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin was the "good guy" on our side). After WW2 he was given half of Europe as a reward, forcing that half of Europe to become communist, and the Soviets got to write the history books about Germany and WW2. Not the most transparent and unbiased source of information.

The Soviets and other allied soldiers (the good guys) also had a free-for-all with the German ladies after winning the war.

"The majority of the assaults were committed in the Soviet occupation zone; estimates of the numbers of German women raped by Soviet soldiers have ranged up to 2 million"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_...

[lupusreal]

Japan should have unconditionally surrendered in March, half a year before the nukes, when the US military burned most of Tokyo to the ground in less than two hours.

And yes. Stalin was a bad guy and it's a pity the war didn't end with the demise of both the Nazi and Soviet regimes. This is also irrelevant to the matter of strategic bombings perpetrated by America and Britain.

[xcv123]

General George S. Patton:

"We may have been fighting the wrong enemy (Germany) all along. But while we're here (on the Soviet border), we should go after the bastards now, 'cause we're gonna have to fight 'em eventually."

https://books.google.com/books?redir_esc=y&id=32DxAAAAMAAJ&d...

[lupusreal]

I literally just told you that the Soviets should have been taken out. This fact doesn't change the moral calculus of the strategic bombings against Germany and Japan. The fault was not doing the same to the USSR.

[xcv123]

I understood what you wrote. The interesting part of this quote is apparently General Patton also realised they should not have been fighting against Germany in the first place. There are other quotes from him that indicate some regret of fighting against Germany instead of the Soviets, by the end of the war.

[racional]

The fault was not doing the same to the USSR.

You realize that this is exactly how the war between Oceania and Eurasia started, right?

[FredPret]

Conditional surrender would have been completely unacceptable given that they were the aggressor and had a million troops in China, and wanted to hold on to their conquests after the war. Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it.

Your points about the Communists stand, but keep in mind that the West always considered them the least bad option. They started out on Hitler's side and they only got half of Europe because they already had it occupied with masses of troops. The West couldn't have pushed them back to Moscow unless they were willing to fight a couple more years, killing millions more.

[pdonis]

> Even after the first nuke they didn't surrender. It took the emperor speaking up - for the first time ever - after the second nuke, and even then the military junta tried to stop it.

All this is true, but it's also true that the nukes weren't the only factor involved. A good case can be made that it was actually the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which started at midnight local time on the same morning that Nagasaki was bombed, that gave the peace faction in the Japanese government enough leverage to get the Emperor to intercede. The Japanese still weren't exactly sure what the nuclear bombs were, and they had already been firebombed for months so having two more cities incinerated was not the huge change that later US propaganda made it out to be. But the Japanese had been trying for many months to get Stalin and the USSR to broker a peace agreement, and Stalin and Molotov had been stringing them along without any real intention of helping, to ensure that Stalin would have time to enter the war against Japan. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria shocked the Japanese government into realizing their true position and made surrender an urgent priority since Japan greatly preferred being occupied by the US to being occupied by the USSR. The nuclear bombs were a convenient way for the Emperor to save face and not have to admit that it was really the strong desire of the Japanese to surrender to the US and not to the USSR that drove the decision.

See the excellent book Racing the Enemy by Hasegawa for a detailed and thorough exposition:

https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/...

[FredPret]

This is an excellent point. This is why it was necessary to beat the Germans first - so the Russians could invade or at least threaten Japan.

Even so, a land conquest of Japan would have cost vast numbers of lives - far more than the nukes.

When people die one by one in war, the emotional impact is blunted. But when a million die in one bomb, it seems much worse, even if the overall body count is lower.

[pdonis]

> This is why it was necessary to beat the Germans first - so the Russians could invade or at least threaten Japan.

That was the strategy that FDR and Churchill agreed to, but the primary person driving it was Stalin, because he didn't want the US and Britain to defeat Japan before he got a chance to attack them, and he knew he would not be able to attack them until Germany was defeated. (He wanted to attack them so he would have a pretext for taking over territory that Russia had lost in the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-1905.) As events proved, the US and Britain did not need any help from the USSR to defeat Japan militarily, and with different diplomatic choices they probably could have gotten Japan to surrender before the USSR attacked.

Once FDR died and Truman took office, btw, it was no longer clear that having the USSR enter the war against Japan was a US objective. Truman, unlike FDR, was not a fan of Stalin and viewed him as a geopolitical threat, not an ally. Which, historically speaking, was a sounder view.

[gmoot]

> with different diplomatic choices they probably could have gotten Japan to surrender before the USSR attacked.

Such as?

[fpoling]

Soviet Union were preparing to invade Hokkaido. My grandfather was staged near Vladivostok and everybody in Soviet military there in summer 1945 expected there would be invasion of Japan.

Japanese knew that Soviet rulers did not care if another million of soldiers died and Soviet occupation was considered much worse outcome. That contributed to their surrender to US.

[arrowsmith]

I recently rewatched Band of Brothers and this scene hit me really hard (starting at about 1:50):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43-p3xLDyo

This is from the final episode of the series. Easy Company have fought their way from Normandy to Germany, losing hundreds of their friends and brothers in battle after brutal battle. Now the Nazis have surrendered and they finally have some respite - but their celebrations are shortlived. Their commanding officer informs them that they're to be redeployed to the Pacific. The war isn't over, and the expression on Malarkey's face at 2:09 says it all.

Whatever anyone says about the atomic bombings, I bet those men were damn happy to hear about Japan's surrender. Imagine if they'd been sent to invade Japan, in another brutal campaign that would have taken months if not years, costing hundreds of thousands more Allied lives.

Then imagine telling them that the government had secretly developed a powerful new weapon that could have ended the war earlier and avoided all this bloodshed - but they hadn't used it because they were worried about the moral implications. I don't think they'd have agreed it was the right choice.

[themaninthedark]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast

The emperor directly mentions the atomic bomb in his address; "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

He only tacitly mentions the battle situation; "But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest."

[pdonis]

> The emperor directly mentions the atomic bomb in his address...He only tacitly mentions the battle situation

I know that. And I said why: to save face. He didn't want to tell the Japanese people that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was the reason. The atomic bomb made a much better reason for public consumption. That doesn't mean it was the actual reason that drove the decision, which was made in private.

[themaninthedark]

So without the atomic bomb, the emperor and the peace faction did not have a way out and the fighting would have continued.

[Aeolun]

Hmm, the books I’ve read in Japan make it seem more like the emperor was just tired of an unwinnable war. The nuclear bombs and soviet invasion were simply a catalyst. They just got a surrender note from the US at the proper time for that to be the topic under consideration (aside from, you know, surrendering to the people that tricked you being a generally bad idea).

I like how they ultimately accepted the unconditional surrender, but still tacked on a condition that the emperor was not to be blamed.

[arrowsmith]

> the emperor was not to be blamed.

Even though he should have been:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hirohito-the-war-crimina...

[Aeolun]

Maybe. He was pretty young at the time, and surrounded by old guys telling him what to think.

Contrary to what this article says, I’m absolutely convinced that not prosecuting the emperor was the right call. The country would have more or less literally exploded overnight.

The fact the man himself told everyone to surrender was of more importance than almost anything else done, both at government and civilian levels. Most of the internal efforts to stop the surrender were around stopping him from declaring as such.

[soperj]

Literally the only condition was that the emperor was preserved.

[Aeolun]

I think that was the condition they tacked onto the unconditional surrender xD

I imagine there were more before that.

[soperj]

The last conditional surrender before atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that was the only condition. There were previous conditional surrenders. They wanted to drop those bombs though.

[FredPret]

And conquests retained

[xcv123]

> Conditional surrender would have been completely unacceptable

And some would argue that nuking entire cities is completely unacceptable.

[FredPret]

Allied options were:

1. Invade. Expected Allied casualties of 300k all the way to much more than a million. Expected Japanese casualties: tens of millions, perhaps up to literally all of them. Previous Japanese strongholds fought to the last man, earlier in the war the Allies invaded an island with 11000 Japanese soldiers, and I think 47 of those eventually surrendered. The rest died. The civilian populations on these islands infamously committed suicide in huge numbers rather than be captured by the Allies. How much harder would an invasion of the home islands be!? The Japanese government issued an order that every single person must fight to the death.

2. Starve them out. The allies had submarines all around Japan and completely blocked all food and oil imports. This was working. But given the Japanese fighting spirit, likely tens of millions would have died before any change took place. It's also possible that the population could drop so low that the islands would become self-sufficient and then the war would drag on literally forever.

3. Conventional aerial bombardment. The Allies were already trying this with great gusto, to little diplomatic effect.

4. Demonstration nuke off the coast. The Allies only had two nukes left after the test one, and weren't 100% sure it would work. A failed demo would only strengthen Japanese resolve. There were concerns whether one demo nuke would be scary enough to force a surrender. Given that one actually used nuke wasn't, these concerns turned out to be valid.

5. Actually drop a nuke. This option turns out to have had the lowest bodycount in the end and had the unexpected side-effect of ushering in an unprecedented era of global peace.

[philwelch]

> Starve them out. The allies had submarines all around Japan and completely blocked all food and oil imports. This was working. But given the Japanese fighting spirit, likely tens of millions would have died before any change took place. It's also possible that the population could drop so low that the islands would become self-sufficient and then the war would drag on literally forever.

Probably the biggest share of the blockade at the end was done by naval mines. At the end, the US airdropped naval mines in Japanese harbors to prevent them from importing food, and this sunk more Japanese shipping than the submarines ever did. It was even called “Operation Starvation”.

[xcv123]

6. Accept Japan's request for peace negotiations. Stop fighting and begin negotiating their conditional surrender.

[FredPret]

And let them continue to fuck up China and the whole Pacific region, only to come back swinging a couple of decades later

[Aeolun]

> This option turns out to have had the lowest bodycount in the end

Given that you don’t know the body count of the other options, given they didn’t happen, that’s a bold statement to make.

[pie420]

The firebombing of tokyo killed 200K people, more than both nukes. the firebombing was an attempt to end the war via conventional means and it did nothing to weaken japanese resolve.

The reason hiroshima and nagasaki (small cities) were chosen as nuke targets was because every other bigger city was already mostly destroyed due to firebombing campaigns.

[pdonis]

Your survey of the options is basically the one that the US government put out after the war to push back against criticism. However, historical scholarship since then has shown that it wasn't that simple.

First, there is no evidence of any actual casualty estimates made during the war that were anywhere near as high as the ones you give in option 1. Those numbers were made up after the war. The wartime estimates were about an order of magnitude lower.

Second, you left out an option: clarify the status of the Emperor if the Japanese surrendered, which the US government well knew, since they were reading Japanese diplomatic traffic and also had plenty of intelligence from spies, was the only real obstacle in the way of the Japanese surrendering. The final surrender agreement left the Emperor in place as the head of the Japanese state. If the Japanese had known that was going to be the final outcome of surrender earlier, it is highly probable that they would have surrendered earlier. The status of the Emperor was the primary weapon the military war faction in the Japanese cabinet used to quash surrender proposals.

Third, to call the time since WW II "an unprecedented era of global peace" is a bit much. What the bombs ushered in was an era of nuclear stalemate. The US does deserve credit for not using the bombs again, even though the US was the only nuclear power for at least four years after WW II. It is also true that many people after WW II expected a nuclear conflict to happen as soon as the USSR got nuclear weapons, and none did. But that didn't stop plenty of conventional conflicts from continuing to break out all over the world, nor has the US kept out of such conflicts.

[FredPret]

First, the casualty estimates are just for US soldiers and is likely low. They fough against Japanese troops with a kill ratio of between 1:1 and 1:20 (in favor of the Marines) so it’s easy to extrapolate massive US casualties when fighting the then 80 million strong Japanese on home soil.

I don’t know much about the second point, so you may be right.

Third, you have to look at stats, not emotions. Battle deaths - in absolute terms and per capita - dropped like a stone after 1945.

[pmontra]

Nuking cities or conventional bombing them is the same thing. The bombing of Tokyo resulted in about 100 k deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

Only the emotional impact was different. A nuke was an otherworldly weapon that marked a technological superiority that was impossible to overcame during the war, hence the surrender. Carpet bombing would have to go on until enough Japanese cities and industries were reduced to hash. Then maybe an invasion. As somebody pointed out, the surrender of the Japanese troops in China was a goal of the war and they could not carpet bomb or nuke China.

[pdonis]

> they were the aggressor

Only because the US froze all trade with Japan and intentionally refused all Japanese attempts at diplomacy to negotiate some kind of arrangement. The US did that knowing that the Japanese government would go to war, since the US had broken the Japanese codes and was reading all Japanese diplomatic traffic. In other words, the US intentionally provoked Japan into going to war.

[FredPret]

Yes, they froze Japanese trade. But only to stop outrages being committed all over the area, including annexing Manchuria and invading China. The Japanese were doing all of this with imported US oil. Stopping the oil exports hardly places responsibility for Pearl Harbor on the US.

[pdonis]

If those things the Japanese did were "outrages", so were the things the US, Britain, and other European countries did to build their empires. The Japanese viewed their actions as simply taking their rightful place as an imperial power alongside those other countries. Yes, by today's standards, or at least today's Western standards, such things are Not Done, but if we are going to judge WW II Japan by those standards, we should judge the WW II Allies by those standards too.

[FredPret]

Point me to the rapes of Nanking the allies did. Or maybe just stop spreading Soviet propaganda.

[CamperBob2]

People who are ready to surrender don't need to be nuked twice.

[czl]

> Allies did not initiate war and did not want war.

An argument made that WW2 was continuation of WW1 and that WW1 was wanted by British leadership who were locked in an arms race with Germany that they could not sustain much longer and wanted a war with Germany while they were ahead so the assassination that triggered WW1 was the pretext tobstart WW1. If you disagree please try to answer why leaders are regularly assassinated and that does not cause a world war.

[lupusreal]

Listen, while I broadly agree with your grander point (Britain wanting a war with Germany and taking any excuse given for it) your argument for this is flatly moronic; the assassination of the archduke was not Britain's pretext for entering the war! That was Austria-Hungary's pretext for invading Serbia. Britain's pretext was the German invasion of Belgium. Read a fucking book.

[czl]

While Britain's decision to enter World War I was indeed triggered by Germany's invasion of Belgium, it's important to consider the broader context. In the years leading up to the war, Britain had engaged in a naval arms race with Germany, driven by fears of Germany's growing military and economic power. British leaders, including Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, viewed war with Germany as inevitable and believed it was better to fight sooner while Britain still held a naval advantage.

Britain's system of alliances, particularly the Entente Cordiale with France and Russia, made it likely that any conflict involving these powers would draw Britain into a larger war. When the July Crisis erupted following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, British leaders did little to prevent the escalation of tensions. Despite last-minute efforts by some, such as German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg's plea for British neutrality, Britain remained committed to its alliances and the belief that war with Germany was necessary.

It's worth noting that other European leaders, such as French President Raymond Poincaré and Russian Tsar Nicholas II, also played significant roles in the outbreak of the war. However, Britain's long-standing rivalry with Germany, its naval arms race, and its commitment to alliances that would likely trigger a larger conflict all contributed to its readiness to enter the war when the opportunity arose.

[philwelch]

There’s a much simpler theory of the war, which is that it was Germany that was worried about a foreign rival catching up to them—Russia—which is why Germany pushed for the war to start. It’s interesting to see this theory projected onto the British, but there’s a fatal flaw with this projection. The first declaration of war was by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. Britain was not in a position to manipulate the situation as to encourage that; Germany was. And Germany would have known that an Austro-Hungarian war on Serbia would draw in Russia, which is how they get the Russo-German war they actually wanted.

How, exactly, mechanistically, does Britain manipulate this crisis into an Anglo-German war? They didn’t make Austria-Hungary declare war. They didn’t even declare war alongside the French. And they certainly didn’t make Germany invade France by way of Belgium in order to give Britain a pretext. It sounds to me like Germany wanted war with Russia and was confident they could also afford war with France (having kicked their asses in 1870 already) but would have really preferred to keep Britain out of it.

If there is a criticism one can levy against the British, it might be that they simply weren’t forceful enough in making that consequence clear to the Germans ahead of time. The “alliances that would likely trigger a larger conflict” were in fact a consciously designed system of balances of power meant to deter exactly that type of large scale war, in the tradition that was established 99 years previously in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. It’s easy to dismiss that system because it failed catastrophically in 1914, but the fact that it had mostly worked since 1815 was unprecedented in European history. The 99 years between the Napoleonic and First World Wars were the most peaceful 99 years of European history since at least the Roman Empire; check back in 2044 to see if we can break that record.

[czl]

> The 99 years between the Napoleonic and First World Wars were the most peaceful 99 years of European history since at least the Roman Empire;

You make a good point about the "Long Peace" between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. While there were indeed several conflicts during this period, they were generally shorter and more localized. The Revolutions of 1848, which affected many European countries. The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) The Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885) The Greco-Turkish War (1897) And there are others that I missed

> Germany wanted war with Russia and was confident they could also afford war with France (having kicked their asses in 1870 already) but would have really preferred to keep Britain out of it.

Yes I also agree however had Britain remained neutral and not created alliances that it knew would put it in conflict with Germany is it possible that the Germany vs. Russia conflict might have remained a regional war (like others I mentioned above) and so continuing the so called “long peace”? Instead there was an escalation to a global conflict. So what motivated Britain to make these alliances that caused the escalation? Is there a better explanation than “Thucydides Trap”? (See my sibling post about this.)

“Thucydides Trap" suggests that when a rising power threatens to displace an existing great power, it often leads to war. Russia, Britain, and Germany found themselves in this predicament before World War 1, with each nation acting rationally to protect its own interests. However, the complex web of alliances and the fear of losing power ultimately led to a global conflict that no one truly desired.

[philwelch]

> And there are others that I missed

For instance, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, where the German Empire you seem to idolize was effectively born. Also the same war that gave the German Empire a degree of overconfidence about their chances against France.

> however had Britain remained neutral and not created alliances that it knew would put it in conflict with Germany is it possible that the Germany vs. Russia conflict might have remained a regional war (like others I mentioned above)

Did Britain create the alliance between France and Russia? They certainly weren't a party to it, because that wasn't their casus belli for entering the war. Their casus belli was the German invasion of Belgium. My contention is that if Britain was less neutral and more proactive about creating alliances that could put it in conflict with Germany, they could have successfully deterred the First World War.

[stickfigure]

> So what motivated Britain to make these alliances

The answer to this is incredibly obvious. It's the same reason people have always made voluntary alliances - for security. See also: NATO.

As for the "Thucydides Trap", there's plenty of criticism on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap#Criticism

Personally I file it alongside Marxism, Asimov's Psychohistory, and all the other Grand Theories Of History that try to pretend human behavior is simple and predictable.

[robbiep]

The chamberlain government would like to disagree with wanting a war with Germany

[SamBam]

WWI, not WWII. But I agree with the larger point that Britain was not looking to start a war, and was absolutely not the cause of the war.

[czl]

Before World War I, Britain observed Germany's rapid rise and perceived it as a threat to its own global dominance. This situation is a classic example of the Thucydides trap, named after the ancient Greek historian who noted that when a rising power threatens to displace an existing great power, war becomes more likely. In this case, Germany's growing industrial and military strength was seen as a direct challenge to Britain's hegemony.

Germany, on the other hand, wanted to emerge as a stronger power than Britain while avoiding direct conflict. German leaders pleaded with Britain to remain neutral and not declare war on Germany. However, from the British perspective, war with Germany was deemed necessary to suppress its increasing power and maintain Britain's position on the world stage.

British leaders may not have actively sought to start a war, but they believed that confronting Germany was crucial to protect their national interests. See my reply to sibling comment with more details.

Today there is a similar situation with China being the rising power and America seeking to suppress it.

[mr_toad]

Britain was absolutely not prepared for war at the start of WWII. If they had lost the Battle of Britain it is unlikely they would have survived a land invasion.

[czl]

WWI, not WWII. Look again at my words and at the other replies.