Causes and Excuses for WW I

Because of entangling alliances, and big egos, 9 million died in WW I. Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia sounds like some demands made by a modern day bully.

One veteran of WW I who recently died had often said, "They died for us". I think they died for the kings, popes, and the aristocracy.

My own view of the causes of WW I, they were just excuses. Tribes just love war for some real reason. Modern humans have learned to produce their own food and desalinate water, the only animals that can do such. Still they plunder and enjoy killing their own kind. Sadism can only be detected in one animal, the human.

Humans used to practice torture in public, in the village square. Torture was made illegal in 1864 by the Geneva Conventions. It was not prohibited because after a million years humans suddenly became noble and virtuous. It was prohibited because the leaders did not want to be tortured in case of defeat or in case there was another French Revolution. Torture is now done in backrooms, not in the public square. Torture has only been prohibited for a nano second of human history. And we call humans the civilized animal.

We made dueling between individuals illegal. It's time to make dueling between states illegal. There is no reason the Gulf of Tonkin dispute could not have been solved in a court of law, and saved millions of lives, and saved billions of dollars. But, states will never give up the power and most prized possesion, the ability to make war, where a coward can pretend to be the great Commander in Chief.

Charles Tolleson


http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm
We'll start with the facts and work back: it may make it all the easier to understand how World War One actually happened. The events of July and early August 1914 are a classic case of "one thing led to another" - otherwise known as the treaty alliance system.

The explosive that was World War One had been long in the stockpiling; the spark was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. (Click here to view film footage of Ferdinand arriving at Sarajevo's Town Hall on 28 June 1914.)