a reply to:
JiggyPotamus
This is simplifying some things to a great degree
let's realize what germany is/was up to ww1.
Germany was a series of princedoms and states that had once been a part of the Holy Roman Empire.
This area was invaded by France during Napoleon's reign, and later managed to unify under leadership of the state of Prussia, during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. a war that was short, and ended in a decisive defeat for france, with the loss of some northern industrial territory.
That is what motivated tensions in France to Declare war on Germany in ww1.
in the last years of the First World War, the Kaiser was removed in a coup by mostly Social-Democrats(welfare-capitalists), who recognizing the
increasingly bad situation, especially after the US entered on France and the UK's side.
the rest you covered.
Things were unstable in germany, mainly due to the whole issue of the treaty of Versailles. It's important to point out some of the hard to notice
elements of the period.
in 1917 there was a revolution in russia, the Tsar was deposed, and replaced with an intermediary/transitional council/government, war with germany
continued on however. Then The Bolsheviks launched a coup and removed this transitional government, and declared control.
however it's often missed, by most at least, that lenin, nor marx, nor any actual communist of the time would think the backward nation of Russia
would be a candidate for a communist revolution. You see communism isn't an alternative to capitalism, it's seen as an inevitable result of capitalism
urbanizing and industrializing, at least it was perceived as such at that time.
Lenin's goal was to inspire revolutions elsewhere around the globe, particularly in Germany, France, and the UK.
1919, there is a communist uprising in germany, many cities are taken over, including berlin, the weimar government is in panic.
Freikorps, who
were essentially private/paramilitary militias made up of middle-class farmers, were called upon to crush this rebellion, and they did, mostly by
killing indiscriminately and looting. This included executing many of the key members of the german communist and labor-movement leadership up to that
point. it's worth noting that many of the
Freikorps were later Brownshirts, as they were often angry, bitter ww1 veterans who felt their nation
was betrayed by the government that replaced the Kaiser, and in addition despised communists, and were highly suspicious of the USSR/russians, and
Jews(who had a lot of representation in the intellectual and political circles of that time as the former military/monarchists were discredited).
en.wikipedia.org...
the war in europe during ww2, was mostly in the eastern-front, the russians took the majority of the casualties, and in many ways never recovered from
the Great Patriotic War. the russians were thirsty for blood, and enacted terrible revenge on german civilians; massacres, mass-rapes, looting, and
mass-deportations of ethnic germans into the new east-german border, or into siberia to die. The western allies weren't much better, as many prisoners
of war and their families died in american camps of exposure. to be honest, there wasn't much room for sympathy there, the germans had shown they were
beyond savage in their use of industrial genocide.
However the western allies had, and in many ways continue to, show a bloodthirsty trend of bombing. Vietnam, Iraq, and the continuing drone-war show
that the US, and Britain, have a fetish for bombing people. regardless if it works, or if it just makes our enemies more determined to hurt us.
edit on 21-12-2014 by NonsensicalUserName because: (no reason given)