Part 1 The Build Up
Back in 1914 a mother fucker of a fight kicked off thanks to some dude you never heard of, operating for an organisation nobody remembers, killing a guy who’s greatest achievement had been boffing a chick his peers disapproved of. Yup Gavrillo Princip and a bunch of muppets called the Black Hand really stirred things up. It all happened in a shitty backarse of a place called Sarajevo, and thanks to another douche that even less people have heard of, resulted in all manner of shit that still reverberates to this day. (I’ll tell ye this last guy’s name next time out … Oh and by the way you’ll get massive Kudos if you mention him in like the Leaving Cert or A levels or whatever, cause the examiner won’t have a clue who the fuck you’re talking about and will have to look him up).
Gavrillo Princip brings a whole new meaning to the term "Collateral Damage"
Well that’s the short version. But since I’m in a generous mood at the moment I’ve decided to throw you retards who can’t figure out what to do for your Leaving Cert History special topic a bone. That’s right assholes rejoice! Rejoice and offer thanks to the lord, for your all knowing, benevolent, and fabulously handsome role model; Titus Flavius Vespasianus has decided to write a wee piece that would give even the most tight arsed bitch of a corrector a severe case of pussy stimulation.
Where to begin? Well if you wanna really impress the fuckers you’d best go back to good auld Otto Von Bismarck. You see Otto knew a thing or two about being a badass. This is the guy that Hitler regarded as THE man, so that ought to tell you all you need to know about Otto’s badassery- Hell, Hitler idolised the guy so hard that he named a mother fucker of a battleship after him. Well Otto was from the landed gentry of the most kick ass military powerhouse in 19th century Europe. A place called Prussia. No not Russia you retard. Prussia.
Today Prussian military might exists only in the fond memories of a few neo Nazi’s, but back in the day it was the leading state of a bunch of states that had little in common other than the fact that they all spoke Kraut and liked to wear Lederhosen. Well I say leading state but a guy called Franz Joseph disagreed. Old Franz Joseph had been around longer than prostitution and ruled a wee place called Austro-Hungary. These guys were always fucking up the Prussian’s plans to unite all the shitty Kraut states into one giant badass Kraut empire. And this really pissed off our friend Otto.
Prussia and surrounding somewhat shittier states
But Bismarck was a man of political dexterity, and courtly intrigues, and soon set about devising a plan so ingenious in it’s intricacies, that he was certain it could not fail to convince the Austrians that German unification, under Prussian dominance, was the way to go. What was the plan? … Beat the shit out of the fuckers and kick Franz Joseph’s arse all the way back to Vienna. Unfortunately Bismarck’s delicate manoeuvrings didn’t go down too well with a bunch of frog eating assholes in Paris. A guy who liked to call himself Napoleon III reckoned it was time to enter a few negotiations of his own with Bismarck, and put an end to all this Kraut unification nonsense. Well Bismarck wasn’t too keen on that idea, so he devised an even more ingenious and finely nuanced plan to convince the frogs that a united Kraut empire would be no threat. What did he do this time? Yup, that’s right he beat the shit out of the fuckers and kicked Napoleon’s arse all the way back to Paris.
Frogs getting their arse kicked during the Franco Prussian War
After that nobody else felt like negotiating with Otto and the 2nd Reich was formed. Unfortunately for Bismarck there was a slight flaw in his plan. It involved placing a complete retard in charge of what was now the most powerful country in Europe. Yup thanks to Bismarck the Prussian Kaiser – Kaiser Wilhelm – was given supreme authority over all the Kraut states and he soon set about throwing his weight around and pissing pretty much everybody off.
Retards ... Even the Germans have a few
Yeah the Kaiser was real miffed that Germany had come to the imperialist empire building malarkey late, and while the Brits and Frogs had empires controlling half the planet, Germany’s empire consisted of a few shitty scraps of jungle somewhere in the Congo, and a sausage stand in Ghana. In vain attempts to redress the balance he pissed off the frogs in Agadir (twice), he pissed off the Russians in the Balkans (fuckloads of times) and he pissed off the Brits by challenging their naval supremacy. The Kaiser’s attempts to scare the Frogs in Agadir ended up looking pretty lame. The Brits came down on the side of the Frogs and the Krauts had to back down. The Balkans worked out a little better for him. By siding with old Franz Joseph, and telling the Russians to go fuck themselves he gained a temporary appearance of being a badass. Unfortunately for Kaiser Bill it pushed the Russians into closer relations with the Brits and Frogs.
German overseas empire circa 1900
The end result of all the Kaiser’s shenanigans was an anti German alliance “The Triple Entente.” Consisting of the UK, the Frogs, and the Ruskis.
To counter the Triple Entente the Kaiser established the somewhat shittier “Triple Alliance” which was basically Germany with a couple of crappy countries thrown in for good measure. Said countries being Austro-Hungary (who under Franz Joseph – had the dubious distinction of losing pretty much every war it had ever fought) and the even shittier Italy, the only country in the world likely to lose a fight against Austro-Hungary. To avoid war the two alliances decided on a policy of mutually assured destruction. An ingenious philosophy devised to ensure that nobody could even contemplate the idea of a fight. Germany and France engaged in a build off to see who could make more riffles, artillery pieces, shells, motars etc. While Germany and Britain squared off to see who could build the most ships.
The Brits who until the Kaiser had come along had what they called a ‘two power standard’ (they wanted to have a bigger navy than the next two biggest navies in the world combined) came up with this new type of warship called a dreadnought – basically a giant fortress that floats. They built shitloads of them. The Krauts copied the idea and built their own Dreadnoughts. The Russian set about conscripting an army so ridiculously massive that the Germans could spend ten years slaughtering the fuckers and still not even be half way through ‘em. Yup the old; ‘they’ll run out of bullets before getting through this lot,’ approach. Added to the huge armies and navies was the understanding that an attack on any one member of either alliance would be seen as an attack on the lot, and thus result in a major arse kicking. Yup a pretty ingenious plan really with only one ever so slight flaw; said flaw being … it was complete pants.
Ok I couldn’t be arsed writing any more for the moment, but look out for Part 2 … thats where the shit really hits the fan.
I know where this story ends…. a Scottish band called Franz Ferdinand.
[...] Vespasian – “History for Retards (the First World War)” [...]
history prof?
!
tog go bog e alanna!
i’m quite calm, no worries. not a history teacher though, was just a little shocked by the vitriol in that guy’s/girl’s speech.
also, going to assume the alanna part wasn’t meant too patronisingly. nice to see irish being used though! i understand scots gaelic better though.
but yeah.
You forgot South Africa.
You know, the Second Boer War. It was after the first where the German’s beat the English peasants. The English then mobilized their armies, and sent them in to invade South Africa in the Second Boer War.
However, the English still failed to defeat the Boer men, so they sought out an opponent more equal to their courage, the Boer women and children.
Tens of thousands of ethnic german woman and children corpses later, the “cunning” English had won!
This mass murder of ethnic german women and children in death camps probably had no effect on German opinion of England.
An Englishmen guaranteed it to me! In fact, he made the startling revelation that those camps weren’t death camps at all! The tens of thousands of deaths were purely an accident, and the Englishmen had been actually trying to protect the women and children!
So, having received some straight up facts from a real straight shooter, I realized your points to be entirely correct.
Many a German probably later regretted having failed to reason with England in South Africa using tactics that had worked quite well in the past. As the English still rambled insanely about being “provoked”.. so they might as well have actually defended themselves from England’s violent attack.
…the only flaw in this is that…uh…well…all of it? The Germans had no involvement in either of the Boer wars. They were fought principally between the Dutch Boer settlers and the British empire. Also, “English” is a load of bullshit. It’s called the British empire because it was a union of countries under the control of Britain – Britain consisting of England, Wales, Scotland, and at that time, all of Ireland.
And actually, I’m not quite sure what relationship you’re suggesting the Boer wars had on the outbreak of WWI…?
I think it was all about boys and toys. They wanted to play with their new battleships properly. Regattas didn’t count.
Also, there was nothing much going on in the way of general violence, all the rest of the world having been conquered and all that, and they got bored.
Remember, the guys running the show had been brought up on the stories of Achilles & so forth, in between bouts of buggery. Commerce didn’t count, that was for the middle class. War was their raison d’etre.
The only thing that stopped them post-Crimea was that they were all off slaughtering natives in Africa. Once this was done, they’d nothing to do but fight with each other.
I’m sure the women egged them on a bit too.
well, tbh, i think that WWI was a practice run for WWII finding what sick fucked up tactics the germans could come up with and for the British to play with their toy ships and for russia to try their ‘get everyone in our army killed but they will never kill us all act by giving them shitty stuff and saying if you die your actually helping us defend ourselves’ which was always a load of bullocks.
Very well done. But I don’t think you gave Servia enough credit. After all, not even Kraut kaisers can match the stupidity of that backwards (now AND then and forever) sh*thole. After all, few people with the world’s sh*ttiest army will start a war with a European power, force the involvement of other states, create a massive conflict that will cause WWII and then suck whose ever d*ck they can find they will be thrown a few bones.