Sir Max Hasting - Catastrophe

Comments · 136

• SE

  @seanmoran2743 · 3 years ago

  In 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war kept him elsewhere, and Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present) "that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust – probably not more than one-quarter of us – learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it."

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• JE

  @jeffersonwright6249 · 3 years ago

  Hastings is right that WWI was a negative victory against the powers of autocracy. What not everyone understands is that war technology had advanced well beyond military imagination in all but one crucial avenue - battlefield communication.

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• LA

  @largelysubatomic · 10 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2mWeMO52Bk&amp;t=458">7:38</a> to skip intro

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• RO

  @rosesprog1722 · 3 years ago

  Except that the blank check includes the phrases:<br> &nbsp; &quot;Finally, as far as concerns Serbia, His Majesty, of course, cannot interfere in the dispute now going on between Austria-Hungary and that country, as it is a matter not within his competence&quot;. <br> &nbsp; &nbsp; The blank check meant that if Russia decided to get involved in a war that didn&apos;t concern her, Germany would prevent her from eating Austria, it was a defensive entente. Then Sir Edward Grey, after denying any such entente for years finally admitted that there was indeed an entente with France. That event almost caused half the ministers to quit parliament in disgust to finally rally the &nbsp;cause of the war. Germany did not plan, want, pursue nor lost that war on the battlefield, she lost it in the dark back rooms of the Palais de Versailles through secret deals made by crooks whose goal was the economic destruction of an annoying competitor to some old, tired and dying empires for whom war was the only negotiation possible. Sir Hastings is a great historian, but hopelessly British, with the incurable bias it implies.

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• EL

  @eldragon4076 · 10 years ago

  Just finished the book - Highly recommended!

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• SE

  @seanmoran2743 · 3 years ago

  The Great War for Civilisation <br>I didn’t believe in it then and I believe in it less so now <br><br>JRR Tolkien

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• GL

  @glutinousmaximus · 7 years ago

  Max Hastings is one of the really great war historians of the 20th century. His lectures and books are graphic and accurate - almost as if he were there. Thanks so much for posting!

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• KE

  @kevinbyrne4538 · 10 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2mWeMO52Bk&amp;t=1067">17:47</a> &nbsp;&quot;They underrated the dominance [that] their country was achieving through its industrial prowess, without firing a shot on any battlefield. &nbsp;Germany was powering ahead of Britain, France, Russia by every economic indicator. &nbsp;The supreme irony of 1914 to me is that if Germany had not gone to war, I can think of nothing that could have prevented Germany from completely dominating Europe within a generation by entirely peaceful, economic means.&quot; <br><br>Ironically, both Germany and Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced that the alternative was poverty and impotence. &nbsp;Both countries fought huge neighbors that they couldn&apos;t conquer; both countries lost their wars; both countries recovered and returned to the ranks of the richest and most influential nations. &nbsp;<br><br>If both countries had abstained from war, they would have become even richer and more influential. &nbsp;The wars were a complete waste of life and treasure.

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• JO

  @joemanner6171 · 4 years ago

  Best chains ever...

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• DO

  @doctortimepmd3339 · 7 years ago

  There so much more going on a person couldn&apos;t get in one video..<br>No Fear I Am With The High Command..

• GN

  @gnarfgnarf4004 · 5 years ago

  Brilliant. &nbsp;Deserves far greater viewing.

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• PM

  @PMMagro · 3 years ago

  Good lecture!