Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, the reason why I blamed Austria-Hungary more than the other countries is because that belligerent seemed hell-bent on starting a war. France, Germany, and Russia pretty much could've been sitting in hostile detente indefinitely if they didn't have some powder-keg trigger. And it probably would have been a good strategy for all of them in the long run.

However, there was no way forward for Austria-Hungary to experience peace and not experience catastrophic decline. They were getting their asses handed to them economically, militarily, and demographically and the only way for the empire to survive in more-or-less its current form was to be the winner of a long-shot war.

That's sort of how I feel about the U.S. South before the American Civil War. The North could've just ran out the clock no matter which non-violent way forward the South picked. There was no way for the South to exist in its current form after about a generation of so, short of a long-shot desperate gamble on secession. So rather than just consigning itself to long-term decline it staged a decisive confrontation.

[Blade]

If they didn't have a powder-keg trigger, one country would probably have fabricated one, the way Prussia did in 1870 to start war on France.

[Username17]

If they didn't have a powder-keg trigger, one country would probably have fabricated one, the way Prussia did in 1870 to start war on France.

It's important to remember that while Bismarck did totally troll the French parliament into declaring war on him, the French parliament did declare war on him and not the other way around.

Bismarck did say that he was going to troll the French parliament into declaring war on Prussia and that this was going to provoke the Southern German States into siding with him. And then he trolled the French parliament, they declared war, and the Southern German States allied with him.

It's the kind of plan that you'd think would only work in a video or card game. But apparently people are predictable enough in their responses to troll posts that you can pull that kind of shit off IRL.

-Username17

[Voss]

For WW1, I don't think Germany or Austro-Hongria is more to blame than any other. All European countries were extremely nationalists, extremely proud, and convinced they would win any war in a short time. And many countries had reasons to want to start a war.

It took the traumatism of WW1 to make countries understand that war wasn't something you could consider as casually as before.

As AH said, a lot of this was technology. And bizarrely enough, racism. I once read a turn of the century report to the British Army General staff (post some South African war I don't remember) that was essentially an analysis of machine guns and the like, downplaying their effectiveness against White Europeans on the principle that Racism is Magic and they just wouldn't kill technologically and culturally superior people all that well.

And when it turned out the devastatingly effective weapons aren't actually magically racist after all, tactical adaptation didn't happen fast enough. As it turned out, WWI was needless trauma. The military leadership of most countries simply had their heads up their collective asses for about 50 years.

[Chamomile]

World War I was avoidable. Germany was a dick, the political situation was a powder keg set up to produce a gigantic conflict, the technology was way ahead of the tactics. All of which should have been foreseeable and fixable. I mean, any look at the American Civil War should have warned everybody about trench warfare; the Crimean War about disease control.

That said, the number of stuff you'd have to introduce to prevent it is more complicated than "keep Archduke Ferdinand alive." If it wasn't him, it could have been any other little spark that set things off. You'd probably need a complete political change in Europe to prevent WWI, and it's hard to imagine that coming about non-violently.

Okay, so here's a follow-up question: You are the time police. You are being sent back in time to prevent World War I. What's the best strategy for making this happen? Follow-up question: Is it possible to make this happen in such a way as to prevent Hitler's rise to power, thus removing the necessity for the otherwise inevitable assassinate Hitler time police mission? I would assume that if WWI could be prevented, Hitler's rise to power would be prevented pretty much automatically, but since I can't think of how to actually prevent WWI, I'm not sure.

[darkmaster]

Go back in time and kill napoleon as a child thus preventing the rise of the nation state. Of course, that would also erase all of modern society but you know.

[name_here]

WWI has some deep roots; you'd probably have to seriously disrupt at least one of the major powers. Preventing the unification of Germany might do it, because the Austro-Hungarian empire probably wouldn't be willing to try staring down Russia without backup but people wouldn't want to provoke non-unified Germany into getting its act together.

Disrupting just one of the other powers would probably result in some form of continent-spanning war, though it could potentially alter the allegiances of the others.

Hitler's rise is so bound up in the resolution of WWI that it would almost certainly never have happened without WWI or an equivalent.

[Username17]

Go back in time and kill napoleon as a child thus preventing the rise of the nation state. Of course, that would also erase all of modern society but you know.

Meh. Without Napoleon, we'd just be talking about Emperor Davout. The French Nationalist Team is pretty deep and doesn't need any one dude.

As Voss pointed out, the information that trench warfare was going to be horrible and bloody and slow was certainly available to Europeans, they just didn't want to hear it. South America had the Battle of Tuiúti in 1866, the United States had that whole Civil War thing, The British were actually involved in the Boer Wars in 1902. True story: when I was in Ghana, I visited a pizzeria and they had a "Boer Pizza," it is a pizza covered with ground meat.

Historical data that the World War I plans were completely fucking insane was simply available. The marshals of the major powers simply dismissed them. Somehow the fact that the Italians had lost the Battle of Adwa in 1896 just didn't register.

Ultimately, I think if you want to stop World War I from being like that, that you have to affect the ideas of European military leaders. Merely killing a dude or winning a battle or something isn't going to do it. So basically what you need to do is to write a book that gets turned into mandatory reading in 1880 or so, so that all the top brass of all the major powers will have read it and had their opinions formed by it when 1914 comes around.

So you're going to want to distribute some machine guns to some bullshit militia that historically gets curbstomped by an empire. Like, maybe you make the Romanians defeat the Ottomans in 1878 or the Slavians beat the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1877. Not really that big of a deal by itself - some empire crumples early and some piece of Europe is painted blue instead of red by 20 years of map makers. The important thing, is that you write a book called La défense impénétrable about how to stymie a large invading force with a small defending force using nothing but machine guns and bags of sand. And then by 1914, it will be "common knowledge" that a technologically advanced nation can defend itself successfully even if wrong footed by a numerically superior foe.

And then you might be able to keep really big wars from happening in Europe until someone figures out Blitzkrieg.

If you just want to keep WWII from happening, you could do worse than to give Woodrow Wilson some beta blockers in 1915. An activist United States in the closing negotiations of WWI means no punitive war reparations on Germany in the interwar period, and that means no Nazi party. Or you could write a Keynesian monetary text in 1919 to prevent Heinrich Brüning from inflicting catastrophic levels of unemployment on the German people in 1931, and then again - no Nazi party (at least, not as a major political force).

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

And then you might be able to keep really big wars from happening in Europe until someone figures out Blitzkrieg.

Aside: blitzkrieg was less an intentional strategy and more an emergent one - it had a lot more to do with improvements in technology than improvements in strategy. Remember, what people call blitzkrieg is seriously best described as "attacking a fortified line of defense by bombing the fuck out of it, putting giant metal cans in front of your tiny squishy people, and trying to make it through the dangerous areas really fast." It's actually a really obvious solution to the problem of trench warfare everyone got a painful awakening to in WW1, but it depends on having reliable giant metal cans (some of which can fly, no less), technologies which were still in their infancy during WW1.

So it's probably more accurate to say "until someone figures out how to mass produce weaponized giant metal cans of the tracked and aerial varieties."

[Prak]

Is there any study of the psychological effects of execution on the family of homicide victims--ie, whether people actually feel more recompensed if the killer of their loved one is executed?

[Ancient History]

If you want to prevent WWI, Germany and England are pretty key to the thing; you pretty much need a Germany unified under Bismarck and bellicose under Wilhelm II to be effective, and you need an England fucking passive enough to sit back and watch. A lot of people don't even recognize how medieval European politics was before 1900. Kaiser Wilhelm II was the first cousin of the King of England and eldest grandson of Queen Victoria; given a slightly different rule of succession or an accident and he'd have been on the throne. Hell, there was talk about England teaming up with Germany against France and Russia, before ze Germanz invaded Poland. Even Hitler wanted to ally with England and rule the world like bros.

Ironically, a small, bloodier war in the heart of Europe at the time might have taught the major powers a thing or two...or maybe not. A Belgian Civil War with trench warfare and machine guns as a proxy for French and German parties would have been a bloody affair and might not have drawn England into it, except as observers.

And, of course, you could kill all the horses. Any particularly robust equine influenza that killed a majority of the working animals would basically cripple a lot of the WWI armies, at least in the early years of the war, or spur the development of tanks, automobiles, and bicycle brigades, but old thoughts die hard.

[Blade]

It's important to remember that while Bismarck did totally troll the French parliament into declaring war on him, the French parliament did declare war on him and not the other way around.

Napoleon III was as eager as Bismarck to wage war. They both needed an excuse.

Frank's solution to prevent WW1 might work, but I'm not completely sure. Back then the military was still quite aristocratic: generals weren't necessarily thinking the way you'd expect one to think today. Plus there was a lot of nationalist bullshit, so it's possible that they'd react to your book by saying "yeah, there's no way the guys on the other side can win an offensive because of our machines guns. We, on the other side, have brave soldiers and horses, who'll be able to successfully charge through machinegun fire!"

So you'll probably also have to work on toning down the nationalism/racism.

Assuming you could do this and end up with a few European superpowers who are happy sharing the power, you'd have to turn your attention to the colonies, since we're talking about three colonialist superpowers, and colonies might get ideas when learning that a small army can easily defend itself from a large army...

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, as much as I've railed on AH, one thing kind of eludes me on the whole WWI powers thing:

What exactly was the Austria-Hungary empire's endgame? Like, say for whatever reason Russia and thus France didn't step up and let Serbia be at their mercy. What was next on the agenda? How long did they expect this status quo to last?

[Chamomile]

I'm no expert on the era, but just from knowing their situation was generally kind of desperate in the long run, it's entirely possible they didn't have an endgame. People who plan past next year are alarmingly rare even in leadership positions where it should logically be a prerequisite.

[Laertes]

From what I've read, Austria-Hungary's plan was a mixture of the following:

a) Expand into the Balkans as the Ottomans weaken, exerting hegemony over the new states there. It might not be the sort of expansion where you colour their bit of the map your colour, but it's certainly the sort where they do what you say regardless of whose flag flies.

b) Continue to buy off the Magyar aristocracy with concessions, thus keeping the Hungarian population of the empire on the side of the German rulership.

c) Try to use the generally-rising standard of living due to industrialisation as a way to distract their population from wanting political reform (cf modern China.)

[Ancient History]

Before the Archduke was assassinated, the end game was the United States of Greater Austria.

After he was assassinated, the end game was basically to resolve the territorial disputes in the south in Austria-Hungary's favor - which was a long shot to begin with, since they entered the war with (compared to other European nations) a terrible army. It would have been just another war in the Balkans with all the participants holding their breath in hopes Russia wouldn't get into it, but for the alliance with Germany - which is what turned what should have been "the inevitable disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" into "Oh shit, the world is at war!"

It's more complicated than that, natch. The really global aspect of the war came when Germany used its navy and overseas forces to put pressure on Britain's massive overseas empire, in the hopes that it would distract Britain from the war effort on the continent. Didn't entirely work, but the wide-spread conflict caused a lot of disparate elements to come into play - the Arab revolt, the civil war in South Africa, the Japanese gaining a step in Asia. No one wanted a world war, but the way they played it that's what happened.

[fectin]

As Voss pointed out, the information that trench warfare was going to be horrible and bloody and slow was certainly available to Europeans, they just didn't want to hear it.

I blame bad translations. Clausewitz On War was, is, and will continue to be the path the Real Ultimate Power. Unfortunately, at the turn of the century, the English translations were a crime against publishing. Also, inasmuch as they led directly to the infantry charge strategies, they were literally a crime against humanity.

cf. e.g. http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airc ... vison.html, criticizing Liddell-Hart's criticism of Clausewitz. NB. though that Liddell-Hart consisently blamed misinterpretation of Clausewitz, vice his actual theories. (That's an extraordinarily easy thing to do though. See for yourself: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1946/1946-h/1946-h.htm. then go compare the Everyman's Library Version, which is subtly different and laid out much better.)

[Chamomile]

Here's a naming question. I have this fictitious force that twists and corrupts everything it touches, spreading as an ominous fog. Within the fog are monstrous horrors and everything begins to decay. So basically it's Silent Hill, but contagious. I need a name for this thing, preferably something that's just a word but capitalized.

Being that I've read a lot of 40k stuff recently, I wish I could use Chaos, but unfortunately that is associated with a faction of literally demonized outsiders and the race traitors who support them in a setting that is a parody of fascism that has been unironically embraced by clueless people easily manipulated by black-and-white narratives. And the thematic thrust of my Silent Hill fog thing is actually that it is the absence of civilization, so when you can't maintain the borders anymore due to economic collapse or civil strife or invading enemies or plague or whatever, in it creeps, reclaiming the world in its twisted and disturbed nightmares. So Chaos is pretty much right on the money as a one-word description, but people are going to hear that and think of 40k villains or Moorcock villains or something else that is actually just evil.

I'm thinking I might go with just "the fog" or maybe Decay or Corruption.

[Kaelik]

I would avoid Corruption, but Decay could work.

[Whipstitch]

The Rot also works. The Degeneration is right out because that lands you squarely in 40k territory again.

[TiaC]

Entropy, Discord, The Maddening Mist, The creeping end.

[Maxus]

Miasma?

[Kaelik]

I would avoid Entropy. Miasma could work, but it just seems so bland, not really conveying anything, more like a placeholder.

[erik]

Miasm is a less frequently used and more ominous sounding version of Miasma.

Also available:

The Reckoning
Fog of Ruin
Mouldering Mists
The Waning
Blight
Wasting

[Kaelik]

Ruin. Just call it Ruin, and hope Brandon Sanderson doesn't sue you.