WHERE DID WORLD WAR I REALLY START?

WHERE DID WORLD WAR ONE REALLY START?

By: CliffMickelson

Date: Friday, 4 March 2005, 9:07 a.m.

As the events of the early 20th century begin to fade into the mists of time, it is not uncommon in our day and age to find that few people have a true understanding of one of the principle causes of the most costly and bloody war ever fought in Human history.

World War One, AKA "The Great War, or "The War to End All Wars" was a conflict so traumatic and so ghastly, that when it finally ended, not only had the map of the world changed beyond all recognition, but the world itself would never again be the same.

Those with a passing knowledge of this life and death struggle between the Titans of Europe, often cite the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian student anarchist as the cause.

This is a common misconception. World War One would have been fought regardless. For 50 years, the events that would one day eradicate an entire generation of youth had been simmering with an increasing intensity.

England and Germany,… England, Germany and France,… England, Germany, France and Russia....In the frantic quest for the Imperium that characterized Europe in the nineteenth century, many European nations came and went, but.....there was always England. And England had no intention of brooking competition.

-But competition, there was!

The competition between England and the Germanies had become particularly vicious prior to the successes of Bismarck over the Austrians and the subsequent unification of the Electorates. These Two world class powers, second cousins in both language and culture, had long possessed a keen rivalry reserved for the domain of siblings.

The British assault of 1898-1902 upon the hapless but indomitable Boer population of the South Africa only exacerbated hard feelings between the two powers.

One nation, already wealthy and Imperial, and the other, chaffing to share in the rush to riches, were both destined to sooner or later come into overt conflict.

And then there was....Austria! Or, more correctly, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, held as a personal fiefdom of the House of Hapsburg.

Prior to the ascendancy of Prussia and the union of the Germanies at the behest of Bismarck, The House of Hapsburg had long proved itself a thorn in the side of their Anglo-Saxon cousins across the channel. The signature of this competition was written upon the straits of the Bosporus and on the waters of the Euxine and the rocky islands and shores of Greece.

Added into this mix were the Slavs, who, in combination with the Austrians, had ambitions of their own in the regions that London felt were of strategic Imperial interest.

It should come as no surprise then to discover that English foreign policy in the last half of the Nineteenth Century was decidedly Anti German and anti Slav.
Perhaps the greatest architect of English Imperial policy during this period of time was the remarkable politician and four time prime minister, William E. Gladstone.
It was the Anti Slavic and Anti Hapsburg containment policies of Prime Minister Gladstone that were destined to lay the much of the ground work for what later became known as World War One.

But what can we use as a starting point? What event can we point to and say:
"Aha! There it is...HERE it is that the road to war emerges!"
Does such a starting point exist?

Yes, I believe it does.

World War One began in a tiny little village, 20 miles west of the walls of Constantinople in the year 1878!

A place known to the Greeks as San Stefano.

It was on a cold November day in San Stefano, that a victorious Russian army halted in anticipation of the final surrender of the Ottomans to the might of the Czars!
Despairing of help from England or France, and decidedly beaten, the Turks agreed to sign the document known as the treaty of San Stefano.

But at that very moment, unbeknownst to both the Turks and the Russians, sailing at top speed up the Bosporus to the very doors of the "Divine Porte was an English fleet.

Meet William E. Gladstone!

As a result of this gunboat diplomacy and the subsequent effective use of diplomatic power and intrigue by Gladstone, a case can be made that on that day, the true genesis of both the Great War, and it's subsequent sequel in 1939 were ordained to be.

Both World Wars of another century, can be actually traced back to the forced revision by the English, of the treaty of San Stefano.

That treaty between the Ottomans and the Russians had confirmed the gains of the Russian victory in the Russo-Ottoman war of the same date. The centuries-long goal of the return of the Orthodox to Constantinople and the symbolic mass at a re-sanctified Haiga Sophia, appeared at last to have been realized.

However, this pan Orthodox quest was fated to never come to pass.
As they had so many times in the past, the principle powers of the West determined to thwart their fellow co-religonist over matters of State. The Gains of the Russian armies were surrendered to the intrigues of the English.

And....

To this very day, one man alone is held to account by both the Russians and the Austrians for the defeat of a policy pursued for two centuries; centuries spent in blood, in war, and in the nurturing of an implacable hostility by the Austro- Russian Balkan alliance toward the decayed Empire of the Ottomans.

So it was that the English presided as midwife at the stillbirth of the Slavic dream of the redemption and re-Christianization of the second Rome through the aegis of the third Rome
Prime Minister Gladstone, with his usual efficiency, had obtained the connivance of the French in forcing a summit that we know today as the "Congress of Berlin." It was at this "congress" that the treaty of San Stefano was "ex-post-facto" rewritten to suit the imperial interests of the English.

When the dust cleared, the Treaty, it's provisions and its grants had been completely eviscerated by the activities and intrigues of Whitehall's emissaries. The Russian and Austrian gains of the recent Russo-Ottoman war were completely reversed!

The Russians and the Austrians, never forgot that robbery. If it hadn't been for the unforeseen assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and for the fact that for over 200 years the Austrians and the Russians were as much competitors as friends in the Balkans, it would not have been beyond the realm of possibility to have seen the Russians fighting in W.W.I on the side of the Central powers.

And THAT, my dear readers, is one of those inscrutable... "What if's?"
It is one that would have changed the course of history!

-CliffMickelson