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[A Black Falcon]

If they hadn't started WWI, they wouldn't have had a horrible peace treaty. And before you start preaching about they didn't start WWI, they gave Austria-Hungary a "blank check" to attack Serbia. No one wouldve cared if Germany had shut the hell up. In fact, I blame Germany for both World Wars, started in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war. They sewed the seeds for it back then. You blame the French for the Versailles Treaty; I blame the Germans for THAT treaty, which started the war that brought about the Versailles Treaty!

Well they didn't start the war!

True, they did write the blank check, but if you think that its their fault you need to look at your history again.

First... I don't think World War One was really anyone's fault. No one nation was to blame. No, the fault lies on the collective governments of Europe. They all assumed that the alliances would keep war away... and that modern technology wouldn't lead to fundamental change in the way war was fought.

They thought that it'd be like another one of the 19th century wars -- short and simple, without too many casualties.

So they all antagonized eachother.

Sure, the Germans gave Austria a blank check. But that's just one of the last steps on a complex path that led to an inevitable war. The only question was 'who will fire the first shot'. And so when Serbian terrorists killed the Austrian prince, Europe had the excuse it needed to go to war.

Sure, the Kaizer was a moron and thought that he could win easily... its why he helped fund the Austrians. But the French, Russian, and British governments were no better. In WW1 neither side was evil... no one was fighting for evil principles, neither side was markably more evil in war than the other... no, it was just a big bloody mistake that the European governments thought they could avoid with the alliances. Of course they never dreamed that it was those same alliances that would destroy them...

But it is of course true that WW1 caused WW2. WW2 would never have happened without the WW1 peace treaty that the victors (except for us, but we never signed the treaty anyway, so that doesn't matter) imposed on Germany... making them take all the blame for the war was absurd when others were more culpable and they didn't instigate it. And the scale of the repartitions... insane. And as I said, those repartitions led Germany to the nasty circle that made their government and their whole economy completely reliant on the American stock bubble...

Leaving the nation ripe for people with answers to the problems once the bubble burst.

Sorry? Why are you saying sorry; as if you have some superiority over me and I'm trying to impress you. That's not true either, it wasn't front page material, but people knew about it. Try those all-too-realistic movies like Schindler's List and The Pianist. The poor Jews knew, but they couldn't do anything.

Try history. I have read and watched enough to know some of this stuff...

First... sure, some people had heard rumors. Some people in Europe, some Jews, some Americans... some had heard. But no one truly believed such things... no one could be doing that! What strange rumors! As I said, based on reading books about the Jews in Europe, in so many cases people would hear some tales of evildoing but would think 'that won't happen here too' or 'they are exxagerations'... because no one except the higher-ups knew the true extent of the horror.

As for the few American Jews who knew what was going on? I watched a documentary on that... they were ignored. Even by President Roosevelt.

No, it wasn't until the deathcamps were found that any significant number of people really believed that the whispered tales could be true.

Maybe rumors would be buried deep in newspapers. But those weren't absolute accounts. And most Americans and Western Europeans were antisemites anyway, so I bet a very large number of them just thought 'oh well'... and not knowing the true extent of it they often didn't really think much of it.