World War I: Difference between revisions

** Continuing on the Foch quote; US general Pershing hated the idea of an Armistice, because he believed that unless they obtained an unconditional surrender the German people would come to believe that they were defeated for reasons other then military. [[wikipedia:Stab-in-the-back legend|He was right.]]

** A cartoon from the time of the Versailles treaty shows Lloyd-George saying to his fellow leaders: "Listen. Do you hear a child crying?" Said child is unseen in a corner weeping over a torn copy of the treaty. Virtually any boy born in England or France in 1918-1919 would have been conscripted in 1939.

* [[Gambit Pileup]]: The entire war was a textbook example of this; in some cases the gears had been turning since the ''seventeenth century''.

* [[General Failure]]: On virtually every side and a large part of why the war was as horrible and bloody as it was. Generals, and most senior officers, of the time often had their position from politics rather than competence, dreamed of glorious victories with lost men as statistics, and often hated other countries ''that were on the same side''.