Probably for the best, t. If the screws had seen you reading a history of Sinn Fein, they might have thought you'd been radicalised and stuck you in Belmarsh.Originally Posted by Tony C
Probably for the best, t. If the screws had seen you reading a history of Sinn Fein, they might have thought you'd been radicalised and stuck you in Belmarsh.
Remarkably the unification of Ireland was a subject I used to get out of an awkward situation on Saturday - left as I was with a very pro-Palestine Irishman and very Jewish German. Last time they were left together the former suggested that a certain Austrian had the right idea. Fortunately I was a good few hours into a sessionProbably for the best, t. If the screws had seen you reading a history of Sinn Fein, they might have thought you'd been radicalised and stuck you in Belmarsh.
Without wishing to be indelicate, that's got to be a pretty rare beast.
He is indeed
I must admit that if you said that you were with an Irishman, an anti-semite, a German and a Jew and that there were only two people, I probably wouldn't have allocated the attributes that way.
You'd have assumed the Irish jew was an anti-semite
It's all their fault for the Easter Uprising in 1916. In 1914, Home Rule had passed the HoC three times, but was being delayed until the end of the war. Had the traitors just waited a couple of years, they'd have had a united Ireland.Probably for the best, t. If the screws had seen you reading a history of Sinn Fein, they might have thought you'd been radicalised and stuck you in Belmarsh.
Instead, while the Battle of Verdun was raging, they thought it was better to help the German with their plans to take over the whole continent, before using its resources for a second war against GB. Had the Germans succeeded, they'd have become a de facto German colony as was planned for Holland and the like. With a German dominated customs union and military domination, they'd have had to do what the Lutherans told them.
They'd have had less control over their own affairs than they did in 1914, compared to being a self governing dominion in the imperial economic bloc. They're as bad as Jinnah and his religious partition heresy.
A sophomoric and naive analysis that displays exactly zero understanding of the balance of probabilities with regard to Home Rule. Had the Irish not resorted to violence, it is highly unlikely (given the power wielded by Unionism and the primacy of the Ulster question in British minds) that Home Rule in any form would have been forthcoming. Even as it was Ireland only achieved rule over that portion of Ireland that was left once the Ulster question had been resolved to Unionist satisfaction.
It is our common error to assume that NI is what was 'left over' after the establishment of the Free State - in fact, it was very much the other way about as far as the British were concerned. This is why the British offered a truce to Sinn Féin only after the boundary was in effective operation and the Northern Ireland parliament had come into existence in June 1921.
In short, the British would almost certainly have fúcked Home Rule out the window in order to keep the Unionists (which also meant the military - see the Curragh Mutiny) happy. Violence is the only way they got any semblance of independence.
As for the war, by 1916 there was no realistic possibility of anywhere in the British isles being occupied by Germany - the British fleet was far, far too powerful for that ever to happen, even if the Germans had by some miracle won on land.
Anyway, read this and learn something.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fatal-Path-.../dp/0571297404
Did you miss the point about the second war in what I wrote?
We know from the 1914 September Programme exactly what the Germans planned in the event of a victory in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm
The Brest-Litovsk shows they weren't joking in terms of imposing such a punitive peace.
Have a look at the terms of the Sept Prog - you'll like "Germany would create a Mitteleuropa economic association, ostensibly egalitarian but actually dominated by Germany." {Brexit is the final stage of its implementation.}
Now which is the only country not mentioned at all? GB. Why? Because Germany planned a second war with the UK for global domination.
{This is why Fritz Fischer in the 1960s - the first historian given full access to the imperial German archives - talked about German war aims being identical in both wars. And the Fischer Thesis is the accepted, historical consensus over half a century later.}
This can also be seen with the peace offers made later in 1916 to France and Russia which explicitly stated "the war at sea continues."
Had the Sept Prog been implemented, all the Channel Ports would be in hostile hands, and our trade would be banned from the continent.
But more importantly, this massive German continental sized economy would then devote all the resources to building a fleet capable to beating the RN. They wouldn't have to put most of their military spending towards the army as France and Russia were no longer threats.
So had the Germans won at any point during the war, which was possible until the Spring Offensive failed to split GB and Fr on the Western Front, then we would have been looking at a second war within a decade that we wouldn't be able to afford to fight.
So I'm afraid you're completely wrong to dismiss the threat to GB during WW1. The reason the UK isn't mentioned in the Sept Prog - why there's not even a demand for an indemnity from us, unlike the French - is because they saw it as only the warm up for the sea war with us for global domination.
Think about it as Schlieffen Plan 2.0. Knock out France then knock out Rus. Then use the resources of the continent and control of the Channel Ports to knock out GB in a second war.
Yes, but it was nonsense. Germany never had a chance of defeating the Royal Navy. It was simply too fúcking big and as was made clear by actual events, any attempt to defeat Britain at sea would necessarily have brought the USA into the war - at which point it was game over.
The Spring Offensive was a last, desperate gamble, by the way. It terrified the allies because it made significant local gains so quickly, but the fact is that it could never have succeeded because Germany simply didn't have the strategic resources to exploit their successes. All they ended up with were stretched supply lines, isolated troops and lots of impossible-to-defend salients. Their men were half-starved and exhausted and the offensive cost them a million casualties they couldn't afford. It looked impressive, but it petered out and then they were then crushed by Haig's war-winning combined arms offensive.
Besides, they didn't even have the means to fight the Spring offensive until they'd won on the Russian front and brought all those troops west, by which time the USA was already in the war and they were strategically fúcked. Their fleet was still blockaded in harbour by the Grand Fleet and their population was starving as a result.
No. In strategic terms, the Germans lost the war at the Marne in 1914. It just took them four more years to realise it. As a result, there was never any realistic chance of Ireland coming under the Prussian jackboot - even if they'd wanted to.
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