rosstheboss":3fngyao2 said:B77":3fngyao2 said:rosstheboss":3fngyao2 said:Not in any way like the first two -
The first world war was effectively a squabble between cousins, to cut a long story short!
Actually no, that was just a good excuse, in fact Germany was around 500km away from completing the Berin-Bagdhad railway, we couldn't allow another rapidly rising industrial nation access to the middle east and it's natural resources. The first british troops to be deployed in WWI were not deployed in europe but in Iraq, in Basra in fact, 2nd Dorset regiment.
Had to check this - The 2nd Dorset were deployed in November, the main BEF went to France in August. Where did you learn about the railway? I've never heard of it as a reason for the start of the war
I'd heard it years ago from a history teacher in our school, who was dismissed for 'giving people ideas'
The 2nd Dorset were actually en route to the mid east when the BEF were deployed so yes you could argue that the BEF were the first troops in the field.
It's a bit of a slog but this is good, written in 1959 and presented to the Centre for Naval Analysis.
http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/ ... 040100.pdf
A bit more concise
http://automaticballpoint.com/2010/02/1 ... great-war/
This is also quite entertaining if you have a spare 45 mins and like Robert Newman
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DCwafIntj0
Of course everyone is free to draw their own conclusions but given the fact that the Falklands conflict (in which I lost 2 cousins) was a masterful piece of political engineering by the then government, designed to win them the next election, it doesn't take too much of a leap of the imagination to give credence to the idea that the assasination of The Arch Duke of Austro-Hungary was not the primary reason for the Great War.