[yella]

Robert Newman, ex-half of the comedy duo Newman and Baddiel, made this docu-comedy some years ago, a very British comedic and sarcastic view of geopolitics and the history of oil.

Amusing and worrying at the same time: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 3427636721

[Cid_Yama]

Been a long time since I've seen that. Note the real reason behind the start of WWI.

[chris89]

One of the best things on the internet.

It's an indictment of our culture that, of the old double act, Baddiel went on to become a succesful mainstream comedian (re-recording novelty football songs and casually denying climate change), while Newman managed to be both genuinely funny and important and gets kicked to the sidelines. All while the runaway train rumbles toward the cliff-edge.

It's just so damn frustration that voices like Newman don't get heard above the clamour of consumerism.

Corporate media is the emperor and he's butt naked.

[dorlomin]

Note the real reason behind the start of WWI.

That part is completely wrong. At best it is grossly reductionist but basically ignores several key factors including the differing objectives of the Tirpitz stratagy vs Fishers\z Battenburg, the different strengths vis a vis marine engineering and armouring philosophies of the dreadnoughts and that it would require the HSF to be utterly beholden to the whims of Constantinople to threaten extended war with the British Empire, great though Newmans comedy is, Alfred T Mahan he aint.

Anyone genuinely interested in how the naval rivalry contributed to the build up of tensions would do well to read Masies Dreadnought.
Also worth noting that the numeric disparity was never going to be removed so at Jutland the Grand Fleet could leave a Dreadnought class ship at home due to it being too weak while the Germans were forced to bring 4 preDreads along (the Deutchlands).


A historian who does not understand historiography, who would have guessed

Robert Newman, ex-half of the comedy duo Newman and Baddiel, made this docu-comedy some years ago, a very British comedic and sarcastic view of geopolitics and the history of oil.

Funny thing about Newman is I dont see him even on the comedy circuit much, not even the festivals which normally lap this stuff up. He does turn up at political meets but not really sure what he is doing with his carreer. FWIW Stewart Lee is back on the box with his own show and every bit as caustic and political as Newman so there is space there for it.

[Cid_Yama]

You are the myopic one, and once again demonstrate you do not know what you are talking about.

Germany in the 1880s began turning an envious eye towards the riches of the East -- coal, gypsum, and oil topping the list. Alongside this envy dwelt dreams of grandeur and influence, all hinging on a scheme they called, the Berlin-Baghdad Express.

By 1903, with the 1st stretch of the railway to Bulgurlu completed, the economically sinister aspects of the Berlin-Baghdad Express began percolating to the top. Following the historic highway of the ancient caravans, emerging from the Taurus Mountain Range onto the plans and through the Cilician Gates and across Amanus, east to Mosul and south to Baghdad, the iron freeway promised to be just that -- free.

Germany had no intention of paying customs as it crossed the borders. From Baghdad, through Anatolia and across Eastern Europe, the route was to be duty free. Germany would control land rights wherever the rails lay and the prospect of the Reich gorging itself on the riches of the Ottoman Empire alarmed the European Powers to the same degree as had Russian military machinations.

German influence in the region mushroomed and German banks thronged the Middle East as an extension of the Kaiser's economic might. Alarmed, Western politicians considered the Baghdad railway the primary symbol of German domination in Asia Minor. Plans set in motion by France to build a competing line in the region had amounted to little more than talk.

Throughout the years during which the railway was debated and the European Powers struggled to contain the Kaiser's ambitions, the seeds of distrust and malice were slowly and irrevocably sown. Combined with other sources of friction, including Germany's effort to rival Great Britian's sea power, this distrust was easily transformed into war. According to Morris Jastrow in "The War and the Bagdad Railway," the railway, which should have functioned to bring nations together as a medium for exchanging ideas and merchandise, was a primary cause of pulling them apart, leading them to mutual destruction.

link


1n 1908, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co discovered oil at Marjed Soleiman, laid pipelines to the Persian Gulf at Abadan, and built the world's largest oil refinery.

Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, arranged the purchase of 51% of the company in order to supply his navy, which was in the process of converting from coal to oil.

As we know William Knox D’Arcy in contract with King Mohammad Reza Qajar took oil permission research and his expedition explored this black gold for the first time in (The Middle East) Masjed Soleiman. In effect, this event changed our country and The Middle East destiny. By oil and petrochemical industry development and also industries establishment that severely depended to this substance, the necessity of dominance over the oil resources and countries having this resource became the then economical, political and military superpowers` main program.

link

The British fought in what is now Iraq throughout WWI.

The Ottoman Empire was on the side of Germany.

"In the First World War the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire sided with the Germans and Austrians. The Turks had held Mesopotamia since 1534 and they had a firm grip on many of the Persian and Arabian oil fields. Britain wanted that oil for its large navy. The British gained Basra and its oil wells in November 1914. They also occupied the terminal of the oil pipeline and the refineries on the island of Abadan in the river of Shatt El Arab, in the south-western corner of Persia (Iran). In December 1916 the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force crossed the river Tigris and captured Kut-el-Amara. Over the next few months the British and went on to take Beersheba, Jaffa and Jerusalem. The troops reached Baghdad in 1917.

link

The British knew they could bottle up Germany's navy with a blockade. Which they proved during the war. Tirpitz' plan to expand Germany's navy did not greatly influence the start of WWI.

Rather, the need for secure access to large amounts of oil to run their navy on, did.

[bluekachina]

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

[dorlomin]

You are the myopic one, and once again demonstrate you do not know what you are talking about.

The prelude to WWI was one of the diplomatically complex events in recent modern history. Posting a couple of 'facts' then shouting that this was the cause of WWI is just tedious. Especially as all you can do is back it with a link to a blog you googled up.

It is no different to posting up a few facts about Alsace Lorraine and then claiming this proves the German control over Alsace Lorraine was the true reason for WWI. Reductionism has its place in narrowing in on one aspect but to then use a painfully simplified view as the whole story is rubbish.

Had there been no Bagdad Berlin railway there would have been practically no difference in the run to history of the first world war.

1n 1908, the Anglo-Persian Oil Co discovered oil at Marjed Soleiman, laid pipelines to the Persian Gulf at Abadan, and built the world's largest oil refinery.

Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, arranged the purchase of 51% of the company in order to supply his navy, which was in the process of converting from coal to oil.

Only partially true. The RN went back to coal for the R class Dreadnoughts after the Queen Elizabeths. But nothing to do with the Baghdad Berlin railway.

The British fought in what is now Iraq throughout WWI.

It also fought in Palestine, Syria and Turkey at the Dardanelles. The Turks were a major threat to the Russians who the Entante needed in the war to maintain the Eastern Front. Tannenberg pulled the bears teeth but the tripartite still had masses of man power in the East.

Did you even know there was an Eastern Front? The Ottoman Empire was on the side of Germany. link
This does not prove it was a primary objective. Its as dumb as claiming Barbarossa was all about oil.

The British knew they could bottle up Germany's navy with a blockade. Which they proved during the war. Tirpitz' plan to expand Germany's navy did not greatly influence the start of WWI.

Marking this as a F. Tirpitz risk theory was that the HSF was supposed to be a deterrent to prevent the UK from entering a war. It is very well known part of the history of the time and very often used as a counter example to theories of strategic weapons balance.

Specifically written into the preamble was an explanation of Tirpitz' Risk theory. Although the German fleet would be smaller, it was likely that an enemy with a world spanning empire would not be able to concentrate all its forces in local waters. Even if it could, the German fleet would still be sufficiently powerful to inflict significant damage in any battle. Sufficient damage that the enemy would be unable to maintain its other naval commitments and must suffer irreparable harm. Thus no such enemy would risk an engagement. Privately Tirpitz acknowledged that a second risk existed: that Britain, seeing its growing enemy might choose to strike first, destroying the German fleet before it grew to a dangerous size. A similar course had been taken before, when Nelson sank Danish ships to prevent them falling into French hands, and would be again in World War II when French ships were sunk to prevent them falling to the Germans. A term, to copenhagenize even existed in English for this. Tirpitz calculated this danger period would end in 1904 or 1905. In the event, Britain responded to the increased German building program by building more ships herself and the theoretical danger period extended itself to beyond the start of World War I. As a reward for the successful bill Tirpitz was ennobled to the hereditary ‘von’ Tirpitz in 1900.[10]

While this is wikipedia you will find this is the received understanding of Germanys strategy of the time.

The whole point of building the HSF was to threaten the Royal Navy with sufficient damage as to keep them out of a conflict. Instead this created what was known as the Dreadnought Race.

And the Germans anticipated a British blockade, this was part of their strategy. Every major war the UK had fought against another recognized power for over a hundred years involved close port blockades. The Germans had anticipate such an event and wanted the British to do it, with their ships near German ports they could inflict damage on them by submarine.
The innovation introduced by Fisher and Jellico was a far blockade. They realized they did not need to keep the Germans in port, this was not France with its open Atlantic coast, they only needed to maintain the Royal Navy numeric advantage. The blockade could be enacted by small boats like destroyers intercepting blockade runners. The Germans could not risk sending big ships to fight off the small ships at this would lead to an attrition of there capital ship strength, so they were stalemated unless they came out en masse. The exception was the battle cruiser raids on the English coast, but the battle cruisers were fast enough to outrun anything other than another battle ship which lead to Doggerbank.

The idea that the build up of German capital ships

Tirpitz' plan to expand Germany's navy did not greatly influence the start of WWI.

Well its typical of you. Almost every history book covering the topic will highlight it as a major factor, you will sit and shout on the interenet that its not.

Rather, the need for secure access to large amounts of oil to run their navy on, did.

Persian oil was pretty sufficient, it was only small boats, some battle cruisers and the Queen Elizabeths that were primarily oil fired, although the Rs did have oil boilers with their coal ones. The UK could also buy oil from Russia, America, Venezuela the Dutch Indies and other sources.

As always complexity reduced to aggressively presented, narrowly defined assertions lacking context or caveat.

[dorlomin]

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Your point?

[bluekachina]

!?! The British supplies in Abadan were far from secure. Although Persia was officially neutral throughout the war, much of the action in the Middle East took place there.

link

[Cid_Yama]

Had there been no Bagdad Berlin railway there would have been practically no difference in the run to history of the first world war.

That is the most rediculous statement you made in your tirade.

The Berlin-Baghdad railway was, even though not finished, shifting the whole balance of power along it's entire route. It changed alliances and secured the Ottoman Empire as part of the Central Powers. Because of that, it cut off nearly all maritime supply to Russia during WWI, and presented a serious threat to British supplies of oil as well as opened an opportunity for military support of an Ottoman push to capture the Suez Canal and push the British out of Egypt.

Because of the First Suez Offensive, the British were forced to garrison the canal with forces intended for Gallipoli.

Britain and France recognized the threat the railway posed for military movement to the Middle East early on. Thus, their strong opposition to it.

With the discovery of oil and greater dependence of modern warfare on it, it just made the situation that much more dire.

You can take your personal attacks and stuff them where the sun don't shine.

[jedrider]

Interesting: Oil and the origins of the ‘War to make the world safe for Democracy’

Geopolitics So, Iraq War and Afghanistan is just a continuation of this madness.

[dorlomin]

Deary me Cid, is that all you have? Argument by assertion based on what you learnt watching a comedy sketch.
As I have said the build up to the war was hugely complex with many authors taking very different aproaches in what was important. Everyone form Paul Kennedy, Naill Fergusson to the likes of Barbara Tuchman have had a go at explaining the era.
Its complex and filled with many mutually reinforcing trends.
When you can explain why French feeling over Alsace Lorraine were not as important as usually thought, why the personality of WIlhelm and his inability to maintain the balance produced by Bismark and his network of alliances was not as important as a railway, explain why Kenedys view the road to war was driven by internal economics of the belligerents rather than imperial ambitions or Masies view that it was the naval arms race.
Here read up on some of the competing ideas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiogr ... orld_War_I
And remember kids, comedy shows are not authorative history lectures.

[dorlomin]

I tend to agree Cid on this one. Wars for resources are often wrapped up in patriotic babble and socio-economic-political cover. Read A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics & the New World Order by F. William Engdahl. He explains the role of oil in WWI and WWII. For instance, Caspian oil was the reason the Germans marched on Stalingrad, got bogged down, and eventually retreated from Russia. The beginning of the end. Of course we in the West roundly ignore this. (Just as we ignore the truth that there was a active petroleum industry in Baku for centuries, and the first deep commercial well was drilled ten years before Drake's well in PA, USA.)

Caspian oil was an objective of the invasion not the objective. Early on Army Groups North and Center were getting more of the mobile reserves than South. Hitlers flicking between objectives. But living space is the one that had been on Hitlers mind since Mein Kampf.
The motivations for the Ottomans in WWI were complex but after nearly 200 years of retreat it had big beefs against the Entante (Greece, Egypt, Algeria and Russian grasping of its lands and liberation of Bulgaria.)
Its initial thrusts were for the Suez to cut it off and into Russian territory to form its long dreamed of pan Turkic empire. Oil is only a substitute for land and manpower. And at the outset of WWI Id be of the opinion it was not seen as anything more than a source of money to all but a few of those round the Fisher\ Baatenburg admiralty.
That oil is on a shopping list for an invader does not in itself mean it was the key or the only motivation.

[dorlomin]

growing human populations

Does not require a growing population. Inspite of the huge thinning out of Eurasian populations during the late medievel population crisis wars continued. The black death left lots of viable land untilled but still there was war.

A lot of the rest is patriotic babble and academic posturing.

Who is denying resources are important?

[dorlomin]

A resource you have left out, access to markets.

[Quinny]

Newman might be totally wrong (I'm a maths/science type, so don't have a background in history), but his theory still makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than what I was taught!

[Cid_Yama]

In 1888, the Oriental Railway from Austria, across the Balkans via Belgrade, Sofia, to Constantinople, was opened. This linked with the railways of Austria-Hungary and other European countries and put the Ottoman capital in direct communication with Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. It was to be significant for later events.

The Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, on November 27, 1899, awarded Deutsche Bank, headed by Georg von Siemens, a concession for a railway from Konia to Baghdad and to the Persian Gulf. In 1888 and again in 1893, the Sultan had assured the Anatolian Railway Company that it should have priority in the construction of any railway to Baghdad. On the strength of that assurance, the Anatolian Company had conducted expensive surveys of the proposed line. As part of the railway concession, the shrewd negotiators of the Deutsche Bank, led by Karl Helfferich, negotiated subsurface mineral rights twenty kilometers to either side of the proposed Baghdad Railway line.[22] Deutsche Bank and the German government backing them made certain that included the sole rights to any petroleum which might be found. The Germans had scored a strategic coup over the British, or so it seemed. Mesopotamian oil secured through completion of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway was to be Germany’s secure source to enter the emerging era of oil-driven transport.

A German-built rail link to Baghdad and on to the Persian Gulf, capable of carrying military troops and munitions, was a strategic threat to the British oil resources of Persia. Persian oil was the first crucial source of secure British petroleum for the Navy.

Turkey, backed and trained by Germany, had the potential, should it get the financial and military means, to launch a military attack on what had become vital British interests in Suez, the Persian route to India, the Dardanelles. By 1903 the German Reich was prepared to give the Sultan that means in the form of the Baghdad Railway and German investment in Ottoman Anatolia.

By 1913 that German engagement had taken on an added dimension with a German-Turkish Military Agreement under which German General Liman von Sanders, member of the German Supreme War Council, with personal approval of the Kaiser, was sent to Constantinople to reorganize the Turkish army on the lines of the legendary German General Staff. In a letter to Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, dated April 26, 1913, Freiherr von Wangenheim, the German Ambassador to Constantinople declared, “The Power which controls the Army will always be the strongest one in Turkey. No Government hostile to Germany will be able to hold on to power if the Army is controlled by us…” [25].

As well in Serbia British military and intelligence networks were most active prior to outbreak of war. Major R.G.D. Laffan was in charge of a British military training mission in Serbia just before the war. Following the war, Laffan wrote of the British role in throwing a huge block on the route of the German-Baghdad project:

"If 'Berlin-Baghdad' were achieved, a huge block of territory producing every kind of economic wealth, and unassailable by sea-power would be united under German authority," warned R.G.D. Laffan. Laffan was at that time a senior British military adviser attached to the Serbian Army.

"Russia would be cut off by this barrier from her western friends, Great Britain and France," Laffan added. "German and Turkish armies would be within easy striking distance of our Egyptian interests, and from the Persian Gulf, our Indian Empire would be threatened. The port of Alexandretta and the control of the Dardanelles would soon give Germany enormous naval power in the Mediterranean."

Laffan suggested a British strategy to sabotage the Berlin-Baghdad link. "A glance at the map of the world will show how the chain of States stretched from Berlin to Baghdad. The German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, Turkey. One little strip of territory alone blocked the way and prevented the two ends of the chain from being linked together. That little strip was Serbia. Serbia stood small but defiant between Germany and the great ports of Constantinople and Salonika, holding the Gate of the East...Serbia was really the first line of defense of our eastern possessions. If she were crushed or enticed into the 'Berlin-Baghdad' system, then our vast but slightly defended empire would soon have felt the shock of Germany's eastward thrust."

British intelligence thus instigated the assasination Of Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Serbian Black Hand with the assistance of the Serbian Government. As intended, this provoked a response against Serbia by Austria-Hungary. Britain, France and Russia had previously guaranteed Serbian Sovereignty.

Buxton added, “The Serbian army would be set free to take the offensive, and possibly provoke an uprising of the Serbian, Croat, and Slovene populations of the Austrian Empire. Any diminution of the Austrian force would compel the Germans to withdraw a larger number of troops from the other theatres of war.” [32]

link
Off topic & Ad hom text deleted.

[dorlomin]

So here we have a wonderful demonstration on the power of google to find a random article to rationalise an ossified position.

Little more. We find there was a railway line, this we already knew and we find there were some widely speculative accounts of how the entire Empire would fall if this railway line was completed. Well those of us who get our history from a broader range of sources than googling up something to try justify a position will know that such wild opinions were not that uncommon back then. R.G.D. Laffan seems to have gone native with the Serbs so his screed is little more than rationalising Britains anti Ottoman position during the war.
In terms of the kind of wacky out there theories doing the rounds at time there was a very popular genre called invasion literature where such flights of fancy were regularly given air. As I recall even old general Roberts was given to flights of conspiracy about foreign workers in the UK (probibly as part of his agitating for national conscription).

What we do not find here is anything of value in evaluating the competing motivations of the actors involved. I observe that many people cannot move beyond monocasual explanation of events, complexity defeats them.

The Great War was a very complex event that still devides respected historians. The long running tensions between the Imperial powers in both areas of formal and informal empire are well known, but as the Entante Cordial showd that even Britain and France could work things out. Signed only a couple of years after Fashoda and as the Heligoland–Zanzibar treaty showed the British and Germans could work together so even imperial frictions were not the whole story.

But then again if you want to find the competing ideas of why WWI happened you can read up on it, its not that hard.