A Short History On Why World War I Was Truly A Retarded War

As long as our earliest ancestors began to create tools to kill animals, they found out that they could kill people as well! And this started a killing spree that continues to this day. But as we evolved more and began to form societies and cities we were able to take killing each other to a whole new level. And the birth of wars began.

There have been wars that were waged for freedom, justice, and other noble and worthy causes. One war was to put a stop to an evil dictator that wanted to take over the world, he tortured his own people, and killed a fuck ton of people. Guess who that was! 

No not him.

No, not him either,

getting warmer...

"ME! ME! I'M THE GUY!" 

Just to put things in perspective for you, the guy we did go to war with was not the worst offender pictured here. He is not even in second place. He is in third. Stalin (pictured above Hitler) is second, and Mao Zedong (pictured above Stalin)  was responsible for more deaths than those other two assholes. But I am here to talk about war and Hitler is the only asshole we fought so I digress.

So yes, as sad as it is there are some wars that are necessary and it pains me to have to say that. And then there are wars that have been fought that really makes you say, "Wait, what the hell are even doing here?" I am here to talk about such a war; I am here to talk about the cluster fuck that was World War I. It started in Europe in 1914 and ended in 1918. There were a lot, and I mean A LOT of deaths from this war. There were 37 million military and civilian deaths in this war making it one of the deadliest wars in human history. 

So if that many people died than there had to be a reason, right? Who was the evil bastard that caused all of that? Here is where we get to the cluster fuck part, there really wasn't one. No Hitlers, no Stalins, No Maos, nobody that you can point the finger at and say, "He did it! He started it and it is all his fault!" So what led to World War I? Well a lot actually but I am not going to bore you by going into a lot of detail I am going to kind of sum it all up because if I didn't this would turn into a 400 page book! 

1) Imperialism- now this is a big word that pretty much means "Hey you have a lot of good shit in your country that can make us have more money than God! So, yeah, we will be taking over now and make you apart of our ever growing money-making empire! Thanks, bye". It was because of imperialism that you now have a lot of either English or French speaking African countries. But this made it a competition. It was like playing a game of Risk only with real people and real weapons. So while every European nation was trying to get their hands on every country they came across, countries began to really hate each other.

2)- Militarism-- The Great Industrial Revolution had happened and there was technology available that had never been seen before!! This also meant that we could make weapons that had never been seen before. Because at this point a lot of countries hated each other this led to an arms race. Yes, ladies and gentleman Europe was engulfed in a cold was long before America. They did it first. They're hipsters like that!

3) Nationalism- It means "we are better than you so go suck it!" And this attitude was felt more in the Balkans than most other places.Prior to WWI not one, but two different wars took place in this region. Why? Well you have an area where you have  12 different ethnic groups and more languages, sub-languages, and dialects than is healthy to think about. And most of the people in one ethnic group hated the people of the other ethnic groups. So they didn't want to be in one country with "those" people they wanted to be independent or be in a country that had "their" people. Here is what that region looked like in 1900: 

And here is what it looks like today:  

Well all of this fighting lead to reason number four:

4) Alliances- Anybody who has ever seen a season of "Survivor" knows that this will not work out. They were agreements that pretty much said, "hey if we get attacked you help us and if you get attacked we will help you". It sounds simple, but that meant that if there was any trouble (which obviously there were or I wouldn't be writing this damn thing) EVERYONE had to get involved. Here is how the whole "alliance" thing actually played out: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia got involved to defend Serbia. Germany seeing Russia mobilizing, declared war on Russia. France was then drawn in against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany attacked France through Belgium pulling Britain into war. Then because Japan had already beat the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War Japan entered the war to fight against the Russians AGAIN! 

"This is making my brain hurt!"

5) A guy got shot- That is what started the actual war! As stated above (don't worry about re-reading it and putting yourself through that mess again) Austria-Hungary was the first to declare war and then everyone was obligated to join. Why did Austria-Hungary declare war? Because Emperor Franz Joseph got really pissed off when his heir to the throne, Archduke Ferdinand, got shot and died. A CIVILIAN shot Ferdinand but the emperor blamed Serbia so he declared war on them, and every-fucking-body else! 

Every reason before now is scholarly opinion that can be backed up by research. If you don't believe me, then look at Wikipedia for Christ's sake. But this last reason is a theory I have developed over the years on my own, and I would like to share it with you 

6) There were too many inbreds and not enough adult supervision- You see there was this queen of England named Victoria who did not just have children, she had fucking litters of them! So by the time all of her children marry and have kids, those kids marry other relatives so as to keep the blue-blood lineage alive. So at this time the ruling families of Europe did not have a gene pool, they had a fucking Jacuzzi. 

Here is how the kaiser of Germany, the tsar of Russia, and the King of Great Britain were related: 

Like I said, too much inbreeding

   

So there you have it. The cluster fuck of World War I. No real bad guy. Just a bunch of bored, rich relatives that wanted more land, more money, and a chance to play with their new toys. The toys being new and better bombs, machine-guns, torpedoes, and tanks! 

Well the Tsar didn't end up well. In fact due to a Communist Revolution he ended up dead. And Germany lost so Wilhelm and his family were no longer allowed to rule Germany. This made it possible for Hitler to eventually seize power and start World War II.  

"I'm back BITCHES!!"