Civ 1919: The Treaty of Versailles pt1

At the end of WW1, the Americans and British went to Paris to decide on the fate of Germany and the future of the world. The Treaty of Versailles and the conference in Paris in 1919 set up the Interwar period and made World War 2 inevitable. Here we begin our short series on the Treaty of Versailles, kicking off our Interwar series. Civilizations is Back!

World War Civ 51: The Debrief

Two and a half years. 50 episodes. 100+ hours. When we set out to cover World War I back in September 2022, after our Scramble for Africa and our Civilizations (1400-1900) series, we had a plan for how we were going to go about it. In this debrief, Dave and I talk about what we were able to do better and worse by using this format compared to when Dave taught it (and I studied it) in high school and when we both studied it in university. As well as some reflections on what stood out from the history, the idea of WWI as an inflection point in history, and previewing our next three series: Interwar, World War II, and Decolonization.

Was World War I an Immense Anglo-American Conspiracy?

We have come to the end of our study of World War I, gone over its causes, events, and costs in great detail. Now it’s time for a plot twist: the idea that the whole war was conceived and extended by a conspiratorial group of race patriots at the heart of the Anglo-American elite. We use Carroll Quigley’s book, the Anglo-American Establishment; Docherty and McGregor’s two books, Hidden History and Prolonging the Agony; and James Cafferky’s Lord Milner’s Second War, to present the case that the war was orchestrated by this Secret Elite to destroy the possibility of a German industrial rival possibly allied with Russia… perhaps this elite still exists… and still conspires along the same lines one hundred years later!

World War Civ 49: How the war changed how things work

From the transformation of all the technologies of war – railways, air travel, wireless, tanks, poison gas – to the changes to the institutions of daily life (notably health care) World War I made many changes into the world we recognize today. Also – my apologies – in the second half, my recurrent audio issue came up and I was recording with my webcam instead of my mic!

World War Civ 48: Great War, at what cost?

Counting the costs and losses of World War I. 8.5 million killed on the battlefield, 21 million wounded. 10 million civilian deaths, then a flu epidemic that killed tens of millions more. The global economy transformed beyond recognition. The beginning of the end of the colonial empires. And various measures that are inevitably going to lead to another, bigger world war.