It was a
Sternstunde (great moment) at the Museumsgesellschaft when Prof.
Jörn Leonard
gave his lecture
Über Kriege und wie sie enden.
He had clearly structured his presentation and illustrated it
with relevant slides. On the topic of "How wars end," he formulated ten theses
and defended them brilliantly. I shall report, but I will also give my views
and comments.
There are wars of conquest, wars of aggression, fratricidal wars,
religious wars, wars of unification, colonial wars, civil wars, you name it.
So it is only natural that wars end differently.
Frederick II's
conquest of Silesia escalated into the Seven
Years' War, which, fought on different continents, is often referred to as the
first world war.
First, the great Frederick ordered his foreign minister, Count
Heinrich von Podewils
(1696-1760), to come up with a
iusta causa for a Prussian military
incursion into Silesia. Ultimately, the subsequent non-recognition of female
succession to the throne in Austria had to serve as a flimsy pretext for
war.
In his memoirs, the king writes, "In addition, I was in possession of
quick-witted troops, a well-filled treasury, and a lively temperament: these
were the reasons that led me to wage war against
Theresa of Austria, Queen of
Bohemia and Hungary. Ambition, my advantage, and the desire to make a name for
myself tipped the scales, and war was decided upon."
Hitler's war of aggression against Poland triggered the Second World
War.
On September 1 at 4.47 a.m., HMS Schleswig-Holstein opened fire at the Polish
ammunition depot on Westerplatte.
Read more.
The armed conflict between Prussia and Austria for supremacy in the empire was
a fratricidal war.
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Mourning Germania
Prussia and Bavaria faced each other as enemies
at Kissingen in 1866.
Commissioned by officers from both sides,
Michael Arnold
created this figure
in memory of the battle, which claimed
the lives of around 250 people.
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Was the Thirty Years' War a religious war?
Golo Mann
wrote, "It had always been the thesis of the [Bohemian] rebels that it was
only about religion and nothing else; always the counter-thesis of the
imperialists that it was not about religion at all, but about secular unrest.
Ultimately, as with most wars, it was only about power.
Gustaf Adolf
landed at Usedom with an army, coming to the aid of the German Protestants,
although they had not called for him. Had he not instead in mind to strengthen
his military position on the coasts of the Baltic Sea?
Read more in German.
Often, rulers cynically use religious ideology to keep the common man in line,
making him docile. Regardless of religion or of no religion, despots do not
care about human lives.
After his disastrous Russian campaign,
Napoleon
commented cynically and coldly on the losses, "A man like me cares little about
the lives of a million people ... The French cannot complain about me; to spare
them, I sacrificed the Germans and Poles."
Can the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 be regarded as a
war of unification?
Blinded by the gold, the
Kini
copied the letter of consent Bismarck had drafted to elect the Prussian King
Wilhelm I as German Emperor, like a schoolboy, making only minor,
insignificant changes, and signed:
With the assurance of my highest esteem and friendship, I remain
Your
Royal Majesty's friendly cousin, brother, and nephew
Ludwig
Hohenschwangau, November 30, 1870
Entire peoples were murdered in the colonial wars of the 19th century
in Africa.
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The totality of war: Herero survivors after fleeing through the desert
in 1904/05
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The American Civil War is characterized by its murderous,
mechanized warfare. Many fallen soldiers were so badly mutilated that they
could no longer be identified and were buried anonymously.
The Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, looked like a city bombed in
World War II, with significant suffering for the civilian population.
Thus, the American Civil War gave birth to three terms now part of the
vocabulary of modern warfare: the home front, the unknown soldier, and the
unconditional surrender of the Confederate States.
Thesis I
War and Peace: The nature of war determines its end.
Regarding the various types of war mentioned above, this thesis is quite
apparent.
Thesis II
Contingent Dynamics: Genuine decisive battles are rare, and the longer a
war lasts, the more difficult it becomes to control.
Indeed, Blitzkriegs are ideal. In addition to quick decisions, they conserve
resources.
France never got over the humiliation of its defeat in 1871. As Bismarck had
expected and
August Bebel had feared, France was no longer seeking revenge for
Sadova (Königgrätz), but rather revenge for Sedan.
The elderly
Victor Hugo proclaimed, "One day, France will rise up
invincible. It will take back Lorraine, Alsace, the Rhine, Mainz, and
Cologne."
For a new round of war, the Supreme Army Command in Berlin had developed the
so-called
Schlieffen Plan, according to which France was to be brought to
its knees in the shortest possible time with a sickle cut.
The plan failed and instead led to years of grueling trench warfare.
Thesis III
The Search for the Right Outcome: A "bad peace" can prolong the war.
The Treaty of Versailles was not a good peace, as
John Maynard Keynes
wrote in 1920 in
The Economic Consequences of Peace, "The Treaty
includes no provision for the economic rehabilitation of Europe—nothing to
make the defeated Central Powers into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize
the new states of Europe, nothing to reclaim [Communist] Russia; nor does it
promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies
themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered
finances of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and
the New."
Note that some of Keynes's remarks remain relevant. The finances of France
and Italy are still in disorder, and President Trump imposes high tariffs to
forcibly shift the economic imbalance between the United States and the rest
of the world. His "trade war" poses unknown risks for the global economy.
Most historians agree: The seeds of the Second World War were sown in
the "bad peace" of the First, or the World War lasted from 1914 to 1945.
Thesis IV
The Long End: Those who still see opportunities on
the battlefield will continue to fight as long as possible.
Before American troops arrived in France in large numbers at the beginning
of 1918, the Oberste Heeresleitung (Supreme Army Command) sought a
decision in favor of the Central Powers on the Western Front in the spring
of 1918.
After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Russia on March 3, 1918, Germany
moved about 45 divisions from the east to the west by May.
The "Kaiser's Battle" or Great Spring Offensive of 1918 brought some
territorial gains, but by September, it got stuck in the mud of the
battlefields.
Thesis V
Planning and Forecasting: Available resources determine the tipping point
of wars, but not necessarily the actors' insights.
The Continental Blockade of 1806, an economic blockade against England, had no
impact on Napoleon's wars of conquest. Ultimately, it harmed France and its
allies more than it did Great Britain.
The far greater production of fighter planes by the Allies in 1943 was a
tipping point in World War II; however, it did not lead to Germany realizing
that the war was lost.
Thesis VI
Extended Ceasefire: Not every war ends with a formal peace.
German historian
Hans-Ulrich Wehler
viewed the period from 1914 to 1945 as an "era of world war" with a brief
truce in between.
Churchill
wrote in the preface to his book The Second World War, "One might almost say
that the Second World War was the Second Thirty Years' War of
1914–1945."
He later reiterated, "The Second World War was the continuation and the
vindication of the First."
Thesis VII
The Ambivalence of Signs: There is no peace without communication, and
those who humiliate the defeated turn peace into a ceasefire.
With the signing of the peace treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of
Versailles, where the Second German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, the
French victors humiliated the Germans to such an extent that it was not only
right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic who spoke of a
Schandfrieden (shameful peace).
This obviously supports Thesis VI.
Thesis VIII
Fall Height and Disillusionment: Overburdening peace with expectations can
prolong the shadows of war.
The general world peace was concluded in 1814.
The genius brings the olive branch so long desired by the people to the high
Allied Powers. France, clad in the mantle of lilies, restores its rightful king
to the throne. The enemy warriors now embrace each other like brothers. But the
destroyer of the world is hurled into the abyss, and with him the eagle and the
tiger, which German bravery will continue to guard.
High hopes, but this general world peace as a result of the Vienna Congress
could not last forever, because if you look at the map of Europe in 1814,
there were many unresolved problems:
The multi-ethnic state of Austria-Hungary, the situation in the Balkans,
Italy and Germany were fragmented into small states, divided and
disunited.
Still, the Vienna general world peace lasted 39 years. It was not broken
in Central Europe, but in the "exotic" Crimean War of 1853, in which Russia
fought against an alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and
Sardinia-Piedmont.
Thesis IX
Doing Peace: Once the treaties are signed, the work of peace begins.
Peace work begins after a ceasefire. This peace process is generally a
laborious one, involving nitty-gritty details, which, as we know, are where
the devil lies.
Following the collapse of the multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia, it has not yet
been possible to achieve a self-sustaining peace there.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, EUFOR Althea is securing the country in accordance
with the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement.
In Kosovo, NATO-led KFOR troops are stationed to secure peace between the
Serbian and Albanian populations.
Thesis X
Paradoxical Endings: Not every victory is a win, and some defeats become
opportunities.
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German Instrument of Unconditional Surrender
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Red Baron's example is the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan in
1945.
What was an absolute low point in the national history of both countries
turned out to be a stroke of luck in retrospect.
To date, both countries have developed into stable democracies. Will these
democracies be able to withstand the current autocratic trends?
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Survey on party preferences from October 2
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In Germany, political parties on the right (AfD) and left (Die Linke, BSW) are
steadily growing, which brings back bad memories. Will, in the end, the
democratic center (CDU/CSU, SPD, Grüne) be crushed between the two extremes, as
in the Weimar Republic?
God forbid.
**
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