Re:Why was the Zimmerman Telegram so important?
by danieltillett on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @04:44PM
(#13421600)
Yes the Great War was a continuation of British foreign policy of the last 500 years. I think the Germans would have had their hands full intergrating their EU that the UK would have been allowed its slow decline in peace.
I really do think the Great War broke the long slow march towards democracy and moderation that had started in the 19th C. Germany in the early 20th C was the centre of modernisation and Liberalism and if it wasn't for the war there is nothing to suspect that this wouldn't have continued.
Whatever, it would have been messy — very messy.
(However, the move towards social democracy in Germany was a thing pre-war, and if anything it was the capitulation to nationalism of the moderate left that opened the door to the radical left and communist fringe across Europe; it's interesting to speculate where things might have ended up if the standard bearer for hardline socialism had been someone like Rosa Luxemburg rather than Vladimir Lenin.)