As if WW 1 and 2 are in fact a single event with a strange picnic pause in the middle.
Re:Why did Japan surrender? (2011)
by ArkyBeagle on Monday January 19, 2015 @08:11PM
(#8914971)
It's a stretch, but some have linked those two with the Franco-Prussian War as well.
Bismarck predicted:
"Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this"
"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Forced_to_res...
Large German units started surrendering to small Allied forces. Yes, tanks and the U.S. arrival helped clinch everything. But the meltdown inside Germany was quite amazing. Think of the U.S.'s final decision in 1973-75 to get out of Vietnam no matter what. And then multiply that breakdown of the warrior mentality by 100.
The Kaiser lost control of his country in the war's final weeks, and the German authorities naively hoped that they would get an OK armistice/settlement if they called it quits. When they didn't, that created such deep German resentment over the next 20 years that a resumption of the war became inevitable.