re: #278 FemNaziBitch

I did a bit of reading on the early part of 20th century last year. In a nutshell, I came to the conclusion that most of our societal and foreign policy ills can be traced back to the Treaty of Versailles.

While there is a certain amount of truth there, it oversimplifies things tremendously. There were a number of competing streams of trouble, for lack of a better word, that collided in the Balkans and touched off WWI. But even if it hadn’t happened there & then, some other explosion like that was going to happen before 1920. The Naval arms race, if nothing else, would have imploded the world economies by then.

CL - you might find Barbara Tuchman’s book “Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour” (1956) useful in understanding the mindset of the British and their fantasy that they had some kind of “special” relationship with the Holy Land. It’s a very insightful work as I recall. It and the previously mentioned “A Peace To End All Peace” are probably the best lay works I’ve run into for understanding how & why the British made such a rat fucked disaster out of the Middle East.