Revenge Strategy: Wasting the power of your hate on the guiltless (XV). The Great War impact on our history tour.
“Waiting to escape”. An aquarelle exercise painting by Eleonora Escalante. Painted on watercolor paper Fabriano 5-Fine Grain-300GSM. Size: 9 inches x 12 inches.
Let me start to explain myself better what I wrote yesterday: “The Great War and World War II on our strategy journey must be taken seriously by anyone who wishes to work in business or corporate or political or economic or social or human development or migration strategies, simply because it is a veridic example of our most up-to-date past pivot legacy for decision making in our innovation processes”.
When I wrote the last underlined phrase, what I am trying to express is that our innovation processes may lead us to deadly consequences. All our inventions can be used as a force for good and as a force for evil. The Great War and WWII are here so close to us, on our historic memory to don´t repeat those innovation mistakes again. Maybe we must learn to slow down our inventions when we are in the design phase. Or we should introduce a “verification-check” called prevention of evil damages during the research-development period. Or we learn to stop our ambitions for revenge strategies at the level of our thoughts. Or we start to designate the government to regulate and stop our harmful inventions in every single country on earth. Each time that the man creates something it can be used as a force for good or a force of evil. A simple example: a knife can be used to help us to prepare our food, but can also be used to kill. A machine gun utilized for the first time at WWI was designed to kill. This invention should have never been approved at that time. Every innovator must know and understand how the Great War and WWII paved significant destruction. In this particular century, all our emerging digital technologies, artificial intelligence, IoT, space new inventions, robots, etc. have the possibility to be used for good and for evil. Better we learn the lessons from WWI and WWII before proceeding further. Let´s not continue producing new technologies and its respective products and services which could harm us more than what the war industry has injured us.
After the latter explanation, let´s continue to answer the topic of today:
Why the Great War is so crucial to understanding WWII? Because the European former status quo was broken with the WWI. As simple as that.
WWI and later WWII were triggered by destabilization of the European society, the imbalance caused by a tension between the nations which supported the old ruling order of imperialism established by war conquests (the race to build empires); and the new ruling democratic model which was beginning in France. This lack of equilibrium or imbalance set the groundwork for World War I and later WWII. The old imperialism style was disrupted at the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The WWI was simply a symptom of the existing lack of equilibrium between the nations. The beginning of WWI is directly related to the desire of the old Prussian empire (Germany) led by the House of Hohenzollern, who wanted to gather their historic territories (all german roots speaking lands) and achieve corporate growth by conquering new potential territories around their borders.
Some interesting facts about WWI:
- “World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties: Germany (Prussian Empire), Russia (Romanov Dynasty), Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg Monarchy), and Turkey (Ottoman Empire)”(Brittanica.com)
- It was during this war that the Russian Romanov Czars ruling model was destroyed by the Bolshevik Revolution (The House of Romanov was the reigning royal house of Russia from 1613 to 1917).
- The WWI was supposed to become another war in a series of wars which have happened since the neolithic ages. But the WWI or the Great War was unique because of the level of sophistication for massive murder of the war technology weapons produced at that time. The weapons´ technology was remarkably deadly “par rapport” or in comparison to all the weapons used previously to this one. Military technology of the time included important innovations in machine guns, grenades, artillery, trenches, along with essentially the most innovative weapons of that season such as submarines, poison gas, warplanes, and tanks. Before the WWI, the air war through the aviation did not exist. Before the WWI poison gas was never used. Before the WWI the machine guns and tanks were nonexistent. And this armament proved to be enormously deadly. 8.5 million soldiers died, plus more than 22 Million civilians or innocent people were counted as dead or disappeared. For more information about the WWI military technology read this article please: http://mentalfloss.com/article/31882/12-technological-advancements-world-war-i
- The WWI started before 1914. The first sign of this war happened more than half-century beforehand. Many believe that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (1914), the heir presumptive to the throne of the Austria-Hungary Kingdom was the WWI cause. To my belief that is not the whole truth, and we should go back in time. Please take a look at the following slides (source: public domain).
- The Kingdom of Prussia was created in 1701, eventually leading to the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871, with the Hohenzollerns as hereditary German Emperors and Kings of Prussia.
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Kaiser Wilhelm I. Source: Public Domain
As mentioned above, Germany´s rulers from the House of Hohenzollern, Wilhelm I and later Wilhelm II, both called Emperors or Kaisers, were imposing the old traditional corporate strategy to raise its kingdom resources. Inside the Kaiser Wilhelm I mental frame, the motto of “more is more” was reflected in their strategy implemented by appointing Otto Von Bismarck as a Chancellor-Prime Minister. Von Bismarck was designated in 1862 to unify the different german origin kingdoms. He declared the war to what is now Denmark and Austria, conquered Alsace and Lorraine from France and started another war against France in 1870. Through these events, the Prussian Empire expanded aggressively. When Kaiser Wilhelm II took the throne, he tried to reclaim Morocco and attempted to open a railroad project from Berlin to Persia, it was clear that Germany´s intentions were to continue their expansion mode using the “imperialism colonial style”
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Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Source: Public Domain.
By August 1914, the Prussian empire in conjunction with Austria-Hungary declared the war to France.
- Previously to the beginning of the Great War, France established a treaty with Russia´s rulers, to defend themselves against the Prussians from Germany.
- Germany (Prussia´s kingdom) under King Wilhelm II, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey (all together) conquered Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro. Rumania also felt down later.
- On the other hand, Russia, England, and Japan were France allies since the beginning of the war. It wasn´t until 1917 that the USA started to help economically to France with money and war provisions.
- The Prussians were the experts at utilizing submarines, meanwhile the British utilized the dreadnoughts to protect themselves against the german´s underwater maritime attacks.
- Germany was economically barred. And their populations did not have provisions. They couldn´t continue the war.
- Latin America kept itself out of the territory wars, but some countries helped with raw materials and food to the French-USA-England team.
- By the end of the year 1918, the Treaty of Versailles began. It was under this Treaty that the League of Nations was created to preserve and promote peace. This was its principal role. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Yugoslavia were created as independent nations. Germany ceded Alsace and Lorraine to France. Germany was prohibited to fabricate weapons. Germany was supposed to be demilitarized, and finally, Germany and its allies were commanded to pay a monetary compensation as a concept of reparation to the rest of the countries affected.
- Germany’s defeat in World War I in 1918 led to the German Revolution. The Hohenzollerns were overthrown and the Weimar Republic was established.
- The League of Nations couldn´t accomplish its significant mandate. Even though the League of Nations was established to stop any future war in Europe, its effectiveness was hampered by the non-participation of the United States.
Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia (1871–1914), in the era of Wilhelm II, Source: David Liuzzo.
Adolf Hitler rose to the German power in 1933, 14 years after the Treaty of Versailles. On my next post, I will dedicate a few lines to describe Who was Adolf Hitler. Not because I wish it (this man and his sponsors were abominable criminals), but because any corporate strategy analysis starts by understanding who leads the decision making. In the case of Hitler, I am convinced that he was being hired to represent the real decision-makers wishes behind WWII. My intuition tells me that Hitler was simply the executor of a plan that was carefully planned since Otto Von Bismarck times, and probably, this is just my hypothesis, Hitler sponsors also helped him to fake his own death and escape before the end of WWII.
See you next week, with a new episode of “Revenge Strategy: Wasting the power of your hate on the guiltless”. 
Source of reference utilized to write this article:
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I
https://www.historyonthenet.com/world-war-1-comprehensive-overview-great-war
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. All the presentation slides shown on this blog are prepared by Eleonora Escalante. Nevertheless, all the pictures, images or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
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