[TW]Fox;17577511 said:
WWI ?
One of the best theory's ive read about how WW1 started is by A.J.P. Taylor, that it was all down to Train Timetables
Train Timetables you say ? Let wikipedia explain ( i tried writing it myself but wikipedia has summed it better i think)
In his 1969 book War by Timetable, Taylor examined the origins of the First World War concluding that though all of the great powers wished to increase their own power relative to the others, none consciously sought war before 1914. Instead, he argued that all of the great powers believed that if they possessed the ability to mobilise their armed forces faster than any of the others, this would serve as a sufficient deterrent to avoid war and allow them to achieve their foreign policy. Thus, the general staffs of the great powers developed elaborate timetables to mobilise faster than any of their rivals. When the crisis broke in 1914, though none of the statesmen of Europe wanted a world war, the need to mobilise faster than potential rivals created an inexorable movement towards war. Thus Taylor claimed that the leaders of 1914 became prisoners of the logic of the mobilisation timetables and the timetables that were meant to serve as deterrent to war instead relentlessly brought war. Many have argued that Taylor, who was one of the leaders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, developed his "Railway Thesis" to serve as a thinly-veiled admonitory allegory for the nuclear arms race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._P._Taylor
My Point in bringing this up ?
This is a very specific set of circumstances, that, in this Nuclear age, and an age of modern transportation, couldnt be replicated now.
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