While people have occasionally paid for having too much faith in our fallible hardware, most of our tragedies—intense international wars and prolonged domestic injustices—have been due to our all too human software and particularly our inability to get along with one another. Despite all the inventions and technological progress of the Industrial Revolution, we seem to be in our own Dark Age of human relations. Nothing better demonstrated this point than World War I—the first and certainly one of our finest major tragedies.

While in July, 1914, no one could have anticipated all the consequences of the impending war, everyone would have been much better off if European leaders had considered it simply in an economic context, as it was a sure-fire money loser. However, as usual when rationality is needed most, there was a complete breakdown of political sanity. Against a backdrop of regional politics, cravings for vengeance and paranoid ambitions, a general reluctance to face known facts, throttle patriotic zeal and search for peace led to outright blunders. Specifically, Austria wanted a fight, but in getting more than what it wanted, it was carried along by an unhealthy does of Germanic arrogance.

Rooted in most egos is the "Custer complex"—the inability to appreciate the capabilities of one's rivals. However, in militarists this handicap is often accentuated, and throughout the war, Kaiser Wilhelm II and his chief generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg were particularly susceptible to this condition. They assumed the allies would be too stupid to discern the intent of German genius and completely underestimated America's ability to raise and dispatch an army of any real value to Europe.

Actually, in their assumption about the allies misreading their intent, the Germans were half right. The French were completely wrong as to the location of the heaviest German attack despite accruing evidence that they were indeed wrong and a warning of their strategic error from the ablest among them, General Victor Michel. In 1911, he informed the Supreme War Council he was convinced that if Germany attacked, it would do so via the northern route through Belgium because of the impenetrableFrench defenses in Lorraine. The British had come to the same conclusion as to the probable route of a German attack, but the French commanders had made up their minds. The War Council was convinced the Germans would take the southern route through Alsace Lorraine because 1.) this was where the Prussians had attacked in 1870, 2.) this was where the French had decided they would launch their own attack if there were a war, and 3.) a northern drive would necessarily bring England, which had a treaty with Belgium, into the war against the Germans.

stupidity.net

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