Thursday, November 28, 2019

A History of the German Revolution of 1918 19

A History of the German Revolution of 1918 19 In 1918 – 19 Imperial Germany experienced a socialist-heavy revolution that, despite some surprising events and even a small socialist republic, would bring a democratic government. The Kaiser was rejected and a new parliament based at Weimar took over. However, Weimar ultimately failed and the question of whether the seeds of that failure began in the revolution if 1918-19 has never been decisively answered. Germany Fractures in World War One Like the other countries of Europe, much of Germany went into World War One believing it would be a short war and a decisive victory for them. But when the western front ground to a stalemate and the eastern front proved no more promising, Germany realized it had entered into a prolonged process it was poorly prepared for. The country began to take the necessary measures to support the war, including mobilizing an enlarged workforce, dedicating more manufacturing to arms and other military supplies, and taking strategic decisions they hoped would give them an advantage. The war went on through the years, and Germany found itself increasingly stretched, so much so it began to fracture. Militarily, the army stayed an effective fighting force until 1918, and widespread disillusion and failures stemming from morale only crept in towards the end, although there were some earlier revolts. But before this, the steps taken in Germany to do everything for the military saw the ‘home front’ experience problems, and there was a marked change in morale from early 1917 onward, with strikes at one point numbering a million workers. Civilians were experiencing food shortages, exacerbated by the failure of the potato crop over the 1916-17 winter. There were also fuel shortages, and deaths from hunger and cold more than doubled over the same winter; flu was widespread and lethal. Infant mortality was also growing considerably, and when this was coupled with the families of the two million dead soldiers and the many millions wounded, you had a populace th at was suffering. In addition, while working days grew longer, inflation was making goods ever more expensive, and ever more unaffordable. The economy was on the verge of collapsing. The discontent among German civilians was not limited to either the working or middle classes, as both felt an increasing hostility to the government. Industrialists were also a popular target, with people convinced they were making millions from the war effort while everyone else suffered. As the war went deep into 1918, and the German offensives failed, the German nation seemed to be on the verge of splitting, even with the enemy still not on German soil. There was pressure from the government, from campaign groups and others to reform a government system that seemed to be failing. Ludendorff sets the Time Bomb Imperial Germany was supposed to be run by the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, aided by a Chancellor. However, over the final years of the war, two military commanders had taken control of Germany: Hindenburg and Ludendorff. By mid-1918 Ludendorff, the man with the practical control suffered both a mental breakdown and a long-feared realization: Germany was going to lose the war. He also knew that if the allies invaded Germany it would have a peace forced on it, and so he took actions which he hoped would bring a gentler peace deal under Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points: he asked for the German Imperial autocracy to be transformed into a constitutional monarchy, keeping the Kaiser but bringing in a new level of effective government. Ludendorff had three reasons for doing this. He believed the democratic governments of Britain, France, and the United States would be more willing to work with a constitutional monarchy than the Kaiserriech, and he believed that the change would head off the social revolt he feared the war’s failure would trigger as blame and anger were redirected. He saw the neutered parliament’s calls for change and feared what they would bring if left unmanaged. But Ludendorff had a third goal, a far more pernicious and costly one. Ludendorff didn’t want the army to take the blame for the war’s failure, nor did he want his high-powered allies to do so either. No, what Ludendorff wanted was to create this new civilian government and make them surrender, to negotiate the peace, so they would be blamed by the German people and the army would still be respected. Unfortunately for Europe in the mid-twentieth century, Ludendorff was entirely successful, starting the myth tha t Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’, and helping the fall of Weimer and the rise of Hitler. Revolution from Above A strong Red Cross supporter, Prince Max of Baden became chancellor of Germany in October 1918, and Germany restructured its government: for the first time the Kaiser and the Chancellor were made answerable to the parliament, the Reichstag: the Kaiser lost command of the military, and the Chancellor had to explain himself, not to the Kaiser, but parliament. As Ludendorff hoped, this civilian government was negotiating an end to the war. Germany Revolts However, as the news spread across Germany that the war was lost, shock set in, then the anger Ludendorff and others had feared. So many had suffered so much and been told they were so close to victory that many weren’t satisfied with the new system of government. Germany would move swiftly into revolution. Sailors at a naval base near Kiel rebelled on October 29, 1918, and as the government lost control of the situation other major naval bases and ports also fell to revolutionaries. The sailors were angry at what was happening and were trying to prevent the suicide attack some naval commanders had ordered to try and recover some honor. News of these revolts spread, and everywhere it went soldiers, sailors and workers joined them in rebelling. Many set up special, soviet style councils to organize themselves, and Bavaria actually expelled their fossil King Ludwig III and Kurt Eisner declared it a socialist republic. The October reforms were soon being rejected as not enough, both by the revolutionaries and the old order who needed a way to manage events. Max Baden hadn’t wanted to expel the Kaiser and family from the throne, but given that the latter was reluctant to make any other reforms, Baden had no choice, and so it was decided that the Kaiser would be replaced by a left-wing government led by Friedrich Ebert. But the situation at the heart of government was chaos, and first a member of this government - Philipp  Scheidemann – declared that Germany was a republic, and then another called it a Soviet Republic. The Kaiser, already in Belgium, decided to accept military advice that his throne was gone, and he exiled himself to Holland. The Empire was over. Left Wing Germany in Fragments Ebert and Government At the end of 1918, the government looked like it was falling apart, as the SPD was moving from the left to the right in an ever more desperate attempt to gather support, while the USPD pulled out to focus on more extreme reform. The Spartacists Revolt Bolsheviks The Results: The National Constituent Assembly Thanks to Ebert’s leadership and the quelling of extreme socialism, Germany in 1919 was led by a government which had changed at the very top – from an autocracy to a republic – but in which key structures like land ownership, industry and other businesses, the church, the military and the civil service, remained pretty much the same. There was great continuity and not the socialist reforms that the country seemed in a position to carry through, but neither had there been large-scale bloodshed. Ultimately, it can be argued that the revolution in Germany was a lost opportunity for the left, a revolution that lost its way, and that socialism lost a chance to restructure before Germany and the conservative right grew ever more able to dominate. Revolution? Although it is common to refer to these events as a revolution, some historians dislike the term, viewing the 1918-19 as either a partial / failed revolution, or an evolution from the Kaiserreich, which might have taken place gradually if World War One had never occurred. Many Germans who lived through it also thought it was only half a revolution, because while the Kaiser had gone, the socialist state they had wanted was also absent, with the leading socialist party heading up a middle ground. For the next few years, left-wing groups would attempt to push the ‘revolution’ further, but all failed. In doing so, the center allowed the right to remain to crush the left.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Bluebuck - Facts and Figures

Bluebuck - Facts and Figures Name: Bluebuck; also known as Hippotragus leucophaeus Habitat: Plains of South Africa Historical Epoch: Late Pleistocene-Modern (500,000-200 years ago) Size and Weight: Up to 10 feet long and 300-400 pounds Diet: Grass Distinguishing Characteristics: Long ears; thick neck; bluish fur; large horns on males About the Bluebuck European settlers have been blamed for countless species extinctions the world over, but in the case of the Bluebuck, the impact of western settlers may be oversold: the fact is that this large, muscular, donkey-eared antelope was well on its way to oblivion well before the first westerners arrived in South Africa in the 17th century. By then, it seems, climate change had already restricted the Bluebuck to a limited swatch of territory; up until about 10,000 years ago, shortly after the last Ice Age, this megafauna mammal was widely dispersed across the expanse of South Africa, but it gradually became restricted to about 1,000 square miles of grassland. The last confirmed Bluebuck sighting (and killing) occurred in Cape Province in 1800, and this majestic game animal hasnt been seen since. (See a slideshow of 10 Recently Extinct Game Animals) What set the Bluebuck on its slow, inexorable course toward extinction? According to the fossil evidence, this antelope prospered for the first few thousand years after the last Ice Age, then suffered a sudden decline in its population starting about 3,000 years ago (which was probably caused by the disappearance of its accustomed tasty grasses by less-edible forests and bushlands, as the climate warmed). The next deleterious event was the domestication of livestock by the original human settlers of South Africa, around 400 B.C., when overgrazing by sheep caused many Bluebuck individuals to starve. The Bluebuck may also have been targeted for its meat and pelt by these same indigenous humans, some of whom (ironically) worshiped these mammals as near-deities. The relative scarcity of the Bluebuck may help explain the confused impressions of the first European colonizers, many of whom were passing on hearsay or folk tales rather than witnessing this ungulate for themselves. To begin with, the fur of the Bluebuck wasnt technically blue; most likely, observers were fooled by its dark hide covered by thinning black hair, or it may have been its intermingled black and yellow fur that gave the Bluebuck its characteristic tint (not that these settlers really cared much about the Bluebucks color, since they were busy hunting herds relentlessly to clear land for pasture). Oddly enough, considering their meticulous treatment of other soon-to-be-extinct species, these settlers managed to preserve only four complete Bluebuck specimens, which are now on display in various museums in Europe. But enough about its extinction; what was the Bluebuck actually like? As with many antelopes, the males were bigger than the females, weighing upwards of 350 pounds and equipped with impressive, backward-curving horns that were used to compete for favor during mating season. In its overall appearance and behavior, the Blueback (Hippotragus leucophaeus) was very similar to two extant antelopes that still roam the coast of southern Africa, the Roan Antelope (H. equinus) and the Sable Antelope (H. niger). In fact, the Bluebuck was once considered a subspecies of the Roan, and was only later accorded full species status.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

An Article Critique of Leaders in Social Networks

An Critique of Leaders in Social Networks - Article Example with this kind of social media is, whereby people rank the links of the most clicks website this helps understand who has been most searched and has more influence than the others in the public eyes. The limitation in this trying to identify that only the most followed are said to be the most liked which may not be the case. This method is known as page rank and, it is using this method that you will find that there are people who are found in page nine and they are still reflected in the important stage. There is another issue where the leader rank the formulation is different in probabilities and it is important to understand for it to be success a lot of calculation is put in place. Page rank does not take account of the logarithm that leader rank does not. It is important to for a ground note to all the links to the same network to the and all the number of users are intertwined to form the ground node. The problem with the PageRank is not effective to tie the chain of a ll the links that come through one website and it is for this reason that sometime the leader rank is more reliable and can progress to the next progress. These assumptions cannot be illustrated without the calculations of the probabilities and the chances of the chain of this entire fan zone. The chances of getting the right traffic is also limited to other issues such as the time zone and also net neutrality which forms the core question whether it is valid to follow the statistics of all this. The inverse proportion is not realistic as it favors those with many fans regardless of how many times they clique. There is a great chance that getting the right number of traffic cannot be achievable with the page rank but only with the leader rank. Though the people analyzing this always prepare with good intent it is only important we understand the interpretation of all this due to its complexities. This article does not really find a solid background of how many leaders earn their