THE BIGGEST FAIL IN EUROPEAN HISTORY: Dropping the Pilot

Let's take a step back for just a second, and consider the phenomenon of nicknames. Throughout European history, we as a race have had a tendency to don monkiers of all kinds on important figures. Nearly every single one has been a slap in the face. Catherine the Great of Russia, who actually instituted some pretty sweet Enlightened reforms, received the lovely nickname "Madame Snake." Catherine de Medici, who impressively managed to have an important say in the politics of France from 1559 all the way to her death in 1589, was called "the Monstrous Regiment of Women." If you play an important role in European affairs and you escape without being given a sucky nickname, you have achieved a great feat.

Otto von Bismarck was nicknamed "The Pilot." Before you explode in reaction to how awesome that is, take a deep breath and try to finish reading this blog first. Imagine how many cool things someone nicknamed The Pilot can do! Maybe he flew hang-gliders around all day. Maybe he drove awesome pirate ships. Maybe he had a little Captain in him. Maybe he even sat behind the steering wheel of one of these bad boys.

Does it even matter why it was bad that Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany decided to dispose of Otto von Bismarck's services of "piloting" his country's foreign policy in 1890? It's pretty obvious that if you get rid of The Pilot, you're dumb. If you can understand that Bismarck was freakin awesome and had an incredible nickname, then you can understand that Wilhelm really screwed up. Seriously, he's The Pilot. Sweet mother of god.

This unfortunate tale goes all the way back to Napoleon, my friends. After his complete domination over nearly all of Europe ended, the balance of power on the Continent was severely disrupted. Enter Prince Metternich of Austria. To maintain peace, he and the Concert of Europe established a strict conservative dominance over all the land that previously belonged to Napoleon, and then some. With nationalism bubbling in every country and revolutions sproutin up like they were going out of style, Europe started to become a very unstable place. And then The Pilot flew down and made it all better. This guy rocks. I'm pumped up just writing about him.

An angry France wants to try to win back its losses from the Franco-Prussian War, Serbia's Pan-Slavism movement is about ready to set Europe on fire, Russia is humiliated and pretty pissed off by its terrible defeat in Crimean War, and Austria-Hungary is becoming desperate to remain a key player in European affairs, but none of this phases Otto. His Congress of Berlin in 1878 shut down Russia's attempts at expansion that would have set off nearly every European country into a hissy fit. Austria-Hungary is pleased, and agrees to the Dual Alliance (Austria-Hungary, check). Italy joins in, making it the Triple Alliance, and things were lookin pretty swell (Italy, check). And before Russia can cause trouble, Bismarck slaps down a fat Reinsurance Treaty with them in 1887 (Russia, check). Without Russia's support, Serbia becomes far less serious of a military threat, and Otto has yet again shown em who's boss (Serbia, check). The only other major powers left are The United States (just chillin a whole Atlantic Ocean away, not causing any trouble), Great Britain (splendid isolation and the guarantee of naval dominance, yo), and France (still really pissed). France is all alone diplomatically, however, and thanks to Bismarck's brilliant statesmanship and use of the Realpolitik, the French threat disintegrated as they lacked the allies to achieve anything that could have been detrimental to the balance of power.

Oh, Wilhelm. You piece of crap. Ya just needed that "place in the sun," didn't you? I'm gonna cast aside my usual tone of completely unbiased, unadulterated historical fact, and say something that could be considered more of an opinion. I hate Wilhelm II. He sucks.

In THE BIGGEST FAIL IN EUROPEAN HISTORY, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany dropped the freakin Pilot. Dropped him like it's hot. Dropped him straight on his German behind. Without his superb diplomatic abilities, it all began to fall apart. Wilhelm began by simply getting rid of the Reinsurance Treaty. With Russia now angry again, they jumped back to supporting Serbia's crazed Pan-Slavism. France was hankerin for an ally, and went straight for Russia. And just so he could be that much more of a stupid head, Wilhelm began an incredibly costly naval arms race with Great Britain, which brought them into this now world-wide conflict. The Triple Entente allied Great Britain, France, and Russia together in 1907 and Europe had officially split into two camps. World War I was a comin'. It was the end of an era, and this is the end of this ridiculously large post.

Man, what a mustache on Bismarck.

False Sense of Security Fail: The Maginot Line

I think this link does a fine job of prefacing this post. (see here for an explanation of that if you're curious).

The Maginot Line brings us to one of the most embarrassing events in France's history. It's quite understandable, however, why they would gear up for WWII in such a dramatically dorky fashion. The interim war period of 1919-1939 was rightfully nicknamed the Age of Anxiety, as the promises of the political leaders of the time weren't coming true. Mentally and physically scarred soldiers returned home to find that the goals they thought they were fighting for were had been exaggerated and dramatized. As the scores of worksheets that AP Euro students have to fill out will tell you, Woodrow Wilson's description of World War I as a war "against militarism and absolutism" had started to wear off, and disillusionment was all over the freakin place. In France's case, this uncertainty wasn't only held by citizens. The promises of protection and alliances that the US and Great Britain had made to France weren't being kept, and every government official in France was shakin in his or her little trendy French outfit. After some panicked treaties with Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Yugoslavia between 1921 and 1927, France had done little to calm itself down.

So they decided to hide. Under ground. With a bunch of big forts and guns and stuff above them for protection. Embracing the outdated trench warfare tactics of WWI, they built a pretty hefty set of defenses along the French/German border, curled up into a ball, covered their ears, and waited for all the scaredy-ness to go away. A False Sense of Security Fail was surely in their midst. They didn't bother fortifying the Ardennes Forest, which was an open path into France just north of the Maginot Line, because it was impenetrable. Completely and totally impenetrable, I promise. By this point, Hitler had become the butt head that we all remember him for being, and he had different plans for this lovely forest. To keep the French busy in their little hide and seek game, he sent a decoy force to the attack the Line head on. Then, a second force skipped on through the Ardennes Forest while third a went through Belgium and the Netherlands en route to France. Less than 4 weeks later (on June 14 1940), Paris had fallen. Shucks. Then, 12 days later, France completely checked out of WWII with an armistice treaty with Germany.

Infallibility Fail: The Syllabus of Errors

The Syllabus of Errors was probably the biggest fail the Catholic Church has ever committed in its long and illustrious tenure on this planet. For a bunch of infallible dudes, popes over the years have done some pretty stupid stuff. Lets take a little trip down memory lane to exhibit A: the Crusades. It's pretty hard to understand the logic there. "Lets send millions of guys really far away to take a piece of land from some other culture and then be colossal jerks and kill all of them for no reason - Oh wait, we FAILED. No biggie, we'll try again, EIGHT MORE TIMES." Another prime example would be the entire era of Renaissance popes - the thinking there being "Lets break every rule in the book and still be the holiest guy on earth." Then comes the oh-so-great Babylonian Captivity. "Since having the papacy in Avignon is stupid, we'll elect a new pope. What, they excommunicated each other? Didn't see that coming. Ok, we'll, uh, elect a third one! Oh great. More excommunication. Maybe we can have some councils or something to figure this out."

All this is pretty hilarious, but it pales in comparison to the syllabus of errors. Instead of learning its lesson from trying to stop the Scientific Revolution with the Inquisition, The Church repeated itself in a spectacularly idiotic way. The scene is Europe, 1864. Italy has just been unified, and the Pope isn't too happy about losing all his states. The industrial revolution is raging, and people are a lot more concerned with mass culture and politics than with religion. I mean, soccer just got invented! You can't compete with that. Anyway, with all this other stuff going on and society getting gradually more secular, Pope Pius IX is mad as hell and he isn't going to take it anymore. So he issues a document condemning pretty much every -ism out there, along with human reason, science, religious tolerance, and progress in general. He even goes so far as to say it isn't his responsibility to "reconcile himself, and come to terms with, progress and modern civilization." Yeah that's right civilization, who needs you anyway? Among the doctrines attacked were the obvious creations of Satan, communism, socialism, pantheism, rationalism, and liberalism, but also biblical and clerical societies! Hey you, bible scholar! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you - just want you to know all your education is worthless 'cause you're wrong.

In the aftermath of all this, most factions of European society ignored the church. Protestants got ticked off, Liberals got even more secular, and even a lot of Catholics rejected it and turned to Modernism, a way of doing exactly what the pope said not to do - reconciling religion with modern society. Finally, the Lateran II accords of the '60s updated Church doctrine to somewhat normal views (The Jews were collectively absolved for the killing of Christ, for example). The current Pope has described Lateran II as beneficially "counter-syllabus."However, since all popes are technically infallible, all that junk still stands. Go figure.