YouSaid · the spoken record

Christopher Capozzola

lines on the record
111
first
2022-09-14
most recent
2022-09-14
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “One of the things that we see immediately is the industrial revolution of the previous 30 or 40 years brought to bear on warfare, right? And so you see sort of machine guns, you see artillery. These are the kind of the key weapons of war on both sides. The vast majority of battlefield casualties are from artillery shelling from one side to another, not rifle or even sort of machine gun kind of attacks. In some ways, the weapons of war are human beings, right? Tens of thousands of them hoard over the top in these sort of waves to kind of try to break through the enemy lines. And it would work for a little while, but holding the territory that had been gained often proved to be even more demanding than gaining it. So often each side would retreat back into the trenches and wait for it.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “To avoid shelling from artillery then become six feet, ten feet deep, two miles wide that include telegraph wires, that include whole hospitals in the back. And then at that point, the front is locked in place. And the only way to break that is sort of basically dialing the war up to 11, right? Sort of massive numbers of troops, massive efforts, none of which work, right? And so the war is stuck in this. But that's the phase transition right there.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, I think the phase transition is over the course of the fall of 1914, when the Germans make an initial sort of bold move into France. In many ways, they're fighting the last war, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. And they really do sort of want to have a quick lightning strike in some ways against France to kind of bring the war to a speedy conclusion. France turns out to be able to fight back more effectively than the Germans expected. And then the battle lines sort of harden. And then behind that, the French and the Germans, as well as the British on the side of the French start digging in, literally, and digging trenches, trenches that at first are three feet deep to”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Conflict. Well, it might be a skirmish, it might be, you know, sort of a standoff. It could be solved with diplomacy later because diplomacy is failing now. That turns out not to be the case. Diplomacy fails. It's not a skirmish. It becomes a massive war. And the Americans are watching all of this from the sidelines. They have very little influence over what happens that summer.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Over the course of about four weeks, right, following the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo, it sort of triggers a series of political conflicts and ultimately ultimatums sort of demanding that one or other power sort of stand down in response to the demands of either Britain, France, or in turn Germany or Russia. At the same time that those alliances kind of trigger automatic responses from the other side. And so it escalates. And once that escalation is combined with the call up of military troops, then none of those powers wants to be sort of the last one to kind of get ready for conflict. So even throughout it, they think they are getting ready in a defensive maneuver. And they think if there is”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I would put the blame on the system of empires itself, on the system. But in that system, the actor that sort of precaries the most responsibility is definitely imperial Germany.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That's a really tough call to make. And that deciding that is going to keep historians in business for the next 200 years, I think there are people who would lay all of the blame on the Germans and who would point toward a generation of arms buildup, alliances that Germany made and promises that they made to their allies in the Balkans, to the Austro-Hungarians. And so, yes, there's an awful lot of responsibility there. There has been a trend lately to say, no, it's no one's fault, right? That, you know, that all of the various powers literally were sleepwalking into the war, right? They backed into it inadvertently. I think that lets everyone a little too much off the hook, right? And so I think in between is”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Well, certainly after 1898 with the acquisition of the former territories of the Spanish Empire, the United States has formal colonial possessions. And it has sort of mindsets of rule and military acquisition that would define empire in a kind of more informal sense.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yes, historians never like to say things are inevitable. And certainly, you know, there were people who could have chosen a different path, both in the short term and the long term. But fundamentally, there were irreconcilable conflicts in the system of empires in the world in 1914. I can't see, you know, it didn't have to be this war, but it probably had to be a war.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yes, yes, and right. So, yes, there's a sense that the military can be the solution to political conflict in Europe itself. And the and is that war and military conflict are already happening, right? That there's war, particularly in Africa, in North Africa, in the Middle East, in the Balkans, conflict is already underway. The European powers haven't faced off against each other. They've usually faced off against an asymmetrical conflict against much less powerful states. But in some ways, that war is already underway”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “On the one hand, World War I started because of a series of events in the summer of 1914 that brought sort of the major powers of Europe into conflict with one another. But I actually think it's more useful to say that World War I started at least a generation earlier when rising powers, particularly Germany, started devoting more and more of their resources toward military affairs and naval affairs. This sets off an arms race in Europe. It sets off a rivalry over the colonial world and who will control the resources in Africa and Asia. And so by the time you get to the summer of 1914, in a lot of ways, I say the war has already begun. And this is just the match that lights the flames.”

    2022-09-14 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #320 – Christopher Capozzola: World War I, Ideology, Propaganda, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source