Today in History

The thing I like about history is that it gives one hope. Not necessarily hope that things will get any better, but hope that human civilization will continue in some form, despite the collective arrogance, ignorance, foolishness and stupidity of the human race. It’s not like we’re not smarter than gophers and mina birds and stuff, but gophers don’t have a military/industrial complex to keep under control. One theme that is consistent in history is the prevalence of political and religious extremism in collapsing empires. There’s always some agitated group or another claiming that if we just sacrifice more children to the gods, or kill all the Jews, or cut taxes, or give away all our possessions and worship Bhagwan Buttercup that the situation will stabilize and we’ll be fine in the long run. The problem with these simple solutions is that they are seldom comprehensive enough to address the complexities of the global political and economic conditions that drive change. The problem with complexities is that they are complex, which means they are complicated which means excited people don’t score well on the test.

And so it was, 94 years ago today, that the brave forces of glorious Romania moved against the less-than-brave and glorious forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last of the Dual Monarchies, in the region of Transylvania. Romania had entered into a secret treaty with the Anglo-Franco-Russian Alliance which guaranteed them substantial territorial gains if the Allies were victorious. Perhaps the Romanians anticipated the substantial tourism economy created by vampire movies, or maybe they just wanted to control the vast mineral wealth. Anyway, based upon the recent successes of the Russian Army against the Austro-Hungarians, they bet on the Allied horse and set their sights on running the demoralized Austro-Hungarians out of Transylvania.

Unfortunately for the Romanians, Russian successes would be short lived as the political unrest in Russia spread and detracted from the commitment to the war. In addition, a scant few weeks after Romanian forces moved into the nearly impenetrably mountainous and heavily wooded terrain, all armies of the Central Powers were placed under the control of the German General Staff, which meant the incompetent Austrian aristocrats that had been mucking up the Empire’s war effort were sacked and replaced with Prussian officers who were way more interested in killing the enemies of the Fatherland than their predecessors had been. German General August von Mackensen had won the Iron Cross in the Franco-Prussian War as a young lieutenant and was in no mood to gratify Romanian territorial ambitions or opportunistic war-making. He set to work beating the crap out of the Romanian army, and by December of 1916, he had routed them and captured the capitol, Bucharest.

Ultimately, in May of 1918, Romania surrendered unconditionally to the Central Powers, but by then the Germans were on the verge of collapse themselves. Following the conclusion of the war, Romania was rewarded by the victorious Allies with most of the territory they had sought to take by force, although the Allies were unable to restore the 335,000 casualties suffered by the Romanians in less than two years. In exchange for their soul, they got the Dacian gold mines which had so drawn the Roman Emperor Trajan 1800 years before. It would appear that vampires are not the only blood-suckers one might encounter in Transylvania.

Anyway, to America’s credit, we have seldom displayed the military opportunism inherent in Romania’s actions in World War One, unless you count the invasion of Canada during the Revolution, the war with Mexico, the war with Spain, the seizure of Hawaii, various invasions in the Caribbean, wholesale genocide of the Native Americans and the depopulation of Diego Garcia, but all those things happened at least 20 years ago. Now that President Obama is in charge, we can rest assured that America’s military will never be used as an instrument of economic policy; that we will never again descend like jackals on the decaying corpse of a foreign empire with the intention of securing lucrative mineral rights or advantageous terms for our corporations. I can feel the change and it feels pretty familiar.