> WWI was the stupidest war ever. Politically
>speaking, I mean. It started because one man was
>killed, and at some point, peoples decided the
>Germans had lost. Really, it was pretty
>pointless.

Actually, it started because the French were still pissed about getting their butts whipped by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71. They wanted the terriroty back that Germany had conquered. They were looking for any excuse at all to fight Germany, even though their erstwhile "allies" the Brits were smart enough to realize that war with Germany wasn't going to go very well for the French right about then. Then again, war with Germany NEVER goes well for the French.

So yeah, the whole Archduke thing happened, Germany said "Ok, you want to fight us, here we come. THROUGH BELGIUM!" And the French said "LE GASP!" and ran away.

The only reason Germany lost World War I was because the Allies successfully cut off their supplies. We starved them into submission. But if you look at the final locations of the armies, clearly Germany had "won". Only their forced surrender made the history books report otherwise.
That and the fact that the Kaiser ordered unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the US into the war on the side of the Allies (the US was neutral at the time, and there was no real guarantee that if we joined the war, it would be on the British/French side.)

-- Dave