Kaiser Wilhelm II and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in 1897 initiated a massive German naval buildup under the "Risk Theory." The theory assumed that because Britain’s navy was dispersed around the globe protecting colonies and trade routes, attacking a concentrated German fleet in the North Sea would be so costly that even a British victory would leave the Royal Navy permanently weakened. In that weakened state, Britain would fall prey to its traditional imperial rivals in France and Russia. Thus, by building this large fleet, Germany hoped to gain the leverage to blackmail Britain into diplomatic alignment or at least guaranteed neutrality in a future European war, while also acquiring colonial concessions in future negotiations, using it as a bargaining chip during various summits including the 1912 Haldane Mission. This obviously did not play well in London. The direct threat to Britain's naval dominance led to great anxiety across much of the British Admiralty and public, sparking the famous chant: "We want eight, and we won't wait!" (demanding eight dreadnoughts in the 1909 naval estimates rather than the proposed four). Under this push, figures like Winston Churchill established an explicit 60% margin of superiority over the German fleet while redeploying Royal Navy capital ships from the Mediterranean to home waters.

The outcome was a British victory that exposed Germany's strategic overreach. Realizing that Great Britain’s superior financial markets, merchant infrastructure, and shipbuilding capacity could out build Berlin on an almost two to one basis without straining its economy, the German Naval Office grew despondent and effectively conceded the race by 1912, facing intense pressure from the army and budget hawks over the extreme expense the naval buildup required. Faced with the resurgence of Imperial Russia and rigid continental obligations, Germany quietly drew back from its naval program settling for a reduced building pace and diverted its military expenditure into massive land army expansions under the 1912 and 1913 Army Bills. Rather than securing British partnership or neutrality, Wilhelm’s naval gamble permanently dismantled Britain's traditional isolation, drove London into informal naval and military coordination with France, and left the German Empire strategically encircled when war broke out in 1914.

The ironic thing about this all is that Wilhelm II essentially forced the British government to take action when it really didn't want to. The Liberal party in power wanted to avoid adding unnecessary spending to an already growing naval budget, and many ministers feared that tying Britain at the hip with France and Russia would guarantee they'd be pulled into a future European war with relatively little gain for Britain. Thus it's quite possible that had Wilhelm simply never challenged British naval dominance in the first place rather than trying to use the fleet to bully Britain into a blanket neutrality pledge they could never accept he would've kept Britain detached, avoided strategic encirclement, and saved massive amounts of money that Germany actually needed for its land armies.

This was worsened by the fact that the German Navy was hamstrung by its own Risk Theory. Because the fleet's entire purpose was to remain a political deterrent, German naval leadership was paralyzed, barely trying to challenge the British naval blockade during World War I out of fear that an active engagement would result in the destruction of the fleet.

Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course

The Reverse Course (逆コース, gyaku kōsu) is the name commonly given to a shift in the policies of the U.S. government and the U.S.-led Allied occupation of Japan as they sought to reform and rebuild Japan after World War II.^\1]) The Reverse Course began in 1947, at a time of rising Cold War tensions.^\1]) As a result of the Reverse Course, the emphasis of occupation policy shifted from the demilitarization and democratization of Japan to economic reconstruction and remilitarization of Japan in support of U.S. Cold War objectives in Asia.^\1]) This involved relaxing and in some cases even partially undoing earlier reforms the occupation had enacted in 1945 and 1946.^\1]) As a U.S. Department of State official history puts it, "this 'Reverse Course' ... focused on strengthening, not punishing, what would become a key Cold War ally."^\2])

Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers on August 15, 1945, and officially exchanged instruments of surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, by which time thousands of Allied occupation forces had already begun landing on Japanese soil. The occupation was commanded by American general Douglas MacArthur, whose office was designated the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP).^\3]) In the initial phase of the occupation, from 1945 to 1946, SCAP had pursued an ambitious program of social and political reform, designed to ensure that Japan would never again be a threat to world peace.^\3]) Among other reforms, SCAP worked with Japanese leaders to disband the Japanese military, purge wartime leaders from government posts), and break up the powerful zaibatsu industrial conglomerates that had supported Japan's drive for empire in Asia.^\3]) In addition, SCAP instituted a sweeping land reform that made tenant farmers the new owners of the lands they had previously rented, in a blow against a previously powerful landlord class that had supported the wartime regime, and sought to unravel the wartime Japanese police state by breaking up the national police force into small American-style police forces controlled at the local level.^\3]) SCAP also sought to empower previously marginalized groups that it believed would have a moderating effect on future militarism, legalizing the Communist and Socialist parties, encouraging the formation of labor unions, and extending the right to vote to women. The crowning achievement of the first phase of the occupation was the promulgation at SCAP's behest in 1947 of a new Constitution of Japan.^\1]) Most famously, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution explicitly disavows war as an instrument of state policy and promises that Japan will never maintain a military.^\1])

At the same time, however, Cold War tensions were already ramping up in Europe, where the Soviet occupation of Eastern European countries led Winston Churchill to give his 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, as well as in Asia, where the tide was turning in favor of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War.^\1]) These shifts in the geo-political environment led to a profound shift in U.S. government and Allied occupation thinking about Japan, and rather than focusing on punishing and weakening Japan for its wartime transgressions, the focus shifted to rebuilding and strengthening Japan as a potential ally in the emerging global Cold War. Meanwhile on the Japanese domestic front, rampant inflation, continuing hunger and poverty, and the rapid expansion of leftist parties and labor unions led occupation authorities to fear that Japan was ripe for communist exploitation or even a communist revolution and to believe that conservative and anti-communist forces in Japan needed to be strengthened. An early sign of the shift in SCAP's thinking came in January 1947 when MacArthur announced that he would not permit a massive, nationwide general strike) that labor unions had scheduled for February 1.^\1]) Thereafter, the broader shift in occupation policies became more and more apparent.^\1])

ever read a medival epic and be like "oh wow racism REALLY didn't exist lmao" what the fuck happened (looks at Teutonic Order) what the FUCK did you do

Franz Halder was a prominent Wermacht general and ally to Hitler. Halder was instrumental in devising the nazi invasion of Poland and later Operation Barbarossa as Chief of the General Staff of the Wermacht High Command. Halder oversaw the Barbarossa decree, which ordered German soldiers to exterminate civilian populations, ordered the murder any communist or Jew they found, ordered strict punishment for German soldiers raping non-German women(the women would be killed), and gave German soldiers total immunity from existing German law. As Barbarossa failed, Halder and Hitler became estranged and Halder was eventually jailed before eventually surrendering to the Americans.

Halder lied about his knowledge and participation in Hitler's genocide. Taking him at his word, Halder was quickly acquitted of any wrongdoing. He was then recruited to be a state historian by the US Army Historical Division. Halder leveraged his knowledge of the Soviets in order to get himself and a cabal of fellow Nazis put in charge of the post-war historiography of WW2. Eventually his ordering of war crimes was discovered and Nuremberg asked for a retrial. The US Army declined.

Halder immediately began fabricating the clean Wermacht myth. Halder and his "research" group of former Nazi officers personally vetted and edited account of WW2 in order to erase evidence of Wermacht involvement in war crimes, and blamed Hitler entirely for Germany's strategic failures. Halder's group fabricated antagonism between the Wermacht and Hitler, and placed the blame for war crimes entirely at the feet of the SS. They also had a great deal of control of the archives through the 1950s, only letting favorable accounts trickle out to pro-German historians.

Halder eventually retired from his work for the US Army in the late 1950s. He remained an icon of WW2 historians; still frequently corresponding with fellow Nazi apologists and fielding questions. In 1961 JFK gave Halder the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, making Halder the only German to be personally awarded by both Hitler and and American president.

Context: After hearing a rumor that his secretary Henry Neilson was sleeping with his wife, he confronted and shot Henry in the chest.

He survived the initial shot but died of the injury 2 years later

The King came to learn the rumor was completely false and felt immense remorse, offering to accept punishment and even abdicate the throne. Everyone around him rejected his proposal to abdicate.

He sought redemption through public service, helping in many public projects, including Hawaiian medical centers and Anglican Churches

During the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans were notorious for infighting. Especially between communists, socialists, anarchists, and other factions. Tensions occasionally erupted into violence, most notably during the May Days of 1937 in Barcelona, when rival Republican factions fought each other in the streets. The subsequent suppression of the POUM, encouraged by the commies, further deepened these divisions.

Even as Franco’s Nationalists fought to defeat the Republic, factions within the Republican camp were sometimes busy fighting, persecuting, and even killing one another.

Needless to say, this wasn’t particularly helpful to the Republican war effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Collor

HMS Jervis Bay was an armed passenger liner that encountered the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer while protecting a merchant convoy. From Captain Fegen of the Jervis Bay’s Victoria Cross citation:

“For valour in challenging hopeless odds and giving his life to save the many ships it was his duty to protect. On the 5th November, 1940, in heavy seas Captain Fegen, in His Majesty’s Armed Merchant Cruiser Jervis Bay, was escorting 31 Merchantmen. Sighting a powerful German warship, he at once drew clear of the convoy, made straight for the enemy and brought his ship between the raider and her prey, so that they might scatter to escape. Crippled, in flames, unable to reply, for nearly an hour the Jervis Bay held the German’s fire. So she went down; but of the Merchantmen, all but four or five were saved.”

Context: During the reign of King Kamehameha II, Christian missionaries began to arrive per invitation by the rulers, after they abolished the previous system of worship known as the Kapu.

His mother in law Ka’ahumanu was a Christian convert and Kamehameha II was friendly towards it, but refused to convert as he would have to give up having multiple wives including his half sister Kamāmalu.

He purchased a royal yacht known as Cleopatra’s Barge and was said to have such pride in it that his agent stated:

If you want to know how Religion stands at the Islands I can tell you — All sects are tolerated but the King worships the Barge.

In the lead up to the Battle of Savo Island the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia was called away from commanding the allied task force so that its admiral could attend a conference between the other allied commanders. During its absence that night several Japanese ships moved in and attacked the allied force resulting in the loss of four heavy cruisers and one damaged, Australia was the only heavy cruiser in the force to escape unscathed.

also storks fought Homo floresiensis aka the hobbit of flores which is very similar to the myth which is also crazy like godamn

The British East India was ultimately successful in conquering India. One of the most challenging states to overcome in the subcontinent was Mysore, the topic of the meme.

Mysore was fiercely independent, had a string of S-tier rulers, and a huge army. They also had Mysorean rocketry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets

The world’s first iron cased rockets.