Engels' prediction of WWI
anecdote · Marxist history ·
retold in 8 talks
Friedrich Engels, in the 1870s/80s, predicted a future European war involving Germany caught between Anglo-Saxons and Russia, which Germany would lose and then restart, demonstrating that Marxists can be lucky or prescient.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 8
“Engels... clearly predicted World War II... Germany will find itself coined between two poles: Anglo-Saxon, French and Russian.”
“Engels: if Germany will lose this war, in a decade or two, Germany will trigger another war.”
“Engels in some letter saw the signs... he says there will be around 10 million dead people.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
universal historicist dialectical movement
×1
retroactive necessity
×1
dark underside
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Otto von Bismarck3Chris Hani2Charles Rosen2Lyndon B. Johnson2John F. Kennedy2Frederick II of Prussia2Henri Bergson2Charles Taylor2
alongside works
Every retelling 8
Friedrich Engels, in the 1870s/80s, predicted a future European war involving Germany caught between Anglo-Saxons and Russia, which Germany would lose and then restart, demonstrating that Marxists can be lucky or prescient., illustrating universal historicist dialectical movement,retroactive necessity
Friedrich Engels, in an 1882 letter, accurately predicted the alliances, death toll, and subsequent German-triggered second war of World War I, demonstrating that the 'era of progress' was an illusion masking impending catastrophe., illustrating dark underside,Hegel's big obsession
Engels predicted WWI in 1880, including the death toll (9-10 million) and the trigger for WWII by a defeated Germany, showing Marx/Engels had concrete foresight despite being dismissed as mere theorists., illustrating materialist reversal of Marx into Hegel
In a letter Engels predicted a Pan-European war: Germany-Austria vs Russia, with France-England in the west, ~1 million dead, and that if Germany lost it would trigger another war in a decade or two., illustrating dialectics,the dark underside of progress
Engels in the 1870s-80s predicted a European war at the start of the next century in which Germany, caught between Anglo-French and Russian poles, would lose, and then start a new war a decade or two later., illustrating Marxist prediction,dialectical analysis of geopolitics
In a letter, Engels predicted an all-European mega-war (Germany vs. France/England and Russia), estimated around a million deaths (the official WWI figure), and the possibility of a Russian revolution; in another fragment he foresaw a German war of revenge ~30 years later, anticipating WWII., illustrating Engels as pragmatic analyst,dialectic of contingency and necessity,historical prediction