Friday 19 September 2014

The War that Ended Peace

Margaret MacMillan's prize-winning volume on the causes of the First World War is a must-read for anyone interested in that complex but elusive subject; in modern history generally; and in how wars start - a nervous subject given President Putin's antics in the Ukraine.

Professor Macmillan begins in Louvain, Belgium, and the destruction in the early days of the war of the magnificent library by the advancing Germans. There follows a survey of Europe in 1900 by way of describing the exhibitions of the various countries at the Paris Exposition of that year.

Then begins the history proper as each of the big players is examined in turn from about the mid 19th century - Great Britain and 'splendid isolation'; 'Woe to the country that has a child for a king' (Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II); Dreadnoughts and -the Anglo-German rivalry; the Entente Cordiale (France and Britain); Britain's relationship with Russia and how the Triple Entente was formed to match the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; the creaky empire of the Habsburgs - (Austria-Hunagary); the Balkans including Serbia and Bulgaria - and the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

After that - 'What were they thinking?' What was the mindset of the nations in the early years of the last century? What were the philosophies that motivated people? Social Darwinism gets a few mentions as a powerful influence - struggle is inevitable and the fittest will survive.

Then comes a description of the decade or two leading up to the war - crises in the Balkans and Morocco. War seemed very close more than once, and the climb-downs and compromises left a fragile and volatile legacy, a powder keg that only needed one crisis too many to set it off. Sarajevo and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the spark that ignited that keg.

What were the factors leading to war? Militarism, especially of Germany; imperialism as the Empires tried to protect their interests around the world and in Europe, or in the case of Russia and Germany, felt they needed to catch up with the older Empires; nationalism as subject peoples sought liberty. There was pride and the upholding of honour. There was sheer stupidity, stubbornness and incompetence - Macmillan leavens her history with delightful and often hilarious pen-portraits of many of the key politicians of the time. The crises in the Balkans and Morocco in the decade before 1914 slowly edged the world towards war so that before 1914 many observers were saying that war at some point soon was inevitable.

Macmillan concludes: 'Was Wilhelm II to blame for the Great War? Was Tirpitz (the German naval chief who began the naval race with Britain)? Grey (the English Foreign Secretary who, it may be argued, had he been more decisive and made it clear, earlier, to Germany that Britain would support France wholeheartedly if Germany attacked, may have averted the crisis)? Moltke (the German army chief)? Berchtold (Austria-Hungary's Foreign Minister)? Poincare of France? Or was no-one to blame? Should we look instead at institutions or ideas? General staffs with too much power, absolute governments, Social Darwinism, the cult of the offensive, nationalism? There are so many questions and as many answers again. Perhaps the most we can hope for is to understand as best we can those individuals, who had to make the choices between war and peace, and their strengths and weaknesses, their loves, hatreds and biases….And if we want to point fingers from the 21st Century we can accuse those who took Europe into war of two things. First, a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be and second, their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left but to go to war. There are always choices'.

And that must be true. Mustn't it?

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