By James Joll
Poetic coincidence, I began reading this book while waiting for a plane in Geneva Switzerland, home of the European UN, in the country nestled between France and Germany. Also as bit of humor TJ lent me this book as a pass through from one of his friends who studied it for a class. I mused at what he took note of versus what I marked as noteworthy. We had to have taken away two different verdicts. This is the third in my series of books where I am purposefully looking for answers to the cause of war. The first two, Rise and fall Of the Third Reich and Paris 1919, only threw clues and inferences. Also know I have a library of read material related to the subject but such material was not necessarily read to answer this single question. I was hoping, from the author’s credentials as college professor and historian, to get something more absolute from this one. While I gained a lot of insight and can now start to draw my own conclusions I hate to say it but I am leaning towards the view of the French, which is always to be fearful of the German propensity for dominion. I am leaning with reservation because the French have yet to reach a level of national conscience that demonstrates peace for the right reason. This review will brush over the top of James Joll’s work and I will make an attempt to connect dots and draw conclusions. Keep in mind I am on to reading on Bismarck and then the Crimean War, so I reserve the liberty to modify conclusions written herin.
This book addresses seven different overarching factors starting with the July crisis in 1914 that may have attributed to the cause of WWI. Of the seven factors the mood of 1914 strikes me as the most intriguing. The mood involves the dynamics between the people and their leaders. The most essential aspect of the relationship is the timing of an action, which may be the result of decisions made long before the action. Power politics versus humanity with a civilized world order looming in the balance. While all the countries involved in WWI experienced these dynamics, Germany, albeit with a considerable peace movement in its midst, appears to have demonstrated the most tangible aptitude towards war.
Along the lines of a manipulated mood, one interesting dynamic the author includes is socialism-v-capitalism. What makes this intriguing is the author demonstrates that it is not the theory of the two philosophies but rather the way each may be applied. History clearly shows that free market, as a medium for freely negotiated division of labor, is an accelerator towards a peaceful society. Socialism has demonstrated the same when you look at Scandinavia. To this day the differences have not come close to instigating an international conflict. Only corruption and power politics internally and internationally can be found as a culprit.
In 1914 the novel idea socialism seemed to challenge the sense of internal power among the leaders where creating international conflict helped bring a sense of nationalism that would be perceived by the constituents as dependant on their leadership. This dynamic did not directly cause the war, but it gave leaders a motive to cultivate the approval to go to war. In the German case, the cultivation of the approval is most prominent. The first reason is the country was only 40 years old with many states questioning their unity. In Germany with the mechanics of their government the military was king. Rather than a civil war killing each other they opted for a war against their neighbors. Today in the European Union, there are many states questioning the purpose and fairness of a new Union, with Germany at center stage once again.
With regard to the mobilization of the war machine in Germany, the feeling of power in conjunction with the limitations in aptitude of one person(s) pulling the levers appears to have been a dynamic of the breakout of the war, but not the cause. To qualify this their was purposeful deception in justifying decisions for war but more so the direct mobilization of military machines were run amuck. Cause and effect was not clearly understood or communicated among the leaders involved. Connecting the dots of the diplomatic cause to the military effect, given that military action as the last instrument of diplomacy, finds the irretrievable orders of mobilization to war irreconcilable with the profit-loss aspects of a military result. Because this is an aspect of the war, I find it difficult to call it the protagonist of the war.
The protagonist to The Great War as history sees it appears to be clearly placed with Germany. In their unification, they found both as a people and in their leadership the desire to expand. At the same time they were internally conflicted which caused leadership to find international conflict a solution to bolstering a unified German mind. The legacies of Bismarck, Nietzche, and Treitschke over 40 years through the education in their schools, the German youth were a brainwashed a people apt to salute anything with a uniform. Those uniforms told them that they deserve more. The Kaiser, with an agenda for more pushed Austria to military action with Serbia. The Kaiser knew a conflict would draw in Russia. The Kaiser knew his plan would require the neutralization of France. The Kaiser miscalculated is English in-laws. Aside from his low level of mental acuity we question his motive.
In defense of the other belligerents, Austria-Hungary’s state of disintegration on its own may have taken a more passive position to a perceived attempt to disrupt the transition of Habsburg power from its current king to its prince in waiting. Russia had its interests in a warm water port guised in its protection of Slavic people, but was not in a position having just been defeated by Japan to go to war. France and England over years of disarmament were just not ready for war. Germany was going a different direction having built up its navy to rival England, and bolstered is army through a conscription level higher than its neighbors. Germany saw both Russia and England as rivals that they needed an upper hand on. The shot heard around the world was all the Kaiser needed to launch a military plan that caused general war. Could this have been prevented?
Balance of Power did not work to gain a world peace and eventually gave way to a United Nations, which obviously is not working, as there have been over 65 wars across national boarders since its inception. We also know building coalitions forces have its limitations as business and political agendas often conflict. It seems greed for money and power corrupt whomever sits at the helm of any type of organization. We know that boycotts and sanctions do not work as world consensus or for that matter consensus at any level is impossible to maintain. What will work? I have said before that it seems that when two or more people ban together for a common cause involving scarcity of some thing, there will be another group ready to fight for their share. Who should be the arbitrator of such conflict and can you scale this arbitration to a world level?
What is missing is Conscience…collective conscience… the power of one singular mind for mankind…the willingness to extend your being beyond your physical self. At the core is You/Us. If you have a conflicted conscience it would follow that your society has a conflicted conscience. Germany certainly displayed how a group of people can make their body temples a false alter through which they perceive the world. They sought for more…the god of more. They had collective conscience going in the right direction, but were merely focused on the State, their State and that is where they became delusional. But lets be fair, Americans in 2007 do it too. Cast a hue of shame on us for collectively lobbying our congressmen for banning the sale of key resources to international entities (China & Dubai) that we fear that they may get more than we get.
So lets turn the coin over and hit the fast forward button. Why does Iran fear the West? Read my past reviews, first they want something today that they once had which is recognition as a world power. They now fear others because those countries want something Persians have. (oil and/or warm water). They feared USSR because of their experience of a Russian agenda for more. (warm water port) They feared the British because of their same experience through bogus business deals. (oil) Iran, believe it or not, prefer to work with and through the United States for their rightful place on the world stage as right now only the United Sates through its diplomacy shine a light on that need. This phenomenon was also observed in my reading of 1919. Yet we fear them (Muslims} because we are convinced they are out to take away our way of life. I consider it merely to be a subplot rooted in Imam rhetoric, albeit rooted in the Quran, a fear that is snatched up by people on both sides of the equation living in fear. In every case there is a fear of one group of people taking away an object even if that object is an idea (ideal) from another group of people.
What if we did away with the groups of people? Sounds too much like communism. What if we did away with the objects? Sounds too much like Jesus. Oddly enough communism banned the teachings of Jesus. What was he teaching? Jesus was teaching that we are all one. When you make a slight on another you are making a slight upon yourself. When you make a gift for another you are making a gift for yourself. When you are giving up a material thing for another, you are gaining a material thing for yourself. When you live at the sake of another you are slighting that other man and thus slighting yourself. We are all one of one singular mind and that is to love (allow another to exist just as he/she is) and be happy with that reality (accept it). The average bear does not see or perhaps does not want to see it that way because he is not at one with himself. There is no singularity of the mind that would enable him to transcend his body temple. Therefore, he spends his energy consuming more things to make his body, family, village, city, nation, more comfortable.
Therefore groups of people build temples, shrines, or monuments that while intended to unite people, they miss all people, ending up with a group of people and therefore have unacceptable separate realities full of conflict, whether intended in its origin or not. Historically we find it to be a part of human nature to behave this way individually and as nations. We have failed to understand that the basic tenant of conflict is the failure to recognize that the human race is all one, the world is a billion piece jigsaw puzzle, where one damaged or missing piece renders the whole puzzle worthless. To break through, can we suspend with the idea of temples, as they are symbols of our separateness? Can we get rid of symbols as they unintentionally classify, which is a proponent of the process of division? These very questions suggest we do away with religion, government, and science, as we know them. They can be seen as opponents to each other and to mankind when applied in the wrong spirit of mind. Daunting!!!!
In the case of WWI it is easy to pass the buck on to Germany. They had motive, preconceived intent, and the ability. There people never saw the devastation on their side of the boarder in that war allowing Hitler to light another fuse. It took the their annihilation in WWII to finally eradicate their compulsion of war like behavior as a nation. But to slight them is to slight the whole human race. Whilst we maintain a continued vigilance on Germany and Japan, we should be mindful of our own thinking as well. Our option as history would propose… annihilation
Not sure I have said anything new, but will leave it here for now. I am on to finishing, Bismarck, Crimean, and then on to techno solutions.
End notes
The Old Alliance System
1. p. 56: The maintenance of Austria-Hungry as a Great Power became a major foreign policy goal of Germany, both on diplomatic grounds, since Austria was seen as Germany’s only ally, and because any internal crisis in Austro-Hungry might have repercussions in Germany.
2. p. 57: In the years between the Bosnian crisis and the outbreak of the First World War, four things were forcing a reassessment and tightening up of the alliance system in Europe. The upheavals in Turkey which encouraged Russian hopes of compensating for their humiliation in the Far East by gains in the Balkans, …Austrians must act vigorously against Serbia to prevent the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy…the German naval building was a threat to Britain’s imperial interest,…German belief they must take action in order to ensure that the world balance of power was in their favor, … the hopes of the French, using the alliance with Russia to obtain the return of Alsace and Lorraine.
3. p. 63: on the period before 1914: Although the Germans had given the Austrians some diplomatic support at certain points in crisis, the Balkan quarrels had not escalated into European war because the Germans were not prepared to give their ally free hand against Serbia.
4. p. 65: The realization by the Germans that Austria-Hungry was her only reliable ally and that she must be supported at all costs in any policies which Austrians thought essential for survival of the Habsburg State, was an important motive for the German decisions of July 1914; and these decisions have been seen in terms of the Austrian belief that Germany had not supported her sufficiently in the previous years.
5. p. 66: The existence of the alliance system above all conditions expectations laid about the form of a war would take if it broke out, and about who were likely to be friends and enemies. These expectations laid down broad lines of strategic planning, so that general staffs were taking decisions, which often committed them to irreversible military actions if war threatened.
Militarism, Armaments and Strategy
6. p. 70: by 1912 the German authorities were so worried about the Social Democrats won a third of the votes in the Reichstag, they had serious doubts about increasing the size of their army. …the government succeeded in1913 in carrying a three year law through parliament, the anti-militarist movement was strong enough for any government to take into account the mood of the conscripts before starting a war.
7. p. 71 in a town hall conflict a soldiers telegram “ Town Hall occupied by the military. We urgently desire information as to the reasons in order to reassure the excited citizens.” Satirists might laugh at this episode, but it was a sign of the readiness of Germans to accept without question the orders of anyone in a military uniform.
8. p. 72 While the general acceptance of military values by large sections of the German public may have contributed to the mood which made war possible and to the enthusiasm with which the outbreak of war was greeted, the most important aspect of the role of the German army in the coming war was its freedom from civilian political control
9. p. 77 And Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, as result of changes in the cabinet….: I must explicitly repudiate the suggestion that Great Britain can ever allow another naval power to approach her so nearly as to deflect or to restrict her political action by purely naval pressure.” The German government was in fact hoping for just that and wanted political concessions in exchange for naval disarmament.
10. p. 79 The structure of German society gave a special role to the army and produced a special respect for military values. The naval policies of the Kaiser and Tripitz aroused British foreign antagonism and began a naval race which had important social and economic effects as well as producing a radical change in British foreign policy.
11. p. 88 The King withdrew from, politics and Alexander became Prince Regent, while Pasic announced dissolution of parliament and new elections for 1 August. Thus, because of tension between the army and the civilian government, Serbia was in the midst of a major political crisis at the moment of the assignation of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
12. p. 90: Traditions of terrorism and conspiracy going back to the years of Turkish rule contributed an element of instability in both domestic and foreign policy (Serbian)…. Yet in the summer of 1914, when the Serbian army had not yet recovered from efforts in the Balkan wars, was hardly the moment for Serbia to provoke such a war; the evidence does not suggest that either the Serb government or the army command wanted to do so.
13. p. 91: The pace was set by Germany trying, for a variety of reasons, to shift world balance of power in her favor even if it involved a risk of war.
The Primacy of Domestic Politics
14. p. 109: notably that of Germany as we shall see, foreign policy was sometimes used as a way of providing a focus for national feelings so as to distract attention away from divisions and tensions of German society
15. p. 111: The Austro- Hungarian government believed that the establishment of some sort of control over Serbia was essential for the survival of their state.
16. p.111: The Liberal government had been in power in England since 1905 and there were many among supporters who held to tradition of …Gladstone, and believed that the balance of power was a dangerous concept, that expenditure on armaments was both wasteful and wicked and that Britain’s policy should be to maintain the freedom of trade and to keep herself free of foreign entanglements.
17. p. 115: If we look for responsibility for the First World War in the political and constitutional arrangements of the belligerent states, then the structure of the British government can be held responsible for Grey’s reluctance openly to commit Britain to support France and Russia before he was absolutely convinced he could carry his party with him.
18. p. 117: if a war was to come, it would have to be overran issue which would appear to the French public as involving a direct threat to France. For this reason the French government appeared to the Russians to be unreliable allies.
19. p. 117: French Prime Minister Poincare was convinced the he could produce a mood of national unity as was prepared to use his presidential prerogatives as far as they could possibly be stretched in order to do so. Domestic politics were to be subordinated to foreign policy.
20. p. 120: It was by then already clear to Poincare that the strength of anti-militarism had been exaggerated and that mobilization would proceed without interference from socialist or syndicalists.
21. p. 124: The Tsar himself was sometimes influenced by similar ideas for the reconstruction of central Europe. He told a rather bewildered British ambassador in April 1913 that he believed the disintegration of the Austrian Empire was only a matter of time.
22. p. 130: with regard to Germany, There is evidence that, at least from the 1890s, members of imperial government believed a vigorous foreign policy and encouragement of an aggressive nationalist spirit would be one way of overcoming the particularist sentiments in the individual states and producing a mood of national unity comparable to that of 1870.
23. p. 131: Bulow had successfully fought Reichstag elections of 1907 with slogans which combined nationalism, colonialism, and anti-socialism.. However the supporters of the view that it was concern for (German) domestic polititics that determined the conduct of German foreign policy would argue that this was more than just a matter of using foreign political issues for the immediate purpose of winning a particular election, and that foreign policy was deliberately used as a means of manipulating public opinion so as to create a sense of solidarity among German people and overcome the social and political divisions which were seen as a threat to every existence of the German Empire. The attraction of colonial Empire, a large fleet and an active policy would serve both as a basis for rallying the loyal elements around the Kaiser and government and as a means of countering the threat of a growing socialist movement.
24. p. 132: It is unlikely that German naval building would have been pursued so enthusiastically without the Kaiser’s personal commitment to the creation of a German fleet. This was no doubt partly the result of his own psychology – his emotional need to show himself the equal of his British relatives, and his country equal to England, which he both loved and hated.
25. P. 139: Between 1912 and the outbeak of the war, much nationalist propaganda was explicitly linking calls for preparation for war with the hope that a war might put an end to social democracy. ... While other members of the German government and high command believed that there was little point in postponing a war which they considered inevitable. Bethmann, with his eyes on the internal situation, was concerned that a war if it cam should appear to be one in which Germany was attacked by Russia. … From the time of Engals and Marx onwards, socialists had always believed that war against Russia, the most reactionary power in Europe would be justified, however they might criticize militarism at home.
The International Economy
26. p. 161: The international bankers were in a paradoxical position, symbolic perhaps of the whole capitalist system in Europe before 1914. Pm one hand, through their close collaboration with governments, they encouraged by their investment policy the consolidation of alliances and the growth of colonial rivalries. On the other hand the benefited by the flow of international trade and had an interest in uninterrupted international tension.
27. p. 164: The British share of world trade was falling…they had older industries. From a purely economic view of the United States was at least as dangerous a rival a Germany yet there was not talks of growing antagonism between the two. Sir Edward Grey in 1906 “ The economic rivalry (and all that) do not give much offence to our people, and they admire her steady industry and genius for organization. But the do resent mischief making. They suspect the Emperor of aggressive plans of Welpolitik, and they see that Germany is forcing the pace of armaments in order to dominate Europe and is thereby laying a horrible burden of wasteful expenditure upon all the other powers.
28. p. 168: Certainly there were industrialist and military men who hoped the war once begun would end with a peace that would extend their markets or safeguard their strategic position ( Field Marshal Hindenburg was to justify his demands for large annexations from Russia with the words “I need them for maneuvering of my left wing in the next war”)… Bethman approved a program of extensive annexations in the west to be followed in the pushing back of the Russian frontier and ending Russian control over non Russian [people … these gains that Germany went to war and that alone seemed to provide a way out of economic difficulties and contradictions so widely apparent in the spring of 1914.
Imperial Rivalries
29. p. 176 During the 1890s the main imperial rivalries had been between Britain ND France in Africa and Britain and
30. p. 176: Russia in the Far East. Britain and France had been close to war in 1898 over their claims to the upper Nile.
31. p. 181: For Britain in 1914 the threat to the empire which Germany appeared to represent was not a threat to any particular colony – as we shall see, right down to the outbreak of war there was always room for agreement between the two countries on specific colonial questions.
32. p. 181/182: Welpolitik or imperialism in this very general sense – and this was one of the reasons why it could serve as a unifying force for many different groups in German society – seemed to give purpose and a new mission to German state.
33. p. 188: The Turkish government ware increasingly concerned that their obvious weakness, after their defeats in Tripoli and Balkan wars made them vulnerable to a threat of partition, and they became convinced that they had more to fear from Russia than from Germany.
34. p. 181: Nevertheless the case of Turkey – like that of China a decade earlier – and the complex story of Anglo-German co-operation and rivalry there suggest that here was an area in which imperialist rivalries among European Great Powers were contributing to the instability which made the outbreak possible.
35. p. 191: Giolitti states: Tripolitania is a province of the Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Empire is a European great power. The integrity of what remains of the Ottoman Empire is one of the principles on which equilibrium an peace is based… Can it be in the interests of Italy to shatter one of the cornerstones of the old edifice? And what if after we have attacked Turkey, the Balkans begin to stir? And what if a Balkin war provokes a clash between the two power blocs and a European war? Can it be that we can shoulder the responsibility of putting a match to the powder?
36. p. 192: Certainly Italy’s imperialist war was one of the sparks lighting what one historian has called the long fuse linking the outbreak of the First Wiorld War to remote origins in the Balkins.
37. p. 192: The outbreak of war in 1914 wa not caused by immediate imperialist rivalries; and Germany’s aspirations for colonial territory might well have been achieved by agreement with Britain if the Germans had been prepared to abate their claims to naval hegemony. Nevertheless weak independent states such as Morocco and Ottoman were a temptation for the imperialist.
38. p 195: Imperialist thinking had always accepted the risk of war and regarded armed struggle as an essential part of imperial extension, even though tin fact imperialist was had hitherto for the most part been limited in scope. By 1914 this intensified the crisis in which German ambitions, French grievances, Russian expansionism, British anxieties and Austrian fears lead to decisions that war was inevitable.
The Mood of 1914
39. p. 199: But the mood in which peoples of Europe accepted and in some cases welcomed the idea of war was not just the result of the way in which their governments had justified their immediate political decisions. It was founded on the accumulation of national traditions and attitudes which had formed beliefs about the nature of the state and authority, reinforced by the curriculum in schools over the past decades and the kind of language in which politicians and journalists had discussed international relations.
40. p. 203: at the Tsar’s initial peace conferences in 1899 and 1907, the Kaiser declared: I’ll go along with the on conference comedy but I’ll keep my dagger at my side during the waltz.
41. p. 204 Most members of the peace movement were anxious to stress that their attempts to reform their system of international relations and to reduce armaments did not mean they lacked patriotism… “ We cannot continue criticism of policy which has led to this war as we did in the case of South Africa, for our safety is at stake. We can none of now think of anything but this one object”.
42. p. 204: Among socialist, “The working man has no country” the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed in 1848, “National differences and antagonisms are daily more and more vanishing owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, the freedom of commerce, the world market, the corresponding thereto.
43. p. 204: The internal regime of a stat was opposing Russia was of little importance: Turkey, for example as in the Crimean War was on the side of history because, as Engals put it a few years later: “A subjectively reactionary force can in foreign policy fulfill an objectively revolutionary mission.
44. p. 208: in France the revolutionary syndicalists and some socialists were calling for general strike in the event of mobilization… the French departments were busy revising the lists of people who were to be arrested in the event of mobilization.
45. p. 210: in Germany, they never forgot the twelve years under Bismarck’s snit-socialist law which had made many of the usual activities of political party impossible and were terrified that similar restrictions might be imposed again. …Bebel in fact accepted the socialist’s impotence in the face of German state and the Prussian military caste…
46. p. 211: In short the governments were very successful in convincing their citizens that they were the victims of aggression and in appealing to immediate feelings of patriotism and self-preservation which proved stronger than any internationalist convictions.
47. p. 217. When the war broke out, the British at least were encouraged by their newspapers, propagandists and religious leaders to attribute the war specifically to the influence of two German writers, the philosopher Fredrick Nietzche and the historian Heinrich von Treitschke.
48. p. 218: The moment the State proclaims “Your State and the existence of your State are now at stake” selfishness disappears and party hatred is silenced…In this consists the grandeur of war, that trivial things are entirely lost sight of in the great ideal of the State.
49. p. 223: Baden-Powell enabling the British Empire to survive: “We must all be bricks in the wall of that great enterprise – the British Empire – and we must be careful that we do not let our differences of opinion on politics and other questions grow so strong as to divide us.”
