The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (Making History)

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In: Epkenhans, Michael; Foerster, Stig and Hagemann, Karen eds. Militaerische Erinnerungskultur. Soldaten im Spiegel von Biographien, Memoiren und Selbstzeugnissen (pp. 132-151) From 2006 until 2011 she was the secretary of the German History Society. [2] [ failed verification] As of 2014, she was a member of the editorial board of 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War. [3] She chaired the Open University department's Research Steering Group and the departmental REF panel until December 2013. [1] Media [ edit ]

John Keiger: Yes, I'm afraid that, rather pessimistically, I do think that, particularly over Ukraine, but also perhaps over what is going on in the Far East, [where] there is a potential for things to go horribly wrong. One incident in which the pride of a nation becomes implicated -- like, for instance, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 -- that kind of incident, if it came today, say, the assassination of a major person in Ukraine that immediately brought into play the various external powers, then that could provoke a very serious incident. That does concern me. I don't think the United Nations would be able to do very much. It is very hard to know, but, for instance, if the Russian ambassador in Ukraine was assassinated, what would happen? In: Ehlert, Hans; Epkenhans, Michael and Gross, Gerhard P. eds. Der Schlieffenplan: Analyse und Dokumente (pp. 79-99)

But at this point a crisis develops that is really not of Germany’s making and is really – in the beginning – Austria’s crisis. And Germany then encourages Austria. Would you say that that’s fair – do we need to look more at Austria in the July crisis than at Germany? Historians of the Great War found themselves in high demand in 2014. The looming anniversary naturally prompted publishers to commission titles that were designed to make a splash, cause debate, and spark public interest. The market was consequently flooded with publications that attempted to explain why war had broken out in 1914. Few could have predicted, however, the full extent of public and media interest in World War I. Nor could one have expected that the question of the origins of the war, in particular, would once again be paramount and the subject of widespread, heated debate. This book is a unique collection of diplomatic and military documents for the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. It brings together newly-discovered documents as well as many not previously available in English, drawn from a broad range of sources and countries. It is an essential collection for anyone studying the origins of the First World War. In conclusion, this study makes a very significant contribution to the scholarship on both Wilhelmine Germany and the military pre-history of the Great War. In the current state of research, it is clearly the definitive statement on the role and career of the younger Moltke as Chief of the Great General Staff. I suspect that it will remain as such for a long time to come. Notes From the German perspective, it hardly mattered if Russia was preparing merely a partial or an actual mobilization, because “every day that Russia concentrated her troops was indeed a lost day for the German deployment plan…” Footnote 109 Yet, as Krumeich rightly notes as well, one should “not overlook the fact that it was precisely the strict timetable of the Schlieffen Plan that allowed the political leadership so little leeway for negotiations or even for “militarily secured diplomacy.” Footnote 110 In that sense Britain's hand had not been forced by the fact that Russia had mobilized early, but rather because Germany could not have allowed Russia to have this head start. In emotionally charged scenes, and in the knowledge that Russia was gaining ground, military leaders pleaded with civilian authorities to be allowed to declare Germany's “period preparatory to war.” But it was only when full mobilization was confirmed on July 31 that the German military was allowed to proceed with its own military measures. Footnote 111 The fact that Russia decided on July 24 to prepare to mobilize had nothing to do with this German decision.

As it turned out, the same was true in 2014, when the German general public was again interested in this old-fashioned topic and in old-fashioned diplomatic history. By telling this intricate and complicated story so well, and by saying what many wanted to hear, Clark became (even more) famous and was able to sell his serious work of scholarship in truly staggering numbers. Footnote 125 This is not the only area in which the book makes some interesting contributions to existing debates. Despite the fact that the title suggests that the scope of the work is confined to the origins of the war, the study actually continues into the early war years. Thus, in addition to assessing Moltke's contribution to the military outcome to the July Crisis, Dr Mombauer also evaluates his part in the failure of the so-called Schlieffen plan. This is, of course, an old controversy, but Dr Mombauer is, nevertheless, able to bring a genuinely fresh eye to it. Starting from the premise that there was a Schlieffen plan, Terrance Zuber's recent claims notwithstanding (4) that it was Moltke's job to update this plan on a regular basis, that his revisions made sense in the light of the changing circumstances of the European military scene, and that Moltke's actions reflected the fact that he was not a victim of the 'short war illusion', she is able to provide a more balanced perspective to the German reverse at the Marne. This result, which played a major part in ensuring that the First World War would be a prolonged 'total war', was in many respects the culmination of all of Moltke's fears. Once again, however, this fact merely serves to place his actions in pushing so strenuously for war into the sharpest relief. Der Moltke Plan. Modifikation des Schlieffenplans bei gleichen Zielen?’, in Hans Ehlert, Michael Epkenhans and Gerhard P. Groß (eds), Der Schlieffenplan. Analyse und Dokumente, Paderborn, Schöningh 2006, pp.79-99We’ve just heard from John Röhl and now I’m in the studio here in London with Professor Christopher Clark from Cambridge who is equally as fascinated by this long debate on the origins of the First World War, but he takes rather a different angle in approaching the topic. Chris, before we talk about your own interpretation, I just wonder how convincing you find John’s view which I guess I’d summarise as the German paradigm.

Germany’, in Holger Herwig and Richard Hamilton (eds), War Planning 1914, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 48-79 Find out more about this book The Kaiser. New Research on Wilhelm II’s role in Imperial Germany, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (edited with Wilhelm Deist) Find out more about this book I published my book Die Julikrise in 2014 to present my research-based counter-argument to the centenary revisionist interpretations. I argued that all the major powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France and Russia) had some responsibility for the escalation of the July Crisis but that the German and Austro-Hungarian governments deliberately provoked this crisis without flinching at the possibility of unleashing a major war. Die Julikrise has sold more than 6,000 copies and is also available in Danish and Turkish. Crucially, the book, and other publications in history journals and public forums, have given me a platform to engage in public debate. Sean McMeekin: History never repeats itself in exactly the same way. I see the appeal of these analogies -- that China is Germany. But, of course, China could equally well be Russia in 1914. The Russian economy was growing at a rate of about 9 percent a year in 1914. In fact, in many ways, Russia on the eve of World War I was a far better analogy for China today. Supposedly, even if you believe the traditional historiography the whole problem is the growth of Russian power and that was what was actually destabilizing Europe -- not the growth of German power. So, sometimes even when we try to learn from history, we draw the wrong analogies and the wrong lessons. the long controversy around the question, why did the war break out in the first place? Over the next four weeks, some renowned historians will share their research and analysis with you. And you’ll discover the devastating impact of the war on individuals and on whole societies. While this might seem like a sobering learning experience, it’s also a moving story that’s lost none of its fascination more than a century after it began.

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This reinterpretation of Serbia's role was not welcome in contemporary Serbia, where the national story told about the country's entry into the war has traditionally been one of victimhood. The Belgrade government, in this interpretation, had been unfairly targeted by the imperial power Austria-Hungary, which wrongly sought to punish it for having allegedly instigated the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. In present-day Serbia, i.e., in the aftermath of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the fighting of the 1990s, the history of the country's twentieth-century wars remains politically relevant and contested, and the suggestion that Serbia had played a decisive role in causing the outbreak of World War I was greeted with national outrage. Footnote 35 It should come as no surprise that Serbian nationalists considered unacceptable both Clark's comparison of the events of June 28, 1914 with September 11, 2001, as well as his discussion of Serbia's more recent Balkan Wars in the same breath as Serbia's alleged aggressive prewar foreign policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, Clark's account paints a lurid picture of Serbia's violent past, and he argues that our “moral compass” has changed in recent years: “Since Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo, it has become harder to think of Serbia as the mere object or victim of great power politics and easier to conceive of Serbian nationalism as an historical force in its own right.” Footnote 36 Germany necessarily occupies a central part in this account. Having been blamed for causing the war, it was here that most effort was expended to counter such allegations. However, the actions of other belligerents are also under scrutiny, and interpretations of the role of Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia and Serbia in the events that led to war are analysed. In this audio you will be able to hear two leading historians of the First World War discuss their subject with me, Annika Mombauer. We’ll be hearing from Professor John Röhl and Professor Christopher Clark, who’ll both be able to tell us why this is such a fascinating subject; why this is such a difficult debate; and what the role of evidence – in particular – is in helping historians come to conclusion, quite different conclusions, about the origins of the First World War.

Mombauer studied history at the Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität (University of Münster) in Münster, Germany, and at the University of Sussex, where she was awarded a D.Phil. in history in 1998. She joined the Open University staff in 1998 as lecturer in modern European history. In 2003, she also became a visiting fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, Australia. [1] In Germany, by contrast, Clark's focus on the responsibility of other countries was a welcome relief for many who, it turns out, still resent the “war-guilt” verdict of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and who would prefer to see contemporary Germany be saddled with less historical baggage. One of the most surprising aspects about the debate as it unfolded during the centenary year was, in fact, the depth of feeling that still exists in today's Germany about the “war-guilt question.” Footnote 39 Clark's attempt to dismiss the notion of guilt or the search for a culprit, and to focus instead on previously marginalized actors, was read in Germany as a reversal of the established interpretation assigning the main share of responsibility to Germany—which, it seemed, was now largely off the hook. By emphasizing, in particular, that France and Russia had colluded with one another, Clark suggests that Germany acted defensively. And by highlighting Serbian aggression in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary emerges in his interpretation as a declining imperial power under threat and in need of support from Germany. By bringing the actions of Serbia and its allies into sharper relief, this change of perspective enables a different reading of the decisions taken in Vienna and in Berlin in 1914. The Library's buildings remain fully open but some services are limited, including access to collection items. We're

It seems to me that the problem with the blame-centred approach is not so much that you might end up blaming the wrong party because frankly now a hundred years later, as you say, it doesn’t matter who we blame, politically it doesn’t make any difference. The real danger is that you end up deciding who you think is the culprit – you know bringing in the suspect and then constructing a charge sheet against that suspect in prosecutorial manner which is exactly what Fritz Fischer did. The problem is that that’s such a narrow approach. What we really need to understand is how did this war come about? Once we understand how the war came about, then we can ask questions about why it came about and because of whom; and we need to ask how first and allow the why and who questions to arise out of the how answers, rather than the other way around. Also published in Serbian - ISBN 978-86-7102-452-5 and Croatian translation - ISBN 978-953-303-726-4 - with a new foreword, 2014) Now we’ve talked a lot about guilt, responsibility, culpability, and that’s essentially what this long debate has always been about – trying to attribute guilt, starting of course in the war itself and then at Versailles, it was very much about war guilt for the obvious reasons of needing someone to shoulder the reparations and being responsible. But how useful do you think it is to talk about war guilt now that we’re a hundred years or more removed from these events – should historians attribute responsibility and guilt? Helmuth von Moltke: A General in crisis?’, in Matthew S. Seligmann and Matthew Hughes (eds), Leadership in Conflict, 1914-1918, Leo Cooper, London 2000, pp. 95-116, 0-85052-751-1.