Recently, I noticed a book in the possession of Aelianus, called ‘Dreadnought‘. Due to my recent Hornblower obsession (I really must get to that shoe-post-y series of trivial literature and television at some point), I was immediately intrigued. It turned out to be not about sailing ships (ba!) but about Britain and Germany, and the role of their navies, on the way towards the First World War.
Yet, when I opened the book, the passage I hit upon was extremely vivid, and Aelianus assured me it was representative for the book. This has turned out to be true so far; I am at 550 of 910 pages, and find it the perfect cross between reading a novel and reading serious stuff. In fact, it is rather like reading a novel, only that it has really happened.
It is entertaining, informative, and utterly shocking.
Shocking, because I start to realize how influenced my history teachers were by their Marxist-dominated studies, apparently.
Shocking even more because it seems to me that quite generally in Germany, East or West, the dreadfulness of the First World War is entirely shadowed by the supreme dreadfulness of the Second World War.
According to what I learnt at school, and according to what every rational person in Germany believes, the Second World War was something that would not have happened without particular (Hitler) and general madness in Germany.
The First World War, on the other hand, happened because (now this is what I learnt at school) basically every one of the protagonists had an interest in it happening (imperialism! bad, BAD, Imperialism!!), only no-one thought it would be that disastrous. Now I have only got to 1902 in the book, but from that it is quite obvious that within the more-or-less-moral concerto of diplomatic relations at the time, Germany quite certainly acted on the ‘less’ extreme of that gradient, throughout.
Though Aelinus tells me he shudders at thinking of what would have happened had there been an aliance between Britain and Germany at that point, I still do think that double-dealing, deceitfulness and hubris were even less conductive to European (and worldwide) happiness than a realization of ‘we are basically family, and that parliamentary monarchy thing you have going over there does not seem such a bad thing, probabably rather a better thing than our obsessively military absolutist culture’ would have done. But well. We will never know in this live, probably.
I mean, if, on reading such a book, you think that the ‘resignation’ of Bismarck was a thing that would make matters worse: things must be in a really, really bad state already. Poor, poor Germany, please really do pray for us!
Laodicea 
June 14, 2013 at 10:40 pm
“within the more-or-less-moral concerto of diplomatic relations at the time, Germany quite certainly acted on the ‘less’ extreme of that gradient, throughout.” I didn’t quite understand this bit – could you explain it again?
June 15, 2013 at 11:30 pm
On re-reading probably not the clearest expression…
I meant that of the countries involved, probably all did some unhelpful and morally questionably things, but that Germany, taken all to together, behaved in a particularly reprehensible way.
June 16, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Oh now I understand. Thank you.
June 15, 2013 at 8:32 pm
When you’ve finished with Dreadnought, try Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers”. The origins of WWI lie as much or more in the Balkans and the countries of northern and western Europe’s inability to cope with Turkish withdrawal to Anatolia as in the imperialism that Marxists and the facile of thought try to ascribe the war to.
It’s interesting, too, to look at the way that Germany was viewed in the UK as the 19th Century progressed: from a world of small states, Goethe and Beethoven, to a world of Prussia and Brahms, and to think about how much this reflected the changes in Germany and how much it reflected the changes in the UK.
We are about to endure five years of Fergal Keane emoting from where the trenches were, in a tendentious, Blackadder-inspired travesty of WWI; it might nevertheless be helpful for more Germans to look beyond WWII at some of the events that led to it.
June 15, 2013 at 11:37 pm
Thanks for the tip. But is ‘The Sleepwalkers’ as entertaining?
I always had the Balkans much in mind when thinking about WWI, since it events related to conflicts there started the war. It may be Massie’s style as a historian, but I was quite intrigued, so far, with the extent to which personalities and personal decisions influenced events (especially William II appearing to have been quite insane).
June 16, 2013 at 6:22 pm
No, I’m afraid it’s pretty hard work, but very rigorous academically. Kaiser WII was just not very bright, I think, but was nowhere like as much in control as he and people around the world thought he was: remember that he was on the Royal Yacht and out of touch for most of July 1914.
The bit that rarely gets mentioned is that the Serbs, Romanians, and Bulgarians each tried to play off France and Austria-Hungary, with the Russian’ perceived role of Protector of the Slavs getting wrapped up in it all.
Or if you’d rather:
Private Baldrick: No, the thing is: The way I see it, these days there’s a war on, right? and, ages ago, there wasn’t a war on, right? So, there must have been a moment when there not being a war on went away, right? and there being a war on came along. So, what I want to know is: How did we get from the one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?
Captain Blackadder: Do you mean “How did the war start?”
Lieutenant George: The war started because of the vile Hun and his villainous empire- building.
Captain Blackadder: George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe, while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganika. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the imperialistic front.
Lieutenant George: Oh, no, sir, absolutely not.
[aside, to Baldrick]
Lieutenant George: Mad as a bicycle!
Private Baldrick: I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich ’cause he was hungry.
Captain Blackadder: I think you mean it started when the Archduke of Austria-Hungary got shot.
Private Baldrick: Nah, there was definitely an ostrich involved, sir.
Captain Blackadder: Well, possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war.
Lieutenant George: By Gum, this is interesting. I always loved history. The Battle of Hastings, Henry VIII and his six knives, all that.
Captain Blackadder: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other’s deterrent. That way there could never be a war.
Private Baldrick: But, this is a sort of a war, isn’t it, sir?
Captain Blackadder: Yes, that’s right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan.
Private Baldrick: What was that, sir?
Captain Blackadder: It was bollocks.
Private Baldrick: So the poor old ostrich died for nothing then.
June 16, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Surely the degree to which the Kaiser was in day to day control in 1914 is not really the issue. Bismarck had a basically sound and sane arrangement given Prussian/German interests: keep Austria and Russia allied with Germany to prevent either aligning with France and triggering a war. Broker their disputes in the Balkans so as to keep them both happy as far as possible. Keep colonial entanglements to a minimum so Britain has no interest in continental affairs. William II ruined this system and transformed it into a World War mechanism by refusing to renew the treaty with Russia and building a huge fleet that had no function unless it was to facilitate the conquest of other powers’ colonies in the face of British opposition. He did this not because it made any sense but because he was mentally unstable and he was facilitated by the Prussian tradition of unembarrassed amoral statecraft.
June 16, 2013 at 9:44 pm
Once Bismarck had made the Empire secure in its borders and had dismissed the threat from France and Austria (and Denmark – never forget Denmark!), he had little left (in foreign policy terms) other than his ability to maintain the status quo. When William II came to the throne he represented a new generation and Bismarck’s days were numbered. (There’s a Churchill-Eden analogy here crying to be worked up.)
The war wasn’t inevitable: wars never are; but they are weighed on one side of the balance of probabilities. The tactical decision making by the Great Powers in the Balkans, say from the death of Alexander and Draga in Belgrade in 1903, meant that any grand strategic view of their interests – in particular of their collective interests – had become lost.
This isn’t my field though, so you’ll need to read more widely. But as long as you steer clear of anyone who says it was an imperialist war, you’ll find a richer story than you were taught, and an infinitely more grown up view of history than the Oh-What-A Lovely-War meets Blackadder view that we will be subjected to here for the next five years.
June 16, 2013 at 11:21 pm
I’m not sure what it is you disagree with. It seems clear there was no necessity to dismantle the framework Bismarck constructed to preserve the status quo and William II’s motives for doing so were not rational.
June 17, 2013 at 7:18 pm
All I’m saying is that the Kaiser wasn’t acting alone in developing new policies, and that even if they hadn’t changed, French foreign policy and the activities of the Balkan states themselves would have forced the change.
June 17, 2013 at 10:59 am
Leo XIII, in ‘Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae’, June 1894: “This, as it were, armed peace which now prevails cannot last much longer’.
June 17, 2013 at 7:34 pm
[Repy to Ttony]. I am not clear why French foreign policy would have forced a change as its long term objectives remained the same under Bismarck and afterwards. The difference was that William II’s alienation of Russia allowed them to progress. As for the Balkans a rational partition of Orthodox and Catholic spheres of influence between Russia and Austria was certainly possible in principle and in the interests of both powers and, so long as Britain’s concerns over Constantinople were respected, need not have led to war. In short, the only power with a rational interest was France (because of the annexation) and so long as France was isolated by the alliance system and consoled with colonial expansion there was no need for France to get her war. Germany disrupted that because of William II irrational behaviour. It what sense was it rational for Germany to act as it did (except on the self-fulfilling assumption that was was inevitable)?
June 17, 2013 at 7:50 pm
I’m uncomfortable with the idea that any governmental policy can be “rational”, unless “rational” includes “as viewed from a perspective of self interest” and “subjectively”. For example, I can do convincing arguments as to why we should arm Syrian rebels, not arm but support them, and support Asad, and could justify calling them rational.
WWI isn’t something that happens because a series of mechanistic levers were pulled in the correct order: people with varying amounts of power made various decisions at various points, and one by one, the options for not-war were snuffed out.
I really don’t want to extend this, but you need to think about what the realistic alternatives each of the protagonists thought they (and their adversaries) had at each point in the last couple of years before the war, what constraints each of the protagonists thought they (and their adversaries) were under, and the influence of parliaments and public opinion on the decision makers.
This is PhD stuff, not comments in a blog!!!
June 17, 2013 at 10:39 pm
Rational could be understood in a Machiavellian sense or in a moral sense. In neither of these was the repudiation of the Russian treaty and the building up of huge navy rational. Such support as existed in Germany for the naval build up was elicited by the Kaiser’s government in the late nineteenth century it was not spontaneous.