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

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The German Reich was not “guilty” of World War I. Such a category did not exist then, for, according to the code of European state wars, sovereign states had the “ ius ad bellum” as long as they could claim a violation of their interests. In 1914, this right to war applied least to Great Britain because the United Kingdom could not claim an immediate interest of coalition obligation for an intervention in a local war (between Austria-Hungary and Serbia). Only the British entry into the war turned the original conflict into a global disaster. Footnote 114 Well the most recent interpretations on the origins of the war focus on Russia and France in particular and also Serbia’s role has been highlighted – I’m thinking here of Christopher Clark’s book The Sleepwalkers, which has already made quite a splash and he’s looked at a lot of archival evidence to show for example Serbia’s involvement, to prove Serbia’s involvement in the assassination and to highlight the roles played by France and Russia; and Sean McMeekin is another example of somebody who highlights Russia’s culpability in the outbreak of the war. I wonder what your view is on the idea that Europe sleepwalked into war in 1914. That suggests to me that nobody actually wanted it and the war really was an accident. there is no need for scholars to go on a roundtrip through the capitals of Europe with the aim of finding out that other decision-makers were more responsible for the First World War than the two emperors and their advisers. Berlin and Vienna continue to be the best places for historians to look closely for clues as to why war broke out in 1914. Footnote 82 Julikrise und Kriegsschuldfrage – Thesen und Stand der Forschung', Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Spring 2014

Germany’, in Holger Herwig and Richard Hamilton (eds), War Planning 1914, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 48-79 Find out more about this book Clearly, then, some important areas of consensus do exist. But disagreements on nuance and detail continue unabated, and here the devil is in the detail. Historians reading the same evidence come to opposing conclusions or evaluate the importance of specific events in an entirely different way. For example, they continue to argue over the significance of Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia, the importance of the Russian mobilization, as well as about the nature of, and intention behind, the British mediation proposals. In fact, the most recent publications spend a great deal of time considering these controversial aspects in particular.Here Annika explains her research and why it’s essential to understand the origins of the war and the controversy the topic has sparked. The hundred-year debate Annika Mombauer's essential source reader translates, cross-references and annotates a vast range of international diplomatic and military documents on the origins of the First World War. It collects together documents which are newly discovered or were not previously available in English, drawn from a broad range of sources and countries into a single, indispensible text for students and scholars alike. 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.

In 2011 she organised, together with Professor John Röhl, an international conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Fritz Fischer’s publication Griff nach der Weltmacht, which sparked the infamous Fischer controversy. The conference took place on 13-15 October 2011 at the German Historical Institute in London. She has edited some of the conference proceedings which were published in a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary History, entitled ‘The Fischer Controversy after 50 Years’ (April 2013; 48, 2). Clark has greatly advanced our understanding of these crucial events by shifting our focus away from Central Europe to the Balkans, as well as from the immediate causes of the war in 1914 to 1903, thus moving the debate in new directions and highlighting how crucial these “Serbian Ghosts” are for understanding the Balkan origins of the war. Based on Clark's new approach, International Relations theorists have come to understand this brutal act of 1903 as the start of territorial or spatial rivalries between Austria-Hungary and Serbia (the two had maintained better relations before 1903 than they ever would again): “If one could find an initial origin of the war, separate from long-term structural forces, the 1903 murder was it,” political scientist John A. Vasquez argues. Footnote 34 Introduction: The Fischer Controversy 50 years on’, The Journal of Contemporary History April 2013 48 (2), pp.231-240 According to Gerhard Hirschfeld and Gerd Krumeich, the German Reich had “maneuvered itself into a cul-de-sac from which it could not find a way out, but it certainly was not solely responsible for the escalation of the crisis.” Footnote 80 Whether or not Germany acted out of a sense of strength or weakness hardly mattered, in the end, for the outcome of the crisis. Its potential enemies were strengthening their military might, and there is certainly a good deal of evidence suggesting that Germany's leaders feared a time in the not-too-distant future when Russia would be too strong to defeat. Because of its geographic position (i.e., flanked by two hostile powers) and with no alternative to the only plan for deployment in the event of a two-front war, fear of an uncertain future outweighed the fear of a war that one believed one could somehow envision (leaving aside the fact that such visions ultimately fell far short of reality). In the summer of 1914, Germany's leaders were still confident in their momentary advantage over their adversaries: it is thus possible that they combined feelings of superiority with fear of their potential enemies, and that they were motivated by both in equal measure. It was the choices that men made during those fateful days that plunged the world into war. They did not walk in their sleep. They knew what they were doing. They were not stupid. They were not ignorant. The choices they made were rational, carefully calculated, premised on the assumptions and attitudes, ideas and experiences that they had accumulated over the years. Real people, actual flesh-and-blood human beings, were responsible for the tragedy of 1914—not unseen, barely understood forces beyond their control. Footnote 95The 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 This interpretation went counter to my conviction that Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s decision-makers had deliberately provoked a crisis, using the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as a pretext. To me, the evidence was clear. They were willing to risk escalating a localised war with Serbia (whom they suspected to have been behind the assassination), knowing that this could bring Russia, France and Britain into the conflict. 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

RFE/RL: There has been a lot of speculation that the situation around the world now -- say, in Ukraine or the dispute between China and Japan over islands and resources in the South China Sea -- and the situation in the summer of 1914. Do you see parallels and lessons that can be applied to the world today? She would be interested to hear from prospective PhD students wishing to research a topic in modern German or European history. Publications Monographs Common to all recent publications is the stress on the agency of key individuals as a determining factor. Underlying structural factors, such as the alliance system—once the usual explanation for the war's origin—are no longer seen as causes of the war. Footnote 92 Domestic causes of the war, which were a popular explanation in the 1960s and beyond, are also no longer regarded as the reason why war broke out. As Gerd Krumeich concludes: “It is simply not possibly to prove that Bethmann, the Tsar or Poincaré acted as they did for fear of revolution, a putsch, or for domestic policy advantages.” While their decisions were not made “in a vacuum… it has, up to now, not been possible to prove” that their decisions were taken to achieve “domestic or societal goals.” Footnote 93

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Annika Mombauer (born 1967) is a historian best known for her work on General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. She is a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History in the History Department at the Open University in Great Britain, and Associate Dean (Research) for the Arts Faculty. The “war-guilt” debate is, without a doubt, one of the most protracted historical controversies of modern history. Why did Franz Ferdinand's violent death unleash a war of previously unprecedented horror and scale? This murderous act resulted in the July Crisis, “the most complex [event] of modern times, perhaps of any time so far,” and ended in “the most complicated of all wars,” leading to a hundred-year controversy and a heated quest to identify “guilt” among some of the participants. Footnote 9 That question seemed easy to settle when the war had just broken out: everyone was certain, of course, that their war was a defensive one. In the wake of the Allies’ victory, it was also easy to attribute “war guilt” to the losers. But over the next hundred years, the term guilt would fall out of fashion; at the same time, the question of deciding who had been responsible would remain a topic of fraught debate. It would be an exaggeration to claim that the long debate about the war's origins had been entirely settled before the centenary, but there were nonetheless broad agreements that had been hard fought for during decades of debate.