Before you bother to read any of my tedious tripe please do visit The American Spectator and see how a brilliant, intelligent and passionate writer, Peter Hitchens, tackles the pros and cons of WWI - even if, in my opinion, he's wrong on the essentials. I must admit that in taking on the likes of Peter Hitchens, and Niall Ferguson, the distinguished historian who supports his view, I feel a tiny bit of the tremors that our 'Tommies' must have experienced as they 'went over the top'! It is also worth reading an article from 2009 written by Hitchens' late brother, Christopher, for The Atlantic which may or may not have influenced Peter but the pair of them, despite their philosophical differences, obviously agreed on this one premise - that Britain should not have entered WWI.
I admit that it is with a fair amount of uncertainty that I disagree with Mr. Hitchens so let me begin by emphasising one huge point on which we are both in total accord - 'it woz the Huns wot started it' - as he makes clear:
Since Fritz Fischer’s great and damning account of his own country’s undoubted attempt to seize world power by shock and force, the truth has been quite clear.
Germany started the war because she wanted and hoped to gain enormous prizes through a swift victory, first over France and then over Russia. She encouraged Austria to be inflexible toward Serbia in the hope that this would happen, and the plan worked. It was not the first time that a country had carefully fostered a pretext for war, and it will certainly not be the last. Most readers in Britain and the U.S. will be able to think of recent examples.
In a post on his blog in The Mail earlier this year he emphasised German war guilt:
I’d add that there’s no real doubt that Germany began the war. I really don’t know why anyone bothers to argue otherwise. The great German historian Fritz Fischer established this beyond all doubt in his unmatched work of 1961 ‘Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegzielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914–1918’ This was published in English with the emollient and evasive title ‘ Germany's Aims in the First World War’ . A more accurate (if slightly sensational translation, as the word ‘grab ‘ is slightly more violent and demotic than ‘Griff’) would be ‘A Grab for World Power - The War Aims of Imperial Germany 1914-1918’. Perhaps ‘Grasping for World Power’ would be more accurate, if less literal, as is often the case in translation.
I have read Fischer's book and it is a damning indictment of the German ruling class who, it should be emphasised, were passionately supported by large swathes of the German people including much of the so-called 'intelligentsia'. And whilst on the subject of the German ruling class of that period it is worth stressing what a deeply peculiar bunch of people they were from the Kaiser downwards and including the military who were not servants of the state but personal servants to Kaiser Wihhelm who was himself arrogant, cowardly, psychotic and stupid beyond belief. Unlike Britain which was ruled by a monarch with considerable influence but no power and in which senior soldiers took orders in the monarch's name but which originated from politicians whose power was equally diffused by party politics and representative government and which could, therefore, be altered or at least argued with, in Germany the Kaiser's word was the first and last word! So, there is absolutely no doubt that Germany had worked out a detailed grand strategic plan and was determined to execute it in 1914.
Now, the Hitchens, frère et frère, can argue from the comfort of the clear bright light and the perfect vision of hindsight. Thus, they can list the multitude of horrors that ensued and no-one, least of all me, can argue with it. I will not linger on the 'mud and blood' which anyone with an iota of feeling may imagine from simply looking at your local war memorial or reading the war poets. Instead I will follow Hitchens' accusatory pointing finger and contemplate the crumbling collapse of Great Britain that followed over the next century and which, I hope and pray, has now reached rock bottom. In fact Hitchens, in his angry despair, points to a collapse in the whole of European culture and civilization since 1914. Again, I can agree up to a point with that whilst not falling prey to the silly notion (not his, to be fair) that Edwardian England, the French belle époque and the last grandeur of the Austrian empire were somehow the pinnacle of civilization. But he is surely right to emphasize that much of life today barely qualifies as civilised and the roots of evil are to be found in the collapse of post 1914-18 Europe.
Even so, trembling and doubtful as I gaze on the wasteland, I still maintain, not so much that we should have fought, as that we had no choice but to fight. My argument needs must be of the 'if, but or maybe' variety which never comes across so well as the litany of historical horrors told by Mr. Hitchens. Nevertheless, everything I read about the nature and character of Wilhelm II, to say nothing of the militaristic 'bombastards' with whom he was surrounded, confirms my belief that even if we had refused to enter and that France had fallen, the German ruling class would have imposed dire restrictions on us and our fleet. No doubt they would have insisted on pinching some of our empire territories which, given that we were losing money on many of them, might have been an advantage. However, the Kaiser was a naval obsessive, which is why he spent 'zillions' building a fleet to match the British and was then forced to let it, and the tens of thousands of men who would have been much better employed on the western front, rot away uselessly in harbor. Yes, Mr. Hitchens is entirely right to say that Germany's main aim was east into Russia and south east into Asia but had we ducked the decision then Wilhelm would not have let slip the chance to exact penalties on us in general and on the Royal Navy in particular which would have left our trade routes undefended. With the French ports in the Med and the Atlantic under German control they would have been at his mercy - and so would we!
The fact that today, via the European Union, modern Germany has achieved almost everything it desired in 1914 is sickening but that cannot be blamed on the likes of Lord Grey and the majority of his Liberal government. They knew that there was no chance of an honorouble settlement with Wilhemine Germany, as Churchill put it, "The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet". Yes, men were slaughtered wholesale and apparently for no visible gain - except one! A jewel beyond measure - we remained a free country bending the knee to no-one.
