The War That Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War, by Margaret MacMillan, Profile Books, RRP£25, 704 pages
July 1914: Countdown to War, by Sean McMeekin, Icon Books, RRP£25/Basic Books, RRP$29.99, 560 pages
Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914, by Max Hastings, William Collins, RRP£30, 628 pages
And now it begins! Now can be heard the first rumble of the guns of autumn as war breaks out across the publishing front! Yes, indeed, as the 100th anniversary of August 1914 approaches, along with Christmas, you can expect a steady barrage of new releases by various authors seeking to explain the hows, whys and wherefores of the First World War. Many authors, I guess, will seek to find and expose 'the real truth' or the 'hidden causation' that has evaded historians for the last 100 years - well, it all helps sales, especially with Christmas coming on and wives wondering what on earth to buy the old man for a present. So the modern 'moving finger having writ, moves on' and points this way or that way in a desperate attempt to be different and original, but the fact is, boring and obvious though it be, that WWI was caused by the colossal Bismarckian cuckoo in the European nest - 'it woz the Germans wot done it'!
It matters not who fired the first shot, or even why, the fact is that the German elite, fooled by an absolute belief in the puffed-up notion of their own superior technical expertise gradually developed a grand strategy of which they thought even Clauswitz would have been proud. It was after the ousting of the realist, Bismarck, by the dreamers that the fantasy was pursued of a Germany commanding all of Europe down to and including the middle east, with its conquests supported and protected by a global Germany navy far superior to anything the Royal Navy could produce. The word to sum this up is Größenwahn which I am assured by my trusty Google Translate means megalomania and which my even trustier OED assures me means "obsession with the exercise of power, especially in the domination of others". Couldn't have put it better myself!
Actually, there is a man who put it very much better than I ever could and he was not only a historian but also a German. Fritz Fischer wrote his definitive book in 1961 entitled Germany's Aims in the First World War and in doing so almost started 'WWIII', or at least, the equivalent there-of when it comes to academic 'handbags at dawn'! His fellow German historians, so to speak, 'ver nicht amused'! His main thesis was that once the German-speaking peoples of Europe (except Austria) were united, their geo-political position at the heart of the continent was bound to produce a grand strategy by which that power could be wielded. Three European wars later, the Franco-Prussian, WWI and WWII, nothing has changed except the means. At long last the half-mad militarism of the Prussians has been subsumed and now the Germans realize that they can achieve their aims, which have not changed in essence for over a hundred years, by means of economic strength rather than military might. This is a bit of a relief for the rest of us but don't kid yourself, the problem remains. And how right 'that woman' was when she opposed German re-unification!
Anyway, Ladies, for Christmas buy your old man Fischer's book, it's still spot on even after 50+ years and it will come in handy for dropping on his toes if he gets lazy because it is, in all senses, a hefty read!
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