Issue: 27 | History Review March 1997 | Page 12-16 | Words: 3696 | Author: Pearce, Robert
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The Origins of the First World War
Robert Pearce distributes a survival kit for the most
hazardous causation question of all.
What caused the First World War? This is a perfectly legitimate historical question.
Historians have always been primarily concerned with change and thus with the causes of
change. Also, we have to be concerned with big issues and really formative events - like the
1914-18 war. The Great War not only killed about nine million people and ended Europe's
supremacy in the world (so that, according to Sellar and Yeatman, America became 'top
nation' and history came to a full stop); it also transformed the political map of Europe.
Indeed some of the major features of European history between the wars - like Soviet
communism, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, and even the depression of the 1930s - are
unthinkable apart from the legacy of the war. It also changed the way we perceive the world.
It may be said, with pardonable exaggeration, that 'modern consciousness', at least for
Westerners, began in 1914. The question of why the war began is thus an important one; but
it is also immensely difficult, if not impossible, to answer.
The purpose of this brief essay is not to attempt the impossible but to pinpoint some of the
reasons why the origins of the First World War are so complex that they defy simple,
straightforward answers. First, it must be said that the study of history is difficult: die attempt
to understand the past is forever doomed to at least partial failure, and only the naive think
otherwise. But if we show real awareness of the historian's problems, we also demonstrate a
valuable understanding of the nature of history itself. The other difficulties may be divided
into half a dozen convenient sections.
The issue of causation
Why things happen is something of a mystery. Anyone who delves into philosophy will see
this. The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy asked in War and Peace a very pertinent, but
also very perplexing, question: 'When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun,
because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below
wants to eat it?' We may think that any one of these provides a possible explanation,
depending on our perspective.
Historians use a variety of causal labels to help our understanding of why things happen, but
because we do not all assign the same meaning to them they can in fact be bewildering.
Everyone is familiar with the concept of 'short-term' and 'long-term' causes, but not everyone
has the same timespan in mind - and whatever happened to "medium-term'? Historians also
write regularly of 'objective' and 'subjective' causes; of 'preconditions' and 'precipitants'; of
sufficient' or 'necessary' factors, as well as of 'occasioning' factors or triggers. In addition,
there are still 'root', 'basic', 'fundamental' and 'peripheral' causes. And if there are 'important'
causes of an event, does this mean that there are 'unimportant' ones as well?
A.J.P. Taylor once compared the outbreak of World War I with a motoring accident for
which it makes no more sense to blame the driver of the vehicle involved than it does the
inventor of the internal combustion engine - or, he could have said, of the wheel. It is an
analogy well worth thinking about. Certainly the origins of traffic accidents and of wars can
be traced back ever further into the past, and none of the participants is ever likely to agree on
who is to blame. But so complex are the ramifications of causal theory that most of us have at
one time or another been tempted to shrug our shoulders and take refuge in another of
Taylor's notions - this one decidedly perverse - that 'things happen because they happen'.
The time span
We all know that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg Empire, was
assassinated at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip and that this unleashed a chain
reaction of events that led Germany to declare war on Russia on 1 August. The adoption of
the German Schlieffen Plan then brought France and Britain into the conflict. 'Once the dice
were set rolling', said Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, 'nothing could stop them.'
But when did the dice start rolling? When should we begin a study of the origins of the First
World War? Certainly we cannot commence with Princip's gunshots, for we have to ask why
he decided to assassinate Franz Ferdinand - and the answer to the question why is always in
the past. When may we say that the concatenation of actions and reactions that resulted in
war really began? Some books begin in 1911, with the Agadir crisis. Others go back to the
first Moroccan crisis of 1905. Or should we look to the naval race and Tirpitz's first naval bill
of 1898, or at the dismissal of Bismarck ('the dropping of the pilot') in 1890? All are possible
dales. Or is the real beginning the unification of Germany in 1871? Yet even before that there
were traditions of militarism in Prussian history which go back at least to the sixteenth
century and which led Mirabeau to comment caustically that Prussia was 'not so much a stale
with an army as an army with a stale'. There is a real problem here, and one which has no
easy solution. Perhaps we should distinguish between the preconditions (like Prussia's
military traditions, German unification, etc.), which made the war merely possible, and the
real causes, which actually brought it about. But, even so, it is certain that there can be no
universally agreed starting date.
There is also the problem that in searching for the origins of the war we pick out a strand
from the past and, almost automatically, distort history by exaggerating that strand, assuming
that it was more important than it really was, just because later it became significant.
Hindsight can easily lead to a false perspective.
We can only understand the origins of the First World War if we study a long period of the
past; and if - as we must - we study the Eastern Question and the Balkan conflicts of 1908-13,
then we become immersed in some immensely complicated historical issues. We are also
confronted with the paradox that if we locate the causes of the war in the years from 1870 to
1913, those same factors also led, for most of Europe, to a long period of peace.
Also, when do we stop? Do we need to look beyond September 1914? Had a truly world war
begun then, or must we look ahead to October 1914, when the Ottoman Empire came into the
conflict, or - more important - to April 1917, when the USA, and its cluster of satellites,
entered the war?
The geographical span
Anyone studying the origins of the First World War has to study several decades of European
history, during which the policies of the Great Powers varied widely, thus making it
impossible for us to assign to any one country a fixed degree of responsibility for creating
international tension. But there is also the problem of the sheer numbers of stales involved.
We have to look at Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Serbia and Great Britain and that is the absolute minimum, since Italy. Greece, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria,
Montenegro and other stales also had their parts to play. We cannot focus on any one country
- or indeed any two - if we want to understand what happened.
Yet how difficult it is to consider so many states, especially when each had its own domestic
problems which influenced foreign policy. In France, for instance, there were persistent calls
for revenge after the defeat in 1871: the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was still remembered as a
national mutilation, and no amount of African colonies could make good the loss. As a
dynastic empire, Austria-Hungary was on the defensive in a world where political legitimacy
was increasingly seen to stem from national consciousness, and so its politicians felt the need
to deal firmly with the independent Slav state of Serbia, especially after its successes in the
two Balkan wars. Germany had all sorts of problems. Bismarck's political system had broken
down, and from 1913 no government could secure a majority in the Reichstag. Might a war
solve this political crisis, causing Germans to forget their differences in a welter of
nationalistic fervour? In addition, while some Germans (for instance, those in the PanGerman League) were calling for an aggressive foreign war out of a consciousness of
strength, others felt threatened by the Triple Entente of France, Russia and Britain (a situation
summed up by Der Tag with the phrase 'Enemies all around: permanent danger of war from
all sides') and so saw a preventive war as the only way out.
Examples could be multiplied at length. The important point is that each participant in the
First World War had particular problems of its own and so separate reasons for getting
involved. It may be convenient to study the common, European-wide causes of the war – and
such causes, for example the alliance system and the climate of popular opinion, did exist –
but there were also distinct causes operating in different geographical areas. The First World
War thus resulted from a highly complex amalgam of particular and general causes – not a
comforting thought for the student of history with only limited time at his or her disposal.
The subject matter
There was a time when the origins of the war were approached through the study of
diplomacy and in no other way. The war was seen as the product of' the actions of a relatively
small number of men – monarchs, some ministers and foreign secretaries, with the odd civil
servant thrown in. Life was simple then.
Now we adopt a much wider perspective, and we are inclined to see the conflict as having
ideological, cultural and economic origins, as well as political and diplomatic ones. No one
these days sees 'foreign policy' in isolation. Much therefore depends on the angle of vision we
adopt. We can see the war as the result of economic rivalries and the machinations of the
arms manufacturers; and we can see it as the end product of the popular image of war (as a
glorious adventure, like school games writ large) which, along with a disparaging and
stereotyped view of foreigners, had been popularised over the previous decades. The
'unspoken assumptions' of Europeans before 1914 have over the last twenty-five years been
analysed in detail, and no student of the origins of the war should ignore them. Norman Stone
has even gone so far as to assert that, before the physical fighting began, 'war had already
broken out in men's minds'. Certainly the habits of thought of Europeans undoubtedly explain
why war was welcomed by so many people. But the unfortunate fact is that the historian now
has a virtually unlimited mass of material to study, including manifestations of Social
Darwinism, the works of the enigmatic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the press and
popular literature, the cult of athleticism – and much more besides. We have to study social
history (interpreting that term as broadly as possible), without balking the important question
of how far, and in what ways, the politicians were influenced by such phenomena.
The status of the documents
No one now studies the origins of the war from an exclusively diplomatic point of view; but
we cannot afford to ignore diplomacy, or power politics, entirely. However likely some
general conflict may have been, the actual war which broke out in August 1914 was started
by individuals whose actions we must analyse in as much detail as possible. The documents
themselves must therefore be scrutinised with great care. Of course no document provides
objective, foolproof evidence: all are biased to some degree, and those which were written
with an eye to posterity – like some of the telegrams sent on the eve of war between the
Kaiser and the Tsar, each trying to establish a future, flattering reputation for himself – are
the most untrustworthy of all. What, for instance, are we to make of the September
Memorandum? Does this show, as Fritz Fischer has insisted, such thorough and detailed war
aims that its production, so soon after the start of the war, presupposes their existence in the
minds of the German ministers during the July Crisis itself? If so, we may well agree with
Fischer that Germany went to war in order to achieve these aims, which amounted basically
to a German-dominated 'middle Europe'. Or, on the contrary, should we write off the
memorandum as a response to early German military successes, or to Bethmann's efforts to
'steal the thunder' of the hard-line German annexationists and, thereby, safeguard his job? If
we do, we may reject the document's relevance to the origins of the war altogether.
The documents do not speak for themselves. Historians cannot dodge the conscious and
difficult task of interpretation. Bethmann Hollweg had said on 7 July that 'our action against
Serbia can lead to world war'. These words might seem clear enough, but are they? The
inflection of the voice, and the stress on a particular word, can give the sentence three or four
separate shades of meaning. One of the most intriguingly dif6cult tasks of the historian is to
try to reconstruct the mentality of the people being studied, to find the mind's construction in
words and actions.
The historiographical debate
We look to the experts and their books for guidance through the maze of problems that
surrounds the study of the origins of the First World War. But the only thing about which the
experts agree is that they fundamentally disagree. Hence their de- bates may serve to
compound our confusions.
Back in 1919 there was a consensus, at least among the victors of the war, embodied in
Article 213 of the Treaty of Versailles, the so-called 'war guilt clause': Germany and its allies
had deliberately started the war. There was also agreement in the 1930s, though by now the
consensus had changed. It was believed, in Lloyd George's celebrated phrase, that 'the nations
slithered over the brink into the seething cauldron of war'. The war had therefore been an
accident; and at the same time, since it could not be averted, there had been something
inevitable about it. This time unanimity lasted longer, and as late as the 1950s historians
judged that the war had been a gigantic, disastrous accident. No one had desired it, and so no
one was to blame. (This was a politically comforting verdict for both the Germans and the
French, who were then setting up the European Economic Community – but, of course, a
convenient verdict is not necessarily an incorrect one.) Then in 1961, to a storm of political
disapproval in Germany, where he was described a 'national masochist' and an 'intellectual
flagellant', Fritz Fischer returned to notions of German war guilt. Tracing continuity in
German aims and policy from 191Z to the out- break of war in 1914, Fischer argued that
Germany was deliberately 'grasping at world power'.
Fischer's views have been very influential, but they have not achieved any- thing like general
acceptance. V.R. Berghahn has argued that the German government did not deliberately
cause the war but that, nevertheless, it was primarily responsible in that its ministers gambled
with the risk of a general conflict. He, and other historians, have also criticised Fischer's
depiction of Bethmann-Hollweg: in their view, the Chancellor was a cultured but weak and
vacillating man, not someone coolly and calmly bent on major war. Similarly, Berghahn has
modified Fischer's view of the Kaiser. Admittedly the Kaiser gave the Austrians his 'blank
cheque' of unconditional support on 5 July, but at this stage there still seemed a. chance that
the other monarchical Powers and especially Russia, would stand aside and allow AustriaHungary to punish Serbia, whose complicity in the murder at Sarajevo was taken for granted
by most observers. The Kaiser then went off on a cruise, not a likely action for someone who
expected the eruption of an imminent crisis.
L.C.F Turner has accused Fischer of failing to see German developments in their proper
European context. For instance the German army bills of 1912 and 1913, which Fischer
interprets as the start of' a 'drive to war', can be seen as little more than an attempt by
Germany to overcome its vulnerability vis-a-vis the Entente powers of France, Russia and
Britain. Turner himself views the outbreak of war as 'a tragedy of miscalculations'. Similarly
ER. Bridge has written that all the belligerents were motivated in July 1914 by a defensive
concern to protect their status as Great Powers. A.J.P. Taylor sees the First World War (like
virtually everything else) as an accident, human folly playing a much greater role in history
than human wickedness. In his view, had Princip not shot Franz Ferdinand, international
tension might well have ebbed away; as it was, the new emergency enabled the warmongering generals to take over from the civilian politicians, and then their inflexible
military plans, and especially the Schlieffen Plan, took over from the generals. Hence the
Great War was, initially, ‘war by timetable', so that all were trapped by the ingenuity of their
military preparations. Recently, further works have appeared, but we are no nearer to any
generally accepted explanation.
Perhaps a fruitful way forward lies not in considering the overall issue of what caused the war
but in asking the more specialised, and manageable, question of why particular countries
entered the conflict. A number of historians – like Steiner, Bosworth, Lieven and Williamson
– have pursued this path. But the fascination of the overall issue of why the war started will
surely continue to tempt the adventurous.
Conclusion
The origins of the First World War are confusing to specialists and non specialists alike.
Almost certainly there will never be any agreement on the issue, partly because of the nature
of history itself. When can we ever get at the truth about the past? This may seem a rather
negative conclusion, but it does have its positive aspects. Because history is not a pedestrian
subject, which can result in exact truths, it is an unending dialogue which gives us unlimited
scope for our talents as historians.
But how should students with limited time at their disposal – and moreover with essays to
write and exams to pass – react to the mass of conflicting views? The answer is that you have
to make up your own minds. If you read and agree with Fischer or Taylor or Turner or
Berghahn or any of the others, that is perfectly acceptable, so long as you have good reasons
for doing so. Don't just agree with Fischer because he has written a 900-page book which
seems so formidably scholarly that it must be right. Don't agree with Taylor because he is
witty, or with Turner because his comfortingly slim volume is the last book you have read –
or the only book you have read!
The origins of the First World War are a highly difficult and complex topic. They raise so
many conceptual and methodological problems that it is impossible, in a limited space, to do
much more than point them out. The good news is that students are rarely, if ever, asked to
ex- plain the origins of the war. Typical exam questions are more limited: they are likely to
focus on a more clearly defined area, like the actual outbreak of the war in 1914, on a
particular aspect of the tension that preceded it or on the role of one specific country. It is a
delusion to suppose that examiners have no sadistic tendencies, but it would be a remarkably
uninhibited sadist who set the question 'What caused the First World War?'
Nevertheless, it is worth considering the difficulties inherent in such an impossibly wideranging title. After all, each specific aspect of the origins of the war must be put into the
overall context; and every particular area has its own problems and difficulties too, so it is as
well to get into the habit of confronting such problems head-on. Of course, many students
conceal their doubts and uncertainties behind a cover of assertive generalisations. But history
is not a body of knowledge to learn and regurgitate, and the student who realises the
difficulties of the subject and, sometimes at least, expresses uncertainty (and thus humility in
the face of evidence that is at once overwhelmingly voluminous and also maddeningly
incomplete) is likely to impress far more than the over-confident examinee whose glib
assurances too often reveal little learning and less understanding.
Further Reading
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Keith Wilson ed., Decisions for War 1914, UCL Press 1995
Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War, Longman 1987
Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, Chatto 1967
V. R. Berhahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, Macmillan 1973
L. C. F. Turner, Origins of the First World War, Edward Arnold 1970
A. J. P. Taylor, War by Time-Table, Macdonald 1969
Zara Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, Macmillan 1977
F. R. Bridge and R. Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 18151914, Longman 1984
James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, Longman 1984
D. C. B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War, Macmillan 1991
Samuel R. Williamson, Jnr., Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War,
Macmillan 1991
R. J. B. Bosworth, Italy, the Least of the Great Powers: Italian Foreign Policy before
the First World War, New York 1979
About the Author
Dr Robert Pearce is Reader in History at the University College of St Martin. Lancaster. His
first book was The Turning Point in Africa (Cass 1982); his most recent include (ed.) The
Sayings of Leo Tolstoy (Duckworth 1995), Britain and the European Powers 1865-1914
(Hodder and Stoughton 1996), Attlee (Longman 1997) and Contemporary Britain 1914-1979
(Longman 1997).