“By August 4 1914 the primary belligerent parties had made their declarations of war based on events following the assassination of Archduke Francis and his wife. ...”
To give this discussion some timeline perspective, disagreements over whom to blame for the First World War have been dragging themselves out nineteen times longer than the war lasted, and more than twice as long as the prelude (dating the latter, in the roughest fashion, to the declaration of Koenig der Preussen Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck, of the founding of Imperial Germany).
In his single-volume history of WWI, the late Sir John Keegan concluded with the admission that the causes remained wrapped in mystery.
Learned opinion has veered this way and that. So has popular opinion.
In _The Guns of August_ (late 1950s), pop historian Barbara Tuchman laid it at the feet of Europe’s national leaders, their high officials, and a professional diplomatic corps who remained tied by custom and tradition and protocol, to the pace of events that might have been “normal” in Napoleonic times, but was slow and unwieldy by 1914. Steamships, railroads, telegraph and telephone, wireless communications permitted quicker strategic response (conscripted armies, industrial production, troop movements to the edge of the field); weaponry had advanced even more (steel, nitro propellant, automatic arms, long-range artillery), but tactical mobility remained yoked to the pace of the footsoldier - no quicker than 1800, or 1600.
After the war, many leaders denied they foresaw the scale of carnage, but even the quickest perusals of 1910-vintage tactical manuals bely it.
Robert K. Massie’s two-volume history of the naval arms race and the war at sea (_Dreadnought_, _Castles of Steel_) describes the speedy rise of Imperial Germany to international Great Power Status, and its challenge to British worldwide naval supremacy. Of central importance was the giant sea-change that came over Great Britain’s foreign policy; in less than a generation, the UK abandoned “splendid isolation,” resolved centuries-long hostilities with France, and sought accomodation with Czarist Russia. Then he documents how the Royal Navy strangled German trade, negated the U-boat threat, came that close to sinking the Kriegsmarine’s High Seas Fleet, and made it possible for the United States to bring its forces to France without loss.
With the most exhaustive documentation, he points out where the Germans led the Austrians on, promising limitless support against Imperial Russia, while urging Kaiser William II to conduct his annual summer cruise and pushing numerous high German officials out of town on vacation, to mislead the Allies that all was calm. When the ruses were partly uncovered, German officials lied about it to Allied diplomats, insisting they were trying to hold back overzealous Austro-Hungarians.
Some have condemned the UK for not standing with the French and Russians, earlier. In truth, the Imperial German General Staff had long since discounted the British Army in its entirety; formal records signed by the German officials themselves even welcomed early arrival of the BEF on the Continent - it could then be wiped out in nothing flat, a minor impediment to the German Forces then massed at the Belgian border, poised to grind the French into dust.
A number of thinkers have concluded that the Germans had years earlier decided that long-term trends were against them; since they (and everyone else) quite unremarkably believed war to be a legitimate instrument of national policy, they figured that they had better get on with it before their chances grew slimmer still.
Much has been made of Kaiser William II’s militarism, but there is little evidence he plotted events in advance. The eldest grandchild of Britain’s Queen Victoria (herself more German than anything else), he was by turns pleased with his numerous royal relatives in England, then vexed by British behavior.
Restless, craving aproval, less than mature - his own mother derided him as “a big baby” after he ascended to the throne of Prussia and assumed the kaisership in 1888 - the more he pursued the respect of “Englanders” (and everybody else) the more tiresome he seemed. The situation had remained (mostly) stable for decades before he became Kaiser, thanks in large part to the presence of Otto Von Bismarck, the towering intellect who dominated Continental politics in war and peace for half the prior century, crafting secret treaties and contingent alliances, waging limited wars, diluting hostilities, patching together alliances and dispelling disputes. William dumped him within a couple years, dismantled treaties, and flippantly ignored the complex web Bismarck had woven so tightly, even as it unraveled right before his eyes.
Journalist/historian Max Hastings has recently offered the opinion that Germany should not bear all the blame, but that it had certainly earned the major share.
Thank you for the essay.