The proposer indicated that the reason for selecting a
book about the origins of the Great War was obvious. The 100th
anniversary of WW1 was understandingly receiving much attention. The BBC had
shown some excellent programmes and the articles on its website were well worth
a read. As Fritz Stern said ‘The Great War is the first calamity of the
twentieth century, the calamity from which all other calamities sprang’. Before
turning to ‘The Sleepwalkers’ some context would be helpful.
CONTEXT
The proposer indicated that in 1964 on the 50th
anniversary of WW1 he was in 6th format school. There were no Advanced Highers in those
days so in history class WW1 was studied for a whole term. The British
narrative was much as now: there was a great deal of emphasis on the horrors of
trench warfare with 1July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme and
the worst day for casualties in British history and 3rd Ypres or
Passchendaele receiving much attention. The war poets, particularly Wilfred
Owen, fitted into the theme. ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ which had recently opened
as listened to with its emphasis on the ineptitude of the British
generals. Alan Clark’s book ‘The
Donkeys’ also recently published mined the same ground. Incidentally Clark
admitted later he had made up the ‘lions led by donkeys’ quote from
Ludendorf. The most significant
British book published in 1964, however, was John Terraine’s ‘The Educated
Soldier’ which attempted to rehabilitate Haig as the commander of the largest
army ever put in the field by Britain, 60 divisions, and the victor of one of
the greatest victories in British history, the 100 day campaign in 1918 which
caused the Germans to seek the Armistice.
Interestingly the most widely read account in the UK
of the First World War published a few months after OWALW in 1963 for the 50th
anniversary was AJP Taylor’s ‘The FWW; an Illustrated History’ which sold
250,00 copies by 1990.The book was the first short popular narrative of the
whole war and was dedicated to Littlewood. From start to finish Taylor depicted
the war as a succession of accidents, the product of human error. Statesman
miscalculated. War was imposed on the statesmen of Europe by the railway
timetables of mobilisation. He also claimed that the ‘lions led by donkeys’
applied to all the generals. The war was beyond the capacity of generals and
statesmen alike.
The other distinctive British reinterpretation of WW1
was the excellent BBC TV series ‘The Great War’ aired on the new BBC 2 channel
in 26 episodes in 1964 as the centrepiece of the BBC commemoration which
achieved huge audiences. Corelli
Barnet and John Terraine were the principal scriptwriters and the programme was
intended to be a robust defence of the British army and generals against the
likes of Clark and Taylor. But while the script was balanced, the visuals
overcame the words and the British narrative was reinforced.
It would be fair to say that Terraine’s view of the
War and the successes of the British army and generals is widely held today by
military historians but, despite their efforts, in popular perception in
Britain the Great War has remained a saga of personal tragedies, illuminated by
poetry, fiction, eg Pat Barker and Birdsong, and popular TV, eg Blackadder, a
subject for remembrance rather than understanding.
This is a peculiarly British perspective; none of the
other participants see it this way and it is instructive to consider why. One
answer is that Britain in 1914 was not fighting directly for the defence of the
homeland. All the other countries thought they were; Germany, Russia and
Austria-Hungary justified aggression as an act of pre-emptive defence.
The causes of the war has long been an issue
everywhere including in Britain. German aggression has been one answer
enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles but others have argued that the war just
happened through the failure of European diplomacy. While the Terraine view of
the military War is broadly accepted by military historians there is no such
consensus on the causes of the War. In the 1960’s the ‘Germany was the
aggressor’ view received a huge boost from the writings of Fritz Fischer,
Professor of History at Hamburg, and his followers such as Imanuel Geiss.
Fischer argued that Germany used the crisis of Sarajevo to seek to grab world
power. The ‘Fischer thesis’ was that Hitlerite expansion was no aberration but
part of the dynamic of German history since at least Bismarck. The proposer had
heard Fischer speak during his time at Edinburgh University in the 1960s doing
history and also heard AJP Taylor who supported the Fischer thesis. The Fischer
thesis became the dominant view of the origins of WW1, not least because
Fischer and his followers were German. Not surprisingly the main opposition to
the Fischer thesis came from Germany.
Given the attention produced by the centenary of the
War, it seemed a good idea to choose one of the many books published recently.
Why ‘The Sleepwalkers’? As can be
seen from the blurbs, many reviewers have said that it is the best account yet
of the origins of the First World War. Even those opposed to the Clark thesis,
eg Max Hastings, is quoted on the front cover saying ‘One of the most
impressive and stimulating studies of the period ever published.’
Understanding the causes of the War is complicated by
the huge amount of source material. Over 25000 books on the origins of the war
had been published at the last count 20 years ago. Clark makes the point that
the sources are so extensive they help to explain why the outbreak of the War
has proved susceptible to such a bewildering variety of interpretation. He says
in his introduction ‘There is virtually no viewpoint on its origins that cannot
be supported from a selection of the available sources’
DISCUSSION
The majority of members of the Book Group did not find
the book an easy read. Others disagreed. It was a dense, detailed analysis of
the origins of the War and difficult perhaps to engage with for those
unfamiliar with the period. Nonetheless almost everyone enjoyed the book, found
it engrossing and stimulating with a good structure and narrative prose style.
One thought the work read like an academic thesis and
as such made for a difficult long-winded read. It was beyond the redemption of
editing. More significant perhaps was Clark’s interpretation and presentation
of "facts" which this reader found unconvincing. While the number or
references was impressive he felt that he could have presented a counter
position had he selected different
sections from the same documents. In short he did not trust Clark.
Another liked the presentation from individual country
viewpoints, and the highlighting of the tribal nature of humans. But the overall problem with the book was that it became a
shopping list rather than a concise reasoned analysis or argument. By droning
through the entire Serbian parliament and greater Slav-dom etc. etc. for 100
pages the point was lost. There was a difference between a ‘paper, a thesis’
and a log-book. This was a log book.
What was also worrying that
by presenting the ‘chains of decisions’ in enormous detail, he sought to
submerge the key points under a wave of trivia.
Another became progressively
more disenchanted the more he read. He was so surprised by Clark’s pronounced
Germanophilia that he had to look up his biography. And it turned out that
Clark was not an expert on the First World War period, but was an expert on
German history. He had studied in Berlin, married a German wife, and been
awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the German Government. His
pious renunciation of the blame game was disingenuous, as his objective, as
noted by Bogdanor, was to exculpate Germany and Austria-Hungary as far as
possible from their responsibility for starting the War, while pointing the
finger of suspicion at all other possible candidates.
This reader was not convinced by Clark’s attempt, and, because of what
he viewed as remarkably partisan omissions and distortions, by the end he also
ceased to trust that anything he said was the whole truth. He would have much
preferred if Clark had been upfront and said that as a German expert he was
going to write a book that set out the German perspective on the events.
Members were not convinced by the psychobabble aspects
of Clark’s analysis, eg the ‘crisis of masculinity’ and the title was also
criticised. Only in the last pages does Clark explain the reasoning for the
title: ‘ The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing,
blind to the reality they were about to bring into the world’. This is unconvincing.
The ‘watchful, calculated steps’ he had chronicled did not constitute
sleepwalking. Secondly the American Civil War should have shown the
protagonists of 1914 what modern war would be like.
There was also some debate as to whether the book was
an academic or popular work. It was agreed it fell between the two. It was too
detailed to be a popular account yet assumed too much knowledge to work as a
general introduction.
One argued that despite its populist title, its initial narrative drive sagged
too much to be a popular read, but it was too partisan, and too compressed in
its argumentation, to rank as serious academic revisionism.
Inevitably there was discussion of Clark’s thesis of
the origins of the War.
The proposer pointed out that in Clark’s view the War
was not inevitable.
The War had specific causes, principally the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the most successful terrorist act in history.
Franz Ferdinand favoured a federal Habsburg empire, giving all the Slavs equal powers,
a major threat to an expanded Serbia including all South Slavs. In addition he
was strongly opposed to war with Serbia let alone Russia. From the Serb point
of view he was their prime target.
Even so, argues Clark, the Austrian response to Serbia
only become a general European War because the Russians, allied to the French,
supported Serbia. Clark pointed out that the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was
less draconian than the NATO one of 1999. One’s view of the legitimacy of the
Austrian action will influence one’s assessment of the actions of Russia,
France and Germany. Initial UK reaction was supportive of Austria. If Austria
had immediately conducted a policing action against Serbia no one would
probably have intervened. There are good reasons, explained Clark, why they did not and this
enabled opposition to Austria to grow. Even then many people in UK opposed
support for Serbia and autocratic Russia. Germany’s crass attack on France and
Belgium silenced critics.
While there has been general praise for ‘The
Sleepwalkers’ it is fair to say not all have been convinced by his thesis. Some
members of the Group argued that, in the words of Vernon Bogdanor, ‘It is the
most sophisticated and penetrating of all attempts to shift responsibility for
the war away from Germany and Austria Hungary’. They considered that Clark was
misleading in this attempt. For example, Clark says that Edward Grey the
British Foreign Minister ‘showed no interest in the kind of intervention that
might have provided Austria with other options than the ultimatum’. One member
pointed out that Grey in fact made six proposals for international talks to
Germany which were ignored. After the war Grey regretted he had approached
Germany rather than Austria. Not
just Britain but France and Russia had argued for international talks to
resolve the problem of the assassination, and only Austria-Hungary and Germany
had refused to countenance such a solution.
The same member pointed out that mobilisation is quite
different to a declaration of war, and that Clark lazily conflated the two. He
also pointed out that whether there was a difference in the case of Bosnia
between a protectorate and annexed territory might seem arcane, but that it was
important to the outbreak of hostilities.
Others suggested that Clark’s discussion of the
Austrian ultimatum showed him at his worst. No unbiased person could equate
Milosevic, a war criminal, with Pasic. After a two-page rant about how the UN’s
ultimatum in 1999 was worse than Austria’s, he limply concedes that Austria’s
ultimatum was designed not to be accepted (did his editor insist on this?).
Moreover the world had moved on a lot since 1914 and to compare the UN and
Austria-Hungary is a jest not a serious piece of analysis. A serious analyst
might rather have referred to contemporary reaction to the ultimatum – such as
that of Grey, who turned pale and said it was “the most formidable document
I had ever seen addressed by one State to another that was independent.”
Clark is over critical in a personal way of those with
whom he disagrees. He downplays the German preparations for war and willingness
to attack Russia and France. Some pointed out that Clark was seeking to redress
the argument away from German responsibility and the book should not be read in
isolation.
Clark argues he is concerned with how the War happened
not who to blame. His view is that responsibility is collective. The majority
view in this country is that German aggression is to blame, as argued in the
Treaty of Versailles. That has been a controversial view ever since; there is
still no consensus on the causes of WW1. The view people take will depend on
various factors including inclination and nationality. For example American
reviewers of Clark, eg Professor Thomas Laquer in the London Review of books,
have been broadly supportive of the Clark thesis, unsurprisingly as neutrals in
the War until 1917. In his classic 1928 study the American historian Sidney Fey
argued for shared responsibility for the War, essentially Clark’s view.
History of course is written from the perspective of
the times in which the writer is living.
Clark makes the interesting point that developments in
our time, eg terrorism and suicide bombers mean we have less sympathy with a
rogue terrorist state such as Serbia, particularly after their violent
irridentist nationalism in the 1990’s. Equally we are now more sympathetic to
the Habsburg Empire, a model for the EU. Almost all Habsburg territory is now
within the EU; a major exception is Western Ukraine.
Clark’s emphasis on contingency rather than necessity
for war origins also fits into postmodernist theory which has influenced
historical analysis as much as other disciplines. Agreement on the origins of
World War 1 is not achievable.
The discussion in the group reflected this. Some
members were more persuaded by the Clark thesis than others. Others felt that
Clark was not to be trusted, and that his book had received much more attention
than it merited. There was general agreement, however, that the book had been
an excellent and stimulating choice.
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