How Wars Start: Britain & World War One

Military History:

Was Britain's entry into the First World War either inevitable, essential, or both? Or Neither? An investigation of causality.

Blog Post Dated December 2021

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in Sarajevo, June 1914

It is curious that so few historians, when dealing with the causes of the First World War, address the question of compelling reasons for British entry into the conflict. There is even less discussion of what might have been the consequences of a decision by the Asquith government to remain neutral rather than declare war on Germany on the 4th August 1914. (Let me be clear - I do not hanker after an “alternative history” narrative - something which is anathema to every shred of historian’s intellect within me. Rather, it is my curiosity as to why so few historians have chosen to approach the enduring and troubled debate about the causes of the war - and the motivations for war - from the perspective of what countervailing forces existed within the British government, the opinion forming elite, and the general public, to, in the final analysis, stay out of the conflict!)

There is a mountain of material, in many languages, dealing with the reasons for war - both the underlying dynamic as well as the immediate spark that set the conflagration alight. Amongst the mature, mid-century output, unquestionably the most considered and influential is James Joll’s “The Origins of the First World War” (Longman 1984). In what is in effect (now and probably always will be) the standard history, Joll, somewhat disappointingly, concludes that, well, lots of things caused the war.

“Each of the factors we have been considering as possible causes of the First World War seems to have contributed something to the decisions in the final crisis of July 1914. The individuals who took those decisions were, often to a greater extent than they realised, limited in their choice of action not only by their own nature but by a multitude of earlier decisions taken by themselves and their predecessors in office.” (page 299, 2007 edition)

However, in spite of this somewhat Olympian and determinist vista, Joll does in fact come close to identifying at least two aspects of the process as being (in his opinion) more important than most. The first is the widely held view that it was actually caused by the Germans.

“Once war was accepted as inevitable by the German leaders, as it was by December 1912, whether because they thought that what would now be called a pre-emptive strike was the only way of defending themselves against encirclement by hostile powers or because they thought a war was the only way to achieve the world power at which some of then were aiming, then, as the development of the July crisis showed, their strategic plans became all important and these had more immediate military consequences than those of any other power.” (page 300, 2007 edition)

The second takes Joll close to where I believe his instincts as a historian lie (sadly I never met Joll, although I had every opportunity to do so).

“But many of us are sufficiently Hegelian, if not Marxist, to want to try to bring into our explanations the moral values of a society, the Zeitgeist, as well as the economic interests of the participants both as individuals and as members of a class. Perhaps this means resigning ourselves to a kind of two-tier history. One the one hand there are the broad lines of social and economic development …….. One the other hand there is the world in which the decisions of individual leaders, whatever their origins, can effect the lives and happiness of millions and change the course of history for decades.” (page 305, 2007 edition)

Since 1984, two truly brilliant revisionist works have been published. The central thrust of Christopher Clark’s work (The Sleepwalkers, How Europe went to War in 1914, Penguin, 2012) is to shift the balance of cause (and blame) away from the German Reich towards events in the Balkans - specifically the expansionist and hyper-nationalist role of Serbia and the aggressive-defensive “final roll of the dice” attitude of the government in Vienna (which was, at least in part, the outcome of what Vienna believed to be a “blank cheque” guarantee from Berlin!). While in no sense refuting the militarist nature of the Reich’s society and polity - the military option was always central in the thinking and planning of the Kaiser and his government - Clark is much more sympathetic to Wilhelm’s dilemma over unconditional support for Vienna, as well as the strategic concern about the “two-front threat” posed by the Franco-Russian alliance. He rejects absolutely the view expressed by Joll - (which I quote above, Once war was accepted as inevitable by the German leaders, as it was by December 1912, et sec).

For these reasons, Clark’s book remains immensely controversial, especially in Germany. Such is the burden of the revisionist!

For my thinking on this subject, I find Clark valuable for two reasons, firstly, his clarity on the warlike and anti-German passion of Poincare, an aspect of the situation that few other historians identify so vigorously.

“Poincare’s visceral preoccupation with the threat posed by Germany was one driving factor. He had been ten years old when the Germans overran his native Lorraine in 1870, forcing his family to flee. His home town, Bar-le-Duc, was occupied by the Germans for three years, pending the payment of the French Indemnity. This did not mean that Poincare was a revanchist in the mood of Boulanger (Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger - known as General Revanche, Minister of War during the 1880’s), but he remained deeply suspicious of the Germans; ….. Salvation, Poincare believed, lay solely in the fortification of the Franco-Russian alliance, the keystone of French security”. (pages 294/95).

Secondly, Clark asserts in stark terms the anti-German character of the senior members of the British Foreign Office, including Sir Edward Grey, whom Clark presents in a decided unflattering light.

“Of all the politicians who walked the European political stage before 1914, Grey is one of the most baffling. …. tightly focused on the European continent”.

“Grey was a passionate naturalist, birdwatcher and fisherman ….. he struck them ‘as devoid of personal ambition, aloof and unapproachable’”. Pages 200 - 202)

(Professor Clark is an eminent historian and noted Germanophile, holder of the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and author of the highly praised study of Prussia “Iron Kingdom” - which in my view tends toward the turgid. There is a newly published biography of Sir Edward Grey - “Statesman of Europe - a life of Sir Edward Grey”. Otte T.G. Nov 2020 which attempts a corrective. Otte’s introduction includes the following - “What Churchill did to the history of the 1930’s and 1940’s, his predecessor David Lloyd George did to the reputation of Grey. He dished him. On losing office, he turned to writing his war memoirs, in which he stated that Grey’s ‘personality was distinctly one of the elements that contributed to the great catastrophe’, and in which he portrayed him as ‘not made for prompt action’ and as ‘the most insular of our statesmen, who knew less of foreigners through contact than any minister of the government’)

The second revisionist work is even more exceptional, indeed, I regard it as belonging to a small group of the pre-eminent histories produced since the emergence of modern historiography approximately 200 years ago. Dominic Lieven, in his “Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia” (Penguin, 2015) gives us a penetrating new insight on the origins, from the Russian perspective. There is so much of value that is difficult to create a hierarchy, let me just draw provisional attention to three prominent features.

In chapter one, Lieven articulates with consummate clarity the imperial nature of the First World War, both globally and within the boundaries of greater Europe. Then, in chapter three, he reveals his masterwork of original research, providing the reader with immense new insights into the key decision makers within the Tsarist Empire, and the collective mindset that existed as these men dealt with contradictions of a state fatally weakened by the Russo-Japanese war 1904/05.

And finally, spanning whole period, Lieven displays exceptional scholarship in describing the expectation, formation, operation and breakdown of a system of deterrence that was designed to prove security, but ended generating precisely the opposite. For students of nuclear deterrence (such as am I), this book presents the most perfectly formed treatment of deterrence thinking and purpose, in a context which is both radically different from the post-Hiroshima environment, and eerily similar.

To Be Continued