""The Sleepwalkers - How Europe went to War in 1914"" Topic

Hey folks,

as I´m about to finish "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark I wanted to share my impressions and recommend the book for anyone who is interested in a comprehensive and well written account on how the Great War came to be. The book takes a different premise than most, focusing on the question of "how", not so much on the analytic question of "why".
All the while, Clark uses a vast amount of critically reviewed and carefully selected sources (almost 200 pages of the book are devoted to the bibliography).

Clark tries to deliver an account that avoids the question of guilt, focusing instead on the problem of agency, the interlocking decisions and rivaling interests of the different conflicting party – and succeeds pretty well in my opinion.

I´ve posted a more comprehensive review on my new blog for WW1 Naval Warfare, to be found here:
link

Definitely worth buying!

Interesting. Anybody out there who has read this book and "The Guns of August"? How do they compare?

Thanks for the recomendation. It sounds like the kind of study I like. I'll have to look for it.

And, I too am interested in the Mediterranean in WWI. I have some miniatures for Austrian and Italian fleets. I'm looking forward to seeing more on your blog.

Clark tries to deliver an account that avoids the question of guilt…

I don't think that's possible.

You might be interested in 'Europe's Last Summer' by David Fromkin , which uses pretty much up-to-date research ( including that of Fritz Fischer ) on the beginnings of WW1. Rather than subscribe to collective guilt , Fromkin shows that both Austria-Hungary and Germany felt threatened by the growth of Serbia and Russia respectively and thus entered into wars to determine which nations would come out on top : Austria a limited war in the Balkans , Germany a world war. Helmuth Von Moltke was in fact deliberately trying to bring about a war with Russia to decide matters before Russia could become too powerful and overwhelm Germany in any future conflict : the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was merely a convenient excuse to settle the question. If any one man was responsible for starting WW1 it was Von Moltke , according to Fromkin.
' The Guns of August ' was written before Fischer's research became well known and thus places a different emphasis on events , but Clark's is a new book thus I am surprised he seems to excuse the Central Powers in this affair.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast is just released his first installment of the history of WWI. Worth a listen. It is 3 hours long and only covers up to before the first engagement with the British.

If I can suggest another book – "Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914", by Max Hastings, is about the same topic – the background as to how the war started, and why things escalated beyond what the people in power expected.

TL;DR – Moltke, Germany and Austria get the lion's share of the blame. He doesn't avoid the question of guilt!

I just finished Max Hastings book. And yes Moltke and Austria get the lion's share, though he does point out that Serbia started the ball rolling.

Also covers the first year of war. I was totally amazed at the gross incompetence showed by the leadership (especially the military generals) on all sides.

I think people vastly overestimate the influence of Moltke junior in German Decision making, and vastly underestimate how trans-formative of the internal political balance of power in Vienna the assassination was. Clarke does a good job of putting these things forward. All my academic life I had the German guilt hammered into me, but in light of these two books (Clark and Pointing's "13 days"), this is a argument that is simply indefensible.

Moltke was simply one player in the German side, and until the very end of the crisis was out of the loop. Bentham Hollweg was running the German show, and he seems at least from the Pointing and Clark narratives to had kept a firm hand until the Russian mobilization. Yes he gave the Austrians a blank check early on, but he never believed that the war would diffuse. Moltke only becomes important after Russia has started a de-facto full mobilization in which case he gains leverage for the war. But until then there is no clear dominant war-party in Berlin.

In Austria on the other hand the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand takes out the peace party in the Austrian government and loosens the hands of that criminal Conrad. The assassination was decisive not as a pretext but for making the war-party dominant in one more great power capital.

But to simply point the finger at the two Central Powers and their lucky war-parties simply ignores the pretty well entrenched war parties running France and Russia by 1914. Let us see

In France Poincare, a man openly looking forward to a war, and one who gives a huge blank check to Russia comfortably heads a war-party that has gained the upper hand in French politics. Sure you have token peace party members like Viviani around, but as the Clark and Pointing narratives point out they are browbeaten by Poincare. So in 1914 French policy making is dominated by a war-party.

In Russia after Stolypin's assassination you have an acceding war-party around those other criminals Sukhomlinov and Krivoshein that in 1914 pulls out a coup and leads to the dismissal of Kokovtsov, the last serious peace-party leader in Russia.

And in the UK you have Grey agitating for a de-facto blank check to the Entente, who in 1914 is lucky enough to have the Irish Home Rule crisis give him a Tory alliance to overcome the peace-party in the cabinet.

So by 1914 of the 5 powers in question 2 have dominant war-parties (Russia and France), 2 see unanticipated events that give the war-parties the upper hand (Austria-Hungary and the UK), and 1 is in flux (Germany). Really speaking why would anybody expect to avoid war when 4 of 5 players are spoiling for a fight.

What the Clark book nailed to me is the ultimately wars do not happen because of systems and so on. They happen because people who want war come to dominate the policy of states. Systems and other conditions may make it more likely that war-parties gain power, but sometimes it is blind stupid evil luck (as in the case of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand).

And that while collective quilt may make sense in WWII, it makes no sense in WWI. There were specific people who pushed to war, pushed for war despite being pretty sure it would be terrible. They were criminals.

For me

Poincare and part of the French diplomatic corp, Kirvoshein, Suknomlinov, Conard von Hotzendorf, Apis (Dragutin), Wilson, Moltke are Criminals who intentionally sought a world war. They should be treated like that by history and for posterity.

Sazonov, Nicholas II,Berchtold, Francis-Joseph were accessories to crime in that while they did not intend it once it was offered they went along knowing the consequences.

Hollweg, Wilhem II, and the Russian general staff beyond Suknomilov are at the least guilty of criminal incompetence. Especially the Germans

Pasic and Franz-Ferdinand for me are innocent. Pasic could not do much in the country he was in, and though he was a Big Serbia advocate and knew that this could only happen in the context of a European war, he was not willing to be the one to trigger that war (unlike that murderer Apis). At least from the Clark and the Pointing narratives, Franz Ferdinand does seem the key for a permanent shift in Austria towards peace-party dominance.

And the important thing in Clark is his reference to the Stolypin affair.In a Europe in which both Stolypin and Franz Ferdinand are alive and in power, WWI becomes less likely, since both cared more for internal reform than the Balkans. Two bullets killed 1800000 people and a whole civilization. Not one.

Or that is my quite polemical view.