Later this year, Europe will mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, a cataclysmic conflict that shattered a century of near peace, claimed the lives of 8.5 million soldiers, altered national borders, broke up several empires, spurred the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazis in Germany and sped up the emergence of the United States as a superpower.
Europeans had grown accustomed to the most peaceful era since the days of the Roman Empire, and were upbeat about the future. The assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, a crime committed by a Bosnian Serb nationalist, ended this idyll. By Aug. 4, Europe was engulfed in war.
The chain of events that precipitated this catastrophe were bound up in the system of defensive alliances which, ironically, were designed to promote stability and avert war. Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy comprised the Triple Alliance. France, Russia and Britain formed the Entente Cordiale. Members of each alliance, held together by a web of common interests, were supposed to come to each other’s assistance in case of an attack.
The first phase of World War I erupted when the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with Germany’s support, declared war on Serbia. Russia, backing Serbia, went to war with Austria-Hungary and Germany. In turn, Germany attacked Russia’s ally, France. As the last domino fell, Britain came in on the side of its allies. The Ottoman Empire, seeking to preserve its colonial holdings in the Balkans and the Middle East, aligned itself with Germany.
Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, the author of Paris 1919, a prize-winning account of the postwar Versailles conference, sifts through this geopolitical mess and examines the origins of the war in magisterial fashion in The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914. It’s published by Allen Lane, an imprint of the Penguin Group.
In her view, the war was primarily caused by rivalries over colonies, economic competition, an arms race and ethnic nationalisms. But fear was a key ingredient, too. Austria-Hungary feared that South Slav nationalism, centered in Serbia, would affect its status as a world power. France looked warily at Germany’s growing strength. Germany was suspicious of Russia, which was rearming. Britain was concerned that a single country, Germany, would dominate Europe and thereby upset the balance of power.
MacMillan argues that Europe’s descent into war was influenced by a number of decisive turning points: France’s decision to ally itself with Russia as a counterbalance to Germany. Germany’s decision to launch a naval race with Britain. Britain’s rapprochement with France and Russia. Germany’s attempt to topple the Entente Cordiale in two crises over Morocco. The eruption of two Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913.
Although MacMillan is a detached and impartial observer, she believes that some nations were more culpable than others in igniting the war. As she succinctly puts it, “Austria-Hungary’s mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany’s decision to back it to the hilt, Russia’s impatience to mobilize, these all seem to bear the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Neither France nor Britain wanted war, although it might be argued that they could have done more to stop it.”
These developments, she says, “added to the layers of resentments, suspicions and memories which shaped the relations among the great powers. That is the context in which decisions were taken in 1914.”
As she looks back, MacMillan, a professor of history at Oxford University, claims that rivalry between Germany and Britain was not necessarily inevitable. Indeed, she points out, “a British-German partnership made a lot of sense.” Germany was a land power, but Britain was a sea power. German and British colonial interests did not clash, and France seemed to be their common enemy. The royal families in Germany and Britain were related by blood, and the ruling elites in both nations were largely Protestant.
The Boer War in South Africa, as well as a dispute over the Samoan islands, generated tension between Germany and Britain. Germany’s Navy Laws of 1898 and 1900, initiated by Navy Minister Alfred von Tirpitz to upgrade its naval fleet, significantly increased British unease over German intentions. And public opinion in Britain, fanned by fears that Germany would pose a threat to British prosperity, turned Germany, Britain’s biggest trading partner, into a potential enemy.
Partly in response to the navy race, Britain moved closer to France and Russia, a development that alarmed Germany. And Serbian dreams of uniting six million Serbs and Croats in the Austria-Hungarian Empire put its long reigning emperor, Franz Joseph I, on edge.
By 1913, a series of disputes, from the rivalry between Austria-Hungary and Russia in the Balkans to France’s anxieties about Germany, had driven apart countries that had much to gain from working together.
The atmosphere was so explosive that British War Minister Richard Haldane warned that if a general war on the European continent broke out, Britain would have to participate to save France from Germany. In Berlin, German Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg both believed that a war with France was on the horizon.
From 1912 to 1914, spending on defence increased sharply. “What the arms race did was to raise the level of tensions in Europe and put pressure on decision-makers to pull the trigger before the enemy did,” MacMillan writes in an apt summary.
Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Austria-Hungary’s archduke, Franz Ferdinand, an antisemite who loathed Hungarians and Serbs, was greeted with a mixture of indifference and apprehension throughout Europe. The aging emperor, Franz Joseph, was advised to react resolutely. Germany promised him its full backing, thereby giving Austria-Hungary a “blank check.”
“Germany’s leaders felt that they had little choice but to support their ally even as it pursued dangerous policies, much as the United States continues to support Israel or Pakistan today,” MacMillan notes.
Voicing criticism of German policy, she adds, “Germany’s key leaders, such as Bethmann, may not have deliberately started the Great War, as has often been charged … Nevertheless, by taking its coming for granted, as something desirable even, by issuing the blank check to Austria-Hungary, and by sticking to (the von Schlieffen) war plan which made it inevitable that Germany would fight on two fronts, Germany’s leaders allowed it to happen.”
According to MacMillan, Germany hoped to localize a war to the Balkans, or better still, avert conflict altogether. It was not to be. On July 20, Franz Joseph presented an ultimatum to Serbia. Four days later, Serbia accepted all but two of his demands, prompting Austria-Hungary to declare war and countries like Russia and France to mobilize their armies.
By Aug. 2, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Serbia were officially at war with each other. Germany’s violation of Belgium’s neutrality, which had been guaranteed by the major powers, was the last straw for Britain, which entered the war two days later. Canada plunged in, too, and the United States entered the war in 1917.
It was far more destructive than anyone could have imagined. By the end of 1914, France and Britain had already lost 265,000 and 90,000 soldiers respectively in bitter trench warfare. At the Battle of Ypres in October of that fateful year, 89,000 German troops were killed.
In the winter of 1917, the czarist regime in Russia fell, and in the summer of 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. The Ottoman Empire would be the next to fall. In November 1918, the German king, Wilhelm, abdicated, leaving Germany without a monarchy.
MacMillan documents these thunderous events with precision and elan, exhibiting a mastery of the material and a flair for explaining complex situations in simple yet vigorous prose. The War That Ended Peace is a superior work of scholarship.