The War That Ended Peace
and award-winning author of Paris 1919 comes a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, a fascinating portrait of Europe from 1900 up to the outbreak of World War I. The century since the end of the Napoleonic wars had been the most peaceful era Europe had known since the fall of the Roman Empire. In the first years of the twentieth century, Europe believed it was marching to a golden, happy, and prosperous future. But instead, complex personalities and rivalries, colonialism and ethnic nationalisms, and shifting alliances helped to bring about the failure of the long peace and the outbreak of a war that transformed Europe and the world. The War That Ended Peace brings vividly to life the military leaders, politicians, diplomats, bankers, and the extended, interrelated family of crowned heads across Europe who failed to stop the descent into war: in Germany, the mercurial Kaiser Wilhelm II and the chief of the German general staff, Von Moltke the Younger; in Austria-Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph, a man who tried, through sheer hard work, to stave off the coming chaos in his empire; in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife; in Britain, King Edward VII, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and British admiral Jacky Fisher, the fierce advocate of naval reform who entered into the arms race with Germany that pushed the continent toward confrontation on land and sea.
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What Hacker News says
- Margaret MacMillan is a modern historian with a liberal world view and no ideological incentive to defend Bismarck, and in her phenomenal work The War that Ended Peace (2013) she largely supports this view.
- > From my understanding the problem was that Germany was growing very strong and threatening Britain's domination.
That is an argument often made, but the evidence for it is basically speculation based on pure balance of power theory.
There is just one very big problem with that theory. Why would Britain not have the same issue with the US? The US was tracking and even outpacing Germany in growth and population, but Britain was willing to compromise with the US based on reasonable disagreements. Because the US did not overreach, Britain was content with losing influence.
The US for example promised not to annex Cuba and signaled that they did not have much interest in further expedition in the east. The also agree on how to deal with South America.
Germany on the other hand was different. They essentially tried and did everything to piss everybody off. Britain was in some cases actually prepared to agree with Germany, but Germany behaved so stupidly that they drove them in French hands.
Then Germany continued to behave like idiots so that eventually the arch enemies Russia and Britain agree to an alliance even when they had outstanding issues in Persia and other places.
Even then, once German soldiers were literally walking threw and destroying Belgium Britain only joined the war on a thin margin in parliament.
I really don't see how Britain can be made responsible for any of it. Britain loudly called for peace talks until right before WW1 and Germany/Austria refused any kind of talks.
> Saying a bunch of students started WW1 is quite absurd.
The caused a geopolitical event who's fallout caused the war. Of course they did not put on German uniforms and walked over the Belgium border.
> I did find some material pointing fingers at King Edward though, might want to take a look [2]
Seems to me that amounts to about a conspiracy theory. There is this Anglo-saxon elites conspiricy theory going around. Everything that happens was somehow planned and put in place by the British so they could profit form it.
I have read multiple very modern books that in detailed researched these diplomatic relationships and not a single modern historian seems to endorse this theory.
> An interesting book about the topic is The Great Illusion By Norman Angell [1]
He had some good points. His problem was to misunderstand the political economy of the countries. In the autocratic empires the people who have the power to declare and make war are not the same people who mostly profited from the markets.
The German and Austrian high officials were part of a separate culture where they actually look down on many business men and the newly rich, all they car about was power and honor. Looking at the Austrians makes this point quite clear, these people were not living in the same world that Angell was outlining.
Many German capitalist understood the problem and were against war, but they did not have the required influence.
Edit:
If you want to read one book on the subject I would recommend "The War that Ended Peace" by the highly respected historian Margaret Macmillan.
