The Great War (Again)

This summer, it will be 110 years exactly since the seemingly almost accidental outbreak of the First World War ("The Great War"). One might wonder whether, after all this time and all the scholarship "the Great War" has generated, there is still anything left to say. But so catastrophic was that war, that we simply cannot let go of its memory. Understandably so! For not only was the war a civilizational suicide (as Pope Benedict XV rightly characterized it), not only did it destroy the old established order, it also led directly to the Second World War with all its attendant horrors, and (thanks to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which the war facilitated) also led to the Cold War, and indeed to the current configuration of Europe (in which Eastern Europe again resembles Eastern Europe post Brest-Litovsk), and the terrible war taking place at present between Russia and Ukraine.

In On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (tr. Anne Buckley and Caroline Summers, Cambridge University Press, 2022), University of Leeds Professor of Modern European History Holger Afflerbach re-examines the history of the Great War, primarily from the perspective of Germany, highlighting how close the conduct and outcome of that war really was (hence, "On a Knife Edge"), how it could just as well have ended in a draw if the belligerents' leaders had been able and willing to behave differently. It offers all of us who have been so shaped by the tragic outcome of that war an opportunity to reconsider our history, the better to understand the past - and perhaps also the present.

In his Introduction, the author summarizes his aim in the book: "to show that the outcome of the war was for a long period veery widely considered to be open; and that bearing this fact in mind is indispensable to understand the increasing radicalisation of the war, the insuperable obstacles in the way of a compromise peace, the harshness of the victors and the stubborn unwillingness of the vanquished to accept the result." A serious engagement with this book offers some answers to all these questions.

I am not a student of military history, and there is a lot of that in this book (along with much else), but the account never loses the forest for the trees and presents a comprehensive picture of the wartime political and diplomatic situation and of the very fallible behaviors of the belligerents' leaders, both civil and military. Although some were occasionally quite prescient, they were motivated by a variety of considerations - foreknowledge of the future unfortunately not being one of them.

That said, I, for one, was somewhat surprised by the widespread pre-war expectation that modern warfare would be unavoidably apocalyptic and the simultaneous sense that such a war needed to be won. It seems to me striking how similar that sounds to the Cold War world in which I grew up. Fortunately, nuclear deterrence functioned successfully during the Cold War. There was nothing quite comparable in 1914.

Regarding the start of the war, the author highlights the disparity between the immediate causes and the wider issues which eventually moved to the forefront. While I have never shared the view that put all the blame on Germany and assumed that none of the powers anticipated quite what would happen, I was surprised to learn how strongly the Germans believed that they were fighting a largely defensive war. It was the contradiction between this widespread German self-understanding and the military strategy Germany pursued (and how that strategy was interpreted by others) that created one of the many conundrums of the war. On the other hand, both France and Italy had "openly expansionist, nationalistic, and imperialistic agendas."

One of the most significant characteristics of the war was the long-term stalemate on the Western front, which highlighted the difference in experience between ordinary soldiers and the officer corps. Had the war been confined to Europe, stalemate might have prevailed, but, of course, the war was fought elsewhere as well, with more obviously decisive outcomes. The two sides seem also to have had different historical models in mind - the Seven Years War for the Germans, the Napoleonic War and corresponding victory for the British.

A persistent leitmotif in this book is the many missed opportunities to make peace during the course of the conflict. For example, an early, separate peace with Russia might have avoided the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and might easily have led to a draw between the Central Powers and the Western Allies. It is truly striking how many efforts were made during the course of the war to end it - both direct peace offers and offers at mediation. These included the famous peace initiative of Blessed Kaiser Karl I of Austria, the various offers of mediation from the U.S. and the Vatican, and peace initiatives from Germany itself - most famously the invitation to all the Allies to join the peace process at Brest-Litovsk.

"For most of the war, a tie seemed the almost inevitable result of the strategic situation. ... There is much to suggest that if the war had been confined within a European framework, the warring nations' respective advantages and disadvantages would in the end have cancelled one another out and enforced a compromise peace."

Unfortunately, pre-Bolshevik Russia "could not overcome its hesitation to offer a separate peace" and the Western powers did all they could to keep Russia in the war, "an enormously shortsighted strategy on the part of the Entente. and its new ally the USA, and it led Europe into catastrophe." Meanwhile Germany's bungling of its relationship with the U.S. led to American entry into the war, tipping the scale in favor of the Western Allies. This proved doubly tragic. The Allies could not win without the U.S.: "an Entente victory became reliant on the now indispensable assistance of the Americans: this meant that the endurance of any political outcomes would depend on a lasting commitment from the United Sates after the end of the war." (We know how that turned out!) The author notes that one of the ironies of the way the war concluded was that Wilson's idea of "peace without victory" became impossible precisely because of the U.S. military intervention finally tipping the scale in the Entente's favor.

Finally, regarding the internal destabilization of Germany in 1918, there was an (understandable) German misreading of Wilson's priorities. "The Germans had no way of knowing that the question of the monarchy was ultimately of secondary importance to the President and his advisors [who] might even have preferred the Kaiser to remain ... This would have soothed their growing fears that a revolution in Germany would bring the Bolsheviks to power. However, these thoughts remained concealed from the German public, as the wording of Wilson's note was hostile towards the old order." In the end, the fall of the monarchy was the fault of the Kaiser himself. Afflerbach quotes one Social Democrat to the effect that a timely abdication would have "broken the back of the republican movement." Instead, it was the Kaiser's "shameful departure" that the author believes decided the monarchy's fate.

Afflerbach argues in the end that "the patently senseless sacrifice of millions of men in a war that only ended in a draw might have been a better deterrent against a new war than the idea that such a war could be 'won'." Of course, the opposite happened, the war was "won" - patently senselessly - and immediately set the stage for the next war. That is but one of many unfortunate lessons to be learned from Allied intransigence snd German blundering in the First World War.