http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1432_A_1279269_1_A,00.html

Aug. 1 marks the 90th anniversary of Kaiser Wilhelm II's declaration of war against Russia. But the role of imperial Germany in unleashing the horrors of World War I continues to divide historians nearly a century later.

Nine decades down the line, the question that still plagues scholars is how "civilized" Europe could plunge itself into one of the most atrocious conflicts in the course of humanity.

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles that ended the Great War put the sole responsibility for its outbreak firmly with Germany and its allies, largely due to decisions made during the so-called July Crisis of 1914. On July 5 of that year, German Kaiser Wilhelm II gave his blessing when an Austro-Hungarian envoy asked him to back reprisals against Serbia after the heir to the Hapsburg throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo the week before.

The "blank check" for Vienna's actions that fateful summer is considered by historians to be the decisive first step on the march to war. Other German sins included its refusal to join last-ditch crisis talks proposed by London and later, its invasion of neutral Belgium -- decisions that appeared to set off an inexorable chain reaction.
Over-simplification?

In that age of alliances, the sword-rattling by central Europe's monarchies served as a provocation to the designated protector of the Slavs -- Russia -- and its wake, France and Britain, united in their "Entente Cordiale". But although history has traditionally placed the bulk of the blame on Germany, some scholars such as Oxford professor Hew Strachan call such analyses simplistic. "The complexity of events makes it impossible to attribute fault to one country in particular," Strachan was quoted by Der Spiegel news weekly as saying.

"The Entente overestimated the decision-making process in
Germany," which was itself reacting to the action of others,
Strachan said. He noted that the Russian decision for a partial mobilization of troops on July 24 "was perceived by Germany as a declaration of war".

On July 31, Berlin asked Saint Petersburg to hold off on its mobilization, and a day later, it deployed its own troops, followed by France. In 1914, all of Europe was on guard. The system of alliances split the continent down the middle with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy on one side versus Britain, France and Russia on the other.
Colonial ambitions, hegemonic delusions and an accelerating arms race fed the tensions that had already brought Europe to the brink of war three times since 1905. For decades, Germany looked to this explosive backdrop to deny its own responsibility in the war. It took historian Fritz Fischer in the 1960s to point out the unflattering image in the mirror.

Fischer accused Germany of unleashing a preventative war to break the country's prevailing isolationism. Britain and Russia's military force made Berlin fear a shift in the balance of power toward the Entente. The scholar cited in particular the meeting of a German war council on December 8, 1912 during which the option of a preventative war against Russia was floated.

21st century theories

After creating a scandal with his analysis, Fischer was later seen as having opened the door to Germany's recognition of its central role in instigating the bloody conflict. But today, the pendulum has swung back slightly due to the work of modern historians who draw attention to the contradictions in Fischer's theories. For example, why did German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg -- presented as the architect of the war by Fischer -- send a message to Vienna on July 29 ordering it to "stop at Belgrade" with its military action?
And why did Wilhelm II go on a pleasure cruise in July if a major war was being plotted? "There were immediate and profound causes of the war, the mobilization of millions of soldiers... that were the result of decisions and orders formulated by men...from the small circles around the monarchies of Vienna and Berlin... and to a lesser
extent, London, Paris and Saint Petersburg," wrote German historian Volker Berghahn.

I have always held Count Leopold von Berchtold of Austria to be very responsible for the war. He was dishonest to the Kaiser about various matters and was rather careless when dealing with Serbia.

I have always held Count Leopold von Berchtold of Austria to be very responsible for the war. He was dishonest to the Kaiser about various matters and was rather careless when dealing with Serbia.
It was Czar Nicholas fault, the Serbs weren't his business? Once Russia was in France was going to jump in there to "regain Alsace Lorraine".

The blame can be spread around quite easily.

The Russians shouldn't have been dicking around in the Austro-Hungarians' backyard.

The Austo-Hungarians shouldn't have tried to present Serbia with a lose-lose ultimatum. Didn't the plans for action against Serbia get written BEFORE Ferdinand was shot?

The Germans shouldn't have stopped the successful strategy of containing France by pissing off Russia, shouldn't have given carte-blanche support to the Austro-Hungarians, and shouldn't have invaded Belgium.

France shouldn't have been such sore losers after the Franco-Prussian war.

All the countries involved should have looked at conflicts such as the late US Civil War (where trenches and wire actually showed up late on) and the Russo-Japanese war to realize that technology would have a great impact.

The British especially should have realized that the war wasn't going to be the usual jolly old scrap with a bunch of wogs over in the colonies, and maybe should have realized that supporting the less-than-ideally-competent French military wouldn't stop at bringing over a few Regular units.

Every country involved, once the war started, should have realized that large numbers of their generals were hilariously incompetent when it came to modern warfare. Yes, the constraints of technology, such as the lack of practical two-way portable radios, made it hard to be a general, but dammit, this does not mean that the concept of "not doing **** that doesn't work and has been proven to not work" has to be thrown out the window.

It's completely insane that Haig hadn't been fired by the end of the war. WWI saw some of the most ridiculously depressing examples of incompetence in leadership known to history.


Well, I've sorta gotten off-topic here.

But anyhow, main point: You can't blame just the Germans, they were just another cog in the machine.

I could go on a tome-long rant about the war, but Britain's omnipresent foreign policy double standards, France's insecurity and bitterness about 1871, Russia's incompetent leadership, and Austria's multiethnic patchwork all were major factors. Germany made mistakes but they were no more to blame than anyone else, in fact probably less. On a global scale, Britain and France were trying to deny Germany the colonial resources that they considered their birthright. Oh, and Belgium is a whiny little ***** country that has no historical precedent for existing and did nothing but manufacture 'Hun atrocity' stories.

Germany actually did seriously **** up the PR front with hostage-taking policies in Belgium, and German soldiers in the West in WWII were actually generally better behaved than their WWI counterparts.

It had long been the goal of France to expand to its 'natural borders' along the Rhine.

And it had, simmeraly, long been the intention of the Russian government to secure acces to the Straits of Bosparus, in order to be able to deploy its Naval forces in the Mediterreanean Sea. However, for this the Russian government desperately needed support from other nations, particular Britian, which it thought it would only receive after participating in a great European conflict.

Anyway, I read this in a book from the groundbreaking Dutch historian J.H.J Andriessen, who seems to be leading the current trend of WW I revisionism in Holland.

Germany actually did seriously **** up the PR front with hostage-taking policies in Belgium, and German soldiers in the West in WWII were actually generally better behaved than their WWI counterparts.
What limited incidents actually did happen in Belgium they brought on themselves by sniping etc.

What limited incidents actually did happen in Belgium they brought on themselves by sniping etc.

Nuh-uh.

All from "The First World War" by John Keegan:

"There were, later enquiries would reveal, few or no francs-tireurs in Belgium in 1914." (p81)

"Non-resistance did nothing to placate the invaders. Almost from the first hours, innocent civilians were shot and villages burnt, outrages all hotly denied by the Germans as soon as the news-subsequently well-attested-reached foriegn newspapers. Priests were shot, too, perhaps because German officers remembered that it was the priests who had led the resistance of Catholic Brittany against the armies of the French Revolution in 1793." (p82)

"Worst of all the outrages began on 25 August at Louvain. This little university town, the "Oxford of Belgium", was a treasure store of Flemish Gothic and Renaissance architecture, painting, manuscripts and books. Panicked allegedly by a misunderstood night-time movement by their own troops, the occupiers, 10,000 strong, begtan to shout "snipers," and then to set fire to the streets and buildings where francs-tireurs suspectedly operated." (p82-83)


Yeah, the stuff about the Germans bayonetting babies, etc, is BS, but they were hardly having a tea party.

"Non-resistance did nothing to placate the invaders. Almost from the first hours, innocent civilians were shot and villages burnt, outrages all hotly denied by the Germans as soon as the news-subsequently well-attested-reached foriegn newspapers. Priests were shot, too, perhaps because German officers remembered that it was the priests who had led the resistance of Catholic Brittany against the armies of the French Revolution in 1793." (p82)


Most of this kinda stuff was debunked. Shooting the boy raping faggots of the papist church brings no tears to my eyes espec since Hillaire Belloc a Papal agent help tip British public opinion towards intervention on the continent.

If you can't trust Keegan, who can you trust?

He does point out that the worst atrocities were often carried out by rear-line troops who had been driven into a state of hyperalertness by BS about partisans.

If you can't trust Keegan, who can you trust?

I don't really trust mainstream historians on much of anything.

What limited incidents actually did happen in Belgium they brought on themselves by sniping etc.

The histories I've read fully support this. I have an out-of-print book by D.J. Goodspeed, Ludendorff: Genious of World War One that claims the first German casualties of the war were killed by Belgian Snipers. I can't blame the Belgians but the German response was not too different from the US response to resistance fighters in Iraq. Goodspeed's book explains, "They found it outrageous that men in uniform should be fired on by civilians, for they had been brought up on legends of the war of 1870 and hatred franc-tireurs with a patriotic passion."

http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/franctireur.htm

documents on Germany's request for passage are here:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/belgium_germanrequest.htm
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/belgium_germanrequest2.htm

Notice that even after the invasion Germany's second request states that "any agreement with Belgium that can be reconciled in any concievable way with its conflict with France" would be acceptable to Germany.

Goodspeed also writes that a stream of German refugees fled westword as the Cossacks pillaged on the Eastern Front. "A few days previously Neidenburg had been a neat little town of white frame houses nestling among black fir forests and tall pine woods, but the Cossacks had wantonly set it on fire and now most of it was a smoldering ruin." The simple fact is that German atrocities were not unique.

Belgium was very stupid to not grant free passage, its not like France's "plan 17" didn't call for a Belgium invasion( though after attacking through Alsace Lorraine).

The first German casualties of war were caused by Belgian snipers, this is because Belgium was this wacky little thing called a "soveriegn nation" that had an "army". Because this army was "small", they had to "fight unconventionally". But does that justify burning Louvain?

Belgium wanted to hold onto neutrality. Siding with the Germans would be a violation of that. They just wanted to be left alone. Far as I'm concerned, the invasions of Belgium by the Germans in both World Wars were far more offensive than, say, the invasions of Czechslovakia and Poland in the 30's.

As to the original question of Germany's guilt, I've been doing some research on Fritz Fischer over the past few months(I only became aware how significant he was when we had this debate at OD so I don't pretend to be an expert.)

The main critique of Fischer is that he looked at Germany in a vacuum and ignored the fact that leaders in other nations were just as imperialistic and aggresive. Certainly there was an elite group in Germany and Austria-Hungary eager for war( Like Von Berchtold who used outright deception to goad Emperor Franz-Joseph), that does not mean the populace of either country was uniquely aggresive or warlike.

Another historian, John Flynn presents German militarism within the context of a Europe wide debt expansion which led to aggresion.

Flynn is at his superb best in his comparative analysis of the military policies of Germany and Italy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that in Germany, Bismarck inaugurated government planning of the economy in order to steal the Socialists' thunder. "The great German Chancellor decided, after some experimenting, that he could give the German people all that the socialists promised without setting up socialism a tragic blunder which politicians in America who have not read history seem not to have comprehended to this day" (p. 117).

Conscription into the armed forces formed a vital part of this quasi-socialist program. It provided employment for large numbers of young men, as well as offering a huge outlet for government spending. Militarism, in brief, met perfectly domestic imperatives. And, as the burden of debt mounted, the pressure for war increased concomitantly: "War, the supreme project of obfuscated politicians trapped in impossible promises, in overpowering taxes and crushing debt" (p. 121).

In stressing the domestic imperatives in German policy that led to war in 1914, Flynn anticipated the influential work of Fritz Fischer and his school in Germany. And Flynn developed his account with much more balance than Fischer, who tends to see the European conflict of 1914 as exclusively the result of German aggression.

To Flynn, the pressures of war caused by expansion of debt were a European-wide phenomenon. (Flynn, incidentally, was a considerable authority on German history. One thinks in this connection of his outstanding comparison in The Road Ahead of the British and German systems of government in 1914 by no means to the advantage of the former. But this is another story.)

Entire Article:

http://www.mises.org/misesreview_detail.asp?control=55&sortorder=issue

IMO the blame is equally shared by all belligerant parties in WWI and the eternal stain and shame is as difficult to erase as shlt from a blanket.

But of course with MILLIONS of young dead Frenchman and Englishmen in 1918, the blame had to be found somewhere and Germany took it up the arse. That's what bothered Hitler so much -- among other things.

And the USA isn't guilt-free either. On the contrary. If the USA had NOT butt in at the 11th Hour and saved the war for the Allies, the war would stopped due to sheer exhaustion and the warring parties retired to their national borders. But the USA upset the natural balance in Europe and by doing so paved the way for the Fuehrer and WWII.

Nice going President Wilson.

Another historical irony is that a few years ago Bill Clinton, another U.S. president, PUNISHED SERBIA. This time nobody cared.

Better late than never I guess.....

The first German casualties of war were caused by Belgian snipers, this is because Belgium was this wacky little thing called a "soveriegn nation" that had an "army".

Belgium is a buffer state...