H-German Forum -- First World War -- Afflerbach (December 2014)

H-German ANN: H-German Forum -- First World War -- Afflerbach (December 2014) Discussion published by Laura Hilton on Tuesday, December 9, 2014 H-GERMAN Forum: The Outbreak of the First World War Holger Afflerbach, University of Leeds The First World War has garnered significant attention in the last decade. It is not a neglected field. In normal years, a constant stream of research is published on all conceivable aspects of the subject. Now, around the centenary of 2014, this stream has become a veritable flood, and new books have appeared by the dozens. Authors and publishers did not wait for the centenary of the outbreak of the war; neither did they limit themselves on only the July crisis. The boom started in 2012 and created a real avalanche of paper. The Special Page on the First World War of the Frankfurter Rundschau alone lists 26 new titles with approximately 17,000 printed pages and these are solely German books or books available in German translation.[1] I expect that the process of a centenary commemoration, which caused this wave of publications, will go on, albeit in changing intensity, until 2018/19 when it will reach the centenary of the end of the war and the peace settlements. Only then will it go back to “normal” research and writing activity. I am also writing a book on the First World War and, therefore, I am a potential contributor to this mountain of paper, as well as a consumer of all these new books. Therefore, I accepted the kind invitation by H-German to answer the question regarding how I think these publications will influence our understanding of the July crisis and the First World War, and how the debate will continue from here on. Let me first ask: Is there a debate? The answer to this question is difficult. It is surely not a debate comparable in intensity with the Fischer controversy which started in 1961 and kept historians engaged for at least two decades. [2] This debate centered on the question of German responsibility for the First World War and it was probably the most intense and longest debate in the history of post 1945 German historiography. However, a discussion of this type simply is not taking place right now. Maybe one of the reasons is that the First World War is now, much more than in the 1960s, “history.” The last veterans died years ago, the war is no longer “contemporary history,” and, therefore, no longer a field of personal passions and emotions. Nevertheless, we see the influence of our own times in the most popular, albeit not hotly debated argument in the centenary production, that of German “normality.” If this is a trend, then there is a second one occurring. The book by Fritz Fischer had a strong thesis. The majority of the books that I discuss here have much less so. Most of them are not, or at least are much less, “thesis driven” than Fischer’s book. A catchy thesis normally simplifies things and, therefore, provokes discussion. The centenary production instead offers books which are at a high scholarly level, and they often offer a very detailed and well-read synthesis of the enormous body of existing research on the First World War. A synthesis is, of course, necessary and extremely useful. If well done, it deserves our admiration, but it cannot really ignite discussions like a thesis-driven book does, by provoking opposition. Citation: Laura Hilton. ANN: H-German Forum -- First World War -- Afflerbach (December 2014). H-German. 12-09-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/discussions/55018/ann-h-german-forum-first-world-war-afflerbach-december-2014 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-German A third trend is the parallelism of the actual publications. The books that have appeared since 2012 were written – or have been ordered by publishers – with the centenary in mind. The argument of being on the market “on time” meant that they were produced at roughly the same time. Therefore, most of them cannot relate or respond to each other. They relate to and discuss the existing literature. Given that they are parallel, this makes a debate, an interrelation, difficult. These reasons may substantiate my impression that there is, right now no “real” debate concerning the outbreak and the history of the First World War. Nevertheless, will any of the new publications lead to a radical new understanding of the July crisis or of the First World War? The July crisis is one of the most debated events in history. Thousands of contemporaries and historians have written about it, and tens of thousands of books and articles published since 1914 discuss every conceivable aspect of the event. The same is true for the First World War itself. It is of course very difficult to change our understanding of a topic that has been debated for a hundred years. I see in most publications over the last two years more of a reevaluation of existing arguments rather than brand new ones. However, there is also distinctive progress. The publications of the last two years make our views on the First World War more complete and more comprehensive and they will change our understanding of the war regarding many details, evaluations and nuances. Therefore, briefly: There is not a debate, but there is a very significant and important increase of encyclopedic knowledge on the war. Let me begin by discussing some of these works. In terms of impact, surely Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers deserves first mention. The book was widely reviewed (also by myself) and, therefore, I will discuss here only some selected arguments.[3] The reasons for its success are manifold. It is an well-written book, a major example of academic rigor and competence. The way Clark approached his topic was surprising and refreshing. He did not follow the Albertini/Tuchman orthodoxy and did not focus on the usual “road to war” -- Germany and Wilhelm II, the refusal to renew the reinsurance treaty, Tirpitz, the German battle fleet, the Anglo-German alienation, and then the way into the abyss.[4] The refreshing and important aspect of Clark’s book is that he does not discuss Imperial Germany’s actions in a European context and how this led to war, but he offers a very broad panoramic view of all European politics. His book starts with King Alexander of Serbia and his wife who were brutally murdered by a bunch of Serbian nationalist officers. After 1903, this group took the Serbian government hostage and made it a kind of rogue state. They forced the government to pursue an aggressive nationalistic policy. They were also responsible for the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand. It was impossible for Austria- Hungary to be a good neighbor with this state. The Habsburg monarchy came off quite lightly, and Clark describes it benevolently. What do we make out of that? I think that Clark had a very interesting idea to begin his book with the description of the cruel killing of King Alexander and his wife. It was dramaturgically clever and well- chosen to convey his message: The First World War was, in principle, the Third Balkan War and not the Third Morocco Crisis, like some standard interpretations (From Agadir to Armageddon) want us to believe.[5] Of course, this thesis could invite criticism. Indeed, it did. Clark’s book provoked a wave of hostility in Belgrade and very critical reviews by Serbian historians. The international attention Sleepwalkers has produced offers, in my view, a great chance for future research: a thorough investigation of Serbian pre-1914 politics in an international context. The story of the Balkan roots of the war could be told differently from the way Clark told it, by not Citation: Laura Hilton. ANN: H-German Forum -- First World War -- Afflerbach (December 2014). H-German. 12-09-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/discussions/55018/ann-h-german-forum-first-world-war-afflerbach-december-2014 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-German focusing so strongly on Serbian pre-1914 nationalism, but by including Agenor Graf v. Goluchowski’s Balkan policy, the consequences of the Austro-Serbian tariff war, and especially the role of the Bosnian crisis in 1908/09. Clark did not cover those events thoroughly. Had he done so, he could have shown the Balkan road into the world war in a different light: World War I as the Second Bosnian Crisis, with the huge responsibility of Berlin and especially Vienna. Instead of going into more detail I ask: will Clark’s views permanently alter our understanding of pre-1914 politics? My answer is that they should and they have to, but not in the form in which Clark is presenting them to us. I do not think that future investigations of the roots of the First World War could or should start principally in 1903 in Belgrade. Serbian politics after 1903must play an important and very prominent role in any future analysis of the roads to war. However, our view should not be limited to Belgrade but should include a much broader analysis of the Balkan problems. Clark was not the first who claimed that the First World War was the Third Balkan War. There were writers in the interwar period who did so. Joachim Remak asked this question, and we can trace it back to the era of the First World War itself.[7] Clark’s book will help to recalibrate our attention towards Balkan politics and to where the First World War undoubtedly originated.

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