Myths of the Great War Mark Harrison* Abstract. There are persistent myths about every aspect of the Great War of 1914 to 1918: how it began, how it was won, how it was lost, and how the peace was made. I consider and reject the arguments that the war broke out inadvertently, that the western front saw needless slaughter, that Germany was starved out of the war by the food weapon, and that the peace treaty that ended the war was the cause of another war. Introduction One hundred years later, perceptions of the Great War continue to resonate in today’s world of international politics and policy.1 Most obviously, does China’s rise show a parallel with Germany’s a century ago? Will China’s rise, unlike Germany’s, remain peaceful? The Financial Times journalist Gideon Rachman wrote last year: The analogy [of China today] with Germany before the first world war is striking … It is, at least, encouraging that the Chinese leadership has * Mark Harrison, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom email:
[email protected] 1 This paper was presented as keynote lectures to the Economic History Society annual conference at the University of Warwick, 28 March 2014, and the Ninth Appalachian Spring Conference in World History and Economics, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, 12 April 2014; and to meetings of the Lancaster University Economics Society on 25 November 2014 and the Defence Economics Seminar at the Ministry of Defence, London, on 25 March 2015, and Bristol (Abbey Wood) on 1 July 2015.