The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (Making History)

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Clark has greatly advanced our understanding of these crucial events by shifting our focus away from Central Europe to the Balkans, as well as from the immediate causes of the war in 1914 to 1903, thus moving the debate in new directions and highlighting how crucial these “Serbian Ghosts” are for understanding the Balkan origins of the war. Based on Clark's new approach, International Relations theorists have come to understand this brutal act of 1903 as the start of territorial or spatial rivalries between Austria-Hungary and Serbia (the two had maintained better relations before 1903 than they ever would again): “If one could find an initial origin of the war, separate from long-term structural forces, the 1903 murder was it,” political scientist John A. Vasquez argues. Footnote 34

After the war, people dealt with what had happened in different ways. We’ll study how writers and artists attempted to come to terms with the experience. And finally, we’ll explore I also collated, translated and edited a collection of more than 400 international documents relevant to the origins of the war, many previously unpublished, which readers can use to discover for themselves the level of responsibility of each major power for the coming of the war. Challenging the popular rewriting of history Also published in Danish: A Mombauer: Julikrisen. Europas Veu ind I Første Verdenskrig, Ellekaer, 2014) Germany necessarily occupies a central part in this account. Having been blamed for causing the war, it was here that most effort was expended to counter such allegations. However, the actions of other belligerents are also under scrutiny, and interpretations of the role of Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia and Serbia in the events that led to war are analysed.Wilhelm, Waldersee and the Boxer Rebellion’, in Annika Mombauer and Wilhelm Deist (eds), The Kaiser. New Research on Wilhelm II’s role in Imperial Germany, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 0-521-82408-7, pp.91-118. From 2006 until 2011 she was the secretary of the German History Society. [2] [ failed verification] As of 2014, she was a member of the editorial board of 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War. [3] She chaired the Open University department's Research Steering Group and the departmental REF panel until December 2013. [1] Media [ edit ] Now we’ve talked a lot about guilt, responsibility, culpability, and that’s essentially what this long debate has always been about – trying to attribute guilt, starting of course in the war itself and then at Versailles, it was very much about war guilt for the obvious reasons of needing someone to shoulder the reparations and being responsible. But how useful do you think it is to talk about war guilt now that we’re a hundred years or more removed from these events – should historians attribute responsibility and guilt?

The First World War: Inevitable, Avoidable, Improbable or Desirable? Recent Interpretations on War Guilt and the War’s Origins’, German History, vol. 25, No 1, 2007, pp.78-95 Mombauer was a contributor to Michael Portillo's documentary about the causes of World War I, The Great War of Words, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in February 2014. [4] Here Annika explains her research and why it’s essential to understand the origins of the war and the controversy the topic has sparked. The hundred-year debate John Keiger: Yes, I'm afraid that, rather pessimistically, I do think that, particularly over Ukraine, but also perhaps over what is going on in the Far East, [where] there is a potential for things to go horribly wrong. One incident in which the pride of a nation becomes implicated -- like, for instance, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 -- that kind of incident, if it came today, say, the assassination of a major person in Ukraine that immediately brought into play the various external powers, then that could provoke a very serious incident. That does concern me. I don't think the United Nations would be able to do very much. It is very hard to know, but, for instance, if the Russian ambassador in Ukraine was assassinated, what would happen?In 2011 she organised, together with Professor John Röhl, an international conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Fritz Fischer’s publication Griff nach der Weltmacht, which sparked the infamous Fischer controversy. The conference took place on 13-15 October 2011 at the German Historical Institute in London. She has edited some of the conference proceedings which were published in a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary History, entitled ‘The Fischer Controversy after 50 Years’ (April 2013; 48, 2).

Der hundertjährige Krieg um die Kriegsschuldfrage', in Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 65, 5/6 2014, pp.303-337 Helmuth von Moltke: A General in crisis?’, in Matthew S. Seligmann and Matthew Hughes (eds), Leadership in Conflict, 1914-1918, Leo Cooper, London 2000, pp. 95-116, 0-85052-751-1. Germany’, in Holger Herwig and Richard Hamilton (eds), War Planning 1914, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 48-79 Find out more about this book So when we now look at the July Crisis, my opinion is that it’s sort of a crisis of two halves, if you like; the first half, up until the Serbian ultimatum is really very much a crisis that’s shaped by decisions made in Berlin and primarily in Vienna; but that after the ultimatum, everyone obviously is involved in decision-making and they make decisions which will affect the outcome of the crisis. Would you agree with that or do you see that differently?It was the choices that men made during those fateful days that plunged the world into war. They did not walk in their sleep. They knew what they were doing. They were not stupid. They were not ignorant. The choices they made were rational, carefully calculated, premised on the assumptions and attitudes, ideas and experiences that they had accumulated over the years. Real people, actual flesh-and-blood human beings, were responsible for the tragedy of 1914—not unseen, barely understood forces beyond their control. Footnote 95 Clark's account starts with the lurid description of “an orgy of violence,” namely the regicide of the unpopular Serbian King Alexandar Obrenović and Queen Draga in June 1903. Recounted in great and gory detail in a chapter fittingly titled “Serbian Ghosts,” this violent act marked the end of the Obrenović dynasty and the instatement of a new King, Peter Karadjordjević, from a rival dynasty. Footnote 33 Among the chief conspirators in the 1903 murder was Dragutin Dimitrijević, better known as Apis, who would later play a significant role in the planning of another regicide—that of Franz Ferdinand in June 1914. He “only narrowly escaped bleeding to death” in 1903 after having been wounded during the coup—which surely begs the first of many counterfactual speculations about the origins of the war. A response to the question of whether the assassination of 1914 would have occurred had Apis died in 1903 depends largely on what role one assigns to him in the 1914 plot. The Fischer controversy, documents, and the ‘truth’ about the Origins of the First World War (2013-04)

After the Second World War, German historians fully accepted the charge of an aggressive war waged by Germany from 1939. Germans accepted the grotesque character of Hitler and his regime, but this acceptance stressed that Hitler was exceptional, an aberration, who in no way represented the general course of German history. This all changed in the 1960s with the historiographical shift caused by the work of Fritz Fischer. Fischer produced two ground-breaking books on German war aims and German planning for war that completely changed the debate on the origins of the 1914-1918 war. Fischer’s argument that Germany planned the war and desired control over continental Europe caused a huge uproar in Germany. If one accepted the aggressive intent in German foreign policy in 1914, it was but a small step to make the connection with the war launched in 1939. Maybe the Kaiser and Hitler were not that dissimilar. The contentious nature of Fischer’s views meant that his arguments soon spilled over into the TV and the media. Having dealt comprehensively and effectively with the Fischer debate, and shown just how immense was the impact of Fischer’s work, Mombauer then outlines the post-Fischer perspectives on the origins of the war. As Mombauer argues, this more recent work, informed by Fischer, provides a more nuanced examination of the origins of the war that moves away from simplistic notions of German guilt. All upcoming public events are going ahead as planned and you can find more information on our events blog the dimensions of the possible catastrophe did not yet play a part. The mixture of excitement and wantonness that characterized so many of the actions during the July Crisis would doubtless have been different had the decision-makers known that the planned “great war” would not remain within the anticipated confines but instead develop in the shortest time into battlefields likes those of Verdun and the Somme. Footnote 96 Clearly, then, some important areas of consensus do exist. But disagreements on nuance and detail continue unabated, and here the devil is in the detail. Historians reading the same evidence come to opposing conclusions or evaluate the importance of specific events in an entirely different way. For example, they continue to argue over the significance of Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia, the importance of the Russian mobilization, as well as about the nature of, and intention behind, the British mediation proposals. In fact, the most recent publications spend a great deal of time considering these controversial aspects in particular. Vom kurzen Krieg zum Ersten Weltkrieg: Der deutsche Kriegsverlauf im August und September 1914’, HISTORICUM, (Vienna) December 2001

The hundred-year debate

Where is the debate headed? All too often historians have attempted to predict the future of this century-long controversy—and they have nearly always got it wrong, thus making it presumptuous to make confident predictions. Footnote 126 In a summary of the debate as it had developed up to the end of 2012, Gerhard Groß was confident that the topic would continue to exercise public opinion in the run-up to the centenary and provide for “an exciting discussion,” but he did not expect “a new Fischer-controversy with a great deal of public attention like the one in the 1960s.” As we have seen, that turned out to be far from the mark. Footnote 127 Historians of the Great War found themselves in high demand in 2014. The looming anniversary naturally prompted publishers to commission titles that were designed to make a splash, cause debate, and spark public interest. The market was consequently flooded with publications that attempted to explain why war had broken out in 1914. Few could have predicted, however, the full extent of public and media interest in World War I. Nor could one have expected that the question of the origins of the war, in particular, would once again be paramount and the subject of widespread, heated debate.