THE ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The reasons why Europe went to war in August 1914 are some of the most debated themes amongst historians. At the time, Europe led the world in virtually every field; militarily, economically, in science, culture and the arts. By the time the war and its inevitable consequence, the 1939-45 conflict, were over, Europe led in none of these. It was a period of collective madness, that resulted in death, destruction and misery on a scale never seen before or since.

The outbreak of war also broke a long period of European peace, since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put a final end to the Napoleonic wars. True, European countries had at various times been at war since then; but they tended to be either localised conflicts (eg the Crimean War) or colonial fights (eg the Zulu and Boer Wars). Germany had comprehensively stuffed first Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and then France (1870) in the course of its transformation from a collection of independent states dominated by Prussia to the German Empire (also dominated by Prussia). Yet each of the campaigns consisted essentially of one battle, in which the losing army was annihilated; the conflicts didn't really last long enough that they could be described as wars.

Some have seen war as inevitable, once Germany had allied itself with Austria-Hungary and Italy, and Russia had allied itself with France (and, more loosely, Britain). In this scenario, pressure between the two triple power blocks would mount and eventually explode. But the pressure between the two European power blocks during the 1950's and 1960's was intense and ideological (Edwardian Englanders could travel to Berlin and St. Petersburg in a way that 1950's Englanders could not); and the destructive firepower at their disposal was even greater than in 1914. Yet the Cold War never really became hot. And it doesn't explain why Italy deserted its Germanic allies in 1914, and eventually entered the war the following year on the Allied side.

Others have seen the source of the conflict in the Balkans. A ragbag of states emerging as the European part of the Ottoman Empire slowly disintegrated, they were a perennial source of potential conflict between the empires of Austria-Hungary and Russia. However, there had been Balkan crises at various times in the early part of the century, and all had been successfully contained. Not always without fighting, but they did not result in a general European war.

Yet another view points the finger at the rapid build-up of forces in every country, and the technological developments such as the machine gun, heavy artillery, and dreadnought battleships that greatly increased collective firewpower. With so much "gunpowder" lying around the continent, all that was needed was a spark, and that was provided by the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne and his wife on 28 June 1914. The Archduke Francis-Ferdinand was visiting Sarajevo on the anniversary of the Serbian defeat at the mediæval Battle of Kosovo, when he was shot by a member of the Black Hand, a Serb society opposed to Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, even this theory is not totally convincing. Austria undoubtedly wanted to teach Serbia a lesson, and made outrageous demands; but Serbia's initial response was conciliatory. Not much happened for nearly all of July; the British Foreign Secretary, for instance, spent all of his weekends fishing in Hampshire, the German Emperor went on a cruise in the Baltic.

The real reason seems to be that key people panicked. Armies at the time were highly dependent on mobilisation and railway timetables. Germany in particular was terrified of having to fight a war on two fronts, and had developed the Schlieffen Plan, whereby they raced to Paris and knocked France out of the war before the huge, but lumbering, Russian armies arrived in the east (as it happens, German fears were overblown; they fought for nearly four years on two fronts, winning in the east and holding their own in the west, plus a lot of other theatres around the world). Against that background, in an age of non-instantaneous communications, and at a time of year when key people were on holiday, the temptation was to mobilise first, in order not to be put at a disadvantage if the other side did. Since everybody felt the same way, it was difficult not to set things in motion. And once mobilisation had been put in place, it was incredibly difficult to stop it.

And therein lies the lesson for the modern world, in my view. Better communications and the introduction of "hot lines" between the White House and the Kremlin greatly reduced the likelihood of an accidental nuclear launch during the Cold War. Yet in other conflicts, the temptation to "strike first" has been huge. The West went into Iraq in order stop potential weapons of mass destruction being used against it; those weapons turned out not to exist. A similar head of steam is building up over Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Anybody who has played the board game Diplomacy will know well the military choices which the various countries had to take during the First World War. But the game starts once war has already been declared. The knack for political leaders is not to start a conflict; the events of 1914 show how easy it is to drift into one.    

Walter Blotscher