The Great War: Ten Contested Questions by Hazel Flynn

Author:Hazel Flynn [Flynn, Hazel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-02-28T22:00:00+00:00

7

THE VIEW FROM BERLIN

How did the war unfold inside “enemy territory”?

Rashness and weakness are driving the world into the most frightful war, the ultimate aim of which is to destroy Germany.

— Kaiser Wilhelm II, 30 July 1914

In Chapter 1 we looked at the events that led up to the war, and the differing views then and in later years about where blame should fall. We learned a little about how the Central Powers — who were unquestionably the aggressors in the Allies’ eyes — believed they were fighting a defensive war. Time, now, to delve deeper into the experience of those who would emerge as the war’s losers: Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

For Professor Ute Daniel, author of The War from Within: German Women in the First World War, the war provides a harsh and unforgettable lesson that “small things may have huge and unexpected consequences”. The German and Austro-Hungarian leaders had pictured a battle they could control, one that would give them “a better position in the international pecking order”; instead they got a world war with death and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Professor Gerhard Hirschfeld, whose many books include the co-authored Scorched Earth: The Germans on the Somme 1914–1918, feels that both Germany and Austria-Hungary could have taken steps to de-escalate the building tension after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But, he adds, “in my opinion it’s very important to note that Germany and Austria-Hungary, as well as all the other countries involved in the diplomatic struggle, acted out of fear”. Or rather, out of different fears — of losing their particular cultures, of losing their empires and of falling behind in the colonial race.

Hirschfeld says that there were some dissenting voices within Germany that wanted to see peace maintained, but they were overwhelmed by the politicians and military leaders who felt that war was “more or less inevitable”, in which case they would be better off entering it sooner rather than later. “Looking at demography and industrial development within Russia, they said, ‘This country is going to be so strong that after 1916 a war will be inevitable, so why not go to war in 1914 and then finish the business once and for all?’”

Germany’s physical location also played into the pro-war mindset. “The question of Einkreisen — encirclement — became the dominant paradigm of German diplomats and military planners before the war,” says Hirschfeld. “In 1906, then-Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow declared in a famous Reichstag speech at the German parliament that Germany felt encircled due to its geographic situation.”

This reflected a major change which had begun soon after Wilhelm II ascended the throne in 1888. In the decades following the 1871 unification of Germany, the country’s first leader, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, worked very hard to maintain peace in Europe. He felt strongly that the security this provided for the new nation was far more important than expending effort trying to build up colonial holdings. He was also fiercely anti-socialist and in 1878 finally succeeded in having the popular Social Democratic Party banned.

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