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The First World War and its

Origins
Dr Lisa Pine
Origins of the First World War
• The subject of the origins of the First World War
is one of much dispute and debate amongst
historians.
• Factors to consider:
1) Imperial rivalry
2) Primacy of domestic policy
3) Germany wanted war
4) International economy
5) Alliance system
6) Arms race
Immediate Cause of War
• 28 June 1914 assassination of Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand (1863-
1914), heir to throne of Austria-Hungary.
• Assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, where he had gone for
army manoeuvres, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of a Serbian nationalist
secret society, the Black Hand.
• Princip shot dead the Archduke and his wife.
• This was the spark that ignited the situation into war.
• Immanuel Geiss: ‘Sarajevo was the dramatic culmination of the conflict
between the Danube monarchy and the south Slav national movement
that had been smouldering for so long.’
• But what made this particular event so significant? There were other
crises in previous years and they had not ended in war. For example the
Bosnian crisis in 1908-9 had shown how easily the instability of the
Balkans could upset the equilibrium in Europe.
• Christopher Clark describes the Balkans as ‘a region of high political
tension and instability in the years before the outbreak of war’.
July Crisis 1914
• The chain of events leading to war following the assassination:

• 5 July: Austria asked Germany for backing in event of war with Serbia and received it through
the blank cheque.
• 20th-23rd July: French Prime Minister gives Russia blank cheque of unconditional French
support in event of war during state visit
• 23 July: Austria sent ultimatum to Serbia which if accepted reduced Serbia to a client state of
Austria and if refused gave Austria excuse to crush Serbia militarily.
• Then alliances entangled many protagonists.
• Serbia appealed to Russia for help. Russia mobilized on 31 July.
• 1 August: Germany declared war on Russia and France.
• Germany needed to send troops through Belgium as part of her campaign against France.
• Belgium refused and then Britain was obliged to join war on 3 August because of her pledge
to protect Belgian neutrality, dating back to 1839 Treaty of London.
• 3 August Britain sent ultimatum to Germany to get out of Belgium.
• Ultimatum expired on 4 August without reply and so Britain was at war with Germany.
Imperial rivalry
• The clamour for empire, in particular, in the 1880s and
1890s (Scramble for Africa), created serious rivalry
between the Great Powers and added considerably to
tensions and to the instability of the international
system.
• Imperial rivalry led to a series of incidents including
1905-6 the First Moroccan Crisis and 1911 the Second
Moroccan Crisis (Agadir Incident).
• Also rise in nationalism of peoples living under
Ottoman and Habsburg rule – lots of tension in Balkans
and Balkan Wars in 1912-13.
Primacy of domestic policy
• War could solve or postpone domestic issues at home. For example:
• In Britain, the Irish question could be suspended and the women’s
suffrage movements quietened down.
• In France, problems of income tax and fiscal reform could be
postponed.
• In Germany, war to produce a Burgfrieden – solemn civil truce
between political parties – solidarity in time of national crisis.
• All governments and most citizens were subject to the ‘short war
illusion’: it was going to be over by Christmas (1914).
• The consequence of this miscalculation and the impact of a long
war in the trenches made the First World war a significant turning
point in European history, with unexpected longer-term
consequences of social change and larger mass casualties than had
been anticipated.
Primacy of domestic policy - Germany
• In Germany, armament production helped economic
stability and created employment.
• This was important – Fritz Fischer (1961) maintained
that it was domestic and social pressures that
determined German foreign policy before 1914.
• Sammlungspolitik: domestic policy to unite all strands
of German society together behind Kaiser
• Weltpolitik: Aggressive foreign policy, for example,
distracted attention at home from the massive growth
in socialists into largest political party by 1912.
• The idea of war countered socialism by creating
patriotism and nationalism.
Germany
• German war guilt: Fischer showed not only the
extent of Germany’s annexationist aims in First
World War, but also suggested that the German
government deliberately went to war in 1914 in
order to attain them.
• By July 1914 no room left for manoeuvre because
of war plans and strategies – exploitation of crisis
• The very concept of the Schlieffen Plan for France
and Russia signified that mobilization meant war.
Germany
• Military generals (especially von Moltke) urging
Kaiser to go to war before Russia became too
powerful (Russia’s Great Military Programme Nov
1912)
• Imperial War Council Dec 1912: Kaiser met with
military council in Berlin to discuss plans for
future war
• Septemberprogramm: Germany’s war aims
published September 1914 show that Germany
wanted to create Mittelafrika and Mitteleuropa -
war to achieve these aims
International economy
• Marxist interpretation that the war was inherent in the nature of
capitalism.
• The forces which drove states to expand overseas were leading
inevitably to a clash in which the great cartels would no longer be
able to agree on a peaceful division of annexation areas and would
force their governments to war for economic interests.
• But how war would start at that particular time not explained by
these theories.
• In addition, industrialists stood to gain from war because of
production of armaments.
• Great arms firms, ‘merchants of death’, said to provoke war for
increase in profits: Krupp in Germany, Schneider Creusot in France,
Skoda in Austria-Hungary, Armstrong and Vickers in Britain.
Faulty system of international relations
• This meant that no room was left for diplomacy either.
• War had been avoided in previous crises of 1908, 1911 and
1913, but not so in 1914.
• And previous crises had contributed to the decisions made
in 1914.
• These crises were themselves the product of long-term
developments over decades, esp. Franco-Prussian War of
1870-1, which had established German military
predominance and left France with a bitter grievance about
the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.
• These events set the framework within which the IR of the
first years of the twentieth century were to be conducted.
Alliances
• The nature of the alliance system would
ultimately lead to war.
• Main alliances were between:
• Dual Alliance – Germany and Austria-Hungary,
1879.
• Triple Alliance – Germany, Austria-Hungary and
Italy, from 1882.
• Franco-Russian Alliance France and Russia, 1894.
• Entente Cordiale France and Britain, 1904.
• Anglo-Russian Entente: Britain and Russia, 1907.
Formed the Triple Entente

President
of the
USA
Woodrow
Wilson

(The USA
entered
the war in
1917
declaring
war on
Germany)

Despite the Triple Alliance 1882,


Italy entered the war on the side of
the Allies in 1915
Alliance system
• The most significant aspect of the alliance
system was that any incident between any
member of the two power camps could not
remain local.
• Military action caused a chain reaction,
dragging every protagonist into war regardless
of their lack of involvement in the original
dispute – this point came after Franz
Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo.
Arms Race
• From 1897 Germany had embarked on its construction of a high seas fleet.
(Anglo-German naval race begins)
• 1898 First German Naval Law
• Britain’s navy based on ‘Two Power Standard’ 1889 – Germany’s naval
expansion seen as threat
• Britain responded by building from 1906 the Dreadnought, a battleship
with more guns and greater speed than any so far constructed.
• Germany accelerated her production of large ships and it became clear
each armed with the other in mind.
• Popular press whipped up xenophobia and war scares on each side,
increasingly sensationalist
• By 1914 Admiral Tirpitz realized that Britain would not give up her naval
superiority.
• Russia was also rearming, increasing her standing army by 500,000 men
and building a railway network in western Russia to enable speedy
mobilization (Great Military Programme November 1912)
Arms Race
• The rapid production of armaments, in which all the
major powers were involved, contributed to the sense
that war was possible, and even inevitable.
• The public justification for arming was that it was a
deterrent, but no government had been deterred from
arming by the arms programme of its rivals – instead,
they had increased the pace of their own armaments
production.
• Instead of acting as a deterrent, the manufacture of
arms made war more possible and indeed more likely.
Opinions on the Outbreak of War
• Sir Edward Grey – arms/naval race main reason why
Britain went to war:
‘The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the
sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was
these that made war inevitable.’
• Woodrow Wilson: war broke out due to system of
alliances/secret agreements
• Lenin: In his book ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of
Capitalism’ 1916, argued that WW1 was a dispute
over colonies (imperial rivalry)
Opinions on the Outbreak of War
• Fischer: war broke out to fulfil ‘Germany’s
political ambitions which may be summed up
as German hegemony over Europe’
• Norman Stone and John Röhl are of the
Fischer school of thought
• David Stevenson: the Imperial War Council
1912 is not evidence that Germany wanted
war
The Sleepwalkers
• Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How
Europe Went to War in 1914.
• ‘ The conflict that began that summer
mobilised 65 million troops, claimed three
empires, 20 million military and civilian
deaths, and 21 million wounded.’
• Clark notes that ‘ policy-making processes
within the states caught up in the crisis were
often far from transparent’.
The Sleepwalkers
• Clark notes that what must strike us at the start of the
21st century about the summer crisis of 1914 is ‘its raw
modernity’.
• ‘Behind the outrage at Sarajevo was an avowedly
terrorist organisation with a cult of sacrifice, death and
revenge; but this organisation was extraterritorial
without a clear geographical or political location; it was
scattered in cells across political borders, it was
unaccountable, its links to any sovereign government
were oblique, hidden and certainly very difficult to
discern from outside the organisation’.
The Sleepwalkers
• Clark’s book is about agency: ‘the key decision-
makers - kings, emperors, foreign ministers,
ambassadors, military commanders and a host of
lesser officials - walked towards danger in
watchful, calculated steps. The outbreak of war
was the commendation of chains of decisions
made by political actors with conscious
objectives, who were capable of a degree of self
reflection, acknowledged a range of options and
formed the best judgements they could on the
basis of the best information they had to hand.’
Conclusion on origins of the war
• In seeking an explanation for the origins of the
First World War, we need to consider not just one
factor or cause, but several.
• JAS Grenville: ‘the war was about national power
and ambitions’.
• James Joll: ‘An accumulation of factors –
intellectual, social, economic, and even
psychological, as well as political and diplomatic –
all contributed to the situation in 1914’.
Propaganda Posters
The role of remembrance
• How do we remember the First World War?
• Cenotaph ( from Greek ‘ empty tomb’) in
Whitehall, a permanent memorial.
• Funeral of the unknown warrior
• Festival of remembrance
• Poppy Day: Annual commemoration at 11 am,
on 11th November - 2 minute silence.
• Graveyards and memorials
The Cenotaph
Why do we remember?
• The reason is to perpetuate the memory of the
war dead quite simply. War graves provide all the
evidence we need to remind us of the horrors of
modern warfare.
• Poignancy of the youth who died - majority killed
in action were between 18 and 25 years old.
• And who do we remember? Not just British
troops, but the huge effort and human sacrifice
on behalf of the colonies and dominions in the
First World War.
The war to end all wars?
• The First World War marked a massive change in
and social opinions attitudes to war, as well as
having an enormous immediate impact on
redefining international relations for the next 20
years.
• The Great War destroyed and disrupted lives on
an unprecedented scale. After the First World
War, with its protracted trench warfare, war lost
its sense of glamour, romance and nobility.

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