The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War, by Margaret MacMillan

In 1955, in the University of Hamburg’s biggest auditorium, the controversial historian Fritz Fischer lectured on the origins of the First World War. He aired the thesis later expounded in his much-debated books: in essence, that what happened in 1914 was no accident, but resulted from a proto-Hitlerian expansionist drive by Wilhelmine Germany. His lecture on the Moroccan crisis of 1911 was a savage critique of the clumsy policy of Germany’s chancellor, rising in an impassioned crescendo to the bellowed rhetorical question: “And what further bit of stupidity did Bethmann-Hollweg go and do next?” At this point the student audience, present writer included, watched as an elegant blonde – Frau Fischer – rose from her front-row seat to admonish the lecturer: “But Fritz, Fritz, don’t get so worked up!” (“Rege dich doch nicht so sehr auf!”)

In fact, of course, people have been getting worked up about the causes of the Great War since it started, when the belligerent powers competed in rushing out documentary publications designed to pin the “war guilt” on each other. The endless flow of literature was then stimulated by many factors, not least the provision in the 1919 Versailles Treaty that, since Germany was responsible for starting the war, she must pay a massive reparations bill. A century later, in the rising flood of pre-centenary studies, Margaret MacMillan’s unusual contribution will certainly hold a leading place. Part of the originality of her approach is that while she discusses all the major themes that readers familiar with the subject will expect – the controversies, the leading personalities and the crises, treaties and other episodes – she does so in a way that often makes us see them in a new light. She adroitly summarises well-known controversies – for instance, the “Fischer thesis” of German responsibility, or the argument that Britain’s foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey could have prevented war in July 1914 by issuing a stern warning to Germany that an invasion of France via Belgium would mean British intervention. These controversies are still alive: only recently on the latter point, a former Cabinet minister (Lord Adonis, no less), reviewing a new biography of Grey, argued that Grey could and should have delivered such a warning, surprisingly ignoring the fact that deep divisions of opinion in the British Cabinet made this impossible. MacMillan says enough about such controversies to make sense of them, but rather than worrying over every detail, she draws her readers’ attention to the broader context: what kind of Europe were the decision-makers of the time living in and what was the state of mind that led them to decide as they did?

The existence of the alliance would embolden one partner or the other to take risky or provocative steps it might otherwise have avoided

As noted above, all the major diplomatic and other landmarks of the pre-1914 decade and more are here. MacMillan takes us through the Anglo-Japanese treaty of 1902; Japan’s military humiliation of Russia in 1904-05; Britain’s entente cordiale with France in 1904 and her agreement with Russia three years later; the crises over Morocco in 1905 and 1911; the Balkan turmoil surrounding Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 and the complex multilateral Balkan Wars of 1912-13; and of course, the final catastrophe triggered by the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalists in 1914. But rather than dissecting the diplomatic minutiae of these events, the author neatly and clearly focuses on some of their critical aspects and implications, common features and causal role in the overall sequence of developments that led to the nemesis of 1914.

Significantly, MacMillan pinpoints some of the essential features of the networks of rival alliances that dominated European diplomacy by 1914 – the Triple Entente of France, Britain and Russia versus the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy – including the way in which their sometimes minimal formal obligations came to entail far-reaching and even life-and-death commitments in times of crisis. For instance, the actual mutual obligations of Britain and France under the celebrated entente cordiale were strictly limited to issues of colonial tidying-up – Britain to keep out of France’s way in Morocco, and France out of Britain’s in Egypt. By 1914, though, the pressure of events and the awareness of common interests had produced a degree of Anglo-French cooperation – diplomatic, military and naval – strong enough to convince Grey that Britain had an unbreakable moral commitment to stand by France in the event of war.

Another important aspect of Europe’s alliances was that although normally they were explicitly defensive pacts – one party would support the other only if the latter were attacked by a third – the practical effect was often to encourage more offensive attitudes, since the existence of the alliance would embolden one partner or the other to take risky or provocative steps it might otherwise have avoided.

Moreover, the apparatus of policymaking in national capitals was often chaotic to a degree that prevented departmental views being coordinated or decisions being rationally taken or communicated. The problem was especially acute in the imperial courts of Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg, which lacked the essentials of Cabinet government and where policy often depended on which minister or military commander could catch the emperor’s ear. But in London, Paris and Rome as well, ministers, diplomats and service chiefs kept secrets from each other, and what came to be known as Europe’s “international anarchy” had an unhealthy parallel at the national capital level.

Did some of Europe’s rulers actively want war? Certainly some military leaders, after very nearly going to war during some of these successive crises and sometimes convinced that an all‑out showdown was inevitable, argued for seizing the right moment and getting the thing over with. The political and diplomatic language of the time, dominated by concepts of “rank” and “standing”, and the conduct appropriate to the “honour” or “reputation” of a great power (as in Grey’s sense of a moral obligation to France in 1914) certainly reflected a world in which states often felt impelled to adopt an assertive or even aggressive posture rather than a conciliatory one.

Another factor, interestingly explored by MacMillan, is that by 1914 every major power in Europe was beset by more or less acute internal tensions. Stagnant but seething Russia, multinational Austria-Hungary, the France of the Dreyfus affair and even the noisily unified new states of Germany and Italy were all profoundly affected by divisive schisms; and the issues preoccupying pre-war Britain were women’s suffrage, acute industrial unrest and, above all, the civil war threatened in Ireland. It was no wonder that among all the strands of discourse about Europe’s uncertain prospects, there was one that positively liked the idea of war as a way of clearing the air and rallying one’s nation in a Union sacrée.

MacMillan’s superb and very entertainingly written guide to this Europe – a Europe, as she shows, similar to our own in some ways, but very different in others – will be warmly welcomed by different kinds of reader. Those who “know” the subject will find new perspectives and new ways of looking at it, while those less familiar with it could hardly find a better introduction or a better basis for judging some of the centenary polemics we now face.