World War Which

Ilan Goldenberg goes beyond the observation that for conservatives it's always 1938 and notes the opposite lessons of World War I where various sides deemed themselves "forced" to fight a war nobody wanted and that served nobody's interests.

My strong sense is that 1914 scenarios are more common than 1938 scenarios. Trade and tourism are positive-sum interactions between nations. War and coercive acts short of war are negative-sum interactions. This means you should try very hard to seek peaceful intercourse via trade and tourism and to avoid negative-sum conflict-based interactions. Sometimes, of course, one faces a foe so determinedly fanatical that it's impossible to avoid the negative sum track where everyone invests vast resources in figuring out better ways to blow stuff up. But the kind of strong irrationality represented by a Hitler or perhaps a Pol Pot is very rare, normally people can't acquire and maintain political power without being sensitive to their own interests.

Comments

Add in that WW2 was largely due to the extremely unfair deal at Versailles, forced by the French in a manner which reminds one of the current mood of getting exactly what we want without giving anything up or else....

Posted by lfv | May 20, 2008 10:34 AM

As a commentator on the other site noted, Kaiser Wilhelm was also deeply irrational, possibly even as bad as Bush. He deserves the lions share of the blame for that war by making all diplomatic and strategic considerations subservient to short-term tactical military considerations: the ill-fated Schlieffen (sp?) plan.

Posted by Jim W | May 20, 2008 10:35 AM

I don't think there's any apolitical criterion that works on these kinds of questions. Politics matters. My own view is that learning from experience is great, as long as you learn the right things.

Posted by MattF | May 20, 2008 10:36 AM

There are a number of lessons that WWI can teach. The danger of overzealous executives and weak parliamentary bodies. The danger of financial interests influencing media representations. The danger that war breeds more war--war ideologies (ie fascism) come to life and don't go away. Silly notions of national honor trumping real and deadly costs of war. Underestimating the deadly impact of war.

The lesson that Europe and the US learned from WWI was that wars are evil--waged by the masses for the elites. War was a sin to be avoided at all costs.

I fear our generation is learning this lesson and it may have ill consequences down the road. Because of Bush's lies and the media's support of said lies, the people will be less likely to trust the government and the media when a legitimate threat does emerge.

Posted by Scott Kern | May 20, 2008 10:38 AM

Trade and tourism are positive-sum interactions between nations. War and coercive acts short of war are negative-sum interactions.

That's fantastically phrased, Matt. That's why nationalistic war-fetishists make no rational sense - war is one of the worst things that can happen to a country, ESPECIALLY the winners. You're wasting lives, you're building billions of dollars of equipment for the express purpose of blowing it up. In the end, unless you're fighting a war of conquest, you get 0 return on your investments. So why does anyone listen to neo-cons? Why does ANYONE listen to republicans anymore? I get frustrated.

Posted by ArtB | May 20, 2008 10:45 AM

I dunno, Scott Kern. Yes, that pacifism is in theory a danger, but right now John McCain is running around saying that Iran is every bit as much a threat to the US as was the USSR. We spend more on the military than every other country in the history of the world combined (note: I made that up).

I don't think that the US is at risk of falling into that mentality. WWI hit every family in England and France. The Iraq occupation falls on the 1% or so who have served there. Jingoism remains a bigger danger in the US than reflexive opposition to fighting genuinely bad leaders.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 20, 2008 10:46 AM

ArtB-- here's what one guy thought about your point: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross."

Anyone who said something like that in public today would be categorized as a wuss. That was Dwight Eisenhower. If men like him-- people who have seen war-- had been in charge of this country the last 7 years, things would be very, very different right now.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 20, 2008 10:54 AM

WWI wasn't a war that "nobody wanted to fight." The Germans and Austrians were quite willing to fight it. To a lesser extent, so were the Russians. My understanding is that scholarship in the last decade or two has unearthed plenty of evidence the these countries' leadership were eager for war.

Also, don't forget that a number of countries entered only in 1915, after the stalemate and carnage were perfectly evident, specifically the middling powers Romania and Italy. The idea that WWI was just a big misunderstanding is a myth.

Posted by Ragout | May 20, 2008 10:54 AM

Elvis - I was trying to find that quote, but couldn't find it because I thought it was Churchill :( - good catch.

Posted by ArtB | May 20, 2008 11:06 AM

You're right that WWI style international relations are more common than WWII. But what, exactly, is it that is more common?

you should try very hard to seek peaceful intercourse

Of course you should try very hard, but sometimes it doesn't work. WWI was a typical European war in that lots of great powers turned to violence because they were steadily constrained toward that course to protect interests perceived as vital. No crazy power-mad dictators were involved, yet war ended up happening, as it always does in history.

Kaiser Wilhelm was also deeply irrational, possibly even as bad as Bush. He deserves the lions share of the blame for that war by making all diplomatic and strategic considerations subservient to short-term tactical military considerations: the ill-fated Schlieffen (sp?) plan.

That is totally wrong.

The idea that WWI was just a big misunderstanding is a myth.

The idea that WWI was just a big misunderstanding is a straw man.

Posted by Marshall | May 20, 2008 11:14 AM

While I whole-heartedly agree with your point in general Matt, I feel you underestimate how risk-friendly the politician ruling a country can be. Most people acquire political power NOT by being rational calculators, but simply by taking large risks that happen to pay off.

You bet your career on say, 5 elections, that each time you win and are better off, and on average each election you didn't know if you really had better than a 50/50 shot. Maybe chances were better, often they were even worse. A lot of rats enter this race, one inevitably wins every election in a row due to chance, and that rat thinks he is imbued with a super-human destiny. A risky war is obviously the next step.

Posted by Shock Mouse | May 20, 2008 11:18 AM

Elvis - great citation. Non-defense use of our assets (people and capital)would have been far more beneficial. Unfortunately the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex has become way too powerful. Too many jobs are tied to the M-I-C-C in nearly all congressional districts -- smart play on the defense contractors -- not so smart for the rest of us.

Until we figure out a way to get congressmen to think outside of their short-term interests and vote for US long-term interests, we will be stuck with this problem.

Posted by mike c | May 20, 2008 11:22 AM

Elvis, thanks for the quote. I hadn't heard it before.

Posted by qjjdduoei | May 20, 2008 11:23 AM

Re Jim W

The reason the Schlieffen Plan failed was because the head of the German General Staff, von Moltke, panicked at the approach of two Russian armies in East Prussia and removed 5 divisions from von Bulows' army, entraining them and sending them eastward to oppose the Russian advance. This opened a gap between his army and von Klucks' army on his right. Kluck then inclined his army to the left to close the gap, thus exposing his right flank to an attack emanating from Paris, which led to the famous 1st Battle of the Marne which resulted in a German retreat and the implementation of 4 years of trench warfare. The unfortunate part of all of this, from the German point of view, was that the Battle of Tannenberg was fought and won while the 5 divisions were still entrained so that they played no part in either battle. Had von Moltke kept his nerve, the French troops would have struck Klucks' army frontally, rather then on a flank, and the result might have been very different.

Posted by SLC | May 20, 2008 11:35 AM

Once, for a university history class, I read the actual editorials published in newspapers in 1937 and 1938. The "pro-Hitler" camp basically claimed that the new German leader was restoring pride and prosperity to Germany. But what I distinctly remember was an "anti-Hitler" editorial, clinging to the myth that "those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it," that claimed this new guy Hitler was just like the Kaiser and therefore could best be defanged by not giving him the war he so clearly wanted.

There has been only one Hitler, and at the time people who claimed the past always repeats missed him.

Never listen to people who always maintain history repeats itself. It doesn't.

Posted by Diana | May 20, 2008 11:46 AM

We spend more on the military than every other country in the history of the world combined (note: I made that up).

According to some Web site I've never heard of before that I just found by Googling, America accounts for "approximately 50 percent" of the world's total military spending, so you're right, or pretty close. I don't know about the history of the world, though; apparently we only made up about a quarter of the world's defense spending in 1986.

Well, "only." LOL.

Posted by Cyrus | May 20, 2008 11:47 AM

SLC,

That may be so, but the pertinent question is: why did the war start in the first place? My understanding is that the Kaiser was a reckless, jingoistic character much like Bush. Furthermore, the decision-making process was effectively relegated to a group of militarists whose policy was tailored around the idea that, since war was more or less inevitable, the primary goal should be to get the war going under the best conditions wrt the Schlieffen Plan.

It was a case of the military plan driving policy. Another important consideration, as is implied by your post, is that the margin of error for the Schlieffen Plan was ridiculously small. Using it as the keystone of their policy was insane.

Posted by Jim W | May 20, 2008 11:48 AM

Actually, Marshall, blaming the Schlieffen Plan is not "totally wrong". More than any other Great Power's plan, the Schlieffen Plan guaranteed an immediate escalation to continental warfare - to Germans marching on Paris - if it seemed likely that a Balkan war between Austria and Russia would break out. So when the Kaiser's govt. actively supported and egged on Austria's intransigent response to Sarajevo, the ultimate consequences should have been apparent in Berlin. Everyone else in Europe, including the Russians, was telling Serbia it should swallow its medicine in July 1914, until it became clear that no medicine would be enough for Berlin and Vienna.

Bottom line is that Austria wanted a Serbian war; Germany wanted a local war too but was willing to risk a general one. Its own military plans ensured it would get one. The other powers aren't blameless for the background conditions which led to war, but it truly was Berlin and Vienna that decided to pull the trigger. That the gun blew up in their hands shouldn't obscure this. Otherwise history is just everyone's fault and therefore nobody's fault.

As other commenters note, the Plan itself was insane, like putting your country's future on snake eyes and rolling the dice. In fact it would have failed even without the two corps sent east, because the logistical system could not sustain such a huge # swinging through such a large arc.

Posted by Estrien | May 20, 2008 11:59 AM

for conservatives it's always 1938

Funny, that. In 1938 the conservatives were adamant the Hitler was Europe's problem, not ours. That was if they didn't see him as a counterbalance to Stalin, in which case he wasn't a problem at all.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | May 20, 2008 12:03 PM

That may be so, but the pertinent question is: why did the war start in the first place? My understanding is that the Kaiser was a reckless, jingoistic character much like Bush.

I am by no means an expert on pre-WWI Germany, but my understanding from college history classes is basically what Marshall said above - WWI was a typical european war where nations fought to protect interests they deemed vital, e.g., a (relatively) recently unified Germany felt that it had missed out on the colonialism jackpot, France was still smarting over the Franco-Prussian war, Great Britain feared domination of the continent by one power and worried about challenges to its empire, the austro-hungarians felt their empire slipping away, Russia was seeking to assert itself more in Europe, and the Ottoman Empire was flailing around in its death gasps. The militarists in Germany held sway because of the power of the Hohenzollerns and junkers in Prussia, and of Prussia in Germany, but it's not as if Germany simply pursued war for war's sake - it was seen as inevitable because the sitution appeared to be a zero sum game, rigged in favor of the French and British, with war being the only potential game changer.

Posted by Alexis | May 20, 2008 12:07 PM

Roddy McCorley,

If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word.

That was Harry S. Truman, on June 23, 1941, the day after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

It wasn't just conservatives who saw Nazi Germany as something of a counterbalance to Stalin, and those who held that view kept it pretty much until we were in the war.

It also wasn't just conservatives who thought Hitler was Europe's problem, not ours. Communists were quite adamant about that from august 1939 until June 22, 1941, and so were a lot of left-wing fellow travelers.

Posted by Marty Busse | May 20, 2008 12:15 PM

What is "totally wrong" is the following statement: making all diplomatic and strategic considerations subservient to short-term tactical military considerations

It's wrong because the Schlieffen plan was developed to deal with the French-Russian alliance, i.e. take out France before Russia can get mobilized. The Schlieffen plan was a creature of Germany's strategic situation.

It would make no sense to plan your strategy around implementation of a particular military plan. Contrary to what you said, Kaiser Wilhelm was not deeply irrational and he was the titular head of a modern state full of perfectly sound strategists. Granted, they may have been too eager to believe that Britain would stay out of a European ground war to save Belgium or France, but though that judgment proved wrong, it was a sounder judgment than the one the British made. They should have stayed out! And the Germans thought they would. They could have effectively guaranteed their interests by using the navy to bottle up the German fleet, mounted an anti-submarine campaign, and that's it.

Posted by Marshall | May 20, 2008 12:16 PM

Re: He deserves the lions share of the blame for that war by making all diplomatic and strategic considerations subservient to short-term tactical military considerations: the ill-fated Schlieffen (sp?) plan.

Wilhlem was a blithering idiot, but was he any worse than Franz Joseph, the Turkish Sultan, Tsar Nicholas, the british and french leadership or the Serb hotheads who started the whole business? While Bismark was in power, and Queen Victoria ruled over her far-flung royal family, peace held. But by 1914 most of Europe was led by a choice collecion of dunderheads.

Re: the people will be less likely to trust the government and the media when a legitimate threat does emerge.

It didn't take the people long to ramp up support for WWII once Pearl Harbor was bombed. This mayb e an oldfashioned but maybe we shoudl wait until the threat is truly real before we go on quests for foreign dragons to slay?

Posted by JonF | May 20, 2008 12:20 PM

"Trade and tourism are positive-sum interactions between nations. War and coercive acts short of war are negative-sum interactions. This means you should try very hard to seek peaceful intercourse via trade and tourism and to avoid negative-sum conflict-based interactions."

Hitler happened during the Great Depression, when trade and tourism were at best a minor consideration. When positive interactions are non-existent, negative ones become more attractive. Developing positive interactions with Iran is probably a good idea.

Posted by Horace | May 20, 2008 12:23 PM

Re Jim W, Alexis, & Estrien

Also not to be forgotten is the Kaisers' attempt to build a high seas fleet to challenge Britains' naval superiority. Thus the great Dreadnaught race. The only accomplishment of this strategy was to drive Great Britain into the arms of France and Russia, thus insuring that any war which broke out would be a European wide war. As Barbara Tuchman in her book, "The Guns of August," pointed out, France and Russia would probably have been more cautious in challenging Germany in the absence of British support.

Posted by SLC | May 20, 2008 12:23 PM

There are even more basic problems to understanding WWI as irrational:

The nationalisms that underlay the support and build-up to the war were not irrational. As understood correctly at the time, all the states of Europe needed to encourage - in fact, were forced to encourage - nationalism among their citizens because the high economic inequality of the then-existing industrial capitalism undermined any sense of community identity among the average citizens. I.E. the official state policy of all European states (whether democracies or monarchies or mixtures) was capitalism. The capitalism of the time delivered very high proportions of the resulting economic rewards to a small percentage of the population, with at best mediocre improvements to large percentages of the population. In addition, capitalism encouraged, at the individual and local level, citizens to be conspiring against one another for commercial advantage. Further, capitalism completely destroyed all traditional sources of previously local adherences ( for example, by forcing millions of farmers to move to completely new industrial cities which lacked any real history or traditions).

The national states thus needed to generate commitment among the population for the national state and thus rationally built ideologies of fairly extreme nationalisms. The moderate democracies often had MORE intense nationalist movements (for example, the US' insistance on viewing itself as the white Protestant republic or the UK's bizarre pre-WWI paranoid fantasies of homoerotic Germanic "penetration") than the mixed monarchies did, not less. To be honest, all of these nationalisms were almost entirely fake and were created as a state policy to balance the tensions created by industrial capitalism.

Ultimately, WWI was unavoidable because:

the model of governing (i.e., the classical liberal model) of early industrial capitalism, classical economics and legalistic constitutions protecting only limited negative rights was untenable. The pre-WWI solution was nationalism when it should have been social democracy (the actual solution that worked after WWII). The nationalism inevitably led to the result of massive war.

Posted by burritoboy | May 20, 2008 12:26 PM

A couple more points:

1. Estrien, Tuchman does argue in the Guns of August that there were elements of the German general staff who thought the Schlieffen plan such a tactical wonder that it was in Germany's strategic interest to have a war just to demonstrate the all-conquering majesty of the German industrial and war machine. Tuchman was a great researcher, so I defer to her in the matter of whether these people existed. Indeed, such a view would be analogous to some of the idiocy on display in the McCain campaign, the Pentagon's strategy operation, and the National Review. But I hazard that the people who actually conducted Germany's foreign policy did not feel this way. Bulow and Bethmann-Hollweg were both sound steady-hand-on-the-tiller types, as was their governing apparatus, and if there's a sad tale to be told in all of this it's that the moment the international relations situation switches from "peace" to "war," the militarists gain prominence.

2. France would have been better off losing the war in 1914 than winning it in 1918. In fact, I bet George Clemenceau would have said so himself in a setting that was not a campaign appearance. Needless to say the czar would also have preferred losing a war in 1914 to, oh I don't know, getting taken out back and shot. SLC is absolutely right: belief in the British big brother was extremely harmful to all of the allied powers. Yet another example of a game where the players would be better off if they were weaker.

3. JonF is completely wrong about the quality of heads of state in 1914 relative to the nineteenth century. More importantly, domestic squabbling among various royal houses is not a variable that explains much at all.

Posted by Marshall | May 20, 2008 12:39 PM

Marshall - I agree the Schlieffen Plan was a creature of Germany's strategic situation (largely in turn of its own creation); but it was not the inevitable creature. The elder Moltke for example, thought a defensive two front strategy after 1871 was more in tune with Germany's interests and capacities. So did Falkenhayn before 1914.

Be that as it may, the Germans had a plan which said, in effect, "if war looks likely between us and/or an ally and any other power, start marching on Paris". In July 1914 their diplomacy did more than any other government (none of whom were innocent) to ensure that a war between Austria/Russia would happen, when any such war, because of their own Plan, would not be containable. They would be easier to excuse if they were irrational...

About Britain joining in: I disagree with you there too, but too little time to get into that one. Perhaps you've been reading too much Niall Ferguson, who makes a similar case and who seems to mistake the Kaiser for Angela Merkel.

Nor do I agree with the "inevitability" argument. War was certainly likely for all these economic, nationalist etc. reasons, but it wasn't foreordained. Real people with real power made real decisions to stoke the flames rather than trying to find a solution, and a solution in 1914 was readily available.

Posted by Estrien | May 20, 2008 12:48 PM

"More importantly, domestic squabbling among various royal houses is not a variable that explains much at all."

It's more of an affectation by Americans that, because the Central Powers were nominally monarchies, that equated the 1914 Reich and Austro-Hungarian Empires with medieval kingships. That portrayed WWI was a battle between progressive, liberal states against medieval or absolute monarchies, a view which conveniently makes the USA the vanguard of history.

Besides ignoring that Czarist Russia (far more of an actual absolutist monarchy that the Wilhemine or later Habsburg regime) was one of the Allies (as well as one of the Allies - Italy - rapidly becoming the first fascist nation very soon after the war's end), the government apparatus of the Wilhemine Reich wasn't really notably more traditional or retrograde than those of the Allies - though it was far less democratic, it certainly wasn't decrepit or ineffective either.

Posted by burritoboy | May 20, 2008 1:03 PM

More on Elvis's quotation from Ike:

Ike delivered that speech, which is called "The Chance for Peace Speech" in April of 1953, at the American Society of Newspaper Editors -- Eisenhower called it "the first formal address to the American people" since his inauguration.

Recordings of the speech are available at the Internet Archive here.

You can read the full text here.

Here are Ike's proposals for a framework of international treaties to secure peace:

As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work - the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:

1: The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.

2: A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes.

3: International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.

4: A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness.

5: The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safeguards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.

Imagine any American elected official -- much less an incredibly popular, Republican president -- advocating a similar program today.

Posted by Pesto | May 20, 2008 1:23 PM

you should try very hard to seek peaceful intercourse

Lots of people seek it all the time.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 20, 2008 2:11 PM

"belief in the British big brother was extremely harmful to all of the allied powers. Yet another example of a game where the players would be better off if they were weaker."

The general conclusion is true; the specific example simply is not. Russia and France could not depend on British aid, and they knew this perfectly well. British diplomacy in 1914 therefore made France and Russia more rather than less conciliatory, which was one of its major objectives. Its coyness was designed precisely to optimize negotiation and reasonableness on both sides. When it came in, it was for its own reasons (navy plus resistance to any hegemon in Europe) and because of its growing conviction in the actual crisis of 1914 that Germany was pushing for a war to gain that hegemony.

As for France being better off losing in 1914: France would then have looked much like France in 1940 – effectively no longer a sovereign power. Whether the difference between a devastated France of 1918 and a defeated France of 1940 is worth all those deaths is a question those two generations answered for themselves. But a defeated France of 1914 would have probably had the same regrets as the French of 1943.

Posted by Estrien | May 20, 2008 2:26 PM

The world would probably have been better off if Britain had stayed out of the war, or at least kept their involvement to a naval blockade. Britain certainly would have been. But they were doomed to enter the war from the time the deal was signed for the Berlin-Baghdad railway. This development represented the shortest way to India, and a dagger pointed at the heart of the British Empire which by this time was more an Asiatic power than a European one. Then as now the crucial strategic point resided in the Persian Gulf.

As for "...the kind of strong irrationality represented by a Hitler or perhaps a Pol Pot is very rare...", Saddam Hussein definitely belongs in this group, which is likely to grow larger in the future if the current attitudes about enforcing important international norms persists.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 20, 2008 5:27 PM

Re Robert Powell

As I stated previously, Great Britain could not stay out of WW 1 because of the build up of the German High Seas Fleet which was designed to challenge British naval superiority. A German victory on the continent, eliminating France and Russia as continental powers, would have seriously jeopardized Britains' control of the sea lanes on which it depended for survival. As it was, the results of the Battle of Jutland exposed the inferiority of the British Dreadnaughts relative to protection and firing accuracy. It also exposed the technical problems with British ammunition which tended to break up when striking opposing Dreadnaughts at oblique angles, thus causing little damage to them. It was only the advantage in numbers and in larger guns (13.5 and 15 inch bores vs the German 12 inch) that enabled Jellicos' fleet to win a strategic victory, albeit a tactical defeat.

Posted by SLC | May 20, 2008 6:18 PM

Obviously, this is a case of projection. The leader so fanatically determined on the course of war was George W. Bush. And he was the one oblivious to his country's own interests. And the same goes for McCain if he is elected too.

Posted by John Raymond | May 20, 2008 6:55 PM

If the world would have been better without Britain joining WWI, then you have to argue that a German victory would be a 'good thing', because this would have been the result. (Why do you think Britain, which believed in the balance of power, eventually joined the Entente? Why was there actual stalemate for four years once Britain threw its weight in that balance?)

Of course, a German victory = no Hitler. But the foreign policy aims of Germany in 1914 were essentially the same as the 1930s, which ties us back to 1938. The real cause of WWII was not Versailles per se, but the failure to deal with an expansionist Germany effectively. This is the problem Europeans had to deal with from the 1890s to 1945, and which they failed to solve - in some large part because Wilson saw the problem as frustrated Balkan nationalism and secret diplomacy instead. So if it was wrong to appease in 1938, it was wrong in 1914. And if in 1938 the bad guy was more obvious, the practical means of dealing with him were in far shorter supply.

PS none of what I argue in this thread should be taken for an apologia for the criminal and stupid invasion of Iraq.

Posted by Estrien | May 20, 2008 7:07 PM

Re: But the foreign policy aims of Germany in 1914 were essentially the same as the 1930s,

Nonsense. The Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe but not rule it outright. Moreover his allies (at least Austria-Hungary) were not the bumbling sidekicks that Mussolini proved to be to Hitler. They had ambitions of their own, and a victorious Kaiser Wilhelm would have had to satisfy the other Kaiser in Vienna and the Sultan too.

Posted by JonF | May 20, 2008 7:22 PM

JonF - Re.: The Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe but not rule it outright.

This distinction is, in your word, "nonsense".

I am not arguing the Kaiser was Hitler in his toxicity. Obviously, the two eras have differences. But Hitler himself didn't want to "rule" France "outright" and did not do so when he got the chance. On the other hand, the German Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1918 is lebensraum in action. Germans in both eras wanted a mix of outright conquest and annexation and more indirect control and dominance. In both cases they came true - temporarily.

I.e., the foreign policy aims of Germany in 1914 WERE essentially the same as the 1930s. They were different from Bismarck's more limited views of the 1870s-1890s, and were more consistent with Hapsburg Spain or Napoleonic France. Hitler was a product of this fin-de-siecle milieu and thought in its weltpolitik terms, which were then radicalized as to means by WWI.

As for the Austrians, they were already Mussolinis by 1915 and the Germans would have done a Grossdeutschland, 1937 solution - on their own terms - had they won the war.

Read some Fischer, Geiss, Weinberg et. al. all of whom try to end this silly distinction between what was effectively a single war against the German attempt at hegemony in the early 20th C.

PS none of what I argue in this thread should be taken as an apologia for the ridiculous sabre-rattling over Iran.

Posted by Estrien | May 20, 2008 8:15 PM

Although it's impossible to prove, there is a lot of evidence to support the idea that a victorious Wilhelmine Germany would have continued to evolve as a constitutional monarchy that would not only have not produced a Third Reich, but would most likely have restrained Bolshevik Russia to an extent that would eventually have been fatal to that regime. The sheer destructiveness of the war as it developed is the best argument that it should have been avoided, or at least maintained as another continental European tiff rather than the world war which Britain's involvement made it.

When Blutcher's Prussian army of 116,000 men invaded Belgium in 1815, they were regarded by the British as comrades in arms and undoubtedly turned the tide in Wellington's favor at Waterloo. When the Germans invaded northern France in 1870 British opinion was broadly in their favor, if less shrilly so than the queen, who likened the siege of Paris to the downfall of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hanover and Hesse had often supplied significant elements of Britain's ground forces.

Anxiety about the German fleet in combination with control of a railway that stretched ultimately from Berlin to Basra that could threaten Britain's imperial hegemony, especially India, largely explains in my view why British diplomats were prepared to go to war with such comparative recklessness.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 21, 2008 1:56 AM

Re: The foreign policy aims of Germany in 1914 WERE essentially the same as the 1930s.

No they weren’t. Imagine the map of Europe after a German victory in, say, 1915. And a map of Europe after a German victory in 1941.
In the former case, the Germans would have pushed their boundaries a bit eastward, probably gobbling up all of Poland (which itself extended further east than it does now). Elsewhere their territorial acquisitions would have been minor. They already had the Alsace after all. Nor would Austria-Hungary have expanded much, if at all. Ditto for the Turks. Bulgaria probably would have taken Macedonia and perhaps some other neighboring territory—and that’s about it. France would have been disarmed, but not eviscerated as a nation. Britain would have been humiliated and excluded from Europe, but the rest of its Empire would have been little affected. Russia would have been a mess, but that was going to happen sooner or later no matter what. A puppet regime would have sat in power in Belgium. But the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Iberia would have been untouched.
Now as to the 1941 map: Germany would have controlled everything east to Moscow and the Volga and perhaps beyond. The Mediterranean would have been a German lake (shared somewhat with friends in Italy and Spain). Puppet govermments would have sat in power in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Zagreb, Athens, Sofia, Budapest, and Bucharest. The Turks, Swedes, Portuguese and Swiss would have been thoroughly cowed,”Finlandized” in effect. The Reich would have been the dominant power in the Middle East. An isolated Britain would have been neutered and disarmed and its empire would have soon departed (as of course it did anyway).
The foreign policy goals of the Nazis were far more promiscuous than anything the Kaiser dreamed of.

Posted by JonF | May 21, 2008 9:18 PM

JonF omits the fact that a basic part of Nazi hegemony was genocide. In contrast, Imperial Germany and Austro-Hungary of 1915 had highly-assimilated Jews, as well as many other minorities, in positions of power and influence. Intermarriage was growing, and already extremely frequent in big cities.

One could also add that there was a broad spectrum of active political parties, a growing trend that would almost certainly have brought those governments into line with modern multi-ethnic democracies like Britain and the US.

Posted by Robert Powell | May 22, 2008 5:00 AM

for conservatives it's always 1938

Yes, except in the actual 1938 it was the conservatives who were the appeasers.

Posted by Marshall | May 22, 2008 7:57 AM

Re World War I, it is interesting that none of the commentators point out that the U.K. had a treaty commitment to Belgium, and a history of honoring their treaty commitments. They also had a long history of seeking to maintain the balance of power in Europe, which meant they typically opposed aggressive powers if they seemed to be on the verge of dominating Europe.

Also, as many have pointed out, the run-up to the guns of August happened when many of the principals (not-the-least being the Kaiser of Austro-Hungary) were on vacation, and not paying full attention to things.

Posted by Marshall | May 22, 2008 8:09 AM

Re: JonF omits the fact that a basic part of Nazi hegemony was genocide.

I omitted it because I was only addressing Germany's foreign policy goals in each war.

Posted by JonF | May 22, 2008 6:19 PM