Historiography: Origins of the Great War 3
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- Created on: 28-05-18 11:20
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- Historiography: Origins of the Great War 3
- Sydney Bradshaw Fay
- The Origins of the World War, 1929
- Writing in response to finding of Paris Peace Conference that Germany was solely responsible for outbreak of war
- Fay maintained that it was a complex assortment of causes
- Notably imperialism, militarism and alliances, that pushed Europe into war
- No one country plotted an aggressive war and many, including UK and Germany, made genuine, though unskilled, efforts at mediating the July Crisis
- In some ways, Fay and those who agreed with him are part of larger movement to reintroduce Germany to community of nations in same way that spirit of Locarno was
- Fritz Fischer
- Grasp for World Power, 1961
- Written in wake of WW2
- Reevaluated his country's role in causing WW1
- In contrast to Fay, Fischer found Germany sought aggressive war of expansion in 1914
- Germany was surrounded by hostile countries and her economy, culture and influence in decline
- A successful war of expansion would solve these problems and was therefore plotted and encouraged in years 1912-14
- The July Crisis was deliberately managed to this end
- Fischer maintained that these attitudes and desires were not held solely by maleficent and deluded leadership
- After examining a broad cross section of German society in 1914, Fischer concluded that these attitudes and aims had broad support from business interests, academics and all political parties in Germany
- It is not difficult to understand why this was a contentious position in post-Second World War Germany
- Eric Hobsbawn
- The Age of Empires, 1987
- Wrote in Marxist historical tradition
- Does not find causes of war in any one country or person, but rather in system of industrial capitalism that dominated economies of Western Europe
- Argues industrial capitalism's insatiable hunger for resources and markets fuelled New Imperialism of C19th
- While this need was temporarily slaked by the 'scramble in Africa', it was soon brought European countries into conflict
- Further, within industrial powers, this competition required a close partnership between government and arms producers, for whom peacetime profits had to be maintained
- these profits required so that industry would be around for next war, a war in which strength would be measured not in military strength alone, but also in industrial capacity
- By arguing a systematic cause of war, Hobsbawm and other Marxist historians bring a degree of inevitability to the war
- Regardless of who led the countries, or which countries were involved, they believe system would have caused a war eventually
- Niall Ferguson
- The Pity of War: Explaining World 1, 1999
- Like Fischer, blames one country in particular
- Responsibility rests with actions, and in some cases of inaction, of the UK
- Believes Fay was wrong, that anti-militarianism was rising in Europe by 1914, secret diplomacy has solved many disputes, and that Germany and UK were more than capable of settling their differences
- Maintains British political and military leaders had planned to intervene in European conflict from 1905 and in fact would have violated Belgian neutrality themselves had Germany not done it first
- Further, he maintains that UK misinterpreted German intentions, seeing them as Napoleonic, rather than as essentially defensive
- These leaders misled British parliament into declaration of war
- John Stoessinger
- Why Nations Go To War, 1974
- Finds liability for war largely in personal failings of those trying to manage the July Crisis
- He believes that each of leaders acted out of an over-inflated sense of both their own country's weakness and their enemy's strength
- Further, the Supreme leaders in Austria-Hungary and Germany failed to exercise sufficient control over their subordinates, who actively conspired to provoke at least a regional war in not a general European war
- Once the 'iron dice' were cast, none of the leaders had nerve to order a halt mobilisation
- Even though this was a completely viable option
- Had different personalities been in positions of authority in July 1914, there may never have been a war
- Sydney Bradshaw Fay
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