The War that Ended Peace: how Europe abandoned peace for the First World War

Margaret MacMillan
Profile Books, £25
ISBN 978-1846682728

Margaret MacMillan is a Professor of International History at Oxford and an authority on the history of Europe in the early 20th-century. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end the war, which won the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize.

In this work of just over 600 pages she seeks to explain how Europe, then at the zenith of its global power and influence, slid inexorably over the cliff and into the abyss of the First World War.

As such, this book is not a conventional military history but, rather, a history of Europe between 1890 and 1914 which asks the terrible question: why did Europe so manifestly reject the idea of reason and enthusiastically choose the path of self-destruction?

MacMillan synthesises a plethora of sources and writes in a clear narrative style that keeps the reader’s attention. But this work is somewhat spoilt by a number of stupid errors, such as the oft-repeated nonsense that Erskine Childers was shot by the British. These mistakes are inexplicable, coming as they do from the hand of a Professor of International History at the University of Oxford. However they do not detract from the main thesis of the book, nor mar the enjoyment of it.

MacMillan devotes 18 of her 20 chapters to discussing the period 1890-1914, a period of extraordinary rivalries, alliances, and hubristic nationalism, not to mention great advances in science and military technology. She starts with Great Britain, serene in her splendid self-imposed isolation, commanding the greatest Empire since Rome, but aware that change must come and of the necessity to forge alliances.

Great Britain’s first inept attempt to curry favour with Imperial Germany by ceding the strategically crucial island of Helgoland in the North Sea for the worthless swamp of Zanzibar was a fiasco. Germany retained Helgoland, no alliance was made.

Imperial Germany further exacerbated the situation in 1900 by making ill-judged remarks in support of the Boer Republics, before finally deciding on the absolutely suicidal policy of building a High Seas Fleet to challenge the hegemony of the Royal Navy. This ensured the undying enmity of Great Britain who then reluctantly sought an understanding with their traditional enemies, the French.

By 1914 it was axiomatic that Great Britain supported France. On the outbreak of war in August 1914, it came as something of a blessed relief for Prime Minister Herbert Asquith who saw it as an alternative to the prospect of a brutal civil war then looming in Ulster over the torrid business of Home Rule.

Germany’s diplomatic disaster

For Imperial Germany the period was a diplomatic disaster, starting with the dismissal of the aged Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1890. The Reinsurance Treaty with Imperial Russia was abandoned in the same year that the new Kaiser was asserting himself with a mixture of bombast and ineptitude. As a result France was quick to form an alliance with Imperial Russia, providing her with massive capital investment to improve her otherwise ramshackle military potential.

Undeterred by this failure or by the collapse of any idea of an alliance with Great Britain, the Kaiser, ably abetted by the anglophile Alfred Tirpitz, antagonised the situation further by commencing the construction of the High Seas Fleet that lead to a debilitating naval race with Great Britain.

By 1914 Imperial Germany was faced with a two front war, confronted by Great Britain, France, and Russia. Her only allies were the decrepit Austro-Hungarian Empire, described by a German Chief of Staff as ‘like being shackled to a corpse’, and the equally moribund Ottoman Empire.

MacMillan, in line with some other contemporary revisionist historians, lays the blame for the conflict at the door of a belligerent Imperial Germany and the Austro-Hungary Empire. She does acknowledge that the other Great Powers also share some of the responsibility but underplays the deviousness of France and the stupidity of Imperial Russia, not to mention the belligerence of Great Britain.

All these powers felt in some way threatened by the vibrant, arrogant, and seemingly over-confident German Empire, while the Germans felt themselves to be outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded on all sides, and under an imperative to act quickly or face annihilation.

Imperial Germany is severely castigated for being the only power that actually planned to attack another power (France) in MacMillan’s opinion. But this blatantly ignores France’s ‘Plans XIV – XVII’ continually updated from 1898-1913.

An air of complacency

There is no doubting that the German Schlieffen Plan (1905) was an offensive plan, but so were the far less competent efforts of Britain, France, and Russia. However, both sides were delusional when it came to assessing the cost of any war in terms of blood and treasure.

The fact that the Austro- Prussian War of 1866, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, and the various Balkan conflicts had been decided decisively in a matter of months led to a fatal air of complacency, the belief that another war would follow the same brief pattern.

There were siren voices such as the Russian industrialist Ivan Bloch or ardent pacifists such as Jean Jaures who argued passionately against the madness of war, but they were, predictably, ignored.

There is very little new in this book, which is hardly surprising given the almost obsessive fascination with the subject. However MacMillan does take the novel approach of making a number of analogies with contemporary events that some readers may find irritating.

For example she describes the newly launched HMS Dreadnought as ‘The Muhammad Ali of the seas’, draws a parallel between Austro-Hungary’s desire to exterminate Serbia with the similar desire of Bush and Blair to do the same to Iraq in 2003, and likens the incompetence of the leaders of 1914 to the statesmanship of President John F Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This is, however, more than compensated for by her excellent nano-portraits of all the major characters that led the way to 1914. Thus we are made aware of the laziness and lechery of Herbert Asquith, the ferocious nationalism of Theophile Déclassé, the deviousness of von Bulow, and the passion of Jaures. Strangely the portrait of David Lloyd George is disappointingly incomplete, while Churchill’s almost homicidal delight on the outbreak of war is duly recorded.

MacMillan concludes that there was a gross failure of imagination on the part of all those who should have foreseen the catastrophic consequences of any major European war. In this she is surely correct. So too is her conclusion that those who claimed to have no other choice, quite simply lacked the necessary courage and integrity to stand up to their belligerent colleagues.

Thus did a cabal of perhaps 15 or 20 revered ‘statesmen’, who theoretically represented the apogee of European cerebral achievement, with an average age of approximately 58, lead Europe willingly and knowingly to her ultimate doom. In doing so, they ended the longest period of peace Europe had known since the heady days of Pax Romana, 1,500 years before.

This book comes with a fine set of photographs and adequate maps, and – notwithstanding my quibbles – is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in this pivotal moment in European history.