The liberal society that had developed in Europe during the 19th century was especially proud of having greatly limited the scourge of war. From the time of Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 to the outbreak of what Europeans quickly came to call “The Great War” in 1914, Europe enjoyed the longest period of general peace it had known since Roman times. There had been limited wars in Europe during the 19th century (war of Italian unification, 1859; Franco-Prussian war, 1870-71), but no conflict involving all the major states. Nineteenth-century wars had also been short and not terribly destructive. In the first years of the twentieth century, European diplomats held a number of peace congresses to try to reduce the risk of war even further, and to insure that wars that did break out would be fought according to civilized rules.
The contrast between liberal hopes for the elimination of war and the extreme violence and brutality of the conflict that began in August 1914 and lasted until November 1918 helps account for the feeling of shock that most Europeans experienced. Fought with the new weapons made possible by the technological progress of which Europeans were so proud, the Great War was far deadlier than any previous conflict. Nationalist sentiments that had developed in the 19th century drew whole populations into the war and made any notion of compromise seem like treason. The spectacle of the advanced societies of Europe using all their resources to destroy each other raised disturbing questions about European claims to represent a more advanced civilization than the rest of the world.
I. A Century of Peace (1815-1914)
A. The Nineteenth-Century Balance of Power
B. Liberal attitudes toward war
1. blaming absolute monarchs
2. nationalism and the promise of peace
II. The Path to War (1870-1914)
A. The impact of post-Bismarck nationalism
1. Germany and the balance of power
2. small-power nationalism in eastern and southern Europe
B. The System of Great-Power Alliances
1. Bismarck and the alliance system
2. Triple Alliance and Triple Entente
3. diplomatic crises and the alliance system
C. The New Mood of Domestic Politics
1. mass politics and public emotion
2. a loss of diplomatic flexibility
3. ‘war fever’ in 1914
D. The Role of Industrial Technology
1. the industrialization of war
2. military planners’ responses: Germany’s Schlieffen Plan
The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894: “France and Russia, animated by a common desire to preserve the peace, and having no other aim than to prepare for the necessities of a defensive war, provoked against either of them by an attack by the forces of the Triple Alliance… [promise to support each other in case of such an attack, and to coordinate their military plans in advance.]”
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany respons to the British proposal for a treaty restricting naval armaments (1908): “If England intends graciously to extend us her hand only with the intimation that we must limit our fleet, this is a groundless impertinence, which involves a heavy insult to the German people and their Kaiser… France and Russia might with equal reason then demand a limitation of our land armaments…”
German Foreign Office dispatch explaining policy to its ambassadors, 21 July 1914: “If the Austro-Hungarian government is not going to abdicate forever as a great power, she has no choice but to enforce acceptance by the Serbian government of her demands by strong pressure, and, if necessary, by resort to military measures. The choice of methods must be left to her.”
Public mood in Austria in August 1914 (from Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday): “… there was a majrestic, rapturous, and even seductive something in this first outbreak of the people from which one could escape only with difficulty…. As never before, thousands and hundreds of thousands felt what they should have felt in peace time, that they belonged together… All differences of class, rank, and language were flooded over at that moment by the rushing feeling of fraternity. Strangers spoke to one another in the streets, people who had avoided each other for years shook hands, everywhere one saw excited faces. Each individual experienced an exaltation of his ego, he was no longer the isolated person of former times, he had been incorporated into the mass, he was part of the people, and his person, his hitherto unnoticed person, had been given meaning.”