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Prelude to World
War One:
Underlying Causes of the War
When, on July 23, 1914, Austria-Hungary accused Serbia
of responsibility for the murder of the archduke and made demands that
seemed to foreshadow military action, the illusions of pacifism vanished
overnight, and the citizens of all countries who before Sarajevo had had
no thoughts of war accepted it as something unavoidable. Men then began
to ask themselves how the war had come about, distinguishing between the
immediate antecedents and the deeper roots. A popular explanation was
that it had been caused by economic jealousies and rival imperialisms.
Thus for 25 years Germany had been challenging the century-old commercial
supremacy of Great Britain; Germany, it was argued, was pushing Britain
to the wall, and Britain had gone to war to destroy German competition.
Then there were the rivalries between Britain, France, Germany, and Russia
in the Balkans, Africa, and Asia that more than once had brought them
to the brink of war; and along with the activities of governments went
the intrigues of high finance in all parts of the world to obtain concessions
for railways, canals, oil wells, and other profitable enterprises. This
explanation of the "international anarchy" was championed by
socialists, who derived their ideas from Karl Marx, but it was not exclusive
with them; on the very eve of the war in 1914, Henry Noel Brailsford,
an English radical, published a book entitled The War of Steel and Gold
that said much the same thing.
Undoubtedly economic interests and rivalries played a
considerable part in creating international tensions in the 43 years between
the Treaty of Frankfurt, which closed the FrancoPrussian War, and the
outbreak of World War I. The dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia,
which set off the explosion, was greatly envenomed when Austria sought
to control Serbia by harsh commercial treaties and by the imposition of
severe sanitary legislation against the importation of Serbian livestock
(the so-called Pig War, which began in 1905). A long tariff war (1888-1898)
embittered the relations between France and Italy. In colonial matters
there were such sharp conflicts as those between Britain and Russia in
Persia (Iran), between France and Italy in Tunisia, between Germany and
France in Morocco, between Britain and France in Egypt, and between Britain
and Germany in Africa. More than once war seemed imminent. Likewise the
project of building a railway from Constantinople (Istanbul) to Baghdad
and the Persian Gulf, the Baghdad Railway, which was the most famous undertaking
of financial imperialism, involved Britain, Germany, France, and Russia
in years of bitter wrangling. In consequence of these rivalries for colonies
and the competition for concessions, all the governments built up their
navies, which seemed necessary for the protection and expansion of their
interests overseas. The naval rivalry between Germany and Britain became
the most important single factor in their antagonism.
Yet economic interests, in the usual meaning of that phrase,
had little to do with the outbreak of war in 1914. The trade rivalry between
Britain and Germany, which had been so much advertised 10 years before,
was easing off because the two countries were increasingly developing
their markets in different parts of the world-Britain within its own empire,
and Germany on the continent of Europe. In the spring of 1914 the various
powers interested in the Baghdad Railway arrived at a compromise which
seemed to ensure the completion of the line, and at the same time they
divided the Ottoman Empire in Asia into spheres of economic influence
for the laudable purpose of avoiding war over the Turkish succession.
On the colonial side the great powers were able to partition
Africa without recourse to war. The British fought the Afrikaners (Boers)
in South Africa, and British, French, Germans, and Italians fought native
peoples throughout the continent, but the Europeans did not fight one
another. In the spring of 1914, Britain and Germany were ready to sign
an agreement concerning the ultimate disposition of the Portuguese colonies
in Africa. Instead of going to war over Persia, Britain and Russia had
divided it into zones of economic exploitation. To be sure, Japan and
Russia had fought a serious war over Korea and Manchuria, but it may be
said that by 1914 the economic rivalries and colonial disputes that loomed
so large in the first decade of the 20th century had greatly diminished,
and they played no part in the negotiations which immediately preceded
the war.
But if strictly economic questions were of small importance
in bringing on the war, that could not be said of problems of strategy
and military power and national prestige because of the German enigma.
Germany was the most restless nation in Europe. Its population, industry,
and foreign trade were growing more rapidly than those of any other European
country, and it had become the second industrial and commercial nation
of Europe, with every prospect of becoming the leader and thereby upsetting
the balance of power. The Germans did not, however, feel sure of their
future. As they looked around them, they observed that Britain had secured
control, in one form or another, of the most desirable parts of Africa,
held large possessions in Asia, and ruled the ocean lanes from innumerable
islands in the seven seas which provided naval bases and coaling stations.
In comparison, the German colonies in Africa and Asia and the German islands
in the Pacific were pitifully inadequate. They were not generally suitable
for white colonization, the small German population consisting of officials,
soldiers, and traders; their trade with the mother country was infinitesimal;
and they were a financial burden to the home government. Even the early
colonial nations that were no longer major powers-Spain, Portugal, and
the Netherlandswere better off than Germany. The prevailing view was that
colonial possessions were necessary for an industrial nation in order
to supply the raw materials needed in industry, to furnish markets for
manufactured goods and opportunities for the investment of capital, to
provide outlets for emigration, and to offer careers for ambitious persons.
Germany, not having rich, productive, and populous colonies, felt discriminated
against, even though it could and did buy and sell freely throughout the
world.
So, in the last decade of the 19th century, there arose
in Germany a tremendous agitation and a loud cry for "a place in
the sun"; along with this, the charge was frequently made that out
of jealousy and hatred Germany's rivals, principally Britain and France,
were standing in the way of the nation's acquiring its just due. The achievements
of Germany in industrial progress, social legislation, and municipal administration
were so universally admired by foreign visitors and observers that the
Germans came to believe that they were a superior people, and they proclaimed
this belief in innumerable books, pamphlets, and speeches. While other
nations have always held high opinions of themselves, they have never
carried self-adulation to the pitch reached in Germany before 1914.
The Alldeutscher Verband, a small but noisy and influential
association of prominent persons, proclaimed that it was necessary to
complete the unification of the Germanic peoples of Europe, millions of
whom did not live within the empire established in 1871, and writings
of all kinds set forth in detail what was wanted elsewhere in the world.
Since these programs were to be realized at the expense of other nations,
it was often stated that Germany would use force if necessary to achieve
its ends. A vast literature in praise of war as a necessity for Germany
and as a purifying experience came into existence, and the German Army
became the most venerated institution in the country. Emperor William
II helped by his flamboyant speeches to create the impression that Germany
was bent on war and would stop at nothing. Foreign visitors were uniformly
impressed and alarmed by German militarism, which before 1914 was regarded
outside of Germany with something like the horror felt in the 1950's and
1960's toward communism outside the Soviet world.
The German government never associated itself with the
demands of the agitation for colonial expansion, but it resorted to methods
of diplomacy which gave great offense. It utilized the South African (Boer)
War of 1899 - 1902 to force concessions from Britain in Samoa; it seized
the opportunity offered by the Russo - Japanese War of 1904-1905 to secure
from Russia a commercial treaty that was unduly favorable to Germany;
and when Russia, the ally of France, was defeated in the Far East, Germany
forced France to get rid of its foreign minister and to change its policy
with respect to Morocco. The British, Russian, and French governments
regarded the German actions as blackmail and became increasingly suspicious
of the ultimate aims of German policy. Inevitably they drew together in
a diplomatic combination which came to be known as the Triple Entente,
and the Germans denounced this action as "encirclement."
In addition, in 1900 Germany embarked on the construction
of a navy intended to be second only to that of Great Britain. This was
a favorite project of William II, and he declined all suggestions from
Britain for a limitation of naval armaments. The greater the German Fleet
grew, the more dangerous it seemed to the British, who regarded their
century-old naval supremacy as the foundation of their political independence
and the condition of national existence. For military as well as for political
reasons, therefore, Britain drew closer to France and Russia, and the
closer these relations became the more Germany complained of encirclement.
The problem presented by Germany to the other European powers must be
kept in mind in considering what happened in July 1914.
Nevertheless, despite what has been said about German
ambitions, the primary cause of World War I was the conflict between the
political frontiers of the European nations and the distribution of the
various peoples of Europe-the denial of what is commonly called the right
of self-determination, although this term was not generally used before
1914. From the Rhine eastward the political frontiers of Europe, as fixed
by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 or determined by the wars of the 19th
century, cut across recognizable lines of nationality. In the west, Germany
held Alsace-Lorraine, taken from France in 1871 against the wishes of
its people, who disliked German rule and wished to return to France; it
is not too much to say that the blunder of Germany in annexing Alsace-Lorraine
and the refusal of France to recognize its loss constituted the most important
single factor in the history of Europe from 1871 to 1914. East of Germany
lay Austria-Hungary, which contained 11 different ethnic groups, 9 of
which were kept in greater or less subjection by a ruling clique of Germans
and Magyars; many of the Germans dreamed of union with the German Empire.
In the Balkans ethnic and political boundaries, the latter determined
by the Treaty of Berlin (1878) and the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), rarely
coincided. The Russian Empire in 1914 possessed vast non-Russian territories,
which were later represented by Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
and the Rumanian province of Bessarabia. Poland was the most notorious
case of the denial of self-determination, for it had been divided between
Austria, Prussia, and Russia in the late 18th century and again in 1815.
A minor case was presented by Schleswig-Holstein, where a Danish minority
lived under Prussian rule.
The Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian governments showed little skill
in handling their minorities. Some groups were treated more harshly than
others, but everywhere the minorities grew increasingly restless under
political repression and economic oppression, and they, demanded concessions.
In Austria-Hungary some minorities were able to look across their frontiers
to the free kinsmen who, they hoped, would one day free them from the
antiquated rule under which they suffered. The Yugoslavs of both Austria
and Hungary, refused concessions by their Habsburg rulers, looked for
help to Serbia, which, under King Peter I Karageorgevich, was an independent
nation; and the Rumanians of Transylvania, in southeastern Hungary, gazed
across the Carpathians to independent Rumania, which had a Hohenzollern
king. The Poles refused to give up hope of reunion, which, they were well
aware, could come about only as the result of a war involving their three
partitioners, and many Poles undoubtedly welcomed the coming of war in
1914.
This conflict between existing governments and their unhappy
minorities was the factor primarily responsible for the catastrophe of
1914. Germany understood that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine could
be maintained only by the sword and armed accordingly; France was equally
aware that the lost provinces could be regained only by the sword, and
for years many Frenchmen dreamed of a war of revenge. This Franco-German
irreconcilability poisoned the international atmosphere. The multinational
Habsburg monarchy came to rely more and more on force and less and less
on the loyalty of its peoples, which was slowly but surely seeping away.
The partition of Poland was maintained only by the armies of the three
partitioning powers; and the frontiers of the Balkan states depended exclusively
on armed might.
The victories won by Prussia in its wars against Denmark,
Austria, and France in 18641871 were generally attributed to the superiority
of its conscript armies over the semiprofessional troops of the vanquished.
It was not surprising, therefore, not only that the new German Empire
continued to recruit its armies by universal military service, but also
that the Continental neighbors of Germany adopted the same system. Only
Great Britain retained the volunteer system for raising its relatively
small army, which was designed to defend the British Empire and not to
join in a Continental war. As population increased, so did the numerical
strength of the European armies; in addition, every improvement in the
weapons of war by one country was a challenge to all. From 1872, when
France adopted the German system, until 1914, every government spent as
much money on armaments as it could persuade its people to pay for in
taxes or as the national economy could afford; the cost was easily borne
by an increasingly prosperous Germany but was ruinous for Italy. This
competition did not, however, produce any increased feeling of security.
On the contrary, the proportionate strength of the various armies was
not very different in 1914 from what it had been 40 years earlier; the
feeling of insecurity was much greater, as may be seen in the war memoirs
of Gen. Erich F. W. Ludendorff.
Disputed and unstable frontiers were not, of course, the
only reason for great armies. European governments had always maintained
armies, partly to keep order at home, partly as levers in diplomatic bargaining,
and sometimes for aggression and conquest; but the determination of monarchs
and governments to preserve their territories intact in the face of increasing
dissatisfaction with existing frontiers and conservative institutions
made the competition in armaments more costly and more dangerous than
it had been in previous generations.
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