Dan Snow's History Hit - The Road to 1914: Myths of Nationalism

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

This week in 1914 saw the outbreak of the First World War. In this special episode from the archive, Margaret MacMillan talks to her nephew Dan about her seminal book 'The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914'. They discuss the importance of Storytelling to the historian's process, the ways in which political actors at the time viewed the relation between fate and choice, the role that masculine insecurity played in the build up to the war and also examine the construct of and myths surrounding nationalistic feeling in the pre-war years. They even consider the possibility of an alternate course of events that involved Britain not entering the war at all.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This week in 1914 saw the outbreak of the First World War. At a time of increased global tensions, superpower rivalry, nationalism, and aggressive rhetoric, it's always important to look back on times from our past with resonance that echo. And so I've got Professor Margaret Macmillan on the podcast. She is a legend, University of Toronto, University of Oxford professor, and she's also my auntie. So she's the person who, more than anyone else, fired my love of history when I was young. She wrote a

huge award-winning book on the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War, and more recently, for the centenary, she wrote a book on the outbreak of the First War in 1914 as well. So she's the obvious person. She's the world's leading expert to get onto the podcast to talk about the forces that pushed Europe and the world into catastrophic war in 1914. This is a repeat. This is from the archive. Once a week, we dig out a classic podcast from the archives. This is this week's. I hope you enjoy it.

If you want to listen to all of our podcasts, they're only available in one place. That's History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history with audio and video, hundreds of hours of documentaries, hundreds of hours of podcasts on there. So please go and check it out. You can go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you get a month for free. And then your second month for just $1, one pound, one euro. It's pretty sweet. In meantime everyone here is professor margaret mcmillan enjoy 100 years on from the First World War, I went to talk to Margaret Macmillan, Professor of History at Oxford, about her hugely influential work

on exactly why and how the war broke out and our enduring fascination with this turning point in our history. A time in which so many of the modern world's problems have their roots. Hello, Margaret. Thanks for coming on the show. No, I'm delighted to be here. Well, after all, I should interview you because you're the person who inspired me with a love of history. Well, I hope so. I don't take any credit for it, though. History is kind of a big deal in our family.

Why do you think we, in our family, had an appreciation and a love for the past? I wonder. Partly I think because we are all great gossips and so we'd love to talk about what was it like when you were little and then we'd sort of get on well what was it like when your grandmother was little and so I think I think our parents and your parents also had an appreciation of the Purst, and they used to take us to places, they used to tell us stories, they gave us books. And so we grew up knowing, not in a sort of genealogical way, but we grew up knowing something about what the Purst was like. So you're my auntie, my mother's sister. I thought your mother, my grandmother, also had an amazing oral storytelling tradition.

I think her way of getting me interested in history was she'd tell us about her ancestors and she'd say, just like your Auntie Margaret or just like your cousin Gwyneth. You know, so we felt that we were part of this kind of continuum and somehow we were inheriting their traits and both in terms of our innate sort of biology, but also in our kind of character and outlook as well. I think so. And she also was very good at telling stories. And so a lot of the stories she told was things that had happened to her as a little girl, or it happened to her parents as little children. And so they became part of our sort of storytelling. And so we'd say, tell us the story about the time you ate too many plums, or tell us the story about the time you stole the bicycle and rode away, you know. So it became something that we liked. You know how children love stories being repeated?

And so we got lots of stories. And your grandfather and my father would do it too. We'd say, tell us the stories about when you thought you could fly and you jumped off the top of the barn and realized you couldn't. So I think children love those sorts of stories. Absolutely. And hearing about Grandpa Macmillan in the trenches or Nine, your mother's father at Gallipoli and all those kind of stories

you went from hearing those stories and telling those stories to me to writing enormous histories including telling the story of one of the most one of the biggest stories really of the last couple of centuries which is the outbreak of the First World War I never meant to do it because I thought so many things had been written about the First World War and I actually sat in this room with a very nice young publisher who came to see me and he said we've got a project

for you would you like to do a book on the First World War the outbreak for the anniversary in 2014 and I said well no I said it's already been done I've got another project I mean so I said there was that wonderful book by Barbara Tuchman The Guns of August and because he's sort of cheeky, he looked at me and he said, you would have read that at least 50 years ago when you were young. Yeah, amazing. So maybe it's time for something, you know, a new view. And I got obsessed with it.

And the First World War, the outbreak and its significance and its consequences fascinate historians of the 20th century. It is one of those moments, one of those seminal events. It's an overused word, seminal event. But it is really one of those times when everything's different, you know, and we still don't know how it started. We know that it left a very different world, but there are endless debates and they will go on. I don't think there's ever going to be an answer to how the First World War started. I read your wonderful book and I felt at the end of it, I still didn't know how it started in a positive

way. And I think that when you talk to really great historians and professors, you almost leave the conversation less certain than you began it. Well, I don't think we're there to provide clear answers. We're there to give the best possible explanation. But what I also felt I wanted to do with the outbreak of the First World War was help people, including myself, understand how it came about. How could they have thought themselves into those positions and made those decisions? And so I ended up doing, I meant to do just a short little book on the July crisis and the outbreak of war by the beginning of August 1914, but I ended up looking at European society. How did people think? How did they feel? How important was it that men had an honor code in many countries,

that in a way that gangs do today they'd rather die than be wrong. How important were manly values, how important were assumptions about social Darwinism, that humans were divided into species who were condemned to struggle with each other. So it's the frame of mind I became so interested in. But I was also interested in all those forces for peace, because there were, there were huge forces. You know, there's a big middle class peace movement. There was a big working class movement, increasingly organized and powerful, saying we will oppose a capitalist war. And so why didn't all those forces in the end win out in the struggle, I suppose, for the soul of

Europe? But it was sophisticated enough not to just go, the First World War was caused by the chief of the Austrian general staff. You know, you didn't finish by pointing the finger. I mean, you had one great conclusion, we didn't talk about the conclusions first, but I'd really like one of your conclusions, which was, there was a fundamental problem with politicians believing they didn't have a choice and you said they always have choices yeah and that was so resonant because you think you think about the east asia today in korea today it's such an important point yeah yeah and what worries me is president trump is saying i don't have a choice here you know it's a way of absolving yourself of responsibility isn't it you're saying what can i do you know circumstances makeances make it necessary. There was that terrible thing that Theobald Bethmann-Holweg, the German chancellor, said as he prepared to prepare the orders for

Germany's mobilization. And he said, the iron dice have rolled. Well, he rolled them. But I think with the First World War, and I had a very interesting discussion with Chris Clark, that wonderful historian at Cambridge once. And he said, and I think he's absolutely right, I agree with him, that it depends when you're trying to set the explanation. So if you look at the last two weeks of July, you can see the steps that led to war. But if you go further back, it broadens out and deepens out. So was the arms race part of it? Was nationalism part of it? Was imperial rivalry part of it? Oh, I know, so difficult where did you where did you end up falling on the on is it the big substructural of the imperial competition masculinity racism the arms is it those or is it contingent is it mistakes is it timetables is it is it just

tiny misjudgments the awful thing is i think it's all of it you know because people operate within frameworks i mean we are part of a society at the moment. We have certain assumptions, which often we don't examine. You know, we assume certain things are good, certain things are bad. And we're products of our societies. But we also make decisions within those frameworks. And so I think what I tried to do was try and understand the society within which these people operated. And class is very important.

and understand the society within which these people operated. And class is very important. You know, if you come out of the upper classes in, say, Austria-Hungary or Germany or Britain, you have a certain set of values. Now you can rebel against them, you may end up being very different, but you grow up with a certain set of values. So I mean so many of those people in key positions in foreign ministries and in the military in, say, Austria-Hungary or in Germany came out of those aristocratic backgrounds, were being brave, being prepared to fight, having a strong sense of honor which they

transferred to their countries. They kept on talking about Austria-Hungary's honor and Germany's honor. I think that matters. You know your class background matters. It really matters too in the end. I mean again I came to this conclusion by the summer of 1914. It matters who's in power. You know if you had had… let's just take one example,

if you had a different czar in Russia, in Russia, Nicholas II, you had a man who was weak, who was determined to hang onto the Romanov power, who saw any concession to the new forces in Russia, the new democratic forces, new constitutional forces as weakness, who had been forced to give a constitution and then had spent the next 10 years trying to claw back the powers. This is someone who was weak

but who feared that if he didn't look tough in 1914 people would stop supporting him. I mean he decided on war I think partly because he was afraid of being weak and I think the same thing was true of Kaiser Wilhelm. It's funny this idea, this obsession, older men obsessed with honour, very aware of imperial competition and the Brits saying our word will count for nothing, other people saying no one will ever believe us again, it's about honour and of course these old men are also looking over their shoulder terrified about change in sight that might see them and their class swept

away from power, the kind of idea of a cleansing war, a war to reinforce traditional values. What's going on within aristocratic masculine culture at that time in Europe? I suspect there's more uncertainty and insecurity than you might think. I mean, the world is changing around them. If you look at what's happening to the value of agricultural land, for example, across Europe, it's not as valuable as it once was. And many of those big aristocratic and upper class fortunes are based on land. Not all. I mean, the ones who survive have breweries, they have mills, they have factories.

But a lot of the wealth among the upper classes is in land. And the value of land is going down. There's a huge amount of land being sold off, transferred, families going bankrupt because they're no longer as rich as they were. It's partly because there's now competition from cheap grains coming in from the Americas and from places like Australia and New Zealand. All those new farming areas are being opened out. And so I think there's a fear that they're vanishing. If you think of the cherry orchard, for example, that wonderful sort of elegiac Chekhov play, it's about dispossession. It's about an old family losing its place. And the last sound you hear, I think, almost is the sound of

the axes cutting down the cherry trees because a new man has bought it and he's going to turn it into a commercial property. So there's that, I think. There's a sense that values no longer fit into the modern world. Things are changing. Because the time before 1914 was also a time of tremendous growth and experimentation and change. And so I think there's something of that. But there's also what you said, that there is this feeling that if we get a good war, it'll bring the nation together. We won't have all these internal divisions, which we do have. We have different political divisions, different classes, different ethnicities.

And it will, so some of them thought, they certainly thought in Germany, in certain circles around the Kaiser, it will give us the excuse to suspend the Constitution, get rid of the Reichstag, which we don't like, close down the unions who are troublesome, get rid of the Social Democratic Party. We can go back to some sort of idealized past where you rule with an iron fist and the lower classes knew their places. So it's a complex, I think, of ideas and emotions. And then also what's so interesting about your book, and again we think about this in the era of Trump as well, is the revolution in state power that enabled small groups of individuals to control the lives of just millions of into Belgium full of troops or mobilise these vast armies. It doesn't seem like political institutions and decision-making has moved on beyond the days of just William the Conqueror deciding things with half-brothers. Yeah, it's a very curious combination, isn't it? Because what you have is peoples whose values often represent an earlier type of society,

a more agrarian society, a society with perhaps a clearer class structure, in charge of what is an increasingly industrialized war machine. And part of what contributes to the tragedy in Europe and the catastrophe of the First World War is that you have this enormous capacity to produce things, this enormous capacity to organize. I mean, governments have become more and more bureaucratic. I mean, governments are beginning to collect statistics by the middle of the 19th century. They have much more knowledge about society and bureaucracies have become much more professional.

And they also have this huge industrial capacity and they have this huge network of communications, of telegraphs, of railways, of paved roads. And so the tragedy is in a way that you have people in charge, as you suggested, who come out of an earlier thing. I mean, they think, I think, a lot of the generals. It's not, to be fair to the generals, a lot of them are beginning to be aware that the world is changing. They're beginning to be aware that war on an industrial mass scale is going to be absolutely hideously expensive. But they've been trained to think of winning wars, and they've been trained to think of the attack.

And I think they hope that war will somehow end up like being a war of maneuver, like the Napoleonic Wars. And I think what's really striking is how many of the generals at the beginning of the war collapse and are not there by Christmas. I mean, von Moltke, the younger, the chief of the German general staff, basically has a nervous breakdown and has to be removed. And it happens to a lot of them because they're simply not equipped, and very few people are, to deal with this. British Corps commander dies on the way to the Western Front. Yeah, they have heart attacks, they collapse.

And it's understandable because they're under the most terrible pressure. Okay, so we talked about some of those class issues. What about imperialism? What about nationalism? This enormous, the 9th century age of imperial, European imperial race? Yeah. Well, imperialism had led to a lot of conflicts and very nearly led to war between Britain and France, for example, in 1898, had threatened war between Russia and Britain. I mean, the great irony was Britain ended up on the side of the two nations with which it had nearly gone to war. Imperialism had caused tremors throughout Europe, but I would say most of the imperial

rivalry, with the exception of the coming conflict would say most of the imperial rivalry, with the exception of the coming conflict over the demise of the Ottoman Empire, had been settled. Africa had been carved up. Longstanding differences had been settled. And I think what was really now coming back into Europe were the nationalist feelings which had been fueled by imperialism. And there was this very dangerous sort of application of Darwinian ideas to human societies. And social Darwinism believed or argued that the human race could be divided up into species. And in their natural state, species tended to have natural predators, tended to struggle for survival. And these ideas were applied to societies.

And so there was an idea that the French were the hereditary enemies of the Germans, and the Germans were the hereditary enemies of the French and of the Russians. These are dangerous ideas, because then you begin to think, well, war was bound to happen. And also that whole notion, that phrase, the struggle for survival, acquires a moral connotation. If you don't struggle for survival as a people, you don't deserve to survive. What's wrong with you? You're weak. You're feeble.

And so it's very, very dangerous. I mean, you get people talking and writing. The professor of war in Oxford writes like this. We need a good a good healthy war we need to show that we're manly we need to show that we can win and it's a dangerous mindset isn't it when you think a war is a good thing and I guess nationalism is playing havoc in Eastern Europe where people start telling peasants that they are in fact Frenchmen or you tell people in Cornwall, oh, you're a Brit. And in Eastern Europe that's almost impossible because people have these multiple identities. So no one really knows what they are, what they're supposed to be.

No, I mean, nationalism is a creation. And it's a very recent creation, actually, in terms of human history. I mean, before the beginning of the 19th century, very few people thought of themselves as French or maybe the English. I mean, I think there was a sense of Englishness. But, you know, in France at the beginning of the 19th century, a lot of people didn't speak French at all. And they thought of themselves as Breton or Basque or coming from the Languedoc or Alsatian. They didn't think of themselves as French.

And I think nationalism is a created sense. And it's created, I must say, by people like us. It's created by communicators and historians and poets, yep, and painters. And these national mythologies are created. I mean, there's sort of cults of great heroes. And it was very interesting, just before the First World War, there were all sorts of commemorations. And so the commemoration of the Battle of Leipzig in Germany and huge statues and monuments were erected. And there was a commemoration of the Battle of Waterloo, there was going to be a commemoration of the Battle of Waterloo

but there was a commemoration of Trafalgar. So you begin to get these, I think the French commemorated Austerlitz, you get these commemorations and you get people telling everyone, but you are part of this race, and people use the term race and nation interchangeably. So there's a hint, more than a hint, that there's a biological component to this. We're all family, we're all related. We speak the same language, we share the same religion. And if you don't realize you're part of the nation or race, we'll make you realize it. You may not know, but we will awaken you to your true identity.

And that's a big problem for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, isn't it? Because even the most passionately nationalist poet or thinker couldn't pretend that the subjects of the Austro-Hungarian crown were all a unified family. No, and that was the dangerous thing for Austro-Hungary. I mean, Austro-Hungary had survived for a very long time as a series of muddles and compromises and, you know, vaguenesses. And there was quite a bit of sort of at the various local levels that there were diets, there were parliaments, there was quite a bit of self-government, and they were moving more in that direction. We'll never know, but without the combined forces of nationalism in the First World War, it's possible Austria-Hungary could have carried on into the 20th and 21st century as a sort of prototype European Union, you know, with

control, you know, devolution at certain levels, but some sort of central government and some sort of identity at the local level, but an identity at the central level. I mean, people could be both. And you did get people in Austria-Hungary saying, well, I'm a good servant of the Kaiser and I'm part of Austria-Hungary, but I'm also a Czech or I'm also a Pole and I can do both. But increasingly what was happening before the First World War was that the nationalists were saying you can't do both. If you're a Pole, you have to want an independent Poland. If you're a Serb living within Austria-Hungary or a Croat living in Austria-Hungary, you have to really want to be independent.

You have to really want to be independent if you're Czech or you're Slovak. And so nationalism was just tearing Austria-Hungary, you have to really want to be independent. You have to really want to be independent if you're Czech or you're Slovak. And so nationalism was just tearing Austria-Hungary apart. So is it that, when we come to slightly more short-term reasons, is it that effect of nationalism in the Balkans on Austria-Hungary that makes Austria-Hungary particularly keen to go to war with Serbia when Serbia is seen to have been behind the murder of the Austria-Hungarian heir to the throne? Oh, yeah. Austria-Hungary has been wanting to go to war with Serbia, at least key decision-makers in Austria-Hungary have been wanting to go to war with Serbia for some time.

The chief of the Austrian General Staff, Konrad von Hotzendorf, I think had called for war with Serbia a dozen times before 1914. It's because Serbia was growing in power, growing in its assertions, and what it was to Austria-Hungary, it was a magnet for all the South Slav peoples, which included Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, many of whom, most of whom lived within Austria-Hungary. It was a magnet for them, or that's what Austria-Hungary feared, that those South Slavs who lived within Austria-Hungary would be drawn into Serbia's orbit. Because Serbia was, if you like, a modern 20th century nation state. It was perfect. It was uniform, single, confessional.

It felt like a nation state rather than a creaky old early modern empire. And for Serbian nationalists, the Serbs living within Austria-Hungary, and there were quite a lot, were lost to them. They had to be brought out. But so too were the Serbs living in Bosnia. But so also were the Croats and the Slovenes, who the Serbs felt really were properly Serbs. They'd just gone the wrong direction. They'd become Catholic rather than Orthodox. So I think you've got this Serb nationalism. And the Serb nationalists were, you know, many of them, like all ideologues, were pretty fanatical about this.

And they were prepared to do a lot of distractions we've seen to get it. And so for Austria-Hungary, Serbia was an existential threat. If Serbia had its way and the South Slavs began to be pulled out, then the Poles in the north would want to leave. The Ruthenians were beginning to develop a national consciousness. They might want to join with the Russian Empire. The Czechs and the Slovaks were already very, very, well the Czechs particularly were already very much demanding more and more power.

So Serbia meant to Austria-Hungary the end if it wasn't stopped. And so when, my view is that when the Archduke was assassinated for Austria-Hungary, this was the perfect excuse he'd been looking for. It needed a good excuse. What better excuse? land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

So, Austria-Hungary gives a list of particularly onerous, a list of demands that is designed to be refused to Serbia. Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, Serbia went a long way to try and comply with them, but they really were designed to be refused. I mean, if you are an independent state, can you accept having the officials of another power monitoring your bureaucracy and your legal system? I mean, it would have been too much. And what is more, Serbia was given the ultimatum, it was given 48 hours to answer it. While the Serbs were desperately trying to come up with an answer, the Austrian embassy in Belgrade was burning its papers and the diplomats were preparing to leave. I mean, I think they didn't want an acquiescence. So while Austria is being very, very bullish about its small neighbour Serbia, chance to beat it down, what role are the Germans playing? Well, this is where I think the Germans do bear responsibility. I mean, I don't think the Germans brought about World War I on their own, but they certainly behaved in a way that made it more likely. And they had made it more likely already by allowing their Kaiser to go rampaging around Europe, being belligerent and saying silly things. I mean, he was unpredictable and his government often despaired of him, but it left an impression of a Germany that was

unpredictable. And when the crisis developed in the Balkans, when the Archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo, the Germans gave what was called the blank check to Austria-Hungary. They said, do what you want with Serbia, we'll back you. We will back you this time. They hadn't backed them over previous crises, and Austria-Hungary was a bit sore about this, but this time the Germans said, don't worry, we're with you. And that meant that Austria-Hungary behaved more recklessly than it might have done otherwise and was less inclined to contemplate any deal being brokered. And so then, so you've got Germany saying, we're in all the way, we'll back you all the way.

Yeah. And then we come to the Russians. So what role do the Russians play? Well, the Russian role is quite controversial. And partly it is because we don't have a full account of what the Russians were actually saying in the inner circles. In Russia, I think there was a feeling that this time, the trouble is there'd been previous crises. And previous crises, nations hadn't backed their smaller partners, or there'd been a compromise in the Bosnian crisis in the First Balkan War and the Second Balkan War.

And in Russia, there was quite a lot of pressure to back Serbia this time. We didn't back them before. We didn't back them enough. And the Serbs are our little brothers. And so there was quite a lot of pressure to back Serbia this time. We didn't back them before. We didn't back them enough. And the Serbs are our little brothers. And so there was that feeling. There was also a feeling that if war is going to come, we're readier for it than we would have been 10 years ago. The Russians had been doing a lot of re-arming, a lot of rebuilding. And so I think the Russians behaved recklessly.

I mean, the big question is, did Russia begin to mobilize before it said anything? And was it secretly mobilizing, which is what Germany said? And it's very difficult to tell because mobilization includes lots of things. So if the Russians are getting a bit nervous and they tell their officers not to take their summer holidays, you know, is that mobilizing? If they move a few troops to the frontier, is that actually preparing for war? Is it precautionary? The Germans decided that it was preparation for an attack on Germany as well as on Austria-Hungary.

And German military attachés were sent to look for evidence of this. Didn't, I think, find that much, but the Germans just then concluded that showed how clever the Russians were and how secretive they were. So it's a tricky one. I mean, you know, there are those who argue, I don't agree with them, there are those who argue that Russia actually brought about the war and it was being egged on by France. So it's really France's and Russia's responsibility. My own view is that trouble starts with Austria-Hungary in July 1914. Austria-Hungary is backed up by Germany, and then the other

nations behave equally foolishly and carelessly. Well, so then once Russia's involved, France has got a very tight treaty relationship with Russia, so they're kind of involved. But then that leaves Britain, Wales' largest empire, important industrial power, had spent the last 100 years sort of pretending it wasn't that interested in what was going on on the European continent. What brought Britain in?

That's an interesting question. I mean, I think the British came in partly because of Belgium. I think the British cared strongly about the rights of neutral nations and the whole notion of neutrality because they had so often been neutral themselves. And so the idea that neutrality was something that wouldn't be respected, that powers would simply ignore, was something that alarmed the British. They felt it was in the end going to be something that would worry them in the longer run. And I think there was also a certain idea of a Belgian little country being steamrolled by Germany. And there were, we now know there

were German atrocities in Belgium. You know, it used to be thought that those were simply propaganda, but the Germans did behave pretty badly in Belgium and those reports were getting out. But I think in the end the British would have had to come in as they came into the Napoleonic Wars and as they came in in 1939, because they cannot have a hostile power controlling that whole seacoast facing Britain, controlling the waterways that lead into Europe. I mean, Britain depended so much on trade with Europe. And so I think strategically, Britain's long-term interests meant that it was going to have to come into counter-Germany. It couldn't afford to see, it wasn't Belgium so much in into counter Germany. It couldn't afford to see,

it wasn't Belgium so much in the long run, they couldn't afford to see France defeated. Britain could, it was an interesting position because it was technically not aligned to either bloc on the continent. There were family and strong industrial links with Germany. There were understandings and a better relationship with France. What could Britain have done differently? And could Britain have broken an agreement that avoided war? It's such an interesting question. And I still am having trouble making up my mind about it. I think Sir Edward Grey, who some people think was a great foreign secretary, I think he could have taken the crisis more seriously earlier on. And I think he could have made it clearer to the Germans that if they really persisted, and if it came to the Germans that if they really persisted

and if it came to war against France, Britain would enter the war. Now that would have been dangerous for him because he had to get parliamentary approval and there were a lot of people in the Liberal Party in Parliament who didn't want Britain to go to war. But I think he could have perhaps taken steps earlier. I don't know. It's so difficult because on the other hand, if you have a Germany and Austria-Hungary who are prepared to risk all and go to war, would they stop? I don't know.

But I think Britain could have perhaps stepped up a bit earlier and been a bit more forceful earlier on about really how dangerous a game this was that they were playing. World Finance. Because does Germany go to war in August 1914 thinking ultimately that Britain won't get involved? Dr. Well, I think the Germans thinking ultimately that Britain won't get involved? Well I think the Germans persuaded themselves that Britain wouldn't get involved because that's what they wanted to think and then when they did think well Britain might get involved well it's got a contemptuous little army you know what can it do I mean it can't

make a difference an army of a hundred thousand I mean what they were worried about was the British naval blockade in the British navy but they thought I mean that their glorious plan was to win the war quickly. And so they really weren't thinking about what would happen. Most of them weren't thinking about what would happen if the war dragged on. And so I think they simply thought, you know, 100,000 isn't going to make much difference. You know, we've got this huge sort of force moving through Belgium down into France.

You know, the British won't get there in time. And even if they get there, they won't make a difference. As we know, they did make a difference. You know, that small British expeditionary force played a very important part in slowing up the German advance. And once that advance was slowed up, then other things began to happen, and the momentum was lost. And then we should talk about, because we have our Canadian, your Canadian grandfather, my great-grandfather was involved in the war. I mean, what did Britain's colonies, which at that point,

was their foreign policy being exclusively controlled over London or could they have had some choice, certainly into the scale of their contribution to the First World War? I think there was some choice in what the empire would contribute. But I think at that point, the different parts of the British Empire didn't have independent foreign policies. In the case of Canada, the Canadians were moving towards a greater control over their foreign policy, but they still saw themselves as operating very much within the British Empire. They had just set up a department of

external affairs, but external meant everything outside the British Empire. And when Britain declared war at the beginning of August 1914, the Empire was automatically at war. It was going to be very different in 1939 beginning of August 1914, the empire was automatically at war. It was going to be very different in 1939. By that point, the different components of the empire, particularly the so-called old dominions like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, controlled their own foreign policy. And the Canadian government made a point in 1939 of declaring war a week after Britain

did to show that we were independent. But you know, in 1914, a lot of the people living in somewhere like Canada, the English speakers, the French speakers were different, they'd been there for much longer, but a lot of the English speakers had only recently come from the British Isles, including our common ancestor, the Scottish, the two Scotsmen who came over, common ancestors, had come over in the 1860s. So they still had family ties with what they called the old country. And so when Britain was threatened, they felt they were threatened. And so their identity was still British at this point.

And so they really didn't see it as anything odd in sending troops over there, lending lots of money, sending resources. We wouldn't be studying history, we wouldn't be studying the outbreak of the First War if we didn't somehow want to think about our own times as well. I mean, when you're writing these books and the way you want people to read them, do you want people thinking about Trump? Do you want people thinking about Korea as well? Or are those parallels worthless? No, I think the parallels are interesting. And what I want when people read my books, or when people read history generally, is for them to get a greater understanding of the present

because I think we're all produced partly by our memories and so what has happened to us and what worlds we come out of actually affects us in the present and the same thing is true of groups of people such as nations. Parallels I think are interesting I mean that's the second thing I want people to think well is the situation like it today like it was in 1914? What I would not want people to think is oh history repeats itself exactly. You know we can look to the past and we can say oh here's a template. This is what's going to happen in the present.

I don't think we can do that. But what looking at the past can help us do is ask questions. Help us to ask questions about the present. What is likely to happen when a great power feels its power is slipping away? What is likely to happen when you get a rising power? How is it likely to behave? Well, we have examples of that from the past. It might give us some indication of the way things are going to go and help us ask questions.

So what are the, when you, because you go and lecture the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US, you talk to politicians, what do you tell them about 1940? What do they need to know as practitioners, as holders of executive office? I think what I try and tell them is this whole thing that I was talking about earlier, is how you have to question your own assumptions, because we get locked into certain assumptions, and how they didn't question their own assumptions in 1914 enough, and how the civilian politicians, for example, the politicians didn't in some countries acquaint themselves with the military plans. They said, oh, well, that's the military. Well, military plans have strategic and political impacts and international impacts. And it's the

responsibility of the leadership of a country to know what the military are planning. And it's the responsibility of the military to tell the civilians what they're planning. And so things like that I think are really important. How much should we question our challenges? I mean one of the things that really impressed me about John F. Kennedy, I mean we'll never know if he was going to be a great president because he had such a tragically short term, but the way in which during the Cuban Missile Crisis he said, I want to hear all the different opinions here. I want to know why you're saying this. And I think that is important. I mean, I think the danger is

when you get locked into a certain set of assumptions and a certain set of plans and you're told we have to do this because it's the only way. You have to have civilian leaders who are strong enough to say, I don't believe you or tell me why it's the only way. There must be another way. And so I think that's important. I think what is also important before 1914 is to understand the effects of rapid change. Before 1914, people were feeling that their world was changing very quickly around them. And I think we have something similar today. We also have people before 1914 who felt they were being left out, left behind by all these changes.

We have something similar today. We haven't handled that very well. And they weren't handling it all that well in 1914. So these sorts of things can at least give us warnings. I mean, history is a useful set of warnings, I think. Thank you so much, Margie. That was brilliant. Lovely talking to you. Hope you enjoyed the podcast.

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