School of War - Ep 80: Holger Afflerbach on How Germany Lost WWI

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

Holger Afflerbach, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Leeds and author of On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War, joins the show to talk about the origins of the First World War, how much Germany is to blame, and why the July Crisis of 1914 is relevant in 2023.  ▪️ Times      •    01:59 Introduction      •    02:46 Fritz Fischer      •    10:34 1914 and today     •    15:24 The Kaiser     •   21:54 Bethmann Hollweg     •    27:46 Military necessity     •    37:25 How did Germany lose?      •    44:10 Murderers or sleepwalkers? For context, and a better sense of the events unfolding in 1914, checkout the National World War One Museum Interactive Timeline and Summer 1914 Day By Day. Follow along on Instagram

What actually started the First World War? Was it a kind of really bad car accident where, to switch metaphors, the great powers of Europe sleepwalked into catastrophe? Or did, as I tend to believe, the Germans started, sharing blame with others, but retaining most of it for themselves. Regular listeners to School of War will know that this question is a hobby of mine, but the scholarly debate around it has a long-standing pedigree, and gallons of ink have been spilled explaining all that blood so long ago.

Today, we're going to go deep on Germany's war aims and vision during the First World War, especially at its outset, and a truly fascinating conversation with the very fine scholar of that period whose view differs somewhat from my strongly held instinct. I found it fascinating and the set of questions we explored to be strikingly relevant today, as we wonder whether and how a war in the Pacific or perhaps a broader war on Europe might begin. 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalee. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran.

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, photos, and more School of War content, follow along on Instagram at School of War. tap the link in the show notes and subscribe. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean.

Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Holger Aflaba. He is professor of modern European history at the University of Leeds, the author of numerous books and articles, including most recently, On a Knife Edge, How Germany Lost the First World War. Sir, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you very much for having it, Aaron. So I thought we would start with a discussion about historical consensus on this.

question of how Germany lost, but also what Germany's war aims were, how those aims contributed to the start of the war and its conduct. You talk about in your book, you give a great deal of attention to this historian Fritz Fischer, who, as I understand it, and you, of course, are the specialist, not me. So feel free to correct anything that I say here. As I understand it, once upon a time was a contrarian who corrected, who corrected a kind of consensus, and as now his views are much closer to the consensus themselves, and there are new efforts to revise them. So tell us a bit, if you wouldn't mind about the debate here, about who Fritz Fischer was and what his contribution was and sort of where you come into the argument. Perfect. Thank you. Fritz Fischer was indeed a German

historian. He was professor at the University of Hamburg, and he published in 1961 a very, very big volume, so big in terms of page numbers about Germany's war aims during the First World War, which is also the translator. English translation has this title. And it is on Germany's war aims, but also on the political reasoning of Germany for entering the war. And before Fritz Fisher published this book in 1961, there was a kind of consensus among German and international historians that all European powers

kind of slithered into the cauldron of war to quote Lord George, who said that in his memoirs in the 1930s. Well, this already had started differently because immediately after the war, Lord George made his electoral campaign for the first electoral campaign in Britain after the First World War

with a slogan hanged the Kaiser. And in the Versailles Treaty in 1919, Germany had to sign that Germany and its ally Austria-Hunger were responsible for the outbreak of the war. And basically, it started immediately after the war comprehensively with very sharp accusations against German politics. Osterhunger had disappeared, so it was not anymore of much interest. interest. Austria was now a small state with 8 million inhabitants, and Germany was still there, and so the entire blame was loaded onto German shoulders, and the Germans did not accept that. So in the interwar period, an entire army of German historians, with the help of the German foreign office,

were busy with showing that German foreign policy was definitely not worse than the policy of other powers. And then this consensus, Lord George, slithering into the war. All powers kind of made mistakes, and this brought the war, and basically nobody really wanted it, but it happened. And everybody could live with that, and then Fritz Fischer came in 1961, and he caused the so-called Fisher controversy, which was probably the most ferocious controversy among German historians since 1945. So they were ferocious animosity against Fisher, and the enemy said he is one-sided, and all that had also something to do with the Nazi Germany and the Second World War, and basically Fritz Fischer showing Imperial Germany started the First World War,

and the Nazis started the Second World War, something was wrong with Germany. And that caused a long, long, long debate on German Wargild. And Fisher was at the beginning an outsider. And then he drifted always more into the center of the debate. And I would say a Fisher light, if this makes sense, became a new consensus. And all that came again into shifting with a book by Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers. And there you may already sounds quite similar, right? Sleithart into the Kodronovar or Sleepwalked kind of sounds similar.

Christopher Clark denies that it is the same. I don't see much difference. It means something happens which probably nobody really wanted. And where are we now to bring that up to our present days? I would say in Anglo-Saxon countries, we'll say in Britain and the United States and all the others, probably Fisher-Lite is still dominant. In the sense that historians and educated laymen say that imperial Germany had a very aggressive policy and was during the First World War, led also by extremely expansionist, militaristic individuals like Hindenburg, Lutendorf, and a kind of military dictatorship.

So some aspects of Fisher are very much alive, and I want to conclude with one strange fact which is not common knowledge about Fisher. it could be but it isn't Fritz Fischer has written two books on the topic one in 1961 and in 1966 he has written wars of war of illusion and there he basically contradicted himself

and in the first book he said Germany's war guilt was to pushing the Austrians forward in 1914 in the second book he said that Germany was preparing the war since 1912. And of course, that is already a differencing and a much more, much more aggressive approach. If you say that they're not only pushed in 1914, but they were already years before the war contemplating on it. And probably Fritz Fischer did that to confuse students of history

for the generations to come, who never make the difference between Fisher 1 and Fisher 2. Fascinating. This has this debate, even though it's about things that occurred more than 100 years ago, has always seemed to me to have real contemporary relevance. And in general, one finds in policy debates happening in the year of 2023. In the United States, these are typically about China, that one can take from, depending on how you interpret the lessons of 1914, you sort of naturally end up in either a more confrontational or more accommodational pose towards China. Obviously, if you're with Fisher, And you see, as it were, a kind of regime dead set on war that inspires you to be a little bit more confrontational. If, on the other hand, you think that the nations of Europe sleepwalked into this disaster, you're very concerned about preventing sleepwalking from preventing miscalculation and tensions that could lead to miscalculation. So it's history, but it's very relevant. And one of the things I have to say, I really appreciate it about your book, and maybe this is the best place to start with your own interpretation of events is how much you emphasize, these are my words. words, not yours. So again, please feel free to correct me. But to speak of Germany wanting this or that, or Germany pursuing this or rejecting that is a bit strange insofar as there is no Germany, strictly

speaking, there are Germans and there are German political entities and German institutions, and they may all want to be pursuing different things. And I found your clarity on that point, your analytic clarity to be extremely helpful and informative. And so maybe let's start there. You know, We've got the Kaiser, we've got his, the key political players, like the chancellor, we've got the military, we've got the public. Maybe give us a bit of a survey of coming into the summer of 1914 where the major German players stood with respect to a war and wanting a war. Aaron, you indirectly brought up two issues. And I will answer first, the first and then the second. The first issue is, is there actual relevance?

in the topic. And you made an example now with China. And I would say a catastrophe like the First World War always asked for attention so that people ever since, politicians ever since, were afraid that something like that may happen again. You see that in the 1930s. For example, Chamberlain desperately trying to avoid a new war ever since linked to appeasement. You see that with President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he read Barbara Touchments Gans of August about the 1914 events and it was very aware of the danger of escalation. And to make a third example, I spoke many years ago with an American historian Sam Williamson

who made a comparison between the Austro-Hungarian move against Serbia because of terrorism and the United States policy towards Afghanistan after September 11, which is also a kind of very interesting comparison. If you see the links, because both states blamed government where they could not make direct links towards the crime itself. Okay, but now the second point, The second point is, is there exactly this kind of Germany does, Germany does not, Germany decides and so on. This is, I would say, tool, a tool to be able to write history. Imagine you write international history about great powers in the 19th century. And then you have, in Europe, you have five or then six great powers and tons of medium and small powers.

And for that reason, it is practical to say Oster did that and Germany did that and France did that. Because if you start to really analyze who is the decision maker, it becomes extremely complex. And then suddenly you have a plot with 100, 150. protagonists and nobody can understand that anymore. Still, it is a tool and it is what would be the best English work, probably making it an abstract. And there is a big danger of simplification in it. And this is also kind of commonsensical.

My book on Germany in the First World War is specific. And for that reason, it's only about Germany. in the First World War, exactly for that reason, because there were 65 million Germans, and there were some decision makers in extremely complex and cumbersome political structure. There is the Kaiser, the Rice Chancellor, the Foreign Office, there is the army. And the army is again divided between the general staff and the minister of war, or ministers of war, because there were several in the federal structure. and then there is a Navy

and then there is of course a Reichstag, not to forget that, that is a very important point in my book. The German Reichstag, the parliament was not this kind of toothless tiger which is normally portrayed in this Fisher-Light

view of Germany. The Reichstag was gaining power during the First World War. It was a non- not a non-entity. and the German power, you know, there's this word of power centers, which I borrowed from German social historian Hans Ulrich Wela, who said imperial Germany is not a structure like a pyramid,

and you know on top is the Kaiser and the Kaiser says something, and the entire machine acts on him pushing some bottoms. Instead of that, there are five or six centers of power, and they have to find cumbersome compromises. And this is indeed one of the stories of Imperial Germany during the First World War that in places there's a cumbersome decision-making process between the power centers who disagree on central points, like, for example, strategy, war aims, and so on.

Well, maybe we should start with the Kaiser. It would obviously take many more hours than we have to move with the level of detail they each deserve through each of these power centers and their views and aims and decision-making. But the Kaiser is, even if not a all-powerful figure, obviously a critical one. Tell us a bit about him and how his views of war evolve through the course of the July crisis and as the war begins. Thank you for that question. I have now to admit that I looked very carefully towards Kaiser because one of the

of my previous books was an addition of sources from the Imperial headquarters. And two generals who were basically every day during the First World War next to the Kaiser, military attendant and the chief of the military cabinet, wrote war letters and wrote a diary and I edited it. So basically I went through the war with showing the Kaiser day by day. And the Kaiser was Wilhelm, the second was a difficult individual, say it that way. He was extremely volatile. And this went so far that his surroundings tried to bring news to him with a kind of filter.

Because they were afraid that he will overreact in both ways. So if he gets good news, he already thinks the war is won and starts with bizarre plans. And if he gets bad news, he collapses and thinks the war is lost. And so that they always had to build him up again. And obviously, the Kaiser had also moments of serious depression. So that he had, at the outbreak of war, he had to go to bed and basically to sleep 24 hours, be back on deck afterwards. And if we start with the beginning, because we spoke already about the July crisis, during the July crisis, we see also a kind of typical behavior. At the very

beginning of the July crisis, the Kaiser was extremely imprudent. We're saying this is absolutely outrageous what the Serbs did and the Austrians have to punish them and whatever happens, we are standing side by side with Austria, and if the Russian strong, don't worry, we move forward. Did he believe that it will happen? Probably not. One argument here is, after saying so, he went straight to the North Sea to embark on his annual cruise. If I think that the World War breaks out, probably I stay at home and prepare a little bit. He probably thought, like always in his 30 years.

rain, he can talk and talk and talk and talk and nothing happens. In this case, it happened. And when he then understood that something may happen, he tried to turn around and so say, well, the Serbs answered very well on the Austrian ultimatum. I would not have ordered general mobilization. And so then he tried to pull back when he understood what he had created. And then his surrounding said, well, it's too late. His majesty must understand it's too late. and his own wife told him then, William be a man. So behave like a Prussian king. And that is what he then tried to do.

And this was his zigzag line. And I could now go through that entire war. For example, during the peace treaty of Bresditovsk, the peace negotiations with communist Russia, the Kaiser was completely over the top and embarked with the annexationists. And then again, in summer 1918, he understood that the game was up and said,

well, we are overstretched. We have to finish the war. So he understood that. The thing was lost. And the point was this man wars, this inconsistency. And you can always find quite reasonable comments and quite terrible ones, depending on the daily performance. And that is, of course, very dangerous for a head of state if there is such a zig-zac line.

Yeah, and presumably, as in any organization, when you have the boss who is inconsistent and changeable in his views, this creates space and room for all, there's going to be competition in any large organization, certainly in a state, but you create space for much more when this is the situation at the top. At one thing to that, because some historians say that Wilhelm the second was because of his peculiar character during the First World War only a shadow emperor. So basically, he was so, and he does not matter. I disagree with that because the Imperial German Constitution gave the emperor the right to appoint and to dismiss a number of high-ranking, positions among them that the chancellor is the head of government and the chief of staff and the chief of the naval staff. Basically, everybody who was important for the German strategy during the First World War could be fired by the Kaiser.

And this is a kind of very substantial tool, and the Kaiser occasionally used that. and throughout, including firing Ludendorff in October 1918. In October 1918, weeks before the Kaiser had to go into exile, he fired Ludendorf. So I would say the Kaiser had important rests of his power still in his hand. This, of course, does not mean that he was a great ruler, and this does not mean that he was always on top of the situation. absolutely not. Sorry for interrupting. Not at all, but of course what it does mean is that he is not irrelevant.

He was very relevant. Yes, it was relevant. Yes, that is my point. So I was going to take us to the military, but your mention of the of chancellors makes me actually want to ask about Bethman Holweck and his view of things. What is his attitude towards the possibility of war? Does he seek a war? What are his aims in such a war? Talk about him for a bit if you would. Yeah, so there we have, of course, again, a very important decision-maker. And Beethoven Holvig, who was Chancellor since 1909, was probably during the July crisis, 1914, the most important single policymaker in Germany.

We'll say if we consider him and Moldke as a chief of staff, Falkenheim as a minister of war, turpets, as a. minister for the Navy, Jago had for an office if he goes through the list. And the Kaiser, of course, probably the most important single individual in the decision-making

process of which led to the war was Beethoven Holvik. Was he really wanting it? That is question which was as much contested as the Fisher controversy.

You know, this man and his ideas were contested, and that led to another historian's debate because in the 1960s, then suddenly the diaries of his advisor, Kurt Wittsler, appeared, and they gave some insight into Bittmannholwick's sinking while, you know, there were no papers left or so, no diaries, no letters. maybe they were destroyed and maybe they never existed. And people did not do exactly what did Beethoven-Holvix think during the July crisis 1914. Well, and I don't want to discuss that now in detail because then we are stuck for the rest of our session. Sure. With July crisis 1914, I say only one thing.

The man had to speak to the Reichstag when the war was. really imminent. And when he was speaking about his clear conscience, observer said that his voice started to break. You know, somebody tries to say something and knows it. And this is something which probably historians likened the man. This man made terrible mistakes. But he had a conscience, And he had also a feeling of responsibility. So basically, this guy was cracking under the weight of his responsibility for the rest of his days in office, which ended in summer 1917. And he at least did not try to blame all the time others for things going wrong.

And this may also be the reason that Bipman Holweig is, normally positively portrayed in historical literature. So they portray him probably more positive than the result of his policy deserves. Because it is a correcter statement. This was a responsible individual, but his policy was, of course, a disaster. First, the outbreak of the war. You know, you don't need anything else. That's it.

somebody who has to has his fingers in that basically the judgment is done and also during the First World War I speak only about one very important thing I could now also go on with

all this stuff Beatman Holwick was always an enemy of declaring unlimited submarine warfare. He thought it is a dramatic mistake to do that and he tried to stop that. And he was also successful in various instances. For example, when Falkenhan

wanted to do that in 1916, he was able to stop him. But in January, 1917, when Hindenburg and Ludendorf suddenly demanded it, and the Navy came and the Navy had memoranda and so on, he had an extremely weak moment. So that that is something you can read in my book in detail, his stand in the German headquarters was absolutely terrible, terrible in the sense of ineffective. So let's move to the military. And there's a number of things on my mind here in obviously any number of ways we could go with this question.

I mean, your mention of unrestricted submarine warfare calls to mind this dynamic, which occurs a few times, right, where military necessity. has political consequences that are deeply harmful to Germany with unrestricted submarine warfare, obviously ultimately the United States' entry into the war. But earlier, the whole concept of the war in the West and the military necessity of violating Belgian neutrality, which of course famously brings Britain into the war, you have this constant tension between necessity, perceived necessity on the one side and political impact and expansion of war on the other. Another issue, of course, it's extremely relevant sitting here today with our current crisis.

So same sort of question as for the Kaiser and Bethan-Holl. What is the military's vision of this war? What do they want from the war? How do their plans for the war evolve? That is, again, a very good question. Aaron, you made also two points. And I mentioned first the first, which you made, because I think it is a very important one,

this argument of military necessity. So this means that you have strategic situation where the military says it is necessary to do this or that and that and that. And that is another thing which I wanted to mention about Bittmann Holbeck. He did not fight energetically against this concept of military necessity. It started with the Schlefen plan, it continued with the submarine warfare. and at the end of the day, he was responsible. And to accept that somebody like Hindenburg and Ludendorf who were woefully inadequate and, for example, judging the submarine, take the upper hand is of course unforgivable.

And it is true that is also a structure in Imperial Germany, that the military had too much weight and this decision-making process and that the politicians gave them this, basically if this military specialist say so, that must happen. By the way, this is something which Bismarck never did.

So the military came with the same arguments in the 1880s, and Bismarck never let them do, also with preventive war and all that because the French are and, you know, this is military,

necessity stuff. So, and now the military leaders and the strategic visions they had for Germany. Now, unfortunately, we have not one, we have a lot. And this is a little bit like Germany and 65 million Germans. The German army had during the First World War, not than 12 million soldiers, but let me limit that on the chiefs of stuff because they were basically running the show. And the first one was Moldke, Moldke the elder. Oh, God, as well, no, of course not. Muldke the younger, Moldke the younger, who was running, he was Chief of Staff until mid-September, when after the, he had a kind of breakdown during the Marne battle. He was overly nervous already during the July crisis and was replaced by the military cabinet.

We'll say Kaiser, the military cabinet, and this is the sliver of personal policy. I switch chiefs of staff. And Moldke, the younger, was probably another very important individual in the German decision-making process for war. He was pressing for war. And on the other hand, he was completely broken and worried. For example, he was walking up and down in his office the entire night and spoke about this terrible war which was to destroy Europe's cultural life for the decades to come. You know, a very very contradictory individual, on the one hand, pushing and the other hand, seeing what it will mean.

Very, very strange. Then the second one, he was replaced by the Prussian Minister of War, Erich von Feitenheim. He then became head of all. of the general stuff in September 1914 and was dismissed in late August 1916. Well, this man was dreaming of war for the entire period prior to 1914. So he has a private correspondence and said, the existence as a peacetime soldier is terribly boring. Hopefully a war will come and it will also be necessary for Germany and so on.

but you had always a feeling the political reasons for dreaming of war were less important than the personal reasons. We'll say like a person, somebody who works for the fire guards and hopes for a big fire to show that he's a great fire guards man. And Falkenheim and I think many European soldiers before 1914 were dreaming of the baptism of fire. and this is normally very, very difficult to prove because you don't have the sources. In Fuytenheim's case, we have them. So we can say this man was dreaming of war and he was probably driven by personal ambition as a soldier. When he then came to, when he became chief of staff, we see that, He was at least pragmatic.

And this is, I would say, the key word about Erich von Feitenheim, pragmatism. Then this entire sink run aground. In November 1940, nothing was moving anymore. And all hopes to get the operations in the West going again evaporated. Then he approached Bait Banholfeck and said, well, we don't have the military power to win this war. we need a political solution. That is quite remarkable because that was in November

1914. Unfortunately, Biedman Holweig did not embark fully on that. And still, there were than some attempts to broker a separate piece, for example, with Russia and so on, which led nowhere because the Russians

were not ready to do that. And in strategic terms, Falkenheim thought, Germany has not the power, the military power to win against all enemies. So the separate peace was necessary and the goal of the war should be not to be defeated. And he said, if we don't lose the war, we have won it. Which means that Falkenheim also agreed on leaving out annexations and so on. He did not want to stand in the way of finding a political solution.

So again, Moldke was already a kind of contradictory character, and in Falkenheim's case, we see somebody with a steep learning curve. And then in 1916, because all this attempts to broker a piece and a separate piece and so led to nothing, he started with his operation in Verdun, which of course was a complete failure. He had an idea to wear out the enemy with artillery and cause enormous losses to the French so that the French may be ready to compromise. This was a clumsy attempt to open the door to political negotiations. He did not think about a breakthrough or something like that. He wanted to break what the German word is Kriegsvile, the wish. You know, Kriegsville means to the will to continue and to win.

This is what he wanted to break. Well, and then all that, of course, did not work out. And then in summer 1916, we had a big allied offensive on all fronts, a Bursulov offensive, Som, and it is a zonso, and Falkenhagen was dismissed. And then Hindenburg and Ludendorf came to power. and this was a kind of strategic duel. Ruten Dauv's is the real powerful military organizer, so a very gifted military organizer,

but somebody who was a maniac, and he could not give other people confidence. And for that reason, he needed the father Lee Hindenburg, who himself had not the abilities, not even remotely the abilities to do the job. So basically both needed each other. Hindenburg could not do it himself, and Lutendorf could not do it without Hindenburg. And of course, both of them were dreaming of annexations.

There's no question about that, but even they admitted that because of the cracking German home front, it could not go on forever. And then, of course, Lutendorf was fired in October 1918. and then Grunner, but he was only in power for months, and we can skip him. Sure. Well, let me ask, so in a way, this is the title of your book, which your book principally attacks, this curious element of the record, that the whole concept of German war planning and the lead up to the war is that this war

needs to be fast, right? We need to win decisively against our coalition of enemies, because a long war will doom us. And yet, as you point out, in the fall of 1918, as a highly unfavorable conclusion to the war for Germany is looming, there's plenty of resistance to ending the war on the part of any number of Germans and German officers, because there's a belief that it can still be won. So speak to that, if you would. How did Germany lose the First World War? Was it inevitable by the fall of 1918 that they would lose? Or is this, you know, a political collapse above sort of the level of military strategy? Okay.

So again, there are two questions in what you said, Aaron. The first one was this idea of a fast war. And indeed, the Schlefen Plan concept is indeed a fast, fast war, which based, I would say, if we look at this is a tendency I have. I try to look for logical reasons for people making decisions, even if the decisions prove to be disastrous. And so I don't assume that everybody in the past was a complete idiot. So I assume a certain amount of competence, even if the result is a disaster. And the Schlefen Plan concept is to be always operate with superior numbers on the battlefield.

This makes sense. So basically saying that I spread my forces sin, I leave half of them in the West, half of them in the East, is militarily not exactly attractive concept. This is something the Elder Moltke, this time really the Elder Moltke was reflecting upon. But this means that it's not in my hand how this war can end. because that is basically what the Germans did after the Schlieffen plan failing. They split the armies between east and west and were not strong enough on either front. So this is military and politically and strategically a realistic but unattractive option. And if they had known this will be the outcome, probably even the younger Moldeke would not have pushed for war.

Because it would say, better not, like the elder Moldke was also. so cautious. Well, you said they were dreaming of victory. That is now a can of warms. So the second question, because in 1918, basically to make a long story as short and compact as I can, the story of the First World War was for a long period of time that the settled powers were winning on the battlefield,

and losing on the home front. So they had really growing problems to keep their societies going, their foot scarcity, the dropping of industrial production, everything was lagging behind. They had, of course, because of the drafting of millions of men,

they had a dramatic shortage of manpower, also in agriculture and so on. So everything was not working anymore. This was going down and also kind of during the war there was no remedy for this economical problems. And for that reason, saying that in 1918 they were dreaming of victory is a kind of a yes and no question because they were still winning on the battlefield. And they had won against Russia.

So Russia had to drop out and they concluded a piece of Brasditovsk. And then the Italians had lost in October 1917 at Capogretto. Basically, the Italian army, big parts of the Italian army had disintegrated. And so the aggressive part of Germany and also some of the moderate ones, they said the shortest way to peace is military victory because the enemy does not want to negotiate. And now you can say, how do they know that the enemy did not want to negotiate? Do they know that the enemy did not want to negotiate? Central powers had made several peace feelers.

I mentioned that already. Then in December 1916, they made an official peace offer, which was immediately rejected by the Entente powers. Then the German Reichstag in July 1917 made another peace offer. No annexations and so on. Also that led to nowhere. And everybody in political Germany started to believe that the enemy was not ready to negotiate. And that the only safe way out.

So basically that the only way out of the war to acceptable condition, of course, you can always surrender. Then it's over. But if you don't want to surrender but you want to get out, the only way out is military victory. and after the defeat of Russia and the defeat of Italy, the laymen in Germany sought, we can do that in the West now, that we can bring all the troops from the East to the West, and then we have again a numerical superiority.

The strange thing is that the military planners knew exactly how bloody difficult it would be to win on the West, so they were very skeptical. There is a lot of skepticism about that. And the skeptics were right. The German army could not do it. We can here make a long story short, as long as not some miraculous amount of luck had happened.

The Western offensive in 1918 could not succeed. I want to close back at the start of the war. And now that we have spent a fair amount of time, certainly by podcast standards, luxuriating and the nuances, and details of these different power centers and how difficult it is to make accurate generalizations about a topic like German war aims. I want to pose you just kind of a blunt question.

If we imagine sort of two caricatures of historical interpretation, on the one hand, a kind of aggressive fisherism, Germany in 1914 in a way that is uncomfortably close to Nazi Germany in 1939, wants a war, seeks a war, gets a war, and pursues aggressive. of aims throughout that war. On the one hand, and on the other hand, you have a kind of maximalist sleepwalker theory of the case. Sure, we might find some fault with Germany, but we might also find some fault with the Brits and the Russians. Everyone's screwed up. If anyone's at fault, everyone's at fault. What was the cause of the First World War and what was Germany's role within that? Where on the spectrum would be placed?

First, where are we? Are we now with Fisher or we was the war? the sleepwalkers. Well, you are right. It's time to maybe to drop details and come to sweeping generalizations. Okay? Sure. If you point now a gun to my chest, you click the trigger and say, this is a yes or no question. I would say the sleepwalkers thing is right.

If I have really to pick the two sides, of course I would normally say it's somewhere in between. And if I were saying it somewhere in between, I think many of Fritz Fischer's arguments are absolutely valid and also undebatable. They are only put out of context. It is one-sided. It is not wrong. It is one-sided. And you have to add other factors, and this offers then a different overall picture. But the sleepwalkers and also Lord George was slithering into the war, means that all sides made mistakes which led to the disaster. And some made more mistakes than others. I would say the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians did in 1914,

surely more mistakes than the British and the French. So, you know, mistake is a harmless word if the mistakes causes a world war. So I would say these powers definitely made more mistakes. and more criminal mistake than others. And the duration of the war, which is another aspect of my book, was mainly caused by Britain, France and Italy. They were hanging around and they wanted to win, and they did not want to compromise,

even if they were understanding at some point that the central powers were very ready to compromise, but they did want to win and they won also. So we cannot even say that we're strategically wrong, but the collateral damage is enormous because if every day of the war costs more than 9,000 lives, statistically speaking,

that's three times September 11, right, and every single day. And so you get that not for free and you don't get that. Basically, if you shake the foundation, of human societies, and this kind of event does that. At some point, maybe you are unable to fix it afterwards. And my inclination would be to say that the 20th century is a proof

that the First World War has shaken the foundations of European civilizations in a way which could not be fixed easily and which led to the other disasters which were going to come. And it started, of course, with Russia falling into the hands of a communist government. And that in normal times would never had happened. In normal times, Lenin would have died in Switzerland, probably. I think in the United States, certainly in sort of popular historical consciousness, we underrate the impact of the First World War because the Second World War looms so large.

in the American mind, I remember distinctly my first visit to Oxford walking into the, there's an arcade outside the chapel of Balliol College. And the first thing you see when you come into the arcade is there's sort of a large plaque that takes up a whole segment of the war of Balliol's World War II debt. It's a lot of names and it's moving and you look at it. And then you sort of peer down this arcade, sort of down the length of it, it's dark. You can't really see, you know, it's England. So usually there's no sun.

And then I realized looking down the hall that every other aspect of the walls of the arcade was covered with these iron plates. The whole hallway was the memorial to Balliol's World War I dead. Just name after name after name, the classes of 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915 and so forth, just gone, all gone, which makes me wish the Brits had been clearer about the fact that they would fight over Belgium's neutrality. Yes, and to everybody who or lives in Britain like myself or has visited the country knows that this is exactly the truth. You cannot enter a little village without finding immediately in its center the war memorial for the fall of the First World War. And you can read in popular histories that the First World War and the Black Death and the Middle Ages were in terms of population development that the biggest crisis in the world. British history. And yeah, it's a tragedy. Hulgar Aflabakh, thank you for your work. Thank you for

the fascinating conversation and making the time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me and thank you for your attention. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.