The same is true, to some extent, of France's role. The decision-makers in Paris, Stefan Schmidt argued in 2009 in an in-depth study of French foreign policy before the war, were intent on strengthening the Franco-Russian Alliance and thus prepared to support Russia's policy in 1914, regardless of the consequences. He concludes that French President Raymond Poincaré did not, in his dealings with Russia, actively intend a military escalation of the July Crisis, but that his aim was to achieve a political victory for the Entente. Footnote 23 That said, Poincaré was prepared, in this pursuit, to risk war if Germany insisted on taking things further. On the eve of the centenary, it had thus become widely accepted that war had not been ruled out in principle by the governments in St. Petersburg and Paris, and that they were willing to seize a perceived golden opportunity to achieve, if possible, a diplomatic victory—while not ruling out going to war if the need arose. The goal of German and Austrian diplomats following the Sarajevo incident was to try to localize a conflict in the Balkans. Now, this may have been unrealistic, but the ideal scenario in both Berlin and Vienna was for Austria-Hungary to be able to confront Serbia without the other powers intervening. Russia's own policy or position, of course, was to continentalize the crisis and then the conflict. To make sure that France would get involved, and also Britain. To make sure that if it came to war, Britain and France would fight on their side. So, in this sense, turning it into a European and world conflagration was actually Russia's policy. That is not to say that Russia bears sole responsibility either. That is to say, it was the combination of the Austro-German response to Sarajevo and then the Russian response to the Austrian move against Serbia. This is what produced the Great War. So when we now look at the July Crisis, my opinion is that it’s sort of a crisis of two halves, if you like; the first half, up until the Serbian ultimatum is really very much a crisis that’s shaped by decisions made in Berlin and primarily in Vienna; but that after the ultimatum, everyone obviously is involved in decision-making and they make decisions which will affect the outcome of the crisis. Would you agree with that or do you see that differently?

Now looking at the evidence we have on decision-making, particularly in Berlin and Vienna now, it seems to me that Berlin put a lot of pressure on Vienna at various points during the July Crisis, particularly if you look at the blank cheque – it’s not just a blank cheque saying yes we’ll support you, but it is the case of saying, but you need to do it now – it’s now or never – and there is a fear in Vienna that the ally might abandon them if they don’t appear strong enough. Does that in your opinion constitute to some extent German responsibility for the outbreak of war? The volume includes a detailed scholarly introduction which analyses the most controversial issues in the debate on the origins of the War and provides a comprehensive overview of the history of document collections on the war's origins. The documents cover the period 1911-14, with particular emphasis on the July Crisis and immediate outbreak of war. Thoroughly cross-referenced and annotated, these fascinating sources are presented with authoritative commentary, enabling readers to make connections between the documents to illuminate how the decisions for war were taken, and why.Common to all recent publications is the stress on the agency of key individuals as a determining factor. Underlying structural factors, such as the alliance system—once the usual explanation for the war's origin—are no longer seen as causes of the war. Footnote 92 Domestic causes of the war, which were a popular explanation in the 1960s and beyond, are also no longer regarded as the reason why war broke out. As Gerd Krumeich concludes: “It is simply not possibly to prove that Bethmann, the Tsar or Poincaré acted as they did for fear of revolution, a putsch, or for domestic policy advantages.” While their decisions were not made “in a vacuum… it has, up to now, not been possible to prove” that their decisions were taken to achieve “domestic or societal goals.” Footnote 93 In the immediate aftermath of the Versailles verdict, revisionist historians (many, but not all, sponsored by post-war German governments in the 1920s and 30s) have tried to prove it wrong. Among countless arguments, they highlighted Russia and France’s responsibility and stressed that Britain could have played a more active role in preventing the escalation of the so-called July Crisis, which led to the outbreak of war. Throughout the twentieth century, this debate ebbed and flowed. It was particularly ferocious in the 1960s when a German historian, Fritz Fischer, claimed he had evidence to show that Germany had been more responsible than other nations, thus undoing decades of revisionism which had resulted in a comfortable compromise. Vom kurzen Krieg zum Ersten Weltkrieg: Der deutsche Kriegsverlauf im August und September 1914’, HISTORICUM, (Vienna) December 2001 But at this point a crisis develops that is really not of Germany’s making and is really – in the beginning – Austria’s crisis. And Germany then encourages Austria. Would you say that that’s fair – do we need to look more at Austria in the July crisis than at Germany? Sir Edward Grey, Germany, and the Outbreak of the First World War: A Re-Evaluation', International History Review, April 2016, 38, No.2, 301-325

Together these MOOCs have attracted more than 30,000 global learners so far. Meanwhile, courses and articles I have written on this topic on OpenLearn, The Open University’s free online learning platform, have reached more than 270,000 people in 176 countries. RFE/RL: There has been a lot of speculation that the situation around the world now -- say, in Ukraine or the dispute between China and Japan over islands and resources in the South China Sea -- and the situation in the summer of 1914. Do you see parallels and lessons that can be applied to the world today? Why did the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 lead to the deaths of millions in a global war of unprecedented scale and ferocity? This question has been the subject of historical, political and public debate for more than 100 years. This is not the only area in which the book makes some interesting contributions to existing debates. Despite the fact that the title suggests that the scope of the work is confined to the origins of the war, the study actually continues into the early war years. Thus, in addition to assessing Moltke's contribution to the military outcome to the July Crisis, Dr Mombauer also evaluates his part in the failure of the so-called Schlieffen plan. This is, of course, an old controversy, but Dr Mombauer is, nevertheless, able to bring a genuinely fresh eye to it. Starting from the premise that there was a Schlieffen plan, Terrance Zuber's recent claims notwithstanding (4) that it was Moltke's job to update this plan on a regular basis, that his revisions made sense in the light of the changing circumstances of the European military scene, and that Moltke's actions reflected the fact that he was not a victim of the 'short war illusion', she is able to provide a more balanced perspective to the German reverse at the Marne. This result, which played a major part in ensuring that the First World War would be a prolonged 'total war', was in many respects the culmination of all of Moltke's fears. Once again, however, this fact merely serves to place his actions in pushing so strenuously for war into the sharpest relief.

Book contents

The First World War: Inevitable, Avoidable, Improbable Or Desirable? Recent Interpretations On War Guilt and the War’s Origins (2007-01) Where is the debate headed? All too often historians have attempted to predict the future of this century-long controversy—and they have nearly always got it wrong, thus making it presumptuous to make confident predictions. Footnote 126 In a summary of the debate as it had developed up to the end of 2012, Gerhard Groß was confident that the topic would continue to exercise public opinion in the run-up to the centenary and provide for “an exciting discussion,” but he did not expect “a new Fischer-controversy with a great deal of public attention like the one in the 1960s.” As we have seen, that turned out to be far from the mark. Footnote 127 This book is a unique collection of diplomatic and military documents for the years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War. It brings together newly-discovered documents as well as many not previously available in English, drawn from a broad range of sources and countries. It is an essential collection for anyone studying the origins of the First World War. Guilt or Responsibility? The Hundred Year Debate on the Origins of the First World War (2015-12-31) Yet, Krumeich rejects the idea that ambitions of world power or imperial predominance were behind German decision-making, instead identifying “a distinctive fear of the future” as the motivating force for the behavior of the authorities in Berlin. Footnote 74

For the victors who assembled at the 1919 peace conference at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, the answer was clear: Germany and its allies were responsible for unleashing war in the summer of 1914. Yet, this so-called ‘war guilt ruling’, embodied by Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which obliged the losing side to pay vast reparations, did anything but settle the argument. From 2006 until 2011 she was the secretary of the German History Society. [2] [ failed verification] As of 2014, she was a member of the editorial board of 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War. [3] She chaired the Open University department's Research Steering Group and the departmental REF panel until December 2013. [1] Media [ edit ] The “war-guilt” debate is, without a doubt, one of the most protracted historical controversies of modern history. Why did Franz Ferdinand's violent death unleash a war of previously unprecedented horror and scale? This murderous act resulted in the July Crisis, “the most complex [event] of modern times, perhaps of any time so far,” and ended in “the most complicated of all wars,” leading to a hundred-year controversy and a heated quest to identify “guilt” among some of the participants. Footnote 9 That question seemed easy to settle when the war had just broken out: everyone was certain, of course, that their war was a defensive one. In the wake of the Allies’ victory, it was also easy to attribute “war guilt” to the losers. But over the next hundred years, the term guilt would fall out of fashion; at the same time, the question of deciding who had been responsible would remain a topic of fraught debate. It would be an exaggeration to claim that the long debate about the war's origins had been entirely settled before the centenary, but there were nonetheless broad agreements that had been hard fought for during decades of debate. Also published in Danish: A Mombauer: Julikrisen. Europas Veu ind I Første Verdenskrig, Ellekaer, 2014)is reviewed between 08.30 to 16.30 Monday to Friday. We're experiencing a high volume of enquiries so it may take us