The Failure to Prevent World War I: The Unexpected Armageddon

294 Pages·2015·1.57 MB·English

by  Hall Gardner

The Failure To PrevenT World War i
Military Strategy and operational art
edited by Professor howard M. hensel, air War College, uSa
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also in this series:
Air Power in UN Operations
Wings for Peace
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Understanding Civil-Military Interaction
Lessons Learned from the Norwegian Model
Gunhild hoogensen Gjørv
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Britain and the War on Terror
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The Failure to Prevent World War i
The unexpected armageddon
hall Gardner
American University of Paris, France
© hall Gardner 2015
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
hall Gardner has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gardner, hall.
The failure to prevent World War i : the unexpected armageddon / by hall Gardner.
p. cm. – (Military strategy and operational art)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978–1–4724–3056–4 (hardback : alk. paper) – iSBn 978–1–4724–3057–1
(ebook) – iSBn 978–1–4724–3058–8 (epub)
1. World War, 1914–1918 – Causes.
i. Title.
d511.G24 2014
940.3’11–dc23 2014023410
iSBn 9781472430564 (hbk)
iSBn 9781472430571 (ebk – PdF)
iSBn 9781472430588 (ebk – ePuB)
Printed in the united Kingdom by henry ling limited,
at the dorset Press, dorchester, dT1 1hd
Contents
Prologue vii
Introduction 1
1 The “Insecurity-Security Dialectic” and the Unexpected
Armageddon 11
2 Origins of the Franco-Prussian War 39
3 Global Consequences of the Franco-Prussian War 53
4 French Calls for Revanche and Bismarck’s Nightmare of
Coalitions 57
5 British Intervention in Egypt and the Threat of a Continental
Alliance 65
6 Bismarck’s Strategy and Anglo-German Alliance Talks 75
7 The Failure of Caprivi’s New Course 83
8 1894: Year of Anglo-German Alienation 99
9 Fissures within the Continental Alliance 107
10 The Failure of Anglo-German Alliance Talks 121
11 Britain’s Quest for New Allies 139
12 The Anglo-German Détente and Eurasian Conflicts 169
13 The Question of Alsace-Lorraine 191
14 Stumbling into Armageddon 199
vi The Failure to Prevent World War I
Conclusions: The Failure to Prevent World War I 229
Selected Bibliography 253
Index 267
Prologue
What I hope is unique about this book—out of the thousands of books written on the
subject—is that it seeks to systematically examine the long term origins of World
War I in terms of the French reaction to the Prussian/German seizure of Alsace-
Lorraine and how the dispute over Alsace-Lorraine played a crucial role in Anglo-
French-Russian-German-Austrian-Italian diplomatic relations right up until the
outbreak of the war. This is true as French elites (on both the Left and the Right)
continued to challenge the legitimacy of the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt—despite
the fact that it was Louis Napoléon who had initiated the Franco-Prussian War in
1870, even if that war was seen as being provoked by Bismarck.
In essence, the book seeks to explain how a “local” conflict in the Balkans
between Serbia and Austria resulted in a global war, drawing in Russia, France
and Britain, as well as the Ottoman Empire, Japan and the US, among many
other countries. The book examines the reasons for the formation of the 1892‒94
Franco-Russian Alliance and how both Berlin and Paris hoped to manipulate
that Alliance with respect to pressing the British into an alliance. By 1898–1902,
London increasingly found itself confronted with a choice between Scylla and
Charybdis: between forging an alliance with either the German-led Triple Alliance
of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (but with Italy already showing signs of
shifting alliances) or with the French-led Franco-Russian Alliance, which actually
appeared relatively stronger than the Triple Alliance (at least on paper).
The outcome of Anglo-German rivalry for French and Russian political-military
allegiance was not at all predetermined, but French elites played the geopolitical
game with much greater dexterity than their German counterparts. It was accordingly
France—which ironically pursued a provocative Bismarckian geostrategy against
Imperial Germany since the end of the Franco-Prussian War—that was able to
bring Britain, along with Russia, into an alliance, in the period 1903–14, while
concurrently preventing a Russian-German re-alignment. Given the acrimonious
historical rivalry between Great Britain and France, and between Great Britain and
Russia, the formation of the Anglo-French-Russian Triple Entente (plus Serbia)
surprised the world. By 1908, Berlin screamed “encirclement” and prepared for a
two-front war—largely in fear of the disaggregation of its Austro-Hungarian ally,
which was seen by Berlin as being provoked by Franco-Russian support for pan-
Serb and other pan-Slav movements—but also due to uncompromising French
pressure for a return of Alsace-Lorraine, while Britain, France and the United
States were all seen by Berlin as checking German interests overseas.
On a theoretical level, the book contends that the war was provoked by both
“inner” and “outer” policy considerations—in an interactive process of threat
viii The Failure to Prevent World War I
and counter-threats which I have called the “insecurity-security dialectic” and
which I hope represents an advance on the concept of the “security dilemma.”
And it is here that I hope the book is unique in the sense that it seeks to articulate
an alternative global strategy—based on actual proposals made in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—that might have prevented the so-called
“Great War” while also explaining why those alternative proposals were not
implemented. It is argued that World War I—as a systemic struggle—could only
have been averted if had been possible to forge an Anglo-French-German entente
or alliance—based on a hypothetical mutual accord over Alsace-Lorraine—and
that would have attempted to mediate Austro-Russian disputes in the Balkans.
But such did not prove the case—even if British mediation over Alsace-Lorraine
had been proposed at the time of the 1870‒71 Franco-Prussian War by Prime
Minister William Gladstone—and even if numerous peace plans dealing with the
former French provinces were periodically proposed by both state and non-state
actors throughout the entire period, and then once again, belatedly just before the
outbreak of the unexpected Armageddon.
For the cover of this book, I have placed the image of a doughboy who
witnessed the horrors of that Armageddon firsthand. Above him are the lines from
Wilfred Owen’s great poem Dulce et Decorum Est which had been written in
caustic reference to the “old lie” of the Roman poet, Horace, “it is sweet and fitting
to die for one’s country.” As the world appears to be entering into a new phase of
global rivalry, let us hope our leaderships will not once again appeal to that “old
lie”—in an attempt to justify yet another major power war much like that which
exploded so unexpectedly in August 1914.
I would like to thank my assistants Anne-Myriam Adrien for working on the
index and particularly Anna Wiersma for finding key reference materials. Kevin
Blackford did some digging in British archives, while Marco Rimanelli critiqued
draft chapters. Isabelle Dupuy and the AUP library staff were of tremendous
assistance in finding books and articles. I would also like to thank Celia Barlow
for her help in finishing the text and Kirstin Howgate for seeing this project, as
well as my previous ones, through to the end. And once again, I must thank my
daughters, Celine and Francesca, and my wife, Isabel, who had to put up with yet
another book project.
Introduction
World War I (WWI) represents one of the most studied, yet least understood,
conflicts in modern history. As late as March 1909, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward
Grey, considered war an “extreme” possibility resulting from either the isolation of
Germany or of England, and yet such an “extreme” possibility became a reality only
five years later: “Two things, in my opinion two extreme things, would produce
conflict. One is the attempt by us to isolate Germany. No nation of her standing and
her position would stand a policy of isolation assumed by neighboring powers …
Another thing which would certainly produce conflict would be the isolation of
England, the isolation of England attempted by any great Continental Power so as to
dominate and dictate the policy of the Continent. That has always been so in history.
The reasons which have caused it in history would cause it again.” 1
Just on the eve of the war, in late July 1914, just after the Austrian ultimatum to
Serbia, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had convinced himself that the world
was “in measurable … distance of a real Armageddon” but that if conflict did break
out, England would not be “anything more than spectators.”2 Even experienced elites
such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov did not think that Britain and France
had significant enough interests in the Balkans to engage in a major power war.3 On the
German side, on 16 June 1914, despite evidence that Russia might be inclined to attack
Germany in the near future, Chancellor Theobald Bethmann Hollweg placed his faith in
the ability of England and Germany to avert war by means of a “far sighted policy” that
would not be “precluded by obligations to either the Triple Alliance or Triple Entente.”4
Yet such “a far-sighted policy” did not materialize: London and Berlin were
unable to work upon an “agreed plan” precisely because England—perhaps as
much, or if not more so, than Imperial Germany—was caught up in secret military
obligations. This is true in that the structural nature of the Anglo-French-Russian
1 Quoted in E.L. Woodward, Great Britain and the German Navy (Handen, CT:
Archon Press, 1964), 232.
2 Quoted in Adam Hochschild, To End All Wars (Boston; New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 2011), 84.
3 Eugene de Schelking, Recollections of a Russian Diplomat, The Suicide
of Monarchies (New York: McMillan Co, 1918), http://archive.org/stream/
recollectionsar00unkngoog#page/n229/mode/2up.
4 Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Reflections on the World War, Part I, trans.
George Young (London: T. Butterworth, Ltd., 1920), 115: Bethmann Hollweg expressed
similar views to Haldane in 1912, but then exclaimed: “But even (Haldane) preferred the
supremacy secured by British Dreadnoughts and French friendship.”