Origins of the Great War:
Who is at Fault?

No one nation deserves all responsibility for the outbreak of war, but Germany seems to me to deserve most.

It alone had power to halt the descent to disaster at any time in July 1914 by withdrawing its "blank check" which offered support to Austria for its invasion of Serbia.

I'm afraid I am unconvinced by the argument that Serbia was a rogue state which deserved its nemesis at Austria's hands. And I do not believe Russia wanted a European war in 1914 - its leaders knew that it would have been in a far stronger position to fight two years later, having completed its rearmament program.

The question of whether Britain was obliged to join the European conflict which became inevitable by 1 August is almost a separate issue. In my own view neutrality was not a credible option because a Germany victorious on the continent would never afterwards have accommodated a Britain which still dominated the oceans and global financial system.

Serbia bore the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of WW1. Serbian nationalism and expansionism were profoundly disruptive forces and Serbian backing for the Black Hand terrorists was extraordinarily irresponsible. Austria-Hungary bore only slightly less responsibility for its panic over-reaction to the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne.

France encouraged Russia's aggressiveness towards Austria-Hungary and Germany encouraged Austrian intransigence. Britain failed to mediate as it had done in the previous Balkan crisis out of fear of Germany's European and global ambitions - a fear that was not entirely rational since Britain had clearly won the naval arms race by 1910.

A handful of bellicose political and military decision-makers in Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia caused WW1.

Relatively common before 1914, assassinations of royal figures did not normally result in war. But Austria-Hungary's military hawks - principal culprits for the conflict - saw the Sarajevo assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Bosnian Serb as an excuse to conquer and destroy Serbia, an unstable neighbor which sought to expand beyond its borders into Austro-Hungarian territories. Serbia, exhausted by the two Balkan wars of 1912-13 in which it had played a major role, did not want war in 1914.

Broader European war ensued because German political and military figures egged on Austria-Hungary, Germany's ally, to attack Serbia. This alarmed Russia, Serbia's supporter, which put its armies on a war footing before all options for peace had been fully exhausted.

This frightened Germany into pre-emptively declaring war on Russia and on Russia's ally France and launching a brutal invasion, partly via Belgium, thereby bringing in Britain, a defender of Belgian neutrality and supporter of France.

Long before the outbreak of hostilities Prussian-German conservative elites were convinced that a European war would help to fulfil Germany's ambitions for colonies and for military as well as political prestige in the world.

The actual decision to go to war over a relatively minor international crisis like the Sarajevo murder, however, resulted from a fatal mixture of political misjudgement, fear of loss of prestige and stubborn commitments on all sides of a very complicated system of military and political alliances of European states.

In contrast to the historian Fritz Fischer who saw German war aims - in particular the infamous September Programme of 1914 with its far-reaching economic and territorial demands - at the core of the German government's decision to go to war, most historians nowadays dismiss this interpretation as being far too narrow. They tend to place German war aims, or incidentally all other belligerent nations' war aims, in the context of military events and political developments during the war.

The war was started by the leaders of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Vienna seized the opportunity presented by the assassination of the archduke to attempt to destroy its Balkan rival Serbia. This was done in the full knowledge that Serbia's protector Russia was unlikely to stand by and this might lead to a general European war.

Germany gave Austria unconditional support in its actions, again fully aware of the likely consequences. Germany sought to break up the French-Russian alliance and was fully prepared to take the risk that this would bring about a major war. Some in the German elite welcomed the prospect of beginning an expansionist war of conquest. The response of Russia, France and later Britain were reactive and defensive.

The best that can be said of German and Austrian leaders in the July crisis is that they took criminal risks with world peace.

Here the second factor of high strategy intervened to decisive and disastrous effect. All military authorities in Europe believed that attack was the only effective means of modern war, essential even for defense. They were quite wrong about this. They could have learnt from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, and from the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 (or even from the American Civil War half a century earlier) that defense was getting stronger and attack more difficult. None of them learnt this. Every chief of staff had offensive plans, and only offensive plans. All hoped to win from the superior offensive spirit of their army. All except one. The German general staff did not believe that they could conquer decisively if they had to fight at full strength on two fronts, against both France and Russia at once. Therefore they had long planned, ever since 1892, to put practically all their armed weight in the west and to knock out France before the slow machine of Russian mobilization could lumber into action. It was often said in 1914, and has been often repeated since: "mobilization means war". This was not true. All the Powers except one could mobilize and yet go on with diplomacy, keeping the armies within their frontiers. Mobilization was a threat of high order, but still a threat. The Germans, however, had run mobilization and war into one. In this since, Schlieffen, Chief of German General Staff from 1892 to 1906, though dead, was the real maker of the First World War. 'Mobilization means war' was his idea. In 1914 his dead hand automatically pulled the trigger.

        For the Russian decision to mobilize threw out the German timetable. If the Germans did nothing, they would lose the advantage of superior speed. They would have to face war on two fronts, not on once; and this, they imagined, they could not win. Either they had to stop Russia's mobilization at once by threat of war, or they had to start the war, also at once. On 31 July Bethmann asked Moltke: 'Is the Fatherland in danger?' Moltke answered: 'Yes'. This was the moment of decision. Germany sent an ultimatum, demanding Russian demobilization within twelve hours. The Russians refused. On 1 August Germany declared war on Russia; two days later, with hardly an attempt at excuse, on France. The First World War had begun - imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.