World War One was all Germany's fault: the academic argument that sparked a furore

By DAVID MYTON

When a history book ignites a controversy it’s often because the author seeks to overturn a traditional narrative. Such was the case in 1961 when a relatively unknown German academic, Fritz Fischer, challenged long-standing ideas about who and what sparked World War One.

In a 652-page tome – Germany’s Aims In The First World War – Fischer targeted the prevailing notion that all the Great Powers were in some way to blame for the war … so therefore nobody was to blame.

Fischer, a professor at the University of Hamburg in West Germany back in the Cold War days, dismissed the idea that Germany and the other European powers more or less stumbled into the war.

When I studied the 1914-18 war at university many years ago, I struggled to fully understand the causes of that conflict. I mean, how on earth did the assassination in Sarajevo of a plumed Archduke and his wife precipitate such a catastrophe?

Private Baldrick, a character in the British TV comedy show Blackadder Goes Forth, had an explanation that made as much sense as anything else: “I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich cos he was hungry.”

Fischer’s original academic interest was in the narrow field of 19^th Century German Protestantism. But after his and his country’s experience of World War II he wanted to drive a new, broader approach to German history away from its nationalist, conservative past.

That opportunity came in the 1950s when Fischer gained access to the East German archives in Potsdam, then under the control of the Soviets.

Here he found a set of files relating to the Reich Government’s war aims and annexationist plans during 1914-18.

He was shocked. Not only did Germany appear to want to seize new territories, but it seemed had deliberately set about triggering the war to aid its land grab in Europe.

According to Fischer, the documentary evidence showed that German Chancellor, Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg, had planned in September 1914 - after the war had begun - to annex all of Belgium and parts of France and Russia.

Fischer concedes that the so-called July crisis following the assassination of the Archduke left no government of the European powers free of some measure of responsibility for the war.

However, as Germany willed the Austro-Serbian war and deliberately risked conflict with Russia and France, “her leaders must bear a substantial share of the historical responsibility for the outbreak of general war in 1914”, he wrote.

Furthermore, as the war progressed both German public opinion and Germany’s leaders were “fully resolved to overthrow all of their enemies and to dictate peace to them”.

Consequently, Germany could not think of making peace with only one enemy so long as the others were still undefeated - and so long as Germany could still hope for total victory.

Following the German defeat in 1918, many Germans - especially those who played leading parts in political and economic life up to 1918 - preserved “a political and historical image of themselves that was coloured by illusions”, he wrote.

Because the German Army on the Western Front had held out to the last hour on an unbroken defensive front outside of the Reich, people failed to understand that Germany had, in fact, been defeated.

And so the idea took root that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” - which became fuel for another world war some 20 years later.

On publication, the book sparked an uproar and Fischer became that rare thing - an academic celebrity - both loved or despised depending on where you stood on the political spectrum.

His argument seemed incontrovertible. He’d been in the archives – and the records don’t lie. Except that records can be misconstrued and misunderstood.

I’ve read his book a few times. I don’t think Fischer had any dishonest or deceptive intentions. He saw what he saw - or what he thought he saw - and told the world about it.

From my personal book collection - Basil Liddel Hart’s History of the First World War, published in 1930; AJP Taylor’s Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914-18, and published in 1954; and Rene Albrecht-Carrier’s A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna, published in 1958 - these books more or less stick with the conventional understanding of the outbreak of the First World War.

In their book Decisions for War 1914-1917 historians Professors Richard Hamilton and Holger H Herwig say that Fischer’s thesis - that Germany had gone to war in 1914 as part of a bold grab for world power - is “stretching the evidence.”

Such an audacious grab would have required careful planning, detailed preparation and coordinated action - in short, a firm and resolute monarch, a rational and efficient government and extensive detailed planning.

Nothing of this, they say, can be detected.

REFERENCES

Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims In The First World War, Chatto & Windus, London, 1967 (originally published in Germany).

Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since The Congress of Vienna, Methuen & Co Ltd, London, 1958.

B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, Book Club Associates, London, 1970 (First published in 1930).

AJP Taylor, The Struggle For Mastery In Europe 1848-1918, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1954.

Richard F Hamilton and Holger H Herwig, Decisions For War, 1914-1917, Cambridge University Press, 2004