Sacrificial trench warfare was typical of the First World War
Photo: planet-wissen.de
To get straight to the point: it is a purely rhetorical question with which Bernhard Sauer titled his book on the “primal catastrophe” of the 20th century. But from the beginning.
»The First World War was the most comprehensive war in history to date. 40 countries took part. On the side of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria fought against France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Japan and the USA. 20 million people lost their lives because of it. 21 million were wounded. The deaths of a man and a woman in Sarajevo have led to the deaths of millions. How could this happen?”
This is the question addressed by the author, born in 1949 and a teacher by profession, who did his doctorate on the “Black Reichswehr” at the Center for Anti-Semitism Research and has written several respectable publications on the history of the Freikorps, the NSDAP and the SA. Just in time for the 110th anniversary of the start of the First World War, this meticulously researched study is based on numerous sources and includes the literature of both GDR and FRG historians.
On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife were shot in Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb high school student Gavrilo Princip. According to the author, their visit to the Bosnian capital was a poorly chosen date. On this day, St. Vitus’ Day, in 1389, Ottoman units defeated a Serbian army on Amselfeld, thus ending the era of the Serbian Empire in the Balkans – since then, the most important day of remembrance for the Serbs, on which they traditionally commemorate the fight against remembered the Ottoman foreign rule. An affront to the Serbs who were now suffering under the Austro-Hungarian rule. Especially since Franz Ferdinand had recently attended a troop maneuver by the Austro-Hungarian armed forces in Bosnia. A provocation for proud Serbs and Bosnians.
But was this the cause of the subsequent mutual declarations of war by the major European powers? “In the pre-war period there were several crises and repeated assassination attempts.” No question, the German Empire opened this first major global conflagration. But really just in his defense, as the government in Berlin announced? And, for Sauer, the even more important question: “Could the war have been prevented?”
The social democratic and socialist parties of Europe have repeatedly decided at their conferences to use all means at their disposal to combat the impending war. The question of how it can be prevented was already discussed at the founding congress of the Second Socialist International in Paris in 1889. Their Stuttgart Congress in 1907 passed a comprehensive resolution which stated, among other things: “Wars between capitalist states are usually the consequences of their competition on the world market, because each state strives not only to secure its sales territory, but also to conquer new ones , in which the subjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays a major role.
The social democratic and socialist parties committed themselves to fighting against armaments at sea and on land and to educating the youth of the working class in the spirit of international understanding. One wishes for such clear words from the international left today. But despite powerful peace rallies, demonstrations and strikes in almost all European countries, the organized labor movement allowed itself to be captured by nationalism and “hurrah” patriotism, and the SPD, as is well known, with its fatal truce policy. A few prominent representatives such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany maintained the flag of internationalism. Sauer’s monograph focuses on the German situation.
The author reflects on the July Crisis of 1914 and the outbreak of war on August 1st as well as the Empire’s war aims. In his speech in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, Wilhelm II claimed: “We are not driven by a desire for conquest.” And in fact, the majority of the German people believed that they were victims of an “encirclement” by hostile powers. The war propaganda of the Pan-German Association and other right-wing forces had been fruitful, obscuring the actual intentions and driving forces of heavy industry and the banking world.
According to the secret war program presented by Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg on September 9, 1914, the aim was to secure Germany’s dominance in Central Europe for as long as possible, which was “too narrow” for the Pan-Germans. In its guiding principles adopted on May 5, 1915, it was demanded: “As in the East, so also in the West the non-German population should not be granted any political influence; Industrial enterprises as well as large and medium-sized land holdings were to be transferred to German citizens.” In the East, a “national field consolidation” was to be carried out. The Second World War has already been anticipated.
Sauer precisely traces the course of the war, from the Battle of the Marne through the battles on the Eastern Front and back in the west before Verdun and on the Somme. He provides information about the background to the changes in the Supreme Army Command and the eventual de facto military dictatorship under Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The submarine war has not been forgotten either. Neither was the first, extortionate “peace treaty” with the young Soviet Russia in Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918.
On September 2, 1918, Ludenforff admitted: “We no longer have a chance of winning the war.” To immediately shift the blame to the civilian forces in the “homeland”; They should now also eat out the soup “that they brought to us”. This laid the foundation for the “stab in the back” legend, the author states. The military also had government representatives sign the Compiègne armistice. The German Empire, which had been forged with blood and iron by the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, which emerged from three wars started by the Prussian Junker, was now destroyed in one war. Swept away by the November Revolution.
The author devotes almost 20 pages to Adolf Hitler, who enthusiastically welcomed the First World War and who, with his cronies, pushed for a revision of the decisions of the Versailles Peace Conference from the very beginning. He not only intended to restore the borders before 1914, but also to wage a war of conquest and loot. And in whose eyes the peoples of Europe “have the primary task of serving us economically.”
In his final remarks, Sauer surprisingly summarizes that the German government’s policy was “certainly not aimed at a world war.” She was too indecisive and contradictory for that. However, to then emphasize: “Has the German Empire now slipped into war? Absolutely not!”
Bernhard Sauer: The First World War a defensive war? Duncker & Humblot, 188 pages, hardcover, €49.90.
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