Hadnot Conrad demanded, at least three times since December 1912, that thisdisturbing neighbour be disposed of by means of a preventive war?
Demand for preventative war to prevent any further challenge of Austrian power by Serbia
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Using all the documentation known at that time, he accused theGerman government of having intended and prepared for this war since 1912 as aconflict from which Germany was to emerge as a world power – in other words,a power of world supremacy.
War of world supremacy
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when historians of thedifferent nationalities agreed that none of the Great Powers could be consid-ered entirely free from some degree of responsibility.
All nations had a part to play in the war
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need to justify to public opinion thedeaths of the 10 million soldiers who were killed in the war.
Needs of justification thus lead to the great historiography of the outbreak of war
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From the very beginning of a European war such as had not been seen fornearly a century, it was impossible to compare it to any other conflict: byreason of the general mobilisations at its outbreak, and the call for massvolunteers in Britain, this time millions of men would be involved in thewar.
A true people's war had become possible.
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On 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. On 30 July, Russiaordered general mobilisation. During the night of 30–31 July, Austria-Hungarydecided to mobilise, followed on 1 August by Germany and France atapproximately the same time. Also on 1 August, Germany declared waron Russia, and on France on 3 August. On 4 August the United Kingdomdeclared war on Germany, and on 6 August Austria-Hungary declared waron Russia
The progression of war
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these shares will be secondary in comparison to the aggressivediplomacy and armament policies that the German monarchy, with Viennaincreasingly in its wake, pursued from the turn of the century, and that forthe reasons examined here, culminated in the idea of the Central Powerslaunching a preventive war in 1914.
The aggresive policies of Germany plunged the world into war
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Only when it became absolutely clear that the main thrust ofthe German invasion was head on through Belgium and not further southagainst France, was he able to sway his Cabinet colleagues. Like London,Paris similarly took a more ‘attentiste’ position and not the proactive one ofthe decision-makers in Berlin and Vienna
France and Britain were not proactively involved in the outbreak of the war
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it seems that for their own profession’s sakethey wanted to make great wars fightable and winnable again. Hence theyadopted Schlieffen’s idea of annihilation and added to it the notion of alightning war.
The need to justify the profession of war, thus forced military leaders to adopt the Short War Illusion
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Pondering in his years of retirement the lessons of the Franco-Prussian Warin which he had led Prussia to victory against Napoleon III, he came to theconclusion that a future war could no longer be fought among the GreatPowers of Europe. Such a war, he was convinced, would be a Volkskrieg, apeople’s war, that no belligerent could hope to win. Everything shouldtherefore be done to avoid a major European war.3
The growing nationalization of the conflict and growing technological efforts thus made it possible for countries to mobilize such a great amount of technological but more importantly human resources that war became total
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Brilliant mood. The government has succeeded very well inmaking us appear as the attacked.’
The need to appeal the lower classes (social appeasement) thus factored into nations war plans
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These demonstrations made Reich Chancellor Theobald von BethmannHollweg realise that Germany could not possibly join an Austro-Hungarianwar, unless the population could be convinced that they were being calledup to defend the fatherland against the autocratic tsarist juggernau
The need for nationalistic calls for patriotism thus fed a greater call to war.
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The prospects of the future seriously worried him [Moltke]. Russia will havecompleted her armaments in 2 to 3 years. The military superiority of ourenemies would be so great then that he did not know how we might copewith them.
German pessimism thus fed her own insecurities and desire to go to war
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oltke was by now firmly convinced that ‘to waitany longer meant a diminishing of our chances; as far as manpower wasconcerned, one cannot enter into a competition with Russia
Insecurity over the arms race thus fed ineviatbility
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Having summarised his worries, in particular about the size of the Russianarmament programme
The arms races made it more convenient for each nation to launch preventative war
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e inclined to hit before it was too late and while victory stillseemed possible.
The need to achieve victory before "it was too late"
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he country’s enemies ‘were arming more rapidly than we do, aswe were short of money’.
This race to the top thus became a deadly slippery slope as each nation desperate to hold to its advantage sought war
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Moltke also took the view that a warwas inevitable. The sooner it took place the better it would be.
Germany belief in the inevitability of war thus hastened its approach as Germany pushed for an earlier war while it still had the advantage
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To the Kaiser the life-or-deathquestion had been raised for his realm:28 ‘The eventual struggle for existencewhich the Germans (Austria, Germany) will have to fight in Europe againstthe Slavs (Russia) supported by the Romans (Gauls) will find the Anglo-Saxonson the side of the Slavs.’
This life or death question had mostly come about through Germany's own hand
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the pressure was rising, also from Vienna,to launch an early war against Serbia in an effort to strengthen the position ofAustria-Hungary against Slav nationalism
Preventative war thus became a realistic option to strengthen a nations position against its enemies
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They promptly intro-duced army bills themselves so that the abandoned Anglo-German naval armsrace was now being replaced by an even more dangerous military competitionon land.
The German land arms race became a continental one as each nation attempted to respond to threats from rivals land forces
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more alarmed about the future of its own position in the Balkans. In 1908 theHabsburgs had tried to bolster their territorial position by annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, this move backfired because it angered the Russianswho now saw themselves more than ever as the protectors of the Slavs in theBalkans.
Attempts to strengthen national positions merely fed more inecurities and led to greater anger amongst rivals
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Anystate that is involved in a struggle for its survival must use, with utmostenergy, all its forces and resources if it wants to live up to its highestduties.’23 The number of Germany’s enemies, he added, had now become‘so great that it could become our inescapable duty’ to use ‘in certain cases’and from the first moment every available soldier. Thenceforth everythingdepended ‘on our winning the first battles’
Germany with is encirclement became determined to strengthen its armed forces and if tensions continued to win its battles
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the spectre of ‘encirclement’ tookroot in the thinking of the German general staff and of the Kaiser.
Germany became frightfully insecure about its position vis a vis the entente. This insecurity fed the need for preventative action
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In 1907 Britain and Russia had settled their longstanding differences inAfghanistan, which had facilitated the formation of the Triple Entente ofFrance, Britain and Russia
The process begun by Germanys naval arms race concluded in her encirclement
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f course, Ballin was alsoopposed to a continuation of the Anglo-German naval arms race because hefeared a further escalation of tensions that the building of battleships hadalready produced.
Arms races fed the growing insecurities, rivalries, and tensions between nations
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At thesame time, he continued to hope that increasing the social insurance benefitsthat Bismarck had first introduced in the 1880s would woo the industrialworkers away from the Social Democrats and the Social Democratic tradeunions.
The need to maintain both social appeasement and nationalist demands
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Faced with the failure of the disarmament talks(largely because Germany refused to be part of any armament reduction)and with the need to fulfil election promises, the Liberal Cabinet decidedto finance both stepped-up naval armaments and social programmes
Public pressure to defend the nation (we want eight and we won't wait) became too much for the liberals to handle
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When Tirpitz, unwilling to concede that his ambitious plan was failing, alsobegan to build dreadnoughts, Fisher stepped up the building tempo
Both sides became hopelessly entrapped by the need to one up the opponent or face annihilation by the other nations battle fleet
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oroccan test proved to be a very bad miscalculation, and theinternational conference that followed left Germany without the gains she hadexpected
The Moroccan test merely strengthened British-French relations
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Britain began to wonder about the relentless building tempoacross the Channel, and concluded the Entente Cordiale with France,Germany’s arch-enemy on the continent. It was not quite as solid as theFranco-Russian alliance treaty of 1893 that would involve Germany in a night-marish war on two fronts. But the Entente of 1904 rattled the German ForeignOffice and caused it to test its firmness by challenging France in North Africa ayear later.
The building program ultimately forced Britain into the Entente camp and strengthened Germany's two direct rivals on the continent
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‘danger zone’, as he called it, that the ImperialNavy would be passing through. For, if London discovered the ultimate aims,it was likely that it would try to destroy the embryonic Imperial Navy in acoup reminiscent of the preventive strike Britain had launched against theDanish fleet in 1805 outside Copenhagen
German diplomacy thus became a crucial part to enacting the German plan
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the building tempo looked quite modest in its early stagesand was therefore unlikely to alarm the Royal Navy. In other words, atthe turn of the century Germany started a unilateral arms build-up againstBritain, and Germany’s long-term ambition of defeating the Royal Navyhad to be kept secret
These two hypocrisies ultimately doomed the German program
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By 1897, Tirpitz, by now the Kaiser’s naval secretary, had opted for thelatter strategy. He was convinced that the only way to gain sufficient power-political leverage against Britain, the first sea power, was to expand thehitherto modest Imperial Navy into a major tool that could be used towring territorial concessions from the British at the conference table whenanother ‘division of the world’ was being negotiate
Tirpitz saw the need for naval power as necessary to extract territorial concessions from the British and leapfrog Germany into dominant world power status (the fact this would antagonize the British was ignored)
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During the late nineteenth century, the Great Powers on the Europeancontinent eyed the armament policies of their rivals with much suspicion.Perhaps one of them would achieve military superiority and then use thisadvantage to start a preventive war.
The growth of technology led to great insecurities amongst the Great Powers of being outclassed by her enemies in armament
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To him, major wars among Great Powers had become a loss for allparticipants, even for those who formally won, and the drain on resourceswould be so great that the region might never recover.
War became a no win situation
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It containeddisturbingly accurate descriptions of what this war would be like, i.e., a massslaughter of the kind that occurred for real in the trenches of the First WorldWar. War between industrialised nations was for him tantamount to thedestruction of civil and civilised society.
Many believed that any future war would be so destructive it would be impossible for future states to think of war or at least of a war as long as WW1
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However, for reasons to be examined below, from around 1910 the businesscommunities on both sides of the Atlantic became increasingly nervousabout the international diplomatic and military situation
The rivalries inherent in colonialism and European power politics upset the peace and balance of the international economy
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Colonialism was dangerous and, indeed, self-defeating in the sense that itexacerbated economic tensions and rivalries that were inherent in theeconomic systems of an increasingly industrialised Europe
Colonialism did not ease tensions but in many ways exacerbated them.
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heviolence practised in this war became part of German military culture.8 Inother words, it became so deeply ingrained in the ethos of the officer corpsthat it came to see a future European war in the same terms of completeannihilation
The idea of a war of annihilation came out of the experiences of colonial troops and their wars of brutality against local populations
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imperialism was designed to draw all classes together in defence of the nationand empire and aimed to prove to the least well-to-do class that its interestswere inseparable from those of the nation. It aimed at undermining theargument of the socialists and demonstrating that, contrary to the Marxistallegation, the workers had more to lose than their chains.’
The idea of imperialism helped to support the idea that even the lowest classes had something to gain from the nation.
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This expansion, he added, was necessary ‘to no small degree alsobecause the great patriotic task and the economic benefits to be derived fromit will offer a strong palliative against educated and uneducated SocialDemocrats’
Economic and political benefit to imperialism
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The notion that imperialism was a useful tool not only to respond tocommercial pressures but also to divert and ease domestic tensions and topromise material gains for more than a few businessmen involved in interna-tional trade, had by the 1890s become popular among politicians and intellec-tuals all over Europe
Imperialism became a way to divert domestic tensions while also fulfilling higher class commercial interets
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There was yet another device by which – so politicians calculated – patrioticpride and support for the national state could be fostered: the lure of expan-sion into overseas territories and the quest for a colonial empire
Colonialism became a key part of supporting nationalism back home
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A third method was to mobilise nationalist feelings and to win over citizensby appealing to the integrating force of patriotism.
The established order also helped shift the people away from their political and economic concerns by appealing to nationalist feelings
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theyall were faced with growing numbers of citizens living in the cities underconditions that were crying out for improvement. Perceiving a threat to theestablished order, politicians and bureaucrats relied on and refined severalmeans by which they tried to stabilise political conditions.
The demands of the lower classes was a threat to the established order, whose representatives took it upon them to maintain either through appeasement or repression
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It did not take long for the otherparties and classes to see them as a threat
Threat of political participation from the lower classes led to growing fears amongst the higher classes
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the lower classes, too, were able to articulate their hopes and expect-ations vis-à-vis their local and national governments
Growing political consciousness led to a demand for greater political participation amongst the lower classes
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The gap between the wealthyand the poor was particularly visible in residential segregation, dress andshopping habits. Accordingly, the industrial societies of pre-1914 Europebecame more rigidly stratified in terms of socio-economic position and cul-tural habitus
Social status became rigidly stratified
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To grasp the highly dynamic developments that the societies of Europeunderwent in the three or four decades before 1914, the impact of industri-alisation, demography and urbanisation must be considered as major back-ground factor
Europe went through massive societal changes due to industrialization
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Yet at each level there was a willingness to riskor to accept war as a solution to a whole range of problems, political, social,international, to say nothing of war as apparently the only way of resisting adirect physical threat. It is these attitudes which made war possible; and it isstill in an investigation of the mentalities of the rulers of Europe and theirsubjects that the explanation of the causes of the war will ultimately lie
The Mood of 1914 accepted war as a solution to numerous problems which eventually made war possible
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That meansbuilding into the military organization at various levels some sort of self-questioning, problem-solving facility in order to deal with the as yet unfore-seen difficulties which will arise
There is a need to allow for self improvement and change both politically and within a military to allow for miilitary effectiveness
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Public disenchantment at the political aspects of the war therefore interactedwith public unrest at social and economic deprivation, to topple govern-ments and to bring the war effort to a halt
Public disenchantment due to the extreme mobilization required thus in many ways decided the war
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but they could be more easily absorbed into the parliamentary democraticsystem than was the case in the military autocracies
Parliamentary democracies proved more flexible in public frustration than autocracies
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With the strain ofthe war intensifying, and with the respective high commands calling for evergreater sacrifices from their populations without any evident sign of victory,it was predictable that cries would arise for a reform of the entire governingsystem, not to mention for social and economic compensations for theenhanced 'military participation ratio.'
The greater sacrifice required the more the people called for a more revolutionary method of government, as the current government failed to deliver on the people's sacrifice
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n ever costlier arma-ments stalemate was interacting with an ever bloodier operational (andtherefore strategic) stalemate, so it was not surprising that generals grewbaffled, politicians grew desperate, and the public grew ever more resentfulas the arms output meant little; what was more critical was how long eacheconomy and society could meet these unprecedented demands when theprospects of outright victory for either side seemed to be fading away.
The need for continued mobilization as failures mounted led to incrased frustration
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The term political as used in these essays hasactually referred to two separate if interrelated aspects, the first being theavailability of financial, industrial, technological, and manpower resourcesfor the pursuit of victory, and the second being the willingness of the nationat large, and their political representatives in particular, to keep on support-ing the war effort
Political level of military effectiveness
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reated an effective Staff systemto handle tactical and operational problems, to analyze empirical data, toexperiment with new methods, and - most important of all - to encourageopen discussion which would also include challenging received ideas abouthow best things were to be done.
Britain did not have the tactical analysis necessary to change methods of tactics rather than strategy
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The Continentalbalance was upheld (barely); imperial interests were preserved, in some areasconsiderably enhanced; and relations with all of the Allied Great Powers wereskillfully utilized to benefit Britain's complex strategic situatio
The British used diplomacy extraordinarily skillfully to fulfill its imperial ambitions (and in many ways expand them) and to preserve the continental balance of power
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well bring another powerful nation into the enemy coalition.Convinced of its own military effectiveness, however, Berlin proved incapa-ble of coldly weighing the balance of short-term versus long-term risk whichwas at the core of a truly Clausewitzian grand strategy.
Short term vs long term risk
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et whereas the French,for example, enhanced their strategic effectiveness by clever alliance diplo-macy, the German military mind preferred a quite different solution: escap-ing from their geopolitical bind by a bold offensive move which, whileprovocative to neutral Great Powers, would hopefully shatter their immedi-ate foe and thus achieve the desired swift victory.
Germany did not take advantage of its diplomatic situation and often times undermined its own diplomacy through bold action which alienated potential allies
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ver-reaching itself to gain a victory in a specific campaign, it ran the risk ofensuring that it could never win the war as a whole
Overestimation was the Prussian's main flaw
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ts basic flaw,which it repeated even more spectacularly in 1941, was to opt for strategiccourses of action which, while having a certain military logic to them,undermined rather than secured the nation's larger political goals
Germany would often place too high a premium on its strategic action and thus undermine its political goals (e.g. submarine warfare and the US)
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redefine their strategic aim: instead of going for an unattainable break-through, they would aim instead at attrition, wearing down the enemy'sforces until the magic moments arrived when they buckled under
Siege mentality of the war
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As the defending forces fell back, their linesshortened; and Allied reinforcements appeared
As the attackers weakened, defending armies were able to call upon a far larger pool of resources
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Even the more mobile and spectacular campaigns in the European theatereventually fizzled, or ended in disaster, because the technical and logisticalproblems proved insuperable
Logistics were the name of the game in World War One
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If one attempted to punch a holethrough the first line by prolonged bombardments, one surrendered theelement of surprise and allowed the enemy to reinforce the second and thirdlines of trenches. Any advance took the troops farther and farther away fromtheir logistical supplies and rear commanders; fatigue merely compoundedthe problem
Successful offensives were unable to maintain the momentum of their advance without quickly surrendering all of their advantages. No transport or firepower solution yet existed to overcome the offensive-defensive imbalance
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ame quick-firing guns whose demand for shells dras-tically complicated logistics also made it impossible for infantry and cavalryto survive on top of the ground in the face of the vastly enhanced fire power,and before the internal-combustion engine solved that problem as well,through the development of tanks and armored personnel carriers.
The firepower used by the opposing armies drastically outweighed the available protections
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convey those items forward
Taking these items to support an advance was extraodinarily difficult
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s in so many other instances, the acid test of military effective-ness was whether one could handle not the expected but the unexpectedelements thrown up in war.
Handling the unexpected was something militaries in WW1 were awful at facing.
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o a very large degree, in other words, it was impossible for the powers toachieve military effectiveness in the First World War without first finding asolution to a small but vital number of tactical problems: how to close with,and then overwhelm, the enemy's battlefleet; how to counter the attacks ofthe U-boats; how to open up a new strategic flank through amphibiousoperations; and - by far the most important of all - how to break into, andthen out of, an enemy-held trench system.
Closing with the enemy, opening up new flanks, and taking heavily defended positions made up the main tactical concerns of WW1 armies
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For it seems worth claiming that it was at the tacticallevel in this war (much more than in the 1939-45 conflict) that the criticalproblems occurred
Tactical level was were the main problems arised during WW1
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ad been no real winners; everyonehad lost. Versailles had been a 'Carthaginian peace,' ultimately as dissatisfy-ing to the victors as to the defeated.
World War One had seen the nadir of military effectiveness
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The Wehrmacht was a superb tactical instrument.Yet it was frequently launched in strategic and operational directions thatnullified numerous battlefield successes.
Germany completely overesteimated its tactical capabilities against its startegic goals
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Strengths and weaknesses refer to the range of weapons and humancharacteristics that affect combat power.
Strengths at the intersection of the enemies weaknesses
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t is not uncommon for a tactical system to require greater support than amilitary organization can actually provide.
Need for supporting systems to provide necessary resources for tactical systems
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It is possible for a military organization to fail to train its personnel toperform the tasks prescribed by its tactical system
Need for training to educate soldiers on performing the necessary tasks for the tactical systems employed by a specific military
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There are some tactical systems that require an especially high level of trustbetween officers and men if they are to function.
Levels of trust differentiate across different tactical systems
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Italianofficers by and large ignored their men, refused to share front-line hardships,and generally led from the rear. The result was an almost complete lack oftrust
Need for trust between units to help support tactical tasks
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Though any tactical system requires a militaryorganization to pay attention to these issues, some systems require unusuallystrong and resilient bonds with military units
Need to have strong unit cohesion, morale, etc. to make possible tactical operations
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Although different from surprise, rapid exploitation requires similarcapabilities and attributes. Effectiveness in this category involves the utiliza-tion of a wide variety of opportunities created by the almost random fluidityof mechanized warfare
Fluidity and flexibility is essential to taking advantage of opportunities
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Although different from surprise, rapid exploitation requires similarcapabilities and attributes. Effectiveness in this category involves the utiliza-tion of a wide variety of opportunities created by the almost random fluidityof mechanized warfare
Fluidity and flexibility is essential to taking advantage of opportunities
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Historically, surprise has been a potent multiplier of combat power. It isdifficult to find a military that rejects surprise as an advantageous condition.
Ability of tactical level to exploit the element of surprise and opportunity
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his measure of tactical effectiveness closely resembles that of its counterpartat the operational level. However, tactical effectiveness requires that theprinciple of integration and combined arms not be strictly weapons-cen-tered, but rather be applied to all the factors affecting combat power.
Integration of all arms and all factors affecting combat power
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mmediate tactical problem of how to get throughthe killing zone of the enemy's firepower.
The tactical problems may obstruct operational goals
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he dubious doctrine of the DuPicq-Grandmaison school constituted French operational doctrine. The tac-tical system was accordingly based on the infantryman's ability to moverapidly in close order across the artillery and machine gun killing zone toengage the enemy in close combat, preferably with the bayonet.
Tactical concepts must be consistent with the operational capabilities and doctrines laid out by a military
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The adoption of particular tactical systems can hamper military organiza-tions in their pursuit of strategic objectives
Tactics must be in line with startegic objectives
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The tactical level of military activity refers to the specific techniques used bycombat units to fight engagements in order to secure operational objectives.
Tatcics are the individual techniques used by forces to achieve operational objectives (e.g. artillery bombardment used to destroy ground in a WW1 offensive)
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The result was that Bomber Command did notplace its strengths against German weaknesses.
Operational doctrine must develop its own strengths against the weakness of the enemy (e.g. Germany vs. France 1940)
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employment of military forces to achieve objectives for which they arelargely unsuited.
Military forces operational concept must be suited to the strategic objectives set out for them
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The most potent and ingenious operational capabilities are worthless unless anetwork of supporting activities buttresses them
Need for supporting activities to build up operational activities
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At adeeper level, mobility and flexibility depend at least as much, if not more, onan appropriate command and control network and on staff elements thatpermit military units to remain cohesive, distinctive organizations while theymaneuver.
Need for proper mobility and flexibility of forces to take advantage of strengths and weaknesses
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Operational effectiveness has a distinct human element. The professionaland personal relationships between officers of different branches within thesame service as well as between different services provide the institutionaland psychological underpinnings for integrated action.
Integrated action relies on good relations between military branches and forces
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aking full advantage of these military assetsincreases the likelihood that an armed force will fulfill its mission
Being able to integrate and take full advantage of a diverse amount of weaponry
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Measures or indicators of operational effectiveness must reflect thisdoctrinal focus.
Most effective doctrines and forces available to achieve strategic objectives
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ithin the scope of operationalmatters lie the disposition and marshalling of military units, the selection oftheater objectives, the arrangement of logistical support, and the direction ofground, air, and sea forces.
Necessary tasks of operational matters.
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Ideally, the best strategic course should aim to place strength against criticalweakness
Exploit strength and weakness through strategic goals
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Historically - and certainly in this century — coalitions have conducted asignificant percentage of wars
Need to integrate objectives between nations during coalition warfare
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Although a military organization may possess limited power over the ulti-mate fit between strategic decisions and national goals, it usually has morecontrol over the extent to which its force structure is appropriate to itsanticipated uses
Military must use its forces effectively and must fit its strategic objectives to its force size
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The process of selecting national political goals and strategic objectivesshould be interactive.
Both national goals and strategic objectives should be subject to a connected method of discussion
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strategic objective or course of action may fit desired political goals but stillnot be prudent if the risks and costs of failure are sufficiently great
An effective analysis of the risks behind a political goal may compel different strategic methods
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Political goals no doubt should informstrategy, but the strategic alternatives, enunciated by the military, maysimultaneously shape those goals.
Political goals may shape strategic decisions but some strategic decisions may in some cases inform or shape those same political goals
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The strategic level of military activity refers to the employment of nationalarmed forces to secure by force national goals defined by political leadership
Strategic level of the military is the employment of the military to secure political/national goals
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Especially important for military organizations is the willingcooperation and service of the educated and skilled middle and upper classes.
Willing participation is essential to create a strong military officer corps
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ocietal resistance or sup-port can influence the effectiveness not only of conscription, but also ofcombat power.
Resistance to the militaries legitimacy can prove catastrophic for the military's effectiveness
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e military may possess the legal right touniversal conscription, but coercion alone cannot provide the personnel, ifthe society, or an elite within it, desires to circumvent the legal structur
The military cannot simply coerce its citizens into the fold without a significant amount of resistance or a lowering effectiveness of the military's manpower force
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Access to manpower involves not only legal power, but also moral andpractical legitimacy.
The legitimacy of the military helps provide the manpower necessary to staff and create equipment for the military
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n anability to articulate its needs more persuasively than its competitors canarticulate theirs
Military political effectiveness is part of securing resources
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For a military organization to act strategically, operationally, or tactically, itmust consistently secure the resources required to maintain, expand, andreconstitute itself
Securing resources is the most essential part of allowing a military to operate
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Military activity takes place at four different levels: political, strategic,operational, and tactical.
The four levels of military activity
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ertical dimension involvesthe preparation for and conduct of war at the political, strategic, operational,and tactical levels
Preparation and conduct of war coordinated from the top down is the vertical level
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orizontal dimension consists in thenumerous, simultaneous, and interdependent tasks that military organiza-tions must execute at each hierarchical level with differing levels of intensityin order to perform with proficiency.
Individualized actions that each level must take is the horizontal level
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actical systems and their proper utilization on the battlefield.
Operational approach is focused on doctrinal and tactical systems
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No amount of operational [or tactical] virtuosity ... redeemed fundamental flawsin political judgment.
Tactical victories could not escape political failures
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encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net
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Transnational history does not start with one state and move on to others, but takes multiple levels of historical experience as given, levels which are both below and above the national level.
Transnational history as history which merges different forms of experience together
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I joined a collective which reached out across national frontiers to create a new kind of museum, one which treated the Great War as a transnational catastrophe.21 This blending of different national viewpoints and emphases suited the new Europe of the 1990s, when it became apparent that to understand the integration of Europe at the end of the 20th century, you had to understand the disintegration of Europe at its beginning.
The war as a truly transnational tragedy and phenomenom
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I term it the “transnational generation”. This generation has a global outlook. The term “global” describes both the tendency to write about the war in more than European terms and to see the conflict as trans-European, trans-Atlantic, and beyond
Transnational generation- a generation that globalized the war and its impacts
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The demonization of the enemy and the spiritualization of the cause, are themes with clear links to Mosse’s work, and which have constituted a kind of anthropological approach to the history of violence in the two world wars.
A study of human behaviour behind mobilization and justification
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rom the 1970s on, European integration was an attempt to move away from the notion of the nation state as that institution which had the right to go to war,
Move from the nation state to an integrated state incapable of war
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“death imprint”; the knowledge that their survival was a purely arbitrary accident.
Death imprint
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Here was a military historian’s book, but one whose starting point was humane and to a degree psychological.
War became something not just political and sociological but mental and deeply human focused
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his was the environment in which darker histories of the Great War emerged. There were still scholars who insisted that the Great War was a noble cause, won by those who had right on their side. But there were others who came to portray the Great War as a futile exercise: a tragedy, a stupid, horrendous waste of lives, producing nothing of great value
Third/Vietnam generation is the anti-war history, a one completely hostile to the idea of war itself
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battle presented men with terrifying challenges. The men who fought at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 could run to the next hill to save their lives. Foot soldiers converging on Waterloo four centuries later could arrive a day late. But in 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, there was no escape. Given the industrialization of warfare, the air above the trenches on the Somme was filled with lethal projectiles from which there was no escape
War became something inescapable and all encompassing
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glow of the “just war” of 1939-1945 had faded, and a new generation was more open to a view that war was a catastrophe to both winners and losers alike.
War as catastrophe in all ways
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Whatever was wrong with the world seemed to be linked to 1914, to the time when a multitude of decent men went off to fight one war and wound up fighting a much more terrible one.
The shift from a great peace to a catclysmic war which trailed destrcution for years to come
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This second generation of historians wrote in the late 1950s and 1960s, and wrote not only the history of politics and decision-making at the top, but also the history of social structures and social movements.
A social history approach.
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he second generation I term the generation “fifty years on”. While much of the first generation of historians wrote official history, which tends to the history of officials, the second generation wrote peoples’ history, or the history of politics and society at war.
The second generations- a people's generation
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This is not an omission; it is a choice as to what matters in recounting the history of the war. The first generation defined history as the story of power and violence – and of those who wielded these weapons in wartime
The history of the war as one that is inherently political
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Many historians saw it as their patriotic duty to justify the peaceful intentions of their nation in the war crisis of 1914. If we believe all of them, no one wanted war in 1914, and no one was responsible for its outbreak.
The need to prove inocenence after the war
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here were also official histories, many of which were written by former soldiers for the benefit of the various national staff colleges, trying one at a time to frame “lessons” for the future
The need to learn from the war proved paramount
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his first generation was also composed of men whose memoirs went over the ground again for evident purposes of self-justification.
Scholarship on the war became a justifcation for certain actions by the people involved
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Across the world, the imperial state as a form of territorialgovernance was under attack and in retreat, while the nation-state was on the rise
The rise of the nation state led to the dissolving of empire
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he crisis of imperial legitimacy ignited by thewar and its aftermath.
Crisis of imperial legitimacy born out of the promise of popular legitmacy
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It was that the logic of popularrule, which argued that political legitimacy derived not from divine sanction butfrom the people, had finally, after a long and arduous process, achieved near-universal recognition.
The logic of popular rule justified the increasing revolt against imperial rule (eg. self determination)
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Here, as elsewhere, the nation-building pro-cess came at a high price, paid in particular by the minorities of the country
The shatter zones came out of the novel necessity of nation building after the First World War as extreme and novel competition led to extreme violence with little to restrain it.
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The abrupt break-up of Europe’s land empires and the inability of the successorstates to agree on borders with their neighbors certainly played a prominent role intriggering postwar violence
National movements filled the void though were met with intense competition
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absence of functioning states, militias of various political persuasions assumed therole of the national army for themselves
Paramilitary violence became a substitute for professional national armies
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in the collision in Eastern and Central Europe of twocurrents of global revolution, the revolutions of national self-determination andthe social revolutions for the redistribution of power, land, and wealth along classlines
Collission of social and national revolution
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fought in the name of these new nation-states sought to determine or defend theirreal or imagined borders through force and strove to create ethnically or religiouslyhomogenous communitie
The need to defend the new nations and communities in the aftermath of imperial collapse led to widespread violence
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iolence was particularly intense in thevast territories of the defeated dynastic land empires—the Habsburg, Romanov,and Ottoman empires—whose disappearance from the map provided the space forthe emergence of new and often nervously aggressive nation-states.
The disappereance of dynastic empires led to a mass campaign of violence over the filling of the void of empire
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The war thus hastened a process of imperial decline that would eventu-ally lead to the collapse of a global order based on territorial empires and replace itby one predicated on the nation-state as the only internationally legitimate form ofpolitical organization
The war saw empires dissolve and other empires become so overstretched not only by expansion but by the general costs of the war, that the concept of empire collapsed within the next couple of decades
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thewar also delivered a severe body blow to the empires on the winning side, gen-erating new forms of upheaval, disorder, and resistance
War saw a massive dislocation of all global empires
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In many of the colonies, there was a political calculation on the part of thosewho chose to enlist or those who encouraged others to do so
Colonial peoples became active participants in European politics and thus took advantage to further their own political dreams
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we should see the First World Warnot simply as a war between European nation-states but also, and perhaps primar-ily, as a war among global empires
War as a global empire not a European war
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he end of the Irish Civil War in the same year, the restoration of ameasure of equilibrium in Germany after the end of the Franco-Belgian occupa-tion of the Ruhr, the decisive victory of the Bolshevik regime in Russia in a bloodycivil war, and the reconfiguration of power relations in East Asia at theWashington Conference, were all further signs that the cycle of violence, for thetime being, had run its course
The cycle of violence as beginning in 1911 and continuing until 1923
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we must examine the war within a frame that is both longer (temporally)and wider (spatially) than the usual one.
The Greater War paradigm
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That world unraveled dramatically in the twentieth century, beginningwith the cataclysm of the First World War
First World War saw a cataclysmic destruction of the imperial world order
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one that can bring together the agglomer-ation of wars that defined the era to consider how their specific logics, modalities and temporalitiesintersect, how they diverge and what this might tell us about a global history of conflict in the period
Greater War as a federation between countless different conflicts which both unite and diverge
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xploring the contrasts and commonalities between experiences of conflict in colonialcontexts and the imperial shatterzones will help us better grapple with the dynamics that structuredextreme violence in the period and their relations to the shifting regimes of alterity that were cen-tral to imperial collapse, survival and expansion
Contrast and commonalities between colonial and non-colonial contexts
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critical re-engagement with concepts like POW, internee, veteran and paramil-itary through the prism of colonial experiences in the period has the potential not only to extend thegeographical reach of our scholarship but also to refine our frameworks of analysis so they can bet-ter account for the diversity of experiences of conflict across all of the spaces touched by the GreaterWar.
The integration of colonial experiences will allow for a reimagination of the Greater War
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represented both an evolution of past practices of colonial confinement and a prefiguration of thecounter-insurgency tactics that would shape later wars of decolonisation.
Colonial internments saw the introductions and continued use of military and violent tactics which would be used throughout the century
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his meant POWs of the inter-imperial conflicts in colonialspheres were not extended the same protections granted to their peers in Europe
Colonial contexts often saw a more brutalized form of warfare due to European exclusion
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some scholars of colonial campaigns of repression during the Greater Warinsist on the use of the term ‘war’ to describe these conflicts.
Expansion of the Greater War paradigm to include colonial experiences
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ere again we see how a continuum of colonial violence that often stretched far beyond even theexpanded chronologies of the Greater War remains vital to understanding the way conflict unfoldedin many colonial contexts
Continuum of violence beyond the chronology of the Greater War
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While these conflicts were integral to the Greater War,they were also constitutive of the longer process of colonial conquest and the resistance it provoked.
Conflicts remained integral and outside the scope of the Greater War
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expansion of the chronology of violence in the period has inevitably shifted focus awayfrom the once-dominant Western Front and towards the complex and multiple conflicts that definedthe war and its aftermath in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, as well as the disintegrat-ing Ottoman Empire.
The study of the war has expanded beyond the Western Front to include numerous important and brutal "peripheral fronts"
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The rise of the Greater War paradigm, a framework that conceives of ‘imperial survival andexpansion’ as the driving force of violence, has pushed beyond the geographical and chronologi-cal boundaries of traditional narratives of the First World War, tracking conflict across large swathesof the world in the years directly before and after the declarations of war in August 1914 and theArmistice of November 1918.
The Greater War concept
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they remain on the margins of the conceptualisation of conflict in theperiod.
Colonial contexts are continually minimized in the conceptualization of conflict
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he period of the Centenary of the First World War was marked by the heightened prominenceof the ‘colonial contribution’ to the conflict in commemorative discourse
Colonial narratives became an important part of analyzing the widespread effect of the Great War.
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Indeed, the clash at El Herri had begun as a classic colonial punitive raid defined by the typeof extreme violence against civilians that was a key characteristic of colonial warfare.
Colonial warfare became an essential part of the Greater War.
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