Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

My understanding of the root cause of WW1 was the desire of the German speaking "Volk" to obtain more land in the east for their burgeoning population. Almost the same motivation that sent the Third Reich into the USSR.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

The parallel, presumably, of the invasion of Iraq.

There's a portion in this article--not in the excerpts you provide--that our beloved Atrios would love. Liberal intelligentsia believing in the war before discovering that it, like all wars, results in completely unforeseen consequences. Such as the loss of a generation of artists, notably Wilfred Owen.

I'm surprised the 'your fathers lied' part didn't make the excerpt, germane as it is right now. On the whole an incredible piece by Gopnik.

I thought the Brits came in because of the invasion of belgium.

Class divisions disappeared because of the First World War?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/23/books/23ridi.html

A Lost Soul Who Symbolized France's Trauma
By ALAN RIDING

With its devastating toll of 1.4 million French soldiers killed or missing, World War I scarred almost every village or neighborhood in the land. Families and nation mourned as war memorials were hurriedly built to remember those who died for France. But for the parents, wives and children of the 250,000 men whose bodies were never found or identified, closure was more difficult. Many liked to imagine that their vanished soldier, freed at last from some secret German prison, would one day reappear.

This mixture of hope, faith, delusion and despair is at the center of the poignant saga retold by Jean-Yves Le Naour in "The Living Unknown Soldier: A Story of Grief and the Great War." Put simply, the soldier in question was an amnesiac repatriated to France along with 64 other mentally disturbed prisoners of war. After his photograph was published, dozens of families claimed to recognize him as their missing relative. And as the effort to identify him dragged on, he became a living symbol of France's wartime sacrifice.

In the years between the wars he became known as Anthelme Mangin because that resembled the name he mumbled when he arrived by train in Lyon on Feb. 1, 1918. Public interest was fed by newspapers speculating over his true identity and campaigning in favor of one claimant family or other. Jean Anouilh based his 1937 play " Traveler Without Luggage" on the case. In a speech a member of the French senate said that it would be "an act of sacred patriotism" to identify Mangin.

"The truth, though, is that Mangin really had no story of his own," Mr. Le Naour writes. "His story was in the suffering of the families who claimed him." "The Living Unknown Soldier," in Penny Allen's smooth translation, relives their trauma.

For 16 years it was the job of Dr. A. Fenayrou, the director of the Aveyron departmental asylum in Rodez, in south-central France, to judge claims arriving from all over the country and beyond. Before anyone could visit Mangin, Fenayrou demanded physical and behavioral details of the missing relative. And he was wary of claimants coveting the veteran's pension due to Mangin once he was identified. But Fenayrou also recognized that most families were genuine in their joy when they believed they had found their lost loved one.

"Following the model of Pirandello's 'Right You Are,' families recognized Mangin because they were ready to recognize practically anybody," Mr. Le Naour notes. "Contemplating the photo of the amnesiac, all of them were struck by the resemblance to their relative - a resemblance that existed only in the obstinate wills of those in need." And this impression was often reinforced by a face-to-face visit. Mme. Lallement, for instance, insisted the man recognized and kissed her. Mme. Delafouilhousse wrote that "he's all I live for."

Mangin, diagnosed with dementia, could do little to help. "He might take interest in the pictures on postcards or touch the objects or the buttons on the coats of his supposed relatives," Mr. Le Naour recounts. "But he was largely indifferent; once, sitting on a bench, he went to sleep during a meeting." In time, he retreated into silence.

Karl Polanyi's take on this is interesting. I can't give it the summary that it deserves right now, but I do recommend his very readable _The Great Transformation_.

The progress in weapons technology and strategic gaming after the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars must have been truly dazzling. Every side was saying to itself: how can we lose, look at how powerful we are? To get a glimpse of what I mean, just scan the Eleventh Edition of the Encylopedia Brittanica for entries like "machine-gun," or "ordinance," or "mechanized warfare," or "trench-warfare". You might think you were reading user manuals for Lamborghinis and Ferraris.....It would be fun to read about defense spending in the twenty years preceding the war. Anyone know of a book or two on this subject other than Shaw's "Major Barbara"?

Alabama,

Niall Ferguson ("The Pity of War") has figures for pre-WWI defense spending. I was surprised at how low they were: the Great Powers spent about 5% of GDP on the military, as I recall.

Spittle--
****
My understanding of the root cause of WW1 was the desire of the German speaking "Volk" to obtain more land in the east for their burgeoning population. Almost the same motivation that sent the Third Reich into the USSR.
****

You're wrong about WWI, as about everything else (judging by your inane comments on other blogs, such as Eschaton).
Although the far-right conservative "Alldeutschen Verbände", who later shaped the Nazi party and ideology, were influential in their general belligerence and pushing the supposedly superiority of the german "Kultur", there was no widely promoted urge to wipe out vast parts of the east to accomodate german settlers.

Hans Grimm's "Volk ohne Raum" was published in 1926 and still mainly dealt with colonies.

It was all Asquith's fault. Just ask your friendly neighborhood Thatcherite.

Seems to me that there is application of this observation to Bush in Iraq. So Bush, no student, was condemned to repeat it. A fool marching to the tune of very bad players.

Most ironic line from Gopnik's article. I mean, it must be deliberate:

"How a great power at the apex of its influence, with no obvious rivals in sight—the British didn’t want a rival navy, but were more or less content with a minor German empire—grew convinced that it was beset by an overwhelming existential danger is difficult for a contemporary American to understand, of course, but somehow that is what happened."

I have an old Compton's pictorial history of WWI. It contains some pictures from the aftermath of those hideous battles, corpses stacked, covered with blood and mud. There is one especially poignant picture of a photographer who is killed as he snaps his picture. A visit to Paschendale or the Flanders Fields museum will make clear something of which this administration has no personal knowledge: that war is horrible, and the deaths are meaningless.

I can't resist a chuckle when I read Gopnik refer to D-day as a "Churchillian invasion", considering that he and Alanbrook got dragged into it kicking and screaming all the way by Roosevelt and Marshall.

I also cant resist commenting on the serendipity of the appearance in today's NY Times of the book review quoted above by Anne.

>> Capital’s overwhelming desire was for peace and continued globalization. <<

The Leninist explanation actually looks quite reasonable when applied to European colonialism overseas, and particularly in Asia. The difference being that the countries at the receiving end lacked any military capability to stalemate the aggressors and usher in years of trench warfare.

I was always under the impression that there were multiple forces at work in the leadup to WWI and that when combined precipitated that mass calamity. Many have already been mentioned: technological development in weapons and the assumed superiority of one nation's forces over that of the other's; the alliance structures, not just those in the traditional Central vs. Allies but also those involving minor powers (Belgium, as stated earlier); the personal rivalry amongst the royalty of the major powers - indeed, a FAMILY rivalry; national angst as evidenced by British concern over naval buildups and the famous quote from von Bülow: “we do not wish to put anyone in the shade but we do demand our place in the sun.”

The root causes of the First World War, as I've come to understand, weren't simplistic; I've always frowned upon the arguments of those looking for the singular, key reason. Rather, the fascination historically (and academically for me) is with the complexity and confluence of multiple historical threads. I would argue that there have only been a few critical moments in history when so many issues and historical trends came to head in such a short time period. Certainly the post-century period qualifies. I believe the time period from 1760 to 1815 qualifies as well. Unfortunately my unfamiliarity with medieval and ancient history disqualifies me from making an educated statement but my best guess would be the time of the Mongol invasions (specifically the conquests of Genghis Khan) and the collapse of the western Roman empire.

It should be mentioned, in passing, that Rudyard Kipling wrote the most convincing stories in English about the insanity and poverty of the Great War (among them are "Mary Postgate," "The Gardener," "The Janeites," "A Madonna of the Trenches," and "'In the Interests of the Brethren'"). There's very little gallantry or chauvinism here, just a whole lot of pain, grief, and desolation--written, as we might expect, with unbounded energy, wit, and a determined chasteness of style. If Gopnick had bothered to read them, he might have written a different article.

Alabama, Kipling lost his son in the war, IIRC.

big al
I though the Brits...belgium

As has already been pointed out...best in PigInZen's post more complex than that

An additional-and very non-trivial- Brit computation was the resources of India....the Indian Army put 2.5 million people in the field...both on the Western Front and in Mesopatamia - where, as now, there was no discernable "causus belli".

As for Kipling I'm afraid his son dying leaves me cold. I'm sure he'd have thought it grand if the bugger died killing Pathans ...they'd have given him another Nobel for the lament he wrote in that case.

big al,

I think Gopnik agress with you. The part about the threat to Belgium just didn't make it into Brad's snippet.

A few comments- first, the crocodile tears of a few large financiers does not prove that WW I was not an inevitable clash of expanding markets. In fact, the changing balances of trade, the emergence of America as a world power no longer dependent on British capital, the obvious weaknesses of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, to name a few factors, suggest that, like an earthquake, some cataclysmic realignment must be imminent.

Second, the pre-war defense budget may be modest if twiddled by an economist. In reality, the construction of a dreadnought absorbed almost all of the high quality steel produced by Britain in a year. "Balancing" this monetary cost with other figures for the importation of corn or the publication of newspapers does not make the calculation more accurate.

And, for the 'private enterprise' crowd, in the mid 1890s the American ability to produce quality armor plate steel was created entirely by government subsidy.

I'm not getting, please, can you explain it?

W.E.B. Du Bois on the Cause of World War I (from *The Souls of White Folk* [1920], reprinted in Monthly Review, November 2003):

*…In the awful cataclysm of World War, where from beating, slandering, and murdering us, the white world turned temporarily aside to kill each other, we of the Darker Peoples looked on in mild amaze…

…Rubber, ivory, and palm oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges…cotton, gold, and copper…and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from their pits of slime… It was …competition for the labor of yellow, brown and black folks that was the cause of the World War. Other causes have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless were, but they were subsidiary…

Colonies, we call them, those places where *n*gg*rs* are cheap and the earth is rich…where white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave drivers, rape girls and wives, grow rich as Croesus and send home a golden stream…

Germany, at last one and united and secure on land, looked across the seas and seeing England with sources of wealth insuring a luxury which Germany could not hope to rival by the slower processes of exploiting her own peasants and workingmen, especially with these workers half in revolt, immediately built her navy and entered into a desperate competition for possession of colonies of darker peoples…

In the background, shut out from the high way to the seven seas, sat Russia and Austria…

The fateful day came. It had to come. The cause of war is preparation for war; and of all that Europe has done in a century, there is nothing that has equaled in energy, thought, and time her preparation for wholesale murder. The only adequate cause of this preparation was conquest and conquest, not in Europe, but primarily among the darker peoples of Asia and Africa; conquest, not for assimilation and uplift, but for commerce and degradation. For this, and this mainly, did Europe gird herself for the frightful cost of war.

The red day dawned when the tinder was lighted in the Balkans and Austro-Hungary seized a bit which bought her a step nearer to the world*s highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another…

Each nation felt its deep interests involved. But how? Not, surely, in the death of Ferdinand the Warlike; not, surely, in the old, half-forgotten revanche for Alsace-Lorraine; not even in the neutrality of Belgium. No! But in the possession of land overseas, in the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker world – on coolies in China, on starving peasants in India, on dying South Sea islanders, on Indians in the Amazon – all this and nothing more…

[T]he world market most widely and desperately sought today is the market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant...

Is, then, this war the end of wars? Can it be the end, so long as sits enthroned, even in the souls of those who cry peace, the despising and robbing of darker peoples? If Europe hugs this delusion, then this is not the end of world war – it is but the beginning!...*

Mike, thanks for the poignant quote from du Bois.

MFB, lots of people lost sons in WW I, but they didn't write stories like Kipling's, and those stories count for cultural historians of the war. Furthermore, Kipling doesn't just express his own bereavement; he shows the ravages of bereavement for everyone trapped in that war--German and French as well as English. And Venky, can you point me to a single page by Kipling that glorifies the killing of a Pathan? I've read a fair amount of Kipling, but I've yet to read that page.

A good discussion.

On WWI, "Summer, 1914" by Roger Martin du Gard (Nobel 1937) shows how the leaders, government and media, herded the people into the slaughterhouse. "American Patriotism in a Global Society" by Betty Jean Craige shows the same process of tribalism at work for Gulf War 1; it offers an alternate vision of being a good member of the family of nations; it is a very
scholarly book.

There are excuses for war and maybe root causes. Studies have shown a correlation between large proportions of the population being male between 15 and 30 and the likelihood of a war. I believe the root cause of most war is our human fecundity and that war serves as the final population regulator. I saw a beautiful film many years ago about 2 New Guinea highland tribes separated by small river. Their fields are lush and their agriculture sophisticated; the women work the fields which are guarded by watchtowers. The funerals are elaborate and most people die violently, women in an ambush or men in a "war." The wars originate as revenge; the men gather on the traditional battlefield and throw spears until someone is killed. The "war" ends and the funeral preparations begin. So it goes.

I thought the Brits came in because of the invasion of belgium.

As someone pointed out, the causes of WWI were more complex. In Anglo-German relations, the rise of the German Navy was a significant factor in the rift between the two countries. Belgium was as well, but perhaps not so much.

To those interested in the subject, "The Origins of World War Two" by APJ Taylor is very interesting. Or, as he says (paraphrase) 'people are interested in the origins of WWI and the battles of WWII, but rarely in the converse.'

And I can't recommend "Strange Victory" enough, the story of Hitler's gamble on the Western Front that ended up breaking the French.

Wu

WW1 was started by the powers that be at the time. Germany warned the US not to be shipping war supplies on cruising ships. They said they would sink those ships and they did. They sunk the Lusitania and brought us into the war.

"As for Kipling I'm afraid his son dying leaves me cold. I'm sure he'd have thought it grand if the bugger died killing Pathans ...they'd have given him another Nobel for the lament he wrote in that case."

I could not dig; I dare not rob;
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine young and defrauded young.

- Kipling, A Dead Statesman (1924)

"It was the deliberate decision of individuals who thought they knew just what they were getting into. "

Well, there's also the campaigning of Jean Jaures and Keir Hardie against the war. Jaures was assassinated for his trouble. Too bad Karl Kautsky didn't also oppose it.

Tom...
tell the Pathans that...too little too late

I haven't read enough to know what I'm talking about, but a minimalist explanation for WWI sounded adequate to me.

Each nation needed a modern army, if only for deterrence.

As the weapons got more horrible and it looked implausible that a winner could actually profit, the excuse of deterrence got more important. You don't want to be the easy victim that tempts others to attack, you want to have sufficient deterrence that they hesitate and choose not to.

The new wars required mobilisation, large numbers of men ready to railroad wherever they were needed. Very expensive to keep them mobilised without shipping them to the front. Catastrophic to demobilise yours while others are ready to pounce. Even if the intention was deterrence, once deterrence had failed and the armies were mobilised, no one had thought of a way to get them to stand down without fighting. By that point the choices were already made. But did they realise that ahead of time? All it took was a few governments believing that they could mobilise as a sort of saber-rattling and....

This was of course worked out in the context of nuclear stalemate. Approach it from a different context and you'd emphasise different things. But couldn't this be enough? You must build a modern army so you won't be easy prey. You must mobilise when your likely enemies do. You must fight when you mobilise. The rest of it could have been very different and still come out about the same if this logic still worked.

I agree that J Thomas is correct in seconding Tuchman's hypothesis about the final slide into WWI. In modern times, did anyone think it likely after we had placed an invasion army in the Middle East that we would back down? Of course,
one must recognize that this war had been decided by 2002 or earlier and had been desired by the neo-cons since the 90's. Still, once the army was there could this president have been satisfied with saying they had done their job without a conquest? What kind of president could have withdrawn the troops without losing face?
Cop rule: don't draw the gun unless you think it may be used.

Craig, thank you for giving Tuchman's name. I'd gotten that second-hand and had no idea where the ideas started or who to attribute them to.