Silencing the Guns of August

A lesser breed.

What would have happened if the First World War had not?

A fascinating speculation, because the First World War seems to have wrecked so much. All the magical princesses and dukes in their satin finery; Yeats’s “ceremony of innocence.” One can imagine that all was well in Western civ until it happened, and Western civ has never recovered. Beauty itself seems to have died then. Our confidence in the good and the true.

Fascinating as well because there is a general sense that it was far from inevitable, that it broke out more or less by blunder.

So what would have happened?

I find that in the end I cannot imagine anything being much different. Or rather, I really cannot imagine it never happening. It actually was, I suspect, no blunder, no mistake, and  not evitable. The problem began with Charles Darwin, back in 1859.

The war was started by Germany, make no mistake, and if it had not come to war this time, Germany was going to make a war within a few years somehow. I see no peaceful trajectory for a prewar Germany; barring what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah. Germany had done very well for itself with a series of European wars in the later nineteenth century, with Denmark, then Austria, then France, and they were cocked and ready to try for the big one: hegemony. They had rattled sabres to the verge of general war several times in the years leading up to 1914. They were going to keep doing so until it came to that.

It is fashionable these days to insist that it was all started blindly by the system of rival alliances. Nobody wanted it, but nobody could stop it once this machinery was set in motion.

Not believable. The intent and value of alliances was to prevent war, to make it less likely, not to make it more likely. Even the Triple Alliance, the stronger of the two, was purely defensive in nature.

Literally, treaty obligations did not cause the war. There was nothing mechanical about it. Russia had no treaty obligation to defend Serbia in case of war. Even if they had, Germany declared war on Russia, not the other way around. Treaty obligations did not require Germany to do this. Russia had not attacked Austria-Hungary, and had not declared war.

Once Germany and Austria had declared war on Russia, treaty obligations still did not oblige France to go to war on Russia’s behalf. The Entente between them was not a formal defensive treaty. Even had it secretly required action by the French, this was a moot point--since it was Germany who declared war on France, not vice versa. And this was obviously not required by any treaty signed by Germany with anyone. This was a conscious strategic decision.

Germany did, on the other hand, go to war with Belgium in open violation of treaty obligations.

The only major power that actually did declare war because of treaty obligations was Great Britain, based on the old (1839) defensive treaty with Belgium. The same one Germany had violated.

In other words, the system of mutual defense treaties did not cause the war. Instead, a stronger set of public alliances before the war, a clearer deterrent, might have prevented it. Would Austria have gone in to Serbia had they known this would draw in Russia and France? Almost surely not. Would Germany have invaded Belgium if they knew this would bring in the UK?

When Austria-Hungary sent its ultimatum after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Serbia, far from being belligerent, acceded to all but one of a set of outrageous demands. They went as far as they could this side of surrendering their sovereignty. Austria was plainly set on war regardless. Given how militarily shaky Austria was on its own, this demonstrates the powerful influence of Germany in the background.

Kaiser Wilhelm reputedly expressed disappointment at Serbia's response to t he Austrian ultimatum. “A great moral victory for Vienna," he wrote. "But with it every pretext for war falls to the ground.” Austria got what they wanted; he did not. He wanted a big war. 

By his own evaluation, moreover, this means Austria and Germany went to war without a decent pretext. One might want to put the blame on Austria—but Austria might have expected only a local war. And Austria had what it wanted without war. It was still Germany that made it general, by declaring war on Russia.

And this seems to have been preordained. When the German ambassador visited the Russian Foreign Ministry to present the declaration of war, he actually gave two separate written memos. The first declared war because Russia had not responded to the German ultimatum to immediately demobilize. The second declared war because the Russian response was deemed inadequate.

In other words, the declaration of war seems to have been decided in advance, regardless of the Russian response.

"The Crucified Canadian"; a famous German war atrocity of the time, now often disputed. Here features in a poster from the Philippines.

Social Darwinism was no doubt a factor across Europe. But this was especially so in Germany. This was pointed to by Rudyard Kipling in 1897. In his poem “The Recessional.” He wrote:

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Kipling was apparently referring to the Germans, and their atheistic pseudo-scientific “master race” ideology. “Reeking tube and iron shard” as resident idols rules out just about anyone else. It was probably generally understood at the time. Hitler and the Nazis did not suddenly invent this stuff in the 1930s. How could they? It goes back clearly at least to Nietzsche and his ideas about a “master morality” and a “slave morality.”

When war began, there was considerable popular resistance in the UK to getting involved. Witness later events in Ireland. This was also obviously true of the US. Notoriously in Canadian terms, this was so in Quebec. No jingoism, no militarism, no notions of a master race, no Social Darwinism, among the democracies.

In France, it was the same story. As the Serbian crisis unfolded, pacifist demonstrations against war easily outnumbered nationalist demonstrations against Austria or Germany.

Visible support for war was stronger in the monarchies of Austria and Russia. This might only have had to do with a relative lack of free speech and of the right to protest. But neither could match Germany here. In Germany, contemporary witnesses reported real popular enthusiasm for a fight. Hermann Hesse, from Switzerland, wrote in the German press expressing alarm over the warmongering and anti-foreign attitude that he witnessed: “Friends, not in these tones!” 

German execution of leading civilians of Blegny, Belgium.

There were many reports of German atrocities in Belgium at the start of the war. These are often now dismissed as mostly British propaganda. But Vernon Kellogg, neutral American present during the German invasion—presumably a detached observer—was alarmed by the Social Darwinist philosophy he heard espoused by Germans he encountered.

“Initially a pacifist, Kellogg dined with the officers of the German Supreme Command. He became shocked by the grotesque Social Darwinist motivation for the German war machine - the creed of survival of the fittest based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the Gospel of the German intellectuals.” (Wikipedia).

Kellogg sounded the general alarm in his book Headquarters Nights.

It is commonly said that the Treaty of Versailles assigned full war guilt to Germany; and that this was a major cause of the Second World War in turn. This is not quite true. The treaty spoke of German “aggression,” but not war guilt per se. And this was diplomatic boilerplate. Almost identical phrasing was put in the peace treaties with Austria or the Ottomans or Bulgaria. It was required to justify reparations.

Interestingly, in no other nation did the general population make much of it, or read it as assigning overall guilt. Everyone else indeed took it as boilerplate. Why the difference in Germany?

A clear case of “methinks the lady doth protest too much.” The extreme German reaction betrayed awareness of being in the wrong. This is typical of someone with a guilty conscience, when they are not prepared to reform. They tend to react hysterically when someone points out their guilt.

Italy had an alliance with both Germany and Austria, requiring them to come to their aid if they were attacked by Russia. Italy did not come to their aid. In taking this position, Italy declared their opinion that Germany and Austria were the aggressors.

Britain and the US, both neutrals at the start of the war, both also separately concluded that Germany was the aggressor, and chose sides accordingly. 

US enlistment poster

That looks close to a consensus by neutral parties.

One can be cynical and suppose that this charge of German aggression was a cover for simply acting in their own best interest. But Britain, the US, and Italy were all functioning democracies, to a far greater extent than Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. There was a limit to the amount of deceit they could get away with; they needed to worry about public opinion. Their general public had to buy it as well.

Why, in the face of the evidence, does everybody seem so keen to deny German war guilt?

I think it is a typical case of a general human tendency to deny the existence of evil. We want, absurdly, to insist that, if Hitler was evil, he was uniquely evil, and single-handedly responsible for everything in Nazi Germany. He was, we are told, a “madman.”

That is obviously ridiculous. Were he at any point clearly mad, those around him would have stopped obeying his orders. Nor did the vast majority of what happened in Nazi Germany depend on any kind of explicit orders from Hitler.

Perhaps it is too frightening for us to admit that a large proportion of any population, even a majority, can indeed choose to be evil. Perhaps it is frightening because it requires us to examine our own motives and acts—might we, too, be doing evil? Much safer to keep whistling past that graveyard.