Sunday, November 11, is the hundredth anniversary of Armistice Day, which ended the war that was “to end all wars.” Less than a year later, however, the Treaty of Versailles sowed the seeds of the next world war, with its humiliation of Germany, its heavy reparations, and its signatories’ horror of taking early military action.
I have not formally studied the war, but my interest in its causes helped motivate me to study history in more depth. The war was pivotal in European history, so I have read several books about it. Probably the most helpful is The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark.[1]
Clark is a British historian who tries to look at big topics without letting the known outcome influence his description (in a similar vein, he also wrote The Iron Kingdom about the history of Prussia). He begins his 698-page book by saying that others’ explanations for the war include “remote and categorical causes: imperialism, nationalism, armaments, alliances, high finance, ideas of national honour, the mechanics of mobilization.”[2] He takes a somewhat different tack, holding back on the “why” in favor of the “how it came about,” especially once the crisis—the assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg throne—took place on June 28, 1914.