THE WAR THAT
ENDED PEACE other of the European powers. The First
IN 1914 THERE WERE FORCES AGAINST
THE WAR WHICH MIGHT HAVE PREVAILED.
From a talk by Margaret MacMillan
B
efore 1914, Europe was the most
powerful part of the world,
dominating much of it through
wealth, investment and trade, but
also through Europes superior technology
and science. Much of the world was
controlled directly or indirectly by one or
14 | WARTIME ISSUE 67
Wartime 67 Book.indb 14
World War marked the end of Europe as a
world power. It saw the emergence of new
powers, the United States in particular,
which was already on its way to great power,
something the First World War accelerated.
It also sped the disappearance of the
European empires. It brought in or fostered
new ideologies I think it is fair to say that
without the First World War, we would not
have had Bolshevism in Russia, and I doubt
we would have had fascism either. The First
World War created a new and more brutal
European society in which people were
prepared to resort to violent ways of settling
19/06/14 2:01 PM

issues: increasing numbers of assassinations,
increasing numbers of street battles. For that
reason, the First World War still haunts
us, because its consequences have been so
enormous and many of those consequences
are still shaping the way in which we live.
The First World War also haunts us
because we still cant decide whose fault
it was, and that does worry us, and the
debates go on and on. If we cant agree
on how it started, or if we cant come to
a consensus on how it started, then we
may be left with the very uncomfortable
feeling that it may have been an accident,
it may have been a mistake. That worries
us not just because it happened in the
past, but because it could happen in the
present. So we look at the origins of the
First World War with shame, horror, and
Wartime 67 Book.indb 15
THE GREAT WAR: THE ORIGINS
sometimes with fear for the future.
There are a great many explanations of
how the war started, and that in itself is a
danger, because we can look back into the
period before the First World War and we
can see all sorts of possible causes, from
nationalism to the military plans. And
there is a danger that we then assume that
it had to happen, it was inevitable. I dont
think it was inevitable, I dont think very
much in human affairs is inevitable, and I
think we should all fight against that sense
because when that happens, we give up.
What I think important is to look
beyond who was responsible and ask
what Europe was like by 1914, and why
it was that there were tensions in Europe
that pushed it towards war. I think we
need to remember that there were very
many people who thought that war was
impossible or improbable, many of whom
actually did their best to try to make
sure that war would not happen again.
We look so often at the forces that were
pushing for the war in Europe before 1914
that we forget that there was a very big
peace movement, among both the middle
classes and the working classes, which at
the time seemed likely to keep Europe in
a state of peace rather than in a state of
war. So I want to look at both of those
forces and in the end try to understand
how it was, by the summer of 1914, that
yet another crisis broke out in the small
backyard of Europe in the Balkans. I
want to understand why enough people
in positions of power thought that war
was a reasonable option. Why did they
think they could use it, why did they not
foresee as we think they should have
Above: Street
fighting in Berlin
done that the dangers of stalemate were
during the Spartacist very, very great? Trying to understand the
uprising in 1919. Its origins of the First World War, I feel, is
suppression marked like playing a chess game on many levels:
the end of the
German Revolution,
you are trying to understand the forces
though political that are pushing Europe towards war, but
street violence was also pulling it back from war. And you are
not uncommon trying to understand, in the end, those
in Germany in the
1920s and 1930s.
who had to make the decisions and what
AWM A01667 their thinking was.
The age before 1914 was like
our own age: a time of tremendous
globalisation. It had knit the world
together in unprecedented ways. New
communications such as steamships,
the spread of telegraphs, the beginnings
of the spread of telephones and of air
travel, just before 1914, were bringing the
WARTIME ISSUE 67 | 15
19/06/14 2:01 PM

woe to him who sets Europe
alight, who puts the first fuse to
the powderkeg.
different parts of the world into a much
closer relationship with each other. Trade
was expanding hugely around the world,
and there were massive movements of
people as well: peoples from Europe going
to Australia, peoples from Asia going to
the West Indies or Brazil: peoples moving
around the world in a way which I think
is really only paralleled today. Sadly
enough, increased globalisation did not
make a happier and more stable world. A
number of people were hurt or disturbed
by globalisation: it is a force that can
be immensely disruptive and which
can sweep away sources of income and
previous occupations. Some people benefit
from globalisation, but not everyone.
Some people were uncomfortable
about the rapid expansion of the global
community. So before 1914, localisms are
becoming very strong, people are taking
refuge in local identities and turning their
faces against immigrants, because they see
16 | WARTIME ISSUE 67
Wartime 67 Book.indb 16
them as a threat to their way of life. There
was a growth of local nationalism and a
growth of reaction to globalisation. In
many parts of Europe, Jews were blamed
for the transformation of society, and
so there was a growth of anti-Semitism
in places such as Vienna, where the
Jews were somehow identified with the
awesome power of capitalism.
Globalisation does not necessarily
make those that trade together great
friends. In the period before 1914,
Germany and Britain were each others
greatest trading partner. Many in Europe
thought the natural alliance in Europe
was between those two nations. Britain
was the greatest naval power in the world
with the biggest empire and most overseas
investment; Germany was the biggest land
power in Europe with the biggest army in
Europe. There were family ties, of course,
which went from the royal families right
down to the middle classes. There were
natural alliances because of shared values:
both were predominantly Protestant
countries in an age when Christianity still
meant a great deal in national identity.
There was a sense that the British and
the Germans were the sober ones in
Europe, unlike the French who were seen
19/06/14 2:01 PM
 THE GREAT WAR: THE ORIGINS

by both the British and the Germans the schools. Tied into that growth of
Far left: A British
as rather skittish and frivolous. So you heightened nationalism was a sense that
poster from
would have thought that increased trade we are different and in some ways better. 1916 depicting
between Britain and Germany would have Ethnically-based nationalism requires an Germany and
fostered that sense of having something in opposite, it requires an enemy. AustriaHungary as
octopuses spreading
common. In fact it didnt. What common Tied in with this heightened
their tentacles
trade did sometimes was to create fears in nationalism was a growth in both the across Europe.
both countries that the other was jealous, extent and importance of public opinion. AWM ARTV00125
or that the other was cutting into natural This was something really new in Europe.
Below: A pre-war
markets. There were occasional waves of Until the middle of the century, most
recruitment poster
fear going through Britain that it was European rulers didnt have to worry about featuring Irish and
going to be invaded by the Germans. public opinion. They didnt have to worry Scottish Coldstream
Along the coast of Germany, there were about the next election. It was only as Guards and
Grenadier Guards.
fears that the British were planning a the century went on that it became more
AWM ARTV08967
surprise landing. So greater closeness did important to appeal to wider and wider
not necessarily bring greater friendship. sections of the population. The growth
Before 1914 there was also a period of public opinion was of course fuelled
of heightened nationalism. Th is wasnt by the spread of communications and
just a reaction to globalisation, this was literacy, and by the growth of the mass
something that had been building in media that made available cheap books
Europe since the end of the 18th century. and newspapers. And along with these
Before the 18th century most Europeans changes you get highly organised lobby
did not identify themselves as being part groups. These, and public opinion in
of a nation. They identified themselves as general, become things that rulers have to
belonging in this village or that village, take account of. This meant that if there
as living on this estate or that estate. was a crisis, governments found themselves
They identified themselves perhaps by being pushed in directions in which they
language, perhaps by religion, but national
identity was not something that most
people would have felt defined them. But
nationalism increasingly became a way in
which people identified themselves. It was
helped by the spread of communications
it was much easier to feel you were part
of something called the British nation
or the French nation if in your morning
newspaper you could read news from all
over that nation. And of course by the end
of the 18th century, many more people
were reading than had been able to read at
the beginning of the century.
But what you also got was the
elevation of the nation as something
greater than the sum of all its individuals,
and historians arguing that in some way
nations were eternal. Historians actually
play a malign role in this period. They
did in fact encourage the growth of these
passionate nationalisms, often by creating
national histories which portrayed a
particular nation German, French,
British or whatever as something that
had existed for a very long time, and
which would go on existing, to which
people owed allegiance. Often historians
created national histories which had
very little relation to the truth, and
these histories would then be taught in

WARTIME ISSUE 67 | 17

Wartime 67 Book.indb 17 19/06/14 2:01 PM

 did not necessarily want to go. And they
found the public was often more ferocious
in dealing with other nations than the
rulers themselves might have been.
Helmut von Moltke, the Elder,
architect of the German victories of
187071, urged his government, If we
get into such a war where the publics are
engaged, where public passion is engaged,
the great powers will find it difficult to
bring such wars to an end. And woe to
him who sets Europe alight, who puts
the first fuse to the powderkeg. Very
prescient words indeed. What you got, tied
to the growth of nationalism, was a belief
permeating European society that war was a
natural human activity. This was tied in part
to militarism. This was an age in which the
military were enormously admired and seen
as the bravest and noblest part of society.
What also helped to fuel this attitude
was the misapplication of Darwins ideas
about evolution and the ways in which
evolution worked in human society; that
is, assuming that human societies could be
divided up like species, so that you could
have a French species, a German species
or a British species. Social Darwinism
got people thinking as though war was
a natural part of human society. Just as
species in nature had natural predators, so
too did nations. You also got this notion
that those that are fittest will survive.
18 | WARTIME ISSUE 67
Wartime 67 Book.indb 18
Below: A fundraising
Such ideas found particular
badge collected resonances among the military but
by an Australian they did also go through society. There
soldier in England, were forces in Europe and ways of
depicting the ags
of the British,
thinking that helped to predispose many
French, Belgian and Europeans to the idea that war was
Russian allies. possibly a good thing. There was also
AWM REL41104.013 fear among those who worried about the
Bottom: A patriotic
future of the race: that somehow Europes
handkerchief from very success, and the very advances in
early in the war, European civilisation, were somehow
featuring troops of making people soft. There was a real fear,
the three Western
allies.
around the end of the 19th century, of
AWM REL38280 degeneracy. At this stage there emerged
the new so-called science of eugenics:
the idea that the race could be bred and
somehow manipulated, much as you
would try to breed a better tomato or
a better poodle. The fi rst international
eugenics conference was held in London
in 1912. Its patrons included Alexander
Graham Bell, the inventor of the
telephone; Winston Churchill, who
was First Lord of the Admiralty; and
Charles Eliot, the former president of
Harvard University. So these were
not just fringe ideas, they were ideas
affecting the establishment.
The final thing that tended to
predispose Europeans towards
thinking that war was something
good was the glamour of war. We
always underestimate it, but for
some people war is something glamorous.
Particularly among the younger generation
in Europe, there was a sense that somehow
they had missed out on the excitement and
the chance to prove themselves in the way
their fathers and uncles had. And there
were those of course, often revolutionaries,
who felt that war would help to destroy
the old society that war in fact would be
a good and an exciting thing.
However we should also remember
that there were a lot of people who
thought such thinking was ridiculous
and crazy. There were many people in
Europe who thought peace was the
natural situation for Europe and that it
was unthinkable that Europeans would
ever go to war again. There were equally
strong forces pushing Europe towards
peace as pushing it towards war. You got
the beginnings of mass organisations
devoted to struggling against war. The
word pacifism begins to be used widely
at this time. There were big international
campaigns for such things as arbitration,
19/06/14 2:01 PM

in which nations would settle their
disputes by voluntarily meeting and
agreeing beforehand that they would
accept the results of that arbitration. There
are two big disarmament conferences held
in the Hague before the First World War,
in which the nations come together to
talk not of getting rid of war but at least
of limiting war.
There is also a huge working class
movement in the Second International,
which brings together labour parties,
socialist parties from around the world.
Th is is potentially a very, very important
force because the number of people voting
socialist is growing. The British Labour
party had taken shape, for example, and
the German Social Democratic party
was the biggest in Germany by 1912.
It looks as though history is with the
working classes as they grow and flood
into the cities, and as more and more
countries become industrialised. The
Second International, which brings
these different parties together, holds
international congresses at two- or three-
year intervals, and at each one they talk
about what they would do if a general war
came. Speakers from all countries get up
and say, We and our members will not
fight in a general war, we can prevent
Wartime 67 Book.indb 19
THE GREAT WAR: THE ORIGINS
such a war. And of course they could
Above: Crowds have done. If the working classes across
outside the
o ces of The Europe and around the world had decided
Argus newspaper to go on strike, not only would the armies
in Melbourne have been unable to fi ll their ranks, but
anticipating the trains wouldnt have been able to run,
announcement of
the outbreak of war the factories would have stopped, ships
in 1914. could not have been loaded and unloaded.
AWM H11612 In effect, they had it in their hands: the
capacity to prevent a general war.
But there was trouble under the
surface of the movement. The German
socialists resisted French pressure for
a fi rm commitment to oppose a war,
should it break out. When Italy invaded
Libya in 1911, Italians socialists rejected
criticism of their governments civilising
mission. What happens to the Second
International when war breaks out is that
it literally falls to pieces on national lines.
But that wasnt clear before 1914, so you
do get evidence both ways: that there were
those in Europe that wanted a war, but
also those in Europe who were prepared
to work against it. If you look at the state
of Europe before 1914, war was by no
means foreordained.
The crisis of the summer of 1914 is
the time when Europe goes over the edge.
My own view is that it neednt have done
so, but there are several factors which
WARTIME ISSUE 67 | 19
19/06/14 2:01 PM
 THE GREAT WAR: THE ORIGINS
Right: A German
poster c. 1919
which reads
Bolshevism means
hunger and death,
but never peace.
AWM ARTV09317
Below: An unusually
wide poster from
1915. The British
regimental badges
on the soldiers
caps include
those of the Royal
Engineers, the Royal
Artillery, and the
Irish Guards.
AWM ARTV00585
contribute to making this the crisis in
which the the statesmen fail. One factor
is that they had actually succeeded before.
In earlier crises thered been talk of
war, even threats of war, but each time
diplomacy and deterrence had worked
and the powers had backed down. Each
previous crisis had been managed and
war had been averted. That very success,
I would argue, led to a very dangerous
sense of complacency in 1914. Th ings
began to get out of control before people
really took notice. What the previous
crises also did, however, was to leave a
residue of bad feeling and a determination
not to back down again. There was also
an assumption that it was too late in
the year to have a war. All the wars in
Europe up to this point had been fought
in JuneJuly, and theyd all been pretty
short. Nobody wanted to go to war late
in July, when there would not be enough
time for a campaign before winter set in.
Tied in with this was the assumption that
many were making about what a future
war would look like. Even if a war came,
people tended to assume it would be like
20 | WARTIME ISSUE 67
Wartime 67 Book.indb 20
other wars Europe had experienced in
the 19th century: short, sharp, a clear
victory, and then those who had been
fighting with each other would sit down
and discuss peace terms. There had been
warnings that the power of the defence
was getting very, very strong, that it was
getting more and more difficult to attack.
The Russo-Japanese War of 190405
had shown that attackers could expect
losses eight times greater than those of
defenders. But those warnings were either
discounted or explained away; or in some
cases, where the military did take them
seriously, they didnt know what else to
do but to keep attacking. There was a
strong belief that attacking forces could
still triumph, and so the military got very
interested in psychology: how do you
motivate soldiers so that they will rush
across a fi re-strewn battlefield and be
prepared to attack?
I think that if they had got through
ABOUT THE the crisis of 1914, things might have
looked very different in 1915, and people
AUTHOR might have made very different decisions.
Canadian
historian and
What you got in 1914 was a perfect storm
Oxford University in which a whole lot of things came
professor Margaret together at once. You got people in key
MacMillan is the positions who were determined upon
author of The war certain courses of action.
that ended peace. We cant explain how the war
She delivered happened I think there will always be
the Boeing arguments about those fatal steps that
commemorative led to war but what we can try to do is
lecture at the
understand what was in the minds of the
Australian War
people then, and try to understand how it
Memorial on
5 March 2014.
was that they came to think that war was
This is an edited a reasonable option in 1914. I dont think
transcript of we learn lessons from it, but we should be
her talk. warned that with all the best will in the
world, clever people, people in positions of
power, can make really stupid mistakes. We
shouldnt think we are cleverer than people
then, and we shouldnt think that we can
avoid catastrophes. One hundred years
later, we should be reminded that people in
1914 thought theyd have a nice short war
and could settle things and didnt.
19/06/14 2:01 PM