The new history of World War I and what it means for international relations theory

International Security

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 155-191

  Lieber, Keir A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

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EID: 37349123186     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2007.32.2.155     Document Type: Review

References (240)

1. David Lloyd George and Henry Kissinger quoted in Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, eds., The Origins of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 38-39;
2. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 72;
3. and Ross Douthat, "What Year Is It? 1938? 1972? Or 1914?" Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2006.
4. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 94;
5. Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 167-214;
6. Stephen Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), pp. 58-107;
7. Jack Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984," International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), pp. 108-146;
8. Charles L. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models," World Politics, Vol. 44, No. 4 (July 1992), pp. 497-538;
9. Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 50-90;
10. Charles L. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," World Politics, Vol. 50, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 171-201;
11. and Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
12. On the former, see John W. Langdon, July 1914: The Long Debate, 1918-1990 (New York: Berg, 1991);
13. Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London: Pearson, 2002);
14. and Hamilton and Herwig, The Origins of World War I.
15. On the latter, see Hew Strachan, The First World War, Vol. 1: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
16. and David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
17. See also Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War (New York: Berg, 2004).
18. Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), p. 56.
19. Among these so-called colored books, Deutsches Weissbuch [The German white book] was published on August 3, 1914.
20. Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1928);
21. and Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927).
22. Bernadotte E. Schmitt, The Coming of the War, 2 vols. (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1930). On these debates, see Langdon, July 1914;
23. and Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War, pp. 78-118.
24. See Holger H. Herwig, "Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany after the Great War," International Security, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1987), pp. 5-44;
25. Terence Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
26. and Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War, pp. 1-69, 105-113.
27. See also the official document collection Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871-1914 [The high policies of the European cabinets, 1871-1914], which was published in forty volumes between 1922 and 1927.
28. Albertini's work was published in Italy during World War II, but only appeared in English translation from 1952 to 1957 and was slow to disseminate. Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952-57). On Albertini's arguments and influence, see Langdon, July 1914, pp. 50-61, 130-131.
29. Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, Vol. 3: The Epilogue of the Crisis of July 1914: The Declaration of War and Neutrality, pp. 252-253.
30. Tuchman, The Guns of August;
31. and A.J.P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History (London: H. Hamilton, 1963).
32. See also A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery of Europe: 1848-1918 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954);
33. A.J.P. Taylor, War by Timetable: How the First World War Began (London: Macdonald, 1969), pp. 15-45, 119-121;
34. B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War (London: Faber, 1972), pp. 22-27;
35. and L.C.F. Turner, Origins of the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970). Tuchman's book and Taylor's The First World War and War by Timetable have had the most popular resonance, but not academic credibility. Taylor's Struggle for Mastery in Europe does have greater academic credibility, but his analysis in that book is similar to (and derives from) Albertini.
36. Taylor, War by Timetable, p. 121.
37. The term "great symphony" was used by Gen. Wilhelm Groener, one of the principal creators of the Schlieffen myth. Other retired officers in this "Schlieffen school" included Wilhelm von Hahnke, Hermann von Kuhl, Erich Ludendorff, and Wolfgang Förster.
38. The mythical narrative is summarized in Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 2-6. The idea that Moltke failed to keep the right flank strong was especially popularized in Tuchman, The Guns of August.
39. Quoted in Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, p. 37. Groener had served on the general staff under both chiefs and was closely involved in crafting the postwar official German military archive account of the conflict.
40. Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (New York: Praeger, 1958). The original version in German appeared in 1956.
41. Ibid., pp. 17, 66.
42. The problem of a uniquely German militarism is presented in Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, Vol. 2: The European Powers and the Wilhelminian Empire, 1890-1914 (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1969).
43. Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 90.
44. See L.L. Farrar Jr., The Short-War Illusion: German Policy, Strategy, and Domestic Affairs, August-December 1914 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1973);
45. and Gunther E. Rothenberg, "Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment," in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 296-325.
46. Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967). The original version in German appeared in 1961.
47. Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans. Marian Jackson (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975). The original version in German appeared in 1969.
48. Fischer states, "There is no doubt that the war which the German politicians started in July 1914 was not a preventive war fought out of 'fear and despair.' It was an attempt to defeat the enemy powers before they became too strong, and to realise Germany's political ambitions which may be summed up as German hegemony over Europe." Ibid., p. 470.
49. For example, in his first book, Fischer claimed that Germany's radically ambitious war aims were clearly reflected in the "September Programme," a list of goals for future peace negotiations drawn up by Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann Holweg one month after the outbreak of war in 1914. For Fischer, this document, which he had discovered among surviving files in the East German archives, constituted a blueprint for world domination in that it called for large territorial annexations, economic hegemony, and an African colonial empire. For critics, a list of plans put together during the heady days of the German offensive into France in early September could not be used as evidence for Germany's prewar objectives. Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War, pp. 103-106;
50. and Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War, pp. 132-133.
51. Critics also argued that Fischer exaggerated the importance of the infamous "war council" meeting between the German kaiser and his military advisers in December 1912-a meeting where Fischer in his second book claims that the German government settled on a design for a war that broke out a year and a half later. Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War, pp. 149-152, 157.
52. Fischer later appeared to soften his more extreme contention about the December 1912 war council, and scholars continue to challenge his view that Germany engineered a European war in 1914 as part of a bid for world power. Fritz Fischer, "Twenty-five Years Later: Looking Back at the 'Fischer Controversy' and Its Consequences," Central European History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (September 1988), pp. 207-223, at pp. 214-215;
53. and Marc Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 67-73.
54. One might argue that there was nothing new in Fischer that could not already be found in Albertini. Imanuel Geiss, one of Fischer's own students and followers, claimed that Fischer "did nothing more than introduce Albertini's results into Germany for the first time." Geiss, ed., July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War (New York: Scribner, 1967), p. 11. One might further argue that because Fischer's most ambitious claims were less convincing, Albertini's central thesis - that Germany deliberately took steps that risked a European war and thus bears the greatest responsibility for the war - is and should be seen as the standard account of the origins of the war to this day. Although Fischer's work may have had less impact on international diplomatic historians who already had access to English translations of Albertini's work, it still had a huge impact in Germany, and most important, it provides a counterview to Albertini. That is, Albertini asserts that Germany wanted only a local war between Austria and Serbia, whereas Fischer believes that Germany sought a much wider European war. To the extent that the newest evidence of German intentions bolsters Fischer and undermines Albertini, it is appropriate to emphasize their different contributions.
55. See Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War, chap. 4.
56. Some international relations scholars who applied the analogy of World War I to the Cold War were not defensive realists (or realists at all). See, for example, Miles Kahler, "Rumors of War: The 1914 Analogy," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Winter 1979/80), pp. 374-396.
57. On the security dilemma and spiral model, see Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, pp. 58-113;
58. Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma";
59. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy";
60. and Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited."
61. On offense-defense theory, see Van Evera, Causes of War.
62. For a critique, see Keir A. Lieber, "Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International Security," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 71-104;
63. and Keir A. Lieber, War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics over Technology (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).
64. Works linking defensive realist concepts to World War I include Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, pp. 92-95;
65. Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma"; Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War";
66. Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984";
67. Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984);
68. and Van Evera, Causes of War.
69. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, p. 94. See also pp. 92-94 and examples throughout chap. 3.
70. Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War."
71. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
72. Glaser, "Political Consequences of Military Strategy";
73. and Glaser, "Realists as Optimists."
74. See Scott D. Sagan, "1914 Revisited: Allies, Offense, and Instability," International Security, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1986), pp. 151-175;
75. Sean M. Lynn-Jones, "Détente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations, 1911-1914," International Security, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1986), pp. 121-150;
76. Marc Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 120-150;
77. Jack S. Levy, "Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in July 1914," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 151-186;
78. Jonathan Shimshoni, "Technology, Military Advantage, and World War I: A Case for Military Entrepreneurship," International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 187-215;
79. and Copeland, The Origins of Major War, pp. 56-117.
80. Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," p. 167. Jack Snyder writes, "Counterproductive aggressive policies are caused most directly by the idea that the state's security can be safeguarded only through expansion. This idea, the central myth of empire, was the major force propelling every case of overexpansion by the industrialized great powers." He also writes, however, that "much imperial expansion is unproblematic: the strong conquer the weak because it pays."
81. Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 1, 10.
82. Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," pp. 58, 63-64, 66.
83. More recently, in seeking to balance the relationship between predatory and security motives in the context of civil wars, Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis offer a more nuanced interpretation of World War I, yet one that still relies heavily on the security dilemma: "Germany was not a status quo state in the years before World War I; nonetheless, its aggressive policy in 1914 can be understood only in terms of the security dilemma provoked by its own earlier belligerence, not as the result of a simple calculation that the predatory benefits of conquest would be worth the costs and risks." Snyder and Jervis, "Civil War and the Security Dilemma," in Barbara F. Walter and Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 15-37, at p. 23.
84. Zuber published his core claims in Terence Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered," War in History, Vol. 6, No. 3 (July 1999), pp. 262-305;
85. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan;
86. and Terence Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan: Fantasy or Catastrophe?" History Today, Vol. 52, No. 9 (September 2002), pp. 40-46.
87. He defended his arguments in Terence Zuber, "Debate: Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan," War in History, Vol. 8, No. 4 (November 2001), pp. 468-476;
88. Terence Zuber, "Debate: Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan-Again," War in History, Vol. 10, No. 1 (January 2003), pp. 92-101;
89. Terence Zuber, "Debate: The Schlieffen Plan Was an Orphan," War in History, Vol. 11, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 220-225;
90. and Terence Zuber, "The 'Schlieffen Plan' and German War Guilt," War in History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 96-108. An edited volume based on the proceedings from an international conference dedicated to Zuber's thesis is forthcoming.
91. These were the drafts and copies of Schlieffen's memorandum of December 1905, a supplemental text from February 1906, Moltke's annotations and supplement to these documents (dated 1911), and Schlieffen's 1912 supplement. Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan;
92. and Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 42-46.
93. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 9-10;
94. and Robert T. Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870-1916 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 93.
95. Wilhelm Dieckmann, "Der Schlieffenplan," unpublished and unfinished manuscript, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg, W10/50220.
96. Zuber's translation of the Dieckmann document appears in Terence Zuber, German War Planning: 1891-1914: Sources and Interpretations (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2004), pp. 49-121.
97. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 136-138;
98. and Robert T. Foley, "Debate: The Real Schlieffen Plan," War in History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2006), pp. 91-115, at pp. 92-96.
99. Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered," p. 270.
100. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, p. vii.
101. Schlieffen's August 25, 1889, study appears in Dieckmann, "Der Schlieffenplan," annex 2, pp. 227-239,
102. quoted in Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 138-139. Schlieffen makes a similar complaint in his 1905 study.
103. See Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 143.
104. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 138-141, 214.
105. Ibid., p. 214.
106. See Stig Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares: German Military Leadership and the Images of Future Warfare, 1871-1914," in Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Förster, eds., Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871-1914 (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, 1999), p. 358 n. 58. Förster writes that the presence of these imaginary corps in Schlieffen's study might have been his "way of telling his successor to force through his long-cherished demand for the full realization of universal conscription."
107. See also Foley, "Debate: The Real Schlieffen Plan," p. 55;
108. and Annika Mombauer, "Of War Plans and War Guilt: The Debate Surrounding the Schlieffen Plan," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 5 (October 2005), pp. 857-885, at p. 865.
109. The marginal notes in Schlieffen's memorandum are indicated in Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, pp. 131-148; the supplemental memorandum appears in ibid., pp. 165-167.
110. Germany's dispatch of a warship to the Moroccan port of Agadir that summer secured its commercial rights in French-controlled Morocco and won it territorial concessions in the Congo, but the German action exacerbated relations with Britain and bolstered diplomatic ties between Britain and France.
111. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 214-217.
112. Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan Was an Orphan," p. 220.
113. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, p. 217.
114. Ibid., p. 212.
115. Strachan, To Arms, p. 166.
116. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 46, 218.
117. Ibid., p. 31.
118. Ibid., pp. 36, 51. International relations scholars have long been aware of the gap between the number of forces called for in the 1905 document and those available in 1914, and frequently note Schlieffen's professed skepticism about having enough forces for the operation. See, for example, Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive, pp. 108-116. In Schlieffen's words, it is "an enterprise for which we are too weak."
119. Quoted in Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 66. Snyder and others, however, largely rely on Ritter's interpretation that Schlieffen's memo presented the general plan for a two-front war designed to achieve decisive victory in a short time by using the bulk of the German army to envelop Paris. Zuber's work undermines this interpretation.
120. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 212-213.
121. Ibid., pp. 206, 213.
122. Ibid., p. 45.
123. Zuber, "The Schlieffen Plan: Fantasy or Catastrophe?" p. 46.
124. Ibid. See also Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 298-299.
125. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 258-263, 267-280, 303. Zuber acknowledges that from September 2 to September 5, Moltke briefly harbored a hope that the German 1st and 2nd Armies might turn the flank of the retreating French armies and push the French forces onto the Swiss border. But, Zuber argues, this was the first time such an operation was mentioned, and the idea was abandoned when German intelligence reported that elements of the French army had already reached Paris and other forces were being withdrawn from the French center and right wing. Ibid., pp. 276-277.
126. Ibid., p. 5.
127. Ibid., p. 304.
128. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
129. Ibid., pp. 7-8.
130. See, for example, Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, chap. 2.
131. Zuber addresses the issue in Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, chaps. 1, 6.
132. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 48-51, 304.
133. The relevant works are Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964);
134. Martin Kitchen, A Military History of Germany: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975);
135. L.C.F. Turner, "The Significance of the Schlieffen Plan," in Paul M. Kennedy, ed., The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979), pp. 199-221;
136. Jehuda L.Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986);
137. Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian War Planning (New York: Berg, 1991);
138. and Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (London: Arnold, 1997).
139. Strachan writes, "All the older literature needs to be revised in the light of Zuber." Strachan, To Arms, p. 166.
140. See, for example, Terence M. Holmes, "Debate: The Reluctant March on Paris: A Reply to Terence Zuber's 'The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered,'" War in History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (April 2001), pp. 208-232;
141. Terence M. Holmes, "Debate: The Real Thing: A Reply to Terence Zuber's 'Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan,'" War in History, Vol. 9, No. 1 (January 2002), pp. 111-120;
142. Robert T. Foley, "Debate: The Origins of the Schlieffen Plan," War in History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 222-232;
143. Terence M. Holmes, "Debate: Asking Schlieffen: A Further Reply to Terence Zuber," War in History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 464-479;
144. Foley, "Debate: The Real Schlieffen Plan"; and especially Mombauer, "Of War Plans and War Guilt."
145. Most historians have rejected Zuber's highly revisionist conclusion that the case for German war guilt collapses if there was no Schlieffen Plan. Zuber contends that France and Russia were the aggressors; Germany's political and military strategy was fundamentally defensive; and France and Russia attacked first in 1914 as the German armies stood on the defensive on both fronts. The German army's attack on Liège in Belgium (which preceded the French offensives and is generally considered to mark the start of the war) was a defensive move to preempt military threats emanating from Belgian territory. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, pp. 56, 265, 302-304. This conclusion is weak, and stems from Zuber's virtually exclusive focus on military operations that were crucial to Germany's war plan without properly analyzing the broader political and strategic context. Given that Germany faced enemies on two fronts, it was compelled to try to capitalize on its interior lines and railroad mobility to launch debilitating counterstrikes against flanks of French and Russian attackers. In doing so, it transformed its geographic position from a liability into an advantage. But this was defensive war only in an operational sense, not in a grand strategic or political sense. For a thorough and convincing critique of Zuber's position on the question of German war guilt,
146. see Mombauer, "Of War Plans and War Guilt."
147. Holmes, "Debate: The Reluctant March on Paris";
148. Holger H. Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion: Toward a New Interpretation?" Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 3 (July 2002), pp. 681-693, at p. 683;
149. and Foley, "Debate: The Origins of the Schlieffen Plan."
150. Mombauer, "Of War Plans and War Guilt," p. 866.
151. Holmes, "Debate: The Reluctant March on Paris," p. 13.
152. Foley, "Debate: The Real Schlieffen Plan."
153. For Zuber's rejoinder, see Zuber, "The 'Schlieffen Plan' and German War Guilt."
154. Stephen Van Evera, "Why Cooperation Failed in 1914," World Politics, Vol. 38, No. 1 (October 1985), pp. 80-117, at p. 81.
155. Van Evera, Causes of War, p. 194.
156. George H. Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System (New York: Wiley, 1977), pp. 79-80.
157. Van Evera, Causes of War, p. 194.
158. Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," p. 106.
159. Ibid.; and Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984."
160. Van Evera, Causes of War, p. 204.
161. Ibid., p. 238.
162. Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," p. 191.
163. Quester, Offense and Defense in the International System, p. 11.
164. John H. Maurer, The Outbreak of the First World War: Strategic Planning, Crisis Decision Making, and Deterrence Failure (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995), p. xi.
165. See also Farrar, The Short-War Illusion.
166. See Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 343-376.
167. For a short summary of Förster's thesis, see Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion," pp. 681-693.
168. Among Förster's works in German, see Stig Förster, "Der deutsche Generalstab und die Illusion des kurzen Krieges, 1871-1914: Metakritik eines Mythos" [German military leadership and the images of future warfare, 1871-1914: Dreams and nightmares], Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, Vol. 54, No. 1 (1995), pp. 61-98.
169. See also Strachan, To Arms, pp. 1005-1014;
170. and Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 211, 283-289.
171. Strachan, To Arms, pp. 166-167.
172. See also Stig Förster, "Facing 'People's War': Moltke the Elder and Germany's Military Options after 1871," Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (June 1987), pp. 209-230.
173. Quoted in Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 18.
174. Helmuth von Moltke, "Defensive and Offensive (1874)," in Daniel J. Hughes, ed., Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings (Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1993), p. 52.
175. See also Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 350-355.
176. See Förster, "Facing 'People's War'";
177. Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 352-355;
178. and Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun, pp. 25-30.
179. Quoted in Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," p. 347.
180. Quoted in the newly recovered manuscript by Dieckmann, "Der Schlieffenplan," pp. 53-57;
181. and in Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 355-356.
182. Quoted in Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 144.
183. Strachan, To Arms, pp. 163-172, 1008-1010;
184. Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan, chap. 4;
185. Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares"; Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 72-80, 95;
186. and Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, pp. 145-195.
187. See Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares";
188. Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion," pp. 688-692;
189. and Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 94-95, 211, 285, 287-288.
190. Quoted in Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 363-364.
191. Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion," pp. 688-689.
192. Michael Geyer, "German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945," in Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 530-531.
193. Quoted in Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 95.
194. Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," p. 364.
195. Quoted in ibid., pp. 364-365 (emphasis in original).
196. "The 'men of 1914,'" as Holger Herwig writes, "were united in the belief that a general European war would be anything but short." Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion," p. 691.
197. Helmuth von Moltke, "General Observations on the Schlieffen Plan," in Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan, p. 165.
198. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 93-98.
199. Quoted in Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares," pp. 364-365, 373;
200. and in Herwig, "Germany and the 'Short War' Illusion," p. 692.
201. See Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 283-289. She writes, "The evidence now available confirms without a doubt that Moltke and his colleagues wanted war and had sufficient influence over their political colleagues to achieve their aim." Ibid., p. 287.
202. This article focuses on German behavior during the July crisis, largely because Germany is the key actor for understanding how the crisis led to war, but a large and contentious historical literature on the role of the other European powers has emerged in recent years - much of which pinpoints steps that other states took that exacerbated the crisis. See Samuel R. Williamson Jr. and Ernest R. May, "An Identity of Opinion: Historians and July 1914," Journal of Modern History, Vol. 79, No. 2 (June 2007), pp. 335-387;
203. Hamilton and Herwig, The Origins of World War I;
204. and Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
205. On how underlying attitudes of decisionmakers during the July crisis were shaped by the arms competition and perceptions of power in Europe in the decade leading up to the conflict, see David G. Herrmann, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996);
206. and David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War, Europe, 1904-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
207. Explanations about crisis dynamics in the outbreak of World War I are well known, whether appearing in extreme form in older historical accounts (Albertini, Taylor, Tuchman, and Turner) or in modified form in the works of international relations scholars (Jervis, Thomas C. Schelling, Snyder, and Van Evera). Powerful critiques of such explanations also exist, most notably those by Marc Trachtenberg and Dale Copeland. Therefore, the discussion here need only highlight how the new history reinforces the argument that crisis dynamics were not to blame for the outbreak of the war.
208. For earlier challenges to the thesis that Germany expected British neutrality, see Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," pp. 135-136;
209. and Copeland, The Origins of Major War, chaps. 3-4.
210. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 132.
211. Both statements are quoted in ibid., p. 139.
212. Quoted in Copeland, The Origins of Major War, p. 105.
213. "No. 629: The Imperial Chancellor to the Emperor, August 2, 1914," in Max Montgelas and Walther Schucking, eds., The Outbreak of the World War: German Documents Collected by Karl Kautsky, trans. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 478 (capitals in original).
214. As Marc Trachtenberg concludes, the German desire for its adversaries to take the first military steps toward war was "more like a 'second strike' than a 'first strike' strategy, and thus in this respect can hardly be considered 'destabilizing.'" Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," p. 147.
215. Dale Copeland writes, "It is clear that the biggest fear in Berlin in the last days of peace was not that war might occur, but that it might not." Copeland, The Origins of Major War, p. 110.
216. Important analyses of German military leaders, especially of Falkenhayn and Moltke, that draw on this evidence include Förster, "Dreams and Nightmares";
217. Holger Afflerbach, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich [Political thinking in the empire] (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994);
218. Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun;
219. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke;
220. and Dennis Showalter, "From Deterrence to Doomsday Machine: The German Way of War, 1890-1914," Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (July 2000), pp. 679-710.
221. Falkenhayn diary, July 29, 1914.
222. Ibid., quoted in Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 199.
223. Quoted in Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 207.
224. An excellent recent account of this is found in Copeland, The Origins of Major War, pp. 105-113.
225. A classic example is Ritter, The European Powers and the Wilhelminian Empire, 1890-1914.
226. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 286.
227. Albertini, The Epilogue of the Crisis of July 1914, pp. 15-17,
228. quoted in Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," p. 143.
229. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, p. 288.
230. See also Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," pp. 143-144.
231. David Stevenson challenges the view of the unstoppable momentum of military plans in the context of railroad mobilization requirements. See Stevenson, "War by Timetable? The Railway Race before 1914," Past and Present, No. 162 (February 1999), pp. 163-194. Stevenson argues elsewhere that to the extent military measures or imperatives drove crisis escalation, the crucial dynamics occurred not in July 1914 but rather in a process of armaments competition and cycle of aggressive diplomacy beginning in 1905.
232. See Stevenson, "Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 125-161.
233. The incident is recounted in detail in Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 219-224.
234. See also Trachtenberg, "The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914," pp. 140-142.
235. For an interesting account of how scholars have misinterpreted this event, see Trachtenberg, The Craft of International History, pp. 46-49.
236. Stevenson also rejects the idea that war occurred because of a disconnect between policy objectives and military imperatives: "Civilian statesmen rather than military professionals controlled the [great] powers' policies." Stevenson, "Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914," p. 155.
237. On the relationship between diplomatic history and international relations theory, see "Symposium: History and Theory," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 5-85;
238. and Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds., Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).
239. Charles Glaser suggests that even if Germany provoked World War I for the sole purpose of expansion, this would not be inconsistent with the central claims of the spiral model. This finding would undermine the thesis that the war was inadvertent, "but discrediting the spiral model requires going a step
240. For an insightful discussion of how and why international relations scholars are not particularly good at this, see William C. Wohlforth, "A Certain Idea of Science: How International Relations Theory Avoids the New Cold War History," Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 39-60.