In the 1960's a German professor arrived at a series of theories on Germany and WWI that came to be known as the "Fisher thesis."
In his Germany's aims in the First World War Fisher claimed Germany wantede to create a series of buffer states including Belgium in the west and Russia's Polish and Baltic states in the east.
In War of Illusions Fisher claimed Germany used the assasination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand to launch a war of agression that was planned for by 1912 or earlier.
I have not read these works but they make serious charges against the pre-war German government. Any comments?

I always found it odd that WWI started with an assassination in the Balkans but the majority of the fighting ended up on the Franco-German border. I always thought the Germans were taking advantage of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to restart some old fires from past wars with France.

The Kaiser had built a big, modern Navy and a big Army and wanted a excuse to use them. He pushed the whole thing.
He wanted a chance to play with his toys.

Also, the Germans had had the Schlieffen Plan for the invasion of France available for a while. I believe it called for three armies to circle around Paris and envelop it. Instead, von Kluck turned north of Paris, and the French "taxicab army" hit him in the flank at the Marne River.

Germany beleived that it was surrounded by enemies and that, in the event of a conflict, to wait till it was attacked would mean defeat. After the alignment of Russia with France, it believed that it had to knock out France first and then turn to fight Russia in the east. Every country in Europe could mobilize and hold, but to Germany, mobilization meant war.
In the months following the start of the war, Germany was crippled by high unemployment as the factories re-tooled for war production and laid off workers. That's one factor driving the enlistment rates following the outbreak of the war. If Germany had been planning the war for years, it could be argued that it would have had the industrial sector prepared for war. As it was, German war production was completely unprepared for a conflict.

I heard that a day or two after the war started, the Kaiser got cold feet and told von Moltke to recall the troops. Von Moltke had to tell him there was no way to do that.

quote:

If Germany had been planning the war for years, it could be argued that it would have had the industrial sector prepared for war. As it was, German war production was completely unprepared for a conflict.

Not true, JP. Most historians agree that Germany was at least equal to her adversaries in 1914. One theory was that Germany went on the offensive because if they stood by and did nothing, by 1916 they would be in an untenable situation; surounded and militarily inferiour.

oops...been away.

Unemployment among German Trade unions rose from
2.9 % in July 1914 to
22.4% in August
15.7% in September
10.9% in October
8.2 % in November
7.2% in December 1914
6.5% in January 1915
5.1 in Feburary
3.3 in March
and back to 2.9% in April
(The German Inflation, 1914-1923 pg. 199)

The French and Germans were no better off in the early years of the First World War, experiencing severe ammunition shortages until their industries had undergone an unprecendented conversion to military production. (Field Artillery and Firepower pg 28)

In 1914 the German Army had approx. 8000 guns with a limber of 280 rounds per gun. War stock gave each gun a theoritical 1000 rounds per gun but this was exhausted within 6 weeks of the war's start. Ibid footnotes pg. 28 (van crevell, 1970 pg. 110)

Granted, Germany had an Army of 25 corps and the 2nd largest Navy, and a national system of conscription second-to-none, but I was countering the long held opinion that German had secretly prepared for and caused the war by pointing out how unprepared her industrial sector had been. German industry took almost 9 months to convert and retool from domestic to war production and laid off workers during the period.

Being of half German descent, I have struggled for some time with the question of how a people became so incensed that they were able to tolerate to the excesses that were prevalent in the third Reich.

Whilst I don't subscribe to the "stab in the back" theory, I am nevertheless convinced that the Germans felt done in and were unduly susceptible to the likes of Herr Hitler. This gave rise in me to the question: is the accepted version of how he war started, correct?

I have tried for some time to research this issue but my sources are extremely limited and I have barely a smattering of German, hence have to rely only on secondary Anglo Saxon sources, which is hardly ideal because "history", as we know, is invariably written by the victors. Hence, one is always well advised to steer well clear of the concept of the so-called "Truth" put forward by the generally accepted sources and rather to look at the bare, undisputed facts and then to draw such conclusions from them as may appear more logical.

Certainly, almost all British sources are heavily influenced by the fact that by 1917, Britain was losing the war and was making desperate appeals for help to the USA. One must also keep in mind that British pride had suffered a near mortal blow as a result of the mediocre performance of the Royal Navy, particularly at Jutland, but that is a subject worthy of discourse on its own.

One final preface: normally historians are obsessed with chronological "cause and effect" analyses: I don't subscribe to this methodology as it seeks to arrange facts, usually those selected for this purpose by so-called authorities - in a date sequence - and is therefore by definition judgemental. This suffers from a number of other limitations, some of the most important being that:

(a) often, history is shaped by private discussions that remain forever off the record, so that some events occur without apparent cause. In this vein, all "British" pronouncements prior to the lapse of the Official Secrets Act period are for instance, necessarily incomplete regardless of the credibility of the author. Also in this vein, an overt or recorded act might often have unrecorded consequences that may be relied upon as much as - if not more than - on the recorded act;

(b) equally often, the dictum that "(stuff) happens" applies. In this vein, a party might not have intended any specific occurrence, but a fortuitous occurrence may suit it as well, if not better, than if that party had planned it. If such a party exploits rather than denounces the benefits of that occurrence, that party clearly ratifies it, retroactively, asif it had been caused by an act of his own will; and last but not least

(c) more often than not, the utterances of politicians and newsmen of any flavour are at variance with the facts.

I am not familiar with Fisher's work nor the evidence he purports to base his theory on and will therefore only venture a general comment.

The premise of my thoughts is that the German movements of August 1914 amounted to nothing more than a pre-emptive strike.

Since the 1967 Six Day War, the concept of "pre-emptive" strike has become firmly established in International Law. It was known to Britain before WWI (viz. the First Sea Lord's dictum of "hit first, hit hardest, hit longest" etc.) However, when on the receiving end of pre-emptive strikes in 1914 and at Pearl Harbour, the victor's propagandists chose to label it as "naked agression", and this has become the accepted version of the "truth" - purely on the say-so of one side to the conflict.

To determine wheter this is correct, the question is thus essentially: which one of the two did the German conduct amount to.

Fisher's work seems to be the first to attempt to outline actual German ambitions and I am therefore extremely curious to see it. If there is evidence of ambitions that went beyond mere self-preservation then one should obviously concede to the generally held view.

In the meantime I dissent and my reasons are as follows:

It seems to be agreed that The Great War was, at its most basic, really a continuation of the French- and therefore European revolution. The war as such became inevitable after the failure of France's 1870/71 adventure - one that even Anglo Saxon sources seem to acknowledge, was an act of pure aggression on Napoleon's part. The humiliation that France suffered, combined with the loss of territory meant no less than that a further war would ensue: it was merely a question of time and a suitable excuse. That would however only account for a conflict between France and Germany and does not explain by itself the extent of the calamity that followed.

When one reads the sources, one is struck by how virtually all of them refer to the formation of alliances in the latter half of the 19th Century, almost unfailingly as mechanisms to position the parties concerned with a view to the coming conflict; it seems that treaties were seldom signed with any other purpose in mind. Thus, all of Europe knew that war was coming but it seems too, that everyone knew well in advance that that war would involve much more than a mere territorial dispute between France and Germany.

The Germans, certainly, were fully aware of France's simmering intentions. However, they appear to have been conscious from a very early stage that France was not the only threat. Sources refer time and again to how anxious they were to avoid a war on two fronts - indicating that their eyes were turned eastwards. The previously questions are therefore:

(a) whether the Germans anticipated to be on the defensive - and this would include the concept of a pre-emptive strike or;

(b) whether they instigated the war to satisfy some or the other undefined ambition in Europe or elsewhere - as Fisher seems to believe.

I have read fairly widely and have yet to discern any benefit identified by Germany at the time - other than self preservation - as worthy of going to war for. The crime fiction writers'dictum of "motive, method and opportunity" has always struck me as sound. Judged by those criteria it just makes no kind of sense for Germany to have gone to war other than for, as I've said, self preservation and if that was their motive, then it should not matter in any event whether or not they started the war.

Indeed, the Schlieffen plan's (undisputed) express purpose was not to conquer territory, but to put France out of the war quickly so that the Russian threat could be dealt with. The Germans' stated intention of transferring their armies to the East after neutralising France is simply inconsistent with German territorial ambitions Westwards.

Anglo Saxon sources leans heavily towards option (b) but does not, as far as I've been able to discern, identify the ambition that Germany supposedly sought to fulfil by going to war. Instead, (other than apparently Mr Fisher) they avoid the issue and and then speak equally vaguely of:

i) German militarism; and

ii) Kaiser Wilhelm's aggressiveness as prime motivators.

Assuming that a nation is prepared to risk war for such reasons, then the question arises whether the facts support either propostion.

As regards the militarism (i):

As far as I could establish, German pre-war politics were divided as follows: a conservative sector - shall we call it monarchist - which included the pre-democracy institutions, notably the landowners and military leadership; they steadily conceded territory to popular parliamentary rule towards the turn of the century, in which liberals, centrists (for which read Catholics) and radicals (or rather socialists/labour movements) gained increasing power. To say therefore that the society was militarist as a whole is simply not supported by the facts. Indeed, the military budget remained almost constantly the prime political bargaining chip (that is, until the writing on the wall became too clear to ignore and the parties all rallied behind the military).

What is true, is that the German army, such as it was, was probably the most efficient in the world. The British Army was possibly equally efficient but its size and purpose does not make for a good comparison. Certainly, the German Army was in a state of preparedness unequalled by any other as the leadership knew very well that it had limited resources and was faced by very definite threats from both East and West. The (rather convoluted) argument must therefore go something like this: "Germany perceives herself to be under threat. She organises herself as best she can with the limited means at her disposal to meet that threat, which unfortunately happens to be better than almost anyone else is able to, therefore she must be the aggressor".

As regards the second proposition, judging by Wilhelm's utterances, can it be said that Germany truly felt itself threatened or did he secretly harbour territorial or other ambitions against its neighbours?

As far as I could establish, Wilhelm claimed that he wanted nothing more than a "place in the sun" for his people, as per the famous speech of one of his officials. Presciently, he foresaw the yellow peril and, rather naively, sought Great Britain as an ally in the Far East.

That does not strike one at a first glance as being the stance of a warmonger. Was Wilhelm merely putting up a front, or was he in truth the unstable despot that British historians would have us believe him to have been?

To answer this, one must look at the status quo as at the eve of war. Various threads, in no particular date sequence, wind their way up to Wilhelm's position as at August, 1914. Some of the more significant ones ought to be considered:

It must be remembered at the outset, perhaps, that until the mid 19th century, Britain was the undisputed leader in the Industrial Revolution. It indisputably ruled the waves and the sun quite literally never set on the map it had painted red in the first half of the century. It held nominal sway over vast tracts of the world that it neither could, nor particularly wanted to, effectively control - South Africa being a shining example:

As a colony it was regarded - at least until the mid 19th Century - as a backwater, a drain on the exchequer that, by the 1840's, government was on the point of abandoning to self rule. It was only when diamonds, gold, but more importantly huge coal deposits were discovered beyond the boundaries of the Cape and Natal in relatively short order, that it was suddenly deemed desirable to establish a federation under home rule and to bestow the glory of English civilisation on the sovereign areas occupied by the recalcitrant Boers and savage "******s".

Recorded history shows that it was not beyond Britain to manufacture incidents to spark off the Zulu war, only to learn to their shock at Isandhlwana that King Cetshwayo (who by all accounts was as baffled by the onset of war as Wilhelm appears to have been scarcely 35 years later) was determined to defend his people's land.

Neither was it beyond the British to try and re-enact a Texas style take-over in the Transvaal by flooding the Rand with migrant diggers who then claimed citizenship rights only to learn to their horror that the farmer "volk" was equally determined to defend their freedom.

There can be no argument with greed - it is a rather unfortunate yet enduring part of the human condition. However, one wonders how the Lord must have flinched when Britain's pure, unadulterated greed was passed off under the guise of a mission to bring His Word to the noble savage. It stands perhaps as the sole redeeming grace of the English nation that large numbers of its citizens, soldiers and even politicians found these two wars - particularly that which was fought against their fellow Christians, the Boers and more particulalry the way in which it was fought, (which equals almost anything the Germans did in the 40's) abhorrent in the extreme - a sentiment shared by William II, who unfortunately made no secret of his views.

One cannot imagine that, being censured in front of the whole world by a fellow peer and family member to boot, sat well with the powers that be in Whitehall. (The slight to national pride must rank well among the causes of hardening attitudes in Britain).

One direct consequence of Britain's self styled mission to civilize the world was that, whilst its energies were dissipated by the pursuit of colonial fortunes, Germany became the leader in the "second" Industrial Revolution. The vested industrial interests in Britain must no doubt have agitated for limits to be imposed on this rapid expansion.

It is simply so that the discovery of mineral deposits in distant territories had led to a race - in the latter half the 19th century - by all nations who were able to do so, to acquire such territories and by those who had them, to consolidate their control over them.

As regards the major role players, the following facts are of interest in understanding why Wilhelm must have been a rather puzzled and frustrated man by 1914:

Britain and France had made common cause after the defeat of Napoleon I and had indeed gone to war together in the Crimea in the middle of the 19th century.

The absence of source material on this issue leads me to believe that this friendship probably even extended as far as that Britain did not wholeheartedly condemn France's sortie into the German speaking territories in 1870.

On the contrary, if one looks at the way in which France got, and held on to the lion's share of Africa second only to Britain, the conclusion mitigates against anything else than a growing and lasting friendship - which a few adverse incidents such as that at Fashoda did nothing to dispel. Certainly, France's colonial ambitions, other than those a few miles South across the Mediterranean where it's fledgling navy could project those ambitions, could only be realised with the acquiescence of the British. One cannot but help to conclude that France took care of Britain's interests in the Med as a quid pro quo for gaining leeway elsewhere.

A fact almost universally overlooked in the sources that I have read is that Belgium, having secured a guarantee of neutrality from, amongst others, Germany towards the end of the 30's then acquired possessions in Africa out of all possible proportion to its ranking as a world power, a fact that is worth a later revisit. This too, could only have been possible with the acquiescence of the British despite their reported initial opposition to Leopold's ambitions.

Thus, to and outsider, it seems that rather than being an irrational provocateur, William's utterances may rather have been those of one who felt that Germany had been somewhat excluded or even hard done by when Africa was being carved up. Certainly he must have felt that he was not being invited to "play with big boys" whose equal he no doubt was. Would he have been justified in this frustration?

The Germans, counting among the top of the so-called "powers", must have felt that there was some sort of gentleman's agreement that future colonial dispensations would be made, if not equally, then at least proportionally. Certainly, the virtual exclusion of Germany from Morocco, one of the last remaining "independent" African territories, in favour of France, cannot by any permutation of the facts have been deemed to be fair.

One cannot but wonder, given the open provocation that whole Moroccan episode provided, if it had not been hoped for- or even have been manipulated by France, as a pretext to initiate the fight that it was spoiling for. Again, almost certainly, if Germany had harboured aggressive ambitions, it would hardly have passed up on that opportunity as a causa justus bellum. Instead, she walked away from it after a token protest.

Indeed, the fact that Willaim did not continue Bismarck's policy of appeasement to the end, is in itself oft cited as a cause of the war. That argument must logically go something like this: "We're needling you and needling you, Germany. Otto always allowed us to push you people around but now you, William, are suddenly starting to take umbrage so naturally, you are the who's looking for trouble".

Of course, once the ugly duckling desert shutzgebiet of what is today Namibia, turned into the diamond bearing jewel in the crown of the Reich, the die was cast.

It is hardly surprising that Germany was almost immediately identified as a foe by the likes of Jacky Fisher and also mooted as the most likely naval threat. The argument, if one analyses it, must go somewhat like this: "Britannia rules the waves. If you, Wilhelm, have a piece of land over the sea that proves to be valuable to you, you are not allowed a navy to protect those interests. You may only exercise control over your dominion by the grace of the Queen. If you should acquire such a navy, it shall be deemed a threat and you shall have to be subdued (for which read, we shall have to punish you by taking your diamond producing colony away - which in the event proved to be one of the first items on Britain's agenda after getting the BEF across the channel)."

I shall revert later to the issue of the so-called Naval race but suffice it to say that the implications of the incident during the Boer war when the Royal Navy boarded a German merchantman, cannot have been clearer than if written on the wall in pink neon.

Thus, at a time when Germany was ambivalent in its attitude towards Britain and indeed aspired towards an alliance with it, the British had long since identified Germany as a "threat". Germany, most certainly, had no territorial aspirations against the British Empire and fully realised that the island fortress itself would be in any event be impossible to subdue. The converse, quite clearly, was not the case. Unfortunately for them, Germany only belatedly realised that it faced a deadly foe in the British Empire.

The Kaiser, in the circumstances, must be forgiven if he felt frustrated when he could not grasp why German diplomacy failed him so repeatedly. When he proclaimed: "...mein Gewissen ist rein: Ich habe den Krieg nicht gewolt..." I for one, am inclined to believe him.

At a first glance, it would seem that I lay the blame for the war at the door of Britain and France. The issue is not quite so simple though.

Some of the more recent (i.e. post WWII) Anglo Saxon sources have presented slightly moderated views on German guilt, two of the most favoured theories being that Germany was drawn into the war by Austria and that Germany became committed to war by dint of railway time tables.

I personally subscribed to the latter theory until fairly recently: it holds that the Schlieffen plan required the German army to move West, via Belgium, and then South in order to envelop Paris, which is correct. However, the theory then goes further to say that once the rail movement began, mobilisation could not be halted as all surprise would be lost.

This is simply not the case. It now appears that the allies-to-be, had had prior knowledge of the Schlieffen plan for many years prior to 1914 - an actual copy was, I believe, in their hands as early as a decade before. Even if they had had no actual knowledge of the plan I doubt that it would have mattered one way or the other. The following facts support this:

There were only two feasible routes of invasion from Germany into France at the time. The one was to the South, through the corridor at Verdun, this corridor being hemmed in yet further South by a mountain range; it was distant, traditionally fortified and therefore not ideal.

The second lay to the North of the Ardennes and is of some interest.

It runs, notionally, through Belgium and is bordered (politically) on the North by a protuberance of the Netherlands. To the South it runs along the geographical barrier presented by the oft steeply banked, formidable River Meuse that curls round the craggy and thickly forested Ardennes that was itself widely believed, even until as late as 1940, to be impenetrable for purposes of an invasion.

I am not familiar with the topography and cannot comment on the geographic features to the North - but be it political or geogrpahic, at least one source claims that corridor formed a "funnel", which must have been the principal drawback of using that route.

However, this route had the advantages of being:

a) on major rail lines;
b) being richly served with roads and bridges; and
c) being close to the Ruhr, that being the source of the bulk of German military supply. For these reasons it was really the most obvious, if not the only practical choice if Germany wanted to engage the enemy on territory of its choosing.

The Belgians were definitely alive to this fact: they erected the so-called Brialmont forts in a line all along the Meuse at Liege and Namur, that linked with the fortifications in France at Maubeuge (further along the Sambre, a river that drains into the Meuse).

Surprise was therefore simply not an issue, as the erection of the forts of itself can be no better evidence that the Germans were expected to pass that way at some time or the other.

If more warning were needed, then the British, during the final efforts by Germany to keep them out of the war, became aware at least some days in advance, that a German move through Belgium was inevitable. In spite of this, the efficiency of the Germans at the onset of the invasion meant that they nevertheless caught some of the Brialmont garrisons off guard and certainly sufficient bridges and rail links were taken intact.

The timing of the erection of the Brialmont forts as well as their orientation leaves one with no other conclusion than that Belgium, certainly as far as Germany was concerned, was no bona fide neutral.

Perhaps one should add, as regards the orientation of the forts that they were clearly intended only to oppose a German invasion along the route discussed above. To the South of the line formed by the forts, facing France, was the Meuse and the Ardennes which was as already mentioned, deemed to be impenetrable for purposes of an invasion so they could not been intended as a deterrent to France. To the West, along that border with France, no forts were erected North of Maubeuge, leaving the Vlakkeland of Falnsers wide open with the result that, clearly, France was not deemed a threat.

Even had Belgium been a so-called "armed neutral", then its forts ought then to have been aligned equally against France and the Netherlands, which they quite simply, were not.

As regards fortress Antwerp: it can be viewed from two different angles:

a) that it was deliberately built as a final redoubt - much as it turned out to be; or

b) that it was built as a deterrent against a naval landing by the Germans via the backdoor round the Hoek of Holland;

Probably a bit of both. It could certainly not have been built with an invasion from France in mind as a cursory glance at a map will show that, as I've said, almost the entire West country was open to the French. There would also have been no necessity for France to invest Antwerp had they wished to invade. They could have merely laid siege to it, if they wished and once isolated, continued with a move on Brussels or anywhere else they wished, at will.

There are several conclusions to be drawn from this, the most logical being that Belgium had long since come to some agreement with France to buy time for it in the coming conflict by tying down the Germans at the forts until the French could deliver their own intended knock-out blow against Germany further upstream at Alsace-Lorraine. It would certainly offer one explanation as to how Belgium did so well in the African real estate stakes.

This would also explain why Joffre, by all accounts an otherwise fairly capable man, appeared almost totally unconcerned by the German troop movements to his North while he was ponderously getting his Plan 17 underway; he must have been firmly under the impression that the German hordes were being pounded to a pulp in the low countries from the comfort of the Liege cupolas, according to plan.

That the forts proved unequal to their task, was not because the Belgians had accepted the risk that their "neutrality" was unlikely to be breached - as they had had some ten years' warning that this would not be the case - but rather because of their failure to both arm and armour the forts properly for their intended purpose. At least one source mentions

a) the inadequacy of Belgian military budgets;
b) the failure to upgrade the forts with reinforced concrete; and
c) the absence of guns of sufficient range - which probably meant that even witin the confines of the "funnel", they could be bypassed with relative ease.

Stinginess too, is an unfortunate part of the human condition. The French must have felt short-changed when it came right down to it, although of course they would hardly have said so out loud and I am beginning to be of the view that the appellation: "brave little Belgium" should perhaps be revisited.

Indeed, I now suspect that the Belgians may even have kept Joffre deliberately in the dark about the numbers of German divisions that had passed relatively unmolested under their guns.

The Belgians cannot, I suppose, be blamed for favouring the side with which they shared a language and with whom they clearly had a primordial affinity. The Germans, certainly, did not seriously expect them to grant right of passage to their armies in August, 1914.

Those who claim that that would have caused war between France and Belgium, completely disregard the fact that that would simply not have been possible:

A pre-emptive invasion by France had deliberately been ruled out as early as 1912 and France, by design, had concentrated its armies on Alsace-Lorraine and had indeed only one army in reserve, the IVth, that it could even move into the line in the event of a German attack via Belgium being succesful. Thus, being hardly prepared for a defensive posture in the North, there can be no question of France being ready (and most definitely none of it being either willing or able) to go to war against the Belgians.

Since all concerned knew that Schlieffen provided for a move through Belgium, there can again only be one feasible conclusion, this being that Belgium had come to some agreemet with France to defend the Liege/Namur corridor.

This is further borne out, if needs be, by the concentration of Belgian troops to the East of Brussels, anchored on Wavre and at Liege on the eve of war. Such a deployment would have been suicidal if there had been even the remotest possibility of hostilities with France.

Such a deployment,too, would logically only have been made on the stregth of very definite unsderstadings with France.

Certainly, the costly Brialmont line would only have started going up on the strength of such a pact and the only possible scenario that such a deal could have contemplated when those forts were commissioned in the 1880's was one where the Belgians would cover the North while France started it's move on Alsace Lorraine.

Belgium was thus - by all factual indicators - no less than an active partner in plotting a second French adventure into German held territory and I fault Germany for even paying lip service to the sham of Belgian neutrality by demanding right of passage shortly before the invasion.

At the very least, it cannot be claimed with any degree of conviction that Belgium would not have assisted its French neighbour in any ensuing conflict through its open backdoor, free from the policing capability of Germany.

Thus the popular notion that Germany was the big bully who violated Belgian neutrality, does not survive scrutiny after a piercing of the artificial legal veil.

By the same token, Germany cannot be blamed for aligning itself with its German speaking neighbour, with whom it shared an equal if not greater primordial affinity than was the case between France and Belgium.

Indeed, after Koniggratz/Sadowa, the process of German unification devoted much debate to the question of whether there should be a larger Germany that incorporated Austria or the smaller version that eventually won through (...so much for German territoral ambitions...). Which brings us to the question alluded to before, namely whether Germany was pulled into the war by Austria.

It is so that Germany and Austria shared an almost hysterical fear of the Russian hordes; this fear persisted well into the Second World War, and more often than not, proved to be fully justified. This fear was compounded by a number of developments early in the 20th Century. Three need to be considered:

First, the Russians got very roundly trounced by Japan in 1905. Anyone who cared, would have concluded that Russia would shake up its military after that humiliation and that, the longer a war with the Russians took to ensue, the better prepared they would be. In particular it must be noted that France abandoned its professed defensive posture only once it became certain of Russian support, from which point onwards Plan 17 - it's proposed invasion and land grab of Alsace and Lorraine became its openly stated aim.

That any such upgrade was, in the event, stillborn in the morass of Imperial Russian corruption and inefficiency can surely not be blamed on Germany and the lack of material on the issue leads me to believe that the Germans were likely under the impression that such an upgrade was firmly under way and that, if war with Rusia was inevitable, then the sooner it started the better.

Second, Russia had clearly stated territorial ambitions in the Balkans.

However, the only reason why it could have wanted to secure a naval presence there, must be that it was casting its eyes yet further afield.

In the event, Russia may in fact not have had any such further ambitions and this threat may have very well have been conjured up or, if real, blown out of all proportion by the British who were persistently paranoid about their possessions in the East, most notably India.

It was certainly only a matter of time before Russia retried its pre-Crimean experiment - most likely with the assistance of their Serbian cousins and at AoH's expense. (Most of us will recall the Russian propensity for proxy wars, pre-1988, and that the Serbs' own territorial ambitions survived the Pax Titus well into the closing decades of the previous century, when our familiarity with names such as Sarajevo was rather horrifyingly rekindled through the magic of colour television).

Third, the Russian masses were giving the first stirrings of Bolshevik revolt, something that sent waves of apprehension through Western Europe, particularly Germany who sat with a large and sympathetic labour force.

In the Balkans, furthermore, Austria sat with a South Slav population that had a great primordial affinity with the Slavic hordes of Russia and who were beginning to stir in unison. Balkan minorities looked with much apprehension at their Serbian neighbour whose Slavs would no doubt be able to count on the Russian colossus for support in pursuing its openly stated territorial ambitions, notably Southeastwards towards the Kossovo plateau (for sentimental reasons) and Northwestwards towards the coastal provinces that would allow it access to the sea.

Indeed, the Bosnians and Moslems had preferred Austrian annexation much to the chagrin of the "Powers" who had no doubt been eagerly waiting to carve up the spoils of the declining Ottoman Empire amongst themselves (one must presume, to the exclusion of Germany and the Austro Hungarians if Africa is anything to go by).

Thus, Germany had in Austria an ally whose Empire was beset not only by imminent implosion, but was moreover the object of the territorial ambitions of its neighbour Serbia, Russia and the ever duplicitous Italians. But then they do say that one can pick one's friends but not one's family.

Against this backdrop, the exchanges between German and Austrian military leadership on the eve of war adopt a slightly different hue: they appear to have been eager to go over to the offensive sooner rather than later in order to exploit such surprise as they might still have been able to muster, in a pre-emptive strike.

Had William been the warmonger he is made out to be, he would have conceded to his generals' urgings a lot sooner, rather than to have tried to dissuade the ailing Franz Josef from going to war over the Sarajevo assassination.

Finally, the much vaunted naval race needs to be reviewed briefly as a cause of the war:

Even Anglo Saxon sources seem to concede that the German Navy was - until almost the last - a defensive instrument. Even if it's stated purpose of discouraging seaward threats from France and Russia (hence the Kiel canal) were disbelieved, then the design of the ships need merely to be looked at to conclude that it was primarily a defensive and not an offensive arm.

Sadly, Jackie Fisher himself scrapped the Royal Navy's numerical superiority almost overnight when he designed his "one splash" boat, "Dreadnought" and rendered his entire battleship fleet obsolete. From that point onwards Britain and Germany started from scratch on virtually an equal footing - something that the Germans can surely never by any stretch of the imagination be said to have intended.

If Germany had wanted to best the Royal Navy, it would have made use of this opportunity - that it could probably have done had the Reichstsag voted the funds - to simply build Britain into submission - which it did not do.

The old ships, it must be remembered, whilst numerous on both sides, were just so much dead wood and impeded rather than enhanced the efficiency of the fighting fleets: the Germans for one would have preferred to leave the older ships at anchor for the sortie that developed into the battle of Jutland. They were included purely for the purpose of indulging the personnel of the older squadrons - nearly to their catastrophic detriment. Indeed, if the Germans had sortied with just their new ships they would most likely have inflicted greater damage and have been able to extricate themselves at will, without having to nursemaid the older tubs.

Thus, to sustain German guilt on the basis of the Naval race, the argument must go something like this: "We now have the only boat that counts. Our policy says that we must have more of them than the biggest other navy plus one, which we now cannot have unless you refrain from building similar boats for a few years in order to give us a head start. Thus, if you now dare build one too, you are upsetting our self-imposed target, therefore you are the aggressor".

What conclusions, then, can be drawn from the above?

France was going to go to war with Germany sooner or later, that much is clear;

Britain, who was not comfortable with the Germans' inconvenient way of insisting that things should be correct or with their habit of expressing themselves free of politically correct euphemism, wished to acquire the diamond fields of South West Africa and was most assuredly awaiting any pretext at all to afford them the opportunity;

Furthermore, it had built a new ship so advanced that it rendered the mighty Royal Navy obsolete overnight. It must have come as a rude shock to the British psyche to learn that every keel laid down in Germany could compete on an almost equal footing with every one laid down in a British shipyard and this fact alone must have made Germany appear to be a competitor with a hidden agenda;

Germany's sister Empire contained peoples who better belonged in an alliance with Serbia (or, for that matter, Russia) and yet other peoples who feared those very Slavs and sought the protection of their Germanic patrons, all of which emotions were in conflict with nationalist and territorial aspirations of almost each part of the whole. Sadly, the old Emperor elected to retain this disparate mob under his jurisdiction rather than divesting himself of the Slav problem, but in his greed he was certainly not alone;

Italy can be discounted as a serious causative factor: whilst she could not wait to get her hands on some of Austria's southern territories she could not muster her national will for something as harsh as a European war and was awaiting developments that might best suit her own goals;

Belgium had almost certainly done some deal to acquire African real estate in return for which it had erected - either a second rate line of fortifications in the first place - or it had failed to update, maintain and arm them in accordance with its obligation to render quid pro quo;

The Russian Royals, who had bled their own peasant masses white to the point of revolt, were casting anxious glances at her southern neighbours, mainly the failing Ottoman Empire as a convenient pressure release valve.

As opposed to this, I have yet to discern what Germany hoped to gain - other than self preservation - if they started a war.

Certainly, to narrow it down to the simple question of who crossed whose border first, can simply not be the smoking gun evidence that it is made out to be. Equally certainly, the admission of guilt extracted from Germany after it had eventually knuckled under, cannot be allowed to stand.

The answer to the question is probably something along the lines of:

Europe was a powder keg waiting to explode. It was a question of statesmen on all sides waiting for an incident that they could credibly pass off as causa justus bellum. To single out Germany as the single culprit - when there are at least some plausible grounds to suspect that she may have been the victim against whom the a sizeable faction was ganging up on - is not only very likely incorrect, but was almost certainly one of the prime causes of the excesses of Second World War, if not of that war itself.

Read Mein Kampf, Hitler said exactly what he was going to do & how he was going to do it.

Dear Gumby

Sociologits will tell you that people have to be receptive in order to be mobilised into voluntary conduct. Herr Hitler was exactly the right man at the right place at the worst possible time...

...and despite his commendable service record, he had little to do with the cause of WWI which is the subject under discussion