Tag Archives: World War I

Guest Article – The Ghost of 1914

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By

Bill Lind*

World War I ended with a global pandemic.  Has the next world war begun with one?  I pray not, but no historian can look upon the war in Ukraine and not see the ghost of 1914 rising wraithlike from it – a ghost which, I fear, bears a striking resemblance to Conrad.  When was Przemsyl last in the news?

When we think back to World War I, to its origins, its course and its consequences, the parallels are frightening.  The first is that, in 1914, no one expected war or wanted war – at least a general European war.  Kaiser Wilhelm II certainly did not.  On the contrary: as soon as he realized, too late, where events were leading, he made desperate efforts to head them off.  He ordered a cable sent to Vienna telling Austria to take Belgrade and then stop, but the German Foreign Office did not send it.  Tsar Nicholas only approved the order for mobilization with great reluctance; his war and Foreign Ministers acted before he could change his mind.  The Kaiser even halted his army on the Belgian frontier when the British Foreign Secretary hinted Britain might stay out – but then Grey pushed the British cabinet in.

Are events today again running away from those who seek de-escalation?  Russia expected a quick victory (like everyone in 1914), but now finds herself bogged down in a stalemate with no clear exit.  As wars go on, they tend to spread.  The West is upping the ante in the help it is extending to Ukraine.  At what point does Russia start hitting Western weapons shipments while they are still on NATO’s soil?  How long can China remain on the fence when Russia is her principal ally?  If Russia uses chemical weapons in urban combat, does the U.S. wrongly declare them “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and thereby open the nuclear Pandora’s box?  There are a lot of ways for this conflict to get bigger, fast.

The parallels do not end with the merely military.  In 1914, the world had a global economy.  Only in the last decade did the value of global trade reach 1914 levels, as a percentage of the global economy.  But even before Russia invaded Ukraine, America’s use of economic sanctions as weapons was swiftly undermining Globalism, as did the Coronapanic and its effects on global supply chains.  Now, every country is striving to “re-shore” whatever it can, in a security-driven race towards autarky.

World War I ended with the destruction of three great, Christian, conservative empires, the Russian, the German, and the Austro-Hungarian, with ongoing consequences for Christendom.  What states may fail as a result of the war in Ukraine and its potential expansion?  Then, the old empires reformed as republics.  But now, we live in a time when the state is in decline and non-state entities are rising.  Fourth Generation War theory says that a defeated Russia might break up still further, as the Soviet Union did, to become a vast stateless region with lots of nukes and delivery systems floating around.

What then, Russophobes, which is to say the Blob, the neocons, and the neo-libs?  You destroyed states such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya and have not been able to put them back together.  What is your plan for a stateless region running from the Polish border to the Pacific Ocean?

The political establishments in Washington and the EU would be wise to remember that World War I brought a wholesale collapse of establishments.  The monarchies in Russia, Austria, and Germany were swept away, replaced in the first by Bolshevism and the latter two by socialism.  Shortly after the war, in 1922, the Italian political establishment was replaced by Fascism, and in 1933 in Germany by National Socialism.  Do the cultural Marxist elites that now rule in Washington and most European capitals think they are likely to survive a cataclysm they created? (I promise them their replacements will come from the right, not the left.)

If those establishments want to survive, they need now to bend every effort to de-escalate the war in Ukraine, to build a golden bridge Russia can withdraw over without humiliation, one where the Kremlin can claim some sort of victory (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO and Crimea is recognized as Russian) and all Western sanctions are quickly removed.  The U.S., the E.U., and Russia then join to rebuild Ukraine.

In 1914, the post-1815 European order sleepwalked itself into a world war that swept it from the board.  In 2022, the post-1945 world order is on the verge of doing the same.

 

* William S. Lind is a long-time American defense analyst and social critic. This article has been previously published in Traditional.Right.

Good Soldier Švejk

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My wife was going to have an operation. Having her hip replaced, in case you want to know. Since she is 72 years old, Insurance in its infinite wisdom demanded that she undergo a geriatric examination first. Why, she was never told.

Hopeless bookworm that I am, I was reminded of the episode in Good Soldier Švejk where the hero is examined to see whether he was fit for military service in the KuK (Kaiserliche und Koenigliche) Army during World War I. I quote.

[When] Švejk entered the room here his mental state was to be examined, and observing a picture of the Austrian monarch hanging on the wall, [he] cried out:

“Long live our Emperor Franz Joseph I, gentlemen.”

The case was as clear as daylight. Švejk’s spontaneous declaration disposed of a whole range of questions and there only remained a few very important questions which were needed so that from Švejk’s answers the initial opinion of him could be confirmed according to the system of the psychiatrists Dr. Kallerson, Dr. Heveroch and the Englishman, Weiking.

“Is radium heavier than lead?”

“Please, Sir, I haven’t weighed it,” said Švejk with his sweet smile.”

“Do you believe in the end of the world?”

“I’d have to see that end first,” Švejk answered nonchalantly. “But certainly I shan’t see it tomorrow.”

“Would you know how to calculate the diameter of the globe?”

Even if consuming watermelon for erectile dysfunction treatment may not be easy to not not worry when impotence strikes, figure out first whether it is worth downtownsault.org viagra cost india it to worry because the online stores are at your rescue. If you wish not cheap levitra to be a victim of it. viagra online stores The most frustrating are people which affect the everyday day lifestyle of a man. For example, even though taking a tablet is quick and easy, it is perceived as something you would take when you have a disease that can result in erections which cialis 10mg generico won’t go away (priapism). “No, I am afraid I would not,” answered Švejk. “But I’d like to ask you a riddle myself, gentlemen. Take a three-storied house with eight windows on each floor. On the roof there are two dormer windows and two chimneys. On every floor there are two tenants. And now, tell me gentlemen, in which year the house-porter’s grandmother died?”

The medical experts exchanged knowing looks, but nevertheless one of them asked this further question:

“You don’t know the maximum depth of the Pacific Ocean?”

“No please, Sir,” was the answer. “But I think it must be definitely deeper than the Vlatva below the rock of Vyšehrad.”

The chairman of the commission asked briefly: “Is that enough?” But nonetheless another member of the commission requested the following question:

“How much is 12,897 times 13863?”

“729,” answered Švejk without batting an eyelid.

“I think that that will do” said the chairman of the commission. “You can take [him] back to where he came from.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Švejk deferentially. “For me it will do too.”

*

I will not tell you whether my wife was found sane according to all the laws invented by the luminaries of psychiatry. Suffice it to say that, when the examining dignitary, who was younger than she, asked her to draw a pentagram, she did so much faster, and with much better results, than he could.

1917

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A really good movie, like a really good work of literary fiction, will almost certainly contain at least some measure of moral ambiguity. As to which characters are good, which ones are bad, the factors that make them so, and the thousand different ways in which good and evil manifest themselves and interact. Think, for example, of the Iliad as perhaps the best work on war ever written. In the entire poem, much the most sympathetic character is the Trojan hero Hector. And why? Not because the cause he is serving is just—as he himself is well aware, it is not. And not because he is some kind of superman—at least three other characters, including above all Achilles at whose hands he is destined to die, are better warriors than he is. And not because those whom he fights are bad people. In the end, even the proud, touchy, and overall terrible Achilles is shown as capable of love and sorrow (for Patroclus) and compassion (for King Priam). But because he is, at bottom, a modest and even likeable man; god-fearing and not inclined to boast or commit deeds of superfluous cruelty as so many other heroes do. Above all there are his ability to love, which comes through even in the midst of “fearsome war,” and his perfect loyalty both to his own family and to the city of his birth; doomed to destruction though they both are.
By that, admittedly very high, standard 1917 is definitely not a very good movie. The plot is simple, not to say simplistic. This is April and one of the battalions of a British infantry regiment is manning a sector of the front in the rich earth of Flanders. Finding the enemy in retreat, its commander wants to attack and pursue. However, higher headquarters learns that the retreat is really a trap. Thereupon two soldiers are sent out on a perilous journey to warn the commander. One, Lance Corporal Tom Blake, volunteers for the mission because he hopes to save a brother who is serving in the battalion in question. The other, Lance Corporal William Schofield, is selected by Blake himself because of his immense obstinacy and determination to carry out orders at all costs.
Carrying a message, the two of them set out into what soon reveals itself as a nightmarish landscape of abandoned guns, wrecked buildings, bare, mutilated trees, and above all, vast seas of mud. Not to mention the rotting corpses of dead men and animals half buried or lying around in bizarre postures. Pursued might and main, shot at from every available weapon, following many adventures in one of which Blake is killed, Schofield finally arrives at his destination. True, the attack is already under way and Blake’s brother has already been killed. But at least he is able to save the bulk of the regiment from certain destruction.
I am not expert on movies and will not comment on the film’s direction, musical score, and sound effects, for all of which (and more) it has been called “a work of cinematic wizardry.” I do, however, want to say something about two other aspects. The first is its supposed realism for which it has earned much praise. I do not want to go into detail on this point. Just trust me when I say that real war is much, much worse. So much so that putting all its horrors on the screen is probably impossible. And so much so that, had someone succeeded in doing so, much of the public, instead of praising the product, would have refused to watch and turned its back on it.
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As a result, I found watching 1917 was a bit like watching a caricature in black and white. In favor of the movie I must say that it did make me think about what a really good war movie, or a really good war novel, should be like; the way drinking a simple vin de table makes one appreciate, and long for, a grand cru.
That too, is something.

Slithering into War

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As the centennial of the outbreak of World War I approaches, a deluge of new publications seeks to commemorate it and to re-interpret it. Among the best of the lot is Christopher  Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York, Harper, 2014). That is why I have chosen to discuss it here.

The war itself broke out on 31 July. As one would imagine, the search for its origins began right away. Assuming, of course, that the accusations which the various future belligerent started throwing at each other during the preceding weeks should not be seen as part of that search or, at any rate, as preparation for it. At first it was a question of pointing fingers at personalities, be it Serb Prime Minister Nikola Pasič, or Austrian Chief of Staff Konrad von Hoeztendorf, or the Russian Tsar, or French prime minister René Viviani, or British foreign minister Edward Grey, or the German Kaiser, or whoever. Very quickly, however, the hunt expanded to include not only persons but entire peoples. Not just Pasič but all, or at any rate most, Serbs were bad people always ready to throw bombs so to undermine the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the name of irredentism. Not just Hoetzendorf, but many of the ruling circles in Vienna demanded war in the hope of saving the empire from disintegration. Not just the Tsar but many of his people entertained pan-Slavic dreams of expansion, mostly at the expense of Austria-Hungary. Not just Viviani, but the entire French people formed an arrogant nation used to exercise hegemony over the continent and unable to resign itself to its loss. Not just Grey, but the British people as a whole were hypocritical warmongers determined to hold on to their commercial superiority. Not just the Kaiser, but all Germans were power-drunk militarists. The list goes on and on.

It was this version of events, directed against the losers, which underlay the famous decision postwar decision to saddle Germany with “war guilt,” an innovation in international law that had few predecessors during the previous quarter millennium or so. As one would expect, time caused the debate to change its shape. It was not this or that country but their commons scourge, arms-manufacturers and capitalists in general, who were to blame, claimed Marxists. It was not this or that ruler or people but all those bad Europeans, claimed some American historians. It was not this or that country but the treaty-system as a whole others said. It was not so much the treaties as the railway timetables of the various general staffs, which forced them to act precipitously so as to avoid defeat, claimed other historians still.

The outbreak of World War II, and Germany’s role in it, caused some historians to go back to blaming the Kaiser and his associates. Nobody more so than Fritz Fischer in World Power or Decline, the original German version of which was first published in 1961. Clark’s work is not specifically directed against any of these interpretations. Nevertheless, in passing he makes short shrift of them. The railway system is barely mentioned. The treaties, he shows, were not automatic but left their signatories with plenty of room for maneuver. Those who allowed the continent to slither into war were rulers, diplomats, and top-ranking soldiers, not the owners of large industrial corporations. The last-named were never even asked for their opinions. Given that economics only came to be considered as part of war during the interwar era, that is not surprising.

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More significant still, none of those who ruled the most important powers wanted war—at any rate a general war among the great powers. His occasional bellicose talk notwithstanding, that even applied to the Kaiser. As one of his courtiers was to write later on: His Imperial Majesty liked wargames much better than he liked war itself. What really happened was quite different. Though decision-makers might not be interested in a general war, quite a few of them were prepared to risk a more limited one. In doing so, the model they had in front of their eyes was, naturally enough, the limited “cabinet wars” of the nineteenth century. Serbia, provided only it could obtain Russian and perhaps French support, was quite ready to fight Austria. Certain governing circles in Austria were quite ready, indeed eager, to go to war against Serbia if only they could be certain that Germany would support them and thereby neutralize the Russians. The Russians were ready to support Serbia against Austria but hoped to do so without causing Germany to join the fray against them. The French hoped for a chance to recover Alsace-Lorraine but looked forward to doing so without setting off a general conflagration. More than one leading German thought Russia’s growing power called for a preemptive war. However, and as Austrian foreign minister Berchtold saw clearly enough, almost to the end people in Berlin hoped to wage it without dragging in France, let alone Britain.

In other words, in almost all capitals it was a question, not of unchaining a general conflict but of taking what was seen as a calculated risk. In the event, the calculations failed. A European war, later known as the Great War, later still as World War I, was the result. Needless to say, such calculations have always formed the very stuff of which power-politics are made. In many cases they continue to do so still. Are we, then, to conclude that sooner or later they are certain to fail again? One of those who thought so was the noted English historian A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990). Having spent much of his career studying the numerous diplomatic “crises” that dotted the decades before 1914, almost to the end of his life he remained convinced that, sooner or later, another such crisis would lead to World War III. A quarter-century after Taylor’s death, there is no point in trying to deny the logic of his argument. Among those who echo it is Christopher Coker in his forthcoming book, The Improbable War.

However, there is one critical difference: the world which Taylor, Clark, and so many others describe was a pre-nuclear one. In such a world, whatever fate might await the defeated, there would no question of annihilating most, or even a great part, of the population of the loser. The winner, on his part, might expect to prosper. The introduction and proliferation of nuclear weapons has changed the equation. As a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin kindly reminded us just a few weeks ago, with those monsters about another war might very well turn the countries involved, both winners and losers, into radioactive deserts. Judging by the fact that no two nuclear countries have fought each other directly and in earnest since 1945, there is some reason to believe that rulers and commanders are aware of the Damocles’ sword hanging over their collective heads. It seems to have made them much more cautious than they used to be.

It may or may not be true, as some believe, that “the better angels of our nature” are taking over and are responsible for what is sometimes known as “the long peace” which, among the great powers at any rate, has prevailed from 1945 on. Supposing it is, it would represent very good news indeed. Yet even so I propose that a considerable number of H-bombs be kept in reserve ready to deliver a second strike, as nuclear strategists say. Just to make sure that, should the better angels in our dear leaders’ nature fall asleep or go on strike, there will still be fear to keep them from each other’s throats.