The Sleepwalkers

The reasons why Europe went to war in 1914 are both simple and complex. The reason I remember from school is that a guy shot an important person, and then countries went to war because they had alliances with each other. That's basically true, but of course the background is much more complicated.

Christopher Clark, in his book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, gives an exhaustive look at the whys are wherefores. At times I was much too overwhelmed by information--there are only so many Serbian and Russian names one can digest--but for the most part the writing is lucid and detailed.

Clark centers most of his book on the Balkans. That is where Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 18, 1914. But Clark takes us much farther back, tracing Balkan (as well as British, German, French, and Russian) history well into the 19th century. As Clark puts it, "The First World War was the Third Balkan War before it became the First World War."

Basically, it comes down to this: much of the Balkans were controlled by outside forces. When Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia was outraged. A conspiracy, that led all the way to the top of the Serbian government, developed to kill the Archduke, the heir apparent to the Austrian throne.

Frank Ferdinand came on a visit to Sarajevo. "For Serb ultra-nationalists, both in Serbia itself and across the the Serbian irredentist network in Bosnia, the arrival of the heir apparent in Sarajevo on this of all days (St. Vitus Day, a big day for Serbia) was a symbolic affront that demanded a response."

Seven assassins allowed the Archduke's route. One managed to throw a bomb, which exploded behind the Archduke's car and injured some people. Amazingly, the Archduke went on his way, and delivered a speech. Princip carefully figured out where the route was supposed to go, and bided his time. The Archduke had planned on going to the hospital to visit the wounded, but the driver didn't get the info and continued along the published route. At some point, he went down the wrong street, and they had to push the car backward. This is when Princip struck, killing the Archduke and his wife.

The dominoes then started to fall. Russia, sort of like the big new kid in school who wants to get involved, stood behind Serbia, while Austria-Hungary sent Serbia an ultimatum that was almost impossible to adhere to. France was allied with Russia, and Germany with Austria-Hungary. Russia mobilized for war on August 1st, and Germany declared war, which meant they were also at war with France. Britain, who was considered keeping neutral, told Germany that they would keep out of it if Germany stayed away from France, but Germany went ahead and marched through Belgium, violating a treaty from 1839. Britain declared war.

Clark goes into the personalities of those involved, including how all the leaders were related: "By the turn of the twentieth century, the genealogical web of Europe's reigning families had thickened almost to the point of fusion. Kaiser Wilhelm II and King George V were both grandsons of Queen Victoria. Tsar Nicholas II's wife, Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, was Victoria's granddaughter. The mothers of George V and Nicholas II were sisters from the house of Denmark. Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II were both great-great-grandsons of Tsar Paul I. The Kaiser's great-aunt, Charlotte of Prussia, was the Tsar's grandmother. Viewed from this perspective, the outbreak of war in 1914 looks rather like the culmination of a family feud."

Every once in a while, like that, Clark will drop in a bit of drollery, such as this quote about Nicholas: "As an adolescent, he had shown little aptitude for the study of affairs of state. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the conservative jurist drafted in to give the teenage Nicky a master class on the inner workings of the tsarist state, later recalled, 'I could only observe that he was completely absorbed in picking his nose.'"

But most of the book is deadly serious. The book ends as the powers begin war, leaving the carnage to come just a premonition. But Clark gives it to those who underestimated the war's longevity, or were hawkish, such as Winston Churchill. But he is not interested in a blame game: "The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character. Viewed in this light, the outbreak of war was a tragedy, not a crime."

Speaking of the 37 million civilian and military deaths that would follow, Clark says: "One thing is clear: none of the prizes for which the politicians of 1914 contended was worth the cataclysm that followed. Did the protagonists understand how high the stakes were?"

His last sentence somberly gives us the reason for his title: "The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world."