Ninety years after World War I started, the world is still fighting its aftereffects. U.S. and British troops are in Iraq, which Britain created out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire. The Balkans, where the war started, remain in turmoil. Turkey, the Ottoman core, continues to straddle East and West and to have designs on at least part of what is now Iraq.
For decades, historians have posited that the war erupted through spontaneous combustion caused by a complex chain of alliances. In his book, “Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started The Great War in 1914?” David Fromkin, a Boston University historian, details some of that but also pierces long-held assumptions and makes a war that we already knew was unnecessary seem even more so.
Almost since the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during an official visit to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the conventional wisdom has been that Europe went to war because their alliances left nations with no other choice. Russia had to defend Serbia if attacked, and once Austria declared war, Russia had to join in, and so on. This reluctant-warrior theory has existed for decades because the warring parties wanted it that way; Fromkin shows how nations purged their official archives of evidence to the contrary.
This is Fromkin at his best, evoking his 1989 masterpiece, “A Peace To End All Peace.” That book showed how faulty intelligence spurred a series of decisions during World War I that led to the creation of Iraq, the British encouragement of Zionist settlers in Palestine, the disastrous Gallipoli campaign and much of the current instability in the Middle East. Fifteen years after its publication, the book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the modern Middle East.
In his new book, Fromkin tries again to shred much of the official history. This time, however, he falls short because much of that history has already been torn.
In part, he seems to ignore some of the work done before him. Robert K. Massie’s “Dreadnought” (1991) showed how Germany’s rush to match Britain’s naval superiority made Britain and the rest of Europe nervous. By 1914, the continent was armed to its gritted teeth; from Paris to Moscow, governments planned and contemplated war.
This has now become the new official history, so Fromkin exaggerates by claiming the contrary.
But this flaw doesn’t gut the essence of “Europe’s Last Summer.”
Like a lawyer arguing a case, Fromkin assembles his findings and those of other historians to show that the war was no accident. Instead, he shows how Austria and Germany wanted it to happen.
Backed by Germany, which wanted a war because its leadership felt one was inevitable and its chances of winning weakened with each year, the Austrians made demands of Serbia they knew that nation couldn’t meet.
“The ultimatum, in fact, had been drafted with the aim of making it practically impossible for Serbia to accept,” Fromkin writes.
Much of this seems familiar as America evaluates the decisions that led to war in Iraq, and “Europe’s Last Summer” would be worth reading if only to see how governments justify war. But Fromkin’s thorough knowledge of World War I and what it created make the book an even more worthwhile read.
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