Germany and the first world war: Do mention the war

AppId is over the quota
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THE Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) and the German foreign ministry have organised a series of debates in Berlin to commemorate the centenary of the start of the first world war. For the past few months, historians, authors and politicians from Germany and abroad have spent happy hours debating both “the failure and use of diplomacy” in the summer of 1914 and the lessons that should be drawn from it. In one of the most interesting discussions, Christopher Clark, the Australian author of the bestselling “Sleepwalkers”, and Gerd Krumeich, German co-author of “Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg” (“Germany in the first world war”), showed that the question of German blame for the war remains very much unresolved. Whereas Mr Clark underlined the fact that senior military figures in a number of European countries, not just Germany, were keen for war, Mr Krumeich emphasised the enormous quantity of Germany's armaments and its hunger for expansion. He also pointed to its unwillingness to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia that was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914.

Alongside the debates, film screenings and lectures the museum is staging an exhibition linked to the war. Here the focus is violence, rather than diplomacy. The museum, which until 1875 was a Prussian arsenal, owns a huge collection of objects from the period, including uniforms, helmets, guns, gas masks, cannons, flags, letters and postcards, paintings and photos. Many are on display. Of the dozens of exhibitions that will open across Germany this summer, this claims to be the only one offering an overview of the war in both its European and global contexts. The exhibition does not itself try to clarify the Schuldfrage ("question of guilt"), but it clearly shows the atrocities committed by German troops in the occupied cities of Brussels and Petrograd (now St Petersburg) using facts, film clips and photos. 

A gas mask dating from 1917 epitomises another unpalatable part of the conflict: the Germans' first use of chlorine gas in April 1915 against French troops in the trenches, killing thousands. In the "Home Front" section of the exhibition, graphics by Heinrich Zille, a popular Berlin illustrator, and paintings such as “War Winter” by Hans Baluschek indicate the devastating impact that Germany’s ever-growing weapons industry had on the population in the winter of 1916-1917: hunger, shortage of coal and the collapse of the railway network. Elsewhere, newspaper clippings and propaganda posters reveal the support German intellectuals broadly offered the war.

At a time of conflict in eastern Europe and concern about the future of European monetary union (and even of the whole "European project"), there is something oddly relevant about these displays. As Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, commented during one debate: "A hundred years after the start of the first world war...the issue of war and peace, or of the unity and disruption of our continent, is back on the agenda.”

"The First World War" is at the Deutsches Historisches Museum until November 30th 2014

The picture is of a painting by Fritz Grotemeye (1918) showing German soldiers fighting near Tanga, in German East Africa (now Tanzania)

One commenter has said that WW1 may be a mystery, but I don't believe so. WW1 had multiple, identifiable factors. Gavrillo Princep may have lit the fuse, but he was hardly the reason the powder kegs were there in the first place. A tumultuous Balkans promised to be the black hole it ended up being, magnifying minor disputes and sucking in Great Powers. Germans felt encircled, and they weren't really mistaken in believing so. Nor was their encirclement entirely of their making. An almost churlish failure on the apart of the established powers (particularly Britain) to accept and accommodate Germany's rise also deserves a good deal of blame. The book "Sleepwalkers" details beautifully how, gradually, any assertive action by Berlin was viewed as either sinister or spitefully pig-headed, while the same action by London was morally right and a geopolitical necessity. France's obsession with Alsace and Lorraine and its medieval notions of where Gaul began and Germany ended were incompatible with peace, no matter who was Kaiser. We all know about the Schlieffen Plan, but who knows of France's Plan XVII?

Then there are the structural and cultural problems, such as the convoluted alliance system and a general jingoistic fervor that bordered on mental insanity. Was Berlin completely blameless? Of course not. Not even close. But it is nice to see that the discussion of WW1 is easing away from silly notions of an insane Kaiser and a sinister General Staff plotting together with cartoonish villainy to set the world ablaze and unleash hell upon an innocent and unsuspecting continent.

bampbs Jun 24th 2014 21:15 GMT

At a time of conflict in eastern Europe and concern about the future of European monetary union (and even of the whole "European project"), there is something oddly relevant about these displays. As Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister commented during one debate: "100 years after the start of the first world war...the issue of war and peace, or of the unity and disruption of our continent, is back on the agenda.”

That last paragraph is genuinely silly. Before WW1, war was considered a positive good, a way to promote the "Survival of the Fittest". But WW1 taught that modern war, where the great majority of casualties were caused by artillery, yielded only the random survival of the lucky.

I don't hear any voices in Europe even hinting that war is, in itself, a good thing.