I've been reading this thread with great interest, but I haven't commented yet, because I'm not as well-versed with the history of the British Army and the home politics, in the Great War. But now we're getting to my side of the topic!
I think I'd have to disagree with Ferguson. German diplomacy bears immediate blame, for allowing the coalitions that Bismarck had so carefully maintained to fall apart and the alignment that fought the war to coalesce. The Kaiser, his prime ministers and foreign ministers were not up to the task of the kind of diplomacy that their internal and external political position demanded.
But the French pursued a policy aimed at restoring their position, so terribly upset by the loss in 1871, and they were much better tacticians than the Germans were.
Another fault may be laid at the nature of the Imperial German constitution and government, a systematic fault. It was designed as an essentially Prussian device, that is, it was designed around an autocrat-not necessarily the monarch, but his first minister, responsible to him alone and acting in his name. With Bismarck and Wilhelm I, this system worked. It worked for the Empire, because Bismarck's goal was peace, to consolidate the new state's position in Europe. And that meant it worked for Europe, because it was in Germany's interest, as Bismarck defined it, to have European peace. One strategy that he followed in pursuit of that interest was to keep France isolated, at least until any hint of revenge for Elsass-Lothringen had faded. And he was sharp enough to carry out that strategy.
But with lesser men, that system was doomed to fail, failure being an international crisis of some kind. And even Bismarck was not perfect. I think he failed to see where the forces unleashed inside the new Germany would go; at least, I don't think he expected them to be as strong as they were. Ultimately, the liberals were not satisfied with his sop to them (universal male suffrage and the Reichstag; nationalists and Pan-Germanist were not happy with his colonial policies; and Marxists couldn't be bought off with his social security plans.
An interesting take on the period from 1871 through 1945 is Goodspeed's "The German Wars", outlining the diplomacy in the 1890's and the first decade of the 20th century, how the French outmanuevered the Germans after Bismarck was dismissed; and how both World Wars can be seen as two phases of the same conflict, with an armistice in between.
Certainly without the First World War, there is no Second, not in the shape that that conflict took. And it can be argued that without the First, the millions who died in the name of Marxism in the 20th century would probably have been spared, too, for the Bolsheviks were an angry and vocal but relatively impotent offshoot of Marxism, right up to the fall of the Tsar, and without the war, who knows whether they would ever have grown beyond that status?
What a great thread!
Prost!
Brad
