Had Emperor Franz Joseph died earlier than towards the end of 1916, his successor, Karl, might have found the means of saving the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Alternatively, if the old emperor had survived longer, residual loyalties might also have saved his empire. Equally, but for the war, the Tsarist system might well have survived far longer, since it was the challenge of the war that interrupted reforms which were beginning to make a difference. Had it not attempted to continue the war, the Provisional Government might not have succumbed to the Bolsheviks.
German decisions in particular played a crucial role in shaping the war and its outcome, starting with the decision to plunge Europe into conflict in the first place. Had the decision on unrestricted submarine warfare not been taken, it is conceivable that the United States would have remained a neutral, albeit one generally more inclined towards the Entente. Had Ludendorff been a better strategist, his 1918 spring offensives might yet have forced the Entente to negotiate. That would have implied a very different outcome even from the one the Germans thought they had achieved through requesting an armistice on the basis of Woodrow Wilson's ‘Fourteen Points’. Had Wilson been less of an idealist, his mediation might have had less disastrous results, and the United States might have remained engaged in international politics.
But in the last analysis, the case studies that have been presented as the pivotal points of the First World War deal with the reality of the war and its impact. I quoted in the introduction some lines from John Dryden. Let me conclude with some lines from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol:
‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are, do not blame me!’
NOTES
Introduction
1. Charles Lehautcourt [General Palat], La Ruée vers Calais (Paris, 1922), p. 23.
2. Charles Carlton, This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746 (New Haven and London, CT, 2011), p. 150.
3. See, for example, Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 2nd edn (London, 1991), pp. 16–17; idem, Total War and Social Change (London, 1988), pp. xiv–xv; Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds, Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilisation on the Western Front, 1914–18 (Cambridge, 2000), passim.
4. Sir Edward Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World (London, 1851).
5. Compare the optimistic view of Gary Sheffield, The Somme (London, 2003), with the more realistic assessment of Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme (New Haven and London, CT, 2005).
6. See Brian Bond, The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History (Cambridge, 2002); and Dan Todman, The First World War: Myth and Memory (London, 2005).
7. See J. Paul Harris and Niall Barr, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the Hundred Days Campaign, 8 August to 11 November 1918 (London, 1998).
8. Hew Strachan, The First World War: To Arms (Oxford, 2001), p. 729. See also W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Trans-Caucasian Border, 1828–1921 (Cambridge, 1953).
9. Ian F. W. Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914 (Harlow, 2004), pp. 227, 240.
10. Fritz von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkriege, 1914–18 (Berlin, 1939), p. 351; Seventh Army War Diary, 18 July 1918, quoted in Michael Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne (Bloomington, IN, 2008), p. 131. See also Lawrence Sondhaus, World War One (Cambridge, 2011), p. 412.
11. Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War (Cambridge, 1986), p. 564. See also Charles Messenger, The Day We Won the War: Turning Point at Amiens, 8 August 1918 (London, 2010).
12. See Tim Cook, No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War (Vancouver, 1999).
13. See J. Paul Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces, 1903–39 (Manchester, 1996); Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–18 (London, 1992).
14. See Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York, 1989).
15. Matthew Hughes and Matthew Seligmann, eds, Leadership in Conflict, 1914–18 (Barnsley, 2000), pp. 1–10.
16. Arthur Link, Wilson the Diplomatist, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1965), p. 61.
Chapter 1 The Silent Conqueror
1. Charles Lehautcourt [General Palat], La Ruée vers Calais (Paris, 1922), p. 23.
2. T. Bentley Mott, trans., The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, 2 vols (New York, 1932), I, p. 37.
3. Paul van Pul, In Flanders Flooded Fields (Barnsley, 2006), p. 6.
4. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Volume III Companion, Part 1, 1914–15 (London, 1972), p. 122.
5. Michael and Eleanor Brock, eds, H.H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley (Oxford, 1982), pp. 257–58, 275–76.
6. Ibid., pp. 262–63.
7. Charles Le Goffre, Dixmude (Philadelphia, PA, 1916), p. 48.
8. Jean Stengers, ‘Belgium’, in Keith Wilson, ed., Decisions for War, 1914 (London, 1995), p. 155.
9. Christopher Duffy, ‘The Siege of Antwerp’, Purnell's History of the First World War, 1:14 (1970), p. 378.
10. Ibid., p. 380.
11. Jean Ratinaud, La Course à La Mer (Paris, 1967), p. 294.
12. Ypres, 1914: An Official Account Published by Order of the German General Staff (London, 1919), pp. 47–48.
13. Marie-Rose Thielemans and Emile Vandewoude, eds, Le Roi Albert: Au Travers de ses lettres inédites, 1882–1916 (Brussels, 1982), pp. 535–36.
14. Emile Cammaerts, Albert of Belgium: Defender of Right (New York, 1935), p. 197.
15. Léon Van der Essen, The Invasion and the War in Belgium from Liège to the Yser (London, 1917), p. 336.
16. Ypres, 1914, p. 51.
Chapter 2 The Widening of the War
1. Mary Soames, ed., Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill (London, 1998), p. 31.
2. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (New York, 1919), pp. 31–32, 114–15.
3. Lewis Einstein, Inside Constantinople: A Diplomat's Diary during the Dardanelles Expedition, April–September 1915 (London, 1917), p. 1.
4. Ibid., p. 18.
5. Morgenthau, Ambassador's Story, pp. 21–23.
6. The Times, 16 March 1921, p. 11; idem, 17 March 1921, p. 11.
7. Margaret FitzHerbert, The Man Who Was Greenmantle: A Biography of Aubrey Herbert (London, 1983), p. 83.
8. Morgenthau, Ambassador's Story, p. 173.
9. Hew Strachan, The First World War: To Arms (Oxford, 2001), p. 680.
10. Einstein, Inside Constantinople, p. 25. See also Morgenthau, Ambassador's Story, pp. 5, 17.
11. Richard Wright, ‘Goeben and Breslau’, Purnell's History of the First World War 1:13 (1969), p. 342.
12. Brock and Brock, eds, Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 168.
13. Morgenthau, Ambassador's Story, p. 106.
14. Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914 (Cambridge, 2008), p. 177.
Chapter 3 The Making of a Nation
1. General Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, 2 vols (London, 1920), I, p. 28.
2. Tonie and Valmai Holt, Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide to Gallipoli (Barnsley, 2000), p. 244.
3. Daily Telegraph, 7 May 1915.
4. C. E. W. Bean, The Story of Anzac: From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign (Sydney, 1921), pp. 248–52. Bean's diary noted the sound of continuous rifle fire reaching the ships offshore at 4.43 a.m.: see Australian War Memorial, C. E. W. Bean MSS, AWM38, 2DRLL606/4/1.
5. John Robertson, Anzac and Empire (London, 1990), pp. 68–69, 71.
6. Ibid., p. 73.
7. The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CAB 19/31, Cable 881.
8. John Lee, A Soldier's Life: General Sir Ian Hamilton (London, 2000), p. 162.
9. Henry Nevinson, Last Changes, Last Chances (London, 1928), p. 35.
10. Comp
ton Mackenzie, Gallipoli Memories (London, 1929), p. 200.
11. Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, Ashmead-Bartlett's Despatches from the Dardanelles (London, 1915), pp. 49, 77–78.
12. Dudley McCarthy, Gallipoli to the Somme: The Story of C. E. W. Bean (London, 1983), p. 128.
13. Philip Schuler, Australia in Arms: A Narrative of the Australasian Imperial Force and Their Achievements at Anzac (London, 1916), p. 291.
14. Kevin Fewster, ed., Gallipoli Correspondent: The Frontline Diary of C. E. W. Bean (Sydney, 1983), p. 155. See also C. E. W. Bean, ‘Sidelights of the War on Australian Character’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 13 (1927), pp. 211–21, in which Bean contrasts the Anzacs with the ‘dregs of England's cities’.
15. Bean, Story of Anzac, pp. 4–5.
16. Fewster, Gallipoli Correspondent, pp. 156–59.
17. Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli (Manchester, 2004), p. 67.
18. Christopher Pugsley, The Anzac Experience: New Zealand, Australia and Empire in the First World War (Auckland, 2004), pp. 303–04.
19. The Times, 29 September, 1915; Robertson, Anzac and Empire, p. 130.
20. Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (Cambridge, 2006), p. 215.
Chapter 4 The Man and the Hour
1. Lord Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War, 1914–16 (London, 1928), p. 95.
2. The Times, 7 April 1915 and 10 April 1915.
3. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis (London, 1931), abridged edn, p. 255.
4. TNA, CAB 37/128/19, Asquith to Cabinet, 17 May 1915.
5. TNA, T 170/55, Minutes of Conference between Lloyd George and Representatives of Bankers and Traders.
6. TNA, WO 159/15, Robertson to von Donop, 16 November 1914.
7. Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols (London, 1920), III, pp. 244, 326–42.
8. TNA, CAB 22/2, Report of Cabinet meeting, 20 August 1915; ibid., CAB 41/36/40.
9. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 6 vols (London, 1933–36), II, p. 751; Leo Amery, My Political Life, 3 vols (London, 1953–55), II, p. 23.
10. Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command, 1914–18, 2 vols (London, 1961), I, p. 221; Beaverbrook, Politicians and the War, p. 69.
11. Brock and Brock, eds, Asquith, p. 488.
12. Mark Bonham Carter, ed., The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (London, 1962), p. xxxv.
13. National Library of Wales, Lloyd George MSS, 20,404.
14. Lord Riddell, War Diary, 1914–18 (London, 1933), p. 294.
15. Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill, vol. III Companion, Pt II, Documents, 1915–16 (London 1972), pp. 1,016–17.
16. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, I, p. 238.
17. History of the Ministry of Munitions, 12 vols (London, 1922), VII, Pt 1, p. 16.
18. The Manchester Guardian History of the War (Manchester, 1920), IX, p. 159.
19. Forward, 1 January 1916.
20. Hansard 5th series, 10 March 1915, col. 1460.
Chapter 5 The Power of Image
1. Stephen Badsey, ‘The Battle of the Somme (1916): The Film of the Battle’, in Stephen Badsey, The British Army in Battle and Its Image, 1914–18 (London, 2009), p. 119.
2. W. K.-L. Dickson, The Biograph in Battle: Its Story in the South African War (London, 1901), pp. 145–46.
3. The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger, January 1900, p. 4
4. Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (London, 1977), p. 45.
5. Lucy Masterman, C. F. G. Masterman (London, 1939), p. 283.
6. TNA, MEPO 2/1691.
7. Masterman, Masterman, p. 368.
8. Geoffrey Malins, How I Filmed the War (London, 1920), pp. 303–04.
9. Roger Smither, ed., The Battle of the Somme, and The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (Imperial War Museum, 1993), p. 35.
10. Malins, How I Filmed the War, p. 162.
11. Bioscope, 17 August 1916, p. 627.
12. Ibid., p. 576.
13. Roger Smither, ‘"A Wonderful Idea of the Fighting”: The Question of Fakes in “The Battle of the Somme"’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 13 (1993), pp. 149–68.
14. Manchester Guardian, 11 August 1916, p. 9; Daily Mirror, 11 August 1916, p. 10; Spectator, 26 August 1916, p. 227; The Times, 11 August 1916, p. 10; Bioscope, 17 August 1916, p. 577.
15. D. S. Higges, ed., The Private Diaries of Sir Henry Rider Haggard (London, 1980), p. 84.
16. Rowland Feilding, War Letters to a Wife: France and Flanders, 1915–19 (London, 1929), reprint edn (2001), pp. 65–66.
17. The Times, 2 September 1916, p. 3.
18. A. J. P. Taylor, ed., Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson (London, 1971), p. 112.
19. Nicholas Reeves, ‘Through the Eye of the Camera: Contemporary Cinema Audiences and their “Experience” of War in the Film, Battle of the Somme’, in Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon (Barnsley, 1996), p. 793.
Chapter 6 The Death of Kings
1. Alan Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs (London, 1994), p. 349.
2. Count Ottokar von Czernin und Chudenitz, In the World War (London, 1919), p. 33.
3. Palmer, Twilight of Habsburgs, p. 285.
4. Max Hoffmann, War Diaries and Other Papers, 2 vols (London, 1929), I, p. 201.
5. Holger Afflerbach, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich (Munich, 1994), pp. 196–97; Erich Ludendorff, Ludendorff's Own Story, 2 vols (New York, 1920), I, pp. 138–39.
6. R. A. Kahn, The Multinational Empire: Nationalism and National Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918, 2 vols (New York, 1983), II, p. 231.
7. Nellie Ryan, My Years at the Austrian Court (London, 1915), pp. 12–13.
8. Joseph Redlich, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria: A Biography (London, 1929), p. 524.
9. Fritz Fellner, ‘Austria-Hungary’, in Keith Wilson, ed., Decisions for War, 1914 (London, 1995), p. 16; Gordon Tunstall, ‘Austria-Hungary’, in Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig, eds, The Origins of World War I (Cambridge, 2003), p. 134.
10. Palmer, Twilight of Habsburgs, p. 224; Steven Beller, Francis Joseph (London, 1996), p. 136.
11. Beller, Francis Joseph, pp. 215, 218; Albert von Margutti, Kaiser Franz Joseph: Persönliche Erinnerungen (Vienna, 1924), p. 414.
12. Palmer, Twilight of Habsburgs, pp. 147, 334.
13. Lawrence Sondhaus, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: Architect of the Apocalypse (Boston, 2000), p. 133.
14. Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf, Mein Leben mit Conrad von Hötzendorf (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 113–14.
15. Winston S. Churchill, The Unknown War: The Eastern Front (New York, 1931), p. 132.
16. Josef Stürgkh, Im Grossen Deutschen Hauptquartier (Leipzig, 1921), p. 116.
17. Albert von Margutti, The Emperor Franz Joseph and His Times (London, 1921), p. 362.
18. John Elliot, Fall of Eagles (London, 1974), p. 177; Redlich, Emperor Francis Joseph, pp. 533–34.
19. Czernin, In the World War, pp. 27, 217.
20. Elliot, Fall of Eagles, p. 208.
21. A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809–1918 (1948; Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 259.
Chapter 7 The Ungentlemanly Weapon
1. Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News, 3 October 1914.
2. Richard Hough, The Great War at Sea, 1914–18 (Oxford, 1986), p. 169.
3. Churchill College, Fisher MSS, FISR1/14/763, Churchill to Fisher, 1 January 1914; ibid., FISR5/18/4290, Note by Jellicoe; A. J. Marder, Fear God and Dread Nought, 3 vols (London, 1952 and 1956), I, p. 333.
4. Walter Görlitz, The Kaiser and his Court (London, 1961), pp. 125–26.
5. Paul König, Voyage of the Deutschland (New York, 1917), p. 115.
6. Arthur Mee, Adventure of the Island (London, 1919), p. 40.
7. Holger Herwig, ‘The Dynamics of Necessity: German Military Policy during the First World War’, in Allan Millett an
d Williamson Murray, eds, Military Effectiveness (Boston, 1988), pp. 89–92.
8. National Maritime Museum, Duff Diary, 11 February 1915.
9. State of the Union Address, 8 December 1914.
10. Görlitz, Kaiser and Court, p. 153.
11. Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Sceptre, 4 vols (Coral Gables, FL, 1972), III, p. 205.
12. Wilhelm Deist, ‘Strategy and Unlimited War in Germany’, in Roger Chickering and Jürgen Förster, eds, Great War, Total War (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 265–79, at pp. 275–76.
13. Michael Hadley, Count Not the Dead (Montreal, 1995), p. 28.
14. Hough, Great War at Sea, p. 302.
15. Reinhard Scheer, Germany's High Seas Fleet in the World War (London, 1920), p. 248.
16. Ibid., pp. 248–52.
17. Ritter, Sword and Sceptre, III, pp. 305–06.
18. Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–18 (London, 1997), p. 315.
19. Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Dusseldorf, 1961), p. 400. It is rendered slightly differently in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (London, 1967), p. 308.
20. Joachim Schröder, Die U-Boote des Kaisers (Lauf an der Pegnitz, 2001), p. 304.
21. Görlitz, Kaiser and Court, pp. 228–29.
22. Official German Documents Relating to the World War (New York, 1923), II, pp. 1320–21.
23. Gaddis Smith, ‘Unrestricted U-Boat War’, Purnell's History of the First World War 5, 1, 1971, p. 1,808; Konrad Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor (New Haven, CT, 1973), p. 300; Görlitz, Kaiser and Court, pp. 230–31; Helmut Otto and Karl Schmiedel, eds, Der Erste Weltkrieg: Dokumente (East Berlin, 1977), pp. 222–24.
24. David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914–18 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2000), p. 129.
25. 65 Cong., 1st Sess. Senate Doc. 5, Ser. 7264 (Washington, 1917), pp. 3–8.
The Making of the First World War Page 31