The Sleepwalkers:  How Europe Went To War In 1914, by Christopher Clark

This book was a painful one to read, and not only because of its length at more than 500 pages of material.  Part of the painfulness of reading about the period just before the start of World War I is the way in which people viewed themselves as being trapped without options even as they made decisions that led to the destruction of Europe’s glory and honor and reputation and led to a century of brutal conflict relating to fascism and communism that continues to this day in the Western world.  It is not hard to see in the sleepwalking and deeply partisan elites of the past a vivid reminder of the pressures the contemporary generation is under and the way that it is all too easy to give blank checks to one’s allies and to believe that one is being forced into decisions while believing that one’s rivals and adversaries have the responsibility to take actions to avoid warfare, even as everyone acts in such a way as to make such a war inevitable, to the point where parsing out blame between the various great powers seems very difficult to do.

This sizable and focused book is divided into twelve chapters in three parts with numerous smaller sections.  First, the book begins with a list of illustrations and maps as well as acknowledgments and an introduction.  After that the first part contains two chapters that look at the road to Sarajevo (I), focusing first on the problems of government with Serbia relating to a coup that had eliminated one of their ruling dynasties (1) as well as the problems and complexities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (2) of the time.  After that the author examines the problem of Europe divided (II) with chapters that look at the polarization that took place in Europe between 1887 and 1907 (3), the many voices of European foreign policy in the major powers (4), the Balkan entanglements that led to the Italian war to gain Libya as well as the first and second Balkan wars (5), and the last chances for peace in the period between 1912 and 1914 where the author speculates there was a crisis of masculinity (6).  Finally, the book ends with six chapters that examine the behavior of European statesmen (III) leading up to the outbreak of World War I, with chapters on the murder in Sarajevo (7), the widening circle of problems extending beyond Serbia and Austria-Hungary (8), the behavior of the French in St. Petersburg (9) the ultimatum delivered by Austria-Hungary to Serbia (10), the warning shots from Russia as it mobilized (11), and the last days of peace as various nations acted in ways that made it certain that the war would widen (12).

When one sees the hyper-masculinity of firmness and swagger that was being forced on various foreign ministers in Europe in the years leading up to 1914, one finds plenty of similarities to the brashness and arrogance of contemporary politicians.  This suggests that a crisis of masculinity is certainly an aspect of our contemporary political troubles, and that it may have tragic and violent outcomes.  What also strikes me as particularly important about the opening moves that made World War I as destructive as it was is the rigidity that one sees in the various moves.  Russia had no plan to mobilize only against Austria-Hungary and so its mobilization threatened Germany, and Germany had no attack against France that did not involve invading Belgium, which would lead to British involvement, and so on and so forth.  When poor military planning and cultural demands force a high degree of rigidity in the approach of both diplomatic and military efforts, there is clearly a problem within the cultures of those European nations that went to war.  Since similar problems exist in the contemporary West, we might examine ourselves lest we likewise sleepwalk into disaster.