6 World War I, I
Controversies
Introduction: the making of the twentieth century
With black humour one could argue that the Great War of 1914–1 8 was the kind of
conflict that gives war a bad name. War should be an instrument of policy; Clausewitz is
crystal clear on that fundamental. However, for four and a quarter years warfare seemed
more in command of the policies of states than commanded by them. That was not quite
true, but neither was it wholly an illusion. The strategic historian takes serious note of
Gary Sheffield’s expansive claim that ‘The First World War was the key event of the
twentieth century, from which everything else flowed’ (Sheffield, 2001: 221). Sheffield
is persuasive, provided one does not take too literally his assertion that ‘everything else
flowed’ from the war. One has to beware of such a vague concept as the flow of events.
While there is no doubt that in many vital respects the Great War made the twentieth
century, certainly politically and strategically, there is good reason to question the
responsibility of the war for all that followed over the next eighty years.
It is plausible to claim that the Great War against France which concluded in 1 8 15 had
reshaped, even redefined, international politics for at least a half-century. Similarly, it is
scarcely less persuasive to argue that Bismarck’s wars to unite Germany under Prussian
tutelage reconstructed the architecture of the balance of power. The German Chancellor
decisively altered the way that international politics would have to be managed by the
great powers. Now the temporal domain of the strategic historical argument needs to be
extended. The war of 1914–1 8 was uniquely responsible for setting the stage for, and
thereby enabling, the major political and strategic events of the century that followed, but
even the most influential of historical episodes, which tend to be strategic in character,
do not drive forward along predetermined linear paths. Two fallacies beg for attention.
First, just because 1914–1 8 unquestionably was the product of factors traceable to
trends and events in the nineteenth century, it does not follow that those factors caused
the war in a direct and unavoidable sense. Second, although one can hypothesize a rich
assortment of ‘what ifs’, specifying alternative happenings here and there, it should not