History’s Long Tail: The Origins of World War I.



Bismarck
The recent excellent histories on the factors leading up to World War One don’t go back far enough.

The heart of the Treaty of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) was the “Holy Alliance,” an agreement of the monarchs of Russia, Prussia (later Germany) and Austria (later Austria-Hungary) to stamp out any return to revolutionary ideals of the French Revolution.  The three monarchies cooperated until the Crimean War.

The Crimean War (1853-56) was triggered by Russian attempts to expand its influence around the Black Sea, force the Ottoman Empire to allow Russian warships through the Dardanelles and increase influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire (later Turkey) retreated. To keep Russia bottled up in the Black Sea and out of the Mediterranean, England and France came into the war on the side of the Ottoman Empire. Prussia remained neutral. Austria-Hungary also remained neutral but Russia expected Austrian support. After the war, Russian leaders believed that Austria used the war to expand its influence in the Balkans.  Russia and Austria-Hungary became rivals in the Balkans, with increasing Russian paranoia and anger towards Austria-Hungary.  This broke up the "Holy Alliance" and began the long-term rivalry of Russia and Austria-Hungary.  (For an excellent history of the Crimean War, its origins and consequences, see Orlando Figes, The Crimean War).

 Otto von Bismarck used this rivalry to further his aims for Prussia.  He was anti-Austria at this time because he wanted to unite the German states under Prussia and replace Austrian influence in the southern German states.  After being defeated in battle by Prussia (date), Austria focused on the Balkans because its German neighbors in the German Confederation had become part of the new Germany. 

In the next decade, Bismarck began his series of wars to unite the various German states under Prussian hegemony and create modern Germany.  The last war was the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.  Prussia and its German allies won a quick victory and declare the creation of the first German Reich. Besides defeating the French, the Prussians rubbed their noses in it by creating the new Germany at Versailles. Bismarck had achieved his goal of a united Germany but at the expense of creating an implacable foe bent on revenge and recovery of lost territory, France.

Bismarck spent the next twenty years managing the creation of the new state and its European security.  His foreign policy strategy was to make sure Germany would never have to fight on two fronts.  He signed a formal treaty with Austria-Hungary but he also had an agreement with Russia not to attack each other. This isolated France.

Even though Bismarck had created a Germany that disrupted the “balance of power” equilibrium of Europe, his careful diplomacy kept the peace. Germany did not try to expand in Europe and opted for stability.  Bismarck opposed the creation of an overseas colonial empire, which might have antagonized Britain. He counted on the rivalry between Russia and Britain for influence in central Asia to keep the two countries from cooperating against Germany.

 But even before Bismarck was forced to resign by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1890, Bismarck's careful European political structure was unraveling. Russia refused to renew secret "reinsurance" (nonaggression) treaties with Germany, mostly because of Russia's increasing anger at Austria-Hungary's policies in the Balkans, and its German ally. Russia and France began secret talks that would culminate in military cooperation aimed at the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

It is said that some organizations are created by geniuses that could be run by idiots and that some organizations are created by idiots that could only work if run by geniuses. Unfortunately, Bismarck’s Germany was created by a genius but later run by an idiot, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who undid Bismarck’s careful policies. In no particular order, Wilhelm:

Started a naval arms race with England that he couldn’t win but thoroughly alarmed and alienated the English. This undermined the attempts of the German foreign office after Bismarck to reach some sort of understanding or alliance with England.

Declared that Germany should have an overseas colonial empire and made provocative speeches over trivial disputes that threatened European war.

Approved and supported the Schlieffen Plan, the German plan to invade and quickly defeat France before Russia could completely mobilize and move west.  The Plan included invading Belgium to get to France, guaranteeing the anger of the English and increasing the chances that England would fight with France and Russia against Germany.  The German General Staff argued that they would defeat France before England could effectively intervene. They were wrong.  

Through arrogance and ineptness, he further alienated his cousin the Russian tsar and his advisors.

 German foreign policies under Wilhelm meant that rather than face France alone, Wilhelm increased the probability that Germany would face France, Belgium, Russia and England.

 At the crucial time after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his government gave Austria-Hungary "carte blanche" support in dealing with Serbia. A small clique in the Austrian-Hungarian government had long wanted to go to war with Serbia; ironically, this policy was opposed by Franz Ferdinand. The result was that a local dispute was used as an excuse to start a world war.

As 1914 approached, flexible European diplomacy had hardened into two competing alliances. Diplomatic rigidity was reinforced by military rigidity. All potential combatants rapidly increased the size of their armies and reserves, and overall military spending. All had the same strategy – quick total mobilization and go on the offensive. Whoever mobilized first had an advantage. The Schlieffen Plan, Germany’s detailed mobilization plan that relied on Germany's superb railroad system and years of fine-tuning the logistics of the mobilization, appeared on paper to have a good chance to succeed.  But the advances in weaponry and the large increase in numbers, especially the need for large amounts of artillery, reduced the chances of rapid movement needed for a successful offensive. After railroads delivered soldiers to their "jumping off" locations, armies still moved on foot and artillery and supplies by horse and wagon.  

 Both von Schlieffen, after he retired as head of the German General Staff, and von Moltke, the head of the German General Staff in 1914, had grave doubts the Plan could succeed. Von Schlieffen died in 1913.  Von Moltke had a nervous breakdown six weeks into the war and was relieved of command. He died in 1916. Kaiser Wilhelm, whose bombastic rhetoric did much to heighten tensions and alienate England, died peacefully in June 1941 in the Netherlands, which was controlled by Hitler’s Third Reich. 

War is the unfolding of miscalculations. (Barbara Tuchman)

======================================================================

For the beginnings of World War I, its consequences, and a bibliography, see The Beginning of the Twentieth Century:  The Start of World War I.

Go back to the Guide for Pages and Posts.




Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular Posts

Adam Smith's Pin Factory

Image
ADAM SMITH VISITS A PIN FACTORY   Adam Smith’s description of a pin factory is on the first page of  The Wealth of Nations .  (Chapter 1 – “Of the Division of Labour”)  Drawings of pin factories of this period show workers using hand tools. Smith says the process can be broken down into 18 distinct steps, including packaging the pins. Smith mentions that pin factory workers were poorly paid, despite their high productivity.    Adam Smith says he visited a pin factory employing 10 men who produced 48,000 pins per day.  If each of the ten workers had done all the steps themselves, Smith says each worker could produce only 10 or 20 pins per day.  So the pin factory replaces 2,400 to 4,800 pin makers. The increase in labor productivity (output per person per day) is as high as 50 times that of individual pin makers.     This reduction in unit cost or average cost (AC) and the huge increase in quantity produced do not just replace older methods of organization and production.  They increa
Read more

The Structure of the Economy: Bilateral Oligopoly

Image
DEFINITION OF A BILATERAL OLIGOPOLY Models of market structure assume that the demand side is represented by a large number of buyers.  The structure of the market, and the assumed market outcomes, depends on the number of suppliers and how they compete.  Suppliers either post one price or exploit their knowledge of buyer categories by using price discrimination.  Despite the comments about the key role of consumers in determining economic performance, consumers are fairly passive when the discussion focuses on imperfectly-competitive industries.  But many markets are not structured this way; the buyers are not passive consumers but large corporations that do not passively accept suppliers’ prices.  Net prices are actively negotiated.  These markets are often bilateral oligopolies. In a bilateral oligopoly the buyers are not an undifferentiated mass of consumers but rather a small number of purchasing agents or professional buyers representing large purchasers.   T
Read more

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Beginning of the Great Depression

Image
Famous Headline Introduction The usual reasons given for the Great Depression – the stock market crash of 1929 and the later collapse of the banking system – do not tell the whole story. Available economic data indicate (there were no national income accounts in 1929) that a recession had already begun before the stock market crash. The crash of October and November of 1929 was a catalyst that made the recession worse but the partial stock market recovery in early 1930 did not end the recession. Industrial production continued to fall quickly and unemployment rose rapidly in 1930. Continuing farm and businesses failures over the next two years wiped out thousands of small rural banks and threatened total financial collapse in early1933.  For a fuller explanation, we have to go back to the 1920s to see additional reasons for the origins and the rapid decline in output at the beginning of the Great Depression. We have to look at the internationa
Read more

Guide to Pages and Posts

PAGES - ECONOMICS TUTORIALS This set of economic essays in Pages are equivalent to a course in economics. They emphasize the dynamics of economic growth and development, and the role of information in the functioning of modern markets. BASIC CONCEPTS AND THEORY Chapter 1 - Introduction and Summary The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution   in England       Chapter 3 - Economic Development and Economic Growth Chapter 4  - Production Functions and  Supply Chains Chapter 5 - Demand, Income and Consumption Chapter 6 - Competition, Strategies and Structure Chapter 7 - Imperfect Competition: How Large Corporations Compete Chapter 8  - Case Study:  Parker Hannifin Chapter 9  - Bilateral Oligopoly Chapter 10 - Examples of Bilateral Oligopoly Chapter 11  - Critique of Basic Economic Theory MARKET DYNAMICS AND INFORMATION:  HOW MARKETS WORK Chapter 12  - Introduction to Information and Economic Structure Chapter 13  - How Markets Work:  Transaction Costs and Market-Makers Chapte
Read more

Explaining Derivatives - An Analogy

Image
You go around to farmers with cows. You buy all the cows and pay the farmers a small fee to milk the cows and sell the milk. You pay for the cows with ass(et)-backed securities called MBSs (Milked Bovine Securities) that you tell investors are udderly safe. But some of the cows don't give enough milk (cow flow problem) or give no milk at all. You take some of the asset-backed securities, say they're backed by the subprime cows, and use them as collateral to sell another set of securities called CMOs (Cow Milk Obligations). Then you buy CDSs (Cow Dried-up Swaps) from AIG (Angus Insurance Company) to insure the CMOs when the cows stopped giving milk. If you work it right, you collect more on the CDSs than you pay out to retire the CMOs. The money you get from selling the dead cows go to pay the CLOs (cow leather obligations). You could also sell CDOs (cow dung obligations) that depend on how much cow dung is produced. This is a typical Wall Street product - turning sh
Read more

Government Finance 101: Welcome to Alice in Wonderland

Image
    Fiscal Policy   Some basic definitions:   Deficit.    The difference between the federal government’s spending and its revenue in one fiscal year.   The fiscal year starts on October 1.  So fiscal year 2024 started on October 1, 2023. You know right away this is going to be confusing. Yearly deficits before the coronavirus were around $1 trillion per year. For fiscal year 2021, the deficit was $2.8 trillion. Total stimulus spending and tax cuts were around $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest projection is an average yearly deficit of $1.5 trillion for the next 10 years. This should be viewed as a minimum.   Social Security and Medicare are funded by their own taxes and working down their trust funds (selling government bonds). Subtracting Social Security and Medicare taxes from the Federal budget, other revenue covers about 50-60% of all other government spending; the other 40-50% is the deficit and financed by borrowing.   Debt .  Short for national debt.
Read more

John von Neumann Sees the Future

Image
John von Neumann JOHN VON NEUMANN CREATES THE FUTURE If you want to understand the world we live in, you have to know about the thinking of three men – Alan Turing, Claude Shannon and John von Neumann.   I’ve talked a little about Alan Turing in an earlier essay.   All three men knew each other, discussed their ideas with each other and promoted each other’s ideas. John von Neumann has been called the smartest individual of the 20 th Century.   Even an outline of his accomplishments, which you can read about in  Wikipedia, is hard to believe.   He invented game theory, which I discussed in two earlier posts.   He headed up a group of mathematicians who invented new statistical techniques at Los Alamos that made the atomic bomb possible.   In 1944, he wrote a memo that outlined the structure of the modern computer.   He then managed the design and building of a modern general computer and consulted on the building of virtually all the early computers. JOHN VON NEUMANN
Read more

The Roman Republic Commits Suicide: A Cautionary Tale for America

Image
Why Study Rome? Americans have focused on comparisons between Rome and America twice in American history.  The first time was during the period from before the Revolution to after the ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, when the founding fathers and others looked to the Roman Republic for ideas and inspiration on how to structure the new government. After the American Revolution, the founding fathers, having read the Roman authors detailing the collapse of the Roman republic, worried about internal threats to the survival of their new republic.   The second time was when the United States became a superpower, especially after WWII, and then again after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Commentators compared America to the Roman Empire at the height of its power. There was some discussion about how America became a permanent warfare state and how it affected domestic democracy and civil society. And now a third time. Hav
Read more

“Pax Americana”: The World That America Made

Image
There are two kinds of empires: the kind that rules through ruthless exploitation, and the kind that seeks to induce allies into defending themselves through economic incentives. (George Friedman) INTRODUCTION America's power and influence in the world rests on three broad, interrelated bases: 1) Overwhelming military power that can be projected anywhere in the world,     supplemented by security arrangements with allies and supporters. 2) A large, innovative, dynamic domestic economy as the basis for global economic and technological leadership. The economy provides the resources and technology to support the military and a global foreign policy. 3) Claims to moral and ideological leadership and influence, particularly the promotion of liberal democratic societies and supporting political institutions. This post will discuss the economic aspects and related security objectives of American foreign policy. It will focus on the structure of the global
Read more