The Great War of 1911 (updated)

Good stuff. I love good counterfactuals.

Very interesting and persuasive. Another not unlikely candidate for potential fascist dictator of France would have been Weygand, who had all the right characteristics (military prestige, arch-conservative catholic beliefs, anti-semitimism, disdain for democracy, admiration for hierarchy and order…).

Very neat, but surely if there had been any politicians brought down by the Marconi scandal, they would have been Lloyd George, Rufus Isaacs and possibly Herbert Samuel. The chances of it displacing Asquith, who was not at all involved in those very dodgy share dealings, and having him replaced by Lloyd George, who was deeply implicated, were surely nonexistent.

I’ve replaced this with a sex scandal over Venetia Stanley. That was what I originally had, vaguely, in mind, but a quick Google looking for the details threw up the Marconi scandal and it seemed to fit the bill – JQ

Also: Joffre’s plans were that if the Germans went to war the French would attack them in Alsace and Lorraine; not to launch an unprovoked attack on Belgium. That being what happened in 1914.

Also: the Stkes-Picot agreement, and so forth, were consequences, not causes, of the outbreak of war in 1914. The German plans for the annexation of Belgium, and so forth, were the other way round.

But very neat, all the same.

Further, and most serious, problem with this alternative history:-

British involvement in the 1914 war was by no means guaranteed. One of the major factors determining that involvement was the unprovoked German invasion of Belgium, against international treaties (agreed by Germany, France and Britain) guaranteeing Belgium neutrality, which was greatly in Britain’s interest. If the 1911 war had begun with an unprovoked French invasion of Belgium, the chances of a largely united Liberal government declaring war in support of France would have been zero; and in all probability one of its main opponents would have been Lloyd George..

Well, from the excerpt, Lloyd George is laying out a standard establishment line – peace first, negotiation by all means, but there is a line. Note that the High Seas Fleet had been building for 15 years by 1911, and British naval expenditure had grown year by year in response. The Liberals would have been glad to cut back, but public opinion and German pressure would not let them.

Can I recommend that JQ read a good book on Wilhelmine Germany (maybe Volker Berghahn’s study?) He seems to think it was run by Eisenhower Republicans when in fact it more nearly resembles the regime of the lesser Bush.

JQ: link checked. It says, among other things, “if Germany violated Belgian neutrality first, Britain’s treaty obligations to Belgium would automatically put her on the French side against Germany … But if France gave up the moral high ground by violating Belgian neutrality first, Britain would very likely remain on the sidelines; stern reminders from British diplomats and officers reinforced the need to respect Belgian neutrality on several occasions around this time … Ultimately the French military’s doctrine of total attack led them to focus on planning to attack German armies where they would be sure to find them – coming across the Franco-German border, from Germany. But Joffre never doubted that Belgium would be the main battlefield in a war between France and Germany.”

I reckon that makes an attack by the French into Belgium wildly improbable.

Peter T: it is difficult to be unfair to GW Bush, but I think you’ve managed that remarkable feat. May I recommend JCG Rohl’s biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which quotes the Kaiser’s declaration in 1904 at a banquet for King Leopold of Belgium: “I demand a written declaration now in time of peace that in case of conflict Belgium would take her stand on our side, and that to this end the King should among other things guarantee to us the use of Belgian railways and fortified places. If the King of the Belgians did not do so, he – HM the Kaiser – would not be able to give a guarantee for either his territory or the dynasty. We would then, if the case arose, immediately invade Belgium … I will not be trifled with! As a soldier, I belong to the school of Frederick the Great, to the school of Napoleon. If Belgium does not go with me, I will be guided solely by strategic considerations.’”

And writing to Chancellor von Bulow in 1905: “If England starts a war with us in some way or other, two dispatches must immediately be sent by Your Excellency to Brussels and Paris demanding that they declare within six hours whether they are for us or against us. We must march into Belgium at once, however she declares herself … If France mobilises, then that is a threat of war against us in favour of England, and in that case Russian regiments must march with us. I believe that to rape and pillage in beautiful Gaul would be a pleasant enough prospect to lure the Russians.”

Not even GWB …

As for Lloyd George, I would recommend a good history of Asquith’s governments. Roy Jenkins’ biography is entertaining and accurate. It is, or ought to be, well known that in the 1914 crisis half the UK cabinet, led by Lloyd George, were threatening to resign if war was declared, and only the German invasion of Belgium changed their minds, except for John Morley, an old-fashioned Gladstonian, and John Burns (an interesting character: son of a Scots engineering fitter who abandoned his family in London when John was a child, leaving Mrs Burns to set up as a washerwoman; young John acquired a useful local reputation for radical politics and for settling his problems with his fists, and was imprisoned after leading a riotous charge against the police in Trafalgar Square. Not, on the whole, someone who might have been expected to become a pre-1914 Cabinet Minister and to resign rather than support a war. But I digress.)

Make sure to work in a graffito somewhere appropriate: “Archduke Ferdinand found alive! WWI a mistake!”

Richard Ned Lebow, Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives!: A World Without World War I (St. Martin’s, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/Archduke-Franz-Ferdinand-Lives-without/dp/1137278536/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452176660&sr=1-1&keywords=Richard+Ned+Lebow

The Schlieffen plan doesn’t go into effect, because the French invade Belgium. All the Germans have to do is hold off the French in the West while they win the war in the East. Which they could have easily done since defence was favored and the French were way too overconfident on their ability to break lines with elan. See “Grey Tide in the East” by Andrew Heller for a variant of this.

I think you need to have the French muff things in a way that puts Britain into greater sympathy with Germany, a neutral favoring Germany if not an ally. Without the British alliance, France loses big time in a confrontation of armies in Europe.

In fact, the Agadir crisis confirmed the French alliance with Britain. France was reassured that it could concentrate its navy in the Med, not worrying about the High Seas Fleet sailing against the French channel or Atlantic coast.

But, if France, with all its relict reactionary aggression unleashed abroad, went all Fashoda, deeply offending Britain (or the U.S.) . . .

There remained anti-French sentiment in Britain. (Polls indicate popular suspicion of each other today) One can imagine the Dreyfus business going the other way domestically, and the right-wing crazies confronting the British in Africa or China or even India in a way that made Germany look better by comparison. The German monarch was a grandson of Victoria, how bad could he be? The Great Game played with the Russians made a British-Russian alliance unlikely.

If France is not nurturing the Entente and Germany not regularly offending everyone the France could lose. But, it would be a little war, not a Great War.

Very nice!

However, I just can’t see Britain aligning with a France that invaded Belgium. That’s a lot like imagining the US joining Great Britain in WWII after Britain bombed Pearl Harbor. Germany’s invasion of Belgium wasn’t the entire reason the British people supported the war, but it was certainly a necessary reason.

To join threads…Piketty:
“Note that the importance of farmland in late nineteenth-century Germany made the German case
resemble the French more than the British one (agriculture had not yet disappeared east of the Rhine),
and the value of industrial capital was higher than in either France or Britain. By contrast, Germany
on the eve of World War I had only half as much in foreign assets as France (roughly 50 percent of
national income versus a year’s worth of income for France) and only a quarter as much as Britain
(whose foreign assets were worth two years of national income). The main reason for this is of
course that Germany had no colonial empire, a fact that was the source of some very powerful
political and military tensions: think, for example, of the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911, when the
Kaiser sought to challenge French supremacy in Morocco. The heightened competition among
European powers for colonial assets obviously contributed to the climate that ultimately led to the
declaration of war in the summer of 1914: one need not subscribe to all of Lenin’s theses in
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) to share this conclusion.”

I keep hoping Alan Furst will quit retreading WW2 and go back to WW1, including a novel about a good-natured, handsome, sexually not very resistible young chap (i.e. every Furst hero ever) who stumbles upon the Austrian military’s plot to arrange the assassination of that thorn in their side & obstacle to war, the Archduke of Austria.

In the spirit of the @Stephen counterfactual, the pre-1911 majority bloc within the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Council retained their seats after that year…

Great wars are almost always, as Pitt put it, “contentions of purse”, and the French and British had much deeper purses than the Germans (and a banker of last resort in the US).

Germans may have lit the fire but all of Europe was a tinderbox. It’s more interesting to think about what might have dampened the fuel. Perhaps a mildly socialist revolution in a major state that frightened the other elites into reform rather than militarist reaction?

@34 Yes about the immense consequences for the former Ottoman Empire. I am told that the work of Leila Tarazi Fawaz is most important.
http://armypress.dodlive.mil/a-land-of-aching-hearts-the-middle-east-in-the-great-war/
http://wilsonquarterly.com/stories/forgotten-soldiers-india-in-great-war/

“the former Ottoman Empire is one place where the disaster of 1914 is still playing itself out.”

The disaster of 1914 is still playing itself out in the former Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian empires. That’s what is really frightening – nothing has been resolved, even 100 years later.

@38

That’s a pretty impressive goalpost shift.

As a number of people have made the argument, it seems to me to be trivially true that the consequences of WW1 reverberate today, but since we’re playing with counterfactuals what is the counterfactual to how these deep ethnic and national differences play out outside of WW1? How do these meaningful political arguments over identity and power in crumbling political units resolve themselves without the First World War? And independently of whether the conflicts that arose were ‘worth it’, what are the realistic non-violent alternative scenarios that placate elite (and to varying degrees public) growing national demands? I understand WW1 exacerbated these conflicts and radicalised populations, but there were broader ideological and political shifts independent of the war, so is it a little overly determined to put most of these conflicts down to WW1?

The map of the Middle East was going to be redrawn at some stage, and that redrawing was unlikely to be the result of apolitical technocratic management and public consultation. It was going to be the result of power and politics. So what is the resolution to desires for Arab self-government that is considerably better than today? My understanding is that the settlement turned out quite close to the Ottoman administrative divisions, and was not solely a western fait accompli but negotiated over (post Sykes Picot) by elites and populations in the region. What’s the alternative? A greater Arabia driven by reactionary tribal elites from the Gulf (which afaict seems to have been what the Arab Revolt was)? Basically a greater Saudi Arabia? There were/are still local, ethnic and national identities in these regions that cut across sectarian, religious or pseudo cosmopolitan ones, so the resolutions to these conflicts don’t seem obvious to me.

Even in a very small part of it ,As p o neill implies, in ireland, as much as you might get some plausibly workable political solution independently of the war, you could get an incoherent sectarian conflict in the medium/long term. Scale out this small, intractable political dispute and you start to come close to the context that was going to meet even the best meaning of political elites.
I mean, I don’t disagree that Western Imperialism and/or global war has helped define and exacerbate these divisions, I just don’t see how the alternative runs so much more smoothly

What’s needed is an explanation of how the peace-loving democracies of Russia, France and Britain managed to sign all those secret treaties, acquire and expand colonial empires and so on

No idea what you’re actually asking here, JQ, seeing that nobody in their right mind would describe 1911 Russia, France or Britain as (a) peace-loving* (b) a democracy** or (c) not an empire.

*Except in the trivial sense that almost*** every statesman and ruling class in history would prefer the full and peaceful achievement of their legitimate aims to ditto with war. Before total war, peace wasn’t a sine qua non – if anything it was the ‘and a pony’ of international diplomacy.
**Although France had at least had universal manhood suffrage since 1875.
***You have to wonder about Kaiser Wilhelm.

France and Britain are always considered in popular history and imagination to be democracies, not empires, not just pre-WWI but always. But Wilhelmine Germany has good arguments to be considered as much a democracy as them. And even Franz Josef had to take his Diet into consideration. And it is a serious question as to how much influence the Japanese emperor really had.

Propaganda formed these popular images. I think we see in this thread the kind of arguments that a certain kind of learned writer on these issues will entertain to justify these musty constructs.

“If the proximate cause of the war and the initial aggressor are just historical accidents based on random events, this view is substantially bolstered. But if potential proximate causes of WWI are instead dominated by the actual policy goals and differential preference for war vs alternatives by the major powers at the time, that’s a problem for this view.”

I agree that this is JQs intent, more or less , and also that it might not be historically accurate. But I think it goes further thdn this, and is more defensible . That ww1 was in some ways chickens coming home to roost. Perhaps not causally , but culturally and in practice ww1 was just visiting on Europe what european powers had (and continued after) visited on others. But this isn’t an empirical argument , but a moral one. Proving the point that evidence never has anything to do with it, it’s morals all the way for

Can’t wait to read Enzo Traverso’s Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945

“I’ve updated the story so that the war starts at sea, between Germany and Britain. That would be enough, I think, to overcome qualms about Belgian neutrality.”

In 1911? No way. This is even LESS likely then Britain joining a France that invaded Belgium. It’s barely possible that the High Seas Fleet could damage the British fleet, but impossible that it could have even the moderate success of Jutland.

The High Seas Fleet would be missing the Kaiser Dreadnoughts and the Konigs. That leaves the Helgolands, a bunch of obsolete ships, and a handful of modern cruisers, and destroyers. Against a British fleet with plenty of excellent Dreadnought-class ships. Either the Captains and Admirals of the HSF would have resigned their commissions, or they would have gone with their ships to the bottom of the sea. The only plausible result of Germany challenging Britain on the seas in 1911 is the German fleet being mauled.

Germany would then need to declare war on Britain for Britain to enter the war.

steven johnson 01.08.16 at 7:01 pm writes:
>France and Britain are always considered in popular history and imagination to be >democracies, not empires, not just pre-WWI but always.

Very strange schooling you must have had to get that vibe. King Alfred who burnt the cakes was not the figurehead of any democracy and noone I have ever known thinks that.

>And it is a serious question as to how much influence the Japanese emperor really had.

Obvious not that much influence, since he was against the war. Sadly, being educated in Britain he was full of the teachings of the rules of “constitutional monarch”. So after some minor protestations did not do anything to obstruct the rule of the lawfully elected government. Which unfortunately was full of warmongering idiots.

However, since the topic in question is the Great War not WW2, and the Japanese were our allies in the Great War, that’s all by the by.

I do find the counterfactual somewhat bewildering not to say unconvincing on many counts. Germany in 1911 was less relatively powerful than in 1914. Running the Battle of Jutland 3 years earlier would be entirely to the advantage of the British, since their numerical superiority would be even greater, and less likely to provide a worse outcome. I’m not sure any further analysis is to the point, or indeed what the point is supposed to be. Germany attacking the UK because the French was taking control of Morocco is the opposite of convincing, let alone the prospect of them winning.

If one is to argue for Entente “war guilt”, and hey why not, it would be more interesting if based on what they actually did (i.e. not invade Belgium, or indeed declare war on another country except as required by formal alliances). One might have though that there would be plenty that they did do wrong without inventing stuff; if not it displays a fatal weakness in the position — i.e., that the OP believes that in reality there is no Entente war guilt.

The “serious historians” I’ve read certainly don’t consider the Great War to be the result of some unfortunate accident. The precise timing obviously depends to a small extent on external events, but much of it does not.

“I’ve changed … dates … political debates, to bring more aggressive leaders and policies to the fore [and added an] improbable event” is agressive handwaving and gives the lie to “no more improbable than the actual”. Well, given different leaders, policies, dates, events … ok you’ve convinced me, war with the Martians in 1911 was inevitable.

“And in 1911, Italy didn’t have colonies.”

Apart from Libya, Eritrea and Somalia…..

John Quiggan writes:
>As I already said, way too literal. I’m not a wargamer, and I’m not interested in the details of battleship armaments and similar.

I understand the “way too literal” bit, but I think that this is the rock on which successful counter-factuals live or die. (NB: My view, obviously not others.) Positing counter-factuals that are just totally made-up is trivial and uninteresting – anyone can posit anything.

That’s why in my view, positing that if the Great War begins earlier, when Britain and France had greater relative resources (economic, armaments. whatever), it leads to worse outcome (from UK/France), making Britain and France *lose* instead of *winning even more extravagantly*, makes no sense to me.

I do think there is something valuable in the consideration of counter-factuals, but to get real mileage (or at least insight) one needs, in my view, to be really strict on oneself in how you construct it; otherwise, it ends up as just another handwavy self-indulgence in fairyland.

And perhaps in the case of the Great War this is even more important than usual. There is just so much “going wrong” in Europe at the time, that altering the conventional (amongst the hoi polloi) view that it is all the fault of those German fellows, needs the counter-factual to be incredibly strict: a handwaved counter-factual can be handwaved away with equal facility. Of course if one is not concerned with the hoi polloi, the serious historians already have many quibbles and doubts about the whole kerfuffle anyway, no counter-factual is (I think) necessary to get them to see the light.

>More specifically, when I mentioned Jutland, I didn’t mean a rerun of the WWI battle with 1911 fleets, just a naval encounter in the general vicinity that turns out worse than expected for the Royal Navy.

Pretty much in line with what happened at Jutland in real life then. Only even more unlikely (and I still don’t understand why you think Germany attacks Britain because France is obstreporous in Morocco!).

steven johnson writes
>And it must be a strange schooling you’ve received if you think burnt cakes instead of Magna Carta are what’s important in popular mythology.

’twas not I who claimed
>France and Britain are always considered in popular history and imagination to be democracies, not empires, not just pre-WWI but always.

So you now clarify that “always” means “post Magna Carta”. Not in my book, nor in anyone else’s. Apart from Humpty Dumpty’s of course, but that’s glory for you.

And my schooling certainly did not promulgate any nonsense about Magna Carta meaning democracy! Unless you think “the people” == “the barons”. It was certainly an important first step on the journey towards a constitutional monarchy which could be categorised as a democracy, but the last step? No. Just no.

And just what democracy has to do with “doves of religious freedom” rather escapes me. One might rather have thought it had something to do with “rule by the people”, rather than “what God the people should believe in”.

I mean, “gentle doves”, are you kidding me? Henry VIII is a dove? Is gentle?!?! A dove of religious freedom! He was certainly never shown as that at school.

There is a significant difference between the general belief, and I certainly would not contest that it is a general belief, that Britain was a “good country” even in the Dark Ages, and the absurd assertion that Britain was a democracy in the Dark Ages. Of course it was not a democracy and no-one thinks it was one. Tudor times? Not a democracy. Rule by Cromwell? Not a democracy. These are not difficult questions even at O level.

Peter T @61 is correct, of course. The magnitude of the damage from the conquest of Ethiopia later was so much greater I just plain forgot Italian imperialism’s humble beginnings.

Arioch @63 is confused by mere facts. Just as in the thread on England’s loss of empire, when current issues are relevant to historical questions, the popular mythology, which was created for the people, is the default. Until denying the mythology becomes a habit, false details keep creeping in. The English people were a free people and it was their will that triumphed, barring the occasional Norman yoke. Or maybe a bad king like John, but of course the people stood up for their rights, like Robin Hood. Citing mere facts like Cromwell’s Protectorship hardly matters when hardly anyone but a despicable Irishman who doesn’t like the English knows who Cromwell was. Henry VII as the killer of the Roman Catholic Church is the will of the English people and his more unsavory actions become a novelty song by Herman’s Hermits. Yeah, there’s a Bloody Mary but that brief episode is graced by martyrs who bring the glorious triumph of the English people who sank the Armada.

I hope that Arioch is finding it difficult to accept that anybody could possibly believe the enormity of the popular mythology. The thing is, as with all propaganda, it’s not so much that anyone is expected or even needed to believe every jot and tittle. The propaganda is successful if people are merely prejudiced to believe, so that absurd propositions seem reasonable. Putting the origins of democracy back at Anglo-Saxon witans and moots and shire reeves and whatnot means you can pretend that democracy had nothing to do with ugly unpleasant things like the English Civil War or the mobs with tar and feathers in the American Revolution or, least of all, the Great French Revolution. Instead it means the great democracy of the American People was just the antique rights of Englishmen, a conservative phenomenon, all about not paying taxes. It means you can attribute an historic love of freedom to a race and a religion, which is satisfying if you want to kill lots of Muslims today.

Also, Arioch’s school seems to teach an awful lot of English history. In my experience people are nearly as shaky about English history as Mexican history. Quite a few people were surprised to discover that Scotland was once an independent country, and most of those have likely forgotten by now. They are vaguely aware that England has a history, something still unknown about Canada. But the details are vague. English people were free and ruled, some kings, democracy since ages ago but still kings. If they have kings now, and democracy too, how not then too? The more sophisticated may know the phrase Glorious Revolution…but may not.

But perhaps personal experience is unduly infuencing me? I was graced with an edition of the Geneva Bible with the text of the Magna Carta and the US Constitution appended. This was clearly meant to be a gift of political enlightenment as well as a book.

“That is, more interesting and thought-provoking for us; OTOH, that would be more work for John”

Just give Arioch some blood and souls already.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

steven johnson @ 65

I liked this comment, but it does seem to have crossed over from the Hitchens and the Tories thread a bit.

Arioch @ 64

Constructing close counterfactuals can help one learn more about the actual history.

One of the difficulties with JQ’s scenario is that it presumes a conflict over petty geopolitics between “normal states”, conceived of as being rather like countries today, belligerent and self-righteous, and its target seems to be the myth that the war was in any respect justified.

It is certainly a worthy target — the myth of justification. I cheer that.

But, the factors driving Europe toward a catastrophic war had to do with the nature of the Great Powers as Empires ruled by aristocratic elites and their uncomprehending relation to the emergence of a bourgeois modernity and a mass politics of nationalism and the industrialization of war.

One root of the the Great War was in the Franco-Prussian War, after Napoleon III had been decisively beaten and captured. A wave of nationalistic patriotism swept France as well as Germany. The latter had been Bismarck’s intention in provoking a series of small wars, with Denmark, Austria and finally France as a means to create a German nation-state with a Hohenzollern on the throne. French patriotism — the nation-in-arms redux — was not anticipated and nearly undid the German plan. The franc tireau terrorized the German army, leaving a deep impression on German military thinking. And, after the war was concluded, the French adopted universal conscription, setting off a pattern that soon enveloped all the Great Powers except Britain. The stage was set for a war of mass armies wielding industrial firepower.

Bismarck became the bumbling architect of the other great root cause of the Great War when he convened the Congress of Berlin in 1878, in an attempt to rescue Austria from being pulled down into the whirlpool of the Ottoman collapse. He was self-consciously trying to revive the reactionary consensus of Prussia, Russia and Austria that had dominated post-Napoleonic southern and central Europe. Instead he created a framework within which new nations emerging from Ottoman collapse could claim statehood thru an arduous process of begging Great Power sponsorship and recognition while building basic institutions of state.

The problem with the scenario of a Great War breaking out in 1911 as a part of the Agadir Crisis is that Agadir is nothing but the usual cutting of slices of world pie. Germany isn’t objecting to France taking Morocco so much as demanding that Germany be offered something for acceding. (Just as France had offered Italy “permission” to take Libya some years earlier in return for Italy supporting France in Morocco.)

The actual Great War started in the Balkans, because the small nation-states emerging from Ottoman collapse had formed a feral wolf pack, capable of defeating the Turks and quite possibly capable in the foreseeable future of dismembering the Hapsburg Empire.

Somehow, a plausible counterfactual has to make use of the internal anxieties driving the Great Powers — particularly the powerful anxieties over collapse or overthrow evident in the demands from below. The Zabern Affair, the Curragh Mutiny, Dreyfus, the 1905 revolution, the Young Turks as well, of course, the contention of nationalities in the Hapsburg Empire.

It is a complex knot that unraveled in 1914.

Sorry, all. Replace ‘1912’ with ‘1916’.

Franz Ferdinand very possibly would have provoked a civil war inside the Habsburg Empire as the Hungarians were unlikely to respond passively to his efforts to enfranchise the non-Magyar population of his Hungarian kingdom. FF seems to have been a fairly stubborn person and it would be easy to imagine Hungarians deciding they had had enough of the dual monarchy and unilaterally leave. The question is then whether the collapse could have happened somewhat peacefully (with Germany probably incorporating the Austrian half of the Empire, maybe ceding Galicia to Russia) or would it have provoked a free for all as the various neighbors tried to attach their ethnically related constituents.

Firstly I should apologise to steven johnson for lowering the tone of the conversation.

Bruce Wilder@69

Good comment. Bismarck certainly did a lot of “interesting” things, but I was unaware of the Congress of Berlin and its possible effects here.

ozajh@70

That certainly is an interesting thought. Though… were international tensions and flareups not been on the rise anyway?… so lacking the assassination one might imagine that some other incident would likely have brought the whole house of cards tumbling down.

Once things start to unravel, perhaps the treaties – supposed to keep the peace, as a deterrent – mean that everyone ends up fighting everyone else. Well, it’s better than being turned into radioactive wasteland (today’s deterrent!), but maybe not that much better.