Views on Niall Ferguson's analysis of WW1

[Kelenas]

1. The size of the peace time army and the size of the colours/reservists as compared to the neighbouring countries (the UK/France in this case, rather than say Russia, which was much bigger)

Seems just like a natural state of being to me; Germany has a larger population than either France or Britain (not counting their colonial subjects), and thus can sustain larger armies than them. Same with Russia, which had a larger population than Germany and in turn apparently also the largest army out of all the powers.

2. The fact that the state was subordinate to the Kaiser, rather than the other way around. So his position of Commander in Chief etc was more real than say the head of state for France or Britain/UK

It's true that Imperial Germany was more authoritarian than France or Britain, but from what I understand they were still a shining beacon of democracy compared to Tsarist Russia.

3. The fact that Germany had late in the piece decided to develop a large, capable battle fleet in addition to the large, capable army (both sufficient to challenge Britain or France)

France and Russia IIRC also had rather sizeable fleets despite being land-based powers. Is it really any different for Germany just because they decided to jump on the bandwagon later than the others?

4. The various popular lobby leagues that developed in Germany to support the growth of the Navy and Army. I do understand that there were lobbies in Britain/France for both services, but I do not think that they were anywhere near as widespread as Germany (would need to check this)

IIRC there was a lot of popular support in Germany for the enlargement of the Navy by the middleclass, because it had little chances of advancement within the army beyond a certain level. Other than that I'd suspect Germany had the same lobbies of industrialists hoping to make a fortune off government contracts as pretty much every other country did/does.

5. The independent nature of the military services in Germany, compared to the UK/Britain. IIRC the services had a huge degree of control over doctrine, purchasing and budget that was independent of the civilian government and largely only answerable to the Kaiser. This is quite distinct from the UK, where despite the power of the RN, it was still clearly under the thumb of Westminster. In the German situation the military was almost a separate branch of the state, rather than say subsidiary to the civilian head of government.

I admit this seems to be the most compelling argument so far. Was it different in Russia, though?

So in other words the Germans could have paid reparations but chose instead to finance a war machine to try conquering Europe once again?

So in other words the Germans could have paid the extortion money but chose instead to finance a military to defend themselves against their oppressors once again?

Funny how perspective works, no? What is perfectly justified to one is a grave injustice to someone else, and vice-versa.

- Kelenas

 

[Arachnid]

1. The size of the peace time army and the size of the colours/reservists as compared to the neighbouring countries (the UK/France in this case, rather than say Russia, which was much bigger)

Actually you are completely wrong on that one. If you measure militarism by percentage of 18 year olds conscripted, length of conscription, military personnel per capita, military spending as a percentage of GDP, size of reserves per capita then France is by some distance the most militarised Great Power. Germany comes second, with Britain and Russia about equal (Britain had more troops per capita but spent a lower proportion of GDP) some distance behind.

That said Ferguson is also wrong, if you confine yourself to looking at the size and scope of the military establishment Germany is neither the most militaristic or the least.

 

[Faeelin]

So in other words the Germans could have paid the extortion money but chose instead to finance a military to defend themselves against their oppressors once again?

Right, but then I don't see your point. That everyone feels aggrieved seems almost tautological.

 

[teg]

There are multiple parts of Fergueson's opinions I took issue with. Firstly, Germany was highly militaristic, even if the people of Germany were not naturally more inclined for war, they lived in a society that glorified war far more than Britain, France or the USA. Also, the argument that the Allies squandered their economic resources is contradicted by the facts the Allies actually won (and could well have won without the USA but not as decesively as in OTL). Between them, France and Germany were the more militaristic states since Sparta.

5)That World War I was, as Fritz Fischer claimed, a war of aggression on part of Germany that necessitated British involvement to stop Germany from conquering Europe (Ferguson claims that if Germany had been victorious, something like the European Union would have been created in 1914, and that it would have been for the best if Britain had chosen to opt out of war in 1914)

Oh yes, this would have been the EU all right, one run by unaccountable bureaucrats with a facade of democracy. Mittleuropa would have been a German puppet, nothing more, and its establishment would have been a set-back for democracy.

I really don't understand why people want to make excuses for Germany and try to make out it was a democracy similar to Britain. After studying A level history, I think its far better to compare pre-WW1 Germany to Putin's Russia (there is democracy, but its more than elaborate ruse by the real power players to shore up their rule).

 

[Tyr]

Labour first came to power in 1924. The Empire didn't end then, did it?

They're hardly going to do it over night. IIRC they got in with a very slim minority there, possibly even a hung parliament too. Not the same as the 47 victory.
Also pro-independance groups in the empire weren't so well developed in the 20s as they became in the 30s and 40s.

 

[Snake Featherston]

1) It was a highly-militarist country before WWI. The Second Imperialism *was* a highly militarized phase in Western civilization, full-stop.
2) Incorrect. Germany had no need for a large navy, it had no sufficient ports to launch it from.
3) Germany was a legitimate threat to Britain. It was the largest economy in Europe at the time and overshadowed everybody else and had a ruler who had a Reverse Midas Touch and all the tact of the Mad Hatter.
4) As the Soviet Union showed, you can put only so much of GDP into the military before you collapse a state.
5) It was a war of aggression on the part of Austria-Hungary. When Germany got involved the very nature of its mobilization meant it had to be a general war. It could not win in 1914 with WWI technology.
6) Photographs of the time argue he was wrong. They weren't happy in 1939, but that was a different ball game.
7) I dunno about this one.
8) They did make the best use of theirs. They won.
9) As a rule, the army that loses a war is not superior to the one that wins it. Argument is invalid.
10) Which was relevant with Russia and ignores that in the West numbers were kind of missing the point as much as the Five O'Clock Follies did with 'Nam. Russia did lose too many soldiers to Germany. That's how we got the Soviet Union.
11) They were willing but that does not mean they liked bullets and shrapnel and poison gas and mud and the rats from Hell.
12) That needs some damn good cites.
13) I do not quite think the Germans could pay it, and saying "if there was the will" is a nice means to have one's cake and eat it too.

 

[Faeelin]

France and Russia IIRC also had rather sizeable fleets despite being land-based powers. Is it really any different for Germany just because they decided to jump on the bandwagon later than the others?

You can find the numbers, you know. The German navy was significantly larger than the other powers you mention.

And of course we know what a German victory in the east entailed. Ethnic cleansing of Poles, confiscation of foodstuffs, weird plans to colonize the Crimea...

 

[mrmandias]

Saying that Russia was just as bad hardly makes the case that the Kaiserreich was the least militarist nation in Europe.

Seems just like a natural state of being to me; Germany has a larger population than either France or Britain (not counting their colonial subjects), and thus can sustain larger armies than them. Same with Russia, which had a larger population than Germany and in turn apparently also the largest army out of all the powers.


It's true that Imperial Germany was more authoritarian than France or Britain, but from what I understand they were still a shining beacon of democracy compared to Tsarist Russia.


France and Russia IIRC also had rather sizeable fleets despite being land-based powers. Is it really any different for Germany just because they decided to jump on the bandwagon later than the others?


IIRC there was a lot of popular support in Germany for the enlargement of the Navy by the middleclass, because it had little chances of advancement within the army beyond a certain level. Other than that I'd suspect Germany had the same lobbies of industrialists hoping to make a fortune off government contracts as pretty much every other country did/does.


I admit this seems to be the most compelling argument so far. Was it different in Russia, though?


So in other words the Germans could have paid the extortion money but chose instead to finance a military to defend themselves against their oppressors once again?

Funny how perspective works, no? What is perfectly justified to one is a grave injustice to someone else, and vice-versa.

- Kelenas

 

[Chengar Qordath]

1) It was a highly-militarist country before WWI. The Second Imperialism *was* a highly militarized phase in Western civilization, full-stop.

Indeed; it would probably be more accurate to say that, relative to other European nations, Germany's level of militarism wasn't particularly unusual.

As mentioned before, proportional to its economy and population, France put more far more resources into its military, mostly because France was doing everything it could to match the German Army despite having a smaller population and economy to work with.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

As has already been mentioned neither the French nor Russian fleets nor both combined could have been considered a threat to the Royal Navy while the German fleet certainly hoped to reach that level, failing only because British naval construction capacity was superior...and that the British did not have to spend resources on a huge standing army in time of peace.

In fact in 1914 the third fleet in terms of dreadnaughts, although lacking in many other areas starting with cruisers and destroyers, was the United States. Barely a third of Germany's and a quarter of the UK's.

 

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

They're hardly going to do it over night. IIRC they got in with a very slim minority there, possibly even a hung parliament too.

They got in again in '29, also didn't disband the Empire.

Not the same as the 47 victory.

You mean '45. By which time even the Tories (except for Churchill) understood that India would have to be granted independence. The next big step in decolonization, the one that Britain could have afforded to delay, came under a Conservative government.

 

[Emperor of Halton]

They're hardly going to do it over night. IIRC they got in with a very slim minority there, possibly even a hung parliament too. Not the same as the 47 victory.
Also pro-independance groups in the empire weren't so well developed in the 20s as they became in the 30s and 40s.

Even so, Clement Attlee believed, overall, that the Empire was generally a force for good, despite being a passionate socialist. Of course Labour believed in colonial self-government, but there were other factors, too, such as Britain being bankrupted from having fought WWII and the fact that the Indian armed forces had mutinied.

 

[Kelenas]

You can find the numbers, you know. The German navy was significantly larger than the other powers you mention.

Point conceded.

And of course we know what a German victory in the east entailed. Ethnic cleansing of Poles, confiscation of foodstuffs, weird plans to colonize the Crimea...

I can easily imagine them confiscating food, as a countermeasure against the Entente trying to starve Germany into submission, but I seriously doubt either of the other two ever really existed, except in the minds of Entente propagandists and maybe a small number of extremists who'd undoubtedly be seen as crazy by the vast majority of the German people or government.

Right, but then I don't see your point. That everyone feels aggrieved seems almost tautological.

My point is that it is quite easy to disavow France and Britain of any and all responsibility for the post-WWI events and place the blame for the rise of Nazism solely on the Germans. Unfortunately, the world simply doesn't work that way and, as uncomfortable the idea will undoubtedly be for many, Britain and France, though a combination of their actions/inactions made the rise of Nazism in Germany possible, not unlikely how Germany made the rise of Communism/Stalinism in Russia possible.

Saying that Russia was just as bad hardly makes the case that the Kaiserreich was the least militarist nation in Europe.

I never said that Ferguson was right about Germany being the least militaristic; I merely wondered why it is/was considered to be the most militaristic when the other powers of the time seem to have been just as bad.

- Kelenas

 

[I Blame Communism]

I can easily imagine them confiscating food, as a countermeasure against the Entente trying to starve Germany into submission, but I seriously doubt either of the other two ever really existed, except in the minds of Entente propagandists and maybe a small number of extremists who'd undoubtedly be seen as crazy by the vast majority of the German people or government.

Why must we think so? Ethnic cleansing was not an unfamiliar notion at the time: it had been practiced on the Circassians and Balkan Muslims, it was being practised on the Armenians, and that's not to start on the casual brutality of the European powers in their Second Imperialism colonies. Britain had already broken the ice somewhat by applying a moderate version of these measures to white people. Austria, during the war, managed to kill off an appalling portion of the Serbians. How is it hard to imagine, in an atmosphere of total war in which all sides tried to drum up quite poisonous hatred of the foe and extremists were being given greater and greater credibility by a quite ruthless military dictatorship, that Germany would have contemplated this kind of measure?

I can't claim to have personally looked at those documents - although I've seen them cited so many times that I find it difficult to believe in a conspiracy, given the nature of the German government after 1916 - but even without the outright ethnic cleansing German rule was going to be pretty bad in any case. The Japanese didn't go into Manchuria intending to get all the Chinese out of it, and Manchuria makes a very tempting comparison to Hetmanate Ukraine.

I never said that Ferguson was right about Germany being the least militaristic; I merely wondered why it is/was considered to be the most militaristic when the other powers of the time seem to have been just as bad.

Tsarist Russia was pretty horrible, but I wouldn't call it militaristic in the same way; Russian Generals, of course, never took over the country. The army wasn't an independent state-within-a-state in the same way, merely an organ of the (often casually brutal) state.

Likewise Britain: colonial rule was awful, but it was being done by tiny specialised professional classes under strict civilian oversight. Nobody's arguing that the other European countries weren't bad or even that they weren't militaristic in the sense that they spent massively on armed forces and incessantly banged the jingo drum; I'm only saying we should recognise the differences between them.

 

[Julius Vogel]

Actually you are completely wrong on that one. If you measure militarism by percentage of 18 year olds conscripted, length of conscription, military personnel per capita, military spending as a percentage of GDP, size of reserves per capita then France is by some distance the most militarised Great Power. Germany comes second, with Britain and Russia about equal (Britain had more troops per capita but spent a lower proportion of GDP) some distance behind.

That said Ferguson is also wrong, if you confine yourself to looking at the size and scope of the military establishment Germany is neither the most militaristic or the least.

Do you have any good sources on the manpower issue? I do not have access to a great library (well, I do, as the British Library is not bad, but it takes a bit of getting to) and in a brief search yesterday could not find any particularly useful online sources. If you have a URL you would share or something I'd be grateful.

Do the figures you've seen include imperial manpower sources, wrt Britain (White Commonwealth vs subject Commonwealth)?

 

[Bee]

I think that there's a slight bias to all this -- Ferguson is trying to come up with a fresh viewpoint, and is stretching sometimes to get there. A few comments on the specific arguments:

1)That Germany was a highly militarist country before 1914 (Ferguson claims Germany was Europe’s most anti-militarist country)

Not convinced. Bismarck took the country into several wars in the 19th century, and provoked all of them. Subsequently, Germany fought colonial wars in Africa and got involved in supressing the Boxer Rebellion rather enthusiastically. The Kaiser himself had a definite obsession about the military and the Germans were all in favor of an aggressive approach by Austria after the assassination.

2)That naval challenges mounted by Germany drove Britain into informal alliances with France and Russia before 1914 (Ferguson claims the British were driven into alliances with France and Russia as a form of appeasement due to the strength of those nations, and an Anglo-German alliance failed to materialize due to German weakness)

Germany did build up its fleet, and with the purpose of challenging Britain
(more by diplomatic pressure than outright war). The French Alliance came about because Britain was in favor of maintaining the balance of power, as others on this thread have said. Alliance with Russia was made inevitable by France's alliance. Russia was not in great shape at the time; major internal turmoil was ongoing and its armed forces had been badly beaten by Japan's.

3)That British foreign policy was driven by legitimate fears of Germany (Ferguson claims Germany posed no threat to Britain before 1914, and that all British fears of Germany were due to irrational anti-German prejudices)

Germany didn't have any ambition to rule Britain if that's what he means. There was definitely a rivalry on the high seas, though. Britain did not want to see Germany become too dominant in Europe.

In the leadup to the war, Grey tried hard to prevent it. Too many of the other leaders weren't interested. It didn't help that the French President and Prime Minister weren't on the same page, or that the French (Paleologue) and Serbian (Spalajkovich) Ambassadors to Russia were pushing hard for an intransigent attitude from that quarter. Paleologue, in particular, was acting unilaterally rather than following his government's instructions.

5)That World War I was, as Fritz Fischer claimed, a war of aggression on part of Germany that necessitated British involvement to stop Germany from conquering Europe (Ferguson claims that if Germany had been victorious, something like the European Union would have been created in 1914, and that it would have been for the best if Britain had chosen to opt out of war in 1914)

Speculative. Germany was not altruistic, and if it created any sort of European Union, it would have been one to maintain its dominance and inhibit France from fighting it again to recoup its WWI and Franco-Prussian losses.

9)That the British and the French had the better armies (Ferguson claims the German Army was superior)

Agree with Ferguson, especially in 1914. I don't think it's that controversial. Germany lost in the end because it was fighting too much of the rest of the world.

11)That most soldiers hated fighting in the war (Ferguson argues most soldiers fought more or less willingly)

Trench life was miserable. Of course they hated it. They fought anyway because they believed in what they were doing.

 

[Awilla the Hun]

The points about the attitude of soldiers towards trench life are the only ones I can find any sense in. Looking at literature not written by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, etc, gives a wider view of the conflict. There certainly seem to be a number of soldiers, in all armies, who enjoy fighting. (Including today-The Junior Officer's Reading Club is a good example.) It probably wasn't any different in the Great War.

 

[Kelenas]

Why must we think so? Ethnic cleansing was not an unfamiliar notion at the time: it had been practiced on the Circassians and Balkan Muslims, it was being practised on the Armenians, and that's not to start on the casual brutality of the European powers in their Second Imperialism colonies. Britain had already broken the ice somewhat by applying a moderate version of these measures to white people. Austria, during the war, managed to kill off an appalling portion of the Serbians. How is it hard to imagine, in an atmosphere of total war in which all sides tried to drum out quite poisonous hatred of the foe and extremists were being given greater and greater credibility by a quite ruthless military dictatorship, that Germany would have contemplated this kind of measure?

I can't claim to have personally looked at those documents - although I've seen them cited so many times that I find it difficult to believe in a conspiracy, given the nature of the German government after 1916 - but even without the outright ethnic cleansing German rule was going to be pretty bad in any case. The Japanese didn't go into Manchuria intending to get all the Chinese out of it, and Manchuria makes a very tempting comparison to Hetmanate Ukraine.

My main reason for finding claims about large-scale ethnic cleansing of Poles by the Germans in WWI difficult to believe is that those areas of the German Empire which held a large Polish minority or majority before the start of WWI still did so at the end of it; if ethnic cleansing had taken place, then it would have made the most sense for Germany to deport the Poles from inside its own borders first, as simply shuffling around Polish population inside the conquered territory would serve no useful purpose.
Given the aftermath of WWI, it seems that such ethnic cleansing either hadn't taken place, or was on such a minuscule scale as to be virtually unnoticable, in which case I'm not sure one can actually talk about ethnic cleansing in the context, or if it wasn't something else.

Additionally I have tried to find a neutral source about ethnic cleansing performed by the Germans during WWI, but so far I found nothing that didn't refer to the events of WWII instead.

Tsarist Russia was pretty horrible, but I wouldn't call it militaristic in the same way; Russian Generals, of course, never took over the country. The army wasn't an independent state-within-a-state in the same way, merely an organ of the (often casually brutal) state.

Likewise Britain: colonial rule was awful, but it was being done by tiny specialised professional classes under strict civilian oversight. Nobody's arguing that the other European countries weren't bad or even that they weren't militaristic in the sense that they spent massively on armed forces and incessantly banged the jingo drum; I'm only saying we should recognise the differences between them.

I'm not denying that Germany was militaristic then, and the Army *did* play an important part in its national self-consciousness. I'm merely not sure how Germany was *more* militaristic than the other powers; to me it seems they were all at about the same level, but each expressed this differently, and for different reasons.

Not convinced. Bismarck took the country into several wars in the 19th century, and provoked all of them. Subsequently, Germany fought colonial wars in Africa and got involved in supressing the Boxer Rebellion rather enthusiastically. The Kaiser himself had a definite obsession about the military and the Germans were all in favor of an aggressive approach by Austria after the assassination.

The last part should actually be perfectly understandable, given that, as far as they were concerned, Serbia-sponsored terrorists had just assassinated the Austro-Hungarian emperor. For a comparison, imagine how the US and its allies would have reacted if the US President had been killed in 9/11.

- Kelenas

 

[Tyr]

Even so, Clement Attlee believed, overall, that the Empire was generally a force for good, despite being a passionate socialist. Of course Labour believed in colonial self-government, but there were other factors, too, such as Britain being bankrupted from having fought WWII and the fact that the Indian armed forces had mutinied.

The main factor was that India had been promised independance post-war back at the beginning of the war.

Attlee was a Fabian IIRC (me too!), but such views tended not to be the majority in labour. Most of them were Britiain first people.

They got in again in '29, also didn't disband the Empire.

Because that would be a supremely stupid thing to do, things like that don't just happen overnight.
And again, it was a hung parliament.

You mean '45. By which time even the Tories (except for Churchill) understood that India would have to be granted independence. The next big step in decolonization, the one that Britain could have afforded to delay, came under a Conservative government.

Oops, yeah, 45, had India stuck in my head.
The labour remained pretty anti-empire even during tory times in power.

 

[I Blame Communism]

My main reason for finding claims about large-scale ethnic cleansing of Poles by the Germans in WWI difficult to believe is that those areas of the German Empire which held a large Polish minority or majority before the start of WWI still did so at the end of it; if ethnic cleansing had taken place, then it would have made the most sense for Germany to deport the Poles from inside its own borders first, as simply shuffling around Polish population inside the conquered territory would serve no useful purpose.

But the war itself changed attitudes a great deal. I mean, who in Britain would have given weapons to Estonian independence fighters in 1914? For one thing, Germany wasn't a military dictatorship until 1916. It was ruled by sane conservative statesmen who were too busy maintaining an odd political balance to go off and do something that would have raised a great many heckles in the other countries. The German government had, however, been giving vague support to groups that tried to settle Germans in the Prussian east since Bismarck; these just failed miserably.

But during war, needs must, and everybody became rather densensitised to violence. Nationalist views got an airing from Germany's military government and for another thing Germany marched into Russian Poland and found it blasted - thanks to the ongoing war and the Russian scorched-earth tactics, of course, but the experience of enormous numbers of young men going into what appeared to be the dangerous and savage lands east of Germany gave a lot of force to what had previously been the fairly obscure nationalist talking-point of drang nach osten.

Given the aftermath of WWI, it seems that such ethnic cleansing either hadn't taken place, or was on such a minuscule scale as to be virtually unnoticable, in which case I'm not sure one can actually talk about ethnic cleansing in the context, or if it wasn't something else.

Well, Germany had only gotten into Poland in 1915, the Silent Dictatorship had only taken full power in 1916, and Germany was all the while fighting a total war, directing all available resources to the urgent task of winning - and fielding Polish auxilliary and allied troops.

Additionally I have tried to find a neutral source about ethnic cleansing performed by the Germans during WWI, but so far I found nothing that didn't refer to the events of WWII instead.

I'm not saying it was done, I'm saying the idea was discussed in German state documents.

And like I said, Oberost was still no fun. Look at Hetmanate Ukraine, or Kurland, where Germany proved entirely unable to dispense with a group of aristocrats who thought that Wilhelmine Germany itself circa 1918 was far too liberal; the same gang briefly looked like ruling Estonia and Latvia.

I'm not denying that Germany was militaristic then, and the Army *did* play an important part in its national self-consciousness. I'm merely not sure how Germany was *more* militaristic than the other powers; to me it seems they were all at about the same level, but each expressed this differently, and for different reasons.

Well, as I said to begin with, there's no strict and agreed-upon definition of "militarism". Does it mean pride in an armed force, or does it require the political independence and power of that armed force? Germany was very much a country where the army proved to be a political power, which wasn't the case in the other countries, even in Russia.

The last part should actually be perfectly understandable, given that, as far as they were concerned, Serbia-sponsored terrorists had just assassinated the Austro-Hungarian emperor. For a comparison, imagine how the US and its allies would have reacted if the US President had been killed in 9/11.

He wasn't the emperor, he was the heir to the throne (and as far as Hungary was concerned a dangerous political type), and while I often say that Austria was a more secure polity than people often think, that doesn't mean that everybody within its borders was furiously devoted to the royal family.

The horrible situation in Serbia had much broader causes than that, including the bloody-minded tenaciousness of the Serbian army itself, one of the nastier insurgencies and counter-insurgencies of the war, famine, and a typhus epidemic, not all of which were caused by the Austrian authorities. But the said authorities were doing nothing to help the situation, and Royal Serbia lost a larger portion of its population in WW1 than Yugoslavia in WW2.