Mark Hewitson. Germany and the Causes of the First World War. Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2004. 268 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-85973-870-2.

Reviewed by Nathan N. Orgill (Department of History, Duke University)
Published on H-German (January, 2006)

Against the Revisionists

Mark Hewitson's latest work tackles a fairly familiar subject in a very unique way. Having already published a monograph on the subject of German national identity and public opinion before 1914, Hewitson is thoroughly versed in the massive historiography on Germany's role in the outbreak of World War I.[1] But Hewitson's work is not merely a synthesis of the historiography. Instead, it is a direct response to the historiography and specifically to a certain trend he has seen in it--the work of various historians he labels "revisionists." Indeed, a deep reading of the historical literature on the subject can be seen in Hewitson's very broad definition of revisionism. For Hewitson, a revisionist is any scholar who has attempted to refute the major premises of the argument formulated by Fritz Fischer in the 1960s: namely, "that German leaders were confident that they could win a continental war, that they pursued an offensive policy--at the risk of such a war--at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s, and that they chose to enter a world war in July 1914" (p. 3). Hewitson's revisionists include the usual suspects--scholars like Niall Ferguson, Gregor Schöllgen, or Andreas Hillgruber--as well as others one might be shocked to see labeled in this sense--scholars like Stig Förster or Annika Mombauer.[2] Given this approach, this work makes lively reading for the specialist who knows the historiography well; but it will be less useful as a synthesis of the historiography for the novice, since it almost expects a high level of understanding of the material for Hewitson's argument to come across clearly.

As can perhaps be gleaned from Hewitson's definition of revisionism, the central thesis of the book is an attempt to shore up the central arguments of Fischer's two major works of the 1960s.[3] Contrary to the revisionists, who commonly assert that pessimism was a major ingredient of German foreign policy by 1914, Hewitson maintains that German statesmen went to war in the July Crisis from a fundamentally optimistic belief in the strength of Germany's position vis-à-vis the Entente powers. His study is arranged into topical chapters that attempt systematically to refute this major contention of the revisionists, while also developing his own assertion about the assumptions of German policy in the first decade and a half of the 1900s. He treats a variety of subjects in succession: Germany's economic position before the war; popular and party opinions in Germany about foreign policy; militarism and military strategy; imperialism and German diplomacy before 1914; and finally the July Crisis. Gradually, each of the chapters attempts to refute the revisionists' claims about these subjects in such a way that advances Hewitson's own counter-thesis.

Hewitson's first topical chapter, for instance, examines the relationship between the state's economic well-being and German pre-war foreign policy. The most recent revisionist work on the subject is, of course, the chapters on the subject in Ferguson's Pity of War (1998). Hewitson sets out to debunk Ferguson's assertion that the problem of imperial finance created a climate of pessimism and despair about German foreign policy. Although these chapters have been viewed by some scholars as the strongest in Ferguson's work, Hewitson sees this argument as fundamentally flawed. Rather than viewing the subject from the hindsight of the historian, Hewitson maintains we should look instead at what contemporaries actually thought about Germany's economic position in comparison with the other great powers. From this viewpoint, Hewitson argues the situation looked much better than Ferguson allows. Hewitson finds evidence for optimism all across the political spectrum from the SPD to the conservatives, arguing that many contemporaries viewed the early 1900s as economic boom years. Although pessimism of this sort should still be examined alongside a very real concern that existed in official circles in Germany,[4] Hewitson's argument here is an interesting rebuttal of perhaps the most compelling section of Ferguson's work on the background of World War I. And the other major argument Hewitson makes in this chapter--that businessmen were extremely nervous at the prospect of a war that might ruin the economy--certainly rests on a solid foundation, as those familiar with the general pre-war attitude of European businessmen can attest.

Hewitson's most convincing chapters treat the subject with which he is most familiar--public opinion. The third chapter, for example, deals with the question of German nationalism and contemporary perceptions of the Reich's potential enemies in a war. Here again, Hewitson finds much to be confident about, at least if one examines popular sentiments. According to Hewitson, revisionists overemphasize the importance of the right's extreme nationalism.[5] By examining the milieu of what he calls "banal nationalism"--everyday nationalism of those sections of Wilhelmine society like the working classes that have been neglected in scholarly studies--Hewitson again sees a different story. "From this latter perspective," he argues, "it appears that the majority of Wilhelmine Germans were more, not less, wary and sceptical of strong expressions of national belonging and national interest than in previous decades" (p. 42). Moreover, Germany's potential enemies seemed relatively weak when put up to public scrutiny. France was largely viewed as a decadent state characterized by instability and corruption; relative to Germany, Britain was economically on the decline, which explained the apparent self-interest of British foreign policy; and Russia was "an Asiatic power with a corrupt administration, despotic rule and a backward church" (p. 53). Such sentiments seem to Hewitson the exact opposite of the pessimism emphasized by revisionists.

A similar story can be found in Hewitson's fourth chapter on the context of domestic political opinion. In opposition again to Wolfgang Mommsen's contentions about the importance of the nationalist right in public debates about foreign policy, Hewitson sees two major developments changing public discussions of international politics. The first was the rise of a mass press in the 1890s and 1900s that centered on the growth of liberal-leaning newspapers. The second related to the growing political power of the middle and left parties that culminated in the dramatic victory of the SPD in the 1912 Reichstag elections. Both facts indicate to Hewitson that the masses supported parties whose views--when they were contrary to the chancellor and the Foreign Office--were likely to criticize the government's militarism, rather than its failure to conduct an offensive and forward foreign policy. Crucial evidence for this position can be seen in the Moroccan crises, when public opinion acted as a brake on the policy of brinksmanship pursued by Chancellors Bernhard von Bülow and Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg respectively.

In perhaps his least coherent and straightforward chapter--on Wilhelmine militarism--Hewitson acknowledges broad support for the army and an acceptance of international conflict that seems partially to contradict some of the assertions he makes in previous chapters. He argues that this mood is mainly significant because it blocked the development of a viable antiwar movement. But the militarization of German society "did not mean ... that war had come to seem 'inevitable,' nor that the German government was pushed by a militarist public into risking war," for the potential destructiveness of modern war was recognized across the political spectrum--even though political opinions diverged over whether this state of affairs was a good or a bad thing (p. 95). Further, some of the more recent literature on the subject suggests a much greater popular opposition to the war that "reached its height on 28 and 29 July 1914, when more than 750,000 people across Germany joined anti-war demonstrations, far exceeding the numbers involved in simultaneous nationalist gatherings" (p. 103).

In contrast to the public, the military was pushing for war--but not for the main reason advanced by the revisionists. In his chapter on military strategy, Hewitson rejects the notion that military leaders wanted a war because of fears about Germany's decline relative to Russia. This argument, he feels, was created after the fact in memoir literature to exculpate military and civilian leaders in the postwar years, when the question of war guilt was on everybody's lips. Instead, military leaders were primarily optimistic in their views toward a potential war. The strategic decisions they made (implementation of the Schlieffen plan and failure to adopt a feasible alternative defensive strategy) reveal their confidence in Germany's ability to win a two-front war.

This argument carries over into Hewitson's chapters on imperialism, diplomacy, and the diplomatic establishment before the war. Here, the author sees the primary foundation of German policy both under Bülow and Bethmann-Hollweg as faith in Germany's superior position as a continental military power. Imperialism and Weltpolitik were seriously debated by the public and political parties, but did not signify a dramatic shift away from Germany's continental basis of foreign policy; the power behind German diplomacy remained the army rather than the navy, and no serious expectation prevailed among the decision-making elite that the basis of German power would ever change. Hewitson writes that "It was always apparent ... that the Reich's main sources of leverage remained the Continent" (p. 165).

This fundamental belief of the German diplomatic establishment was, as Hewitson argues in chapter 8, behind the "brinksmanship" policies they followed in the two Moroccan and Bosnian Crises--policies pursued because German leaders felt brinksmanship less chancy because of Germany's continental strength. According to Hewitson, this major characteristic distinguishes German leaders from their European counterparts. And in the last crisis of July 1914--treated in Hewitson's final chapter--it led German statesmen to support Austria unconditionally because this tradition had been firmly established in the early 1900s. These statesmen were not the pessimists revisionists have made them out to be. Instead, they "risked military conflict in July 1914 not out of weakness and despair, but from a long-established position of strength" (p. 228).

By the end of the book one is shocked at Hewitson's overturning of most of the currently prevailing interpretations. In some instances, Hewitson takes his contentions too far, paying scant attention to the mass of historiography that runs against his anti-revisionism. Certainly, for example, segments of the military and the foreign office really feared the Russia of the future; and Bethmann, specifically, felt the gravity of foreboding predictions. In like manner, it seems hard to dismiss the importance of imperial rivalries in the world solely on the basis of Germany's reliance on its continental power; the antagonism caused in the process of constructing the navy was far more important than its actual military effectiveness in war, a factor sometimes underemphasized by historians. Most importantly, the kind of pessimism others have highlighted does not necessarily contradict the optimism Hewitson speaks of. Rather, the belief held in 1914--that Germany was still strong enough to defeat Russia--complemented the pessimism about the future in a dangerous way by encouraging risk-taking. Hewitson's analysis could be improved by conceding that optimism and pessimism were not mutually exclusive. German statesmen had an apparent justification for optimism in some areas--Anglo-German relations, for example--and for a more profound despair in others--in Russo-German relations. This confusion in the outlook of the German decision-making establishment should be seen as a fundamental problem of German foreign policy that helped to bring about a war.

Yet, in other ways, Hewitson's work raises interesting questions about the nature of German decision-making before World War I. His treatment of public opinion, for example, is an excellent corrective to previous works, especially that of Wolfgang Mommsen. At times Hewitson displays an uncanny irreverence for the historiography in successfully pointing out those trends of German policy that suggested optimism in 1914: most importantly, the improvement in Anglo-German relations stemming from collaboration in the Balkan Wars and on thorny colonial issues, such as the Baghdad railway and Portugal's colonies. His work is a valuable contribution to the field, for it always treats issues exhaustively covered elsewhere from a slightly different angle that makes them appear different than they had before. In the end, this is the main value of the work: it shows that even if the causes of the First World War have been covered in the past, there will always be room for meticulous reexamination of this very old historiographical problem.

Notes

[1]. See Mark Hewitson, National Identity and Political Thought in Germany: Wilhelmine Depictions of the French Third Republic, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

[2]. See Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Gregor Schöllgen, ed., Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany (New York and Oxford: Berg, 1990); Andreas Hillgruber, Deutsche Großmacht- und Weltpolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1977); Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Stig Förster, "Im Reich des Absurden: Die Ursachen des Ersten Weltkrieges," in Wie Kriege entstehen. Zum historischen Hintergrund von Staatenkonflikten ed. B. Wegner (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000).

[3]. Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914-1918 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962); and idem, Krieg der Illusionen (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1969).

[4]. The State Secretary of the Treasury under Bethmann Hollweg, Adolf Wermuth, resigned over the issue. The question of new naval armaments conflicted with his desire both to do away with the deficits already caused by Tirpitz's earlier naval bills and his wish to find sounder methods of financing future naval construction. See Adolf Wermuth, Ein Beamtenleben (Berlin: Scherl, 1922), pp. 304-316. In 1911, after retiring from office, Wermuth wrote an article complaining of an imperial finance policy completely militarized by Tirpitz and the Imperial Navy Office. See Adolf Wermuth, "Das Reichsfinanzprogramm," Deutsche Revue 37 (July 1912): pp. 1-10.

[5]. For the subject of nationalism, Hewitson views Förster and Wolfgang Mommsen as the primary revisionist historians. See Stig Förster, Der doppelte Militarismus: Die deutsche Heeresrüstungspolitik zwischen Status-quo-Sicherung und Aggression, 1890-1913 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 1985); and the relevant essays in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Imperial Germany (London: Arnold, 1995).

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Citation: Nathan N. Orgill. Review of Hewitson, Mark, Germany and the Causes of the First World War. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11353

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