WWI WAR GUILT EVIDENCE (Militarism / Industrialization)

Transcription

1 WWI WAR GUILT EVIDENCE (Militarism / Industrialization) Militarism / Industrialization Guilty Primary Documents Military Statistics (1914) Map of Military Spending Between Tables of Industrial Statistics Militarism / Industrialization Guilty Secondary Source Decisions for War, By Richard F. Hamilton & Holger H. Herwig

2 MILITARISM / INDUSTRIALIZATION GUILTY Military Statistics (1914) GERMANY (Population: 67 million) Peacetime strength 1914: 840,000 Stehendes Heer (Standing ) Reserves 1914: 3 million, including Peacetime strength 1914: 72,000 Battleships (Dreadnoughts): 13 Battleships (Pre-Dreadnoughts): 30 Battlecruisers: 6 Cruisers (Armoured cruisers + Protected cruisers): 14 Light cruisers: 35 Destroyers: 152 Submarines: 30 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY (Population: 48.5 million) Peacetime strength 1914: 415,000 Reserves 1914: 1.4 million Peacetime strength 1914: 20,000 Battleships (Dreadnoughts): 3 Battleships (pre-dreadnoughts): 12 Cruisers ( Armoured cruiser): 3 Light cruisers: 4 Destroyers: 18 Submarines: 14

3 REPUBLIC OF FRANCE (Population: 39.6 million) Peacetime strength 1914: 823,000 Reserves 1914: 2.9 million Peacetime strength 1914: 65,000 Battleships (Dreadnoughts): 4 Battleships (pre-dreadnoughts): 21 Cruisers (Armoured cruisers + Protected cruisers): 19 Light cruisers: 6 Destroyers: 81 Submarines: 67 BRITISH EMPIRE (Population: 46 million) Peacetime strength 1914: 247,500 Reserves 1914: 414,000 Peacetime strength 1914: 136,500 Reserves: 28,000 Fleet Reserve and 30,000 Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) Battleships (Dreadnoughts): 24 Battleships (pre-dreadnoughts): 38 Battlecruisers: 10 Cruisers (Armoured cruisers + Protected cruisers): 47 Light cruisers: 61 Destroyers: 225 Submarines: 75 RUSSIAN EMPIRE (Population: 167 million) Peacetime strength 1914: 1.4 million Reserves 1914: 5.1 million Peacetime strength 1914: 60,000 Battleships (Dreadnoughts): 2 Battleships (pre-dreadnoughts): 11 Cruisers (Armoured cruisers + Protected cruisers): 8 Light cruisers: 5 Destroyers: 106 Submarines: 36

4 Map of Military Spending Between

5 Tables of Industrial Statistics Table 1 Percentage Distribution of the World's Manufacturing Production, 1870 and 1913 (percentage of world total) USA U.K. Italy Canada Sweden Japan India Table 2 Output of Coal and Lignite - Selected Countries, Annual Averages (in million metric tonnes) UK Austria Table 3 Output of Pig Iron - Selected Countries, Annual Averages (in thousand metric tons) UK Austria ,583 6,484 8, ,462 2, ,770 7, , , ,773

6 Table 4 Growth of the Cotton Industry in Selected Countries (Cotton Spindles - Selected Countries, Annual Total Figures [in 1000's]) UK Austria 10,000 39,500 55,700 2,500 5,000 7, (`36) 4,700 11, ,558 4, , (1840) 2,500 9,212 Table 5 Spread of Railways in Ten Selected Countries (Length of line open [in kilometers [1km = 5/8 mile]) Austria-Hungary Great Britain Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden , ,543 1,730 9,167 11,089 14,603 2, ,626 1, ,507 4,112 23,089 33,838 25,060 9,290 1,846 22,865 7,490 5,876 36,330 4,591 38,109 51,678 30,079 16,429 2,776 53,234 13,214 11,303

7 Hamilton & Herwig: Decisions for War, pp.1-22 the costs of policing, administration, and defence often enormous, a conclusion insistently argued by British liberals. Imperial provides a convenient test. The aggregate value of German s commerce with its colonies between 1894 and 1913 remained less than what was spent on them: Kiaochow alone received more than 200 million Goldmark in subsidies. Of the Reich s total trade, a mere 0.5 percent was with its colonies. Only one in every thousand Germans leaving the homeland chose to go to the colonies (5,495 people by 1904). provides another test. At enormous cost, it pushed to the East, building the world s longest railway line, developed Pacific ports, and, ultimately, took over an important Chinese province - Manchuria. But the n colonisation efforts were unsuccessful and the expectation of monetary gain proved illusory. Despite all efforts to secure a captive market, continued to run a huge trade deficit with China. As for investment opportunities, only two factories were started in Manchuria - distilleries that produced liquor mainly for the n army of occupation. The imperialism argument surfaced again in 1961 when the Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer published his provocative book Griff nach der Weltmacht, wherein he posited that in July 1914 had embarked on an explicit grab for world power. Fischer s opus outraged his colleagues and ushered in two decades of debate concerning both the origins of the war and the place of German imperialism therein. The argument was as brutal as it was simple. From 1890 on, Fischer argued, had pursued world power. In its drive for colonies and imperial trade, it had offended established powers such as Britain and as well as upstarts such as Japan and the United States. This course of Weltpolitik was deeply rooted within German economic, political, military, and social structures, he argued, with both civilian and military leaders steering a course of aggressive imperialism under Wilhelm II. In the wake of the Fischer debate, no historian could ignore his emphasis on the centrality of imperialism among the causative factors behind the decision for war in July-August Militarism is the next factor on the standard list of causes. Discussions ordinarily begin with a review of the arms race, of the competition between the powers before Many of these come without figures on appropriations, size of the military, capacity of weapons, and the like. Again, there is the need for differentiation. The five powers were doing different things. was the most zealous in its effort, first with naval expansion, then, between 1911 and 1913, with a shift to the army. In 1913 it spent 118 million on defence, while Britain spent 76 million. One of the powers, Austria-Hungary, made no serious increase in the decades before n army effectives actually declined slightly from 1911 to Between 1910 and 1913, increased army expenditures by 7.6 percent, by 20.8 percent, and by percent. The broad brush depiction suggests a common response - they were all doing it - but the diversity of these efforts is far more striking. Per-capita expenditures on the defence budget of 1906 (in Austrian Kronen) were: Britain 36, 23.8, 22, Italy 11.6, 9.8, and Austria-Hungary 9.6. As late as 1903, Habsburg subjects-spent as much on tobacco and more on beer and wine than on defence. The ethnic conflicts in Austria-Hungary blocked provision of requisite funds for modernisation of the armed forces. As a result, the Dual Monarchy each year trained only between 22 and 29 percent of draft-eligible males (compared to 40 percent in and 86 percent in ). The undifferentiated portraits of the arms race also overlook the markedly different financial and political restraints faced by the major powers. They pay little attention to the opposition, to the anti-imperialists, Socialists, pacifists, and liberal internationalists, who argued that war was no longer an option by And they pay virtually no attention to business leaders, many of whom were also opposed to militarism. In 1911 in a private conversation, Heinrich Class, leader of the Pan-Germans, pleaded for a preventive war. His partner in the conversation was Hugo Stinnes, s most aggressive industrialist and a leading figure in the steel industry. Stinnes counselled restraint: after 3-4 years peaceful development would be the undisputed economic master of Page 6 of 10

8 Hamilton & Herwig: Decisions for War, pp.1-22 Europe. Max Warburg, an influential Hamburg banker, was shocked by Wilhelm IPs question at a dinner, one week before the Sarajevo murders, whether it was better to attack now rather than to wait for to complete her rearmament. Warburg counselled the Kaiser not to draw the sword. becomes stronger with every year of peace, he declared. We can only gather rewards by biding our time. Also opposed to arms programs were farmers, shopkeepers, small businesses, civil servants, and workers who would pay more taxes. Many accounts point to the war euphoria seen in European capitals in August 1914, this presumably attesting to the militarisation of the masses. But the signs of euphoria came after the key decisions had been made. While the enthusiasm was no doubt genuine, one must again consider the questions of frequency and typicality. Jeffrey Verhey s review of 85 German newspapers and periodicals found evidence of that euphoria, most of it among intellectuals, students, and the upper middle classes. He also noted other responses (mixed feelings, dismay, fear, anxiety) being much more frequent than suspected. And he found frequent reports of tears. Theodor Wolff, editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, writing in 1916 on the anniversary of the outbreak, denied the mass euphoria claim, declaring as false the notion that the German people greeted the outbreak of war with joy. The censors forbade indefinitely any further publication of such claims. The euphoric crowd in Berlin, the centrepiece of the myth, appeared there on 25 July, at first awaiting news of Serbia s reaction to the Austrian ultimatum. Verhey describes the event and attempts some quantification: That evening had not paraded. Only a small minority of the Berlin population had participated - no more than 30,000, or less than 1 percent of the population of greater-berlin. Those four sentiments - nationalism, social Darwinism, imperialism, and militarism - were probably more frequent in the spring of 1914 than at any earlier time. That said, however, some cautions should be noted. We know little about the prevalence of those views -was it 5, 30, or 65 percent of the adult population? What percent of the adherents expressed their views, urging support for their demands? How many joined and were active in the pressure groups? The members of voluntary associations are drawn disproportionately from the upper and upper-middle classes, which means the sentiments of other classes, those forming the vast majority, remain largely, or for the most part, unheard. Advocacy groups, at all times, exaggerate the size of their membership, the urgency of their message, and the extent of their influence. At one time or another, Chickering reports, the Pan-Germans had almost 400 chapters. But the majority or these groups - more than two-thirds - existed only on paper or were dormant on all but select occasions. One further question: did the nation s leaders view these advocacy groups as valued supporters or as a troublesome nuisance? What about that vast majority, the voiceless masses? What, for example, were the views of those other Berliners, those not demonstrating? Had they been asked, what demands would they have made? One hypothesis might be expressed as follows: my family and my family s welfare, first and foremost. But that possibility is regularly bypassed, the noisy demonstration by the tiny minority being judged as more important, and more representative, than the lives of ordinary people struggling with the tasks of everyday life. The sixth argument focuses on the newspaper agitation that was said to have created the mass sentiments. And those sentiments, in turn, supposedly forced political leaders to choose war. There is no denying the bellicosity of much of the press, but here too there are many complications. The press in most countries was differentiated, most newspapers linked to political parties (some also with links to governments). To assess influence, one would have to review the contents, have circulation figures, know the audience characteristics, their reactions to those contents, and their subsequent actions. One can research the contents, the easiest of those tasks, and occasionally one can find circulation figures. But beyond that, for all practical purposes, we have nothing. Another relevant factor, basic literacy, also needs consideration. Illiteracy was still widespread in Europe in 1914, the rates everywhere being higher in the countryside and among older citizens. They were also higher in Eastern Europe. For many people, Page 7 of 10