It is interesting but perhaps not surprising that,
as this conflict-torn century nears its end, the
shadows cast over it by the Great War of 1914-1918
seem in some ways longer, darker, and more
daunting than ever before. For what that struggle
meant and did changed the course of history more
than any other in modern times, including its great
successor war of 1939-1945. Consider only a
few of the consequences of the Great War, offered
here in no particular order. It brought the end of
the Romanovs, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the
emergence of a Communist system that blighted
so much of humanity for the rest of the century.
The war also made possible the growth of Fascism
and its peculiar German variant, anti-Semitic National
Socialism. This ghastly and expensive
struggle shattered a Eurocentric world order, shifted
the financial center of gravity to New York,
nurtured Japanese expansionism in East Asia, and,
at the same time, stimulated anticolonial
movements from West Africa to Indonesia.
The aerial bomber, the U-boat, and poison gas brought
mechanization to the art of killing, making
the latter less personal and yet also more far-reaching
in its effects. Industrialized labor, trade
unions, and socialist parties gained in power, while
the landed interest declined. The social and
political position of women was transformed in various
aspects, despite predictable resistance. The
war produced a cultural crisis, in the arts, in
ideas, religion, literature, and life styles. It also
exacerbated ethnic and religious hatreds, in Ireland,
the Balkans, and Armenia, that scar the
European landscape today. The Great War is therefore
not some distant problem about dead white
males on and off the battlefields. Its origins,
course, and consequences are central to an
understanding of the twentieth century.
-Paul Kennedy, from
his
review in the New York Review of Books
Nothing has so warped our understanding of the 20th Century as the unfortunate
fact that America's wars were, in Bob Dole's felicitous phrase, "Democrat
Wars." The combination of historical circumstances which put Wilson,
FDR, Truman, and JFK in power to lead the United States into WWI, WWII,
The Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam has made it very difficult emotionally
for the institutional Left to criticize those conflicts. It is this
which explains the Left's strange silence as regards what we might otherwise
expect to hear them attack as a savage and unnatural product of military-industrial
capitalism. Fortunately for the Left, the accession of Richard Nixon
to the presidency in 1968 has allowed them to disown Vietnam, turning it
into the one conflict that has truly been diminished in the public eye.
Meanwhile, patriotism, even nativism, is such a powerful force on the Right
that conservatives have been reluctant to question these righteous and
glorious causes. These factors have combined to create
an artificial national consensus about American involvement in a series
of bloody and quite senseless wars.
At last though, in the past few years--not coincidentally following
the Cold War and the end of its dissent stifling effects--conservative
historians have finally begun to produce a coherent and fairly unified
critique of the century's great wars and of American (and British) participation
in them. The liberating winds of these new circumstances have
allowed folks to take a fresh look at a myriad of issues, allowed for A.
Scott Berg's rehabilitation of Charles
Lindbergh, permitted even standard issue histories like David
Kennedy's Freedom from Fear
to at long last acknowledge the utter failure of the New Deal, allowed
the nation to finally accept responsibility for the incarceration of Japanese-Americans,
and so forth. But most importantly, it has led to a series of books
on the threshold issue of whether fighting the wars was in our national
interest to begin with. For instance, Pat Buchanan's A
Republic not an Empire, though it was rather harshly denounced, raised
important questions about whether it made sense for the U. S. to get involved
in WWII. Niall Ferguson's Pity of War performs much
the some service for British participation in the First World War, and
was, not surprisingly, greeted with nearly equal vitriol.
Really more of an extended analytical essay than a history of the War,
Ferguson sets out to answer a series of ten questions :
(1) Was the war inevitable, whether
because of militarism, imperialism, secret diplomacy or the
arms race?
(2) Why did GermanyÃs leaders gamble
on war in 1914?
(3) Why did BritainÃs leaders choose
to intervene when war broke out on the Continent?
(4) Was the war, as is often asserted,
really greeted with popular enthusiasm?
(5) Did propaganda, and especially
the press, keep the war going...?
(6) Why did the huge economic superiority
of the British Empire not suffice to inflict defeat on
the Central Powers more quickly and without American intervention?
(7) Why did the military superiority
of the German Army fail to deliver victory over the British
and French armies on the Western Front, as it delivered victory over Serbia,
Rumania and Russia?
(8) Why did men keep fighting when,
as the war poets tell us, conditions on the battlefield were
so wretched?
(9) Why did men stop fighting?
(10) Who won the peace--to be precise,
who ended up paying for the war?
Because his answers to these questions are so uniformly at variance
with the accepted version of history, Ferguson concludes that Britain's
entry into the War was "nothing less than the greatest error of
modern history." He argues that Germany had no global war aims, that
she would have certainly won the war, but would have done little more than
establish the same type of European trade union that modern Germany is
rapidly creating. And given what Britain gave up, in terms of Empire,
lives, and economic retardation, the war must therefore be seen as a complete
waste.
I agree with those conclusions, but think he may actually be too timid
in his argument. One of the criticisms of his analysis has been that
Germany had wider aims and would have eventually confronted Britain.
This seems almost absurd. Unless the other nations of Europe had
truly collaborated with their conqueror it is hard to imagine how Germany
could have even effectively held onto them, never mind turn and attack
Britain while also subjugating the entire population of Europe.
There's also one strain that runs through the questions he asks, that
I would have liked to see him address--the effect of democracy. It
has long been assumed that democracy would tend to be more pacific than
other forms of government : how then explain the nearly continuous state
of war that the two great democracies, Britain and America, found themselves
involved in during the 20th Century ? There would seem to be a series
of interlocking causes, all functions of democracy, which contributed to
this unlikely state of affairs. First, democracies are more unlikely
to get involved in warfare in the first place. Opposing systems well
understand this fact and are able to exploit it, so that they arm and strengthen
themselves while democracies stand idly by and do nothing. If Britain
really did have something to fear from German naval, colonial, and continental
ambitions, the time to deal with Germany was twenty or more years earlier,
when she was still weak. Similarly, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan,
the Soviet Union, Red China, etc., were all allowed to build themselves
into serious military powers because Britain and America, their leaders
beholden to the will of the people, did not stop them.
Second, when war finally does come, it is precisely because it is a
democratic decision that our soldiers are likely to go right on fighting
even in squalid and lethal conditions. It is the totalitarian powers
which tend to have their armed forces quit on them, because, in some sense,
it simply isn''t their fight.
Finally, the political and cultural dynamics of democracy require that
every war the nation enters into be glorified and sanctified, because it
was the will of the people. This means that democracies are nearly
incapable of learning any lessons from these conflicts. To acknowledge
that the war was a mistake would perhaps be too traumatic to the polity
for such apostasy to stand. Thus, for all the cheap talk of "no more
Munichs" the West does nothing even today as China tries to turn itself
into a superpower, despite the obvious fact that their power will be aimed
directly at us.
The only remaining question, raised by books like this one and Pat Buchanan's
and the ones that will eventually be written about the futility of the
Cold War and the Gulf War, is whether when the next war comes, the democracies
(by which we really only mean Britain and America) will have sense enough
to stay out of it. If enough people read and comprehend The Pity
of War, we just might.
(Reviewed:23-May-01)
Grade: (A+)
Websites:
Niall Ferguson Links:
-Dr.
Niall Ferguson (Oxford)
-EXCERPT
: Chapter One of The Pity of War : The Myths of Militarism
-EXCERPT
: Tommy's Revenge from Pity of War
-EXCERPT
: First Chapter of Ferguson, Niall: The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in
the Modern World, 1700-2000
-EXCERPT
: Chapter One of House of Rothschild
-ESSAY: The Empire Slinks Back (NIALL FERGUSON, April 27, 2003, NY Times Magazine)
-ESSAY: The True Cost of Hegemony: Huge Debt (NIALL FERGUSON, April 20, 2003, NY Times)
-ESSAY: Europe's Response to Iraq Reflects an Old Rift (NIALL FERGUSON, February 23, 2003, NY Times)
-ESSAY
: 2011 (Niall Ferguson, December 2, 2001, NY Times Magazine)
-VIDEO LECTURE
: Why the World Wars were Won (Niall Ferguson, Boxmind)
-RESPONSE : Niall Ferguson responds
to a
review
of Pity of War by Jay Winter in Reviews in History
-ESSAY
: War - what is it good for? (Niall Ferguson, Financial Times)
-ESSAY
: Millennium Reputations : Which are the most overrated authors, or books,
of the past 1,000 years? Continuing our series, the historian Niall Ferguson
nominates Max Weber (booksonline uk)
-ESSAY
: The anarchists are wrong, but they ask the right questions (Niall
Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-ESSAY
: The Birthday Boys (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-ESSAY
: Scotland the Disunited (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-ESSAY
: Has Cash Had Its Chips ? (Management Today, February 01 2001
by Niall Ferguson)
-REVIEW
: of Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw A magisterial
biography which lays bare Hitlerís morbid psyche (Niall Ferguson,
Books Online UK)
-REVIEW:
of The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order
by Michael Howard Peace in our time, almost: Democracy is the best form
of defence against global conflict (Niall Ferguson, Books Online UK)
-REVIEW
: Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor by Kathleen Burk
(Niall Ferguson, Books Online UK)
-REVIEW
: of Frozen Desire: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Money by James Buchan
and The Real Meaning of Money by Dorothy Rowe (Niall Ferguson,
Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of Kitchener by John Pollock (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order
by Michael Howard (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation
by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of The Battle by Richard Overy (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of The Faustian Bargain: The Art World In Nazi Germany by Jonathan Petropoulos
(Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans by Eric Johnson
(Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps by
Tzvetan Todorov (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of To the Bitter End: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1942-1945 (Niall
Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of Hitler's Airwaves by Horst J. P. Bergmeier (Niall Ferguson, Daily
Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide by Michael
Burleigh (Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History by David
Hackett
Fischer
(Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Lewis Gaddis
(Niall Ferguson, Daily Telegraph)
-INTERVIEW
: Audio Special: Niall Ferguson interviewed by Bill Goldstein
(NY Times)
-PROFILE
: The History Man (Daily Telegraph)
-PROFILE
: Dial-a-don : Niall Ferguson is prolific, well-paid and a snappy dresser.
Stephen Moss hated him - at least until he spent an hour being charmed
in the historian's Oxford study (Guardian Unlimited, March 1, 2001)
-PROFILE
: Robert Fulford's series about Niall Ferguson (The National Post,
March 14, 2001)
-ESSAY
: Pop Historians : Since 1945 Britain has bred a disproportionate number
of readable historians. Following AJP Taylor, the line between historian
and journalist has blurred. But has the new post-cold war generation,
led by Niall Ferguson, taken too literally the claim that history is good
"box office"? (Daniel Johnson, Prospect)
-ESSAY
: A History of the 20th Century (Jude Wanniski, Polyconomics)
-PROFILE
: Fighting Blackadder (Desmond Christy, October 30, 1999, The Guardian)
-ARCHIVES
: "niall ferguson" (Find Articles)
-ARCHIVES
: "niall ferguson" (Mag Portal)
-ARCHIVES
: "niall ferguson" (Guardian Unlimited)
-ARCHIVES
: "niall ferguson" (booksonline uk)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Jay Winter, Review in History)
-RESPONSE
: to Jay Winter (Niall Ferguson, Reviews in History)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson (V. R. Berghahn, NY Times Book
Review)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War (Chris Patsilelis, Washington Post)
-REVIEW
: Aug 12, 1999 Paul Kennedy: In the Shadow of the Great War, NY Review
of Books
The First World War by John Keegan
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War (Donald Kagan, Commentary)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and First World War by John Keegan
: Was World War I Necessary (Keith Windschuttle, New Criterion)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and The First World War by John
Keegan (National Review, David Gress, National Review)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and First World War by John Keegan
(The New Leader, Roger Draper)
-REVIEW
: of THE PITY OF WAR: Explaining World War I, by Niall Ferguson. (Andrew
J. Bacevich, Wilson Quarterly)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War, by Niall Ferguson (Christopher Hartwell, Intellectual
Capital)
-REVIEW:
Was the Great War Necessary?: The Pity of War, by Niall Ferguson (Benjamin
Schwarz, The Atlantic)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War (Andrew Cockburn, Washington Monthly)
-REVIEW:
Robert Jervis reviews The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson (Political
Science Quarterly)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Todd R. Laughman , History Net)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Tamara Vishkina)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Lieutenant-Colonel Bernd Horn, Canadian Military
Journal)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (RJQ Adams, History Cooperative)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (John J. Reilly , Alternative History)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War (Marc B. Haefele, LA Weekly)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Contemporary Review, James Munson)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (The Historian, Paul W. Schroeder)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (The English Historical Review, Brian Bond)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (John H. Maurer, American Diplomacy)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity Of War: Explaining World War I (Bill Steigerwald., Pittsburgh
Post-Gazzette)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and First World War by John Keegan
(RICK HARMON , Oregon Live)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson (Jwnnifer Mediano, Mindjack)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Tim Travers, Parameters : US Army War College Quarterly)
-REVIEW
: of Pity of War (Bridge Colby , Harvard Salient)
-REVIEW
: Nov 4, 1999 Jason Epstein: Always Time to Kill, NY Review of Books
BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THIS ARTICLE
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland by Christopher R. Browning
Zhukovís Greatest Defeat: The Red Armyís Epic Disaster in Operation
Mars, 1942 by David M. Glantz and with German translations by
Mary E. Glantz
An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in
Twentieth-Century Warfare by Joanna Bourke
The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam by Bao Ninh
Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris by Ian Kershaw
Hitlerís Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich by Omer
Bartov
The Iliad by Homer and translated by Robert Fagles
The First World War by John Keegan
The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson
-REVIEW: of The Pity of War (Chris Patsilelis, Washington Post)
-REVIEW
: Dec 16, 1999 Robert Skidelsky: Family Values , NY Review of Books
The House of Rothschild: The Worldís Banker, 1849-1999 by Niall Ferguson
The House of Rothschild: Moneyís Prophets, 1798-1848 by Niall Ferguson
-REVIEW
: of THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD Money's Prophets, 1798-1848. By Niall Ferguson
(Geoffrey Wheatcroft , NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of The House of Rothschild The World's Banker, 1849-1999. By Niall Ferguson
(Sylvia Nasar, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848 By Niall Ferguson
(JOSEPH MANDEL, Business Week)
-REVIEW
: of THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD: The World's Banker, 1849-1999 (Business
Week)
-REVIEW
: of Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals ed by Niall Ferguson
(Blair Worden, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of THE CASH NEXUS Money and Power in the Modern World,1700-2000. By Niall
Ferguson. (David P. Calleo, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW
: of Cash Nexus by Niall Ferguson (Jennifer M. Welsh, National Post)
-REVIEW
: of Cash Nexus by Niall Ferguson (Frank McLynn, Independent uk)
-REVIEW
: of Cash Nexus (Christopher Fildes, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW
: of THE CASH NEXUS: MONEY AND POWER IN THE MODERN WORLD 1700-2000. By
Niall Ferguson (The Economist)
-REVIEW
: of The Cash Nexus (New Statesman, John Gray)
-REVIEW: of Empire by Niall Ferguson (Max Hastings, Daily Telegraph)
-REVIEW: of Empire by Niall Ferguson (Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator)
-REVIEW: of Empire by Niall Ferguson (Michiko Kakutani, NY Times)
-REVIEW: of Empire (Farhad Manjoo, Salon)
Book-related and General Links:
FIRST WORLD WAR :
-The Great
War (pbs)
-World
War I Document Archive
-Trenches on
the Web: An Internet History of The Great War
-Major
Battles of WWI
-Charles
Fair's Battlefield Guide
-Encyclopaedia
of the First World War
-The major museums
of Europe, commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armistice of 1918
-LINKS:
WAR, PEACE and SECURITY GUIDE: Military history: World War I (1914-1918)
-The Great
War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (PBS)
-The
War Times Journal: The Great War Series
-The Great
War Society
-Uttermost
ends: New Zealand and the Great War 1914-1918
-REVIEW
: of THE FIRST WORLD WAR By John Keegan ( Tim Belknap, Business
Week)
-REVIEW:
Tools for Destruction, but None for Turning Back (MICHIKO KAKUTANI,
NY Times)
-REVIEW:
(Paul Kennedy: In the Shadow of the Great War, NY Review of Books)
The First World War by John
Keegan
The Pity of War by Niall
Ferguson
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and The First World War by John
Keegan (National Review, David Gress, National Review)
-REVIEW
: of The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and First World War by John Keegan
(The New Leader, Roger Draper)
-REVIEW
: of The First World War , By John Keegan ( Robert A. Pois, Denver
Post)
-REVIEW:
Noel Annan: Grand Disillusions, NY Review of Books
The Generation of 1914 by Robert
Wohl
-REVIEW:
James Joll: No Man's Land, NY Review of Books
Rites of Spring: The Great War
and the Birth of the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins
The Lost Voices of World War I:
An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights
Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist
Heritage
Frieden für Europa: Die Politik
der Deutschen Reichstagsmehrheit 1917-18 by Wilhelm Ribhegge
German Liberalism and the Dissolution
of the Weimar Party System, 1918-1933 by Larry Eugene Jones
-REVIEW
: of 1918: WAR AND PEACE By Gregor Dallas (Jane Ridley, Spectator uk)
-REVIEW
: of THE FIRST WORLD WAR: Vol. 1, To Arms By Hew Strachan and THE
MYTH OF THE GREAT WAR By John Mosier : Yet more men to die Was victory
over Germany in the First World War a figment of the Allies? imagination?
Allan Mallinson takes issue with a controversial view (Times of London)
-REVIEW
: of The First World War. Volume I: To Arms. By Hew Strachan.
(The Economist)
