Book Review: The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (Annika Mombauer, 2002)

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Book Review: The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (Annika Mombauer, 2002)

Annika Mombauer, a German lecturer of Modern European History at the Open University, provides an extremely concise and accessible account of the historiographical development which has occurred within the debate over who, or what, caused the First World War.  Tackling probably the most emotive, widely debated and written about topic of twentieth century history, Mombauer manages to utilise a wealth of material, which is undoubtedly aided by her fluency in English and German when examining the often crucial documental evidence, to provide a starting point for any student attempting to grasp the ongoing debate surrounding the Origins of the First World War.  In the book’s four chapters, Mombauer examines the debate during and immediately following the war, the development of a general consensus in the inter-war years, the revolutionary developments made as a result of the Fischer controversy, and the current state of the debate, before concluding that there is potentially still much to come in understanding of the origins of the First World War.  What is most impressive about Mombauer’s work is her ability to integrate an excellent chronological discussion of how the debate has developed with an analysis of issues surrounding historical scholarship (in particular political agendas that often greatly influence interpretations) and how this historical knowledge can be utilised in the present to produce a publication that has far greater depth than a mere analysis of the origins of the First World War.

        Mombauer’s discussion beings with the immediate attempts made by all of the countries involved in the conflict to be seen as fighting a defensive war against foreign aggressors.  Particular attention is paid to the ‘coloured books’ that served the dual purpose of attempting to alleviate guilt and garner support at home for the war.  Public support would have been at best weak, and at worst hostile, towards any country that appeared to have been the aggressor during the conflict.  Mombauer observes that on behalf of Germany, these actions explain the outrage within Germany in response to the War Guilt Clause enforced upon them at Versailles.  The German government had been successful in convincing the public that they were merely defending their national interests by engaging with the Entente, and so by justifying the war to their own people and ensuring that the unimaginable reparations payments were enforceable, the Entente also laid a moral damning upon Germany and its people.  Mombauer later goes on to discuss the role that this played in shaping Germany decades later.  In the years after the war the official government-sponsored line within Germany, a line also vehemently adopted by German historians and gradually the wider historical community, was that Germany could not be attributed with sole blame, that her leaders had not demonstrated an aggressive policy within Europe, and as came to be the accepted line, Lloyd George’s assertion that “the nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war”.  What these historians were not aware of was that instead of restoring German credibility and national pride, they were in fact paving way for the horrors that National Socialism would later inflict through the belief within Germany that the War Guilt Clause was completely unfounded.  

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Mombauer’s use of such context and development of broader questions surrounding the blame attributed for the First World War is one of the key reasons that her book is far more than just a simple outlining of the debate.  Particularly throughout the second half of the book, her broad and often subtle observations and understanding of why certain interpretations were offered enables the reader to gain a perspective of why the issue was such a crucial debate and, for example, allows one to appreciate why a similar course of denial was not followed in the aftermath of the Second World ...

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