There are some historians who claim that World War I was a clash of egos- German and Austrian, versus British, French, and Russian. Yet, while governments (meaning politicians and, in some case, the military bureaucracy and aristocracy) prepared for war, the people in the various countries were anxious, but hardly ready to sacrifice themselves, their sons,. And their honor in the trenches and mountains stretching from the Marne to well past the Oder.
In the next few pages, the answer to Question B really will be discussed in two separate parts: Who started the war? And, could the wholesale slaughter have been prevented.
For one thing, World War I did not begin because of the assassination of that pompous, dull-witted Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie. It was only the final match to a gasoline soaked inflammable pile. The British were concerned more with internal; affairs, such as Ulster. The French, having been treated to the opening of anti-Semitic wounds in their military by the trial of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus and his defense by Emile Zola, were more interested in "the sensational case of Madame Caillaux, wife of the finance minister and head of the Radical Party, who had murdered the editor of Le Figaro (Joll, 1984, p. 172).
Equally, the working class was uninterested, and disinterested in any sort of war. Their movement emphasized that "Wars are inherent in the nature of capitalism; they will only cease when the capitalist economy is abolished" (Joll, 1984, p. 173). Yet, the seeds of war were not really economic, except for the fact that the Germans wanted to assert their power, and become more heavily dominant in Central Europe. It was not, as one of the slogans of World War II had it, a need for German "lebensraum"- Expansion and domination was political and egoistic. At the same time the bitter French politicians and military were still in denial about the result of the Franco-Prussian W...