Note by Sean Gabb: I believe – though I may have tracked down the wrong recipient of the award – I am related, through one of my grandfathers, to Cecil Sewell (1895-1918), who was awarded a Victoria Cross in the closing months of the Great War. If so, he is one of the dead war heroes in my family I was told about as a boy. If not, there was someone else in the family who got a VC in similar circumstances. I can be proud of his courage, and can hope that I have not, in my own more civilian struggles, fallen below the standard of my ancestors. I still firmly believe, however, that he died for nothing – he and all the other young men on every side buried along the Western Front. It would have been better for us all had John Morley won the Cabinet debates of August 1914, and we’d told the French to look to themselves. Failing that, I wish the Lansdowne peace initiative of 1916 had led to a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. The Great War was a catastrophic mistake at every level. SIG
The Evil of WWI The fiftieth anniversary of the First World War in 1964 felt nothing like the current centennial observances. It is worth asking what has changed. When I was growing up in the sixties in a small town in Texas, World War I seemed as remote to me as the Revolutionary War. Not that the conflict was not unknown to me. In our city park there was a statue of a First World War soldier and a memorial to hometown sons who had died in the war. And my grandmother and grandfather told me stories of relief and celebration in 1918 at the war’s end.
At school, the dumbing down of “social studies” was already well underway, but my teachers did mention the war, though with few details included. Most of those possessed of a public school education in the mid-sixties had at least a chance of encountering Alan Seeger’s poem, “I Have a Rendezvous With Death.” And I had heard of historical episodes like the Lost Battalion.
But by 1964, World War I was always in the shadow of World War II. With its death rendezvous and lost battalions, the First World War was pretty much a downer, while The Good War was a poignant but ennobling upper. The Good War seemed to overwhelm everything with all the movies, the survivors, the stories, glorious Normandy, the Bulge, and all the rest.
But even when blinded by the brightness of the Good War, many educated Americans remembered the great revisionist controversies of the twenties and thirties. In the immediate wake of the first war, a number of American historians produced histories demonstrating that the Germans were hardly the only power to deserve blame for the coming of the war. These “revisionists” — Sidney B. Fay, Charles Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, H.C. Engelbrecht and Bernie Hanighen, and others — revised much of the received history put out by the Entente governments and the patriotic historians who supported the party line. Since we now call numerous schools of historical interpretation in the United States “revisionist,” I will call this early revisionist tradition (with a nod to Paul Gottfried) “paleo-revisionists.” These historians brought different perspectives to the history of their time, but one commonality was that they all pretty much decried the war as a European affair which the United States should have left alone. This movement swelled until the glorious waves of World War II interventionism simply washed over doubts and questions about World War I.
Yet the 1960s was also a turning point in the American consideration of World War I, at least in some respects. Quite apart from the paleo-revisionist history of the war’s origins, the fiftieth anniversary brought forth all kinds of commemorative material, and especially some great first-hand accounts. In this regard, perhaps the most outstanding book is the collection of survivors’ essays edited by George Panichas, The Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914–1918 (1968). Everything taken together, this was no “flood,” but in spite of the American public’s previous lack of interest, there was some fine and evocative writing that came out in response to the anniversary.
Meanwhile, in German universities the sixties brought a stormy historiographical controversy known as the Fischer Thesis Debate, a debate which hung on newly-examined German documents which seemed to show that the Germans were totally guilty in starting the war after all (hence, the debate). Now only a few American students of modern Europe knew anything of this dispute. Still, the European controversy and the fiftieth anniversary memorial writing did arouse interest among scholars, and a few began to rethink World War I. One of these, Columbia historian René Albrecht-Carrié, wrote a small history of the war aimed at a broad audience: The Meaning of the First World War (1965). His book was brief, theme-centered, and even uninformative about many aspects of the war — the military part, for example. But Albrecht-Carrié made one central point persuasively: the First World War was the profound event of the twentieth century world. The great upheavals of the century, he asserted in somewhat Tolkienesque idiom, came from the deeper forces which “broke through” in the years 1916 and 1917. Increased American interest in a forgotten period also showed in the collection of mainstream historians’ opinions in the 1967 book edited by Jack Roth, World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History. By the time I got to college in the early seventies, a couple of young, energetic history professors I encountered had picked up on this new trend, emphasizing in many ways the centrality of World War I to modern history.
Even if most of the renewed study of the war was not revisionist, however, much of it harmonized quite well with the paleo-revisionist approach, especially the revisionist goals of investigating neglected aspects of history and of attempting to look beyond patriotic glorifications of the conflict. Much in the new studies also harmonized with revisionism by emphasizing agency and individuality among soldiers and other “groups” normally treated collectively. John Keegan was nowhere near the revisionist camp, but his 1976 book, The Face of Battle, introduced a whole new interest in individual motivation on the battlefield. Keegan’s whole approach was to explore the faces of the faceless mass of British soldiers, in this case at the Battle of the Somme. Trench Warfare 1914–1918: The Live and Let Live System (1980), Tony Ashworth’s intense appraisal of soldiers’ informal truces during the war was another example of a book with fairly broad circulation that delved into individual rather than mass behavior and motivation. And perhaps most importantly, the great literary historian Paul Fussell gave the world his masterpiece, The Great War and Modern Memory, in 1975, thereby emphasizing the profoundly individual analysis of individual suffering and memory as against state-mediated memorials.
One way or the other, since the late eighties, European historiographical trends and this fairly broad American appreciation of the importance of the war ignited what has been a steady cottage industry in books about the 1914–1918 war. Yale historian Jay Winter helped create a very influential PBS documentary series The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century in 1996. Indeed, Winter and numerous international scholars have reinvigorated the field of World War I studies from the nineties onward.
One of the most important influences on paleo-revisionists after 1945 was Ludwig von Mises. His contributions consisted not so much of detailed studies as of theoretical analyses which put the war into the context of the growing state. This analysis appeared in his wartime book, Omnipotent Government , but also the earlier Nation, State, and Economy and many other works. Mises really offered the revisionist school a theoretical framework which had been missing. He also encouraged many students in this direction, including Murray N. Rothbard and Ralph Raico. Rothbard contributed very substantially to the field of technical studies of World War I as he folded the theory of Mises into the older revisionist school. His works on war collectivism, “war as fulfillment,” the financial history of the war, and other topics stand at center stage in modern paleo-revisionism. Indeed, Rothbard really expanded the agenda of revisionism to encompass a variety of new topics in intellectual, economic, and social history relative to the first conflict. Along with Mises, Rothbard took revisionism in a direction away from the unqualified support of Germany under the Kaiser, a kind of caricature position in which some revisionists had become stuck. Rothbard critiqued the state as state, including the German version of it.
In this renewed tradition, the works of Ralph Raico, Robert Higgs, Jeff Riggenbach, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Richard Gamble, Paul Gottfried, Thomas Woods, Joseph Stromberg, and others expanded the materials and subjects of revisionist studies of the war, giving new life to an older school of thought, very much parallel to the re-emergence of Austrian economics as a dynamic, rigorous system of scholary thought.
There is still much to do, but Austrian-minded historians from various disciplines now have a much broader platform to work from. Though I probably tend to be a glass-half-full judge of historical analysis and social progress, considering the changes I have witnessed from the fiftieth anniversary to the hundredth, I think the picture of the First World War in our minds is fuller and more accurate, the result of a quantum leap in historical knowledge and analysis from the fiftieth to the hundredth anniversary of that massive conflict. Like the Battalion, this past was not really lost, just hard to get to.
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I have read Ludwig Von Mises’ “Omnipotent Government” and “Nation, State and Ecomomy” and I do not remember any defence of German efforts to conquer Europe (and the world) in either work.
What I remember is, in “Nation, State and Economy” an attack on Imperial German “War Socialism” in the First World War (contrasting it specifically with the less collectivist approach in France during the same war) and an attack on the government policy of massive inflation in both Germany and Austria during and (especially) after World War One.
And, in “Omnipotent Government” an ATTACK ON (not a DEFENCE OF) Nazi Germany.
I am afraid that Sean Gabb and “Hunt Tooley” are going to have to find some other friend for any defence of Nazi Germany they may wish to offer, Ludwig Von Mises will not do – because he was an ENEMY of Nazi Germany.
As for Imperial Germany – Mises certainly had no objection to Germany having colonies here and there (not sharing Rothbard’s fanatical “anti Imperialism”), but he was total opponent of trying to base an economy on colonies, rather than upon free trade (the fallacies of economic imperialism had been refuted by such writers as Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, as far back as the 1700s).
As for the German academic-political elite (closer together in Germany than in any other nation), Mises was famously HOSTLE to (not favourable-to) the “Socialists of the Chair” who dominated German dreams of ruling-the-world by military force. Even mocking the idea as “war by a tailor against the people who grow his food”.
It should be remembered that not all socialists are Marxists.
For example, Richard Wagner was an extreme socialist (wanting to get rid of money and so on), but was not a Marxist.
Also such German thinkers as List and Fichte come before Karl Marx – and were more honest (no nonsense about how the state would go after full collectivism was achieved – Fred and Karl were not far from nonsense of their Black Flag “anarchist” rivals on this point, both pretending that the state would wither away if there was no large scale private property in the means of production and so on). The roots of German collectivist academic thought (which influenced other nations – for example the United States via the number of Americans who were educated in Germany, or at American universities based on the German system, such as Johns Hopkins) are a lot deeper than Karl Marx.
On the First World War a clear distinction should be made.
A distinction between a pro enemy position (supporting Imperial German efforts to take over the northern coast of Europe – in order to destroy Britain later, and go on-and-on with the dream of the conquest of the Americas and so on) – clearly someone who comes out with such a pro enemy position is (to use a technical term) a pig. Like someone who publishes an attack on “militaristic” “ancestor worship” on the day of the attack on the Canadian national War Memorial (as Sean Gabb did – yesterday, and he has still not taken the post down, although I hope he will repent of being a pig).
However, on the other hand, there is criticism of TACTICS.
That our cause (the cause of the United Kingdom and her allies) was just is clear – but that does NOT mean that our tactics were always sensible, They most certainly were not always sensible – there were many follies (terrible follies) in World War One. Sulva Bay, the failure to attack at once when the British forces were landed, being perhaps the worst blunder – had the British commanders at Sulva Bay been even of a minimum level of competence the landings would have been a success. The Royal Navy would have been able to sail to Constantinople and knock Turkey out of the war in 1915. And the British and French would have been able to link up with the Russians – thus making the position of the Central Powers untenable. As it was, some ten thousand British soldiers basically just waited around (as their commanders gave them no proper orders) whilst the Turks rushed men to the area and constructed defences.
As for the Western Front – the division between “siege generals” (such as Plumer) and “big breakthrough” commanders (such as Haig) is well known. And I am on the side of Plumer and co – although this is easy with hide sight.
And it should also been pointed out that had Haig been at Sulva Bay (in fact he, quite wrongly, opposed the whole operation – Winston Churchill’s idea was actually perfectly sound, but the operation was not put into the hands of commanders who believed in it, or even understood it) he might well have done a competent job. Indeed his normal tactic (a mass attack) would have worked rather well against a few hundred Turkish troops (which is all they had there – before they rushed in reinforcements) with only limited defences. Sulva Bay being the classic “ticking clock” situation – where the difference between triumph and disaster is one of SPEED.
Those who say “our cause was just, therefore our tactics must not be questioned” make a terrible error. Undermining the very cause they (quite rightly) support.
How odd – some comments appear to have gone missing.
None of us is deleting anything Paul! It might be a wordpress problem: we seem to have those now and then. I will go and check there’s nothing of yours stuck in the “spam” file if you want.
I should have pointed out that the socialist (or semi socialist) Progressives Charles Beard and H.E. Barnes were refuted in their “Revisionist” attack on the United States Constitution (and so on) decades ago (by Forest McDonald and others).
If Dr Tooley is teaching the “economic interpretation” of Charles Beard and H.E. Barnes (and so on) to his students in Austin – then Dr Tooley is part of the problem (not part of the solution).
This is yet another evil fruit of the Rothbardian idea of reaching out to the left – people who do that end up pushing leftist propaganda (such as the works of Charles Beard, H.E. Barnes, G. Kolko and so on).
No David – it was my fault. I got the threads confused – I was looking for things here that I actually wrote on other threads.
The problem is that there is more than one post on the same subject.
British involvement was a self-inflicted wound. If Britain had stayed out of it the odds are it would have been a re-run of 1870. The Germans would have rapidly defeated France, demanded tribute and perhaps taken a bit of territory before retiring. The Kaiser and his Junker class may have been militaristic but there is no reason to believe they would have tried to occupy France permanently.
The German foreign minister of the time noted with astonishment, Germany could hardly believe that Britain had gone to war over a treaty signed in 1839 to come to Belgium’s aid. He was absolutely right. It was absurd.
Agreed. Moreover, I suspect the French would have backed down the moment it became clear we were staying out. There might have been a war in the east, because of the mobilisation orders. Germany might or might not have won. But it was no business of ours.
Sean Gabb is lying (yet again) – France could not “back down” because there WAS NO FRENCH ATTCK ON GERMANY before the German Declaration of War (the German Declaration of War was a pack, of lies).
The actual attack (as in 1939 – when the Germans claimed the Poles had attacked them, again lying, the Germans shot prisoners from a Concentration Camp and dressed them in German uniforms, pretending they were German solders killed by the Poles) was a German attack.
The German objective was to dominate the northern coast of Europe (destroying not just Belgium but France also) for the objective of destroying the power of the United Kingdom – the breaking of Britain (not making friends with Britain) was the objective of the German academic-political elite.
Sean Gabb knows all this – so his “is was no business of ours” is a lie (a despicable lie – from a person who sides with the enemies of his country, and not just in relation to the First World War).
The United Kingdom could no more tolerate Imperial Germany being in control of the northern coast of Europe facing this island, than the first Elizabeth could tolerate the control of this area (the Low Countries and so on) by Philip II, or Britain could tolerate Louis XIV being in control of the coast and the resources of Europe, or the French Revolutionary regimes, or the Nazis or Communists during the 20th century.
This was true even if Imperial Germany had not been building a great navy (which it was) and had not been under the control of an elite seeking unlimited power in the world (which it was).
On his return to Germany the German Ambassador to the United Kingdom would not have the name of the Keiser (or the academics and the ministers) mentioned (in a friendly manner) in his home again. And his wife removed the portrait of the Emperor.
By the way I hear that the “historian” Barnes was a holocaust denier – no wonder the Rothbardians like him.