The Causes of World War
I
by Patrick Alessandra
The historiography of the causes of World War One has always
been a field fraught with conflict. The political implications of where to place
the blame in the aftermath of the wa r, and the sheer scale of the conflict have
caused many a historian to put forth their own interpretations of why The
Great War b egan that fat eful summer in 1914. The historiography of World
War I ha s fluctuated fr om blaming Germany, to the idea that the w ar w as a
horrible a ccident, to blaming Austria-Hungary's ethnic tensions, to more
holist ic views that take into account the millions of individual factors
involv ed in modern times. Like so many areas of history, t he causes of
World War I are a source of endless contention for historians.
One of the biggest schools of thought in regards to t he ca uses of
World War I is exemplified by t he writing of Frit z Fischer. In his book
Germany’s Aims in In The First World War firs t published in Germany in 1961,
Fritz Fischer makes the case that The Great War was largely
the
respon si bility
of Germany. He paints a picture of ever escalating Eur opean
tension fueled b y Germany’s angling for increased resources and status.1 He
emphasized the German antagonism with France as central to Germany’s
approach to general European war, which Germany saw as inev itable. In fact
according to Fischer, t he German leadership felt it needed a w ar t o mainta in
Germa ny's status as a great power.2 World War I happened because
Germa ny needed it, and her statesmen and generals forced it to explode, out
of fears of a rising Russia a nd a sch eming France.3
In contr as t to this Germany centric v iew, A. J. P. Taylor, in his 1977
book How W ars Begin puts fort h a different interpretation. Taylor theorizes
that the true culprit b ehind The First World War was inflexible railroad
mobilization t imetables.4 They were timed and organized so precisely that if
mobilization was paused a fter it began the country in question w ould be
1 Fritz Fische r, German y's Aims in the First World War, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967), 88.
2 Ibid., 49.
3 Ibid., 55.
4 A. J. P. Taylor, "The First World War," in How Wars Begin (New York: Atheneum, 1979), 110.
