Remak

Question 1

To which historian was Joachim Remak reacting?

Answer 1

Fritz Fischer.

Question 2

What is the initial complaint Joachim Remak appears to be making regarding Fritz Fischer?

Answer 2

It appears to overly focused on Germany. It “makes an interesting discussion guide, but not a complete one.”

Question 3

What is the big question Joachim Remak appears to be asking?

Answer 3

“the responsiblliity if each of the belligerents.”

Question 4

What does focusing on the direct, national causes exclude?

Answer 4

Supranational ones, such as the alliance system, imperialism, economic rivalries,

Question 5

What is a problem with focusing on supranational causes? They tend to cancel each other out. Consider the alliance system?

Answer 5

Yes, there were alliances, but how binding were they? The Italians did not think so. Also, shouldn’t the alliance system also serve a a deterrent? If the Austrians were certain that Russia would declare war, maybe that would be a deterrent.

Question 6

What is a problem with focusing on supranational causes? They tend to cancel each other out. Consider imperialism?

Answer 6

Yes, they caused tensions, but some of the fiercest imperialistic rivalries ended up allied (especially Britain and France, but also Britain, France, and Russia).

Question 7

What is a problem with focusing on supranational causes? They tend to cancel each other out. Consider economic rivalries?

Answer 7

While there were certainly economic rivalries, the “businessmen on all sides were among the strongest advocates of peace.”

Question 8

Which nation is least responsible for the outbreak of war? Why?

Answer 8

France. They “did not go to war for Alsace”; they “entered the war because they had no alternative. The Germans had attacked them. History can be very simple at times.”

Question 9

What were France’s main motivations?

Answer 9

Undoing the Treaty of Frankfort and achieving the return of Alsace and Lorraine.

Question 10

How did France contribute to the July 1914 Crisis

Answer 10

They did not restrain Russia. Everybody knows about Germany’s blank check to Austria, but fewer people know that “the Russians held a similar piece of paper from France.”

Question 11

How did Britain contribute to the July 1914 Crisis?

Answer 11

(1) They could have made more clear their commitment to Belgium, though “any responsible German statesman must have known that it was a matter of vital interest to Great Britain whether France survived as a power, and who would control the channel ports of Belgium and France.” (2) Also, like the French, they did little to constrain the Russian response.

Question 12

What were Britain’s main motivations? How was the British perspective unique?

Answer 12

They viewed their global dominance as natural, and any rising power with alarm. Not in the text, but one way to maintain that dominance is to ensure the land powers of Europe were in a balance of power, so Britain could always swing the balance.

Question 13

How did Russia contribute to the July 1914 Crisis?

Answer 13

(1) They mobilized not only against Austria to protect Serbia, but they also mobilized against Germany. So they bear some responsibility for being the first great power to fully mobilize “at a time when mobilization was understood to equal war.” However, every nation other Germany had “peaceful alternatives … even after the men had been called to arms.” Germany was unique as “each minute counted lest the Schlieffen Plan was to fail.” (2) They “gave Serbia as much reason to rely on Russian support as Berlin was giving Austria to rely on that of Germany”

Question 14

What were Russia’s main motivations?

Answer 14

More so than the Austrians, the Russians were the main “expansionist power in southeastern Europe”, usually at the expense of the declining Ottoman Empire. They encouraged pan-Slavic feelings in themselves and other Slavs.

Question 15

How did Germany contribute to the July 1914 Crisis?

Answer 15

(1) The blank check to Austria. (2) Once it became clear that the Austro-Serbian war was likely to engulf Europe, they failed to make any effort at a serous compromise. (3) The triumph of military rationales over political rationale in the invasion of Belgium and France. (See Mombauer, “military concerns and reasoning had become common currency, accepted without question by civilians and determining their decision-making”) necessitating the implementation of the Schlieffen Plan. (4) The incredibly risky diplomatic approach that soon passed fate from the diplomats to the generals.

Question 16

What were Germany’s main motivations?

Answer 16

(1) To maintain the Austrian alliance (and maintain Austria as a great power) (2) To attempt a risky tactic to use the Sarajevo crisis to break the encirclement of Germany by hostile powers. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg wrote, “if war does not break out, if the Czar is unwilling or France, alarmed, counsels peace, we have the prospect of splitting the Entente”

Question 17

If the Balkans were minor and obscure to most of the great powers, who were the exceptions in 1914?

Answer 17

Austria and Serbia. Of the great powers, only Austria’s vital interests were affected by the Sarajevo assassination. “The one problem that was neither negotiable nor repressible was that raised by threat to the integrity of Austria-Hungary”

Question 18

Who made “some of the most basic decisions affecting peace and war”?

Answer 18

Count Berchtold who developed the Ultimatum and ensured it would be unacceptable (rather than Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg) and Nikola Pašić of Serbia (rather than Sergey Sazonov of Russia who warned Austria-Hungary in 1914 that Russia, “would respond militarily to any action against the client state.”)

Question 19

How did Austria-Hungary contribute to the July 1914 Crisis?

Answer 19

“This was Austria’s war”. They certainly wanted war with Serbia, and did not really care if it spread.

Question 20

How did Serbia contribute to the July 1914 Crisis?

Answer 20

“The roots were in Sarajevo, and they were in Belgrade.” (1) The Serbian government “had for too many years been tolerating or even encouraging a movement for a greater Serbia whose aims were bound to be offensive to Austria-Hungary, and whose methods were bound to be offensive to anyone. … But the Serbians set about achieving their purposes with a truly frightening disregard of the consequences” From Wikipedia: The general consensus today is that government did not organize it [the assassination], but how much Pašić knew about it is still a controversial issue and it appears that every historian has his or her own opinion on the subject (2) They could have accepted the Ultimatum; instead they were unconcerned if it provoked a wider war.

Question 21

His summary

Answer 21

WW1 was a “diplomatic crisis gone wrong, the one gamble, or rather series of gambles that did not work out the one deterrent that did not deter. It happens.”