Unit 1 info from TMA01 Data Flashcards
Primary source analysis
ExCoComSum
E Explain what the document is
Co Set the document in its historical context
Com Comment on specific points in the text
Sum Sum up the wider significance of the extract for the debate on the causes of the First World War,
Protagonists
General Helmuth von Moltke - Chief of the German General Staff
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg - The German Chancellor
Oaths and declarations
‘destined to destroy, for decades to come, almost all of European civilisation’
‘Germany will also be forced to mobilise’
‘Germany does not want to be the cause of this egregious (bad, shocking) war’
The Treaties that triggered the war
The ‘Triple Alliance’ - German Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy (who had sneakily signed the Treaty of London 1915 supporting the Triple Entente)
The Triple Entente’ (an agreement not a binding alliance) - French, British and Russian Empires born of three previous agreements and creating Germany’s dread, a two front war
Contents of the memo
Von Molltke pleads that Germany is being ‘forced’ into the war due to the ‘casus foederis’ the 1882 treaty’s triggering by Russian aggression
But this is fake posturing as he and Germany are ‘up for it’ as per the comments in Admiral Von Muller’s diary of ‘The War Council’ 8/10/12 - ‘I believe a war is unavoidable and the sooner the better’.
Ditto the Kaiser at the same meeting - ‘…we shall be free to fight with full fury against France.’
Contents of the memo
This reveals a contradictory mindset, belief in the players’ own rational and a conscious or unconscious desire to go to war, i.e. they cause their own catalysts and momentum
Bismark and Count Lexa von Aehrenthal’s cool and clever hands were now replaced by the trigger happy and bombastic von Moltke a gullible and glory hunting Kaiser and a fatalistic doom inclined Austrian Count Czernin ‘we had to die’
Secondary Source Coogan (Michigan State Uni Proff critique of Lambert (Prof of Naval History) publication Planning Armageddon
Lambart posits that strangulation of German maritime trade would have worked but not used due to anti-British President Woodrow Wilson finding it offensive
Coogan refutes this saying US was pro the allies
Brings to question Lambert’s academic rigour and there is little or no evidence to back up Lambert’s conjecture, ships would have been susceptible to mines, submarines and suffered heavy losses
Number of times reviewed
15/5, 23/5, 5/6
