Don’t Blame You; Don’t Blame Me: Blame the Fellow Behind the Tree!

“In the 1970s, the pendulum began shifting again until, today, it is probably about dead center: that is, all the major actors were to some degree culpable, say a substantial number of historians. Gilbert & Sullivan note that if everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody.” —Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—12/2/2013—Who started World War I?

In the early 1920s, everyone blamed the Germans (except, of course, the Germans).

By the early 1930s, the Germans began getting some sympathy.

After all, hadn’t they been mistreated by the Treaty of Versailles?

That sympathy, though perhaps justified to a degree, came at precisely the wrong time.

It came just when Hitler was rising to power and served as a partial rationale for the foreign policies of appeasement followed by Britain and France, which led to catastrophe.

During the 1940s, it was back to blaming the Germans, of course.

In the 1950s, it was still the Germans.

The 1960s brought a new wrinkle. The Germans began blaming themselves—for both wars, in fact. A popular school of historiography argued that Hitlerian policies had their roots in the expansionist aims of Kaiser Bill’s Reich.

In the 1970s, the pendulum began shifting again until, today, it is probably about dead center: that is, all the major actors were to some degree culpable, say a substantial number of historians.

Gilbert & Sullivan note that if everyone is somebody, then no one is anybody.

Might it not also be the case that if there is an equality of guilt, then none is to be blamed?

There are no miscreants, just victims. Not quite, in my view.

Big countries have always felt justified in pushing around little countries, partly for geopolitical goals but, also, just because they can, and the effort is viewed as validating their “greatness.”

Although Serbia was by no means an unwilling tool, there is no doubt that, in 1914, she was a tool manipulated by Russia.

There is some evidence that the assassination of the Austrian archduke, though planned by Serbian military intelligence, was instigated, or at least approved, by Russia, through its Belgrade military attaché, Colonel Artamonov, and his able assistant, Captain Werchovski, who later became Russia’s Minister for War.

Certainly, powerful circles in Tsarist political life wanted war—for at least three reasons:

1. to attack Turkey (a perennial foe) before she acquired promised British battleships, which would make her virtually invulnerable.
2. to be revenged for political humiliations suffered at the hands of Austria in 1909, 1912, and 1913.
3. to channel mounting internal discontent, which portended revolution, into a struggle to defend Mother Russia against a phantom foreign threat.

To be sure, there were a fair number of “fellows behind the tree” in 1914, but perhaps the most important was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov. He orchestrated the Russian mobilization (Russia was the first Great Power to mobilize) which, by causing Germany to respond in kind, led directly to armed conflict.