{"id":23662,"date":"2015-04-14T01:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T05:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23662"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:32:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:32:51","slug":"qotd-blaming-france-for-causing-the-first-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/04\/14\/qotd-blaming-france-for-causing-the-first-world-war\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Blaming France for causing the First World War"},"content":{"rendered":"

To begin with, any attempt to shift blame for World War I from Germany onto the French-Russian alliance has to deal with Germany\u2019s responsibility for creating that alliance in the first place. If France wanted Alsace and Lorraine back, it was only because it had lost the territories in a war engineered by Germany. Karl Marx, in a moment of rare foresight, predicted that Germany\u2019s decision to annex Alsace and Lorraine would end \u201cby forcing France into the arms of Russia.\u201d Similarly, it was Germany\u2019s decision not to renew its alliance with Russia that led to increasing enmity between Russia and Austria, and to the creation of an anti-German alliance between Russia and France. And the German decision to rebuff British overtures in favor of a naval arms race (not to mention provoking the Agadir Crisis) pushed yet another potential ally into the enemy camp. Germany\u2019s ability to lose friends and alienate people would continue during World War I itself, with such brilliant diplomatic maneuvers as the Zimmerman telegraph, unrestricted submarine warfare, and the decision to let Lenin back into Russia.<\/p>\n

But leave all that aside. It\u2019s certainly true that France wanted to get Alsace and Lorraine back from Germany, and that France knew the only hope it had of beating Germany in a war was with Russia as an ally. But this had been true for decades prior to 1914. Had France and Russian really wanted to start a war with the central powers, they had plenty of opportunities. But they didn\u2019t. Clark himself concedes this, noting that \u201cat no point did the French or the Russian strategists involved plan to launch a war of aggression against the central powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, far from being an instigator, France was disengaged during much of the July Crisis. Attention in France during July 1914 was focused on a particularly lurid murder trial involving the wife of a prominent politician. During the key period of the Austrian ultimatum, both the French president and prime minister were stuck on a boat returning from St. Petersburg. And when leaders did finally arrive in Paris, their moves were not aggressive. The French prime minister cabled Russia on July 30 that it \u201cshould not immediately proceed to any measure which might offer Germany a pretext for a total or partial mobilization of her forces\u201d and the French army itself was pulled back six miles from the German frontier.<\/p>\n

Josiah Neeley, “Historical Revisionism Update: Yes, Germany (Mostly) Started World War I”, The Federalist<\/em><\/a>, 2014-01-06<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To begin with, any attempt to shift blame for World War I from Germany onto the French-Russian alliance has to deal with Germany\u2019s responsibility for creating that alliance in the first place. If France wanted Alsace and Lorraine back, it was only because it had lost the territories in a war engineered by Germany. Karl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1117,1118,7,5,41,1119,246],"tags":[432],"class_list":["post-23662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","category-russia","category-ww1","tag-diplomacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-69E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23663,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23662\/revisions\/23663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}