Last year this month marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the conclusion of the First World War. Taylor’s book describes the blunders which led to the beginning of terrible war.
Taylor’s thesis runs as follows: after the assassination of Franz Joseph, Austria-Hungary had international justification to retaliate against Serbia in some way shape and form. In typical fashion Austria-Hungary dawdled in doing so. Her ally Germany had been encouraging Austria-Hungary to take a stronger stance among the nations and so Austria-Hungary felt compelled to keep inching towards war although they didn’t really want a general war and, ironically, Germany kept hinting that neither did they. Austria-Hungary felt compelled by Germany to do what Germany did not want them to do. Taylor does an excellent job laying out the timeline of confusion between these nations, although more footnotes – or any footnotes- would have been helpful (this may have been due to my reading this book on a Kindle).
Taylor argues that Russia, France, and especially Great Britain moved towards war without ever actually expecting to have to fight. Much of Taylor’s argument rests on the total mobilization that was made possible, and demanded, by railroads. It was not possible to mobilize only part of one’s army and reserves; all must be mobilized simultaneously and so each nation could plausibly argue that they were about to be overrun by the enemy. Once the process began, it was all but impossible to call off.
Taylor argues that the balance of power that existed in Europe had deterred any great power from war but, in this instance, the balance of power failed. He ends the book by saying that even if a deterrent to war is effective ninety-nine times out of one hundred, that one hundredth time is still disastrous. He tells the reader that there is a moral here if one cares to see it; I can only imagine this was a reference to nuclear war.
I have always enjoyed reading Taylor and this is my second or third time through this one. He is a masterful storyteller who focuses on the psychology of history. He paints the people of the past as flawed characters who do many tasks well and yet some quite poorly; both have their effect on the world stage. He clearly enjoys turning popular theories on their head, such as arguing that the Kaiser was actually trying to avoid war rather than its main proponent.
While reading, I couldn’t help but think how often in ministry, and in life, we bumble into disaster in a fashion similar to these nations. We feel forced into action by plans we have made, just as the nations felt forced into war by their railroad time tables which dictated mobilization. We feel compelled to act because we think others expect us to act when in reality these others want anything but our course of action. We bumble into trouble that could have been otherwise.
Taylor does an excellent job in all his writings of showing how the past appears quite murky while it is still the present. Decisions that seem logical in retrospect were often quite illogical when they were made, and logic is only imposed upon them in retrospect. This is all too often the way life, and leadership, work. As life moves forward there are any number of options before you but due to pressures and limitations you only tend to see a few. After the fact, you only tend to see two options – doing what you did or not doing what you did. Taylor shows that there were, in retrospect, and are, in prospect, any number of decisions that could be made and could have been made.
I find reading history to be soothing because there are important decisions to be made and I don’t need to be making them. Rather than suffering from paralysis of analysis, I can simply watch a situation unfold without any need to get involved. They say that we read history to avoid the mistakes of the past, but perhaps we read it because these particular mistakes weren’t ours to make and we make enough of our own so it is nice to read about how other well-intentioned people bumble into trouble.