The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

[Firn]

My personal reading time has been eaten up by more important stuff but I will give it a go soon.

I really enjoyed the Oslo lecture. The introduction brought you right into back in time and space, moving at the size of the couple. He gave excellent arguments why he tried hard to focus first on 'how it happened?' instead of jumping too quickly to the 'why?'. The complexity of the conflicting internal politics meshed with the play of personalities and the changable foreign relationships was well presented. No much monolithic* there but a great deal of chance. The powerful influence of such a big terror event was justly linked to 9/11 with surprisingly close relationships between both types of terrorists/freedom fighters.

All in all he is able to map out a wide net of paths and relationships in which extremely easily something or a combination of different events could have caused history to walk down a different path. Tracking back such a historical path makes one highly susceptible to look at a chain of events as the only de-velopment.

*I read a bit about reader responses to the Swiss initiative and it is just amazing how easily many fall into the same trap. You get highly voted stuff like how the wise Swiss voter upheld the true Swiss ideas and rightly told the EU off, as if the big majority (not to say all) Swiss voted that way. In fact it was a extremely close call, with a higher turnout in the 'Yes' cantons. A small difference in weather, an important Olympic race, an EU interview less and so forth could have easily changed the result.

[AdamG]

I'll expect NASA to announce that they've spotted the Loc-Nar in orbit again, laughing at our species.


Why Ukraine Conflict Could Look Like World War I
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukr...d-war-i-n58776

[Condor]

I really want to read this book. Keep waiting for a copy of it to show up in the local used book store.

[Granite_State]

I really want to read this book. Keep waiting for a copy of it to show up in the local used book store.

If you're holding out on Amazon you're a better man than I.

I think there was another recent book that served as a counterpoint to Clark's, maybe Max Hastings'.

[Firn]

I have not even opened the packaged which was delivered weeks ago. Too much work and my free reading time gets almost all spent on the Ukrainian crisis...

[davidbfpo]

A fascinating, if quirky piece of history has come to light, prompted by the centenary:

A note which has remained in private hands for a century details a previously undocumented meeting between George V and his Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, on the eve of the First World War.

The King, mindful of his position as a constitutional monarch, made no public declarations about the situation in Europe in the lead-up to the conflict.

But in the newly-disclosed meeting, the King informed Sir Edward it was "absolutely essential" Britain go to war in order to prevent Germany from achieving “complete domination of this country”

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...World-War.html

[davidbfpo]

A long article on a new(ish) book which starts with:

A new book throws startling new light on how Britain went to war in 1914, and how it published a deceptive document to try and explain the decision: what the author calls “a dodgy dossier”.

The day after Britain declared war on Germany on Tuesday, 4th August 1914, the Liberal government decided to issue a White Paper justifying its decision. In his new book, “The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush To War, 1914” (published by Verso), Australian historian Douglas Newton argues passionately that an interventionist minority in the Asquith cabinet—Prime Minister Asquith himself, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Lord Chancellor and former War Minister Lord Haldane, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Charles Masterman—manoeuvred the large neutralist majority into siding with Russia and France against Germany as the crisis in European diplomacy reached its climax, five weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkin...dodgy-dossier?

For the book (USA):http://www.amazon.com/Darkest-Days-T...To+War%2C+1914

For the book (UK):http://www.amazon.co.uk/Darkest-Days...To+War%2C+1914