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World Power or Tragic Fate? The Kriegsschuldfrage as Historical Neurosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Konrad H. Jarausch
Konrad H. Jarausch
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia
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Extract

The question Wer ist schuld am Krieg?, the focus of a propaganda battle already during the Great War, has obsessed German historians unlike any other issue in their recent history. In America the publishing success of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August, the acclaim of Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, and the continual appearance of paperback introductions testify to an abiding interest in the outbreak of the First World War. But with the exception of the memorable debate between Sindey Fay and Bernadotte Schmidt, there have been no major American contributions because the issue of causes and responsibilities has been seen primarily as an academic problem.

Type
Review Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 72 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1972

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References

1. Wer ist schuld am Krieg? Rede des Deutschen Reichskanzlers im Hauptausschuss des Deutschen Reichstags am 9. November 1916 (Berlin, 1916).Google ScholarCf.Headlam, J. W., The German Chancellor and Outbreak of War (London, 1917).Google Scholar For the older literature see Herzfeld, H. and Loock, H.-D., “Der Weltkrieg und Versailles 1914–1919,” in the new edition of Dahlmann-Waitz, , Quellenkunde der Deutschen Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1965).Google Scholar

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4. Quoted from the editorial preface of Der Krieg: Politische Monatsschrift, I (1928), No. 1, edited by Heinrich Kanner with occasional contributions from such noted pacifists as Hellmut von Gerlach.Google Scholar Cf. also Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1958).Google ScholarRöhl, John C. G., Zwei Deutsche Fürsten zur Kriegsschuldfrage. Lichnowsky und Eulenburg und der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs (Düsseldorf, 1972).Google Scholar

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30. Cited from Hildebrand's perceptive essay, Bethmann Hollweg: Der Kanzler ohne Eigenschaften? Urteile der Geschichtsschreibung. Eine kritische Bibliographie (Düsseldorf, 1970).Google Scholar

31. Klein, Fritz has written a textbook, Deutschland 1897/98 bis 1917 (2nd ed., Berlin, 1962),Google Scholar and edited Politik im Krieg 1914–1918: Studien zur Politik der deutschen herrschenden Klassen im ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1964).Google Scholar

32. Both published 1968. Gutsche, has written his Habilitationsschrift on “Die Beziehungen zwischen der Regierung Bethmann Hollwegs und dem Monopolkapital in den ersten Monaten des Weltkriegs” (East Berlin, 1967), and a spate of articles on Bethmann Hollweg. He is presently working on a short biography of the fifth chancellor.Google ScholarPetzold, has written Die Dolchstosslegende (Berlin, 1963).Google Scholar

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45. Joll, James, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions (London, 1968).Google Scholar For a popular documentation conveying the critical feeling about World War I of present research cf. also Johann, Ernst, Innenansicht eines Krieges: Bilder—Briefe—Dokumente 1914–1918 (Frankfurt, 1968).Google Scholar

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47. Loewenberg's, Peter challenge is in his “Arno Mayer's ‘Internal Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870–1956’—an Inadequate Model of Human Behavior, National Conflict and Historical Change,” Journal of Modern History, XLII (1970), 628ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his “The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort,” American Historical Review, LXXVI (1971), 1457ff.

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49. A step in this direction is such work as Lamar Cecil's “The Creation of Nobles in Prussia, 1871–1918,” American Historical Review, LXXV (1970), 757ff.Google Scholar

50. Freud, Sigmund to Romain Rolland, 03 4, 1923, in Ernest L. Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud (London, 1960) pp. 341–44.Google Scholar