Who started World War I? | Christopher Capozzola and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Christopher Capozzola is a professor of history at MIT.

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[normonsta]

"I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry."- Baldrick

[wZem]

A big part that led to the escalation was a head of state that didn't really understand the structures of alliances, military strategy or the consequences of his decisions. Apparently while Kaiser Wilhelm was strongly supporting Austria in starting the war against Serbia, he was unaware that starting a war against Russia (the protecting power of Serbia) would trigger the military's strategy to start a war against France, who were allied with Russia, on the Western front first. This plan existed because Russia would take longer to mobilize and a war on two fronts would have been very difficult to fight for Germany. Therefore France had to be beaten quickly to then concentrate on the Eastern front. When the German troops were mobilized Wilhelm was reportedly surprised that they were being sent to the West and not to the East and he didn't understand why war was declared against France, even though this strategy had existed in the military for almost 10 years. The whole time he thought they would fight a war only against Russia on one front. He didn't understand until it was too late.

[Slaphappy]

There's probably been more books written about WWI than any other subject. Here are a few of the best:
The Guns of August- Barbara Tuchman
The First World War- John Keegan
The Sleepwalkers- Christopher Clark
Dreadnought- Robert K. Massey
The Long Shadow- David Reynolds
The Price of Glory Verdun 1916- Alistair Horne
Storm of Steel- Ernst Junger
All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Remarque

[jeanledroit]

For the escalation of war it's a shame the German thrust into neutral Belgium wasn't mentioned by Capozzola. The Germans expected Belgium to let their armies through and have a quick dash to Paris, once they refused Germany invaded Belgium. This lead to the entry of the United Kingdom into the war.
From the allies perspective Belgium refusing to let German troops through, delaying their push to Paris, and leading to the UK joining the conflict was crucial to the outcome of the war.

[quinnimon]

"Was Definitely Imperial Germany"...

And a huge sigh of relief was heard oer and across the Channel.

[markschade]

Just going to throw this out there since much is often made in English speaking sources of the German-Austrian alliance being a catalyst for war. That alliance dated all the way back to 1879. Whereas the French-British alliance dated to just 1904 and the Anglo-Russian alliance to just 1907. Obviously it's more complicated than that but it seems a bit of a copout to just say "well the Germans shouldn't have backed up the Austrians". Furthermore why is more of an onus of responsibility for avoiding war on a rising power than on the established powers. Germany was warmongering by building up its industrial and military capacity and angling for overseas colonies? Why not the British and French who had already had that for centuries and who were willing to use force to prevent Germany from achieving parity and "upsetting the balance"? Why is it presented as a spectrum of it being all the fault of Imperial Germany and not the fault of anyone at all? You talk of "the systems of Empire" itself and as mentioned the British and French had perfected those systems for centuries, we could also include the Russians and their conquest and colonization of Siberia all the way to the Pacific, all well before the Germans even unified themselves let alone attempted to achieve that level of Empire themselves. The British & French Empires and their overseas colonies were essentially the model that the Germans were attempting to follow and their overseas possessions were dwarfed by that of the French & British, no?

At the end of the day it seems the arguments can go around and around in circles and the focus should be more on the individual decisions at specific moments made by individuals in positions of power in the respective warring nations.

[yugo]

i cant not see that your mic has two straps holding the cable and the guests has three. please fix it

[magurastudio]

I'm impressed with how they talked for 15 minutes about WWI without mentioning the Kingdom of Serbia, which lost 1/3 of male population, suffered genocide, and came out of that war with greatest win against much powerful central powers.

[ianlawrie]

It would be interesting to know if there were any influential voices speaking against this mad idea of global war.

[BackToWar]

3:15 you have the wrong map, Moldavia was split in 2 by urss.

[CaseyCJL]

watched this twice and i still don't know who started it and why it started... dang

[veritasdeutsch]

What a coincidence, started to read about the origin of WWI this morning

[ofSeptember]

Yup, I'm a history teacher and so I'm "in the know" about this topic. Everything he says is true. WWI started a generation before the fighting began. Only war and the killing of millions could have put the fire out.

[gov]

imagine the wars that will be fought fifty years from now....

[gast]

Lot's have been said about causes of WW1. Anno 1914 there were few damping factors and a spark could set everything on fire. Examples are the alliances; France revenge feelings; overestimate of own military strength; late on mobilization could imply significant land loss etc. Btw I have read somewhere that van Schlieffen himself doubt his own plan and would think that Germany hadn't sufficient troops to pull it off.

[yossarianmnichols]

The Czar started the war, then the Germans attacked. The Czar had to protect his status by protecting the orthodox faith in Serbia. Serbia definitely controlled the assassins who killed the Arch Duke.

How can you forget to mention Russia, which literally mobilized to start the war??

[syedaleemuddin]

To my knowledge when the Archduke was shot in Sarajevo some of the top players such as UK and US and Russia weren't in the picture. So as he said in the next 4 weeks a lot of communication took place among them maybe some of it fake news that made people all boiled up to jump in the war. So US jumped in very late when it's ships were attacked in the Atlantic

[akhter_meer]

Cecil Rhodes and his dream. That’s it.

[philiptilden]

The Entente came about in reaction to German militarism. Britain declared war because Germany invaded Belgium and Britain guaranteed Belgian nationhood since (I think) 1825, long before Germany existed as a nation state.
Similarly, NATO was formed in 1948 to counter Soviet power, but the Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955. I don’t think anyone could reasonably suppose that the Warsaw Pact was formed to prevent a threat from NATO.