As always, please go here and give my review a "helpful" vote.
An entertaining and informative book for the history lover.
For the lover of history, history has an inherent "Gosh, wow!" factor. A lover of history wants to marvel at the things that have brought us to where we are today, and particularly wants to marvel at the things that were better, bigger and more amazing than we can see today. There is probably no more unmitigated "Gosh, wow!" moment for a lover of history than when he's taken behind the stage where he gets to see the inner workings of history and how the firm, secure, concrete workings of history as it is could have turned out so different if a minor adjustment was made in the plot or the staging.
Jack Beatty's "The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable" is a book for the lover of history who wants to indulge in some "Gosh, wow!" moments. Beatty's thesis is that the First World War - which has been taught for nearly a century as something that was as inevitable as the next Ice Age - could have been avoided if only certain minor adjustments in timing had been made in that last fateful year before the mass slaughter that decapitated one era and launched a newer, nastier one.
Beatty looks at the major players of the First World War - Germany, France, Britain, the United States and Russia - and points to "lost" events, i.e., events that were important at the time but are now forgotten, in order to point out that if those events had turned out slightly different or had been timed differently, then the clock-work mechanics that seems to have launched the First World War would have broken down. In France, for example, if Mrs. Cailleaux hadn't gunned down the right-wing publisher of a newspaper that had been savaging her husband, he might have been in control of France's foreign policy with his pacifist ally in August of 1914, such that he could have negotiated a peace treaty with Germany as he did during the Moroccan crisis of 1911. Similarly, if the build-up to war had been just a few days quicker, England might have been engulfed in a Civil War in Northern Ireland over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland.
A thing I liked about Beatty's book is that it brought together a lot of "background" information I knew about - vaguely - and made them the center of attention. So, I got the details of the Moroccan Crisis of 1911, whereas before it had only been a bit of stage setting. Likewise, Beatty's discussion of America's involvement with Mexico and Pancho Villa made the Zimmerman Telegram - which had been presented to me in High School history as a bit of hysterical drama on the part of America - suddenly make sense as to why Americans would take seriously a German offer to let Mexico have a piece of the American southwest; not the least reason for which was that Mexico actually had several armies, any of which were manifestly larger thanthe 25,000 to 30,000 man army that America was fielding at that time.
Beatty's book is fun, and intended to be fun. My sense is that Beatty enjoys the "Gosh, wow!" bits of history, and enjoyed introducing his readers to the characters who made up the dramatis personae of the fin de siècle. At times, I thought some of his choices were dubious in that regard, such as having Trotsky describe Tsar Nicholas as vapid. After all, how much weight should we give that bit of information? What would we expect Trotsky to say? Likewise, quoting from various books of fiction written long after the fact by authors removed from the events - as in the case of quoting "The Old Gringo" (inasmuch as Carlos Fuentes was born in 1928 in Panama City) - as if they offered insight into the experience of the people suffering through the Mexican Revolution seemed odd. Another quirk I found disconcerting was Beatty's "vertiginous" style of narration. Beatty would often segue off on a tangent from one topic for pages before it became clear that he was discussing a possibly related topic, which was chronologically prior to the original topic. In the chapter on America's involvement in Mexico, it seems that the Dictator Huerta boarded the German cruiser Dresden for exile in Jamaica three or four times. Likewise, in the chapter on Germany, after reading for pages about the German Reichstag's loss of nerve in confronting the military about its usurpation of civilian rule in Alsace-Lorraine, I was brought up short by a reminder that the Reichstag had censured the military on that issue, and I had to go back to find where the censure had occurred to remind myself what had happened. This recursive style is apparently a design feature, according to Beatty's "Acknowledgments," and is intended to "provide recurring images" and show case "parallel dilemmas. " Nonetheless, it can be confusing, so forewarned is forearmed.
1914 is filled with a feast of historical factoids for the history lover. Although as a resident of the Central Valley of California, I have known about the Armenian Genocide my entire life, I did not know that the match that lit it was a Russian victory at the Battle of Sarakamish. I didn't know that there is a current view - based on information previously unavailable in the former Eastern Germany - that there never was a "Schlieffen Plan" or that the "Schlieffen Plan" during the war was in the custody of "Schlieffen's two elderly daughters." (p. 252.) I found it surprising - although I sort of knew this from High School history - that the French "Birth Dearth" is nothing new - it was a reality in the period prior to the First World War. I really hadn't known anything about Herbert Hoover's background or his humanitarian contribution to the starving in Europe. (Again, I had heard about that subject as a "one-off" sentence that usually introduced Hoover.)
Beatty's book can obviously be criticized, and argued about endlessly, with respect to his particular cases. Did they make that much of a difference? Would they have made that much of a difference? But, heck, that's the fun of "counterfactual history," aka "parallel history," aka "alternative history." That history didn't happen, so naturally the likelihood of that parallel history ever happening was - or seems to be - unlikely. On the other hand, he makes some observations worth pondering - for example, what was the effect of the First World War on a generation of German children deprived of their fathers? (p. 316 - 317.) Was Hitler a surrogate father-figure that they were programmed to respond to by their brutal experience? It's an interesting bit of speculation to ponder.
Another thing that struck me was that the fin de siècle is so perfectly modern. In France, a vituperative press gins up the feelings of a reader who goes out and shoots the vilified politician, and we think we have issues with "civility"! In Germany, a pompous twenty-year old refers to Alsatians with the derogatory slur "wackes" - from which I suspect we get our term "wacky" - and it turns into a national crisis, and writing this within a week of the soon to be forgotten Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke "slut" kerfuffle, I have to think, "déjà vu all over again."
Finally, Beatty is enjoyable to read. I like his "vertiginous" and "tenebrous" and "rodomontade." And anyone who can write about the "boche debauched" is having a good time with his subject matter. And sometimes it must have been hard to hold back, such as when Madame Caillaux is acquitted of the public murder of Gaston Calmette after she killed the man in broad daylight after purchasing the gun and engaging in target practice because the jury concluded that Calmette just happened to fall in the path of the bullet that she intended to shoot into the floor to scare him!
This is an entertaining read for the history lover, or simply the person who wants to see how it may be the case that history wasn't etched in stone.
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