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The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Christopher Clark

4.20 · Rating details · 7,207 ratings · 803 reviews

The moments that it took Gavrilo Princip to step forward to the stalled car and shoot dead Franz Ferdinand and his wife were perhaps the most fateful of the modern era. An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, ...more

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Published September 27th 2012 by Penguin

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Jan 24, 2014 Warwick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: austria-hungary, history, serbia, first-world-war, balkans

In a dugout in northern France, sometime in 1916, three British soldiers try to make sense of one of the most complicated questions of modern history:

PVT. BALDRICK: The way I see it, these days there's a war on, right? and, ages ago, there wasn't a war on, right? So, there must have been a moment when there not being a war on went away, right? and there being a war on came along. So, what I want to know is: how did we get from the one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?

CPT. BLACKADDER:

...more

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May 11, 2013 Kalliope rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Kalliope by: MoonButterfly

Shelves: 2014, ww-i, kris-s-findings, history, history-european

In commemoration of the Centennial of WW1, we have also set up a reading group here in GR. Sleepwalkers is one of the suggested books. It deals with the period before the war and is consequently centered on the causes that led to, or I should say brought about, the disaster. But because it is my first book on the political aspects, I felt overwhelmed with the amount of information and baffled by the complexity of the considerations. My judgment has to be taken therefore with more than a pinch of ...more

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May 04, 2013 Matt rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-war-i

For the longest time, I avoided reading about World War I because it seemed too complicated. It was fought for convoluted reasons among now-dead empires in a Europe – and a world – that is now vastly reshaped. I figured my time would be better spent reading another book about Gettysburg.

When I finally made a concerted effort to learn about the Great War (since the Centennial is fast approaching), I discovered its beginnings were actually deceptively simple. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian ...more

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Jul 19, 2013 Dimitri rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: military-history, world-war-one

Simply one of the best books on the origins of the Great War. Take it from someone who wrote his master thesis on the pre-war military strategies of Belgium and along the way devoted too much time to the European dimension. Christopher Clark’s summary of the transformation of Europe between 1879 and 1907 from non-committed alliances into two military ‘blocs’ in two pages plus maps is a thing of beauty. The author clearly belongs to the revisionist camp. His identification of the hawks within the ...more

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Mar 28, 2018 Edward rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star, own, non-fiction, australia-new-zealand, christopher-clark

List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Introduction

--The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Conclusion
Notes
Index

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Aug 22, 2015 howl of minerva rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, ww1-ww2

"‘I shall never be able to understand how it happened,’ the novelist Rebecca West remarked to her husband as they stood on the balcony of Sarajevo Town Hall in 1936. It was not, she reflected, that there were too few facts available, but that there were too many."

I have a masochistic, puritan streak that tells me a serious book should be long, dry, dense and exhaustively referenced to flagellate learning into my ignorant body and soul. Barbara Tuchman's sinfully enjoyable The Guns of August left "‘I shall never be able to understand how it happened,’ the novelist Rebecca West remarked to her husband as they stood on the balcony of Sarajevo Town Hall in 1936. It was not, she reflected, that there were too few facts available, but that there were too many."

I have a masochistic, puritan streak that tells me a serious book should be long, dry, dense and exhaustively referenced to flagellate learning into my ignorant body and soul. Barbara Tuchman's sinfully enjoyable The Guns of August left me craving punishment. Christopher Clark cheerfully provides a whipping. The first 100 pages (or 200, I may have blacked out) contain everything you ever wanted to know about Serbian ethno-nationalism. The 100 pages of notes and references tell you where to go for more. I admit not much of this made it past the retina for further processing. And it goes on. God there must be some happy medium? I'd like to give the people who gave glittering reviews a multiple choice exam on the contents to see if anyone retained anything. Or maybe that's not the point.

In lieu of further review, a couple more quotations:

"The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol. There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character. Viewed in this light, the outbreak of war was a tragedy, not a crime. Acknowledging this does not mean that we should minimize the belligerence and imperialist paranoia of the Austrian and German policy-makers that rightly absorbed the attention of Fritz Fischer and his historiographical allies. But the Germans were not the only imperialists and not the only ones to succumb to paranoia. The crisis that brought war in 1914 was the fruit of a shared political culture. But it was also multipolar and genuinely interactive – that is what makes it the most complex event of modern times and that is why the debate over the origins of the First World War continues, one century after Gavrilo Princip fired those two fatal shots on Franz Joseph Street."

---

There were isolated expressions of chauvinist enthusiasm for the coming fight, but these were the exception. The myth that European men leapt at the opportunity to defeat a hated enemy has been comprehensively dispelled. In most places and for most people, the news of mobilization came as a profound shock, a ‘peal of thunder out of a cloudless sky’. And the further one moved away from the urban centres, the less sense the news of mobilization seemed to make to the people who were going to fight, die or be maimed or bereaved in the coming war. In the villages of the Russian countryside a ‘stunned silence’ reigned, broken only by the sound of ‘men, women and children weeping’. In Vatilieu, a small commune in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, the ringing of the tocsin brought workers and peasants into the village square. Some, who had run straight from the fields, were still carrying their pitchforks.

‘What can it mean? What is going to happen to us?’ asked the women. Wives, children, husbands, all were overcome by emotion. The wives clung to the arms of their husbands. The children, seeing their mothers weeping, started to cry too. All around us was alarm and consternation. What a disturbing scene.

An English traveller recalled the reaction in an Altai (Semipalatinsk) Cossack settlement when the ‘blue flag’ borne aloft by a rider and the noise of bugles playing the alarm brought news of mobilization. The Tsar had spoken, and the Cossacks, with their unique military calling and tradition, ‘burned to fight the enemy’. But who was that enemy? Nobody knew. The mobilization telegram provided no details. Rumours abounded. At first everyone imagined that the war must be with China – ‘Russia had pushed too far into Mongolia and China had declared war.’ Then another rumour did the rounds: ‘It is with England, with England.’ This view prevailed for some time. Only after four days did something like the truth come to us, and then nobody believed it. ...more

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Sep 07, 2013 ·Karen· added it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2014, non-fiction, history

While the dead are gone, they're not gone. While the dead don't speak, they speak.
St Paul

Which begs the question, what do they say to us? Last week saw extensive media coverage of the various commemorations of Britain's declaration of war against Germany on August 4, 1914. Naturally, understandably, inevitably, those dignitaries invited to hold speeches on this occasion turned most of their attention to the human cost. The sheer numbers are obscene, beyond anyone's understanding or imagination. ...more

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Jan 19, 2019 Dan rated it really liked it

Shelves: wwi

For Austria-Hungary, the Balkan Wars changed everything. Above all, they revealed how isolated Vienna was and how little understanding there was at the foreign chancelleries for its view of Balkan events, St. Petersburg’s hostility to the empire and its utter disregard for Vienna’s interest in the region could be taken for granted. More worrying was the indifference of the other powers.

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War in 1914, by Christopher Clark. as its title suggests covers the ...more

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Mar 28, 2014 Tristram Shandy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

”The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol.”

Christopher Clark’s choice of the first bit of the title The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914 may indeed be considered slightly awkward in that it suggests that those who were in charge in European governments at that time are not really to blame for the decisions they took, but nevertheless Clark’s book itself ”The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol.”

Christopher Clark’s choice of the first bit of the title The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914 may indeed be considered slightly awkward in that it suggests that those who were in charge in European governments at that time are not really to blame for the decisions they took, but nevertheless Clark’s book itself is groundbreaking in its capacity of putting a big question mark behind any attempt at, for whatever reasons, playing the blame game. I have some friends who derive the bulk of their knowledge from the feature pages of newspapers and who are, furthermore, endowed with the remarkable and enviable – shall I say “skill”, or is not “power” the better word? – of knowing everything that is said in a book by having a glance at its title, and naturally these friends are indignant at Clark, whom they consider an apologist trying to make World War I pass as something like a quasi-natural catastrophe for which nobody can be held accountable.

Had they read the book itself, and not merely its title, they would know that Clark is far from using scholarly prestidigitation in order to make questions of responsibility vanish into thin air. Quite on the contrary, he casts a very careful look at the agents in that crisis of July 1914, first of all doing away with abstractions like “Germany”, “Russia”, “Serbia” and showing instead that the policy of each of these countries depended on interactions and wrestles for power and influence within the political system of the respective states, which not only made the system of alliances – basically the Triple Entente vs. the Triple Alliance – potentially volatile but also rendered it extremely difficult for any of the major powers to gather reliable information on how the other powers were going to act. It is this atmosphere of mutual distrust and a bellum omnia contra omnes view of foreign affairs, e.g. with regard to geopolitical ambitions such as the Russian interests in the Dardanelles, or the British fear of being pressured in India, that made statesmen of all five powers take unwise decisions which eventually lead towards war. It is at this point, not in the form of picking out one state that is to blame above all others, that questions of accountability come into play.

Clark’s investigation into the outbreak of WWI is structured into three major parts. At the outset, the author has a closer look at the two countries Serbia and Austria-Hungary, since it was, after all, the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s heir apparent and his wife that triggered the July Crisis and led into war. Clark elaborates the problematic role of Serbia as a state whose government was infiltrated by regicide terrorists who championed an extremely aggressive variant of nationalism that not only posed a threat to Austria-Hungary but also to other neighbouring states. It also becomes clear that the young men who set out to Sarajewo with the intention of killing Franz Ferdinand did so with the knowledge to at least some of Serbia’s leading militaries and politicians and that later on these politicians would obstruct any investigations into the backgrounds of the killers. Clark’s decision to work out the connection of Gavrilo Princip and the “Black Hand” with Serbian government officials caused some dismay with those who argue that this is mere Serbia-bashing and exaggerates Serbia’s contribution to the war, but when witnessing the erection of a statue to honour the memory of Princip in Sarajewo in June 2014, we might well ask ourselves if word of the background of this vile act of terror has really gotten around everywhere yet.

In the second part of his book Clark concentrates on the changing system of alliances in Europe with its many antagonisms. He shows that England did not regard the Triple Entente as an alliance directed against the German Empire (as France did) but predominantly as a way of containing Russia and of avoiding conflicts with Russia in the Middle East and India. He also points out how Russia and Austria-Hungary were vying for the sympathies of certain Balkan states, the former with a view to destabilizing the Balkan situation (and Austria-Hungary’s position), the latter with the contrary intention.

Against the background of these preceding events and vying interests Clark finally analyzes the July Crisis itself, which he sees in the light of the so-called Balkan inception scenario, i.e. Poincarés motivation to lead the Entente into war if Vienna attacked Serbia because such a scenario would offer France the best starting position in an armed conflict with Austria-Hungary’s ally Germany. This Balkan inception scenario likewise made it necessary for Russia to mobilize not only against Austria-Hungary but also against Germany, a decision that would further fuel the crisis. However, Clark does not say that any of the major powers had been planning war well in advance. Instead he sees a mixture of shortsightedness and wishful thinking at work, e.g. in Germany infamous “blank cheque” for Austria-Hungary, which is often regarded as proof of Germany’s intention of fuelling the danger of a European war, Clark sees the inapt attempt at limiting Austria’s actions to Serbia only – a calculation that would only work if Russia abstained from backing Serbia, but unfortunately Russia had also given a kind of “blank cheque” to Serbia by assuring the Serbs of her unconditional support.

Clark surely interprets the July Crisis in a new way, which he does very convincingly by consulting a variety of sources and by conscientiously reconstructing the decision processes of those statesmen involved. One of the greatest advantages of The Sleepwalkers is that it is not only carefully executed but also, if that can be said of a book with so serious a topic, a page-turner. Clark does not narrate on the level of personal decisions but elaborate the structures in which these decisions could be taken and carried out and yet he uses a style that does not make it easy to put this book aside. ...more

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Jun 20, 2014 Bettie rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: BBC Radio Listeners

Shelves: politics, published-2014, radio-4, war, wwi, nonfiction, fradio, summer-2014, balkan

(view spoiler)

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Jun 06, 2013 Mal Warwick rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

Does history repeat itself? A Cambridge University historian’s study of the causes of World War I

Six little boys tussle in a sandbox, pushing and shoving, sometimes openly, sometimes when none of the others are looking. One of them, a runt, is getting the worst of it, but he’s a vicious little guy and manages to hold his own within his own tiny corner of the sandbox. The biggest boys exert the least effort but command the most space. They all look confident, but secretly they’re terrified of one Does history repeat itself? A Cambridge University historian’s study of the causes of World War I

Six little boys tussle in a sandbox, pushing and shoving, sometimes openly, sometimes when none of the others are looking. One of them, a runt, is getting the worst of it, but he’s a vicious little guy and manages to hold his own within his own tiny corner of the sandbox. The biggest boys exert the least effort but command the most space. They all look confident, but secretly they’re terrified of one another, leading them to combine forces in a constantly shifting pattern of partnerships to fend off the others.

This is the image that comes to mind of Europe in the summer of 1914 from reading Christopher Clark’s new inquiry into how the First World War came to be. Naturally, Professor Clark had something much more grown-up in mind when he wrote the book. After all, he is a Fellow at St. Catherine’s College at the University of Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. in History, and we all know that a Cambridge Don would never indulge in such belittling imagery.

In all fairness, to put the event in proper perspective, “The conflict that began that summer mobilized 65 million troops, claimed three empires [Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian], 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. The horrors of Europe’s twentieth century were born of this catastrophe.”

With The Sleepwalkers, Clark muscles into the seemingly endless debate about why and how all this came to pass. Not that anybody on the street is talking about this stuff, of course. But among modern European historians these questions pass for excitement, and no wonder: the Great War is generally taken as the climax of the well-ordered Victorian Era that launched the human race with a lurch into the 20th Century. The origins of the cataclysm that upended tens of millions of lives are variously found in Prussian militarism, the colliding interests of European empires, the arms race, the profit motive among arms merchants, and other cross-border phenomena, but Professor Clark apparently will have none of this. He’s a practitioner of that brand of history that finds truth in the quotidian details of human interaction — in short, in the day-to-day decisions of living, breathing human beings tossed together in a crisis that nobody foresaw.

In the first of its three parts, The Sleepwalkers thus explores the political environment, highlighting the major players in each of the contending nations — Serbia, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Germany, France, and England — in the years running up to 1914. Part II takes a broader look at the Continent, discussing the interplay of the leading states in the closing years of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th. In outline, the stable alliances of the late 1880s had given way to a bipolar system by 1907, with the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and (loosely) Italy facing off against the interlocking fortunes of Russia, France, and Great Britain. Clark asserts that “[t]he polarization of Europe’s geopolitical system was a crucial precondition for the war that broke out in 1914.” Then, in Part III, Clark delves deeply into the day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour, decisions of the leading players from June 28, when Gavrilo Princip shot to death the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife, until the early days of August, when all the chips had fallen into place and war was declared on all fronts.

In Clark’s view, “1914 is less remote from us — less illegible — now than it was in the 1980s. Since the end of the Cold War, a system of bipolar stability has made way for a more complex and unpredictable array of forces, including declining empires and rising powers — a state of affairs that invites comparison with the Europe of 1914.” Although Clark makes it easy to see history repeating itself in small ways — for example, the genocidal course pursued by Serbia in the 1990s was little different from its behavior in the decades leading up to 1914 — it’s difficult to see the parallels to most of today’s international crises. Surely, Professor Clark wouldn’t pretend that the U.S. invasion of Iraq — one of the seminal events of our times and perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in American history — was anything but the result of hubris and colossal miscalculation on the part of an ideology-driven clique within the U.S. government.

Disagreements aside, however, The Sleepwalkers is an outstanding piece of work. Professor Clark’s knowledge of the period he writes about is both broad and deep, and he writes with grace and verve that’s highly unusual in academic circles. ...more

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Jun 07, 2013 Ms.pegasus rated it liked it

Recommends it for: anyone interested in serious history

Recommended to Ms.pegasus by: GR review by Mal Warwick

Shelves: history, nonfiction

Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Macedonia, Transylvania – the names float like ghosts over a map of early 20th century Europe. It was a map in flux. The Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was suddenly threatened by the unrest of it's numerous ethnic minorities: Croats, Slavs, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenes, Serbs, Romanians.... Major European powers were jockeying for colonial dominance: England in Egypt and India; France in North Africa and Southeast Asia. Russia sought ...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Jill rated it really liked it

As Clark points out in his Introduction, historians started debating the cause of the First World War even before it began! For it did seem inevitable to many at the time, although the eventual scope – resulting eventually in the mobilization of 65 million troops and ending with the destruction of three empires, 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million more wounded, was unanticipated. Clark notes that while a few leaders warned of “Armageddon” and a “war of extermination” and “the ...more

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Aug 23, 2013 Tim Evanson rated it it was ok

Theoretically, the book is about how the various governments of continental Europe got enmeshed in World War I. In fact, the book is an endless (and ad nauseaum) series of chapter-long mini-studies of a host of pre-WWI crises that convulsed Europe. Clark really doesn't get to the actual decision-making about WWI until the very end of the book, and then treats it as little different from the other crises.

Clark's theory is that foreign policy decision-making in the governments of Europe was Theoretically, the book is about how the various governments of continental Europe got enmeshed in World War I. In fact, the book is an endless (and ad nauseaum) series of chapter-long mini-studies of a host of pre-WWI crises that convulsed Europe. Clark really doesn't get to the actual decision-making about WWI until the very end of the book, and then treats it as little different from the other crises.

Clark's theory is that foreign policy decision-making in the governments of Europe was diffuse, and many actors in each government had their fingers in the pie. Some of these actors were quite low-level, and yet were able to wield enormous power over decision-making. To support his thesis, Clark beats the dead horse about 1,000,000 times with endless case studies of crisis after pre-war crisis. Never does Clark show that these mini-crises had an influence on the crisis of July 1914, nor does he show that they locked in the diffuse decision-making processes that he documents so clearly.

Perhaps the best part of Clark's book are the early chapters on Serbia. His in-depth and eye-opening discussion of Serbian politics and Black Hand's role in it is excellent. The research is superb, the writing crystal clear, and the enormous cast of characters handled deftly. This section of the book is a terrific addition to WWI studies, for it makes sense out of much of what Serbia did during the July Crisis.

I can't say that Clark handles the rest of the book as well. Sometimes, it seems like he's merely name-dropping for the sake of name-dropping, and at other times he becomes so bogged down in relating yet another crisis that you want to just flip 100 pages ahead to get on with the narrative.

My biggest problem with the book regards its central thesis: Clark implies repeatedly that the diffuse decision-making structures of pre-war Europe dragged the continent into war. But, quite frankly, my perception of his research and other histories of Europe throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is that this has always been the case. It's nothing new. Clark implies it is new; indeed, he seems to feel it is something so radically different that it is worth delving deeply into it and devoting several hundred pages to it. But Clark never establishes that it was new, and never addresses the common conclusion that it continued long after the war (and continues to this day).

Clark is probably right that diffuse decison-making dragged Europe into war. But so what? Diffuse decision-making structures have been part of governmental processes for millenia. Why is this different now, in World War I? Although Clark shows that diffuse decision-making structures were nothing new and existed for decades prior to WWI, he never says that they worsened (which is why war broke out), or got better (which is why war broke out), or that they got locked in by decades of use (which is why war broke out). I came away from the book with the feeling "guns kill people". Why, yes -- yes, they do. And diffuse decision-making leads to crisis and war. Yes, yes, it does. So?

One final complaint: Many reviewers bad-mouth Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and compare it unfavorably to Clark's book. Ignore those reviews. Clark is a decent academic writer, but his prose is mediocre for the most part (and often dense, dull, and boring at its worst). Tuchman is eminently more readable, and nothing in Clark's book shows that her factual recounting of the events leading up to World War I is incorrect. ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Gumble's Yard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2014

A much quoted book (*) which seems to have been something of a landmark in the study of the causes of the Great War. The book concentrates solely on this and closes exactly as war is declared between all the parties. The book is well written and enjoyable to read despite its length with the known final declaration of war giving the book a clear end point and structure and adding a slightly "whodunit" type nature to the narrative.

One of Clark's key contentions is that in fact the story doesn't A much quoted book (*) which seems to have been something of a landmark in the study of the causes of the Great War. The book concentrates solely on this and closes exactly as war is declared between all the parties. The book is well written and enjoyable to read despite its length with the known final declaration of war giving the book a clear end point and structure and adding a slightly "whodunit" type nature to the narrative.

One of Clark's key contentions is that in fact the story doesn't have the satisfactory ending of an Agatha Christie novel with a clear villain; in this he explicitly rejects the common view that the Germans were the key culprits and spreads blame widely across them, Austro-Hungary, France, Russia and especially Serbia (much less so England).

Clark's other central thesis is that far from being a pretence for the non Balkan powers to start a war the Balkans had very much become centre stage in European affairs and that the first two Balkan Wars (firstly a concerted attack on Ottoman territory and secondly a war among the aggressors to distribute the spoils) critically changed the political landscape.

Some critical factors here included: the alignment of Bulgaria with the French (due to loans) and Russian concerns about the Bulgarians advances close to the Dardanelles (both of which effectively crystallised their decision in a dilemma they were facing between whether to support Serbia or Bulgaria); the acceptance by France (as a way of firming up their alliance) that their understanding with Russia would include supporting them in actions arising from the Balkans and in exchange demanding that Russia strongly committed to a rapid mobilisation against Germany from the east in the event of war; the increasing strains on the dual empire of Austro Hungary meaning it lost its ability to easily partly mobilise; the growing distrust by them of the Serbians whose lack of any prosperous middle or upper class to support democracy meant their politicians were forced to espouse nationalistic ideals of a Greater Serbia (or face military or extremist overthrow) and who as a result were notoriously unwilling to deal with extremism.

Other key areas that Clark explores include: the polarization of Europe into twin main alliances which for various complex reasons got stronger and stronger; the complexity of foreign policy making in all the states split between Monarchs, government, military, ambassadors and central Foreign offices; that much of the pre war detente actually worsened the situation as it lead to countries panicking that their allies may switch sides and so look for ways to lock them in closer.

In terms of the declaration of war itself: for the Germans Clark argues that they were very aware that the triple Entente allies were much more likely to win a war in 5 years. Rather than this meaning they fought a preventative war now he argues that their logic was that the Russians also knew this and so would either not force a wider war over Serbia (in which case the Austro-Hungarians could afford to be aggressive) or if they did it would prove they were bent on war and so the Germans may as we'll fight it now; he argues for the Russians ( he admits with limited direct evidence) that their Dardanelles fixation and their view that the weakening of the Ottoman empire meant someone would occupy the straights soon meant they were prepared to risk all to back their chosen Balkan ally; France was sticking to the alliance and Balkan commitment it had made to the Russians - it believed the Germans would back down but if they didn't was prepared for war given that a Balkan cause for it would guarantee full Russian commitment and so divide German forces; the English he portrays as less bought in due to the invasion of Belgium (albeit the German decision to invade near to the critically important Channel ports increased British interests) but due to moral pressure from France who pointed out that as part of the Entente France had removed its Channel defenses so that Britain was morally obliged to defend France in this area.

Finally the "much-quoted" comment is not restricted to historical non-fiction: the book forms an important role in the Booker shortlisted All That Man Is by David Szalay. ...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Brian Warren rated it it was amazing

July - August 2014 will mark the Centennial anniversary of the start of World War I. In commemoration, there will no doubt be a lot written and said about the Great War and how the world was changed in its wake. Professor Christopher Clark of the University of Cambridge has written a book entitled "The Sleepwalkers - How Europe Went to War in 1914." In it, Clark scrupulously details the decisions of major and minor actors leading up to the outbreak of war and does something generally ignored by July - August 2014 will mark the Centennial anniversary of the start of World War I. In commemoration, there will no doubt be a lot written and said about the Great War and how the world was changed in its wake. Professor Christopher Clark of the University of Cambridge has written a book entitled "The Sleepwalkers - How Europe Went to War in 1914." In it, Clark scrupulously details the decisions of major and minor actors leading up to the outbreak of war and does something generally ignored by historians writing about the Great War, that is he describes pre-war events in the Balkans, where the spark for the conflict ignited in the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand. He also details Austria-Hungary’s relationship with its Balkan subjects and neighbors in the years leading up to war’s outbreak. Clark’s analysis covers vexing questions, like why Russia, so unprepared for war against its neighbors, would risk it all for Serbia? And why did Britain, for so long a neutral party to Continental conflicts, opt for an alliance with France and Russia, when it was so close to an alliance with Germany?
World War I resulted in more than fifteen million killed (military and civilian combined) or roughly two and a half times the current population of the state of Missouri. It is also blamed in part for increasing the spread of the influenza pandemic of 1918, which is estimated to have taken another fifty million lives worldwide. Add to that the collapse of monarchies in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire; the subsequent rise of Fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain, and Communism in Russia. Without World War I there is no Second World War, no Nazis, no Holocaust, and no Cold War.
“The Sleepwalkers” “strives to understand the July Crisis of 1914 as a modern event, the most complex of modern times, perhaps of any time so far. It is concerned less with why the war happened than with how.” It is how the decisions made by the great powers that led to war that Clark skillfully teases out of the historical record. So much post war scholarship has centered on German war guilt. The German “Blank Check” supposedly gave its ally Austria-Hungary carte blanche to take whatever action it felt necessary in punishing Serbia, knowing that any punitive action was likely to provoke Russia. While its always satisfying to find a fulcrum upon which a story turns, it is just not possible in this case. The truth is that any of the major powers could have avoided war had they just opted out and in fact, as Clark details, most of the players moved purposefully towards the precipice. Russia suffered a 75% casualty rate among the 12 million soldiers it mobilized for battle. Would Russia, in retrospect, have been willing to sacrifice 9 million casualties, and the loss of its monarchy just to protect tiny Serbia? Would France have been willing to lose an estimated 4-5% of its total pre-war population to protect its ally Russia?
The final cost of World War I to society is difficult to grasp because the losses were just so staggering and it was The event that set the course for the rest of the Twentieth Century. “The Sleepwalkers” and other books confronting this momentous topic are vitally important because they shed much needed light on the ways in which decisions to send young people off to war come about, and they prompt us, the citizens in whose name such actions are taken, to consider the consequences in the present and projected far into the future. ...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Jerome rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

No review could do this work justice, so this will have to suffice. Clark's book is an exhaustive and intriguing history of the war’s origins and outbreak. Clark’s story is meticulously detailed and quite dense, but still readable. Still, this is not for the casual reader: the narrative requires some concentration. You’ll get bogged down in a lot of parts, but I think it’s worth it.

Clark’s coverage of the European alliance system is particularly good. He gives us a readable account of all their ...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Andy rated it it was amazing

"What were the causes of World War One?" is perhaps the most common question in both A level and first year undergraduate history exam papers. As with most questions of this type, there is no simple answer. There are, though, themes and hard facts and, in this book, the distinguished historian Christopher Clark unpicks the complex, often obscure and contradictory, events leading up to August 1914.

This is not an easy read, nor should it be. His thesis, including the enticing thought that German ...more

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Dec 03, 2014 E. Kahn rated it did not like it

Four stars and change, guys? Really?

The issue of who "really" started the First World War has been the topic of a hell of a lot of books. The immediate assumption (Germans did it), based on a simple reading of universally acknowledged facts, has been challenged in a lot of those books. Some of those books make a pretty solid argument. This is not one of them.

This volume tries to revive the thoroughly discredited theory that the war was the result of miscalculations by statesmen and diplomats on ...more

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Jul 24, 2013 Rayrumtum rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

This was a fabulous history of the run-up to World War I. I must admit that I am a sucker for reading books about this period. It is like watching a slow developing train wreck over and over. Each time you think this time it will end differently but it never does.

The ideal thing about this book is that it places all of the figures in their bureaucratic process so that what looks like a really dumb decision seems logical in context. He cites ample evidence to support these points. Other authors ...more

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Apr 24, 2019 Scriptor Ignotus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: international-relations, general-history

“What are you?”

“Bulgarian.”

“You are not Bulgarian. Fuck your father.”

- Repeated exchange between Crown Prince Alexandar of Serbia and Bulgars in Serb-occupied Macedonia during the First Balkan War

It had never occurred to me until reading this book how strange it is that the assassination of the archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by an ultra-nationalist Serbian terrorist organization with close ties to the Serbian military and intelligence services—a shocking crime which elicited ...more

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Oct 25, 2018 Sotiris Karaiskos rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, world-war-i

For many reasons I prefer the more contemporary historical books and this I have just read confirms this preference. The main positive thing is their attention to detail and the need of their writers to present as much data is possible about the causes that led to the historical events described. In this book, the author does a very good job in this area, showing us all the underlying causes that led to the beginning of the World War I. For example, to talk about the murder of Franz Ferdinand, For many reasons I prefer the more contemporary historical books and this I have just read confirms this preference. The main positive thing is their attention to detail and the need of their writers to present as much data is possible about the causes that led to the historical events described. In this book, the author does a very good job in this area, showing us all the underlying causes that led to the beginning of the World War I. For example, to talk about the murder of Franz Ferdinand, he goes a long way back to the beginning of the Serbian state's existence and the processes within it that led to the creation of nationalist groups that caused political upheaval and in the end were behind this murder. The second element I like in modern historical books is the fact that their writers try to challenge some things that are considered given. In this book we have the questioning of the belief that war was inevitable, with most sides eager to start it, something that is done by reference to many historical facts.

These are contained in a book that contains so much data for the days and more generally for the era before the beginning of the World War I to create a more than complete picture of all these things that ultimately brought the destruction. From the political goals of the participating countries, to the psychology of their peoples presenting through the press and from the struggles between the doves and the hawks of the European political scene, to the historical facts that were the background to this situation, all what a reader interested in the subject may want to learn is on these many pages. The only omission I can detect is the relatively small reference to military data, military plans, the strength of the armies and technological developments, but this was rather the choice of the author to focus more on politics, which was the more substantial thing.

Για πολλούς λόγους προτιμώ περισσότερο τα σύγχρονα ιστορικά βιβλία και αυτό που μόλις διάβασα επιβεβαιώνει αυτήν την προτίμησή μου. Το βασικότερο θετικό στοιχείο ποιος είναι η προσοχή τους στη λεπτομέρεια και η ανάγκη των συγγραφέων τους να παρουσιάσουν όσο πιο αναλυτικά μπορούν τις αιτίες που οδήγησαν στα ιστορικά γεγονότα που περιγράφονται. Σε αυτό το βιβλίο ο συγγραφέας κάνει πολύ καλή δουλειά σε αυτόν τον τομέα, δείχνοντάς μας όλες τις βαθύτερες αιτίες που οδήγησαν στην έναρξη του πρώτου Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου. Για παράδειγμα για να μιλήσει για την δολοφονία του Franz Ferdinand μας πηγαίνει πολύ πίσω, στην αρχή της ύπαρξής του σερβικού κράτους και στις διεργασίες εντός του που οδήγησαν στην δημιουργία εθνικιστικών ομάδων που προκαλούσαν πολιτικές αναταραχές και στο τέλος βρισκόταν πίσω από αυτήν την δολοφονία. Το δεύτερο στοιχείο που μου αρέσει στα σύγχρονα ιστορικά βιβλία είναι το γεγονός ότι οι συγγραφείς τους προσπαθούν να αμφισβητήσουν κάποια πράγματα που θεωρούνται δεδομένα. Σε αυτό το βιβλίο έχουμε την αμφισβήτηση της πεποίθησης ότι ο πόλεμος ήταν αναπόφευκτος, με τις περισσότερες πλευρές να ανυπομονούν να ξεκινήσει, κάτι που γίνεται με την αναφορά σε πολλά ιστορικά δεδομένα.

Αυτά περιέχονται σε ένα βιβλίο που περιέχει τόσα πολλά δεδομένα για τις μέρες και γενικότερα για την εποχή πριν από την έναρξη του πρώτου Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου ώστε να δημιουργείται μία παραπάνω από ολοκληρωμένη εικόνα για όλα αυτά τα πράγματα που στο τέλος έφεραν την καταστροφή. Από τους πολιτικούς στόχους των κρατών που συμμετείχαν, μέχρι την ψυχολογία των λαών τους που παρουσιάζονταν μέσα από τον τύπο και από τις διαμάχες ανάμεσα στα περιστέρια και στα γεράκια της ευρωπαϊκής πολιτικής σκηνής, μέχρι τα ιστορικά δεδομένα που ήταν το φόντο σε αυτή την κατάσταση, όλα όσα μπορεί να θέλει να μάθει ένας αναγνώστης που τον ενδιαφέρει το συγκεκριμένο θέμα υπάρχουν μέσα σε αυτές τις πολλές σελίδες. Η μόνη παράλειψη που μπορώ να εντοπίσω είναι η σχετικά μικρή αναφορά στα στρατιωτικά δεδομένα, στα πολεμικά σχέδια, στη δύναμη των στρατών και στις τεχνολογικές εξελίξεις, αυτή, όμως, ήταν μάλλον επιλογή του συγγραφέα για να επικεντρωθεί περισσότερο στην πολιτική, κάτι που ήταν και το πιο ουσιαστικό. ...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Jonathan Kranz rated it really liked it

This exceptionally well-researched and scrupulously thoughtful book is not for the casual reader curious about the Great War. While the events described are certainly dramatic, Clark aims for the rigorous examination of causes, communications (and miscommunications) and diplomatic juggling rather than at drama or pulse-pounding narrative.

Even after reading this book, I cannot begin to summarize the war's causes within a brief review; in fact, that's part of Clark's point: he demonstrates time ...more

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Jun 17, 2014 Rick rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

One of the ironies of the First World War—the Great War, the War to End All War—is that if the major belligerent powers could agree on one thing it was that no one intended to fight a continental war over Serbia. Yet, in the event, they all did, with catastrophic consequences. A conflict that should have been limited to a dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia wasn’t because Serbia had an agreement with Russia and Austria-Hungary had one with Germany. And Russia had one with France and One of the ironies of the First World War—the Great War, the War to End All War—is that if the major belligerent powers could agree on one thing it was that no one intended to fight a continental war over Serbia. Yet, in the event, they all did, with catastrophic consequences. A conflict that should have been limited to a dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia wasn’t because Serbia had an agreement with Russia and Austria-Hungary had one with Germany. And Russia had one with France and France with Britain. But even that is too simple and glib a summary, as Professor Clark’s book makes clear. The complications around the arrangements and the relationships inside and outside of the different governments were many and shifting.

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is the well and justly praised account of the complicated and complicating events, governmental agencies, and individuals that steered the greater and lesser powers of Europe into a horrendous regional war that went global and left tens of millions dead or crippled, devastated economies, overthrew governments, and famously set up the circumstances and climate that brought on an even more cataclysmic second world war twenty years later. The book is useful, even necessary, reading not because many of the issues and pathologies of rivalry remain (the Balkans, terrorism, state entitlements), though that is pretty damn significant, but because the general play of thinking, rhetoric, and emotions that trigger influencers and decision-makers today are immediately recognizable as unlearned lessons in today’s headlines. For Americans it will be recognizable in substance and tone in conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq. The closed loop logic of necessity that inevitably leads someone to put troops in harm’s way without critical thought to ethical, strategic, or even tactical consequences.

Clark convincingly sorts the complexity of a war triggered by an assassination in the Balkans that led nations with no direct interest or strategic concern to initiate a war, ignited by that incident, but kindled with a variety of other prevailing motivations. Indeed one of the surprises is how little what happened in Sarajevo on that June afternoon in 1914 influenced or even interested Germany, France, Russia or Britain—Russia more than others because internal politics required support for their Slavic brothers but even their motivations were more focused on empire: the anticipated collapse of Austria-Hungary and stronger access to warm-water ports. France, in fact, a prime mover in the rush to war gave the trigger event very little attention because a politician’s wife had murdered a publisher in what became one of the many scandalous “trials of the century,” dominating press coverage, as well as political and social debate. Without interest in the Balkans, France was motivated by its rivalry with Germany and territory lost to Prussia some decades earlier.

And when we say “France” or “Germany” or “Britain” we mean a few score of critical individuals in each country (monarchs, prime ministers, diplomats, ministers of state, military leaders…). It was not so much the product of a conspiracy (though there was a Serbian conspiracy behind the grand duke’s assassination) as the consequence of a convoluted confederacy of intelligent, pragmatic, self-interested dunces. “One is reminded,” Clark writes, “of a Harold Pinter play where the characters know each other very well and like each other very little.” The treaties, the mindsets, the actions of these leaders in the run-up to the mother of world wars ensured that a global war was far too easy to begin and too nearly impossible in the event to avoid. This is, I think, the sobering lesson in Christopher Clark’s powerful, well-researched, clearly and at times compelling written history of World War I’s start. We are just too damn unreliable to have near automatic triggers to these kinds of conflicts. ...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Bruce Cochrane rated it it was amazing

A year from now, it will be August, 2014, 100 years after the beginning of World War I. How that war started and what was at stake was always somewhat of a mystery to me. I knew that it was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and that somehow "the Balkans" were at the root of things, but beyond that all seemed remote. And of course the fact that the US did not become involved until 1917 made the war seem all the more remote.

Christopher Clark has done a remarkable job A year from now, it will be August, 2014, 100 years after the beginning of World War I. How that war started and what was at stake was always somewhat of a mystery to me. I knew that it was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and that somehow "the Balkans" were at the root of things, but beyond that all seemed remote. And of course the fact that the US did not become involved until 1917 made the war seem all the more remote.

Christopher Clark has done a remarkable job (at least for me) of telling the story of the critical events of 1903-1914. Yes, there are a lot of names to keep track of, and yes there were a number of crises (Morocco, the two Balkan wars, the German mission to Constantinople, etc.) that make the story a challenging one, but what Clark does is, while providing those details, stay focused on the big picture. In particular, we see a number of factors involved - the transition from monarchy to republicanism across Europe, the flawed dualism of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, the fading of the Ottoman Empire, and Russian determination to rebound from its humiliation by Japan in 1905. Placed in that context, it becomes more understandable how Serbian irredentism, beginning with the regicide of 1903, could trigger the cataclysm that it did.

Clark lays out the story in a thorough, logical, and readable fashion. And in so doing, it becomes clear that simplistic explanations like "German militarism" or "the collapse of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire" simply do not suffice. Rather, as the title implied, all parties, concerned as they were for their own short-term interests. sleepwalked their way into catastrophe. And while some may be put off by the conclusion of the book, in which Clark draws parallels between 1914 and present day Europe, it is a perspective that warrants careful consideration.

"The Sleepwalkers" is an outstanding book - academically thorough and brilliantly written. It will not at all surprise me if it receives next year's Pulitzer Prize for History. If you are interested in the origins of the modern world, this book is a must read. ...more

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Aug 27, 2013 Socraticgadfly rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, military-history

Simply fantastic book about the run-up to World War I.

Things I learned include:
1. The Triple Entente, especially from the British angle, was not exclusively an anti-German grouping, and was "unstable" at times up close to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
2. Even more than I knew before, the governmental organization of the Dual Monarchy was rickety. (I knew that many ministries were dual, but until reading this book, did not realize it had dual prime ministers, which was part of the delay of ...more

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Jun 28, 2014 Mosca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

-------------------------------

Some tried to prevent this war.

Some aggressively pushed along the steps that were needed to made it happen.

Some watched, seemingly helpless, as the dominoes tumbled around them.

How that happened, this book lays out in detailed, compelling prose.

Why that happened is gingerly evaded. But the questions will not go away.

I will rethink this book often, I am sure. And I will probably re-read it in time.

Well done and well written.

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Jul 10, 2014 JoséMaría BlancoWhite rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ensayo-histórico-general, modern-history, history-or-europe

This book at times reads like a crime novel, and a really good one at that. We follow the sequence of events that led to the Great War at very close distance and from every angle of the story; we follow the main characters in the story, the emperors, the prime ministers and their cabinets, the ambassadors... quite a feat of investigative work and literary skill combined. The best part is right at the beginning: the story of Serbia and how the assassination in Sarajevo came to happen, the plannng This book at times reads like a crime novel, and a really good one at that. We follow the sequence of events that led to the Great War at very close distance and from every angle of the story; we follow the main characters in the story, the emperors, the prime ministers and their cabinets, the ambassadors... quite a feat of investigative work and literary skill combined. The best part is right at the beginning: the story of Serbia and how the assassination in Sarajevo came to happen, the plannng and the actual shooting, told with exactness worthy of Agatha Christie.

The downside to this otherwise great book is the diplomatic tediousness. One assumes that diplomacy played a role in the bringing about of war and that it was necessary to tell as part of the story in order for us to understand fully why and how the war finally broke out, and why what should have remained a regional confrontation between Austro-Hungary and Serbia finally involved all the great powers in Europe. But was it really necessary to be so meticulous about the negotiations and meetings of diplomats and politicians? I appreciate all the effort the author put into it, but the diplomatic angle to the story just failed to get my full attention.

The main conclusion the author extracts from his study is that the characters who brought their countries into the horrific war that was World War I didn't expect it to be that kind of horrific. They rather expected just another war, like many before, and their soldiers would be home for Christmas. But there were new weapons, terrible new weapons that had not been tried yet, or had not been tried in big scale. The idea being: the men who decided the fate of Europe were sleepwalkers, they didn't know what they where getting into. If that were so, I assume, those European leaders would probably have said no to war. But I'm not very sure of that. The question that in that case arises is: just what is a tolerable number of killed? Instead, in my opinion the question should always be: Is this war really justifiable? ...more

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May 12, 2013 Peter Mcloughlin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1890-1959, european-history, general-history, first-world-war, 00001bad-things

The book attempts to untangle the complicated dynamics of Russia,Austria-Hungary,Germany, France and Britian in the years leading up to the assasination of Archeduke Franz-Ferdinand and the July crisis which started WWI. The book talks about the dangerous realignment that was in place by 1907 with the Central powers precariously facing off the entente. The military build up. The sting of crises in the years before 1914 where good crisis management kept the peace in the short term without any ...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Elizabeth rated it it was amazing

What is the cause of World War I...Germany invaded Belgium. If it were that simple, Christopher Clark wouldn't spend over 600 pages describing the events that led to the war.

It's complicated...and that's an understatement. Each of the leaders were indeed sleepwalkers, working in a vacuum where their point of view was perfect and other countries wouldn't intervene. The war itself was going to last just a few months in their minds and somehow life would continue.

As Clark states, World War I ...more

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About Christopher Clark

Christopher Clark

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Christopher Munro "Chris" Clark is an Australian historian working in England.
He was educated at Sydney Grammar School between 1972 and 1978, the University of Sydney where he studied History, and between 1985 and 1987 the Freie Universität Berlin.

He received his PhD at the University of Cambridge, having been a member of Pembroke College, Cambridge from 1987 to 1991. He is Professor in Modern ...more

Books by Christopher Clark

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947

Time and Power: Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich

Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe

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“For a time, the word Weltpolitik seemed to capture the mood of the German middle classes and the national-minded quality press. The word resonated because it bundled together so many contemporary aspirations. Weltpolitik meant the quest to expand foreign markets (at a time of declining export growth); it meant escaping from the constraints of the continental alliance system to operate on a broader world arena. It expressed the appetite for genuinely national projects that would help knit together the disparate regions of the German Empire and reflected the almost universal conviction that Germany, a late arrival at the imperial feast, would have to play catch-up if it wished to earn the respect of the other great powers. Yet, while it connoted all these things, Weltpolitik never acquired a stable or precise meaning. Even Bernhard von Bulow, widely credited with establishing Weltpolitik as the guiding principle of German foreign policy, never produced a definitive account of what it was. His contradictory utterances on the subject suggest that it was little more than the old policy of the "free hand" with a larger navy and more menacing mood music. "We are supposed to be pursuing Weltpolitik," the former chief of the General Staff General Alfred von Waldersee noted grumpily in his diary in January 1900. "If only I knew what that was supposed to be.” — 9 likes

“The war of 1914–18 was the absolute negation of everything that Clausewitz had stood” — 4 likes

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