The Continuing Debate over the Origins of the Great War

The perennially controversial question of “Who Started World War I,” is revisited by Prof. Mombauer (Open University, U.K.), in this thoroughly revised edition of her The Origins of the First World War (2002).

In her introduction, Mombauer writes “At the heart of this book are two questions, “why historians have debated the origins of the First World War for so long and with such ferocity, and why can they still not agree?” (p. 1).

Mombauer’s first chapter opens with the line “The debate about the causes of the First World War began even before the first shots had been fired,” (p. 14) and proceeds to sift through all of what we would today call “position papers” issued by the soon-to-be belligerents in the period from the Sarajevo event through the first weeks of the war, an impressive outpouring of literally thousands of pages. This was a paper battle that continued until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 which lay blame for the war entirely on Germany, which had to bear “war guilt.”

The following chapters trace the state of the argument over who started it from 1919 through the ‘20s, when a more nuanced explanation was advanced by some scholars, even outside of Germany, through the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, with blame falling once again on Germany. She follows the argument through the Cold War, the post-Cold war era, when most scholars began to agree that responsibility for the war does not solely rest with Germany, once again more nuanced perspectives surface during the centennial of the war. Yet a consensus remains elusive, as there is disagreement on how to allocate that responsibility. Thus, Mombauer titles her Conclusion, “The Long Blame Game.”

The Causes of the First World War is an outstanding scholarly analysis, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the coming of the Great War and its continuing effects on history.

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Note: The Causes of the First World War is also available hard cover and in e-editions.

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