The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began
Augmenting the literature on the origins of WWI, Beatty dwells on domestic political situations in the initial belligerents, plus the U.S. According to him, but for those particular arrangements and specific events, war might not have erupted in August 1914. In France, the murder of Le Figaro’s editor by the wife of Joseph Caillaux destroyed the latter’s possibility of becoming prime minister, in which post, Beatty infers, he would have resisted war. Likewise in Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, he posits, might have counseled peace despite the Serbian assassination of another official. Britain’s absorption in a prospective civil war in Ireland might have emboldened Germany, where the Junker caste held the upper hand over its liberal and socialist opposition after a political fracas in Alsace. As for Russia, Beatty covers the ascendance of ministers less worried by revolution than by German influence at Constantinople. A provocative discussion concerning internal affairs, though with limited linkage to the diplomatic contexts that actually detonated the war, Beatty’s work will appeal to readers attracted by history regarded from counterfactual perspectives. --Gilbert Taylor