![]() ![]() The idea that Germany was the prime mover has enjoyed a brilliant, if chequered career ever since. The victorious allies stuck the blame on Germany at the Versailles Peace Conference, in the "war guilt clause". Who, or what, was to blame? What role do we attribute to underlying trends such as militarism, the arms race and imperialist rivalry? How important was the system of alliances that divided Europe into two armed camps? Then there is the question of which power or powers carry the greatest responsibility for the coming of war. While there is broad agreement about the consequences of the war, the causes have always been contentious. It brought down four European empires and weakened the colonial powers that ended on the winning side, Britain and France it spawned communism and fascism, and changed relations between Europeans and non-Europeans, town and country, governments and peoples, men and women. The war was one of history's great turning points, the beginning of what Eric Hobsbawm dubbed the "short 20th century" (which ended in 1989). Sixty-five million men served in the conflict, 9 million of them died and 20 million were wounded. ![]() This set in train the July Crisis, the moves and counter-moves that would lead to general European war, the "great black tornado", as Theodore Roosevelt called it. A rchduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on 28 July 1914 in Sarajevo. ![]()
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