about “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” by Christopher Clark

Why did World War I start? I did not think I cared much about the answer until reading The Sleepwalkers.

It is a big book—over 550 pages—but it is so well written and organized that I read it all, even though my interest in the subject was passing and my appetite for reading in-depth long-form non-fiction on my own time had dwindled. Every page shares colorful details.

The reasons for The Great War go far beyond the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the shrinking Austria-Hungary throne.

The Sleepwalkers is a deep study of the communications and documented thoughts, the sequencing of events and decisions, and the pressures on European statesmen—the kings, prime ministers, diplomats, and generals—as they footed through the years and through their assumptions into one of the deadliest conflicts in history—a war in which about 9 million soldiers died, with 23 million more wounded along with 5 million civilian casualties.

I was interested to learn about the boiling tensions in the Balkans—especially Serbia and the violent streak of nationalism that organized the conspiratorial network, The Black Hand. Serbia was independent, but Slavic populations lived within Hapsburg land, and the plotters imagined the assassination could lead to a united Serbia.

I was also interested to learn about how the colonial interests of the major powers affected their relationships on the continent. In addition to the Balkans, colonial considerations included far east Asia (although Japan was rising as a major regional power), North Africa, South Africa, areas around the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Black seas, and more options opening up with the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Christopher Clark depicts decision-makers going to war as if it were inevitable, as if narratively driven and somehow unable to imagine the death and destruction that would follow.

The Sleepwalkers impressed the hell out of me—a masterful treatment of a difficult and complex subject. Here are some quotes.

On explaining why Serbian nationalists assassinated Franz Ferdinand:

The archduke made no secret of the fact that he intended to restructure the imperial system after his accession to the throne. The key objective was to break or diminish the Hungarian hegemony in the eastern part of the monarchy. For a time, Franz Ferdinand favoured strengthening the Slavic element in the monarchy by creating a Croat (and, thus, Catholic-) dominated ‘Yugoslavia’ within the empire. It was his association with this idea that so aroused the hatred of his orthodox Serbian enemies. By 1914, however, it appears he had dropped this plan in favour of a far-reaching transformation by which the empire would become a ‘United States of Great Austria,’ comprising fifteen member states, many of which would have Slav majorities. [108, British styling in the book]

On some of the pressures facing the men in charge of Europe:

The press entered into the calculations of policy-makers in many different ways. It was never under their control, and they were never under its control. We should speak rather of reciprocity between public opinion and public life, a process of constant interaction, in which policy-makers sought intermittently to guide public opinion in a congenial direction, but were careful to shield their own autonomy and to protect the integrity of decision-making processes. On the other hand, statesmen continued to view the foreign press as an indicator not just of public opinion but of official views and intentions, and this meant that uncertainties about who was inspiring or licensing which utterances could further complicate communications between states. More fundamental—and more difficult to measure—were shifts in mentality that articulated themselves not in the calls of chauvinists for firmness or confrontation, but in a deep widespread readiness to accept war, conceived as a certainty imposed by the nature of international relations. The weight of this accumulated readiness would manifest itself during the July Crisis of 1914 not in the form of aggressive programmatic statements, but through the eloquent silence of those civilian leaders who, in a better world, might have been expected to point out that a war between great powers would be the very worst of things. [238-9, British styling in the book]

A book recommendation:

In a brilliant study of the US entry into the Vietnam War, Andrew Preston shows that while Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy were reluctant to wage war and the State Department was largely opposed to intervention, the smaller and more nimble National Security Council, which strongly favoured war and operated beyond congressional oversight, narrowed down the president’s options on Vietnam until war was virtually unavoidable. (240, British styling in the book)

And the book’s excellent final words:

... the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world. (562)

Notes:

- Sophie Chotek, the Archduke’s wife, was assassinated along with her husband. She was a Czech noblewoman. Prague was part of Austria-Hungary. Their marriage was unlike many other marriages among royalty and power—Ferdinand loved Chotek, and his marriage to her cost him favor in Austria, and cost him favor with his uncle, the King.

-Christopher Clark is a professor and historian.

something about Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun"

Johnny Got His Gun, a well-known anti-war novel by American writer Dalton Trumbo, chronicles a soldier's waking nightmare. The protagonist is Joe Bonham, a young American whose service in World War I costs him his arms, legs, vision, hearing, and mouth. Bonham, disoriented and displaced, regains consciousness in what turns out to be a hospital bed and gradually realizes the nightmare: that his mind is doomed to live on as the prisoner of a helpless, unidentified, and incommunicable torso on a hospital bed.

Bonham’s reckoning with his fate, his reasons for going to war, and the horror of it all comes amid rushes of pre-war memories. He also uses what remains of his senses to interpret his environment, and he grows determined to communicate with the hospital staff that keep him alive against his will.

Bonham’s extended memory flashbacks did not often connect with me, but some passages set in the present moved me in their intensity of anxiety and outrage.

Notes:

• Johnny Got His Gun was written in 1938 and published in 1939.
• Trumbo was blacklisted by Hollywood but continued working under pseudonyms. The influence of the blacklist soon waned, and he resumed getting credit for his accomplishments during his remarkable career.
• Trumbo directed the 1971 film adaptation of Johnny Got His Gun.
• Hearing Metallica’s single, “One,” around 1992, was my introduction to Johnny Got His Gun. The music video uses clips from the film.

something about Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms looks back at a love that fought in World War I. The lovers are Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Here is Fredric beginning his relationship with Catherine:

I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge, you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

This passage stuck with me. Through most of the novel, I wondered if Frederic and Catherine really loved each other—or, at least, whether each loved the other at the same time. I thought that maybe they were lonely and scared and just wanted to love and comfort someone. She seemed to doubt his sincerity, and he seemed to be either keeping his distance or trying to persuade himself she was something more than she was. Then, by the end, their love—which of course is borne of loneliness and fear—becomes painfully real.

Catherine may be crazy, but she is a great and complicated character. She knew all along that their relationship was doomed.

I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.

"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"

What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying. "You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."

And one of my favorite Hemingway passages is this exchange between Catherine and Frederic:

"We won't fight."

"We mustn't. Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us." 

"They won't get us," I said. "Because you're too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave."

"They die of course."  

"But only once." 

"I don't know. Who said that?"  

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?" 

"Of course. Who said it?" 

"I don't know." 

"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them." 

 

Note:  A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929.

about this symphony

The end wasn't satisfying. But there were parts in the middle that I enjoyed very much.















Note:

• "Music is life and, like it, inextinguishable."
• And only this symphony.

something about "The French Revolution and Napoleon"

The French Revolution and Napoleon distills with flourish the fiery, priority years of French, Western, and arguably world history from about 1789 to 1815. The bulk of those years encompass the reign of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte; but in his book, Charles Downer Hazen gives equal time to the relatively brief epochal years of the French Revolution.

When this history begins, monarchies exercised feudal rulership over Europe, mostly. France—nine-tenths of which was peasants—was suffering the mismanagement of Louis XVI and massive class inequalities of wealth, privileges, rights, and justice. By 1789, the treasury runs dry and a series of national assemblies, constitutional conventions, and emergency committees gather in Paris. Political factions spring up, feuds begin, and revolutionaries quarrel with each other and with the keepers of the status quo. At one point, a draft of the constitution incorporates the Catholic Church with the State, sparking another feud, this time between the elected clergy and the old faithful. This is how the French Revolution begins.

King Louis XVI, of course, is an immediate underdog. But before the revolution reaches his doorstep, France finds itself at war with a Europe full of worried kings and French expatriate clergy and nobles agitating abroad for counter-revolution. Despite a bad start, France somehow manages to fend off and actually beat the primary aggressors, Austria and Prussia.

Fighting this war keeps France from total dissolution and buys King Louis XVI some time. But the war also spurs some of the first ultra-violence, as panicking nationalists find and kill any suspected domestic traitors and terrorists. From here, the feuds between political factions bring France to a boil. As the balance of power tips, the majority at once begins imprisoning and executing its enemies. This so-called Reign of Terror (also known as simply The Terror) ultimately discredits the radical majority, allowing some sense to emerge from the bloody chaos enough so that a functional, albeit ultimately temporary government and constitution are established.

Meanwhile, having fended off domestic mobs from the convention halls at home and then leading French soldiers to victory abroad, Napoleon steps up center stage. He makes use of any time he gets in Paris, networking and then organizing a coup d'etat. Of course, his version of the constitution makes Napoleon Emperor of France. Now head of the state, Napoleon establishes a new norm and order. This order honors the revolutionary principle of equality, more or less, but not liberty, and for the people this is enough for awhile.

But the temporary peace that allowed Napoleon to take the throne dissipates, and France is once again at war with everyone in Europe and Russia. Under Napoleon's direction, France somehow keeps winning against them all except for England, whose Navy has the definite edge. Napoleon feuds with the Pope in Rome, but forms an alliance with Czar Alexander I in Russia, with whom some of France's spoils are shared. Trying a different tactic, Napoleon aims to bleed England of its wealth by declaring a boycott of English goods across the expanded French Empire. But ultimately this causes as much or more hardship for France's subordinate kingdoms, whose peasant class needs the English trade.

So the relative peace in the expanded French Empire withers under this hardship, and again the French expatriate clergy and nobles agitate abroad—including those in Russia—against Emperor Napoleon. Czar Alexander I violates the boycott and Napoleon invades Russia. The Russian military retreats but the Russian climate fights the battle with France and Napoleon, his forces decimated, is forced to withdraw and then struggle to maintain control of rebelling occupied German states. Russia and England join Austria and Prussia in the fight, and Napoleon loses Germany. His determination to keep the remainder of his empire proves hopeless, however, and Napoleon abdicates rule of France and is banished to the island of Elba.

All that, Napoleon's rule from 1804 to 1814, would be a great enough story. But Napoleon authors a powerful final chapter when he raises an army on Elba and embarks on a sequel. Evading the English Navy, the ousted Emperor sails to France and marches to Paris where he is welcomed a hero. The order established in his absence, headed by the installed King Louis XVII, dissatisfies the people. The European alliance that defeated him last time, feuding amongst themselves over how to split up the defeated French Empire, resolve to put a stop to Napoleon once and for all. Napoleon rushes an army to Belgium to beat the allies to the punch, but there he is met by the Duke of Wellington, who defeats Napoleon at Waterloo. Napoleon is banished this time to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic where he dies six years later.

The French Revolution and Napoleon was published in 1917 when European rivals were still burying millions in World War I. Author Charles Downer Hazen uses his preface to recognize this, urging that "there is much instruction to be gained from the study of a similar crisis." Of course, in its way, WWI begot WWII so, if there were any lessons to learn at all, nobody learned them.


Notes:
At one point, King Louis XVI's attempt to flee the palace in Versailles turns into a freakish parade, the heads of his guards hoisted high on pikes by mocking crowds.