Auf Messers Schneide (2018) by Holger Afflerbach is a history of the First World War from the German perspective. The Road Less Travelled (2021) by Phillip Zelikow is an account of the failed attempt to bring about a negotiated end to the the First World War in 1916. Both books are thought-provoking and raise interesting issues such as the role of propaganda in war, victors writing history, lying as an indispensable tool of statecraft, war initiation and termination and psychological biases, hawks prevailing over doves, and governments lying to their domestic constituents during wartime - and ultimately why ending wars is so difficult.
Propaganda is an integral part of war: All warring parties in World War I were quick to exploit just about anything in order to stir moral outrage in an attempt to rally the home front and win international support for their cause. Aside from Germany initiating military hostilities, allied propaganda quickly seized on the violation of Belgian neutrality, German war crimes in Belgium and, later, the infamous Zimmerman telegram and the launching of the unconditional submarine campaign. Germany, much less successfully, seized on Britain’s blockade as a violation of international law.
Historical narratives are (initially) written by the victors: The dominant post-WWI narrative (outside Germany) was that of a militarily aggressive, autocratic Germany ('bloodthirsty hun' and all) hell-bent on hegemony purposefully bringing about the war (aka Fischer thesis). At best, this is simplistic; at worst, it is propagandistic. It is debatable whether Germany was in fact an autocracy (as Kenneth Waltz once pointed out in a lecture I attended). While Germany was undoubtedly militarily aggressive, its behavior was driven more by geographic circumstances than Prussian militarism. And if Germany was indeed in single-minded pursuit of European hegemony all along, one should perhaps have expected it to have a master plan, or some sort of blueprint (which it didn’t). True, Berlin did issue the infamous ‘blanket cheque’ that allowed Vienna to play hardball with Serbia and ultimately provoked Russia’s intervention and lead to the German declaration of war. Benevolently, initial German support for Austria may be attributed to a policy of ‘calculated risk’, gambling that this would suffice to deter Russian from intervening on Serbia’s behalf. Equally benevolently, Germany was concerned about the geopolitical position (and domestic political stability) of its Austrian ally and sought to help shore up its position in the Balkans. More benevolently, this may have been conceived as a high-risk policy. But it was not devoid of a strategic rationale and it was not obviously reflective of inherent military aggressiveness or hegemonic ambition.
Psychological factors matter: Ending World War One was made difficult by the enormous human and material losses all parties incurred very early on (so-called ‘sunk cost’ bias). The status quo effect made the parties that did incur territorial losses less inclined to concede and more inclined to keep infighting. Casting a war as defensive endeavor, which even Germany managed to do (even though at the tactical, if not necessarily strategically, one might think that this was difficult to do) taps into the so-called endowment effect to rally domestic support for the war. (The endowment effect may also explain Clausewitz’s observation that defense tends to be stronger than offense.)
Private information makes it more difficult to bring wars to an end: Absent publicly-known cost-benefit curves, each warring party has an incentive to project strength (ability to impose costs) and endurance (ability to absorb costs) in the hope of extracting greater concessions. Either side has every reason to believe that the other side is bluffing in the context of peace negotiations. The surest way to ascertain the cost-benefit curve of an adversary is to fight to force it to show its hand by way of brute force, as Trotsky had to find out following Russia’s initial rejection of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Germany was quick to continue the military offensive, forcing Russia to sign it. This is not an effective way to settle disputes or end war. Ending wars without having to fight to finish hinges crucially on information, signaling and credibility.
Lying to one’s domestic audience is well-nigh unavoidable: In Why Leaders Lie (2013), John Mearsheimer suggests that government leaders, perhaps surprisingly, rarely lie to each other (mainly because they rarely get away with it), while they frequently tell lies to their own population. (Propaganda is a lie or a half-truth directed not at other leaders, but at one’s domestic audience, the opponent’s population or international public opinion.) Lying serves a political purpose, namely rallying public opinion in support of one’s political objectives. Being honest about one’s outsized losses, for example, undermines morale. Lying about the opponent’s losses strengthens it, or at least does not weaken it. Of course, for lies to have their intended political effect, they must be somewhat believable, lest they have the opposite effect. This also explains why governments resort to indoctrination, the control of information, nationalism, moral outrage, and so on. All these policies are meant to strengthen the home front and the overall war effort.
Hawk beats dove: Another reason why wars may last longer than necessary is that hawks often prevail over doves. Spartans’ decision to go to war with Athens prevailed over the wise, ‘dovish’ council of Archidamus, and ambitious Alcibiades managed to gain support for the ill-fated Sicilian expedition. Similar dynamics are at work in terms of war termination. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan continued to fight during World War Two even when the war was lost. In domestic political terms, nobody wants to be seen as weak or as unduly defeatist in a highly charged atmosphere, like during wartime. (Governments often go to considerable length to pre-empt and punish defeatism, sometimes calling it ‘treachery,’ whereas in reality people simply offer a realistic assessment of, for example, the military situation.) So even if individuals and groups at the leadership level are keen to seek a compromise to end the war, they may fail to prevail over the hawkish opposition and open themselves itself up to jingoistic attacks. And politicians may even exploit this situation to gain domestic political advantage by supporting hawkish policies. Lloyd George and his sabotaging of the German proposal for peace negotiations in 1916 comes to mind.
Power counts for much, trust for little – especially in war: Although the German military leadership asked the government to request an armistice, it was then unwilling (or pretended to be unwilling) to accept the conditions of the allies attached to it . Although Erich Ludendorff typically gets a bad rep, he did understand the importance of (military) power and the ability to impose costs on an antagonist in pursuit of one’s political ends (very Clausewitzian). Subsequently, the German government was forced to sign the Versailles Treaty, but did not attach much legitimacy to it, not least because it regarded it as gross violation of the provision contained in Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points. Of course, France was understandably dead set on imposing a punishing peace, which neither Britain, let alone the US were able or willing to oppose. Being sufficiently harsh to garner legitimacy in the eyes of Germany, it was not harsh enough to prevent a revanchist Germany to re-emerge a little more than a decade later to turn the allied victory into a Pyrrhic victory. But Ludendorff was right. The Versailles Treaty did reflect the balance of military power. Putting faith in one’s opponents’ peace proposal is much risky. Threatening to continue the fight and impose costs on an opponent, if credible and feasible (which it probably was not in the autumn of 1918), would have been more sensible, at least strategically speaking. Believing in promises is riskier than pursuing a policy that threatens to impose costs on the promisor in case it reneges on its original promise or assurances. Ludendorff appears to have grasped this.