Sleepwalking, then and now
by Conrad Black https://www.conradmblack.com/880/sleepwalking-then-and-now
One hundred years ago next summer, the First World War began, and with it a cycle of unprecedented international violence that did not truly end until the end of the Second World War in 1945. More than 100-million people died unnaturally, often in the most horrible circumstances, during the two World Wars. About another 100-million were wounded or afflicted with war and persecution-related illnesses, and whole countries were devastated and reduced to rubble and ashes. The process that began with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince at Sarajevo nearly a century ago also culminated in the only offensive military use to date of the atomic bomb, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. There naturally have been a number of gripping historical studies of the origins of World War I to coincide with its centenary. One of the most interesting is "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War In 1914," by Christopher Clark. He recounts how the leaders of the great European powers metaphorically somnambulated into that horrible war with no idea of what they were doing. The German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires were engaged in acts of dynastic one-upmanship, derring-do, and reaction; and the British and French democracies, though less irresponsible, slid into the war option rather light-heartedly.
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