Historiography

1. Historiography

2. What is historiography? • Historiography is the study of how historians view the past. It investigates the methods historians used and the conclusions they reached in explaining an event or period in history.

3. Why is historiography important to our study this year? • The issue of how the war is started and who was to blame has been a matter of intense debate for ninety years. • In the Versailles Treaty, the allies blamed Germany for the war in the “war guilt” clause. Germans were outraged. This was one of the major contributing factors in the rise of the Nazis in the 1920’s.

4. What caused the war, according to Marxist historians? • Competition amongst empires to dominate world markets. • The idea that the war was not caused by a single nation, but by a variety of other factors became popular in the 1930’s.

5. A.J.P. Taylor and Fritz Fischer • Blamed the aggression of German leaders and Germany’s “will to war”. • What does “will to war” mean? • They thought war was inevitable. Instead of trying to prevent it, they planned for it and, eventually, manipulated it.

6. Current research? • Other countries also had a “will to war,” e.g. Austria-Hungary • The enthusiasm with which war was greeted indicated that everyone was responsible and everyone was to blame. • Some countries thought war was a good thing to solve their own domestic problems.

7. Brief synopsis of World War One • Germany implemented the Schlieffen Plan. Attack France quickly in the west, while holding back Russia in east. • German march on Paris halted at the Marne by French and British troops on 12 September. Meanwhile the Russians were defeated at the Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia on 2 September, but the Germans had to commit so many resources to win the battle that they diverted troops from the west. The Schlieffen Plan had failed.

8. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the war on the German side. In 1915 Bulgaria joined the German side and Italy joined the Allies. • From 1915-1917, the French and British on one side and the Germans on the other fought from trenches which eventually stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss border. • In 1917, the Russian front collapsed, the Czar of Russia abdicated, and the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Germany had won the war on the eastern front.

9. In 1917, German u-boat attacks provoked the United States to join the war on the Allied side. • In March 1918, Germany launched its final offensive which brought it to within 120 km of Paris. Eventually the Allies were able to push them back to where the offensive had begun. • From August 1918, Germany began falling apart. The army realized it could not win the war and began to look for a means to end it without being defeated.

10. When the armistice came in November 1918, the German army was able to retreat in good order. Although the Allies had ample supplies and men to invade Germany, no allied soldier had set foot on German soil. This enabled senior German officers to spread the story that their armies had not really been defeated. The legend of the “stab in the back” was born.