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Christopher
Clarks
Sleepwalkers and
the Germans. A
misunderstanding?
An Australian historians
reappraisal of the origins of the
first world war has provoked
enormous interest in Germany,
writes Andreas Wirsching. But
the debate tells us more about
Germany than about the book
05 August 2014

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Tags: Andreas Wirsching, Daniel Nethery, Europe,
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Special path to war?

he Cambridge-based Australian
An undated photo of
historian Christopher Clark was not
German officers,
unknown in Germany when he
NCOs and enlisted
published his latest book, The Sleepwalkers.
men during the first
In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron
world
war.
Kingdom, attracted considerable praise and
drakegoodman/
saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the
Flickr
Historisches Kolleg, an important centre for
advanced study in history. His biography of
Wilhelm II, which followed shortly after, was
also generously received. The success of The Sleepwalkers, however,
is on another level. Rarely does an almost 900-page history book by
a university professor, densely written and replete with source
material, meet with such an overwhelming response from the
German public.

This phenomenon is, at first glance at least, surprising and worthy

of explanation. One reason for its success lies in the quality of the
work itself. The Sleepwalkers is a probing, well-written book that
provides significant, and in part new, insights where Clark draws on
archival material. Moreover, Clark, like no other before him, treats
the July 1914 crisis as a European crisis. He examines the
international system, its players and the underlying structure of
interests equally in Belgrade and Vienna, Paris and London, Berlin
and St Petersburg. He delves deep into his source material to
reconstruct the parameters in which those who decided between
war and peace acted, and demonstrates the lack of clarity with
which they were confronted. The image that emerges is one of a
diplomatic labyrinth in which European monarchs, statesmen and
diplomats lost all sense of direction and from which the only way
out lay in war. This lends the title of the book a certain plausibility,
one which indeed suggests that those actors lacked awareness and
understanding. One may, with good reason, question the adequacy
of this portrayal and of the title itself. But until now, it has not been
possible to read, in such colourful detail, the complexity and the
contingency that imprinted the perceptions of the decision-makers
of 1914 and determined their actions.
So far we are talking about an important and exciting book. This
cannot explain its success in Germany, however. For this success
says more about German attitudes than about the book itself.
Clearly The Sleepwalkers has touched a nerve of the German

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consciousness of history. But the reflex does not correspond to what

one hears in mainstream public debates; rather, its meaning relates
to a subcutaneous feeling in Germany of being unjustly held to
blame by history in general and by Europeans in particular. Such
feelings weave like a red thread through blogs and comments on the
book on the internet the same type of comment made by
frustrated listeners of public lectures and panel discussions on
twentieth-century history: when will we move on from this eternal
German guilt?
So Clarks book has been sucked into the whirlpool of the debate
over German responsibility for the first world war, a debate that
leaves well-informed people astonished. It almost seems like we are
back in 1964, at the height of the Fischer controversy, when German
war aims, German guilt and whether Germany was primarily
responsibility for the war were passionately debated. That over the
last fifty years all these questions have been intensively studied,
analysed and discriminatingly portrayed in international research
appears to have been forgotten. Whether calculated risk, theories of
preventative war, mindless acceptance, the autonomy of military
war planning, nationalistic sparring and high-stake systems of
alliance, or plain chance was to blame: all of this has been
exhaustively discussed, over and over again, and no historian who
wishes to be taken seriously would formulate a simple theory
attributing all responsibility for the war to the German Reich. Nor,
by the way, did Fritz Fischer.
The more the question of blame arises in public discussion over the
first world war, the more reflective one becomes. Beneath the
surface, the old trauma of the German people appears to live on: not
only standing alone in Europe, but being encircled by resentful
neighbours. If true, it would point to a troubling parallel between
1914 and 2014. It might be asked whether Germany is responsible
for its own isolation lets leave that aside for the moment. But the
feeling of isolation and of being surrounded produced in Germany a
posture of stubborn insistence on its own morality, and over
generations reinforced the impression that Germany was
fundamentally ill-treated by its enemies. In this way the Germans
deprived themselves of the opportunity to come to terms with the
defeat of 1918 in a constructive way. Instead, the Treaty of Versailles
and the victorious powers of the first world war appeared, in the
end, to share at least part of the blame for Hitlers rise and the
devastation caused by the Nazi regime a view that serious
research rejected long ago.

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But surely generational change and the positive experience of

German reunification have overcome such feelings? The reception of
Clarks book has shown this not to be the case. And this in the end
is its most surprising aspect: the desire for a historically uncharged,
so to speak innocent, perhaps even normal, but still nationally
impregnated historical role for the German people remains, in fact,
as widespread as ever. If Fritz Fischer once destroyed the
exonerating myth that we all slithered over the brink, thereby
bringing upon himself the hatred of the nationalistic public and not
a few of his university colleagues, Christopher Clark, through his
portrayal of the July crisis, offers the German people the return to
that comfortable consensus.
Not that Clark goes easy on the Germans or denies their partial
responsibility for the outbreak of the first world war. But he does
not discuss the question of blame or the prime responsibility of the
Germans. He does not want to discuss these topics because he sees
them as badly posed questions. This must be criticised, for the
question of blame had arisen and become an inevitable historical
category of the war as early as the German invasion of Belgium.
Clark also chooses not to delve into the depths of German structural
burdens. The precarious constitution of the Prussian-dominated

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Bismarckian Reich, which opened all doors to the autonomous deals

and plans of the military, and took control away from the
parliament; the equally precarious simultaneity of dynamic
industrialisation and backward social structure; a problematic
bourgeois worldview, which saw its national history and the
contemporary conflicts in Social-Darwinist and in part even racist
categories; entirely overblown war aims Clark mentions all of this
and much more, but does not view it as specific to German history.
So Clarks diagnosis goes as follows: all of this the same, similar
or at the very least comparable could have occurred in the history
of every other European great power. The German reader can
therefore lean back, knowing with academically attested certainty
that in no case did a Sonderweg or special path lead Germany to
world war. Rather, the German trajectory looks very much like that
of the others.
But why has such an academic diagnosis proved so attractive for the
German public today? One would not be mistaken in looking for an
answer in the thorough precariousness of the present political and
economic context. Status fear and anxiety the typical ingredients
of (petty) bourgeois mentality in the Kaiser Reich have made an
irritable return in Germany. The eurozone crisis has made it
possible. Are not its European neighbours by all appearances
coming together in order to harass Germany and, if possible, break
its economic and financial strength? Does not the situation recall
what happened one hundred years ago, when the Kaiser Reich
found itself encircled by its European neighbours? So it feels good to
hear an Australian historian, who teaches in Cambridge, explain to
the Germans that at that time, at least, they were not in the wrong,
and that they bear no special responsibility for the devastation of
the Great War.
All the cheaper then is the shot taken in the midst of the debate at a
Europe depicted and rejected as a threat. The argument goes as
follows. At the outbreak of the first world war, the Germans bore no
particular responsibility and were not principally to blame for what
happened as has now, finally, been proved. This gives Germans
today the moral right to oppose European integration, which
apparently goes against German interests. Cora Stephan, an author
of popular books on historical and political subjects, appears to take
some pleasure in seeing that the thesis of prime responsibility of
the German Reich is buried deep by Clarks book. Together with
three well-known younger historians, she rejects the idea that the
Reich, because of its lust for power, needed to be violently stopped.
Moreover, this view of Germany before the first world war which
Clark apparently refutes would lie at the core of the present
conception of Europe, according to which Germany needs to be
shackled within a supranational structure to keep it under control.
The Germans, with Clark in their briefcases, should vanquish once
and for all their negative exceptionalism and recognise that a
Europe based on a historical fiction will fail. Here, at last, it
becomes clear with which subtext and which interests the Clark
debate has been promoted.
The deep irony is that Clark does not tell the story these people
want to hear. Rather, his book, which does not provide deep
structural analysis, and thus in the end a historical-analytical
explanation, of the first world war, has been simplified and
misunderstood in the German debate. Clark wishes to understand
what drove the actors of 1914 to war. What he really shows is the
complexity of the system of states and its crisis. He renders palpable
the contingent nature of how events developed. Whether the
broader public is really interested in this seems, however,
questionable. Rather, the German reception of Clarks book bears all
the signs of instrumentalisation: it has been used for something
other than what Clark intended. He himself wonders how some in

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this country have come to see him as especially sympathetic to the

German cause. Is it perhaps all just a big misunderstanding? Such
a misunderstanding would bring into the spotlight, however,
problematic rifts in German political culture. For it yields deep
insight into the state of mind of every German who rejects the
mainstream view, because that view remains uncomfortable. Once
again, the German illness of self-pity, as Alfred Grosser wrote,
expresses itself. And so the difficulties of German history in the first
half of the twentieth century a history marked by violence,
annihilation and also guilt must continue to be discussed.
Andreas Wirsching is Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians University
in Munich and Director of the Institut fr Zeitgeschichte. This
article, which first appeared in the Sddeutsche Zeitung on 16 July
2014, was translated for Inside Story by Daniel Nethery.
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4 Comments

David T Roth added this comment on 8 August 2014 |

Permalink
Andreas, I agree that no historian who wishes to be taken seriously would
formulate a simple theory attributing all responsibility for the war to the German
Reich. Unfortunately, popular Anglosphere histories and history magazines,
and many of the recently published, emphasise German responsibility and in
particular, principally due to the alleged mental instability of the Kaiser (the
subject of another book by Clark), as caricatured in the BBC documentary 37
Days. There are also attempts to portray the Serbian government as some
sort of innocent party.
That Imperial Germany bore no responsibility is not true either. But the
popularity of Clarks book (beyond Germany) shows that more nuanced views

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of the origins of WW1 are filtering through.

John smith added this comment on 8 August 2014 |

Permalink
Interesting book and perhaps I might try and get hold of a copy when I return to
Australia. Ive been following the argument(s) over the culpability for the start
of the Great War. If you invited ten academics from different establishments,
youd probably get eleven different opinions and then some more who would
change theirs for something else. Germany cannot shoulder all the blame,
there were others but Germany cannot hide what is an historical fact.

Frank Formby added this comment on 8 August 2014 |

Permalink
While I cannot gainsay the authors statements about the popularity of the
book in Germany, I dont believe he is correct in his explanation of the
motivations of Germans in embracing what he sees as a mistaken positive
message in the book. I dont see Germans as traumatised by their
mistreatment by their fellow Europeans. Though patchy, the German response
to its Nazi past was positive and healing and the issues of WW1 are so long
ago as to be irrelevant to current politics and society. Currently Germany is the
kingpin of Europe with other countries envious and suspicious of increasing
German power. Germany remains the third biggest exporter in the world, has
low unemployment and miniscule far right, racist parties, unlike almost every
other European nation. Because Germans were forced to come to terms with
the legacy of Nazism they have developed a habit of humble, apologetic and
critical introspection (of which this article is an example). However, with
obvious success post war there is a growing atmosphere of confidence and
relief that Germany has put its Nazi past behind it, having learnt valuable
lessons and evolved.
Meanwhile in Australia, memorialising of WW1 will doubtless consist of facile,
ahistorical propaganda and an ignorant, boasting and utterly unjustified sense
of self-importance. The idiotic catastrophe of our involvement will be portrayed
as some sort of victory.

Brian Edwards added this comment on 8 August 2014 |

Permalink
Another theory is that Germany planned well when it built railways pre-war to
the French border etc etc. The facts speak for themselves (Im elaborating
on Johns comment) is a worry when facts become maybes. Maybe his
generals thought it would be like 1870-71 again? Home by Xmas.

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