EBOOK Lost History of 1914
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How the Great War Was Not Inevitable
In The Lost History of 1914, Jack Beatty examines the First World War and its causes, testing against fresh evidence the long-dominant assumption that it was inevitable. &'Most books set in 1914 map the path leading to war,&' Beatty writes, &'this one maps the multiple paths that led away from it.&' Radically challenging the standard account of the war&'s outbreak, Beatty presents the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand not as the catalyst of a war that would have broken out in any event over some other crisis, but rather as &'its all-but unique precipitant&'. Chronicling largely forgotten events faced by each of the belligerent countries in the months before the war started in August, Beatty shows how any one of them - a possible military coup in Germany; the threat to Britain of civil war in Ireland; the murder trial of the wife of the likely next premier of France, who sought d&'tente with Germany - might have derailed the arrival of war. Europe&'s ruling classes, Beatty shows, were so haunted by fear of those below that they mistook democratisation for revolution, and were tempted to &'escape forward&' into war to head it off. Beatty&'s deeply insightful book - as elegantly written as it is thought-provoking and probing - lights a lost world about to blow itself up in what George Kennan called &'the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century&'. The Lost History of 1914 is a highly original and challenging work of history.
In The Lost History of 1914, Jack Beatty examines the First World War and its causes, testing against fresh evidence the long-dominant assumption that it was inevitable. &'Most books set in 1914 map the path leading to war,&' Beatty writes, &'this one maps the multiple paths that led away from it.&' Radically challenging the standard account of the war&'s outbreak, Beatty presents the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand not as the catalyst of a war that would have broken out in any event over some other crisis, but rather as &'its all-but unique precipitant&'. Chronicling largely forgotten events faced by each of the belligerent countries in the months before the war started in August, Beatty shows how any one of them - a possible military coup in Germany; the threat to Britain of civil war in Ireland; the murder trial of the wife of the likely next premier of France, who sought d&'tente with Germany - might have derailed the arrival of war. Europe&'s ruling classes, Beatty shows, were so haunted by fear of those below that they mistook democratisation for revolution, and were tempted to &'escape forward&' into war to head it off. Beatty&'s deeply insightful book - as elegantly written as it is thought-provoking and probing - lights a lost world about to blow itself up in what George Kennan called &'the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century&'. The Lost History of 1914 is a highly original and challenging work of history.