By Eric J. Labs
The last few years in international relations scholarship has seen the emergence of two separate strands of neorealism: defensive realism and offensive realism. While some scholars have attempted to integrate defensive realism and domestic political approaches to international relations, that has not been the case for offensive realism. This paper makes an attempt to do that by using offensive realism to explain why British war aims expanded so dramatically in the First World War but it also finds that hypotheses derived from domestic political theories of international relations helped to explain how and why British leaders justified Britain’s wider war aims.
The phenomenon of political leaders expanding their political objectives during war is a common occurrence in the history of war, yet comparatively understudied. To the extent scholars have paid much attention to this issue, the explanations are idiosyncratic (that is, historians try to explain one specific case) or rely on “folk” theories that are relatively undeveloped and completely untested. This paper take the most prominent of those folk theories and formalizes them into testable hypotheses of expanding war aims. It will also outline an alternative explanation based on offensive realism which I have already discussed elsewhere. 1
Why the British case? British war aims in the First World War are an important case because it should be an easy one for the folk theories to explain and a difficult one for offensive realism to explain. Thus, the relative power of domestic political hypotheses versus offensive realism can be gauged most effectively in this case.
Domestic Politics Explanations of Expanding War Aims
There three major hypotheses of expanding war aims that one can derive from the folk theories in the extant literature on war. The first argues that higher casualties lead states to expand their aims. The second asserts that leaders much adopt wider war aims to generate the social mobilization that is necessary to fight a major war. And the third relies on theories of bureaucratic politics and argues that generals assume greater authority in war and they tend to prefer wider war aims for various organizational reasons—even if they were reluctant to fight the war at the outset.
Blood Price Hypothesis
The first hypothesis is what I call the Blood Price Hypothesis or the Tyranny of Sunk Costs. It holds that the higher the level of casualties a state suffers, the more it will expand war aims; conversely, the fewer losses a state suffers, the less likely it will be to expand war aims. In a desperate war, more ambitious aims are adopted to justify the ever-increasing sacrifice of men, resources, and other values (such as domestic welfare and freedoms). This is the tyranny of sunk costs. As Kaplan writes: “[P]ressures for the enlargement of the victory program are frequently a function of the magnitude of suffering which a nation or alliance undergoes, one indicator of which is the extent to which threats to security values force sacrifices in welfare values. The greater the deprivation, as a rule, the greater will be the pressures for an expansive victory program.” 2 There are really two variants to this hypothesis. One is a “First Image” hypothesis based on dissonance theory. The other is a “Second Image” hypothesis which has its roots in issues of domestic legitimacy. 3 I shall concentrate on the second version.4
The second variant of the blood price hypothesis is based on domestic legitimacy. This version applies mostly, though not exclusively, to the era of modern mass politics in which leaders, politicians, and even dictators depend on the support of a large part of the population for their political positions. 5 Leaders who take a nation to war depend on their populations or at least certain constituencies for support. Presumably, they tell their constituencies that the war would cost a reasonably specified amount of money and men, promising in return specified gains. If, however, their armies do not achieve the gains within allowable costs, the political elites, this hypothesis suggests, will expand their war aims rather than admit failure or that they were wrong. The new war aims justify the extraction of additional resources from the society in order to achieve both the original and new objectives. The new aims make legitimate the additional costs and thereby maintain the power and stability of the government which had sold its people the bill of goods in the first place. 6
While this dynamic may afflict all types of regimes, it follows that democratic governments would be more susceptible to this phenomenon. In democratic states, the government depends more on a wide base of support for legitimacy and thus may require wider aims to keep all the different groups satisfied than a government dependent on a narrower constituency. They must maintain support by winning elections, delivering on promises, and persuading the population to cooperate in achieving their objectives. Democratic governments are generally restricted from employing excessively coercive measures to maintain political support. Though more dictatorial regimes must still rely on public support for their political positions, they have more tools to employ to ensure continued support. They can crush early dissent, shut down opposition newspapers, arrest political opponents and thereby stem the tide of opposition easier than more democratic governments. 7 They must rely much more on the successful execution of policy for maintaining legitimacy and authority. Thus repetitive failure, especially on the battlefield, will undermine a democratic regime more quickly than a dictatorial one, but both will eventually be susceptible to the disappointment of their respective populations. 8
In addition, the fear of losing legitimacy may help explain why war aims sometimes are difficult to contract. Renouncing war aims after great sacrifices would undermine the domestic political position of the policy-makers who advocated and led the war. This helps explain why governments often fall after a lost war. Prior to final defeat, they keep expanding their aims in the hope of recovering their losses, not unlike the failed blackjack player who keeps doubling his bets to recover money already lost. But when peace is made, the broken promises and structure of lies are revealed for all to see. 9 Thus, even if statesmen do not expand war aims, a worthwhile value must still be gained from the sacrifice. As Fred Ikle writes: “Those officials who are identified with the initiation of the war or its early conduct are apt to fear that they would in fact be criticizing and undermining themselves as government leaders if they considered any conclusion to the war that did not achieve the principal war aims.” 10
There is, however, an inconsistency in this argument. Logically, if casualties continue to mount, war aims should rise with them. There should be a never-ending spiral of casualties and war aims in each war such that it ends in total war and the utter of destruction of one side. But this rarely happens. The key question is under what conditions do high costs and sacrifices drive aims up and when do they force aims to shrink? If this hypothesis is valid at all, the answer depends on whether the initial expectations were met and whether the state has the wherewithal to continue the fight. That is, where objectives are met and costs are as expected, this “blood price” dynamic would not operate. Conversely, where a nation has finally exhausted itself in war, this dynamic also would not operate. The desire to end the war becomes overwhelming and war aims contract. But where initial aims are not fulfilled and the state still has much latent fighting capability, the tyranny of sunk costs would dominate war aims policy. To justify the sacrifices already made, new war aims would be proposed.
Social Mobilization Hypothesis
The Social Mobilization hypothesis argues that the greater a state’s need to mobilize its society and the more war-resistant it is, the more it will expand war aims toward universalistic goals; conversely, where social mobilization is not necessary to the war effort, war aims are unlikely to expand. War aims will contract as popular opinion turns resolutely against the war.
War, especially a major war, is a difficult task for a society to undertake. It requires enormous sacrifices in time, money, and lives. Nearly everyone is affected by it in one way or another. To achieve the required sacrifice from society, statesmen will frame the objectives of the war in terms which most members of society will agree on and thus be willing to fight and pay for them. Where these objectives are only tangentially related to the causes of war or are entirely different from initial goals, a state has expanded its war aims. Elites may magnify the objective for which the state is fighting, exaggerate the threat it faces, and polarize the differences between itself and the enemy. As Harold Lasswell observed:
So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. The war must not be due to a world system of conducting international affairs, nor to the stupidity or malevolence of all governing classes, but to the rapacity of the enemy. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically, and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier. 11
This hypothesis is more likely to explain the expansion of war aims at the outset or early stages of war. It is at that stage that a society needs to be mobilized and resources mustered. Nevertheless, this hypothesis may explain expansions in war aims during a war. If a war is not going well, in order to improve their fortunes policy elites may expand their aims in order to extract even more resources from the society.
A corollary to this hypothesis is that sometimes elites find they have done their job of selling the war policy too well and the populace demands wider aims. When policy elites exaggerate a threat or the differences with an enemy, they sometimes find themselves trapped by their own rhetoric. If the government is pursuing a moderate set of war aims but is using extreme propaganda to bolster its case, then strong domestic political pressure may force elites to expand war aims. After all, if the enemy is as bad as the elites claim, why fight for moderate terms? This is especially the problem where political elites have achieved power or are maintaining it by advocating a vigorous prosecution of the war. The social mobilization hypothesis, like the blood price hypothesis, would most likely apply to the era of modern mass politics.
The Cleon Problem
The third hypothesis argues that the greater the influence, prestige, and political power of a state’s leading generals, the more its war aims will expand. This hypothesis is a two-step argument. The first part is drawn from the literature on bureaucratic politics and civil-military relations and explains why military men gain influence in war. The second is drawn from organization theory and explains why military officers often favor wider war aims.
The first part, the bureaucratic argument, derives logically from premises about how states fight wars. When war breaks out, different people and organizations move to the center of power within a state to conduct the war effort. 12 The most powerful of these organizations is the professional military. Military leaders are a government’s experts on war and it is logical that their influence would rise when the character of interstate relations is war. By contrast, diplomats and foreign ministries are the experts of interstate relations during peacetime. In war their influence wanes. As Ikle writes: “At the very moment that the diplomats are being expelled from the enemy capitals, the military leaders come to command a vastly increased segment of national resources.” 13 In ancient Rome, for example, a general in times of crisis was elected “dictator” for a six month period.
The grasp on power by the “experts of war” begins immediately from the outbreak of war but it is not total or complete. Generals first find themselves dictating the resource and manpower requirements to fulfill strategy and achieve success on the battlefield. Civilians officials work to meet those goals. But as the war progresses, military men are more and more brought directly into the process of administration and governing. The hierarchy and organizational efficiency of the military is viewed as necessary for the mobilization of resources.
In addition, public morale and support for the war is often raised and better sustained when military men assume greater direction of the war effort. As the experts on war, the public has confidence in military men to guide the war effort better than the civilians because the former “know what they are doing.” This in turn creates an incentive on the part of civilian leaders to give more authority to the military in part to sustain the political base of the government.
Initially, the military will have the greatest influence over military strategy. However, as Clausewitz has pointed out, military strategy and political aims are inseparable in practice. Strategy influences political ends; political ends influence strategy. Consequently, the military voice in the political ends of the war—often cloaked by the requirements or limitations of strategy—will grow. For these reasons, the Cleon problem is more likely to explain cases where war aims expand during the course of a war, rather than at its outset. As the military acquires more and more domestic political power, it is in an increasingly strong position to adopt wider aims.
The second part of this hypothesis, why military men tend to favor expanded war aims, is drawn largely from the literature on organization theory and military organizations. 14 This literature argues that military organizations prefer offensive doctrines in order to increase their size, wealth, and autonomy. In wartime debates over political objectives, this organizational motivation may cause military men to advocate expanding war aims for several reasons.
First, the very drive for size, wealth, and autonomy leads to advocacy of expanded war aims. Wider objectives gives the military a greater share of resources and military means. Second, militaries often exaggerate the likelihood of the victory during war. This leads civilians to leave the military alone in its conduct of the war because they have no reasons to quarrel with the (apparent) success. With victory so easy, why not take more? Third, militaries argue that conquest is easy and security is scarce. This argument serves the organization because it ensures that the military receives more resources to protect the state. During war, however, this argument provides a double reason for expanding war aims. On the one hand, if conquest is easy, then expanding aims and conquering more will also be easy. On the other, if security is scarce, one must conquer before one is conquered. Security is more difficult to come by, therefore greater aims and more extensive conquests are needed in order to achieve security. Fourth, militaries argue that resources are cumulative. This enhances the military’s size and wealth because when resources are cumulative, all of a nation’s assets must be protected. This encourages military men to pursue greater aims both to strengthen one’s own state by conquering more and to prevent an enemy from acquiring those same resources. Fifth, generals do not have to favor wider aims for their actions to cause expanding war aims. They tend to favor and advise military escalation during war. Officers see a dichotomy between policy and the use of force. Once the reason, time, and place for using force is determined by civilians, the soldiers believe they should run the war and that usually means using the full capabilities available to them. This in turn may then cause war aims to expand. Enemies will counter-escalate, leading to a malign view of their intentions, encouraging wider aims in order defend against an apparently more dangerous adversary. War aims thus spiral upward. Alternatively, more massive means may make victory more likely and thus seem easier, encouraging states to fight for more. In either case, escalating means may lead to expanding aims. Thus even if militaries are given autonomy over means and they do not purvey ideas of expanding war aims, the greater means may lead to more ambitious ends. Sixth, victory imbues individual generals and the officer corps with greater prestige. They enjoy it for its intrinsic value and at the same time the organization benefits because it is more difficult to make budget cuts or interfere with an organization held in high esteem by the public. Thus during war, generals advocate wider aims in order to win more victories and thus gain more prestige. 15
Offensive Realism and Expanding War Aims
Offensive realism holds that because security and survival are never assured in the international system, states seek to maximize their security by maximizing their relative power and influence where the benefits of doing so exceed the costs. States recognize that the more powerful they are, the more secure they will be. As John Mearsheimer has put it, “The greater the military advantage one state has over other states, the more secure it is.” 16 When states confront specific threats, states will attempt to increase their relative power through expansion or arms-racing. 17 In the absence of specific threats, however, states will still seek to maximize their power and influence because they cannot be sure when or where the next threat will arise. When they are presented with opportunities that will easily and cheaply increase their relative power, states will take advantage of them. A strategy that seeks to maximize security through a maximum of relative power is the rational response to anarchy.
This does not mean, however, that all states are motivated by blind ambition (though some may be). They are rational and they calculate the costs and benefits of each opportunity to expand. If the prospective costs outweigh the prospective gains, then the state is unlikely to attempt to expand. For example, Germany under Bismarck studiously avoided war with other great powers between 1871 and 1890 because he knew that the other great powers would coalesce against Germany if it attempted any further expansion. Similarly, one reason why a small state like Switzerland has not attempted to expand for 500 years is that it is hard to imagine a favorable cost-benefit calculus for possible expansion when the country has been surrounded by great powers for centuries. 18
An offensive realist hypothesis of expanding war aims holds that states expand their war aims during war in response to threat and opportunity. My use of threat largely follows that of Stephen Walt. His “balance of threat theory” asserts that states form alliances in response to threats; and the factors that are most important in determining who is a threat are aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive power, and aggressive intentions. 19 I apply his argument to explain expanding war aims. When policy-makers expand their war aims by demanding an additional slice of land, a new political concession, or even the destruction of the enemy’s military infrastructure or regime, they do so because they believe that the future security of their own state is at stake.
A state’s perception of the threat posed by an enemy in wartime may intensify for the same reasons states form alliances in peacetime. The enemy may grow stronger through new conquests, innovative mobilization techniques, or the development of new technologies. A threat may become more proximate as a result an enemy’s conquests or newly formed alliances. An enemy may pursue an offensive doctrine which is perceived as much more threatening than a defensive strategy. An enemy’s intentions may appear more menacing as a result of its wartime behavior. The bigger, stronger, closer, and more menacing an enemy is, the more a state will fear for its security and the more likely it is to expand war aims in order to secure itself better in a post-war world. 20
But this is not all there is to the hypothesis. If it were, there would be little to distinguish between it and other variants of realism. States also expand their war aims in response to strategic opportunities that may arise as a result of events on the battlefield or the belief that the costs of expansion are low. States will exploit opportunities to maximize their relative power and secure themselves better in the post-war world, regardless of the level of threat they currently face.
Opportunity as the absence of systemic and military constraints on a state during war or the belief that any constraint can be overcome at a low cost. Decisive military victory is the most common form of opportunity. It often emboldens the victorious state to pursue war aims much greater than it had originally planned. As Morgenthau writes:
When a nation is engaged in war with another nation, it is very likely that the nation which anticipates victory will pursue a policy that seeks a permanent change of the power relations with the defeated enemy. The nation will pursue this policy regardless of what the objectives were at the outbreak of the war. It is the objective of this policy of change to transform the relation between the victor and vanquished which happens to exist at the end of the war into a new status quo of the peace settlement. 21
Conversely, successive military defeats usually force war aims to shrink, unless policy elites are determined on Hitlerian self-destruction.
There are other forms of opportunity and constraint as well. Policy-makers simply may believe that expanding their aims would be cheap and easy. A military victory may prompt this belief but so might new information or a new appraisal of battlefield conditions which policy-makers think accurate. For example, at the outbreak of the Crimean War, Russia withdrew from two disputed Turkish provinces, fulfilling the initial war aims of Turkey’s allies, Britain and France. Yet, the two western powers expanded their war aims to include taking the Crimea and Sebastopol partly because they expected a quick, cheap victory using their superior naval power. 22
A necessary condition of opportunity is the absence of systemic constraints. If another state threatens to change substantially the balance of power by intervening against a state that is contemplating new objectives, then such an expansion is unlikely to occur. No opportunity is present. 23 As Geoffrey Blainey has observed: “Every decision to wage war is influenced by predictions of how outside nations will affect the course of war.” 24 This holds true for war aims as well. The absence of systemic constraints becomes a necessary condition before states are willing to enlarge their war aims. 25
Where threat and opportunity work in combination, the incentives are extremely powerful for a state to expand war aims. At first blush, this may seem contradictory. How can states be scared and be winning? 26 Even if a state is winning a war decisively, it may believe that its opponent has the intention, the will, and the latent power to recover and rearm in the postwar world for a rematch. At the very least, it cannot be sure that its opponent will not rise to threaten it again. To preclude that outcome, a state will expand its war aims during the existing conflict to acquire an even greater measure of future security. With respect to war aims, the future shadows the present. That is something much more than restoring the status quo; the state is taking advantage of opportunities to expand its relative power.
British War Aims in the First World War
British war aims in the First World War represent a case of multiple expansions in war aims. Britain declared war on Germany for defensive purposes, intending to defend the integrity of Belgium, the Channel coasts of France, and the balance of power in north-west Europe. It soon expanded war aims to include destroying “Prussian militarism,” and several times more first by making promises to other states and then by enlarging its empire in the Middle East. The most important expansion was the first one, destroying Prussian militarism.
Britain’s Declaration of War and Initial War Aims
Britain appeared to enjoy good relations with Germany in the several years prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Many scholars refer to this period as a “detente” between Britain and Germany. 27 London and Berlin found room for negotiation and common ground during the Balkan Crises of 1912-1913, the division of the Portuguese colonies, and the Baghdad Railway. 28
Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, in particular saw improvement in Anglo-German relations. German cooperation and moderation with respect to Balkan issues especially pleased him. In June 1914, referring to the Balkan Wars in 1912-13, Grey wrote: “It seemed to me, that in essential matters of policy which are really important, Germany sometimes restrained Austria and Italy, particularly the former, and allowed them only to go to a certain point.” 29 On July 7, Grey declared: “We are on good terms with Germany and we wish to avoid a revival of friction with her.” 30 , 31
Other members of the British Cabinet and the professionals in the Foreign Office shared this belief in improved relations. David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister, declared in the House of Commons on July 23, 1914: “The two great Empires begin to realize that the points of cooperation are greater and more numerous than the points of possible controversy.” 32 Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, both believed that Britain’s relations with Germany were remarkably good and calm prior to the July Crisis. 33
The July Crisis began after the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was shot to death by a Serbian nationalist. There followed a chain of events which ended in world war. Austria sought to use the assassination to expand its interests in the Balkans at Serbian and Russian expense. Vienna threatened Serbia with war. Russia, siding with its small Slavic ally, threatened war against Austria if it moved against Serbia. Germany and France, in turn, supported their allies.
These events concerned Grey. He hoped that Britain would be able to talk and work with Germany to resolve the crisis peacefully, as they had with previous Balkan problems.
Grey (and the British Cabinet) thought that the German government was divided between a war party and a peace party. Grey believed that the German generals represented the war party and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Foreign Minister Jagow, and Bethmann Hollweg composed the peace party. By acting moderately and calmly, Grey believed he could strengthen the peace party within the German government, leading to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. 34 As late as July 30, Grey instructed Sir Edward Goschen, the British Ambassador to Berlin, to tell Bethmann Hollweg: “If peace can be preserved and this crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she would be assured that no hostile or aggressive policy would be pursued against her or allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately.” 35 Privately, Grey on July 29 had warned the German ambassador to London that in the event of a war between Germany and France, Berlin cannot and should not count on London remaining neutral.
The detente had not been not as real or certainly not as permanent as Grey and many British officials had imagined it to be. As Fritz Fischer and his students have demonstrated, the existence of a war party and a peace party in Berlin was a chimera. Grey was unable to reach an accommodation with Germany and that bitterly disappointed him.
Despite Britain’s attempts to resolve the crisis peacefully, the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia and the Russian mobilization on July 29, the German mobilization on July 31, and the French mobilization on August 1 swiftly forced British leaders to chose between neutrality and war. Britain decided for war. Considerations of the balance of power motivated the British Cabinet’s decision to intervene in the emerging European war. First, on the basis of a naval understanding between London and Paris, the British navy was obligated to defend France’s Channel coastline from a German naval attack. Second, Britain resolved to defend Belgium’s neutrality from German encroachments.
Throughout most of the July Crisis, the Cabinet rejected the notion that Britain had an obligation to support France in a war against Germany. 36 On July 24, the day Austria delivered its ultimatum to Serbia, Asquith wrote to his friend Venetia Stanley that “…we are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon…Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.” 37 As the crisis worsened, repeated French appeals for a commitment of British support were turned down. As late as August 1, Grey told the French Government as it mobilized and prepared for war: “…[T]he present situation differed entirely from the Morocco incidents…France must take her decision at this moment without reckoning on an assistance that we are not now in a position to promise.” 38 Grey’s statement was a reflection of the current Cabinet majority, not his own view. 39
The Cabinet meeting on August 2, however, was decisive. Grey argued for intervention. Prior to 1914, the British Admiralty had asked, and France had agreed, to concentrate the French navy in the Mediterranean so that Britain could concentrate its own in the home waters. Britain had an obligation to defend the French coast from German naval attack. Allowing the German navy to operate freely in the Channel represented a serious threat to British security. 40 The Cabinet agreed that Britain should pledge to France protection of her Channel coasts. 41 In the late afternoon of August 2, Grey told the French Ambassador: “I am authorized to give an assurance that if the German fleet comes into the Channel or through the North Sea to undertake hostile operations against the French coasts or shipping, the British fleet will give all the protection in its power.” 42
By July 31, it was clear that the July Crisis was doomed to end in a general European war. Britain asked from both France and Germany a guarantee of Belgian neutrality. France gave it at once. Germany wavered and delayed. This convinced Grey, Asquith, and several other Cabinet members that Germany intended to invade Belgium. As war between France and Germany drew closer—their mobilizations beginning on August 1—opinion in the Cabinet shifted. Many ministers realized that Britain could not tolerate a hostile power in control of Belgium’s Channel coast. 43
The decisive August 2nd Cabinet meeting had followed news of Germany’s invasion of Luxembourg. Britain made its decision to intervene before London learned whether Belgium would accept Germany’s ultimatum or fight the German army. 44 In the late afternoon of August 2, Grey told the French ambassador that even if the Belgians joined the Germans, the violation of their frontier would still be a casus belli for Britain. 45 David Lloyd George, considered the only man in the Cabinet who could rally anti-war ministers and threaten the unity of the government, found the German threat to Belgium decisive. Although he had once stated that a violation of a corner of Belgium would not have necessarily provoked war, Germany’s full-scale invasion was entirely different: “The invasion of Belgium made the vital difference, as far as I was concerned, between peace and war.” 46
Belgium unified the British public, parties, and politicians. It brought to the surface latent anti-German feeling and united in common cause those who believed Britain had a moral commitment to Belgium and those who used Belgium to justify their support for a balance of power war. 47 Belgium allowed the British to cloak their balance of power motivations in the rhetoric of international law and the defense of the rights of small countries. 48 Belgium’s resistance to the German invasion made the British cause seem that much more moral. The restoration of Belgium became the one “immutable” British war aim. 49 “The one thing which no minister, even in the darkest moments of the war, ever imagined was a settlement in which Belgium did not recover complete independence.” 50 Asquith stated his opinion that in the absence of Germany’s invasion of Belgium, “the British nation could not have then gone into war with a united front.” 51
The sum total of the British Cabinet’s deliberations in the early days of August was that Britain went to war for security. Britain went to war, not for Belgium’s sake, but for British interests in Belgium—which meant a neutral Belgium. 52 Britain’s willingness to fight even if Belgium joined Germany belies the notion that Britain went to war for moral reasons. “The Liberal Government, for all its high-minded pacifism, was prepared to go to war only in defence of narrow national self-interest.” 53 The Cabinet feared that a German victory over France would jeopardize the security of the home islands and of the Empire. This required preserving the balance of power, specifically in north-west Europe, not necessarily the general European balance of power. As Asquith stated in a letter to Venetia Stanley, “It is against British interests that France should be wiped out as a Great Power.” 54 Two ministers, John Burns and Lord Morley, resigned because they did not believe Britain should fight for the balance of power. 55 But in an important speech before the House of Commons on August 3 Grey explained the decision to intervene in the war in precisely those terms. The Foreign Secretary declared that Belgium’s independence—and that of Holland, Denmark, and France—was vital “from the point of view of British interests.” 56 He added:
“I do not believe, for a moment, that at the end of this war, even if we stood aside and remained aside, we should be in a position, a material position, to use our force decisively to undo what had happened in the course of the war, to prevent the whole of the West of Europe opposite to us—if that had been the result of the war—falling under the domination of a single Power, and I am quite sure that our moral position would be such as to have lost us all respect.” 57
These were Britain’s initial war aims: Belgium’s neutrality and the preservation of France as a Great Power. Anything more than that was unacceptable to the Cabinet. Anything less than that jeopardized Britain’s survival. A German war against Russia alone or of Russia over Germany or Austria would in all probability not have brought Britain into the conflict. 58
Destroying Prussian Militarism
Neither Edward Grey’s speech to the House of Commons on August 3 nor the Cabinet debates leading up to Britain’s ultimatum to Germany on August 4 make reference to the destruction of Prussian militarism as a war aim. Yet, within weeks after the outbreak of war Grey and other government officials had declared that the destruction of Prussian militarism was Britain’s primary objective. This represented a substantial expansion in war aims. As Lorna Jaffe observed, statements about destroying Prussian militarism “reflected a basic presupposition about the origins of the war and a genuine belief about the purpose for which Britain was fighting. Private communications and departmental memoranda echoed these public statements…” 59
There was no meeting in which the Cabinet made the decision to destroy Prussian militarism. But the war aim quickly permeated official and private thinking. To evaluate effectively the explanatory power of the hypotheses, we need clear answers to several questions: 1. What did destroying Prussian militarism mean? That is, how did British leaders define “destroying Prussian militarism” and what motivated British leaders to pursue this objective? 2. How was this objective to be operationalized in military strategy and operations? How much did British leaders expect this war aim would cost in material and manpower resources?
To British political leaders, “destroying Prussian militarism” meant that the military caste which ruled Germany and the values that they embodied must be removed from power. This conception harkens back to their theory that Germany was divided between a peace party and a war party. They took Germany’s unwillingness to resolve the July Crisis peacefully and its enthusiasm for mobilization as proof that the war party was in control. As David French wrote, “Germany’s decision to go to war therefore shocked the British.” 60 Indeed, “In attributing responsibility for the war to Germany, British leaders blamed the dominance of the Prussian military class for Germany’s aggressive policy. This perception shaped their thinking about the purposes for which they were fighting, and the concept of the war as a crusade against Prussian militarism soon became official policy.” 61 British leaders did not conceive of the war as a fight against the German people, only their leaders who served them so irresponsibly. They were cause of the war and, therefore, they must be made to pay for it. 62
Grey was particularly angry at being deceived by the German government during the July Crisis. He was “outraged at the way Germany and Austria have played with the most vital interests of civilization, have cast aside all attempts at accommodation made by himself and others, and while continuing to negotiate have marched steadily to war.” 63 This behavior helped to convince him of German ruthlessness. The fact that Grey had believed in the detente made things worse. 64 After the July Crisis Grey was bitter even with the German peace party: “Jagow did nothing, Bethmann Hollweg trifled and the military intended war and forced it. It was a huge and gratuitous crime, the outcome of pride and ambition.” 65
Grey concluded that “Prussian militarism” must be eradicated. In early September 1914, Grey told his constituents that “It is against German militarism that we must fight…it is not the German people, but Prussian militarism which has driven Germany and Europe into this war.” 66
Once the war party is removed from power, Germany would no longer threaten Britain. The fact that Germany started the war influenced Grey’s thinking. As he noted in a diplomatic dispatch, “Germany has planned this war and chosen the time for forcing it upon Europe. No one but Germany was in the same state of preparation. We want in the future to live free from the menace of this happening again.” 67
Other Cabinet officials echoed these sentiments. David Lloyd George, who had been a strong opponent of the war in the Cabinet until nearly the end of the crisis, stated: “We are not fighting the German people. The German people are under the heel of this [Prussian] military caste…” 68 Prime Minister Asquith declared the destruction of Prussian militarism as a British war aim in a speech on November 9, 1914: “We shall never sheathe the sword…until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.” 69
The nature of German wartime conduct and military strategy seemed to intensify the Cabinet’s malevolent perceptions of Berlin. Lloyd George was appalled by Germany’s attack on Belgium. 70 German conduct in Belgium shocked and outraged Prime Minister Asquith. In a speech on October 2, he denounced the “the wanton invasion of Belgium and then of France by hordes who leave behind them at every stage of their progress a dismal trail of savagery, of devastation and desecration worthy of the blackest annals in the history of barbarism.” 71
The major British ministers started to use the language of destroying Prussian militarism right after The Times published a series of reports in late August detailing German “atrocities” in Belgium. The most notorious of which included the alleged murder and mutilation of Grace Hume, a young nurse, and the hacking off of the hands of Belgian babies by German soldiers. Neither of these stories turned out about to be true, despite having received great play in Britain. 72 On September 5, Grey asserted that “The progress of the war has revealed what a terrible and immoral thing German militarism is.” 73 On September 18, he sent a cable to the British ambassador in Washington, stating: “A cruel wrong has been done to Belgium—an unprovoked attack aggravated by the wanton destruction of Louvain and other wholesale vandalism.” 74
But how, exactly, would Britain “destroy Prussian militarism”? The British leadership determined that a decisive military defeat of Germany’s war machine would discredit the Junker military caste and bring about a social upheaval of sorts in Germany. The Prussian militarist influence would therefore be eliminated. 75 Grey refused to consider making peace with the German government as it was constituted and believed that a “military defeat would shatter the charisma of militarism and destroy the ascendancy of the military hierarchy.” 76 As Gooch writes:
[T]he political version of Britain’s most ambitious and most fervidly proclaim aim—the destruction of Prussian militarism—derived from assumptions about why and how Germany had started the war. Translated into military terms it dictated victories over Germany of such magnitude as to permit changing the social fabric and the political structure of Germany. This in turn would destroy the basis of Prussian hegemony over Germany and would also end the dominance of the military over German society. 77
A democratic state might then arise from the ashes. 78
Despite this apparently enormous aim, British ministers were not at first prepared to do what was necessary to achieve it. Britain declared war on Germany expecting a relatively quick, cheap victory. Moreover, the expansion in war aims did not at first cause the British to reevaluate that assessment. The Cabinet envisioned that to achieve their gargantuan aims Britain would have to fight only a limited war with quite limited costs and risks. This is a crucial point: the expectations of the cost of the war went a long way to underpinning British assumptions about the war aims for which they would fight.
When Asquith and Grey and Lloyd George led the Cabinet to war in early August, they in no way imagined a four-year war, a major continental commitment, or millions of British casualties. The decision for war was in large part predicated on a cheap war, quick victory assumption. As Zara Steiner writes: The Cabinet’s “decisions were based on erroneous assumptions about the nature of war, its effects and costs.”79 Most of the Cabinet believed that Britain would fight a relatively inexpensive naval and economic war against Germany, not unlike British strategy during the Napoleonic Wars, while France and Russia crushed Germany between land pincers. “The enemy would be defeated by a combination of British gold and French and Russian soldiers.” 80
During the important Cabinet meeting on August 2, Grey, Asquith, and Churchill all stated that Britain’s participation in the war would be limited to naval and blockading action. They did not even think that the British Expeditionary Force could or should be sent. As Asquith wrote in his Contemporary Notes: “The dispatch of the Expeditionary Force to help France at this moment is out of the question and would serve no object.” 81 In his August 3 speech before the House of Commons, Grey cautioned against any immediate or premature deployment of the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) to France. Even if it were eventually deployed, a naval and financial war would constitute the bulk of the British war effort: “For us, with a powerful fleet, which we believe able to protect our commerce, to protect our shores, and to protect our interests, if we are engaged in war, we shall suffer little more than we shall suffer if we stand aside.” He referred only to the costs a disruption in Britain’s trade. 82
The only member of the Cabinet who disagreed with the prevailing conventional wisdom of a naval war and quick victory was Field Marshall Lord Kitchener, the newly appointed war minister. Kitchener enjoyed a unique position in the British government during the first months of war. Public pressure, orchestrated in part by The Times, had brought about his appointment; Asquith had wanted to name Lord Haldane to the post. Kitchener’s arrival in the Cabinet had a salutary effect on British morale and support for the government. As Asquith’s daughter noted: “The psychological effects of his appointment, the tonic to public confidence, were instantaneous and overwhelming.”83
This popular confidence conveyed considerable political power to Kitchener. “The masses of his country-men were united behind Kitchener because they believed that he possessed plenary power to take decisions which would lead to victory. The government encouraged that belief, and allowed Kitchener to act as supreme war lord for many months.” 84 As Lloyd George described it:
In 1914 he was practically military dictator and his decisions upon any questions affecting the war were final. The members of the Cabinet were frankly intimidated by his presence because of his repute and enormous influence amongst all classes of people outside. A word from him was decisive and no one dared challenge it at a Cabinet meeting. 85
Kitchener told his Cabinet colleagues that the war would take at least three years and would require Britain to build and deploy a massive army to the continent. “Kitchener shocked his listeners by suggesting that the war would be a long one.”86 Despite their views, they approved his plans to begin the recruitment and building of a million-man army.
The war was surprisingly popular. The Bank Holiday crowds in the streets cheered Cabinet ministers on August 3 as they went to and from the House of Commons. Grey in particular received loud acclaim. As Asquith noted in his memoirs: “It is curious how going to and from the House we are now always escorted and surrounded by cheering crowds of loafers and holiday-makers.” 87 The government sought to minimize domestic disruption. No plans were made to take control of the economy and gear it up for war production. Kitchener asked for volunteers without giving a reason why they would fight. None of Britain’s political leaders ever anticipated that Kitchener’s call for volunteers for his New Armies would result in over one million recruits by Christmas. Recruitment stations found themselves swamped and overwhelmed.88 With such popularity behind them, the British government developed its war aims and military strategy almost unencumbered by public opinion. 89
The Cabinet did not envision using the armies Kitchener was raising to defeat Germany and win the war. Kitchener anticipated holding back until Britain could intervene and win the peace. 90 He believed that his armies would not be trained and ready to fight until 1917. British power would then be peaking. In the meantime, Britain’s friends and enemies in Europe would have fought themselves to a standstill and near exhaustion. Britain would be the strongest power in Europe, able to finish off Germany, and ensure that no other power took Germany’s place as the hegemon of the continent, (namely Russia). “The New Armies were not just intended to win the war for the Entente but to win the peace for Britain….They would be able to deliver the final blow against the Germans and allow the British to dictate their peace terms to allies and enemies alike.” 91 There was, therefore, a disintegration in British war aims and military means. But it was this incongruence in part which led Britain to elevate its war aims in the first place. David French provides an excellent summary:
Initially British strategy was designed to maximize [Britain’s] strengths and minimize her weaknesses. The British assumed that the major burden of fighting the continental land war would fall upon France and Russia. Britain made a token contribution to the land fighting by sending the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) to northern France, but her main contribution was in the shape of the Royal Navy, which quickly blockaded the Central Powers, and the economic and financial assistance which she extended to her allies. This was the strategy of “business as usual.” “Business as usual” promised Britain maximum victory at minimum cost. 92
Securing the Empire
Over the course of the war, Britain developed a thirst for Middle Eastern lands that did not exist in 1914. 93 In February 1915 Grey and the French foreign minister, Delcassé, believed that British and French interests were better served if most of the Ottoman Empire remained intact. 94 As David Fromkin writes: “…when the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, Asquith, Grey, and Churchill did not intend to retaliate by seizing any of its domains for Britain. They did propose to allow Britain’s allies to make territorial gains in Europe and Asia Minor at Turkey’s expense; but Asquith’s Britain had no territorial designs of her own on Ottoman lands, either in the Middle East or elsewhere.” 95
This position changed. Kitchener had spent most of his professional soldier’s life serving in the Middle East and Asia. He believed that it was in Britain’s interest to seize large parts of the Ottoman Empire. 96 In a March 16, 1915 memo to the Cabinet, Kitchener argued that the Ottoman Empire should be broken up and Britain should acquire the Mesopotamian provinces (present-day Iraq), and Alexandretta, the great port across from Cyprus, in order to build a railroad to Mesopotamia. The argument was mainly a strategic one: “The British railroad from the Mediterranean to the head of the Persian Gulf would enable troops to move to and from India rapidly. The broad swath of British-owned territory it would traverse would provide a shield for the Persian Gulf, as well as a road to India.” 97 This argument was persuasive to a majority of the Cabinet. The Cabinet set up a special committee to formulate the details of Britain’s post-war aims in the Middle East.
In December 1916, the Asquith government was replaced by a new coalition government headed by David Lloyd George. After Britain’s failed offensive in the Somme, Lloyd George’s Cabinet was even more determined to expand British war aims in the Middle East at Turkey’s expense than Kitchener and the Asquith Cabinet. Lloyd George had been an ardent proponent of breaking up the Ottoman Empire since 1915. In March 1917, Lloyd George told his War Cabinet that destroying Turkey “as an Empire” was a fundamental and unequivocal war aim. 98 He created the forces to do it and they succeeded for several reasons. 99
First, the new prime minister divided up the world between “civilized” and “barbarous” peoples. The Turks were the preeminent example of the latter. Where “barbarous” peoples ruled, Lloyd George believed it was the duty and the right of the “civilized” peoples to liberate them and “restore these devastated areas to civilization.”100
Second, Lloyd George was increasingly concerned by 1917 whether Britain would be able to defeat Germany, especially in light of Russia’s collapse. The Cabinet deemed it vital for Britain to smash Turkey and thereby expel German influence from the region. In August 1917, Britain’s Director of Military Intelligence warned that if Germany’s position in the Middle East and Balkans were not destroyed, Berlin “will then prepare for the next struggle against the British Empire and for the mastery of the world.” Most British ministers agreed with this assessment. 101 If Britain and its allies must eventually accept a peace which was something less than complete victory, then the wartime alliance of Germany and Turkey could become a major geopolitical threat to the postwar British Empire. The Ottoman Empire stood astride two of Britain’s most important possessions—India and the Suez Canal. By taking from Turkey most of its holdings in the Middle East, Britain hoped to build a contiguous swath of territory from Cape Town in South Africa through Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, India, over to Australia and New Zealand. This would remove any German presence and potential threat to the British holdings.
Third, Lloyd George and his closest ministers believed that Britain could not find compensation for its sacrifices in Europe. What could Britain annex in Europe that would prove to be adequate compensation for the money and lives spent there? The Middle East represented vast, ripe pickings which he could present to British people as tangible gains for their sacrifices. 102
Fourth, it should be noted that a sustained attack on Turkey’s empire was, in Lloyd George’s view, a means to an end. The prime minister was not sure in 1917 whether Britain and its allies could defeat Germany. The losses in Europe had been horrendous with little gain. It was Lloyd George’s opinion that the less expensive and more efficient way to defeat Germany and to force Germany to admit defeat was by defeating its allies—“knocking off the props.” 103 Continued operations in France held little prospect for success, while attacks on Turkey promised movement and great success. 104 Whether this strategy, if pursued to its logical conclusion, would have defeated Germany is questionable. 105
The Difficulty of Contracting War Aims
By early 1917 Britain had suffered over a million casualties on the battlefield with little appreciable gain. By the government’s own consensus, it was no closer to winning the war then than it was in August 1914. In light of such awful sacrifice, a question arises: Why did British war aims not contract? The question was not ignored within the highest British councils. In fact, at various points in the war, it was proposed by one minister or another to negotiate a separate peace with Austria or Turkey. In December 1916, Lord Lansdowne asked whether the government should not try to reach a compromise peace with Germany. Yet, little came of these efforts. It was not until 1918 that Britain began to rethink its war aims.
As the war dragged on, top political and military leaders in London accepted the desirability, if not the very necessity, of reducing the power of Germany’s coalition. As Rothwell states, “What the British wanted above all in the Great War was the defeat of Germany and there was much feeling—as strong in the General Staff as anywhere—that a separate peace with at least one of her allies was essential for such a victory.” 106 In a memorandum dated November 29, 1917, General Robertson wrote: “There is no prospect of ever acquiring all those vast enemy territories which the different members of the Entente have been promised or wish to acquire; and, therefore, leaving aside these territorial gains, the question is can we get what we must get if we are to secure the future peace of the world.”107
The promises Britain made to its allies thwarted a compromise peace with Austria. In the spring of 1917. The new Austrian emperor, Karl, offered to support Allied territorial claims against Germany in exchange for the Allies dropping their demands against his empire. He proposed to sacrifice German territory in order to maintain the integrity of his own. Britain rejected the overture. Those terms conflicted with the promises Britain had made to Italy two years earlier. 108 They gave Italy “a formidable weapon in seeking to thwart Anglo-French efforts…to bring about a separate peace with Austria on the basis of only minimal territorial losses to the Monarchy.” 109
By November 1917, however, Italian military incompetence seemed to solve this problem. Italy suffered a massive defeat at the Battle of Caporetto. The catastrophe cost the Italians 40,000 casualties, 250,000 prisoners, 2500 guns, and large amounts of supplies. The losses of the combined Austro-German army were about 20,000. 110 Britain and France were forced to rush eleven divisions to Italy out fear that the Italian peninsula might be overrun. This development helped spur Britain and France to try again to reach a separate peace with Austria, only this time Italian war aims did not matter. If Britain and France wanted to make peace with Austria, Italy was in no condition to continue fighting without their help. 111
This second peace effort also failed, but for entirely different reasons. The strategic situation looked favorable to the Central Powers in early 1918. Russia had been defeated and had withdrawn from the war, Italy had been crushed militarily, Turkey showed no signs of collapse, and Britain and France neared exhaustion on the western front. In these circumstances, Austria decided to cast its lot irrevocably with the Germans. Vienna chose to gamble on German military victory rather than Allied diplomacy. 112
Britain’s inability to reach a compromise peace with Turkey replicated the pattern with Austria almost exactly. When Turkey declared war on the Allies in October 1914, London thought that it would not take much to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. As London realized that Turkey’s resilience was far greater than anticipated, British leaders contemplated reducing their war aims in order to persuade the Ottomans to leave the war. One of the first to broach the suggestion was William Robertson. In February 1916 he suggested that Britain abandon its war aims against Turkey so Turkey would abandon Germany. The problem was that London could not afford to tell St. Petersburg that it was not going to get Constantinople and the Straits. They were a primary reason why Russia continued to fight Germany and Austria and, despite many setbacks, the Russians tied down large numbers of German troops which might otherwise be engaged in the west. Russia in the war was more valuable to France and Britain than Turkey out of the war. Constantinople ensured that Britain could not have both. 113
Finally, one reason why World War I became a total war was because the antagonists were unwilling to consider alternatives to “peace through victory.” Although there were several points when the issue was raised, the Cabinet never pursued a compromise peace with Germany.
In late 1914, the war of movement was over and trench warfare had begun. Grey and Asquith rejected an indirect offer of mediation on the basis of Germany’s evacuation of Belgium. They did not believe the offer was serious. 114
By late 1916, the Somme offensive had just ended with unspectacular results. The Asquith government (now a coalition, but still dominated by the Liberal Party) was rapidly losing its stomach for further all-out fighting. Lloyd George, many conservative ministers, and Britain’s own military leadership criticized Asquith for not being willing to prosecute the war vigorously enough. In the House of Commons and the press, conservatives challenged Asquith’s right to govern.
Against this backdrop Lord Lansdowne, a moderate conservative, asked his Cabinet colleagues to consider negotiating a compromise peace. British casualties after the Somme totaled 1.1 million men, including 15,000 officers killed. In a memorandum to the Cabinet outlining his thoughts, Lansdowne wrote:
We are agreed as to the goal, but we do not know how far we have really traveled towards it, or how much nearer to it we are likely to find ourselves even if the War be prolonged for, say, another year. What will that year have cost us? How much better will our position be at the end of it? Shall we even then be strong enough to “dictate” terms? 115
He added: “Can we afford to go on paying the same sort of price for the same sort of gains?”116
Lansdowne asked in his memo that the general and admirals be requested to render a military judgment as to whether a “knock-out blow” could be delivered against Germany. The chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, wrote the primary response. Lloyd George, a man who hoped to ascend to the prime ministership and energize the war effort, encouraged him to not “be afraid to let yourself go.” Robertson wrote that only “cranks, cowards, and philosophers” would consider a peace before Germany was crushed. To do otherwise would be “an insult to [the] fighting services.” He stated that the government in London needed to show the same courage as Britain’s generals and admirals have. He assured the Cabinet that a knock-out blow was possible: “We shall win if we deserve to win.” 117 Robertson’s views here were not insignificant. He had not ruled out military intervention in British politics. He told General Murray in March 1916: “Practically anything may happen to our boasted British Constitution before this war ends and the great asset is the army—whose value will be fixed largely by the extent to which we at the top stick together and stand firm.” 118
Optimistic reports on the military situation were a common staple which Robertson fed to the Cabinet. Each time an offensive was being prepared, Robertson told his civilian counterparts that this would be the one to turn the tide—even when he was much less optimistic in private. 119
Lord Robert Cecil offered a more reasoned response to Lansdowne’s memorandum. He asked what kind of peace was possible under existing conditions. He believed that peace at the end of 1916 promised German hegemony in Europe:
A peace now could only disastrous. At best we could not hope for more than the status quo with a great increase in the German power in Eastern Europe. Moreover, this peace would be known by the Germans to have been forced upon us by their submarines, and our insular position would be recognized as increasing instead of diminishing our vulnerability. No one can contemplate our future ten years after a peace on such conditions without profound misgivings. 120
Russian power was destroyed, France was exhausted, and Britain would have few means with which to check the continued growth of German prosperity and power once peace was concluded.
Finally, some historians have noted that the British public probably viewed the mounting casualty lists as reason to finish the job. As Paul Guinn writes: “One could not betray the cause for which so many had either died or laid waste their lives….Nor could, in hundreds and thousands of homes, the thought that one’s love had given up or marred his life in vain be endured or tolerated.” 121
This policy did not change when Lloyd George became prime minister. He wanted a fight to the finish—guerre à l’outrance. As he had said in a letter a year earlier, “Only a crushing military victory will bring the peace for which the Allies are fighting, and of which Germany will understand the meaning. That victory we shall have; it will be complete and final.” 122
In the first six months of 1917, labor groups, socialists, and intellectuals began agitating for a moderation in war aims and a negotiated peace. Engineering strikes disrupted production. Socialist agitators organized demonstrations for an end to the war. The reaction of Lloyd George, the War Cabinet, and the military leadership was a stronger determination to win. General Haig, Britain’s field commander, continued to insist on military victory because in that event, “The chief people to suffer would be the socialists who are trying to rule us at a time when the right-minded of the Nation are so engaged on the country’s battles that they [the socialists] are left free to work their mischief.” 123 Lord Esher, in a letter to the King’s private secretary, wrote:
If we really defeat the enemy England will recover her balance quickly enough. If we fail to beat the enemy and have to accept a compromise peace, then we shall be lucky if we escape a revolution in which the monarchy, the Church and all our ‘Victorian’ institutions will founder…the institutions under which a war such as this was possible whether monarchical, parliamentary or diplomatic, will go under. I have met no one who, speaking his inmost mind, differs from this conclusion. 124
As Rothwell states: “To almost everyone in ruling circles the only really satisfactory answer to such developments seemed to be to press on for victory, thus vindicating their leading position in society.” 125
Yet, the loss of the Russian front and the expected transfer of a million German troops to the west sparked the British government to rethink its war aims. Russia’s final collapse in the latter half of 1917 changed the balance of power and placed the Allied cause in mortal danger.
In March 1917, British and French divisions out-numbered their German opponents 178 to 129. By January 1918, Russia had been defeated and Italy required reinforcement. Germany was transferring most of its divisions on the Eastern front to the west. It had already reached a balance with the Western allies, 177 divisions to 173. Thirty-one more would arrive in the spring. Despite American intervention, the expectation of decisive victory of the kind Cabinet ministers talked about in 1915 had all but evaporated.
Lloyd George doubted that American help would arrive in sufficient quantity to arrest the impending German offensive. Lloyd George decided to jettison idea of destroying Prussian militarism. In his famous war aims speech of January 5, 1918, Lloyd George rejected this aim (without reminding his audience that it once was a war aim):
Nor did we enter this war merely to alter or destroy the Imperial constitution of Germany, much as we consider that military autocratic constitution a dangerous anachronism in the twentieth century. Our point of view is that the adoption of a really democratic constitution by Germany would be the most convincing evidence that in her the old spirit of military domination had indeed died in this war, and would make it much easier for us to conclude a broad democratic peace with her. But, after all, that is a question for the German people to decide. 126
In a rare public speech Lord Milner, a member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, declared that the British people were “fighting for our lives.” He added: “It is not now a question of destroying Prussian militarism. The question is, whether Prussian militarism should destroy us…neither America nor this country is fighting in order to dismember the German people or to interfere with their clear right to decide for themselves under what constitution they choose to live.” 127
Lloyd George contemplated a peace in which Germany and England divide Europe, primarily at Russia’s expense. Prior to his war aims speech, “Lloyd George spoke almost with equanimity of Germany annexing Lithuania and Courland and added that in that case ‘two great Empires would emerge from the war namely the British Empire and Germany.’” 128 Nevertheless, the Allies were not willing to make peace at any price. Allied war aims were still included the self-determination for peoples, the preservation of the rights of small nations, restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the restoration of Belgium, the loss of non-Turkish lands for Turkey, recognition of the legitimate claims of Italy, Romania, and Serbia, democracy, the loss of German colonies, compensation and reparations, and a permanent peace.
Anything less than this was unacceptable in light of the casualties Britain had suffered. A major reason why Lloyd George made a public statement on war aims in January 1918 was to justify the sacrifices the British people had made. The speech was given before a trade union conference on manpower, one of the groups that favored a quick end to the war. At the beginning of his speech, Lloyd George declared:
When men by the million are being called upon to suffer and face death and vast populations are being subjected to the sufferings and privations of war on a scale unprecedented in the history of the world, they are entitled to know for what cause or causes they are making the sacrifice. It is only the clearest, greatest and justest of causes that can justify the continuance even for one day of this unspeakable agony of the nations. 129
In the final line of his speech, Lloyd George stated: “In these conditions the British Empire would welcome peace, to secure these conditions its peoples are prepared to make even greater sacrifices than those they have yet endured.” 130
The speech was not a peace offer. Lloyd George did not expect Germany accept those terms. It was an enunciation of aims to rally the British people for the fight ahead while at the same time reducing war aims somewhat to a level considered more achievable.
Conclusion
The results of the case suggest that offensive realism and the social mobilization hypothesis provide powerful explanations of British behavior, while the blood price and Cleon problem hypotheses have little explanatory power in accounting for Britain’s decisions to expand war aims, though they have some explanatory power in accounting for why war aims were difficult to contract.
Destroying Prussian Militarism
The Cabinet’s decision in September 1914 to destroy Prussian militarism provides strong confirmation for offensive realism’s hypothesis. Germany’s ultimate decision for war and the conduct of that war led British leaders to believe that a particularly brutal war party controlled the German government and that the only way Britain could be safe and secure in the future was by destroying that war party—Prussian militarism. Crucially, however, adoption of that war aims seemed to hinge very much on the assessment of costs that Britain would face to fulfill it. The Cabinet believed it low and therefore adopted the objective. Only the social mobilization hypothesis works almost as well. Destroying Prussian militarism sounds very much like a universalistic aims for which all can fight. It was publically stated over and over very early in the war, as we should expect. How do we resolve this apparent problem of overdetermination?
I would argue that the offensive realist hypothesis is the dominant explanation and social mobilization the subordinate one. The desire on the part of British leaders to destroy Prussian militarism did not come about because they felt the need to mobilize the British public for war. The Cabinet’s decision to declare war was met with great enthusiasm by the public and recruiting stations were swamped with volunteers before the Cabinet expanded their war aims. The Cabinet had no reason to find a universal goal because the war was already immensely popular. Moreover, British leaders in private letters and diaries stressed the new war aims as fervently as in public. If it were just a propaganda device intended to hide comparatively modest realpolitik war aims, we should see some evidence of that, but we do not. Finally, British leaders thought it would be a relatively inexpensive aim for them to fulfill. Indeed, the evidence suggests that if they had realized what was required to destroy Prussian militarism, it is improbable they would have adopted that goal as a war aim.
The blood price and Cleon problem hypotheses fail so poorly here that they appear to be of limited value. Britain’s war aims expanded big and early, well before there were substantial casualties. They only scrap of evidence in favor of the blood price hypothesis is in Lloyd George’s war aims speech of 1918. It does suggest that the hypothesis can help explain why a compromise peace was ultimately impossible to achieve. However, in no way does the hypothesis deserve the credit and explanatory power that some authors have attributed to it in the World War I case. Similarly, predictions of the Cleon problem hypothesis that generals would gain power came true. But often they favored more modest war aims than their civilian counterparts. Thus, the overall argument that generals gain power in war appears true, but that they favor wider war aims than civilians was proved repeatedly to be not true. Here again, however, the hypothesis had some role in explaining why a compromise peace proved intractable.
Expanding the Empire
Britain’s desire for a larger empire in the Middle East is more difficult to explain, primarily because the motivations for these new aims changed as the fortunes of war changed in Western Europe. The Cleon problem is part of the explanation. The Middle East project was first proposed and initiated by Lord Kitchener. Asquith and Grey doubted the wisdom of enlarging Britain’s holdings in the Middle East, but the field marshal persuaded the Cabinet otherwise. But offensive realism provides most of the explanation. In light of Britain’s history as an imperial power, however, the Cabinet probably did not need much persuading. Moreover, Kitchener’s motives centered on making the existing British Empire more secure—from France and Russia. He feared that after the war, they may once again become Britain’s rivals. In that event, the Empire required more security. The Middle East became the target because it was the opportunity. British civilian and military leaders—but especially the civilian—saw expansion in the Middle East as magnificent opportunity to conquer a lot, cheaply and thereby make the empire more secure against future threats—be they from an undefeated Germany or former allies.
In 1917, the war was not going well for the Entente. It was not at all clear that Germany would or could be defeated. This made the Cabinet under David Lloyd George even more determined to defeat Turkey and annex large parts of the Ottoman Empire. But the new prime minister’s motives were somewhat different from those of the old secretary of state for war. First, if Germany emerged from the war without being defeated, the German presence in the Ottoman Empire would threaten the British Empire’s postwar security. Thus, by acting first and destroying the Turkish empire, Britain engaged in preventive expansion. Second, the failure to gain ground against the German army in Europe led Lloyd George seek compensation in the Middle East for Britain’s sacrifices. He knew that if Germany were not defeated, his government would fall after the establishment of peace—unless he could present to the public other tangible gains. Third, Turkey provided a military opportunity that did not exist in Europe. The government believed that a relatively small force (and therefore a small risk) could reap substantial gains in the open deserts of the Middle East. Finally, Britain was able to expand its war aims because it faced no systemic constraints. It negotiated with France the Sykes-Picot agreement to ensure that French would not thwart Britain’s Middle East project. Russia was bought off with Constantinople and the Straits. In short, the decision to enlarge Britain’s empire at Turkey’s expense is explained by both offensive realism and, to a lesser degree, the blood price hypotheses.
Giving Up on Destroying Prussian Militarism
Lloyd George’s careful exclusion of “destroying Prussian militarism” from his 1918 war aims speech suggests that Britain abandoned the aim. Why? The only explanation that fits with the facts is provided by offensive realism: he did not believe Britain had the power to win such an objective. The Blood Price hypothesis has a difficult time explaining why any war aim would be abandoned in this most total of total wars. If the social mobilization hypothesis were valid, this would have been one of the few war aims Britain could not possibly give up because of its universalistic appeal. The Cleon hypothesis could explain it if Britain’s generals advocated such a contraction in war aims, but they did not. What had clearly changed in those early days of 1918 was an unfavorable change in the balance of power. Opportunity was gone.
Towards a Synthesis of Domestic Politics and Offensive Realism
Integrating the domestic politics and offensive realist hypotheses examined here is not easy. What I offer here are a set of propositions (deduced from the analysis above) that with more theoretical refinement and testing later may find themselves worked into realist theory.
1.States fighting defensive or offensive wars against large threats are likely to use universal appeals to mobilize their populations. Conversely, states fighting defensive or offensive wars against small threats are unlikely to use a universal appeal in preparing for the war effort.
2.States fighting wars against threats that dissipate (in terms of power) but were cheap to counter are likely to become wars of opportunity (subject to systemic constraints). States fighting wars against threats that dissipate but were expensive to counter are unlikely to end without high compensation. They will also be much less susceptible to systemic constraints.
3.The more states are fighting offensive wars characterized by great opportunity, the less influence domestic politics will have.
4.Cheap endeavors that grow more expensive as a war continues (but are still doable) will likely be accompanied by universal appeals.
5.Cheap endeavors that become very expensive will develop a life of their own—be very difficult to end—until the expense becomes overwhelming.
But that integration will have to wait for another day.
Endnotes
*: Prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 16–20, 1999. Back.
Note 1: See Eric J. Labs, “Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims, ” Security Studies 6 (Summer 1997), 1-49. Back.
Note 2: Jay L. Kaplan, “Victor and Vanquished,” in Stuart Albert and Edward C. Luck, eds., On the Endings of Wars (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980), 75. Back.
Note 3: For broader exploration and elaboration on “images” in international relations, see Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). Back.
Note 4: I do not spend much time on the first image explanation here because I think the less persuasive and certainly the less testable variant. Nevertheless, it ’s argument is psychological. Proposed by Robert Jervis, it expects that individuals want to see and do see their actions as rational and consistent. “If a person is to see his own decisions as wise and his behavior as consistent, he will have to believe that his gains are proportionate to the resources expended.” Thus, statesmen in wartime who have made decisions which have had great costs in men and material must justify to themselves that the gain was worth the sacrifice. This may take the form of placing an exaggerated value on the gain achieved. Or statesmen may expand war aims to bring gains or expected gains into line with sacrifices and expenditures. For example, in 1941, Prime Minister Tojo seemed to justify Japan’s continued operations in China in these terms: “[The war] has cost us well over 100,000 men dead and wounded, [the grief of] their bereaved families, hardship for four years, and a national expenditure of several tens of billions of yen. We must by all means get satisfactory results from this.” Quoted in Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 398. Back.
Note 5: While no scholarly work examines this issue, the literature on diversionary theories of war is related and suggestive. This body of work tests whether statesmen start wars to solidify and strengthen their domestic political position. For major works, see Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Arno Mayer, “Internal Causes and Purposes of War in Europe, 1870-1956,” Journal of Modern History 41 (September 1969): 291-303; John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973); Joseph Scolnick, Jr., “An Appraisal of Studies of the Linkages between Domestic and International Conflict,” Comparative Political Studies 6 (1974): 485-509; Arthur Stein, “Conflict and Cohesion,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 20 (March 1976): 143-172. For interesting critiques, see Blainey, Causes of War, chapter 5; Jack S. Levy, “The Diversionary Theory of War: A Critique,” in Manus Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989): 259-288; and John A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 208-210. Back.
Note 6: See Fred Charles Ikle, Every War Must End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 74. Back.
Note 7: However, even weak authoritarian regimes, ones that perhaps have already made a number of mistakes, will take measures and pursue policies to try to build popular support for their governments. This will make them more sensitive to the costs their people are bearing in order to prevent further erosion of their legitimacy more quickly than strong authoritarian governments. Thus, sometimes weak authoritarian and democratic governments may behave similarly. Back.
Note 8: One should add that these two variations of the blood price hypothesis are not mutually exclusive. They can be reinforcing. Both employ sunk-cost dynamics. Justifying aims to oneself and to one’s supporters can be a reinforcing exercise. Back.
Note 9: For a related discussion, see George W. Downs, “The Lessons of Disengagement,” in Ariel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman, Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992): 285-300. Political leaders engaged in risky interventions engage in a behavior which Downs calls “gambling for resurrection.” That is the “phenomenon whereby individuals engage in increasingly high payoff, low probability wagers to salvage past losses.” (287). This strongly resembles the domestic legitimacy side of the Blood Price hypothesis. Back.
Note 10: Ikle, Every War Must End, 74. Back.
Note 11: Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York: Peter Smith, 1938), 47. Vasquez makes a similar argument with respect to arms races. See Vasquez, War Puzzle, 178. Back.
Note 12: For major works, see Graham T. Allison, Essence of a Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); and Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” in American Foreign Policy, 378-408. For critiques of this approach, see Stephen D. Krasner, “Are Bureaucracies Important? (Or Allison Wonderland)”; and Robert J. Art, “Bureaucratic Politics and American Foreign Policy: A Critique,” in American Foreign Policy, 419-458. In addition, see the literature on civil-military relations: Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977); Clausewitz, On War ; Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd edition (London: Methuen, 1961); Samuel Huntington, The Solider and the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1957); Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy: The Soldier and the Conduct of Foreign Relations (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1950); idem, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (New York: Free Press, 1959). Back.
Note 13: Ikle, Every War Must End, 13. Back.
Note 14: In this section, I have relied most heavily on Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises ; Stephen Van Evera, “Causes of War” (Ph.D. Dissertation: University of California Berkeley, 1984); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: Britain, France, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); and Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). Back.
Note 15: One caveat here is that an individual general seeking more prestige through higher war aims does not have to apply only to the era of the professional military. It theoretically could apply at any point in history. This “prestige” only hypothesis deserves more research and much more thorough testing than I am doing here. To truly test its validity, one would at least need to include several cases from the era of the pre-professional military. Back.
Note 16: John J. Mearsheimer, “False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 11-12. Back.
Note 17: The offense-defense balance of military technology does not really matter to offensive realists because weapons cannot be classified as offensive or defensive. Moreover, policy-makers are constantly trying to find ways to reduce the costs of conflict and thereby make war a viable option and achieve victory regardless of the overall balance of military technology. Indeed, the offense-defense balance is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish even if you use a broad definition to include the likelihood of balancing behavior in the international system. See John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 24-30; Jonathan Shimshoni, “Technology, Military Advantage and World War I: A Case for Military Entrepreneurship,” International Security 15 (Winter 1991): 187-215 . For a broad critique of the offense-defense approach to international relations and strategy, see Jack S. Levy, “The Offense/Defense Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis,” International Studies Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Spring 1990), 222-230. For a recent, though ultimately unpersuasive, attempt to resolve some of the problems with the offense-defense approach, see Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 660-691. Back.
Note 18: Following in Waltz ’s footsteps, an analogy from microeconomics may serve to illustrate my central point. The assumption that states try to increase security by continuously striving to increase relative power is not unlike the assumption in microeconomic theory that firms in the market place try to maximize their profits. This is not to say that every single firm tries to maximize profit, but most do. Similarly, not every single state will seek to maximize relative power, but most will do so—within the constraints imposed by their position and a cost-benefit calculation—if they wish to survive. Not unlike states in search of more power and security, firms take advantage of opportunities to make more money where they can. If they are half way through their fiscal year and have earned a decent profit, they do not stop, close up shop, and go home. They continue to try to earn as much profit as possible. Likewise, states will constantly seek to maximize their security, but especially when doing so is perceived to be easy and cheap or when they are fearful and feeling insecure. The analogy is not exact, however, because firms tend to be more concerned with absolute, not relative profit. Back.
Note 19: See Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).. For other works on threat and threat perception, see Raymond Cohen, Threat Perception in International Crisis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979); D. A. Baldwin, “Thinking About Threats,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15 (1971): 71-78; Klaus Knorr, “Threat Perception,” in Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, ed. Klaus Knorr (Wichita: University Press of Kansas, 1976), 78-119; Thomas W. Milburn and Kenneth H. Watman, On the Nature of Threat: A Social Psychological Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1981); Dina A. Zinnes, Robert C. North, and Howard E. Koch, Jr. “Capability, Threat, and the Outbreak of War,” in International Politics and Foreign Policy, ed. James N. Rosenau (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), 469-482; Dina A. Zinnes et al., “The Expression and Perception of Hostility in Prewar Crisis: 1914,” in Quantitative International Politics, ed. J. D. Singer (New York, 1968), 85-119. For an emphasis on the cognitive problems in perceiving threat, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Affairs (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.) Back.
Note 20: This argument has a logical opposite. Rather than expand its war aims in the face of a threat, a state may attempt to appease its opponent by yielding some or all of its war aims. But this type of phenomenon seems much more likely to explain some foreign policy behavior of states than war aims policy. Once a state is at war with another, the ambiguity in the relationship is largely over. There is no question who the enemy is. The only question is how a great a threat it poses. States will only resort to the appeasement route if it has no other choice. That is, war aims will likely contract if the enemy has grown so strong during the war that expanded war aims will prove impossible to achieve. Back.
Note 21: Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 67. Back.
Note 22: Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 191. Back.
Note 23: Interventions or threats of intervention that do not or would not change the balance of power are not nearly as significant. Back.
Note 24: Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (New York: Free Press, 1988, 3rd ed.), 57. Back.
Note 25: These three forms of opportunity (or constraint) are closely related, but they are not identical to each other. A military victory may cause a state to believe that it can win greater aims, but it does not automatically mean that they believe that those new war aims can be achieved cheaply. In practice, of course, this is usually the case, but it is necessary to maintain the theoretical distinction. Back.
Note 26: They can’t, according to defensive realism. If a state is winning or has won a war decisively, defensive realism would not predict that a state would want wider war aims. The threat is becoming less prevalent and, therefore, less a driver of a state’s policy. Back.
Note 27: See R. J. Crampton, The Hollow Detente: Anglo-German Relations in the Balkans, 1911-1914 (London: George Prior, 1977); Michael G. Ekstein, “Great Britain and the Triple Entente on the Eve of the Sarajevo Crisis,” in British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey, ed. F. H. Hinsley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 343; Sean Lynn-Jones, “Detente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations, 1911-1914,” International Security 11 (Fall 1986): 121-150; Zara S. Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977); and Bernadotte E. Schmitt, The Coming of the War, 1914, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930). For historians who minimize the notion of a detente, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980); R. T. B. Langhorne, “Great Britain and Germany, 1911-1914,” in British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey ; and K. G. Robbins, “The Foreign Secretary, the Cabinet, Parliament and the Parties,” in British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey . Back.
Note 28: For details, see Lynn-Jones, “Detente and Deterrence,” 129-133. Back.
Note 29: Grey to Buchanan, June 7, 1914, Grey Papers, F.O. 800/74, Public Records Office, Kew, England. Back.
Note 30: Quoted in Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 123. Back.
Note 31: Grey to Goschen, June 29, 1914, in British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1878-1814, ed. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, vol. XI (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1926), document #4. Hereafter cited as British Documents, followed by volume and document numbers. Back.
Note 32: Quoted in A.J.P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent Over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1957), 126. Back.
Note 33: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 215. Back.
Note 34: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 112-114; Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 220-222. Back.
Note 35: Telegram, Grey to Goschen, July 30, 1914, British Documents, vol. XI, #303. Back.
Note 36: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 231. See H. H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, selected and edited Michael and Eleanor Brock (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 146. Back.
Note 37: Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 123. Back.
Note 38: Grey to Bertie, telegram, August 1, 1914, British Documents, vol. XI, #427. Back.
Note 39: Grey and Asquith and other advocates of intervention feared that should they push the issue, they would probably win, but a large minority of the Cabinet would resign. Asquith in particular did not want this to happen. He believed that it was essential for Britain’s government to lead the country to war united. See Steiner, Britain and the Origins the First World War, 235-236. Back.
Note 40: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 141. These were the same arguments Grey then used in his discussion of France during his speech to the House of Commons on August 3. See Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five Years, 1892-1916, vol. 2 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1925), 314-316. Back.
Note 41: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 235. Back.
Note 42: Grey to Bertie, August 2, 1914, British Documents, vol. XI, #487. Back.
Note 43: David French, British Strategy and War Aims, 1914-1916 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 21-22. Back.
Note 44: Spender and Asquith, Asquith, 89-92. See also, Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986). Back.
Note 45: Documents Diplomatiques Français, Series 3, Vol. XI, Document # 612. See also, Jonathan E. Helmreich, “Belgian Concern Over Neutrality and British Intentions, 1906-14,” The Journal of Modern History, 36 (December 1964): 416-427. Back.
Note 46: Quoted in J. Hugh Edwards, David Lloyd George: The Man and the Statesman, vol. 2, intro. James John Davies (New York: J.H. Sears, 1929), 391. Back.
Note 47: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 233. For example, The Times (London) on July 31, 1914 advocated intervention on strategic grounds: “…a German advance through Belgium into the north of France might enable Germany to acquire possession of Antwerp, Flushing, and even of Dunkirk and Calais, which might then become German naval bases against England. This is a contingency which no Englishman can look upon with indifference….The safety of the narrow seas is a vital, the most vital, British national and Imperial interest. It is an axiom of British self-preservation. France does not threaten our security. A German victory over France would threaten it irremediably.” Back.
Note 48: Asquith speech at Guildhall, “The Prime Minister’s Eloquent Speech,” The Times (London), August 7, 1914. This did not, in my judgment, amount to an expansion of war aims. Defending international law and the rights of small countries was a method to couch to restoration of Belgium in more universalistic terms. The operationalization of that war aim remained the same: the restoration of Belgium. Back.
Note 49: John Gooch, “Soldiers, Strategy and War Aims in Britain 1914-1918,” in Barry Hunt and Adrian Preston, eds., War Aims and Strategic Policy in the Great War 1914-1918 (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977), 21. Back.
Note 50: V. H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 1914-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 32. Back.
Note 51: Herbert Henry Asquith, The Genesis of War (New York: George H. Doran, 1923), 31. Back.
Note 52: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 139. Back.
Note 53: Michael G. Ekstein and Zara Steiner, “The Sarajevo Crisis,” in British Foreign Policy Under Sir Edward Grey, 407. Back.
Note 54: Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, 146. Back.
Note 55: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 4. See also, Spender and Asquith, Asquith, 99. Back.
Note 56: Grey’s speech before the House of Commons, reprinted in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 321. Back.
Note 57: Grey speech to the House of Commons, August 3, 1914 in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 322. Back.
Note 58: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 142; Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 242. See also, Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 92; Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision-Making and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 16. Back.
Note 59: Lorna Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany: British Policy towards Postwar German Disarmament, 1914-1919 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 11. See also Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 82-129; Gooch, “Soldiers, Strategy and War Aims,” 21-40; French, British Strategy and War Aims, 22-23; Laurence W. Martin, Peace Without Victory: Woodrow Wilson and the British Liberals (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958), 26. Back.
Note 60: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 22. Back.
Note 61: Jaffe, Decision to Disarm Germany, 8. See also, Michael Howard, Studies in War and Peace (London: Viking, 1970), 105; Paul Guinn, British Strategy and Politics 1914 to 1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 122-124. Back.
Note 62: Jaffe, Decision to Disarm Germany, 9; Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, trans. and ed. Isabella M. Massey, vol. 3 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 498. Back.
Note 63: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 227. Back.
Note 64: See Charles Edward Henry Hobhouse, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse, ed. Edward David (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977). Back.
Note 65: Grey to Rodd, March 6, 1915, Grey Papers, F.O. 800/65, Public Record Office. Back.
Note 66: Quoted in “Sir E. Grey on German Militarism,” The Times (London), September 5, 1914. See also, Grey to Roosevelt, September 10, 1914, in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 143. Back.
Note 67: Quoted in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 121. Back.
Note 68: “Through Terror to Triumph!”, speech at the Queen’s Hall, September 19, 1914, in David Lloyd George, Through Terror to Triumph, ed. F. L. Stevenson (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), 12. Back.
Note 69: Quoted in “Ministers on the War,” The Times (London), November 10, 1914. Back.
Note 70: Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914-1935 (London: Collins, 1966), 36. See also Jaffe, Decision to Disarm Germany, 10; and Lloyd George, Through Terror to Triumph, 1-16, 46-60. Back.
Note 71: Asquith Speech at Carditt, “A Page of Secret History,” The Times (London), October 3, 1914. See also, Spender and Asquith, Asquith, 99. Back.
Note 72: The Times (London), August 27-29, 1914; and Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (New York: Garland, 1971), 67-70, 78-82. While the British government took up a very active and effective propaganda campaign at home, and in enemy and Allied countries during the war, these initial stories were the work of individuals—Grace Hume’s sister in the first case—and overzealous reporters, soldiers, and civilians in the latter. See also, M. L. Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, 1914-1918 (London: MacMillan, 1982); and Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York: Peter Smith, 1938). Back.
Note 73: Grey Speech, The Times (London), September 5, 1914. Back.
Note 74: Quoted in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 121. Back.
Note 75: Gooch, “Soldiers, Strategy, and War Aims,” 29-32. See also, David Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), 110. Back.
Note 76: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 121. Back.
Note 77: Gooch, “Soldiers, Strategy, and War Aims,” 24. Back.
Note 78: Ekstein-Frankl, “Development of British War Aims,” 126. Back.
Note 79: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 241. See also, Williamson, Politics of Grand Strategy, 364-365. Back.
Note 80: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 15. Back.
Note 81: Asquith, Memoirs and Reflections, 9. Back.
Note 82: Speech to the House of Commons, August 3, 1914, in Grey, Twenty-five Years, 322. See also, Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 237-238. Back.
Note 83: Quoted in Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916 (New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), 32-33, 35. Back.
Note 84: Philip Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London: John Murray, 1958), 285. Back.
Note 85: David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Ivor, Nicholson & Watson), 499. This was a view in which Churchill concurred. He described how Kitchener dominated Asquith such that Churchill’s own position as First Lord of the Admiralty was weakened: “I had not the same weight or authority [in the War Council] as those two ministers (Kitchener and Asquith), or the same power, and if they said ´This is to be done, or not to be done,’ that settled it.” Quoted in Magnus, Kitchener, 286. Back.
Note 86: Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 240. See also, Grey, Twenty-five Years, 71; Taylor, Struggle for Mastery, 529-531. Back.
Note 87: Asquith, Memoirs and Reflections, 20. Back.
Note 88: “´Boom’ in Recruiting,” The Times (London), August 5, 1914. Back.
Note 89: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 15, 25. Mayer states that Britain’s leaders enjoyed nearly complete unity in the country over war aims—until 1917. See Arno J. Mayer, The Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New York: Fertig, 1969), 5. Back.
Note 90: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 20. Back.
Note 91: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 25. Back.
Note 92: David French, “Allies, Rivals and Enemies: British Strategy and War Aims during the First World War,” in Britain and the First World War, ed. John Turner (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 25. French adds that: “The British did not completely commit themselves to playing a full part in the continental land war until the spring of 1916…This contradiction between limited means and total ends was to bedevil British war policy.” (French, British Strategy and War Aims, 20-21, 23). How realistic was Britain’s strategy? On the basis of information available to the British Cabinet in August 1914, their strategy was probably not unreasonable. The overt economic and military resources of the Entente appeared to be more than a match for Germany and Austria.
(See Table 6.1) Table 6.1 Power Resources of the Entente and Central Powers, 1913-1914
|
Country
|
Population (Millions)
|
Military and Naval Personnel
|
Relative Share of World Manufacturing
|
National Income (Billion $)
|
Total Industrial Potential**
|
|
Britain
|
45.6*
|
532,000
|
13.6%
|
11
|
127.2
|
|
France
|
39.7
|
910,000
|
6.1
|
6
|
57.3
|
|
Russia
|
175.1
|
1,352,000
|
8.2
|
7
|
76.6
|
|
Germany
|
66.9
|
891,000
|
14.8
|
12
|
137.7
|
|
Austria
|
52.1
|
444,000
|
4.4
|
3
|
22.5
|
* Does not include the population of the Empire or Dominions.
** Britain in 1900 = 100.
Source: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 199-203, 243. The Entente held a commanding lead over the Central Powers in every category of power resources. Britain’s strengths within the alliance were not in population or military personnel, but in financial and material resources. London possessed dominant shares of wealth and manufacturing capability, whereas Russia had an enormous population and France and Russia combined possessed large standing armies. Britain would bankroll and supply French and Russian armies in their fight against Germany. In the wars of the eighteenth century and the Napoleonic wars, Britain had aided its allies then in a similar way. Back.
Note 93: Britain’s war aims exapnded in other ways as well. To prosecute the war against Germany, particularly at a low cost, the British needed its major allies to stay in the war and they wanted others to join it. Thus Britain agreed to fight until France recovered Alsace-Lorraine, Russia was promised Constantinople, Italy was offered Dalmatia, and in the Middle East, the Arabs were offered their own independent kingdom if they made war on Turkey, Germany’s ally. These new war aims were all a means to an end—the destruction of Prussian militarism—but they still represented political objectives above and beyond Britain’s initial war aims. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Eric J. Labs, “Fighting for More: The Sources of Expanding War Aims,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994), 278-287. Back.
Note 94: Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 95. Back.
Note 95: Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 96. Back.
Note 96: Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 96. See also Magnus, Kitchener, 313-315. Back.
Note 97: Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 141. Back.
Note 98: Quoted in Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 127. Back.
Note 99: For the details, see Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 305-314. See also, C. E. Callwell, The Life of Sir Stanley Maude (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920); Archibald Wavell, Allenby of Arabia: Lawrence’s General, intro. Lowell Thomas (New York: Cowad-McCann, 1966). Back.
Note 100: Quoted in Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 126. See also Fromkin, Peace to End All Peace, 234-235. Back.
Note 101: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 286-287. Back.
Note 102: Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 301. Back.
Note 103: Quoted in Guinn, British Strategy, 196. Back.
Note 104: Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command 1914-1918, vol. 2 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961), 697. Back.
Note 105: See Guinn, British Strategy, 177-178. Back.
Note 106: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 1-2. See also, Wilfried Fest, Peace or Partition: The Habsburg Monarchy and British Policy, 1914-1918 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978). Back.
Note 107: Quoted in Calder, Origins of the New Europe, 112. Back.
Note 108: Taylor, Politics in Wartime, 111-112. Back.
Note 109: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 30, and 76ff. Back.
Note 110: Dupuy and Dupuy, Encyclopedia of Military History, 971. Back.
Note 111: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 85-86. Back.
Note 112: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 158-169. Back.
Note 113: Gooch, “Soldiers, Strategy, and War Aims,” 27-28. See also, French, British Strategy and War Aims, 165-168. Back.
Note 114: French, British Strategy and War Aims, 60-62. Back.
Note 115: Quoted in Asquith, Memoirs and Reflections, 139. Back.
Note 116: Asquith, Memoirs and Reflections, 143. See also, Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne, A Biography (London: MacMillan, 1929), 449. Back.
Note 117: Quoted in Guinn, British Strategy, 175. Back.
Note 118: Quoted in Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 7-8. Back.
Note 119: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 40. See also, Stevenson, First World War, 110. Back.
Note 120: Quoted in Asquith, Memoirs and Reflections, 148. Back.
Note 121: Guinn, British Strategy, 184. Back.
Note 122: Quoted in Guinn, British Strategy . 184n. Back.
Note 123: Quoted in Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 98. Back.
Note 124: Quoted in Guinn, British Strategy, 242. Lord Esher held an unique role in British government circles. He held no office, but was a close confidante of many ministers and certainly an influential personage. Asquith, for example, had asked him to request Sir John French’s resignation, then the British commander-in-chief. He was the preeminent member of the government’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” Back.
Note 125: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 97-98. Back.
Note 126: War aims speech of David Lloyd George, January 5, 1918, in Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2517-2518. Back.
Note 127: Quoted in Guinn, British Strategy, 275n. Back.
Note 128: Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy, 106. Back.
Note 129: War aims speech, in Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2515. Back.
Note 130: War aims speech, Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 2527. Back.
