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Why Cooperation Failed in 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Stephen Van Evera
Stephen Van Evera
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

World War I arose from six remarkable misperceptions that swept through Europe before 1914. Europeans exaggerated the efficacy of offensive military strategies and tactics; overestimated the hostility of neighboring states; falsely believed that strength and bellicosity could intimidate opponents; exaggerated the economic value of empire; believed that war itself was beneficial; and taught themselves a mythical nationalistic history. These misperceptions fostered expansionist foreign policies and bolstered arguments for preemptive and preventive war. They also precluded resort to Tit-for-Tat strategies to achieve cooperation through reciprocity. All of the problems discussed in this collection of essays—perverse payoff structures, short shadows of the future, and large numbers of players—were created or exacerbated by these misconceptions. This case suggests that peace can require political action projects to control malignant misperceptions, although history warns that such projects will not succeed easily.

Type
Part II: Applications to Security Affairs
Information
World Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , October 1985 , pp. 80 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1985

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References

1 On these concepts, see Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 126Google Scholar–32, 139–41. In his introduction to the present volume, Kenneth Oye emphasizes the size of the “shadow of the future” over “recognition” as the key element in a strategic setting because recognition has less relevance to most of our cases. Recognition was a crucial part of the 1914 story, however; so I give it equal billing with the shadow of the future under the general category of strategic setting.

2 Captain de Thomasson, quoted in Luvaas, Jay, The Military Legacy of the Civil War: The European Inheritance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 165Google Scholar.

3 See Axelrod (fn. 1), 59, 128–29, 134, 139, 207. Axelrod does not recommend pure Tit-for-Tat strategies, but rather a more forgiving variant—nine-tenths of a tit for a tat—to diminish the requirement for these conditions. See ibid., 138, 186–87.

4 For more on the cult of the offensive, see Snyder, Jack Lewis, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Maying and the Disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984Google Scholar); Snyder, , “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar–46; and Evera, Stephen Van, “Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 58–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Ritter, Gerhard, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, trans. Andrew, and Wilson, Eva (London: Oswald Wolff, 1958Google Scholar; reprint ed., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 100; von Bernhardi, Friedrich, How Germany Makes War (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1914), 153Google Scholar, 155; Tuchman, Barbara, The Guns of August (New York: Dell, 1962), 142Google Scholar; von Loebell, General, quoted in Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from ign to 1914, trans. Jackson, Marian (New York:W. W. Norton, 1975), 543Google Scholar.

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8 On the evolution of Russian doctrine, see Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive (fn. 4), 157–98. Summarizing the doctrines of all three powers is Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World, rev. ed. (New York: Collier, 1962), 222–30.

9 General de Ryckel, Sub-Chief of the Belgian Army General Staff. He reportedly advised the Belgian King on August 2 or 3, 1914, that the Belgian army should “take the offensive, penetrate into the Rhine province, and march on Cologne. …” See Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols., trans and ed. Isabella M. Massey (London: Oxford University Press, 1952–57; reprint ed., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), III, 461. See also Tuchman (fn. 5), 127–31.

10 Quoted in Ritter (fn. 5), 100–101. A more reliable summary of the Entente's intentions is in Geiss, Imanuel, ed., July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War: Selected Documents (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 26–33Google Scholar.

11 Quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 118; von Bernhardi, Friedrich, Germany and the Next War, trans. Powles, Allen H. (New York: Longmans, Green, 1914), 76Google Scholar; see also 92. Similarly, Admiral Tirpitz warned in 1912 that the Anglo-French Entente ”defacto has the character of an offensive alliance,” and General Moltke declared in 1913 that general war was unavoidable: “war with France is inevitable” and “war must come … between Germandom and Slavdom.” Tirpitz, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 125; Moltke, ibid., 227, and in Hull, Isabel V., The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 241Google Scholar.

For more examples, see Geiss, Imanuel, German Foreign Policy 1891–1914 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 122Google Scholar, 152; Notestein, Wallace and Stoll, Elmer E., eds., Conquest and Kultur: Aims of the Germans in Their Own Words (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1917), 99Google Scholar, 115, 119; and Kennedy, Paul M., “Tirpitz, England and the Second Navy Law of 1900: A Strategic Critique,” Militaergeschichtliche Mitteilungen (No. 2, 1970), 33–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 39.

12 Quoted in Vagts, Alfred, Defense and Diplomacy (New York: Kings Crown Press, 1956), 297Google Scholar.

13 A. A. Kersnovskii, quoted in Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive (fn. 4), 168. See also i William C. Fuller, Jr., “The Russian Empire and Its Potential Enemies 1909–1914,” unpub. manuscript (1980), 17–18, 33.

14 McClelland, Charles E., The German Historians and England: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Views (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 208Google Scholar.

15 Quoted in Archer, William, ed., 501 Gems of German Thought (T. Fisher Unwin Ltd.: London, 1916), 113Google Scholar. For more examples, see Ascher, Abraham, “Professors as Propagandists: The Politics of the Kathedersozialisten,” Journal of Central European Affairs 23 (October 1963), 282–302Google Scholar, at 293; McClelland (fn. 14), 182, 203, 209; Archer (fn. 15), 115; and Snyder, Louis L., German Nationalism: The Tragedy of a People (Harrisburg, PA: The Stackpole Company, 1952), 146Google Scholar.

16 Langsam, Walter Consuelo, “Nationalism and History in the Prussian Elementary Schools,” in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Nationalism and Intemationlism: Essays Inscribed to Carlton J. H. Hayes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), 241Google Scholar–60, at 259; Reisner, Edward H., Nationalism and Education since 1789 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 209Google Scholar.

17 Hamburger Nachrichten (December 31, 1912), Kolnische Zeitung (March 2, 1914), and Das neue Deutschland (August 1, 1914), quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 94, 374, 244; Der Tag (April 1913), quoted in Volker R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 11) 14 (London: Macmillan, 1973), 170.1. Clarke, F., in Voices Prophecying War, 1763–1984 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 49Google Scholar, 122, 143, and throughout, reported that European bookshelves were flooded with novels that conveyed a Darwinistic image of international relations.

18 Anon, (probably William Roscoe Thayer), ed., Out of Their Own Mouths: Utterances of German Rulers, Statesmen, Savants, Publicists, Journalists, Poets, Businessmen, Party Leaders and Soldiers (New York: Appleton, 1917), 3Google Scholar; Fischer (fn. 5), 221. For similar statements, see Schmitt, Bernadotte E., The Coming of the War, 1914, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930Google Scholar), I, 102; Geiss (fn. 11), 121; and Joll, James, “1914: The Unspoken Assumptions,” in Koch, H. W., ed., The Origins of the First World War: Great Power Rivalry and German War Aims (London: Macmillan, 1972), 307Google Scholar–328, at 322.

19 Izvolsky, December 20, 1911, quoted in Schmitt (fn. 18), I, 55. For more examples, see ibid., 370, and Lieven, D. C. B., Russia and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin's, 1983), 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Quoted in Porter, Brian, The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850–1970 (New York: Longman, 1975), 124Google Scholar; Frederick Greenwood, ibid., 125.

21 On “bandwagoning” versus “balancing,” see Walt, Stephen, “Alliance Formation and tthe Balance of World Power,” International Security 9 (Spring 1985), 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walt, , “The Origins of Alliances” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1983Google Scholar); Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), 125Google Scholar–27.

22 Ropp (fn. 8), 212; Ritter (fn. 5), 163.

23 Dehio, Ludwig, Germany and World Politics in the Twentieth Century, trans. Dieter Pevsner (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 20Google Scholar.

24 Geiss (fn. 11), 136–37.

25 In February 1914, von Jagow declared: “We have not built our fleet in vain, and in my opinion, people in England will seriously ask themselves whether it will be just that simple and without danger to play the role of France's guardian angel against us.” Geiss, (fn. 10) 25. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg later confessed that he had believed before the war that Germany could intimidate Britain into abandoning her traditional commitment to maintain the continental balance of power. Fischer (fn. 5), 69. Moltke expressed similar views; see ibid., 227.

For more examples, see Thompson, Wayne C., In the Eye of the Storm: Kurt Riezler and the Crises of Modern Germany (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1985), 50Google Scholar; Fischer (fn. 5). 133.

26 During the July crisis, von Jagow argued that “the more determined Austria shows herself, the more energetically we support her, so much the more quiet will Russia remain.” Geiss (fn. 10), 123. Bethmann-Hollweg believed that the Austrian attack on Serbia might shatter the Entente by forcing Russia or France publicly to abandon the ally. See Geiss (fn. 11), 166, and Schmitt (fn. 18), I, 399.

27 Die Post, December, 1912, interpreting a Bethmann-Hollweg speech, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 241.

28 Joseph L. Reimer, in 1905, quoted in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 57.

29 Karl von Winterstetten warned in 1914 that Austria, the Scandinavian states, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey would all be lost to Germany “if Russia should gain control over one of them, and thus be able to exert pressure on the others”; hence Germany should seek to control the whole bloc. Quoted in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 60. For another example, see Thayer (fn. 18), 74.

30 Memorandum to the Kaiser's brother, quoted in Rohl, J. C. G., ed., From Bismarck to Hitler: The Problem of Continuity in German History (London: Longman, 1970), 56–57Google Scholar, 59.

31 Bernhardi (fn. 11), 21; see also 82–83. Foch, Ferdinand, The Principles of War, trans, de Morinni (New York: Fly, 1918), 36–37Google Scholar.

32 Centralverband deutscher Industrieller, and Emil Kirdorf, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 75, 81. Alexander Wirth forecast that, “if we do not soon acquire new territory, a frightful catastrophe is inevitable.” Archer (fn. 15), 53. Similar views were also expressed elsewhere in Europe: in 1888 Joseph Chamberlain warned the British that “if we were to cut adrift from the great dependencies which now look to us for protection and which are the natural markets for our trade … half at least of our population would be starved.” Porter (fn. 20), 80.

33 Basserman, quoted in Berghahn (fn. 17), 95.

34 Theodor Schiemann, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 39. More examples are in Steinberg, Jonathan, Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London: Macdonald, 1965), 57Google Scholar, and in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 89, 136.

35 Arthur Dix, 1912, as quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 31.

36 Hamburger Nachrichten, June 1910, quoted in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 113; and Die Post, August 1911, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 83.

37 According to Hofmarschall Zedlitz-Truzschler, Moritz von Lynker, the chief of the military cabinet, favored war in 1909 because he saw “war as desirable in order to escape from difficulties at home and abroad.” Hull (fn. 11), 259, quoting Zedlitz-Truzschler; Bernhardi held that “a great war will unify and elevate the people and destroy the diseases which threaten the national health.” Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 38.

This idea also had detractors high in the German government, however, and emphasis placed on it should be qualified accordingly. For examples, see Berghahn (fn. 17), 82, 97, and throughout; Geiss (fn. 11), 125–26; Turner, L. C. F., Origins of the First World War (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 76Google Scholar; and Kaiser, David E., “Germany and the Origins of the First World War” Journal of Modern History 55 (September 1983), 442CrossRefGoogle Scholar–74, at 470. Discussing this idea further is Berghahn (fn. 17), passim. See also Mayer, Arno J., “Domestic Causes of the First World War,” in Krieger, Leonard and Stern, Fritz, eds., The Responsibility of Power (London: Macmillan, 1968), 286–300Google Scholar, esp. 297.

38 Quoted in Kitchen, Martin, The German Officer Corps, 1890–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 141Google Scholar.

39 Bernhardi, quoted in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 43.

40 Bernhardi (fn. 11), 18,20. Other examples are ibid., 23, 37; Kitchen (fn. 38), 96. Bernhardi also believed that even defeat in war could be a healthful experience, bearing “a rich harvest” for the defeated. “[Defeat] often, indeed, passes an irrevocable sentence on weakness and misery, but often, too, it leads to a healthy revival, and lays the foundation of a new and vigorous constitution.” Ibid., 28. Bernhardi further argued that the Boer people had benefited from their encounter with British arms in the Boer War: they had made “inestimable moral gains” and won “glorious victories,” by which they had “accumulated a store of fame and national consciousness.” Ibid., 44.

41 Dr. Otto Schmidt-Gibichenfels, publisher of the Politisch-Anthropologische Revue, November 8, 1912, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 194; Alldeutsche Blatter, in 1911, quoted in Snyder (fn. 15), 241; Das neue Deutschland, August 1, 1914, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 244.

42 Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, December 24, 1912, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 194. Another observer wrote in 1907 that “War is the great chiming of the world clock … the expulsion of stagnation by progress; the struggle of the stronger and more vigorous, with the chance to create new cultural values of a richer existence; a necessity that cannot be eliminated.” Philipp Stauff, quoted in Chickering, Roger, Imperial Germany and a World Without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 395Google Scholar. The historian Heinrich Treitschke held that “war is both justifiable and moral,” and “the ideal of perpetual peace is not only impossible but immoral as well,” and that the “corroding influence of peace” should be deplored. Ibid., 395; Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 41.

For more examples, see Chickering 394–95; Archer (fn. 15), 60, 62, 69; Fischer (fn. 5), 33; Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 34, 39, 41; Snyder, Louis L., From Bismarcf (to Hitler: The Background of Modern German Nationalism (Williamsport, PA: Bayard Press, 1935), 28Google Scholar; Kennedy, Paul M., “The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900–1970,” Journal of Contemporary History 8 (January 1973), 77–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 79.

43 Quted in Stromberg, Roland N., Redemption by War: The Intellectuals and 1914 (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1982), 180Google Scholar.

44 Quoted in Kennedy (fn. 42), 82. Sidney Low wrote that wars are “bracing tonics to the national health”; and Lord Lansdowne declared that warfare would benefit society by “strengthening the moral fibre of the nation.” Porter (fn. 20), 129; Brodie, Bernard, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 266Google Scholar. See also Howard, Michael, “Empire, Race and War in pre-1914 Britain,” in Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, Pearl, Valerie, and Worden, Blair, eds., History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper (Duckworth: 1981), 340Google Scholar.

45 General Cherfils, quoted in Cairns (fn. 6), 283.

46 Quoted in Stromberg (fn. 43), 43, 51. Max Weber wrote that “No matter what the outcome will be, this war is great and wonderful.” Ibid., 52. One poet declared that the war had “swept like a purifying storm into our close and fetid atmosphere …” Ludwig Schueller, quoted in Fuller, Leon W., “The War of 1914 as Interpreted by German Intellectuals,” Journal of Modern History 14 (June 1942), 145–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 152.

47 Quoted in Joll (fn. 18), 318.

48 Kennedy (fn. 42), 90.

49 Quoted in Thayer (fn. 18), 4–5.

50 Bernhard von Biilow, Imperial Germany, trans. Marie A. Lewenz (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1915), 46–48. The writer Richard Dehmel is quoted as stating, “We Germans are more humane than the other nations: we do have better blood and breeding, more soul, more heart, and more imagination.” Schroter, Klaus, “Chauvinism and Its Tradition: German Writers and the Outbreak of the First World War,” The Germanic Review 43 (March 1968), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar–35, at 126; emphasis in original. General Bernhardi proclaimed that the German people are “the greatest civilized people known to history”; that Germans “have always been the standard-bearers of free thought” and “free from prejudice”; and that “No nation on the face of the globe is so able to grasp and appropriate all the elements of culture, to add to them from the stores of its own spiritual endowment, and to give back to mankind richer gifts than it received.” Bernhardi (fn. 11), 14, 72; Snyder (fn. 42), 70.

Price Collier, a foreign observer of this self-congratulatory celebration, wrote in 1913 that he “found this pounding in of patriotism on every side distinctly nauseating.” Quoted in Jarausch, Konrad, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 333Google Scholar.

51 Quoted in Porter (fn. 20), 134–35. Lord Curzon suggested that the British Empire is “under Providence, the greatest instrument for good that the world has seen.” Ibid., 135.

52 Quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 222; Richard Dehmel, quoted in Schroter (fn. 50), 125.

53 Shafer, , Nationalism: Myth and Reality (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955), 185Google Scholar. Also see Hayes, Carlton J. H., Essays on Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1926Google Scholar), esp. 88–89.

54 Shafer (fn. 53), 188.

55 Quoted in Kennedy (fn. 42), 81. H. Morse Stephens noted that “many English historians were fanatically nationalist and supremely insular in their conviction of the superiority of their own over every other nation.” “Nationality and History,” American Historical Review 21 (January 1916), 225CrossRefGoogle Scholar–36, at 233.

56 Quoted in Harry Elmer Barnes, A History of Historical Writing, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Dover, 1962), 216–17. Stephens (fn. 55), 232, found that the French historian Jules Michelet “was almost dithyrambic in his portraiture of the French nation which had become to him a personal hero.”

57 Quoted in Kohn, Hans, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), 300–301Google Scholar; and in Snyder (fn. 15), 141. See also Guilland, Antoine, Modem Germany and Her Historians (New York: McBride, Nast, 1915Google Scholar).

Responding to this propagandistic German education, the British classicist Alfred Zim-mern noted during the war that “Our real opponent is the [German] system of training and education, out of which both German culture and German militarism spring.” Stromberg (fn. 43), 146.

58 Barnes (fn. 56), 224. Such poisonous historical writing led one American historian to reflect on the responsibility of professional historians for causing the war:

Woe unto us! professional historians, professional historical students, professional teachers of history, if we cannot see written in blood, in the dying civilization of Europe, the dreadful result of exaggerated nationalism as set forth in the patriotic histories of some of the most eloquent historians of the nineteenth century.

Stephens (fn. 55), 236.

59 Max Weber, who became an enthusiastic propagandist for militaristic ideas in mid-life, was reportedly converted to the cause by his duty as a reserve officer: his widow wrote that the experience nurtured “a warlike and patriotic attitude which made him hope that one day he would be able to go into the field at the head of his company.” Kitchen (fn. 38), 34. Reflecting later on the effects of their service, other German reserve officers noted, “it is surprising how the uniform changes one's politics,” and marveled at “the reserve of reliable support for state policy” created by reserve officer service. Jara.usch (fn. 50), 344.

Summaries of the activities of the German Navy League are in Rohl, J. C. G., Germany Without Bismarck: The Crisis of Government in the Second Reich, 1890–1900 (London: B. Batsford, 1967), 251Google Scholar–58, and Hale, Oron J., Publicity and Diplomacy: With Special Reference to England and Germany, 1890–1914 (New York: Appleton Century, 1940), 158Google Scholar–64, 217–20. On the Navy League's “fleet professors,” see McClelland, Charles E., “The Berlin Historians and German Politics,” Journal of Contemporary History 8 (July 1973), 3–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 12–21. Longer English-language studies on these subjects, and on the activities of the German Army League, are badly needed.

60 Collier, Price, Germany and the Germans: An American Point of View (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 529Google Scholar.

61 J. Ellis Barker, quoted in Snyder (fn. 15), 254n.

62 January 14, 1914, quoted in Berghahn (fn. 17), 179. Friedrich Meinecke believed that the Prussian army “produced a curiously penetrating militarism which affected the whole of civilian life”; quoted in Berghahn, Volker R., Militarism: The History of an International Debate 1861-igyg (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982Google Scholar), 50. Other contemporaries observed that “the microbe of militarism has been inoculated into the German people,” and saw “the predominance of the military spirit” throughout the nation. Charles Sarolea, in Bourdon, Georges, The German Enigma, trans. Marshall, Beatrice (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1914Google Scholar), viii; Otto Harnack, in 1908, quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 27. Admiral von Muller later explained German prewar bellicosity by noting that “a great part of the German people … had been whipped into a high-grade chauvinism by Navalists and Pan-Germans.” Quoted in Stern, Fritz, The Failure of Illiberalism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), 94Google Scholar.

In 1917 one German official, exasperated at the control of the military over German policy, wrote that “the few perceptive persons in Germany secretly have one war aim: the destruction of Prussian militarism … No one can say it, however, because it is also an English war aim.” Kurt Riezler, quoted in Thompson (fn. 25), 126.

63 Craig, Gordon A., The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 252Google Scholar.

64 See Stokes, Gale, “The Serbian Documents from 1914: A Preview,” Journal of Modern History 48 (September 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar), on-demand supplement, 69–83, at 78–81; May, Arthur J., The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), 399Google Scholar.

65 Grant, A. J. and Temperley, Harold, Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 1789–1914 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1927), 534Google Scholar.

66 Playne, Caroline E., The Pre-War Mind in Britain (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), 162Google Scholar.

67 Military interest in purveying offense-oriented ideas was further magnified by involvement in French and German domestic political and class conflicts, which gave the militaries of these countries an even greater stake in purveying notions that enhanced their prestige, since that would strengthen them against their domestic opponents. Offense-oriented doctrines also provided the militaries with an excuse to maintain their social purity, since they argued successfully that only a socially pristine professional army could wage offensive warfare. On these and other sources of military offense-mindedness before World War I, see Snyder, Ideology of the Offensive, and “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive” (both fn. 4), throughout. More general discussions on the origins of military offense-mindedness are in Posen, Barry R., The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 47–51Google Scholar, 67–74, and Van Evera, Stephen, “Causes of War,” Ph.D. diss. (University of California, Berkeley, 1984), 206Google Scholar–14, 250–54, 280–324.

68 These third and fourth effects of European misperceptions—the tendencies to expect that cooperation would elicit defection, and that defection would elicit cooperation—affected only national estimates of the relative probability of CC, CD, DC, and DD outcomes, without affecting estimates of the rewards and penalties of these outcomes. Technically, this puts them outside the definition of payoff structure suggested by Kenneth Oye in his introduction to this volume, which referred exclusively to the rewards and penalties of CC, CD, DC, and DD, without consideration of their probability of occurrence. The probabilities of outcomes, however, affect the rewards and penalties that certain moves will produce, so these probabilities may be included as elements of payoff structure. Furthermore, players do not always deduce the probabilities of outcomes from the rewards and penalties they believe other players to perceive: sometimes they derive their predictions inductively (for instance, from others' observed past behavior). As a result, perceived probabilities are partially independent of the structure of rewards and penalties provided by CC, CD, DC, and DD, and cannot simply be inferred from this structure. A definition of “payoff structure” should capture these perceptions. Accordingly, I use “payoff structure” to include the rewards and penalties of CC, CD, DC, and DD, as well as the probability of their occurrence.

69 For more on the consequences, see Van Evera (fn. 4).

70 I am satisfied that the “Fischer school” has proved its argument that German prewar intentions were very aggressive. On the controversy over the Fischer school, a useful introduction is Moses, John A., The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German His-toriography (London: George Prior, 1975Google Scholar).

71 The dominant factions in the German government seem to have had the following hierarchy of preferences: (1) Entente acquiescence to Austria's destruction of Serbia, giving the Central Powers a peaceful victory in the crisis; (2) continental war against France and Russia; (3) the pre-crisis status quo; (4) world war against Russia, France, Britain, and Belgium. While peaceful expansion was the Germans' first preference, they recognized that the Entente would probably stand firm in a Balkan crisis, which would therefore probably end in war. They instigated the crisis anyhow, because they preferred a continental war (but not a world war) to the status quo, and because they thought they could confine the war to the continent, avoiding a world war. Viewed in toto, 1914 was thus not an example of a symmetric or asymmetric “Deadlock” payoff structure, since all players preferred a CC outcome (the prewar status quo) to DD (world war), although Germany preferred CC to DD only narrowly.

72 Crown Prince Wilhelm, quoted in Notestein and Stoll (fn. 11), 44. Illustrating this confidence, Count Lerchenfeld, the Bavarian representative in Berlin, reported during the July crisis that the German General Staff “looks ahead to war with France with great confidence, expects to defeat France in four weeks. …” Quoted in Fischer (fn. 5), 503.

73 Bethmann-Hollweg declared on August i, 1914, that “East Prussia, West Prussia, and perhaps also Posen and Silesia [would be] at the mercy of the Russians” if mobilization were delayed; Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen had warned in 1898 that “a delay of a single day [in mobilizing] … can scarcely ever be rectified.” Schmitt (fn. 18), II, 264; Ropp (fn. 8), 203.

74 On July 18, 1914, Secretary of State von Jagow expressed the common German view:

Russia will be ready to fight in a few years. Then she will crush us by the number of her soldiers; then she will have built her Baltic fleet and her strategic railways. Our group in the meantime will have become steadily weaker.... I do not desire a preventive war, but if the conflict should offer itself, we ought not to shirk it.

Quoted in Schmitt (fn. 18), I, 321.

75 Geiss (fn. 10), 84.

76 The cult of the offensive also helped to cause the arms race that gave rise to these “windows.” The logic of defense buildups on all sides rested on arguments that national security was threatened, which presumed that the offense was relatively powerful. Windows of opportunity and vulnerability opened when competitive buildups were not closely synchronized; hence the cult bore some responsibility for both the appearance and the consequence of windows.

77 For an example of such logic, see Albertini (fn. 9), II, 559.

78 Moltke favored a westward strike because “Germany could not afford to expose herself to the danger of attack by strong French forces in the direction of the Lower Rhine.” Geiss (fn. 10), 357.

79 If we imagine Europe playing a “war plans” game whose players had to decide whether to adopt war-widening or war-limiting mobilization plans, the effect of the cult was to enlarge both the penalties of CD (one adopts restrained plans that others exploit) and the rewards of DC (one adopts violent plans that entail unprovoked mobilization and attack against others.)

80 See Albertini (fn. 9), II, 581; III, 195, 250, 391; Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany, 4 vols., trans. Heinz Norden (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1969–73), II, 266; Fay, Sidney B., The Origins of the World War, 2 vols., 2d ed. rev. (New York: Free Press, 1966Google Scholar), I, 41–42.

81 Albertini (fn. 9), II, 309, 515, 541, 551, 574, 579–81; III, 56, 60–65, 105.

82 Albertini (fn. 9), II, 330–36; Schmitt (fn. 18), II, 41n.

83 See Fuller (fn. 13), 4–6, noting this policy and “the mutual incomprehension of soldiers and civilians in late Imperial Russia” that it belied.

84 Albertini (fn. 9), II, 295–96.

85 If we imagine Europe playing an “information game” whose players had to decide whether to adopt open or secret information policies, the effect of the cult was to enlarge both the rewards of DC (others adopt an open information policy that one exploits without reciprocating), and the penalties of CD (one adopts an open information policy that others exploit without reciprocating).

86 See, for instance, Schmitt (fn. 18), II, 39cm; Albertini (fn. 9), II, 429, 514–27; Tuchman (fn. 5), 143; Geiss (fn. 10), 25; Fischer (fn. 5), 133, 227.

87 See Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (January 1978), 167–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 181.

88 The Chinese did issue warnings in late September and early October, but they did not repeat these warnings after the Chinese and American armies approached each other in November (producing a battlefield first-strike advantage); they issued no ultimatum before attacking on November 26.

On this episode, see Whiting, Alan, China Crosses the Yalu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960), 92–150Google Scholar, and Alexander George and Smoke, Richard, Deterrence and American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 184–234Google Scholar.

89 Kenneth A. Oye, in “Bargaining, Belief Systems, and Breakdown: International Political Economy 1929–1936,” Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1983), chap. 3, distinguishes between “blackmailing,” “backscratching,” and “bracketing,” and discusses the greater credibility costs of concession to blackmail, and the greater likelihood that demands supported by blackmail will therefore be resisted.

90 The Kaiser wrote of the Slavs during the July crisis: “How hollow the whole so-called Serbian power is proving itself to be; thus it is seen to be with all the Slav nations! Just tread hard on the heels of that rabble!” July 25, 1914, quoted in Geiss (fn. 10), 182. On the other side, the Russian general staff magazine in 1913 expressed contempt for the Austrian army's discipline and cohesion: “The Austrian army represents a serious force. … But on the occasion of the first great defeat all this multi-national and artificially united mass ought to disintegrate.” Quoted in Fuller (fn. 13), 21.

91 The classic essay on spirals, and on the opposite danger of deterrence failure, is Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton Universit Press, 1976), 58–113Google Scholar.

92 Herwig, “Looking-Glass House: Germany in the Eras of Tirpitz and Moltke,” unpub. (1980), 48. The British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Frank Lascelles, noted of the imperial Germans: “They were the most sensitive people in the world, and at the same time it would never enter into their heads that they could by any possibility be offensive themselves, although in reality they often were …” Geiss (fn. 11), 62–63. When the British papers spoke of the “German menace,” the Kaiser angrily denied the charge, writing “We challenge nobody!” on the margin of one such article in 1905. “It is British vainness and overheated fancy that styles our [naval] building so” Steinberg (fn. 34), 22.

93 On the efforts organized by successive Weimar governments to obscure German responsibility for the war, see Imanuel Geiss, “The Outbreak of the First World War and German War Aims,” Journal of Contemporary History 1 (July 1966), 75–82. A longer treatment of this important subject is badly needed.

94 On these concepts, see Kenneth Oye's introduction to this collection.

95 For documentation, see sources cited in Van Evera (fn. 4), 76–77, 99, 102–13; for sources on Russia's belief that Germany would acquiesce to Russia's partial mobilization, see Al-bertini (fn. 9), II, 550.

96 For details, see Van Evera (fn. 4), 96–101.

97 Illustrating this mindset, one French observer warned during the July crisis that the demise of far-away Serbia would directly threaten French security, and that France had to fight immediately to prevent this:

To do away with Serbia means to double the strength which Austria can send against Russia: to double Austro-Hungarian resistance to the Russian Army means to enable Germany to send some more army corps against France. For every Serbian soldier killed by a bullet on the Morava one more Prussian soldier can be sent to the Moselle.

… It is for us to grasp this truth and draw the consequences from it before disaster overtakes Serbia.

J. Herbette, July 29, 1914, in Albertini (fn. 9), II, 596.

98 See Jervis, Robert, “Hypotheses on Misperception,” in World Politics 20 (April 1968), 454CrossRefGoogle Scholar–79; reprinted in Quester, George H., Power, Action, and Interaction (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 104Google Scholar–32, at 129; Jervis (fn. 91), 343–48.

99 Indeed, it is hard to recount the history of the period without concluding that the Entente did not “defect” first; so in this sense a “nice” strategy can be said to have been tried and to have failed.

100 See Schmitt (fn. 18), II, 90.

101 See Kennedy, Paul M., “The First World War and the International Power System,” International Security 9 (Summer 1984), 7–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 12–14, 18–19.

102 See Chickering (fn. 42), throughout. This account suggests, however, that even a more powerful German peace movement might have made little difference, since the movement failed to dispute the specific factual and theoretical falsehoods that fueled German expansionism, instead misdirecting its energies toward arbitration schemes, disarmament proposals, and general public consciousness-raising.

103 On the de-nationalization of European education after 1945, see Dance, E. H., History the Betrayer (London: Hutchinson, 1960), 126Google Scholar–50, and Kennedy (fn. 42), throughout; on the Fischer school, see Moses (fn. 70), throughout.