12 April 2004 04:31
The Great Deception: The war to end all wars was started by men, leaders who lied to their people, not seemingly random
events
April 12 issue - The central event in "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad's classic novel of cowardice and
courage, is a bump. A freighter steaming across a Pacific Ocean smooth as glass on a moonlit night hits something unseen
and utterly unexpected. The lives of those swept up in the ensuing drama abruptly change forever. So they are, on a
global scale, in "Europe's Last Summer," by Boston University historian David Fromkin. "To a man or
woman in the streets of the Western world" in 1914, he writes, "nothing could have seemed further away than
war." Prosperity embraced the Continent and beyond. The world of 1914 seemed blessed by ever-growing trade and
supposedly civilizing empires. Europeans today boast of building a union free of barriers to travel and commerce, but
they would do well to look to 1914 as a reminder of what Europe can as yet only aspire to. At the time, writes Fromkin,
"the French geographer Andre Siegfried traveled all around the world with no identification other than his business
card." John Maynard Keynes remembers it as an era without exchange controls, customs or constraints on capital or
exports. What "bump" did Europe encounter, unawares, that would hurtle it into darkness? The conventional
answer is that the first world war grew from a series of accidents, culminating in the assassination of Austria's
Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Fromkin's lively yet meticulously researched book portrays the debacle as a planned
conflict, much like the Balkan wars of the 1990s, played out in a series of deceptions. Sarajevo in fact had relatively
little to do with Austria's attack on Serbia. Fromkin cites evidence that preparations for an invasion had begun
far in advance. Germany, traditionally thought to have been caught off guard by the crisis, was actually in cahoots with
the Austrians and secretly planned to use the crisis as a pretext for its own "preventive war" against Russia.
Leaders of both governments went to enormous lengths to hide their true intentions from allies, enemies and the European
public. Small wonder that many European and American officials, dismayed by Iraq, have drawn analogies to Europe's
last summer—reminding us how dangerous it can be when leaders lie to their own people.
[Newsweek International] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
