War of Illusions; German Policies from 1911 to 1914

Description

"Fischer's first book was about Germany's war aims during World War I. It wasn't until 1969's Krieg der Illusionen ("War of Illusions") that he dealt with the run-up to the war. It was here that the evidence was overwhelming. It shows that Germany's leaders were prepared for what followed: that they had calculated how to get Austria-Hungary to fight Russia rather than Serbia, were happy to cause a world war to be able to fight Russia on the terms they wanted, and expected Britain to enter the war after the invasion of Belgium. The scholars who have continued Fischer's work don't all agree by any means--there is much argument over whether foreign or domestic policy concerns played the dominant role in the decision to fight--but historians like Imanuel Geiss, Samuel R. Williamson, Zara Steiner, and Volker Berghahn have taken the framework of Fischer's thesis and fleshed it out. What we believe today is not specifically the same as what Fischer indicated in the 1960s, but he was dead right in the essentials."