EDITOR’S FOREWORD

For the ninth volume in the series on the ‘Origins of Modern Wars’ I have the privilege to present a new work by Professor William Carr. Like the previous volumes in the series, it is valuable both as a work of considerable scholarship, and as a further illustration of the complexity of the general question as to why governments have resorted to the murderous method of warfare in attempts to solve their problems, attempts which were only rarely successful in doing so.

The scholarship behind William Carr’s book is immediately obvious, and has enabled him to reduce the Schleswig-Holstein Question, and the no less complicated German Question before 1866, to lucid and convincing accounts. It has further enabled him to give a gripping and fascinating account of the crisis which led to the war of 1870, an account in which Bismarck’s own elegant, but untruthful, version is set in its proper perspective.

Bismarck, with his amoral and wholly Prussia-centred policy, exploited, but ultimately by-passed, the ideologues, so far as these wars are concerned. The German national liberals might have fought an ideological war against Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein, and against Austria over the German Question, but Bismarck ensured that no wild ideologies would turn the wars into totalitarian ones. In this sense, a Bismarck in 1914, or in Washington in the 1960s, might have saved humanity much suffering, even though doing good for humanity was not one of Bismarck’s preoccupations.

One question which came to the fore in Professor Nish’s masterly study of the Origins of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 is again relevant to the origins of the German–Danish War of 1864: what is the responsibility of the Great Powers who are – and intend to be – neutral, to stop the war from starting? In 1904 Britain and France perhaps did not try hard enough to prevent a war between Russia and Japan, which in human terms was a very terrible one. In 1864 the Danes hoped that the Great Powers – again, Britain and France – would discourage the German Confederation from going to war over Schleswig-Holstein. In Carr’s words, ‘had the international situation not been favourable, Austria and Prussia would scarcely have gone to war’.

On the vexed question of the primacy of domestic over foreign policy – or vice versa – Professor Carr has much to say, ‘Certainly,’ he writes, ‘it is far too simplistic an explanation of Bismarck’s foreign policy to attribute it to a conscious attempt to escape the implications of the domestic crisis,’ Yet he recognises the ‘mutual independence’ of the two, and so reminds us that individual political leaders do not ask themselves: ‘Am I, at this moment, concerned with domestic, or foreign, policy?’

Bismarck, being all of one piece, did not ask himself such a question. And if he wanted – and succeeded – to limit warfare, it was not for humanitarian reasons but rather because he did not want the military men to gain control. Lest we should think that Bismarck was squeamish about warfare, Carr provides us with a fascinating quote from the young Bismarck:

‘German dualism … has regularly adjusted relationships in a radical fashion by warfare and there is no other means in this present century by which the clock of development can be made to show the correct time.’

Once again, in this series’ study of the causes of wars, the question of miscalculation enters the picture. The Danes in 1864 adopted an aggressive attitude in the belief that Sweden – if not Britain and France – would come to their aid and even when the British and French – and Russian – ambassadors assured them that they were mistaken, they preferred to be optimistic against all the evidence.

And the question of the expenses of war is always present. Governments usually go to war only if they can afford to do so, unless they are blatantly attacked by an aggressive neighbour. In the summer of 1865 neither the Prussian nor the Austrian government could afford to fight another war, and so the Gastein Convention served its purpose as a holding operation. If Bismarck was insincere in signing the Convention, it is also true that the Austrian attitude was reflected in the words of the Viennese newspaper, the Allgemeine Zeitung: ‘Peace and friendship until further notice’.

On the war of 1870, Professor Carr concludes that it was ‘in essence a power struggle fought to determine who should be master in Europe’. But to conceal the truth, what Carr calls ‘the ethos of the duelling match’ had to be introduced, with ‘honour’ being ‘outraged’, ‘satisfaction’ demanded, and when no ‘apology’ was forthcoming, war became ‘the only “honourable” way of resolving the matter’. The foolish, and totally irresponsible, French foreign minister, the Duc de Gramont, was perhaps alone in believing in the reality of the duelling match. On Gramont only Shakespeare’s words are adequate:

‘Man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority

… plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.’

HARRY HEARDER

Preface

It was quite fortuitous that this book was completed at a truly momentous time in the history of post-war Europe. The fall of Erich Honecker, the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the coming together of the peoples of the two Germanies have put back on the political agenda what many of us thought was a remote prospect: the re-unification of Germany. When the story of the reemergence of a united Germany (which does not, of course, include Austria although she was for centuries an integral part of the German Reich) comes to be written it will be seen that the desire of the German people for re-unification – in so far as this can be accurately assessed – was a consequence rather than a cause of what happened with such astonishing rapidity in the winter of 1989–90. It was at best only one of several factors in the total situation. More important have been the momentous changes in the Soviet Union associated with Mikhail Gorbachev; the outcome of the revolutionary upheavals which are transforming the political and economic scene in Central and Eastern Europe; and the desire of the United States and the Soviet Union (two of the Four Powers who defeated Nazi Germany forty-five years ago) to bring about, for sound economic reasons, a substantial measure of disarmament certain to alter profoundly the nature of the Warsaw and NATO alliances and diminish correspondingly the military significance which the continued division of Germany once possessed for these Great Powers. The story of the creation of a (partially) united Germany between 1864 and 1871 also depended upon many variables: the power-political struggle between Prussia and Austria, their divergent economic interests, the military prowess of the reformed Prussian army, and on the political skill of Bismarck as well as on the desire of the articulate middle class for a nation state to protect Germany against French ambitions and to give tangible political form to the growing economic ties drawing members of the German Customs Union closer together. There was nothing inevitable about the outcome in the 1860s any more than there is today in Central Europe. The concepts of Greater Germany and Middle Europe had their supporters just as much as Little Germany. And because the Reich of 1871 was no more a ‘national’ state than the rivals would have been, the German question has remained on the European agenda in one form or another ever since. In the text I felt it would be pedantic to use the German names of well known Prussian and Austrian rulers. Similarly the anglicized form has been used for the German states. But German and Danish names of organizations are indicated in brackets as the English equivalent does not always convey the exact meaning. In Chapter 2 the Danish term Helstat has been used throughout to avoid the clumsy English ‘united monarchy’.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst for a grant and to the Leverhulme Trust for an Emeritus Fellowship which have enabled me to pursue my research in Germany. I am also indebted to the librarian and his staff at the Institute für europäische Geschichte in Mainz for their help and to Professor Erich Hoffman of the University of Kiel for permission to work in the library of the Historisches Seminar. To Longmans and to Professor Harry Hearder I am greatly indebted for their patience in waiting through one deadline after another for the manuscript. And most of all I acknowledge my indebtedness to my wife on whose good nature I have once again presumed during the months I spent grappling with the intricacies of mid-nineteenth-century Germany history. I can only hope that all of them will feel that this volume has some relevance to the present situation.

To Kathleen and Mary Louise