|
==1918–1930s== Straight after the war Allied historians argued that Germany was solely responsible for the start of the war; a view reinforced by the inclusion of 'war guilt' clauses within the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919, the German diplomat and former Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow went through the German archives to suppress any documents that might show that Germany was responsible for the war and to ensure that only documents that were exculpatory (favorable to the defendant, in this case, Germany) might be seen by historians.〔Herwig, Holger. "Patriotic Self-Censorship in Germany", pages 153–159, from ''The Outbreak of World War I'', edited by Holger Herwig. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.〕 As a result of Bülow's efforts, between 1923–27 the German Foreign Ministry published forty volumes of documents, which as the German-Canadian historian Holger Herwig noted were carefully edited to promote the idea that the war was not the fault of one nation but were rather the result of the breakdown of international relations.〔 Certain documents such as some of the papers of the Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg which did not support this interpretation were destroyed.〔 The few German historians in the 1920s such as Hermann Kantorowicz who argued that Germany was responsible for the war, found that the Foreign Ministry went out of its way to stop their work from being published and tried to have him fired from his post at Kiel University.〔 After 1933, Kantorowicz who as a Jewish German would have been banned from publishing, was forced to leave Germany for his "unpatriotic" writings.〔 With the exceptions of the work of scholars such Kantorowicz, Herwig has concluded that the majority of the work published on the subject of World War I's origins in Germany prior to Fritz Fischer's book ''Griff nach der Weltmacht'' was little more than a pseudo-historical "sham".〔 Academic work in the English-speaking world in the later 1920s and 1930s, blamed the participants more or less equally. In the early 1920s, several American historians opposed to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles such as Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Tyler Barchek, Charles A. Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes produced works that claimed that Germany was not responsible for war. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, which had seemingly assigned all responsibility for the war to Germany and thus justified the Allied claim to reparations, was invalid.〔 A feature of American "revisionist" historians of the 1920s was a tendency to treat Germany as a victim of the war and the Allies as the aggressors.〔Lipstat, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'' London: Plume Books, 1994, pages 32–33〕 The objective of Fay and Barnes was to put an end to reparations imposed on Germany, by attempting to prove what they regarded as the moral invalidity of Article 231. The exiled Wilhelm praised Barnes upon meeting him in 1926. According to Barnes, Wilhelm "was happy to know that I did not blame him for starting the war in 1914. He disagreed with my view that Russia and France were chiefly responsible. He held that the villains of 1914 were the international Jews and Free Masons, who he alleged, desired to destroy national states and the Christian religion."〔Lipstat, Deborah, ''Denying the Holocaust''. London: Plume Books, 1994, page 26〕 The German Foreign Ministry lavished special "care" upon the efforts of both Fay and Barnes with generous use of the German archives, and in the case of Barnes, research funds provided by the German government.〔 The German government liked Fay's ''The Origin of the War'' so much that it purchased hundreds of copies in various languages to hand out for free at German embassies and consulates.〔 The German government allowed books that were pro-German in their interpretation, such as Barnes's ''The Genesis of the World War'', to be translated into German while books such as Bernadotte Schmitt's ''The Coming of War 1914'' that were critical of German actions in 1914, were not permitted to be published in Germany.〔 Chapter 10 of Wilhelm II's ''Memoirs'' is entitled "The Outbreak of War". In it the Kaiser lists twelve "proofs" from the more extensive "Comparative Historical Tables" that he had compiled, which demonstrate the preparations for war by the Entente Powers made in the spring and summer of 1914.〔(''My Memoirs: 1878–1918'' ) by William II, London: Cassell & Co. (1922) pp. 245-252〕 In particular he alleged: :(5) According to the memoirs of the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, M. Paléologue, published in 1921 in the ''Revue des Deux Mondes'', the Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Militza told him, on July 22, 1914, at Tsarskoe Selo, that their father, the King of Montenegro, had informed them in a cipher telegram, "we shall have war before the end of the month (is, before the 13th of August, Russian style ) ... nothing will be left of Austria. ... You will take Alsace-Lorraine. ... Our armies will meet at Berlin. ... Germany will be annihilated." In a different approach, Lenin in his pamphlet ''Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism'' portrayed the war as imperialist, caused by rivalries triggered by highly organised financial monopolies, that by frenzied competition for markets and raw materials, had inevitably brought about the war. Evidence of secret deals between the Tsar and British and French governments to split the spoils of war was released by the Soviets in 1917–18. In the 1920s and 1930s, more socialist works built on this theme, a line of analysis which is still to be found, although vigorously disputed on the grounds that wars occurred before the capitalist era.〔Henig (1989) page 34〕 Lenin argued that the private ownership of the means of production, in the hands of a limited number of capitalist monopolies, would inevitably lead to war. He identified railways as a 'summation' of the basic capitalist industries, coal, iron and steel and that their uneven development summed up capitalist development.〔Lenin (1978)〕 The National Socialist approach to the question of the war's origins were summed up in a pamphlet entitled ''Deutschkunde uber Volk, Staat, Leibesubungen''. In 1935, the British ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, summed up the contents of ''Deutschkunde uber Volk, Staat, Leibesubungen'' which described the origins of the war thus: "Not Germany, but England, France and Russia prepared for war soon after the death of Bismarck. But Germany has also guilt to bear. She could have prevented the world war on three fronts, if she had not waited so long. The opportunity presented itself often-against England in the Boer War, against Russia when she was engaged against Japan...That she did not do so is Germany's guilt, though a proof that she was peaceful and wanted no war."〔Dispatch of Phipps to Hoare December 16, 1935 Doc 275 C 8362/71775/18 ''British Documents on Foreign Affairs'', Volume 46, Germany 1935, University Publications of America, 1994 page 394〕 In the inter-war period, various factors such as the network of secret alliances, emphasis on speed of offence, rigid military planning, Darwinian ideas and a lack of resolution mechanisms were blamed by many historians. These ideas have maintained some currency since then. Famous proponents include Joachim Remak and Paul Kennedy. At the same time, many one-sided works were produced by politicians and other participants, often trying to exculpate themselves. In Germany these tended to deflect blame, while in Allied countries they tended to blame Germany or Austria-Hungary. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Historiography of the causes of World War I」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|