Rattling the Sabre: Weltpolitik and the Great War

Abstract

‘Bismarck had played chess; Wilhelm II played poker’ [102: p. 180]. This assessment aptly endorses the usefulness of such concepts as ‘bluff’, ‘calculated risk’, and ‘bid for world power’ in explaining the outbreak of war in 1914. It even hints at the rapid shifts between gloom and euphoria in Berlin before the final card was played during the July crisis. Yet before we address that crisis we need to consider more broadly why the Fischer controversy remains alive. We also need to survey those structural determinants of German foreign policy that have fostered the most innovative research since the 1960s and ask what was distinctive about German decision-making.