We walk towards war like sleepwalkers.
I'm borrowing this image from the title of Australian historian Christopher Clark's book on the causes of World War I:
The Sleepwalkers, Summer 1914: How Europe Marched Toward War.
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These third world wars from which the world narrowly escaped
“The outbreak of the war of 14-18,
he writes,
is not an Agatha Christie novel
(…)
There is no murder weapon in this story, or rather there are. one for each main character.
Seen in this light, the outbreak of the war was not a crime, but a tragedy.
In 1914, no European leader was demented, none wanted a world war that would kill twenty million people, but together they started it.
And at the time of the Treaty of Versailles no one wanted another world war that would kill sixty million people but, all together, they still armed the infernal machine that was going to lead to it.
As early as September 7, 1914, after only a month of war, the Chief of the German General Staff who had pleaded so much for Germany to attack before being attacked wrote: "I have the impression that I am responsible for all these horrors and yet I could not act otherwise.
Everything was said about the spiral that leads to war
From September 7, 1914, after only a month of war, the Chief of the General Staff…
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