I’m surprised no one has mentioned Pan-Slavism, which bound Russia to Serbia (and in theory other Slavs) on the basis of ethnicity. Serbian extremists and not so extremists professed similar bonds of kinship. In some cases it was a cover for more Realpolitik motives–like the rivalry between Austria-Hungary and Russia–but it was a sincerely felt ideology of ethnic brotherhood.
Against that we have Austria-Hungary, which had a lot of faults and certainly wasn’t an idealized melting pot of toleration, but there does seem to have been a genuine feeling that it would be possible for many different ethnic groups to coexist in one political entity.
Italy’s entry was certainly prompted by the desire to add A-H’s Italian-speaking provinces, so we can ascribe its war aims as motivated partly by the ideology of nationalism.
For France, Britain, and Germany, war aims appear to have had much more with balance of power politics, which don’t seem to me “ideological.”
If the OP means ideologies in the sense of what might be a generally ideal concept of government and politics (liberalism, autocracy and so on), I don’t think they were anything like as important as the dominant perceptions of inherent national interest in each of the countries concerned.
I was going to mention Pan-Slavism too: it was quite clearly an explicit concern in Austria-Hungary (possibly more among the Hungarian ruling aristocracy than among the German Austrians). Every competing power had longstanding policy ambitions, which may well have been accentuated and (when crisis came to a head) led into disaster by the miscalculations and personality limitations of individual monarchs where they had power or influence, but those underlying trends would have applied whoever was at the top of the heap in each country. Germany would still have become a contender for economic domination across central Europe, Russia would still have felt itself the protector of Slavic nationalities and Orthodox religion (especially if that was the way to have guaranteed access to the Mediterranean), Austria-Hungary would still have been suspicious of pan-Slavic movements and Russian intentions, France would still have been itching for revenge for the humiliation of 1870, Britain would, like France, have wanted to resist and upset any German domination of the Continent (but would have got itself and those it was dealing with into a muddle about just how far it was prepared to take that).
I recommend you check out the YouTube series The Great War. They cover what occurred week by week in a 10 minute episode. They started in 1914 (2014) and are currently up to week 165.
Since most of the Great Powers (except France, a Republic IIRC) started the war as constitutional monarchies ideology was not a factor. They all assumed the same underlying logic of government, a rule of the elite with varying degrees of participation by the unwashed masses. I assume it was the Russian Revolution that introduced an ideological component to continental politics that shattered this status quo. Before this, convenience made strange bedfellows. The rise of communism induced competing ideologies (i.e. fascism) as a counter-punch and made the next big war one of ideologies. Suddenly, the ideology of a foe threatened the status quo of the state and even friends of convenience could not be relied on. Churchill, for example, found neither communism nor fascism palatable but was willing to have a partnership of convenience with one (Russia) to defeat the other; but he never fully trusted the Soviets and was eventually proven right.
There was some ideological element to the propaganda of the Western allies, or at least Britain, with much talk of Prussian militarism and the Kaiser’s personal ambitions, and the defence of the rights of small nations - hardly easy to reconcile with Russia’s rigid refusal to contemplate any real democracy, let alone self-determination for its ethnic minorities. The price of America’s entry to the war was, however, Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the acceptance of national self-determination for central and eastern Europe, but since by then Russia had overthrown the Tsarist system, that was no longer an issue.
What I’m trying to say with that quote (and the background material from whence it comes) is that Keegan, a respected historian, felt that ideology and specific “goals” were subsidiary, even trivial to the cause of the war. The war was caused mostly by all the statesmen having access to these huge, fast-moving armies that had never previously existed. Some of them wanted to use them, period, and others feared their use and wanted to pre-empt them.
Right. The problem is that these vast armies were only possible by universal conscription and the turning of the whole national economy to the war. Every able bodied man would get the call on Thursday morning, put on a uniform, be handed a rifle, and head to the train station. Every rail car in the country would be hauling men and material to the front. Every horse would be pulling a wagon loaded with material.
This meant that armies of literally unprecedented size could be created and supplied and sent on the attack within days, but at the cost of causing the normal civilian economy to grind to a halt. The cost of mobilization would be unprecedented as well. But it would all be worth it if you could mobilize and win the war while your opponent was still dithering. Then your costs would be repaid by your losing opponent, who would be handing over cash reparations and lucrative colonies.
So this explains the mad rush at the beginning months of the war. Every day your nation was mobilized cost an enormous amount. You couldn’t mobilize until you knew war was immanent, yet you couldn’t wait to mobilize until your opponent had mobilized or you’d be days behind.
And so the plan was to immediately go on the offensive as soon as mobilization was complete, because you couldn’t just have your productive workers-turned-soldier sitting around doing nothing, you’d go bankrupt. Except it turned out that putting the entire country on a war footing didn’t last a few months, it lasted years, and the economic and social dislocation was unbearable.
That seems a bit facile. Politicians don’t fight wars just because they have an army. They build up an army because they plan on fighting a war.
There were governments in 1914 that had specific political goals that they wanted to achieve and they thought they could best achieve those goals by a war. The war was not an accident that just happened.
But honestly, they came in vs Germany as the Kaiser was fucking stupid enough to try to build a navy to challenge the Royal navy. This could not be borne. As soon as Bill started on it, the propaganda and public was turned against Germany.
Also, this wasn’t just ‘Germany was trying to build a functional navy and Britain told them to stop’. If Germany had just built to the point where they could comfortably beat the French navy and focused on power projection it wouldn’t have alienated Britain. But Germany built a large fleet of short-ranged ships much larger than would be needed to fight anyone but Britain, the only purpose of the large, expensive fleet was for a war against Britain directly. It was an extremely hostile action that really only served to fuel the Kaiser’s vanity, since there was no way that Britain would avoid building a larger navy to counter it, and essentially made cooperation between the UK and Germany impossible. A WWI with a neutral Britain would probably have gone very differently.
I’ve found all the following to be defined as ideologies:
nationalism
imperialism
alliances
colonization
militarism
and all of them listed as causes of WWI. Is the definition of ideology or are the above -isms, alliances and colonization up for debate as ‘ideologies’? It seems to be the latter. But surely they were all present to some extent in the run-up to the war.
Sure we could call all of those ideologies. But these weren’t ideologies that separated the belligerent powers of World War 1, they were ideologies that united all the powers.
It wasn’t like World War II where there was a fascist alliance that was ideologically opposed to communism and democracy, a democratic alliance that was opposed to fascism and communism, and a communist alliance that was opposed to fascism and democracy. Sure, the democratic side and the communist side allied with each other when the fascists attacked both of them, but the Russkis were the “one of these things is not like the others” player on the allied side. And the minute the war against the fascists was over, the Cold War began.
The axis powers had monarchs who wanted to assert dictatorship power, for whatever reason. They didn’t believe in parliament, democracy or diplomacy and pacifism (eg modern economics power to use sanctions)
They believe they had power from the fuedal history of military wins, and history wasn’t enough, one had to keep demonstrating and using the military to keep and feed power.
Its an ideology, because its not just a decision they made (To fight or to fight ) as they were expecting the masses to follow them in having this set of rules to live by.
Not really. The British opposed Germany because a victorious Germany would be The dominate military power in Europe and British foreign policy had for decades been to side against any nation attempting to acquire such power.
I thought this thread was going to be about the three royal first cousins (George V, Nicholas II and Wilhelm II) who weren’t particularly belligerent in the run-up to the war.
In fact, George and Nicholas were great friends and legendary pranksters; they looked so much alike that at family gatherings they used to swap uniforms and pretend to be each other. Such japes they got up to…and then the war happened.
Britain and France, not to mention Belgium, were no more respectful of self determination for their African and Asian subjects than the Russians were for Central Asians and Siberians. Not seeing why Russia is the odd one out here.
They weren’t the Axis powers in World War I; that’s a World War II term. In World War I, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies were generally called the Central Powers. (Britain, France, Russia, and their allies were called the Allies or the Entente Powers.)
Parliaments weren’t really an issue in the war. Britain and France had parliaments. But they were allied with Russia, which was strongly anti-parliament. Germany had a parliament and Austria-Hungary had two parliaments but in both countries, the monarch had more power than the parliaments. Italy’s king was supreme over parliament but he generally didn’t invoke his power.
But a key point is that all of the European powers saw these as domestic issues. None of them sought to change the system of government in other countries. All of the various arrangements described were seen as legitimate governments. It was not an issue anyone was going to fight over.
Political systems did become an issue late in the war. Most governments in Europe rejected the legitimacy of the Bolshevik government that took power in Russia in 1917 and some tried to overthrow it. And President Wilson had a stated policy of trying to replace monarchical governments with democratic republics. But these were policies that arose during the war and were not a cause for the war.