Diplomatic History of Europe 1500 - 2000 | The Outbreak of World War I (Lecture 25)

Lecture 25: This lecture examines the causes of the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914. This classic case of escalation is the object of one of the biggest debates in modern history, responsible for a voluminous amount of scholarship. We examine how it was that European diplomats and statesmen brought the continent to the brink of and then plunged it into an ever-widening war. We analyze in turn the main competing explanations for this route into catastrophe, weighing long-term and short-term causes, the role of intention versus accident, and the crucial question of contemporary expectations. Finally, we trace how scholarly debate has evolved and explore the current state of that debate.

Essential Reading:
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 200–17.

Supplementary Reading:
James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed.