The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

Took me a long time to get through the book. Relationships and foreign names were hard to follow. I do like non-fiction books. I
enjoyed the historical importance of it. It was easy to draw similarities in today's world, unfortunately.

Although Professor MacMillan obviously has better access to sources than the 50 year old Guns of August in many ways her conclusions are essentially comparable. People are constrained in their choices by their personal history,notions of honour,commitment and essentially limited vision and will make poor choices. But they are capable of choice rather than puppets of an unknowing and uncaring destiny.

A lot of research was done on this book. It was very informative. My main problem with it was the punctuation and difficulty following the poor writing style. In my opinion there were numerous run-on sentences, poor grammar, etc.

Fascinating in so many respects but poor editing detracts. And at the risk of being pedantic, the absence of many essential commas (at least in the kindle edition) at times creates long unstructured sentences that make it really quite difficult to understand!

The authors research is astounding in its scope and depth. In a clear, unbiased account of the last days of another age, we are brought to understand the complexity of the web of circumstances that led to the war. If you want to know how this could have happened, read this book.

This is a good historical work, but it's taking me forever to read. It needs at least two commas in every sentence; without them, you have to go back and re-read every sentence at least twice to figure out what the author is saying. I'm a professional writer and copy editor, so I just don't understand the lazy writing and editing for such an otherwise distinguished work. This extra mental effort is such that I won't be reading some of Macmillan's other books, which I was looking forward to.

I’ve just been reading, what, I’m told is a current best seller: “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914” by Margaret Macmillan. At the turn of the 19th century no one wanted war, especially a world war. The heads of all the major administrations debated the situation for years. At the end, they all voted for war.
The author reports the process in excruciating detail. This gives me no help in understanding what went on or who, or what set of circumstances, made the war a reality. I find the same problem trying to research the “war on terrorism”. Just a lot of confused people running around committing random acts of violence for various presumed reasons.
So I gave it up and proceeded to my next book: “Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope” by Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly. Imagine my surprise when I came across the following:
“I decided to take a moment to tell them what I had learned at NASA about decision-making. I explained that phrase posted on the wall of the conference room used by the Mission Management Team during space flights: ‘None of us is as dumb as all of us.’
‘It means,’ I said, ‘that when you get together to make a critical decision, groupthink can set in. There’s all this technical information, a critical decision needs to be made, and everyone starts marching in the same direction. There might be some people who think it’s the wrong direction, but they don’t say anything. They just remain a part of the group.
‘At NASA, I’ve learned that groups can make stupid decisions that no single individual would make.’”

The book is well written and extremely interesting. The story is depressing. Comparisons with today should be left for the reader to make. I'm about three-quarters of the way through and looking forward to the end. It reads like a text book. It is easy to get lost in all the names. My father fought in WWI and so I know some of the personalities . Dad saved a lot of the news and propaganda. He became very angry when I once referred to teh Belle Epoch. Now I appreciate why he saw it as an unhappy time. The book has reinforced my cynicism concerning generals and politicians. They were all too human. I was surprised to learn how fragile the Russian, Ottoman and Austria-Hungary empires were. What a tragic mess!

This work was a bit ponderous. In some instances I felt the author was condescending. I don't need someone drawing parallels from the past to modern events for me. I am quite capable of doing that on my own.

TWTEP itself looks very interesting, and I learned a lot from the author's previous work, "Paris 1919", but the Kindle version has the usual problems: the book is full of useful maps and other illustrations that can't be enlarged, so people with less-than-perfect vision (like me) can't do much with them. I intend to return the Kindle version and look out for a paper copy.

Margaret MacMillan's account in Paris 1919 of the treaty that ended the Great War is a classic. I wish her account of the road to war were equal to it. Part of the problem is lack of focus. We learn more than we need to of the pre-war peace movement for example. What bearing did it have on the outbreak of the war? Obviously uncertainty about where the socialists stood was important, but the main importance of the liberal peace movement was that no one listened. At times the reader feels as though she has stumbled upon a general history of fin de siècle Europe.

Macmillan is also somewhat uneven-handed. The French and English are always given the benefit of the doubt, while MacMillan insinuates that the Germans in similar situations are manipulating public opinion. I am afraid that this tendency ultimately downplays the Russian and French contribution to the worst case scenario that led Europe to war in 1914. It would have been nice to see a more thoughtful consideration of France's role in encouraging Russia to transform the Balkan crisis into a European one.

MacMillan lards her account with gratuitous comparisons with the international politics of today. Some of these comparisons are more convincing than others, but as a whole they seem condescending to the reader.

With the centenary of 1914 coming up, there will be no dearth of books on the events leading up to the war. The competition will be stiff. MacMillan is especially good in explaining how the crises occasioned by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire from Bosnia on affected the environment in 1914. On the whole though, this book falls short of Clark's Sleepwalkers, and there are likely to be some other strong entrants in the next few months. If a reader decides to study the road to war, this book will have its place on the reading list. But if the reader wants to read one book on the subject, this wouldn't be the one.

A pretty good and balanced history of the events leading up to the Great War. Would have to three or four stars except the author consistently injected her opinions of current events in poorly thought out and rarely relevant parallels. Tuchman, Massey, and Fromkin are better but tend to put more blame on the Austrians and Germans.

This was a disappointing work especially after her Paris 1919 book on Versailles. The author's strengths are in diplomatic history, but here she suffers from covering the same ground many others have covered in the past century. Unlike other reviewers, I did not find her asides drawing parallels with more contemporary events bothersome, as I think readers can make up their own minds as to the applicability of her examples. The book suffers from a cursory look at war plans for the powers involved, giving little reason for the plans that were implemented or why the principals involved thought that the war would be brief. There is virtually no discussion of military history on the tactical, operational, or strategic level except for well-worn bromides about how all the powers involved believed in the ascendancy of the offensive. Why did they believe this? How did they interpret, or misinterpret the evidence from more recent conflicts, from the late 19th century European wars up to the Boer War, or the Russo-Japanese War? If you want answers to these questions, you must look elsewhere. This is a good overview of the diplomacy leading up to the war, but very little on the war, and the combatants who fought it.

Yes, this author wrote this statement in the subject in the book: "George Bush and Tony Blair used 9/11/2001 as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq". The context for this outrageous statement was that Germany and Austria-Hungary used the assassination of the Crown Prince to invade Serbia just like... (the statement above). There was no justification nor facts to support this statement.

Further, the author wrote, George W. Bush criticized his father for not finishing the job in Iraq. Again, this unsubstantiated statement was made in the context that Germany criticized Austria Hungary for not punishing Serbia and finishing the job earlier.

This is too bad, because prior to these statements, the book was actually OK, except that it was a little Anglo-Centric. Then, the author started to impugn motivations to the German and Austrian leaders to position culpability for starting the war (because they were the "conservative" countries) which made me think - well this book is a little biased. Then, the author in her impugning, made these statements which confirmed the author's bias.

Another example of the author's bias: the author missed that during the visit to Russia in July, 1914, Poincare, the President of France, pushed Russia into being aggressive with Austria Hungary and Germany in its response because he wanted those two countries to lose face and back down.

The facts are that all major European powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France and Great Britain, were responsible for the start of World War I as mentioned in the much better book on this topic, Sleepwalkers. I recommend that you stay away from this book and read Sleepwalkers.

I read MacMillan's earlier work, Paris 1919: Six Months That Ended the World, with interest and found it a valuable account of the negotiations that led to the Versailles Peace Treaty ending World War I. The War That Ended Peace? Not really worth the time to read. MacMillan really adds nothing to either the analysis or narrative of the first years of the 20th Century in Europe. I must admit, she warns her readers that the book was not her idea. She viewed "the path too well-trodden" and so she "resisted" the suggestion to write War. (p 648).

She views the events through an Anglocentric lens; often the thoughts of foreign decision-makers (and that is her focus, the Great Men of History) are depicted as "How will the UK react if I do this?" This is especially true for Austria-Hungary, Germany and most of all Russia, which she paints as near dictatorships under the thumb of their hereditary emperors. Oh, except of course when new-fangled public opinion forces their hand, that, and "honor."

I am writing this on Montenegro's eighth anniversary of renewed independence (May 21, 2008), an independence lost to Serb military occupation and French connivance as WWI ended. MacMillan is not kind to Montenegro's King Nikola, (whose name she insists on spelling as Nicholas, even as she uses the local spelling for Serbian PM Nikola Pasic), viewing his well-married daughters (to the future King of Italy and to the Russian imperial family) as impediments to peace. And in her brief summary of the war and the aftermath itself, she merely ellipses Serbia's forceful annexation of its ally. Perhaps because it does not fit her thesis.

Again, we are warned of her thesis. "Some ... were more culpable than others. Austria-Hungary's mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany's decision to back it to the hilt, Russia's impatience to mobilize, ...." (p. xxxv) The old standbys on the origins of the Great War. MacMillan also subscribes to the hoary view that Austria's ultimatum to Serbia after the death of the Emperor's heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated in Sarajevo June 28, 1914, was an intolerable affront to Serbia's "sovereignty", a pretext for war. She neatly glosses over the clear evidence that the Archduke's death was planned in Belgrade, by Serbian Military Intelligence, which trained, armed, and conveyed the terrorists to Sarajevo. The "intolerable" clauses, that Austria participate in the investigation in Serbia, and that the accused be extradited to Austria to stand trial, are surely a lesser affront to sovereignty than killing the heir to a dynastic throne. But of course the head of Serbian Military Intelligence had already tried that before: twice, unsuccessfully, against Montenegro, and once against his own King and Queen.

Unfortunately, MacMillan's Anglocentric lens does not give us any insight into the UK's decisions. It is reduced down to the "balance of power" and an unexplained if repeated assertion that German domination over France or Belgium would be intolerable to British interests. We are never told why - and this after all was the Germany of the Kaiser, the grandson of Queen Victoria who held the rank of Admiral in the Royal Navy - not the Germany of Hitler.

The all-too brief chapter entitled "Dreaming of Peace" whetted my appetite to read more of the efforts of the Socialists and advocates for disarmament in the twenty or thirty years before the War. For that, I will have to turn to her sources. (Reviews forthcoming once I have received and read a few key books in her bibliography.)

As others have noted, I too wearied of MacMillan's overly facile comparisons of the challenges faced by modern leaders to those faced in The Road to 1914. Those similes will rapidly yellow and age - perhaps not an ill effect, if it removes this work from the standard literature on the outbreak of WWI.

This was an interesting look at attitudes and perceptions of the public and politicians that provided the context for the decisions between June 28 and August 4, 1914. The book was spoiled by the author's annoying habit of drawing analogies to current issues which reflect the author's political position. I almost gave up with the book when the author suggested that Wilhelm II's approach to the Sarajevo crisis was driven in part by his need to remedy an apparent failure of his father and drew an analogy to George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush: "Like the younger George Bush nearly a century later, who blamed his father for not finishing off Sadaam Hussein while he had the chance, Wilhelm had always wanted to distinguish himself from a father he held to be weak and indecisive." The author provides a source for neither speculation. My conclusion is that the author has a fairly pronounced position on recent events--one might say an "agenda". The fact that she felt so strongly about her agenda to inject it repeatedly into this book casts a shadow over her work and led to a two star rating.

Overlong, repetitive, meandering and banal. In fairness to the author, it's tough to improve upon Tuchman's "The Guns of August" which was a riveting, breakthrough book. But if you're going to try to add to the ken of knowledge about pre-WWI international European politics, at least try to add something new. I probably would have given this book two stars but I was annoyed by the author's attempts to raise parallels to current political events which betray her bias as a typical liberal academic. If the parallels are so clear, the author need not raise them. Here they are superficial and detract from the work. It also appears to me to be an attempt to curry favor with the book reviewers who would like to see their similar biases confirmed.
In short, a waste of time and energy. If you want to have a good read about this period of history, stick with Tuchman.
I should note that I've read a few of this author's previous books (about Nixon and Mao, and the Versailles treaty) and really expected more.

Trying to understand how the First World war broke out (essentially "how we got to here," i.e., the hundred years or so of havoc and unease that the war unleashed) is something of a parlor game for historians, with some delivering top-notch work while others merely speculate. "The War That Ended Peace" is a good attempt, undone on some level by the writing. If you can forgive the sloppiness of some of its prose, you'll be rewarded with a really good overview not just of August 1914 but of the preceding decades and their importance to what happened the minute Franz Ferdinand and Sophia were gunned down in Sarajevo.

Like I said, the writing is what drags this down in many places, and which keeps me from going all in on five stars. There are times when sentences could benefit from being shortened, or merely having commas (even a comma splice would be forgivable if it breaks up a long thought that overwhelms the reader). There were many times where, as a reader, I wondered if this was a rushed job (as some of the previous reviewers have stated), and I thought it could've benefitted by a closer look at the writing and what problems were there before publication.

The history itself, capturing the sort of domino effect of how the alliances seemingly made war inevitable (even though MacMillan argues persuasively that this was not the case), is fantastic. I thought the portraits of historical figures was much needed, and it provided context to understand some of their actions. Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who's read "The Guns of August" or similarly-themed works about the outbreak of war. But be advised that the writing is not always up to the level of insights that MacMillan provides.

If I hear one more affected reference to 'Laaawd Sawlllllsbrey' I will wretch. Surprisingly, not a single comment on the Narrator but what an annoying, snobbish bore of a voice. High lilting upper crust London high brow over pronunciation makes for extreme difficulty in absorbing any of this potentially interesting material.
I read alot and enjoy non-fiction historical accounts, my forte actually, so figured 25 CDs would make for one interesting road trip. I admit only making it to Disc 4 and perhaps an inkling of discovery, continuity and connect the dots perspective but that is ALOT of time, energy and patience required to tackle the remaining 21. I am seriously considering returning.

So disappointed as I lack in-depth knowledge of the Great War precursors and need assistance to fill in missing pieces. Well, I cannot in good conscience recommend this tome of disparate efforts to convey anything concrete let alone a Road to anywhere. So off to more review comments to find a more suitable leger of knowledge.

Many people , specialists and history buffs alike, claim that World War One changed the course of modern and comtemporary history. It is considered the first modern technological war and when it ended, at least four empires disappeared from the world.
Many problems which concern the world today have their origins in this war and its aftermath.
Margaret Macmillan has written a brilliant book about the background of this horrible conflict which claimed the lives of more than nine million soldiers. This immensly readable book is not only a synthesis of things which have been published before, but is also a very broad and deep analysis of various aspects of the events that led to this tragedy.
True, Professor Macmillan does not offer any verdict as to who was to be blamed for the war. She asks many questions, offers many solutions and lets the reader decide for himself who the real culprit is, but her tendency is to support the Fischer Thesis, or in other words, she more than once hints about Germany's culpability.
This is one of the best book that were ever written about WW1 and it is more than highly recommended!

The World War II metaphor may often dominate much of our political discourse (especially in the case of foreign policy), as well as our language, and even our culture (think classic war movies), but it was World War I, President Wilson famously miss-labeled “War to End All Wars,” that spawned our modern world. One suspects that there are many reasons that the First World War doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Not only does it suffering in comparison with the oft imagined “good war,” but there is that nagging suspicion that it was a wholly unnecessary slaughter, a great grave act of idiocy that set the stage for many of the 20th century’s greatest evils. Moreover, as Professor Margaret MacMillan rightly points out in her new and excellent history, “The War that Ended Peace,” if WWII’s stage is crowded with larger than life characters – Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, etc -- WWI’s leaders seem to range mostly from the ordinary (think George V) to the absurd (Kaiser Wilhelm), to the tragic (Wilson) to the pathetic (Nicholas). Just for such small insightful gems, Professor MacMillan’s history would be worth your time. However, where her work most stands out is her interesting approach to examining the war’s causes and her ability to write well for readers with a range of backgrounds from the expert to the novice.

Obviously the First World War’s underlying causes remains one of the most examined questions in modern European history. Tangled alliances? Leaders fearing that the tide – whether of history, demography, or economics – was against them and that they needed to fight “sooner rather than later?” Convulsing nationalism, especially in the Balkans? The instability and decline of sclerotic authoritarian empires like Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary? The rigid timetables of military mobilization? All of these come up for consideration in this excellent history. Yet more interesting is where Professor MacMillan begins her examination; she starts not in 1914, 1912, or 1910 but instead looks with the many “war scares” which took Europe right up to the precipice of total confrontation between the 1870s and the outbreak of the war. By considering these instances – the Boer War, both Moroccan scares, the two Balkan Wars, the Dogger Banks Incident, etc – she offers insights into how these conflicts were avoided and how, in their avoidance, a later war often seemed to become more rather than less likely.

Similarly impressive, MacMillan never abandons the excellent narrative threads that bind this tragic story together. She conjures characters with gifts that would make any novelist proud. Thus what might have been a dry history comes to life on the page, full of real people with real regrets and very real flaws. Indeed, so flawed are some of these characters, such as Kaiser Wilhelm, one suspects that they would be taken as too impossible for fiction. Such skilled writing, and especially her eye for humor, will maintain the interest of even someone largely familiar with the period.

Of course, since near all of this material has been considered and argued over elsewhere, some readers will disagree with some MacMillan’s conclusions and may even get annoyed at her failure to thoroughly evidence her arguments. We see this, for example, in her consideration of the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, where she sees Moltke as largely blameless but instead points to Belgian resistance and logistical issues as primarily at fault. Likewise some will see her as overstating the importance of the loss of this or that player from the board for its impact on the final conflict. Despite such points with which one might quibble, she never strays from the road of reasoned and fully defensible arguments.

We always look backward into history to understand our own time and in this point is my only complaint about this otherwise excellent work. At times the author tries too hard, making analogies which neither add anything to this work nor much inform us about our modern day. Yet this is a minor point. In the end, MacMillan’s history is one that could and should provoke worthy debate and reexamination of the war that spawned the 20th Century.

A free copy of this work was provided in exchange for an honest review.

The writing style is quite good. Sadly, this book relies entirely on secondary sources. Judging by the footnotes MacMillan failed to consult a single original source. No original scholarship, but rather a regurgitation of the standard British view of the war's origins. Disappointing.

Very detailed and thorough look at the possible causes of WWI. This book is well written and explores multiple countries and angles in the search for the "guns of august." The author's book on the Paris treaty after the war should also be read. Between these two books, one should have a really detailed look at WWI and the causes of WWII.

One thought that I did have is that the author wanted so very badly to scream out that it was the Conservatives of the various countries that actually led to the start of WWI. For some reason, she just couldn't quite do it. She left little hints throughout the book that she thought they were the issue.

As other reviews have stated, the little asides throughout the whole book got to be tiring as it went on. Put a freaking footnote at the bottom if you want to add little ideas in the book.

Recommend.

I was so glad to rediscover this author, having read her excellent, insightful and touching "Women of the Raj" when it was published in 1988. The Daily Telegraph said of the author, "MacMillan has that essential quality of the historian, a narrative gift", and I wholeheartedly agree! That book sparked my interest in the history of British colonialism and the Raj, and I consider it a benchmark for what history books should be. "The War That Ended Peace" is also extremely well-written, exhaustively well-researched - even dense at times, as many here have pointed out, not for the casual reader - but compulsively readable. I enjoyed revisiting a fascinating period I hadn't studied in years (I read "Guns of August" and "The Proud Tower" in college, loooong ago), and learned a great deal I didn't know (or had forgotten) about the historical figures and events of the day, all while enjoying a ripping good, entertaining read. What else can you ask for in a history book? Or any book, really...

Professor MacMillan's subject matter is of course serious, and she gives the individuals, events and crises the gravitas they deserve, introducing the reader to each country and its power brokers in the first chapters, then discussing the social movements, ideas and influences of the period, the fledgling peace movement, the war planning, and finally the mounting, seemingly inevitable crises that built one upon another toward war. She dispels the commonly held notion that it was an inevitable, unstoppable juggernaut - the diplomats, kings and generals had managed to halt the rush to war several times in the years leading up to 1914. Rather, Professor MacMillan argues "some powers and their leaders were more culpable than others. Austria-Hungary's mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany's decision to back it to the hilt, Russia's impatience to mobilise" were more to blame, and adds that though France and Britain didn't want war, nor did they do all they could to stop it. She states the point of this book is to determine why the peace failed in 1914, why were the leaders unable to stop the rush to war?

I found her arguments convincing as to the culpability for starting the war, but as she herself admits the arguments will go on. I know I am not qualified to debate the subject, but I do know what I enjoy when reading history, and couldn't help but be delighted by her gift for clarifying the complex crises, diplomatic blunders and triumphs, the zeitgeist of the age, and nailing down the individual quirks and absurdities of the historical figures with pithy yet telling tidbits like these:

- MacMillan truly gives the reader too many wonderful anecdotes about the incomparably entertaining (and diplomatically devastating) Kaiser Wilhelm to recount, whether he's writing to "dear cousin Nicky [tsar of Russia] with much advice about how to conduct the war" or giving ham-handed and offensive speeches or interviews: "Wilhelm much preferred talking to listening...He gave over 400 official speeches as well as many unofficial ones. The whole court used to worry whenever the Kaiser was about to make a speech because they never knew what he was going to say. Often he said very silly or tendentious things indeed." The author's affection for Willy comes through - how can a historian not love this guy, he's a gold mine - but the kaiser and Germany's diplomatic blunders had me picturing "Springtime for Hitler"...
- Alexandra, wife of Tsar Nicholas: "Like Wilhelm's wife, she was prudish and unforgiving of the sins of others. She decided to invited only women with spotless reputations to court balls; the result was the elimination...of most of the leaders of society...Alexandra prided herself on her thrift and the tsar proudly wore out his clothes."
- Aehrenthal, Foreign Minister of Austria Hungary: "...was dedicated, devious, duplicitous and ruthless. His weakness was that he tended to over complicate matters. Nor was he good at taking advice."
- of Milan, the first Serbian king and relations between Austria Hungary and Serbia: "Milan had even suggested to Austria-Hungary...that it might want to annex his country in return for a nice pension so that he could abdicate and enjoy the fleshpots of Europe. Vienna turned down the offer...[and told] the unhappy Milan that he had an obligation to stay in his country and be a good ruler."
- of Milan's son and heir, Alexander: "Unfortunately for the family and for Serbia the boy grew up to be a chip off the paternal block...he married an older woman with a very shady reputation."
-of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary: "...a man who like plain food, predictable routines, and, for relaxation, hunting and shooting. He was a good Catholic without thinking much about it...He did not like unpunctuality, loud laughter or people who talked too much."
- of Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary: "He was conservative in instinct but a moderate reformer, who accepted that new classes and new leaders were bound to change the face of politics...he kept something of the decent and clever schoolboy who was shocked at dishonesty in his adult life...like other high-minded people, he failed to recognize when he himself was being ruthless or devious, perhaps because he took for granted that his motives were pure."
- of the rise of nationalist tendencies, working along with the rise of Social Darwinism and a fatalistic view that war would cleanse the impurities and purge the weaknesses of corrupt modern society: "Modernism was both a revolt and an attempt to establish new ways of thinking and perceiving and it worried the older generation...It is striking how many fears rippled through European society in the period before 1914."

Wherever a reader chooses to place blame for the war after reading this book, Professor MacMillan paints a fascinating picture of a time when the rush to declare/initiate war became increasingly common as crises followed crises, alliances firmed up, commitments and war plans were made, and perceived diplomatic slights and injuries hardened into a thirst for revenge. This is a hugely entertaining, fascinating look at a pivotal time in history, and I would highly recommend it.

Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, is a remarkable achievement. She has brought to life a long-forgotten but very important part of our shared history - the crucial years leading up to 1914.

This recreation of the past is not limited to politics and economics or even military events, but delves into facets of everyday life, the outlook of ordinary citizens, especially their attitudes toward peace and war, and the growing importance of public opinion. We take it for granted today, but in 1900, governments were still coping with their surprise that public opinion did matter. The wealthy and powerful, the aristocrats of the Old Order, could no longer act with impunity and without fear of consequence.

Events often assume an air of inevitability after the fact. We don't often think about how easily things could have gone a different way. That is MacMillan's central theme here, that war was not inevitable. At the same time, we see a sort of creeping sense of the inevitability of war pervading the international consciousness by the time the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. There were sizable segments of the populations of every country concerned who felt that war was inevitable and even relished the opportunity to avenge old wrongs, real or perceived. We see how dangerous fear can be in an international setting, because everybody feared everybody else. Feared what they might be planning, what they might be capable of doing.

One of the most striking things about the year 1900 is its similarity to our own time, and MacMillan notes many of these instances. The conservatives of the time (like conservatives of today) were terrified by changes taking place in society, terrified of losing their privileged positions in that society, and liberals and socialists and communists and progressives all wanted to make those changes: for example, the drive for women's suffrage (often violent though we don't remember that now), or the expansion of the voting franchise. MacMillan points to an instance in Hungary, where the Hungarians suppressed the rights of minorities living in Hungary yet demanded a greater share of power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Emperor Franz Joseph only ended the stand-off in 1906 when he "threatened to introduce universal suffrage in Hungary." As MacMillan puts it, "the opposition fell to pieces."

It is tragic that some of these conservatives actually saw war as a way out of the trap they found themselves in, the sense that war would somehow settle things one way or another. And it did - at the costs of millions of lives. What seems more tragic still is that many of those who could have put the brakes on the process were for one reason or another, not present in 1914 when they were needed most. MacMilllan stresses here the importance not only of the role of accident in history, but that of the individual, and her account serves as an importance corrective to the idea that people don't matter, that we are prisoner to currents greater than us. The right person at the right time can make all the difference in the world, and the world had none of those people in August of 1914.

Some of these people died of natural causes. Kiderlen the German foreign secretary was one such man, Rasputin (bizarrely) was another, and Franz Ferdinand yet another. But the most bizarre case of all is that of "radical politician Joseph Caillaux," who "might well have been the voice of moderation in France as Europe moved towards war" and who was forced to resign when his second wife walked into the offices of the editor of the "leading Paris daily Figaro" and gunned him down for threatening to publish letters Caillaux had written to her (he was still married to somebody else).

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in modern history, as the events of those days inform the world we live in. I also highly recommend that anyone interested in reading Christian Ingrao's Believe & Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine (which I have also reviewed here) read MacMillan's book first, as it provides a better understanding of the attitudes current before the First World War. You will see, for example, that those intellectuals did not develop their ideas in a vacuum, that they drew directly and critically upon the attitudes of their parents, attitudes which, sadly, were not at all dissimilar from their own.

History does matter and MacMillan has provided plentiful evidence of that truth in this highly readable and accessible account. Please read it as soon as you can.

The writing style makes this book extremely difficult to read. Too many tangents in almost all sentences make it very hard to read. Then, her political point of view is extremely liberally biased, drawing unfounded parallels to very real dangers today along with ridiculess negative comments about Us issues today. Too bad. Her book Paris 1919 was well written, easy to read, and a realistic look at the failures of the "great" powers after the war. Don't bother with this book.

Margaret MacMillan has presented a well-written, carefully analyzed, and cogently argued case for how war was not inevitable in Europe in 1914, or at least not war on the scale that it was ultimately waged. Repeatedly, it is demonstrated how the principal actors had no great desire to go to war with the other great powers (or even, quite frequently, support their allies in war), and hoped that somehow diplomatic solutions could be achieved.

And yet, Europe lurched from one crisis to the next, each time with better-equipped armies, and more firm commitments from the various powers to do what none of them really desired to do. Somehow, amazingly, everyone seemed convinced that peace could be maintained despite the various powers repeatedly moving to the brink of war, and seemed surprised (or strangely untroubled) when war finally did break out amongst the great powers in 1914.

MacMillan pinpoints three crucial developments which set the whole disastrous chain of events in motion: Germany's decision to engage Great Britain in a race of naval proliferation, Germany's failure to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, and France's decision finally to achieve détente with Britain after the nearly-disastrous Fashoda Incident. MacMillan finds no fault (initially) with surprisingly skilled French diplomacy overcoming centuries of Anglo-French hostility, but demonstrates that the inherent instability of Third Republic meant that no government would survive long enough to fashion a coherent foreign policy for the rest of Europe. A splendid effort regarding Britain was soon followed by ham-fisted diplomacy which made an already tense relationship with Germany even worse.

MacMillan, while making no bones about German responsibility for the problems in Europe, almost seems to be sorry for an unending series of German diplomatic blunders in the post-Bismarck years. Even when Germany had legitimate grievances (as in the 2nd Moroccan Crisis) and had good reason to expect support from the international community, the German government managed to make a bad situation worse, often times achieving the exact opposite of what they had hoped. With the Moroccan crises, they hoped to drive a wedge between Britain and France & only made that alliance stronger; with the Bosnian Crisis, German behavior managed to alienate Russia to the point that they felt they had no option to make firm commitments to Britain, Russia's imperial rival in Asia.

With Russia and Austria-Hungary, MacMillan weaves a tale of tottering governments somehow surviving almost total incompetence at times, while dragging down their (increasingly uneasy) allies. It is hard to imagine that war in Eastern Europe could have been avoided --- Russia and Austria-Hungary were simply too unstable internally --- but more deft diplomacy from Britain, Germany & France could very likely have contained the conflict.

Meanwhile, MacMillan tells the story (again and again) of civilian governments not communicating with their militaries, and armies & navies refusing to cooperate. Sometimes it was by design, but often it was (again) sheer ineptitude, as it didn't occur to military planners and their civilian counterparts that their plans were dangerously incomplete without input from their counterparts. Even the German general staff, for all of the fine-tuning of the Schlieffen Plan, never had a back-up plan in case the German armies were unable to achieve a quick victory over France, and it never really had a coherent plan at all on how to use the navy upon which Germany had spent so much money to build.

Great Britain (I guess) gets off with the least amount of criticism, apparently being more concerned with its empire and the government's growing awareness of imperial overstretch, and rather than being incompetent, being guilty of getting caught unawares. Probably this is the biggest problem in the book for me --- England seems to be nothing more than a bystander that ultimately gets caught in the crossfire, but clearly there has to be more to the story than that, and if critics were to attack MacMillan for a perceived pro-British bias, it would be hard to disagree with them.

Beneath all of the diplomatic bungling, MacMillan sees a current of nationalism growing in strength all across Europe, to the point that the various powers (who all had previously encouraged & exploited nationalistic fervor to achieve limited goals, like growing military budgets and splendid little wars) could no longer control events. Governments, because of public opinion, did not dare seek compromise which might result in national embarrassment. The desire to avoid national humiliation (especially in Austria-Hungary & Russia) drove the powers to make increasingly reckless decisions.

I don't think MacMillan believes that peace could have been preserved. It appears that nearly every country in Europe was trying to bankrupt itself with huge military budgets, and a financial collapse could not have been far off. It is hard to imagine that this would not have triggered a conflict sooner or later, but better diplomacy could have kept the conflict regional. Better planning (as MacMillan points out) by Germany --- such as not wasting ridiculous sums of money on a navy which could never compete with that of Britain --- could have meant that a bigger and stronger German army actually COULD have delivered a swift and decisive defeat of France in 1914 and forced all parties to the negotiating table. But ultimately she sees diplomacy and military policy being conducted by a series of individuals who were simply not creative enough to imagine an alternative to all-out war.

Other reviewers have commented on a lack of primary sources. That, and a lack of really thorough discussion of Britain's role in this whole series of crises, keeps this from being a 5-star book for me. However, the well-considered analysis of how Europe could have avoided stumbling into a self-destructive conflict makes this book highly-recommended reading as we approach the centenary of the war.

The event we were taught in school that happened in Sarajevo was just the lighting of the match to the very large powder keg that the nations of Europe had been filling for years. But, there was no shortage of powder to use in the years of war that followed those shootings.

This book is about the decade and a half (give or take) leading up to the start of WWI. While certainly not a book that could be called a "popular history", it is also not written like a textbook. The "story" flows more like a very detailed novel.

It is an impressive study of the people, places and events of that time. The incredible detail is both good and bad. There were times I wanted her to get on with the story and other times where I lost half an hour reading about people I had never heard of before. While not all of the content was of equal interest to me, reading of the phenomenal complexity of international relations and intrigue was fascinating.

While I'm afraid that I will forget more of what I read than I will remember, I am glad to have invested the time to read it.. If you have a strong interest in the subject, then grab this and dig in. If, however, you are looking for a popular history about those times, this will be far too much.

The usual summary of the years before the first World War, that "War to end all wars," typically talks about a long golden summer of peace, punctuated by a few national rivalries, and exploded by an assassination in Sarajevo. But the peace was only on the surface; long-simmering discontentment from each nation involved had simply come to a boiling point, and Sarajevo was just that final, proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

MacMillan does an excellent job of chronicling the individual situations that became the trigger of World War I, beginning with a summary of Europe in 1900, and then examining, country by country, alliance by alliance, and finally event by event every step that led to the final declaration of war. Her narrative is highlighted by distinctive personalities: the Kaiser with his deformed arm and bombastic personality; avuncular Edward VII and later his son George V, the first of two kings in a row who had not expected the British monarchy to fall upon them; Nicholas of Russia, an autocrat with poor advisers whose personal life partially led to his undoing; the aristocratic Emperor Franz Joseph; the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who hated Hungarians and Serbians, yet his assassination killed a man whose opinion might have turned the tide against eventual war, as well as their advisors, ministers, and other military officials like Britain's Admiral Jacky Fisher and Otto Von Bismarck. Events outside of Europe--in Morocco, Libya, and South Africa among others--also contributed to the breakdown of relations.

This is not a difficult, obtusely scholarly book. Its prose is precise and understandable, but because of all the actions going on "behind the scenes," it is a dense book, and one that must be read with an attention to detail so that all of the actions and how they led to war can be grasped. If you are looking for a simple overview of the causes of WWI, this is not the volume for you; however, if you are interested in the period and can give your total attention to the text, it is illuminating and rewarding.

This is a difficult review to write. VINE provides a paperback book without illustrations, maps or index.
This is not the book you will purchase and I must assume these items will be in your book.
This is a serious detailed history of the events leading up to World War I.
Most of it takes place in Europe, the balance being in what we now call the third world.
This is a very different world than ours with different countries, attitudes and governments.
Internal political considerations vary from country to county but all of them are moving to a more inclusive suffrage and social reforms.
International political considerations center on dividing most of the world between the European nations.
Germany is a new nation being less than 50 years old.
England and France are finding a way out of centuries of suspicion and hate.
Russia is stumbling into the 20th century with 17th century ideas.
The United States is not a player on the world stage but is starting being noticed.
Japan is becoming the equal of many European nations.

The author captures this world and the people in it. He explains them, their hope and fears, ideals and way of life well, no small feat.
He captures the nuances of internal relationships as they shift in a changing world.
This is a world of personalities. Much of what happens is driven by the personalities of rulers.
No one wants war but everyone wants something that others fear them having.
These needs and fears lead them into the Great War.

The problem with the book is that there is so much here. This is a major book but it could be to much for many readers.
This is an excellent choice for a book on the causes of WWI.
For so much detail, this is very readable and for those who like history enjoyable.

That War That Ended Peace is an excellent study of the events that led to World War I. MacMillan's book succeeds because she analyzes the prevailing conditions and concerns from the perspective of each of the then major powers, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Britain. Among the many strengths of this fine work are good portraits of many of the leading government and military figures of the day, most of whom, with the passage of time, are now only distant memories. As a student in the 1970s, I was taught a conventional winner's history: that the Great War was largely, if now wholly, the fault of the Germans. MacMillan, although not excusing Germany's militarism, makes it clear that such an easy answer is both incomplete and wrong. MacMillarn argues convincingly that blame cannot be laid solely at the feet of any individual or nation, but that all of the decision makers were to be faulted for failing to use their utmost efforts to avoid war. In the end, she suggests, the war happened in part because many of the combatants believed it was inevitable, and in some cases desirable. But as MacMillan concludes, there are always alternatives to war. And given the immense destruction that the Great War inflicted, human and material, the collective decision to allow the Great War to begin was both tragic and flawed.

In spite of its heft, this book does a poor job of telling why the First World War happened and how it might have been avoided. The immediate cause of the war was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, carried out by members of Mlada Bosna, a group opposed to Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). If the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 had made BiH part of Serbia at that time, or given it its independence, obviously the Great War never would have started as it did. It also could have been avoided if, in 1908, thirty years into its so-called after its so-called civilizing mission, Austria-Hungary had elected to free BiH, instead of annexing it. Yet the author fails to identify the denial of the people of BiH’s right to self-determination as a blunder that led to the war.
For decades preceding the Great War there was a growing movement among Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in favour of a Yugoslav state that would incorporate South Slavs in Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro. However, Gavrilo Princip is identified as a “passionate Serbian nationalist”, when, like the other members of Mlada Bosna, he believed in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav movement, when it is mentioned, is treated uniquely, and mistakenly, as a tool of Serbian statecraft. Ms. MacMillan makes a sneering reference to Serbian PM Nikola Pašić: “hopes of uniting all Serbs (something Pašić defined generously to incude Croatians)“. This reflects badly on her, since Pašić spoke of Serbo-Croats, and successfully sought to create a Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The historical analogies relating to South Slavs are not only off-base but gratuitously offensive. The militants of Young Bosna (Ivo Andrić, a Bosnian Croat who won the Nobel prize for literature, was one of them) were just like the members of Al Qaeda. Serbia provided military aid to Young Bosna just as Iran provides aid to Hezbollah. Ms. MacMillan leaves no stone unthrown.
One would infer from her account that Russia was to blame for the war because she did not stand aside and let Austria-Hungary gobble up Serbia. It is hard to see that this would have avoided a major European war for very long. It only would have postponed one and ensured that when it happened, it would have been fought on what for Britain, France and Russia would have been much more unfavourable terms.

MacMillan's is one of several recent books on the origins and progress to the Great War. It is well worth reading, but is not (despite jacket blurbs) either a "must-read" or definitive. Its strength is the rich context that it provides for European diplomatic and, to a lesser extent, general history in the roughly two decades leading, as the author sees it, to war. It has a point of view (or several) but does not grind axes. The scholarship is sound and many of the individual portraits and details quite compelling. The author makes effective use of extensive quotes from letters, memoranda and memoirs to weave the narrative of the march to war.

This all being said, the book has its weaknesses. The scholarship is rarely original and the analysis not especially fresh. Although the context is rich, the themes articulated tend to be loosely constructed at best and one sometimes has the feeling that the author is striving to justify her no-doubt consuming research by jamming it all in, sometimes more than once.

One particular quibble: MacMillian over-indulges odd parentheticals -- sometimes literally in parenthesis, sometimes by way of short digressions or throw-away remarks and odd comparisons. These evidently are intended to either enliven the telling or imply contemporary relevance; instead, many are shallow when not just peculiar. Is it really useful to explain Austria-Hungary's claiming the assassination in Sarajevo to excuse a long-desired attack on Serbia as being like "hardliners" around Tony Blair and George Bush using 9/11 to urge an invasion of Afghanistan "that they advocated all along" ? Are central European diplomatic maneuvers usefully compared with Muhammed Ali's "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" boxing strategy? These have the feel of clever after-dinner remarks, and are a distraction from the underlying (much more careful) history.

It is regrettable that the editor didn't have the courage his/her red pen when confronted with these distracting asides. On the other hand, perhaps they do have the unintended benefit of reminding one that unsound analogies are sometime as much a bane to the "use" of history as historical ignorance. In any case, I suggest the reader shrug these off and appreciate the sound underlying history writing of Professor MacMillan.

With this history of the years leading to World War I, Margaret MacMillan wants to convince readers that the Great War didn't have to happen, that there was nothing inevitable about the conflict, in short that leaders who had stepped back from the brink so often before could very well have stepped back from the chasm again in 1914.

She has a point. Who would have gone to war if they had understood the loss and suffering that actually occured? But despite the warning of the American Civil War, no leader had imagined what was in store. When war came, the watch word was « Back home by Christmas! ».

We all know Hindenburg and the Kaiser, Churchill and Lloyd George, and Bismarck before them. But MacMillan devotes most of her pages to other actors whose interactions and designs shaped the war many years before it actually happened.

For instance, we meet Alfred von Tirpitz who built the German Navy and thus began and arms race with the United Kingdom, one that the British Navy could not lose and one that Germany could not really afford.

We meet Alfred von Schlieffen who devised the two theater plan to allow Germany to fight on two fronts at once. After his death, the lack of ability of his successor, Helmut von Moltke, ensured that if Germany did declare war on one front, war would automatically happen on the another front as well.

Chapter after chapter, we meet diplomats and generals who approached problems piecemeal. Sometimes they were geniuses with no one of comparable talent to succeed them (Bismarck and Schlieffen come to mind) and sometimes they were ordinary people who approached a problem without thinking the consequences through (Tirpitz).

And in the end, over what? Over one assassination by a small group of nationalists in an obscure backwater of Europe? Of course not. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand did spark World War One but it lit a pyre that had been years in the building.

MacMillan insists the Great War could have been avoided but her work, to me, shows the exact opposite. If Europe was on brink of war so often that avoiding World War One would simply have been stepping back from the brink once more, doesn't that just show that had they stepped back, they would later have found themselves again on the brink? And so on and so forth...

No one seemed to ask what Europe was doing to find itself so often on the brink of war. And thus,the war was inevitable.

But what of today? Could another world war happen? The message I take from MacMillan's magnificent book is not that World War One could have been avoided, it is rather that World War Three can happen but that we can avoid it.

To do that, the first question we need to ask ourselves is why, today, the Great Powers of China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States so often take positions that risk escalating to a conflict.

Vincent Poirier, Québec City

This book is a key piece to undersrand the revealed and unrevealed strategies and alliances which has driven the world to what we observe today. Writen in simple style and parts globally well articulated. I am not sure all parties in conflict are treated without any objectivity biais. historians will judge.

If you read only one book about World War I, this should be it, although it doesn't actually cover the War itself. Rather, it explores the countries, causes, and, most of all, personalities that led to the war. It is a wonderful history, excellently written and a story excellently told. Author Margaret MacMillan thoroughly delves into the players involved, starting about twenty years previous. She gives the reader a view of what conditions were like in Europe, country by country. The reader comes to know the leaders and advisors whose intense personalities influenced and ricocheted off each other, reinforcing distrusts and prior biases. Past political entanglements are examined, along with their repercussions for the web of alliances that led to world-wide conflict; the incongruity of some of the alliances are also explained. War never 'makes sense', least of all this particularly horrendous and inane one, which for the (admittedly tragic) death of a minor ruler led to the slaughter of millions. But in //The War That Ended Peace//, finally the causes are at least understandable – but perhaps, as one sees how things could have been otherwise, more tragic for that after all.
I received a copy from the San Francisco Book Review in exchange for an honest review. The opinions are my own.

This book describes the complex mosaic of history, politics, personalities, relationships, institutions, and ideas that developed and interacted with each other through the 19th century and into the 20th century that then lead to a set of circumstances in Europe that caused the nation’s leaders to see no alternative to war. Thus World War began 100 years ago in 1914.

The book contains parallel histories of the various European countries and tries to provide an understanding of those individuals who had to make the choices between war and peace. Their strengths and weaknesses, their loves, hatreds and biases are all explored. The book describes the world they lived in and its assumptions including what people of the time had learned from previous crises.

Ironically, the long stretch of 100 years between the Napoleonic Wars to WWI of relative peace (Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, 1st and 2nd Balkan Wars were all over within a couple months) and the fact the previous conflicts had been resolved through negotiations led to a complacent assumption that the next conflict would be solved without war. Hidden under this complacency were dissatisfactions regarding the compromises that had come from the negotiations that had settled previous crises.

"What was dangerous for the future was that each of Austria-Hungary and Russia was left thinking that threats might work again. Or, and this was equally dangerous, they decided that next time they would not back down." (p.499)

Thus when the assassination in Sarajevo occurred and Austria made impossible demands of Serbia in retaliation, nobody was inclined to back down. The multiple alliances that had developed over the years complicated matters.

"By 1914 the alliances, rather than acting as brakes on their members, were too often pushing the accelerators." (p. 531)

The following are some of my observations about the history described by this book:

KAISER WILHELM'S PERSONALITY
Kaiser Wilhelm II was not a pleasant person to be around. He was loud, impulsive and had a juvenile sense of humor. He selected his advisers and top government positions, and I believe they reflected his personality. I believe this partly explains why German foreign policies tended to be aggressive and confrontational.

COLONIAL FEVER
All the European countries at the time seemed to think that the rest of the world was made for them to colonize. Since Germany was late to form as a united country they felt like they hadn't gotten their share. This also contributed to German aggressiveness in foreign affairs.

KIEL CANAL
It is no coincidence that the war began in the same year that work on widening the Kiel Canal was finished. The widening of the canal allowed the passage of Dreadnought-sized battleships to travel from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea without having to go around Denmark. Prior to completion of the project Germany had the mind set that they weren't ready for war. Thus the completion in 1914 it may have contributed to Germany giving Austria-Hungary the green light in their confrontation with Serbia. In earlier confrontations (i.e. First and Second Balkan Wars) Germany had encouraged Austria-Hungary to compromise.

GERMAN WAR PLAN COULDN'T BE CHANGED
Early in the mobilization Kaiser Wilhelm asked if Germany could mobilize for war against Russia only and not toward France. He was told by General Moltke that the Schlieffen Plan called for mobilization against both Russia and France and it couldn't be changed. He said mobilization against only Russia would cause widespread chaos. He was probably correct.

OFFENSE NO MATCH FOR DEFENSIVE WEAPONS
All the military schools prior to the war seemed to have stressed the doctrine of the offensive in the execution of war. It's ironic that the early 20th century is the one time in history when defensive weapons were relative superior to the offensive tools of war. Machine guns and repeating rifles were effective when used in defense of fixed positions whereas offensive weapons such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, and attack airplanes were in their infancy. Industrialization had developed the railroads which enabled quick mobilization soldiers. But once they were near the front they needed to use their legs. The result was a defensive war where the trenches hardly moved during its four year duration.

This book does a good job of describing a time in history which is not widely understood today. This year we're observing the centennial of the war's beginning, so it deserves to be understood a little better. The following is what the book has to say about the cause of the war.

"The Great War was not produced by a single cause but by a combination and, in the end, human decisions."

In other words, it's complicated. This is a long book (32 hours in audio format) and once again shows that the more one learns about history the less clear cut becomes the reasons for directions taken.

In her books, Paris 1919 and The War that Ended Peace, historian Margaret MacMillan has neatly book-ended The Great War. She accomplished this by setting out the circumstances that led to a war that should never have happened and the arbitrary, ill advised peace settlement that redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East, imposed an unreasonable reparation burden on the losers and led inevitably to World War II.

In The War that Ended Peace, MacMillan explains that there was no single reason that led to the Great War (not even the "shot heard round the world"). Rather, it was caused by a combination of circumstance so complex and multi-layered that it took her 645 pages to explain them. Included among these were:

* The traditional rivalries, grievances and competing interests of the major European powers;
* Petty jealousies and inept leadership of European royalty;
* The emergence of two rival power blocks - The Entente Cordiale (Britain, France and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) - with members committed to come to each other's aid in the event of war between any two;
* The erosion of the Ottoman Empire ("the sick man of Europe");
* An aggressive European arms race;
* The usefulness of external enemies as a distraction from developing social unrest throughout Europe;
* Escalating conflict in the Balkans; and

The fuse that set the whole thing off: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. By August all of Europe was engulfed in a bloody conflict that would last for more than four years.

In the book's conclusion the author attributes the failure of those who took Europe to war to preserve the peace to "a dangerous complacency in the summer of 1914... a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be and their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left but to go to war." There are always choices she says.

It's a complex story told in excruciating detail. Why should the modern reader care about events that took place more than one hundred years ago? My answer is because it provides context and better understanding of the events of the past century and of the disturbing geopolitical problems we continue to experience today.

Margaret MacMillian is a brilliant historian. Had her story telling been more succinct, I would have given her book a 5-star rating.

Barry Francis

With one notable exception, this is an excellent book that gives a detailed explanation of how Europe stumbled into World War One. MacMillan, who has a fluid and entertaining style of writing, makes a compelling case that the sheer speed of technological and social changes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries overwhelmed the often incompetent and underqualified political classes in nations such as Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Some politicians and rulers were clever but too many of them owed their positions to birth and social class rather than any personal merit. Nicholas of Russia and Wilhelm of Germany were simply not up to the job of keeping their nations out of war at the critical moment and MacMillan, helped by judicious use of sources, is very good at making this clear. That is the first major factor which explains the calamity.

The second was the rapid pace of change; the invention of machine guns and modern artillery and balloons and aircraft meant that in the next big war, defences would be much stronger than they had been before, and as a result an awful lot more soldiers were going to get killed than in previous conflicts. Few people in authority seemed to realise this. Even fewer had an idea of how to tackle the rising phenomenon of nationalism - for centuries various peoples had been happy to work as peasants, swearing loyalty to a local ruler or a distant king, not really caring too much that they were Ruthenians, Galicians etc. Austria-Hungary, which encompassed dozens of different peoples, found it very hard to deal with nationalist movements that were suddenly demanding more rights for their people and in some cases independence. The instinctive reaction was to either to say no to the various demands (as the Hungarian half of the dual monarchy invariably did) or impose a crackdown, which only increased the fervour of the nationalists, in particular those linked to the Serbian cause. Nationalism was a new challenge and few knew how to deal with it. So Austria-Hungary bungled the Serbian file horribly and MacMillan identifies this as one of the main causes of the war.

Another new phenomenon that many leaders also found hard to deal with was the emergence of public opinion. Rulers who had for centuries been able to ignore what regular people thought and felt now had to pay attention and the press helped stir up passions that could not always be contained. Britain and Germany found themselves in an arms race and many other international strains and crises in the run-up to 1914 were in part caused by leaders who felt hemmed in by the popular mood. Dysfunctional political and military systems in several major states also caused enormous problems, particularly in Germany, where the top soldiers did not feel obliged to share the details of their plans and the implications. Time and time again MacMillan shows stressed, underinformed and often incompetent politicians making grave errors and having to be rescued. Europe survived a series of crises from 1905 to 1913 and yet managed to avoid a general war, each time being rescued by major powers agreeing to step back from the brink. By the time of the assassination in Sarajevo some actors were suffering from fatalism ("Perhaps a war would be good to sweep away the old order and end these continuous crises") while others were overconfident in the international community's ability to yet again head off war.

MacMillan does an excellent job of explaining this and delving into the character strengths and weaknesses of the main politicians. I do though have a couple of complaints about the book; she devotes just a paragraph to the Second Balkan War of 1913 and also keeps making inappropriate comparisons to modern events such as the Cuba crisis, the rise of al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks and Bush's decision to invade Iraq. I found this most jarring - I want to immerse myself in what happened 100 years ago, not be hauled abruptly into modern times. There is no need for this; it comes across as condescending and detracts from what is otherwise a very good explanation of how Europe stumbled into the Great War.

This huge book sets up the stage right before the age of European empires would be shaken forever and the fall of the 3 Emperors takes places, MacMillan gives rich detail behind the scenes of how the various colonial powers operated how despite or perhaps of their family connections this made their rivalry all the more greater and all the more potential for violence. I love how this book is so rich in detail and the political cartoons it features are also a plus too!

Margaret MacMillan's "The War That Ended Peace" is a worthwhile followup to her masterpiece Paris 1919, offering the same intricate reexamination of history. In this case, however, the book is slightly less effective as it reads more densely; indeed, it could (and will probably) be used as required reading for upper level international relations courses. Still, it's tremendously insightful, worth 4 stars, and will stand out as among the best of the 100th anniversary literature.

In a sentence, one of MacMillan's conclusions is that Europe's La Belle Epoque was was not quite as good as it seemed. There was peace, wealth, culture - but there was also tremendous nationalism, utterly incompetent governance, and without the work of a few able statesmen Europe would have flared into conflict long before 1914. (One particularly interesting observation was of every French cadet being brought to see what hill they'd have to charge down once war was finally declared on Germany - starting the better part of 40 years before the Great War.)

MacMillan takes a very in-depth look at the complicated pre-war relations between the great powers, and one other conclusion that's worth noting is her comment in the introduction that there were a long series of actions that slowly led to less and less choices for all involved. Those actions are the meat of the 600 pages of the book, and at times it gets a bit dense and hard to keep track of the many players involved. This isn't a popular history; it's a intricately detailed, dense analysis of the decisions and, at times, random bad luck that precipitated the war. MacMillan lays much of the impetus of the war at the foot of bizarre foreign policy and naval buildup propagated by the Kaiser along with the economic backing of Russia that drew them into the French orbit (with France's own interests well ahead of Russia's), but there's certainly more than enough blame to go around.

The other minor weakness of the book is MacMillan's occasional editorial comment on how countries then translate into countries today. These tend to be very short blurbs, and don't fit with the rest of the massively researched analysis. The author may in fact be right on her commentary, but a better fit would have been to dedicate a final, more detailed chapter to her conclusions.

4 stars. Very much worth a read, just not quite the masterpiece that Paris 1919 was.

WWI (the label “the Great War” doesn’t even register) doesn’t carry the same cache as WWII in America. Why dwell on such a debacle, such a failed but oh so bloody war when you could laud our efforts in the second, useful world war? This stands in marked contrast to Europe, which devoted a generation’s literature to the fallout of the Great War (and, admittedly, producing some of our own greatest literature along the way). That being said, surely little remains to be told about WWI; surely someone has already said it. MacMillan would beg to differ, and she does so by asking a different question than the usual regarding what is seen as an inevitable slide into war: “why did the long peace not continue?”

WWI didn’t have the great Pacific front that WWII did, but soldiers from around the world traveled to Europe to fight and there was fighting far from Europe (Europe did, after all, control about 85% of the world then). WWI, probably even more so than WWII, helped usher in a new, modern world. Four empires—Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—fell, in a manner of speaking (two in their new forms would be prime players in WWII, two would be gone and their remnants non-entities). The Europe of WWI was still a continent of kings. Foreign policy and war depended still on aristocrats in the diplomatic office and buffoons on the throne. The European powers were big countries, with populations numbering in the tens of millions, with big armies and defense budgets (“Railways and mass production made it possible to create, move and supply bigger armies.”). It was still a time of violent labor unrest and frequent assassination.

War had changed too. “Soldiers in Napoleon’s time had muskets which, with good training, they could reload—standing up—and fire three times a minute, and which were only accurate up to forty-five metres. . . . By 1870 the soldiers had rifles which were accurate up to almost half a kilometer; what is more they could load and fire six times a minute, and from the breech as they lay down.”

MacMillan points to “Austria-Hungary’s mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany’s decision to back it to the hilt, and Russia’s impatience to mobilise” as the most important factors. This was in spite of trade ties (Britain and Germany were each other’s largest trading partners). The economy rivalry theory just doesn’t make sense. The truth was less rational. Decisions were made by civilians without knowing what the military was planning and vice versa. To MacMillan WWI was a tragedy of foolishness and a comedy of errors, but it was not inevitable and could have been averted by different decisions from a handful of men. MacMillan is writing a history, not an essay, though and she lets her facts tell the story for her, with clean and strong prose.

Disclosure: I received a complementary e-copy of The War that Ended Peace through NetGalley.

The "War That Ended Peace" by Margaret MacMillan is a highly comprehensive, eclectic, well written book - a book about the social forces and events that set the stage for WWI. Dr. MacMillan's analysis is eclectic including discussions of eugenic concerns of the time; rising socialism; the competition between European nations trying to exploit the decline of the Ottoman Empire; the Baltic wars and their relationship to WWI; the dynamics of imperialism pre-war; the European national and Russian national alliances; the loss of control over military escalation; and the public support for war, fuelled daily and with growing intensity by the media. The author includes many other aspects of the pre-war period that contributed to the massive destruction of European wealth and loss of life.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a young Serbian and the demands put on Serbia from the Austrian Hungarian Empire, some of which were not met, led to war with Serbia. This brought into the fray, Germany and Russia, and triggered other Alliance nations, France and Britain, to become involved. Mobilization once initiated became virtually self fulfilling, due to the large size of the armies and limited transportation resources to move them in timely manner to the borders of a country. Nations were somewhat required to match mobilization, or find themselves defence-less with an enemy army on one's border. Control of events was essentially lost and the system that was set up was moving all of Europe to inevitable consequences- death, suffering and destruction of wealth.

The book deals with the decision by the US to delay entrance into WWI until they were forced into the war by Germany's attempt to get Japan and others to declare war on the US. The other deciding factor for the US was the German submarine sinking of US shipping. The US entrance to WWI had been delayed due to the large population of German immigrants and small but significant Irish Catholic immigrant population in the US, in the early 1900's.

Students of history, military buffs, academics and retired individuals, in particular, will likely appreciate the extensive details in Dr. MacMillan's book.

The book made me think of the the plight of widows left with children with no one to support them, at a time when women were often not educated or trained to work outside the home and in cultures that discouraged women working. And in colonial cultures that rejected previously married women as potential wives. How did the poor uneducated families survive. The generational affects on children of losing their father early in their life was again thought worthy of some comprehensive consideration.

I highly recommend a series of books which can be found at the store that fit well with "The War that Ended Peace". George Orwell's, "The Road to Wigan Pier" which provides insight into the historical class structure of Britain, exemplifying life of the English coal miner the colonial administrator. The second is "Capital" by the Economist, Thomas Piketty, a masterpiece of analysis of wealth distribution prior to and after the two wars, providing information on the impact of the first world war on the ratio of income from inherited wealth vs income from work; . The third is a book by Dr. McMillan called Paris 1919, which is a detailed description of the decisions made at the Paris Peace Conference after WWI, that contributed to the occurance of WWII. These three books when read with Dr. MacMillans book "The War That Ended Peace" provides a wide understanding of the financial, political and social conditions of the time leading to WW I for those that want to appreciate the issues further.

One gains a valuable and very unique understanding of what happened to create WWI after reading Dr. MacMillans book " The War That Ended Peace". I highly recommend the book as an informative and enoyable read.

This is a fantastic book. A comprehensive survey of the years and decades preceding the outbreak of World War I. Ms. MacMillan covers all of the major players - Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain, France, and the US. She reviews several smaller scale conflicts that preceded WWI, especially the Russo-Japanese War and several Moroccan emergencies. She also looks at the politics, societies, and military situation in each country.

Ms MacMillan then ties it all together with a suspenseful tic-tock of the last days before war started. We know how the story turns out, but the way MacMillan tells it is still full of suspense. All in all an excellent treatment of the history before WWI.

It was the war they said couldn’t happen. Europe had enjoyed a century of peace. Commerce between the nations was exploding thanks to new inventions and ways of doing business. Knit together by trade, communications and royal marriages, a war in Europe was unthinkable.

Moreover, the leaders of the European powers knew that a general war would lead to the end of their empires. Russia had barely survived its defeat by the Japanese in 1905. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a seething cauldron of nationalities desiring freedom. Turkey was the sick man of Europe, with France and England eying its territory. The German Kaiser feared a revolt against his rule as much as he did the coming war, while the British felt necessary to fight to maintain their global empire.

In the years leading up to 1914, the Europeans had muddled through crisis after crisis, deftly avoiding a general conflagration. Yet, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the continent slowly slid into the war that would consume them all.

This vital period is the subject of Margaret Macmillan’s The War That Ended Peace. She deftly examines the motivations of the Great Powers, as well as the men that led them. War was not inevitable, but the result of mistakes and miscalculations. Europe could have remained at peace, for there was a burgeoning anti-war movement in France and other countries, as well as the first stirrings of international labor. With her profiles of the people and nations of the period, she is careful not to assign blame, writing sympathetically from the perspective of the combatants, whose aims and beliefs were not that different from our own. This was a war in which everyone could claim to be acting in self-defense. Austria-Hungary went to war to punish the Serbs, Russia mobilized to protect Serbia, and Germany felt compelled to quickly defeat France before it would be overwhelmed by the Tsar’s troops.

One hundred years ago, the center of world civilization consumed itself in an unnecessary war. The War That Ended Peace should be required reading for today’s leaders, who glibly assure us that everything will remain as it’s always been. History has shown us the folly of this thinking.
- See more at: http://joeflood.com/2014/07/29/war-ended-peace/#sthash.r4kLx7nv.dpuf

The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan is another great display of the high scholarship quality that MacMillan has delivered in all of her books surrounding the World War 1 era. This book focuses on how the great war developed and what led to the breakdown in relations between the powers. MacMillan casts a wide an holistic net to capture the myriad of reasons that led to the outbreak of general war in Europe and an end to the relative success of the Congress of Vienna system established by Metternich. She shows how the balance of power system established under Bismarck collapsed and how these powers put themselves on the course to war. Some of the areas coveted in great detail include.
* The naval arms race between Great Britain and Germany
* The scramble for Africa and attempts to divvy up remaining territory amongst the great powers
* The weaknesses in the alliance system particularly that of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy.
* The familial relations from the monarchy system and the nature of Wilhelm in Germany to shape his own destiny after Bismarck.
* The economic assumptions and realities of France and Germany.
* Austro-Hungary's internal problems and in addition to the sick man of Europe (Ottoman Empire)
* The first and Second Balkan Wars
Overall the detail is astounding and with 600 plus pages of text the author keeps the book moving giving the right amount of detail without getting bogged down in anyone area. For the history lover this will be yet another MacMillan masterpiece but for the more casual reader that is looking for some depth then you have found the right book.

MacMillan adds interesting material on some of the events and important secondary players leading up to the Great War, but fails to give a clear, comprehensive picture of the conflicts which presaged World War I. If you are a history buff well acquainted with this subject, it is probably a worthwhile read, but the format is confusing and the chapters seem disconnected. It is light years from the brilliance of a Tuchman describing the events leading to Sarajevo or Massie’s telling of the competition to build modern navies.

It also reads like a series of graduate student essays on various people and events of the late 19th-early 20th centuries thrown together to produce a book, with the “students” trying to please the professor with some obscure facts. It also could have used an editor who understood the subject. There is fair amount of repetition from chapter to chapter (thus, the suspicion the chapters were once separate essays), and the quality and importance of the material covered is inconsistent. MacMillan also intersperses annoying and silly comparisons to try to make the events of that time analogous to today, e.g., comparing anarchist assassins and bomb-throwers to Islamic terrorists and von Moltke to Henry Ford and Bill Gates. Really?

Finally, for a high-priced serious history, the book looks as if it was skimpily produced on the cheap. Because of the odd format, a time-line of the various events and a listing of the many individuals who are featured would have been invaluable. There are a few good maps, but mostly not tied to text or sufficiently captioned (e.g., “The Balkans”) to make them useful, and none at all for some events covered (e.g., the European powers is China and the Russo-Japanese War). There are many interesting pictures but they are reproduced in small size and low quality on the text pages in “newspaper” style.

The hundredth anniversary of the Great War is less than a year away. The assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne in an obscure place in the Balkans changed the course of world history. No other event since the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, or any event since 1914 can compare in significance. We are not surprised to see many books appear celebrating that event. Margaret MacMillan's The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (Random House, 2013) is a worthy addition to the list. It complements her earlier, and equally lengthy, volume on the end of the Great War, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (Random House, 2002).

All of the usual, time tested explanations of the causes of the war are included. The tragedy of incompetent leadership, especially in the hereditary rulers of what was to become the Central Powers, the naval race between Germany and Great Britain that made war inevitable, the growing diplomatic isolation of Germany that caused a dangerous paranoia in Berlin, and many more. They are all here, once again.

Despite its failure to add anything new to our understanding of the events preceding the outbreak of war in 1914, The War that Ended Peace is an enjoyable read for the general reader, the history buff who enjoys watching programs on the History Channel, or public television documentaries. A selection of interesting illustrations and a good index add to the enjoyment of reading this book. The academic historian will be disappointed, but the amateur will find it a very well written and enjoyable read.

Margaret MacMillan has written a brilliant piece of history about the onset of World War One. Her writing style (for those who have not read her works...it's time to do so!) is oustanding and as I read the book (I have an ARC so pictures, maps, etc..are not in the book) I was completely absorbed by her descriptions, details, conflicts, etc...that helped brew political aspirations into a full blown world war. When you read a book on a particular time in history you want to feel that you are are actually witnessing the events as they unfolded at the time. This is what I enjoy about the way Margaret MacMillan writes history. I could sense Queen Victoria's frustration with her grandchildren. I could sense the greed and need to maintain colonies as the nations "sabre rattled" for years. The book keeps you turning the pages (isn't that what we want from ANY book).

Years ago I read "Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman (still think it is one of the best books on the outbreak of WWI I have ever read), but his book by Margaret MacMillan may be better. Five stars. I will give this book FIVE stars.

In the days following July 24, 1914, every domino fell in just the right way so that war became the only possible outcome. Margaret MacMillan's great success is outlining how that all developed over the preceding years throughout Europe and the European nations' worldwide interests. As MacMillan states at the end of this brilliant work:

We must remember, as the decision-makers did, what had
happened before that last crisis of 1914 and what they had
learned from the Moroccan crises, the Bosnian one, or the
events of the First Balkan Wars. Europe's very success in
surviving those earlier crises paradoxically led to a
dangerous complacency in the summer of 1914 that, yet again,
solutions would be found at the last moment and peace would
be maintained.

But it wasn't. There were remaining feelings, slights, territorial disputes, desires to assert sovereignty and royal power. The scramble of messages between leaders and various state officials during that final two weeks was furious and educational. In 1914 Europe's leaders failed it either by deliberately opting for war or by not finding the strength to oppose it.

MacMillan provides a historical approach delving back into the 19th century for the roots of the relationships between the various European nations and territories as well as their relationships with colonies in Africa and elsewhere and other countries such as Japan and the United States. While this might sound unwieldy, it works very well. We see each country's developing sense of self (or lack); the growth of industry and it's effects; the wonderful Paris Exposition and it's reflection of the social, economic, political and artistic sense of the time; the advent and demise of various leaders who might have altered the future of Europe: the development of peace movements and workers' rights movements.

In her final comment, MacMillan states:

...if we want to point fingers from the twenty-first
century we can accuse those who took Europe into war of
two things. First, a failure of imagination in not seeing
how destructive such a conflict would be be and second,
their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there
was no choice left but to go to war. There are always
choices.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to read a history on the background and beginning of World War One. MacMillan has provided an excellent, wide-ranging text that surpassed my expectations.

A very strong 5

A copy of this book was received from the publisher through NetGalley for the purpose of review.

Very little in history is inevitable, writes Margaret MacMillan in this terrific account of the run up to World War I. To some extent she argues with view that the war was inevitable, and that Europe basically blundered into the war.

MacMillian argues that diplomacy matters. She details the inner workings of several governments as they successfully maintained a long peace. The multiple alliances, which are often seen as a cause of the war, are shown, in MacMillian's account to have also averted war threats as recently as 1911. She offers reasoned views of national political decisions and vivid personality sketches of a very wide range of characters.

Overall, I thought the book was superior to an earlier book, Paris 1919, where I thought she worked a little too hard to put the Paris decisions in a positive light. Here, she seemed more on point.

While I enjoyed the book a lot, I do have a couple of issues that made me stop short of a five star ranking. As a reader, I think I would have been helped by a "cast of characters" to keep track of who was who among the multiple important players in multiple countries. Also, MacMillian has a bit of the professor's disease, explaining the implications of her observations - reminding us that the Serbian Black Hand group was like Al Queda or that British Parliamentary leaders used tactics similar to contemporary Congressional Republicans.

To sum up, this is a well written, exhaustively researched, but perhaps not too well edited account that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in the period. As MacMillian notes at the very end of the book "There are always choices."

WWI is not an area of special interest or knowledge for me but the account appears very thorough. It is well written, easy to read and keeps you interested. I read it for background on my thesis that I am writing regarding naval warfare in the early to mid 20th century and the effect of the Washington Naval Arms Limitations Conference on navies and naval warfare. I especially liked how she recognized the importance of Alfred Thayer Mahan in stimulating the naval race that played a large part in bringing the war about. She gives the part of the naval arms race in bringing the war about the more than cursory attention most authors do. MacMillan notes that Germany like Japan in 1941 felt time was against them and their military and if war was going to be fought it had to be sooner rather than later. That war had to be fought even if Germany knew it could only win a short war. That concept of where a nation feels cornered and strikes out has occurred over and over again in history. What one nation perceives as a defensive military measure it is perceived by someone else as offensive. US take note with the crowding of Russia by expanding NATO into eastern Europe. She also covers very well the idea of national pride causing a nation to fight a war that it does not want to fight. My one point of criticism is the author refers to heavy cruiser repeatedly when that term was not created until the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Limitations Conference. At the time of WWI cruisers were designated as battle, armored, protected, light or scout. This is a mistake that an editor should have caught.

I grew up and went to school in Germany with the clear message that Germany started the First World War out of imperialistic motives (Fischer's thesis). In MacMillan's book Kaiser Wilhelm, his government and the military remain just as reckless and outright irresponsible (naval competition with Britain, provocation of the Morocco crisis, unconditional support for Austria-Hungary, violation of Belgium's neutrality, offensive instead of defensive) but Germany's action is put in a larger context with other actors unwilling or unable to focus on maintaining peace. It's a sad but important read - particularly with MacMillan's occasional references to political decisions since 1914 - from the Cuban missile crisis to 9/11.
The book is highly readable due in part to a deficiency: it is focusing more on actors than on institutions. MacMillan is referring to the different constitutional settings (and roles of the monarchs) in Germany and Britain. It would have been interesting to read more on that as well as on the economies and economic interests of the powers involved.
I noticed one little contradiction: on page 526 MacMillan writes that in 1914 relations between Italy and Austria-Hungary were at such a low point that neither the Italian King nor an official representative attended Franz Ferdinand's funeral, whereas on page 553 she points out that the Dual Monarchy requested that no foreign heads of state attend, only their ambassadors in Vienna.
But this borders on nitpicking - "The War That Ended Peace" is an insightful and very readable account of a crucial moment in history.

In time for the centennial of the Great War, this work is a panorama of the Great Powers' diplomatic and political history before the conflict -- more exactly, the cultural, political, and social slide toward the destruction of European civilization. The book does not neglect trends prior to 1900 or 1890, as it does review the bad blood between France and Germany dating back to the 1871 war, or, say, the Balkans' progress from Turkish dominion before 1878 to their increasing dangers to European diplomacy after 1908. She does touch on the strong role that Socialism had -- or might have had -- in opposing militarization. She tells us of the complacency that Europe had regarding a general war.

The narrative pace picks up in the final ten years before the war, in which we find that the Great Powers' leaders were mediocrities and slow to react to, never mind shape, events. No Bismarck to bring the Great Powers to mediation, nor a Concert of Europe of like-minded diplomats, but rather a series of generals and foreign ministers unable to grasp the dangers they managed. We learn how mobilization plans and defensive alliances began to exert power over governments and events. This assessment is central to the book and perhaps one of the best judgments we have on why the Great Powers slid into disaster.

These are stories that other historians have covered, either by locality or by time frame -- Barbara Tuchman in "The Proud Tower" and "The Guns of August," Robert Massie in "Dreadnought" and "Nicholas and Alexandra". This book's main value is in its seamless, comprehensive review of this period and this progress to catastrophe. Perhaps it was avoidable -- Europe had surmounted crises, in the Balkans and elsewhere, before 1914, as she tells -- but more and more, Europe needed leadership that had the skill to avoid it. They didn't, in July 1914, and this is a good explanation as to why, and how.

This is a complicated story of many interwoven threads, masterfully related. How could a cataclysm like WWI have happened, after nearly a hundred years of relative peace, prosperity and progress in Western Europe? Surely no one really wanted a war which gutted a whole generation of German, French, British and Russian men, which brought down three long-established monarchies, and lit a fuse which would eventually bring down a globe-spanning empire? Well, yes - there was an element of bored thrill-seekers (mostly intellectual) and glory-hunting militarists seeking opportunities for mayhem or to prove that they hadn't gone soft - but how on earth could they have prevailed over sober, able and well-intentioned statesmen?
But they did and the author tells us how, in great detail over six hundred densely-packed pages. There is not much that is new, but rather organized in a logical fashion and drawn from a multitude of sources. I appreciated most the excellent word-portraits of people - statesmen, intellectuals and public personalities who played a part, large or small - in the twenty or so years leading up to the start of the war. For example, generally Great Britain was disinclined to take sides in conflicts continental, and a united Germany preferred army/land to navy/sea power. A policy of deeper involvement with other European powers on one hand, and an inclination of developing a serious deep-water navy set both nations drifting on an unforeseen collision course. The second part discussed various mass movements or trends both inter-and-intra-nationally, some of which predisposed ordinary citizens and activists towards or away from militarism generally. Touchingly, many people believed that war - total, all-out, balls-to-the-wall war - was something that the advanced nations of the West had moved beyond. Or that it wouldn't happen because the economic consequences would be so dire that the powers that be wouldn't let it happen. Meanwhile, European military planners moved briskly ahead, paying little attention to the main lesson to have been drawn from the American Civil War - that technology had moved way ahead of established tactics. The final section reviews the series of mostly-forgotten crises which flamed up regularly like a patch of international eczema, to be soothed by the salve of diplomacy ... until the next time.
This is an excellent companion to Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War: 1890-1914, even as an advanced reader edition. I assume that the final published edition will also contain a comprehensive index.

This is the second book by Macmillan that I have read. The other, "Paris, 1919" was like this is one full of facts, details, and interestingly presented. However as with many books on World War I by western, especially British authors, I always have the feeling the British seem to be more innocent than everyone else.
I did, however, find her parallels to Bush and Kennedy annoying and disingenuous. They added nothing to the book. It is always easy to compare people and events in history to another event in history. Unfortunately these comparisons usually do not survive further investigation. For example, she cites how Kennedy did not listen to his military during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes, while it can be said Kennedy was correct in not listening to his generals during the crisis, it can also be said that he created the crisis by invading Cuba, his anti-Castro policies and his continuing to back CIA efforts to assassinate Castro.

I received this is an advanced copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review

I enjoy history books and have read several WWII books, but this is one of the first WWI books I have picked up and I was not disappointed. An extremely fascinating time in history with several conflicting opinions and views regarding who was to blame and if the conflict could have been avoided. Also, regarding how WWI may have created an atmosphere that made WWII possible. MacMillan wrote an engaging and fascinating narrative that kept me turning the pages late into the night. She was able to bring these historical figures to life in a way that would make most novelists weep. Though if I didn't know these men truly existed, I would find it difficult to believe these people and that some of these situations and actions weren't fictional. MacMillan truly made history come to life in this book for me, and that's what I look for in a good historical read. I learned so many fascinating pieces of history in this book and have recommended it to many of my history-buff friends. I would highly recommend this book to history novices and experts alike.

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This is a very long, very detailed, very involved and personality-oriented diplomatic history of the origins of World War I. The author starts with a survey of the countries of Europe that she deems most central to the start of the war, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. She spends considerable time discussing each of those countries, their relationship with one another, and various issues between them. She spends a whole chapter on the Anglo-German naval race, for instance. After she's gone through all of this, she begins a narrative which consumes the rest of the book. She discusses the various events that occur, everything from the Moroccan crises to the Balkan Wars and various incidents elsewhere. She seems to view the war itself as the result of a series of events which all occurred when they shouldn't have. Combined with reckless or heedless leaders in the various countries, national leadership that wasn't coordinating with itself or its allies often, and frankly a lack of understanding of what the technological innovations of the last few years would mean to warfare, and you get essentially the perfect storm. Everything that could go wrong did, and the result was a cataclysm.

Recommended. It's a very good book.

A very good book, but not as good as her "Paris 1919" book. While she doesn't quite pin the war guilt tail directly on the German donkey, she comes a bit too close for my comfort. And, she's not very good at taking a close look at Grey and Eyre Crowe. Was Britain as much at fault as some critical reviewers claim? I don't think so. Was it more at fault than MacMillan makes out? I do think so. That's the only major complaint I have.

That said, this did seem a bit disjointed at times, and seemed like a rewrite of articles for history journals, graduate lectures and other things. Probably could have stood better editing and a thorough write-through.

My summer job in high school was leading tours through underground tunnels and trench systems left over from World War I in northern France; every so often a farm animal would blow itself up on a leftover shell from battles waged 60 years earlier, or a very aged veteran would arrive, looking for where he had carved his name into a tunnel wall. So perhaps it's not surprising that since my teens I've sought out most of the books about this era, and reserve a big part of my attention for the question of "why"? In contrast to World War II, the Great War seemed downright irrational, and since it has largely set the stage for the world we inhabit today, I wanted to understand how and when that irrationality took over decision-makers' minds.

Clearly, there will never be a single answer for this, but Margaret MacMillan has done an awe-inspiring job of assembling the various theories and ideas in one unbelievably coherent and very readable tome. Her approach is impressively simple: at each stage along the way, decision makers had choices to make, each of which had consequences (anticipated and unforseen) that limited their options when the next decision presented itself. Gradually, step by step, options narrowed to the point where European nations found themselves careening at top speed down a chute that led in the direction of the apocalyptic conflict that became World War I.

I appreciated this framework, and also the way MacMillan developed her core ideas. First, she lays out the diplomatic manoeuvering that produced the alliance networks in place by 1914; then she delves into the "next level" causes of conflict (such as the dreadnought naval race between Germany and Britain); the intangible role played by the evolution of jingoistic mindsets and the more tangible role of the development of war plans (locking nations into pre-determined behavior and actions, such as mobilizations) before ending up in the proximate causes: the Balkan conflicts of the years immediately before 1914. The result is a triumph.

If you're looking for insight into the war from the perspective of social and political history (rather than military history), this would be a fabulous first step. For an even better experience, I'd suggest combining it with Philipp Blom's excellent book, "The Vertigo Years", which delves more deeply into social history pre-war), "Rites of Spring" by Modris Eksteins, which is a wonderful look at the social and artistic context of war and the advent of modernism (and explains why everyone will be making a big fuss about the centenary of the Great War in 2014). These three books, and Paull Fussell's brilliant "The Great War and Modern Memory" are now my top recommendations to anyone who asks me why we should still care about all this stuff a hundred years down the road. Certainly what happened in 1914 is more relevant to us today than the experiences of Napoleon were for decision makers like Foch, Kitchener and Petain a century after the battle of Waterloo -- and Margaret MacMillan doesn't miss out on that, either. While it's not a major part of the book, and she is rightly wary of drawing facile parallels, she has a knack for when a contemporary analogy serves to clarify history -- or even more importantly, make us think about the ramifications of her approach: the ways in which decisions can lead, unexpectedly, to apocalyptic wars.

A must-read for history buffs; highly recommended.

Margaret MacMillan's history of Europe in the years before World War I is the sort for which the word "magisterial" was invented. At once confirming and refuting the popular image of the war as a tragic conflict that came out of nowhere, MacMillan deftly explains how a series of previous crises, and the seemingly preventive/defensive actions various nations took in response, set the scene for the tumbling dominoes of summer 1914. Roughly the first 40% of the book presents the overall political context: discussing each nation's social, economic and political status, offering brief biographies of its leaders, and considering its relations with the other key players. The next 20% is a more general overview of prevailing intellectual attitudes toward war and peace, including discussion of various military plans, while the final 40% recounts the successive crises that made war much harder to avoid, even as their peaceful resolution convinced those involved that a general conflict could always be averted. This split structure requires the reader to keep relative chronologies in mind, to remember (say) how France felt about Russia generally when considering how both nations related to Great Britain in the context of a specific crisis. A general timeline at the front of the book might have helped with this, as might a dramatis personae to help the reader recall which German diplomat belongs to which biographical sketch from 300 pages ago.

But perhaps such an apparatus would only mislead readers about the overall difficulty of the book. For make no mistake: while this is a history aimed at general audiences, it's not for the casual reader of narrative non-fiction. The very qualities that make this a superlative history will also make it too dense for some people. MacMillan writes well, compacting necessary detail without making it overwhelming, but she's a professional rather than a popularizer, uninterested in novelistic presentation or elaborate scene-setting. Very occasional flashes of dry wit are the only personal touch, though cutting assessments of the principals by their contemporaries do offer an alternate source of humor. In the main, though, this is a comprehensive history, one that demands an interest in the complexity of its subject. There's no way to do justice to the interactions of five great powers and a host of smaller ones over several decades without providing a lot of information. While MacMillan offers some judgments on which parties bear greater responsibility for the conflict, emphasizing poor governmental structures and (possibly undue) concern with prestige rather than putative national aggression, the great strength of her exhaustive approach is that it demonstrates how much the leaders of great powers had to contend with in the early twentieth century. Rarely has the complexity of international politics been made so concisely clear. For the committed reader, this is a fascinating and revelatory book.

This is a masterful work. In 20 chapters and an Epilogue the history of Europe so far as it relates to World War One is lucidly set out in chronological order covering the time from 1900 to 1914, At first I thought it was not telling much new but as the events are set out and the book leads to its climax one is utterly caught up in the account. The author does not spend time on original sources, but her selection of facts from the many books consulted (all, thankfully, identified in a 16-page bibliography) sets out a panorama stunning to contemplate,and which I thought shows the pertinent events in the pre-war world in a vivid way. Reading the book one realizes that some of the questions relating to the genesis of the War cannot be answered definitively but I think she points to probable answers

I liked the book, it takes you through the causes of World War I, pretty much from the days of Bismarck to 1914. The closer we got to 1914 though the more I already knew so I started learning less and not enjoying it as much. Also, there was a 50 page stretch or so where Margaret MacMillan kept putting in her own political commentary into the book. She clearly does not like George W. She also accuses Republicans of hating Mexicans, neocons of wanting to invade Afghanistan even before 9/11 and Israel running American foreign policy. Totally not necessary and added absolutely zero to it.

Although I had a fairly good grasp of the factors that led to the Second World War, I had always felt my education as to the First World War was lacking. I had read The Guns of August, the classic work on WWI by Barbara Tuchman, but wanted more background. While The Guns of August analyzes the crisis that occurred in 1914, it offers only a short explanation of the underlying causes that brought the great nations of Europe to such a crisis in the first place. The War that Ended Peace is like a prequel to The Guns of August. It thoroughly explains the underlying forces that led up to the crisis of 1914, and offers insight into the decisions that ultimately led the world's nations to join in a war that most of them did not really want. It offers a deeper examination of factors that indirectly contributed to the overall outcome, such as the politics of the Balkans and the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Ms. MacMillan's writing style is engaging, and I found many parts of the book enjoyable to read, but some of the reading was quite dense. I don't know that any other author could have done better; the subject matter itself is quite a tangled thicket and Ms. MacMillan leads us through it admirably.

I strongly recommend this book if you want to learn more about the causes of World War One, or if you have an interest in international relations and want to understand how world leaders can sometimes feel compelled to make decisions that ultimately have disastrous consequences.

The first World War has traditionally been called "the war that nobody wanted;" Lloyd George, writing in his War Memoirs; Volume I, Part 1. said that "The nations backed their machines over the precipice ... not one of them wanted war; certainly not on this scale." Most of the blame was put on Germany, and that was used to justify the ruinous war reparations that many argue helped propel the Nazis to power. The idea of a war no one wanted was the accepted wisdom for through the Second World War and until recent times. But more recent revisionist scholarship has suggested that this was a war that everybody wanted. Hamilton and Herwig, for instance, in The Origins of World War I argued that "There was no "slide" to war, no war caused by "inadvertence," but instead a world war caused by a fearful set of elite statesmen and rulers making deliberate choices."

MacMillan takes a view somewhere in the middle. She doesn't see any leaders particularly set on having a war, but neither does she see them avoiding it. Europe in 1911-1914 was a dangerous, new place, with power that had for a long time been vested in the military and royalty suddenly in the hands of elected leaders, anxious to maintain their power and their elected offices. Every country and leader had their own notions about what constituted a "just" division of power, land, and even (in the case of the French) fishing rights on the Continent. What began as diplomatic jockeying gradually led to geopolitical gamesmanship, and then into a dangerous game of chicken, and eventually combat. No one may have wanted the carnage that followed, but few leaders were willing to walk away from the prospect of saving face- and maybe a small amount of conquest to go with it. Defensive postures quickly became offensive ones. Germany may have entered the conflict with the notion of preserving her borders but quickly warmed to the idea of taking Paris while they were at it.

"The War That Ended Peace" is one of those rare history books that's both rigorous in its documentation and detail and at the same time an excellent read. McMillan does an excellent job of describing not only the geopolitical background to the war, but also the characters and the zeitgeist of the time. Strongly recommended to professional and amateur historians alike..

As this is the 100th anniversary of World War I, this is a very appropriate book. And Ms. McMillan has written a first-class history of the period leading up to the outbreak of the war.

Frankly, this is a very long, but easy-read. I absolutely enjoyed the diverse approach the author takes into the many different aspects of European culture prior to the war. This is a bit different than other recent books which are more focused on the direct leadup to the war. This book is important, because I had previously read that Europe was more integrated economically, socially and politically than even prior to World War II. This book shows how much of this argument to true.

This is a very worthwhile bookk, and is truly an enjoyable read. Recommended.

Ms Macillan provides a detailed discussion of the events leading up to WWI. She gives a balanced account of both sides in the conflict. Blame is properly give to the entangled alliances that ultimately caused the war.

Popular perception is that World War 1 became such a large war because of the intricate collection of alliances between the various European countries, but that it also erupted unexpectedly due to the assassination of an Austrian Duke in Sarajevo. In this book, Ms. MacMillan focuses on the period between about 1900 and the start of the war in 1914. She delves into this period to try and understand what were the causes and the steps that lead to the war and why did the war erupt? Her thesis is that only a small amount of people were really involved and that the choices they had made over the years slowly, but surely, brought about the onslaught of the war.

The book starts with the Exposition of 1900 where many countries created pavilions that showcased the progress made over the past century. Taking this as the peak of European peace, the book then explores each of the five major powers in turn and discusses the pressures and political structures that lead them and discussed how they were evolving. There are chapters for Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. While there are not dedicated chapters to Italy or the Ottoman Empire, those countries are frequently mentioned and analyzed to some extent as well. The exposition along these lines is logical - as these were the primary countries who were involved in the machinations that lead to the war - it seemed somewhat choppy and a bit odd as I was reading it.

As the book traces the path that the leaders and politicians took over the next fourteen years, until the war started, the author spends most of the book's space on explaining what took place, and only occasionally introduces analysis on what other choices could have been made and why the decisions that were taken lead Europe to come closer and closer to war. The author repeatedly makes the point that decisions were not taken in a vacuum but that the preceding events, and the emotional and psychological events that happened previously affected the individual decisions. Undoubtedly this is true, but it's kind of hard to know how much effect each of the events had on the individual, especially as the author notes, many of the participants or decisions were not documented and therefore she is deducing what happened. Another thing that she does is to compare those events to events that are happening today, or happened in the very recent past (Iraq war, the Iranian situation, etc.) This was interesting the first time or two, but became jarring after a few times.

A main cause of the conflict was the rise in Nationalism amongst the peoples of all countries. She states this and proves it later, when the war is declared, as Socialists, Pacifists, and other groups, all abandon their international efforts to take on the burden of the war and cheerfully rally around their respective flags. Another main cause in her opinion was the small group of people where were making the important decisions. So, when the Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, that hastened the war, as he was one of the few men of the time who did not want to see a war erupt. Taking out one of the three or four decisions makers in Austria-Hungary meant that country would have no one arguing against the war with enough gravitas to have a chance at stopping it.

I know that my own impressions prior to reading this book was that this war was a surprise. However, reading this book makes it clear that the path to this war was lengthy. The repeated political crises and even wars and battles that were fought in advance of it all made the final eruption the result of a long process and not a sudden, isolated, and surprising event. As the Ottoman Empire tottered, the other European nations were dismembering pieces of it and coming into new conflicts with each other as well as the local people. There were several conflicts in Morocco and what is now Libya. There was a crisis in Bosnia and a war in the Balkans that enlarged Serbia. All of these conflicts, crises, and wars fermented just before 1914 and were definitely part of the fabric of what lead to the World War. Of course, the well-known war plans of the Germans that had no flexibility to them as well as the need to mobilize in enough time to be effective played their role. But, all in all, this war was clearly coming for a long time and the people and leadership knew it was coming and did their best to prepare for it.

Although I learned a lot of reading this book I decided to give it a four star rating. The writing is rather dry and dense and it took me quite a bit of time to get through it. A major contributing factor to this is the writer's style which can be difficult to decipher at times. Here is an early example from the Introduction to the book: "Yet that still leaves the individuals, not in the end that many of them, who had to say, yes, go ahead and unleash war, or no, stop." All those clauses result in needing to spend some time to understand what she is really getting at, and this kind of sentence structure is repeated thousands of times in the 620 pages of this book.

One cannot understand the causes of the Great War unless one also understand the political, economic, social and cultural environment in which it took place.

Hence, the ramshackle nature of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the constitutional arrangements of Germany post 1870,the first and Second Balkan Wars, the familial relations of the monarchy system in Europe, the fragile nature of Tsarist Russia, arms race between Great Britain and a resurgent Germany, the British and Japan,the desire of Germany to launch offensive warfare , social Darwinism, belief in romantic and heroic views of warfare, increase in weapon technology, and so on, are taken in account by Margaret Macmillan.

Along with Annika Mombauer The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and Military Documents (Documents in Modern History) annotated Edition published by Manchester University Press (2013) Macmillan's book, in my opinion is one of the two best books about the origins of WWI that have been published the past several years.

Given the nature of history, the mountain of variables, the dubious quality of many sources and the inability to adopt in full the scientific method that science depends on, it is no wonder that despite the over 46000 books plus articles on the Great War there is still so much disagreement about its causes and conduct.

There is, of course, no agreement among historians or political scientists about what causes war. Is it the nature of man, the type of state or states involved, or problems with the anarchical international system, such as balance of power, instability or lack of a credible international law? Opinions differ widely. Mathematical models have been built and used with poor results. Even wars that appear easy to analyze in this respect prove to be very complex, for example, the American Civil War, the Iraq-Iran war, the Korean war.

Finding the causes of war is difficult because there are so many varieties of each. The idea that wars can be caused by one specific factor, individual or systemic has long been derided. There also is a view that a war of such titanic proportions must have been determined by causes of a similar titanic scale.

Margaret MacMillan starts by stating that all the major Powers must share the blame for a war that caused around 10 million deaths, 15 million wounded and destroyed four major Empires (as well as 1 million horses). But while she words it in a very politically correct way, if you look at the details, she believes Austria-Hungary and Germany were the main culprits. In so doing, she disagrees with Clark and Mcmeekin. Instead she supports the writings of some leading German scholars and the superb accounts by Albertini, Strachan, Stevenson, and many others that the available evidence would convince any unbiased jury to see the actions of these two countries as a cause.

Professor MacMillan is a Canadian who is Warden of St Antony's College Oxford, She is the author of several best sellers and international relations scholar. She writes beautifully clear English making a 700 page book easy to read. She is authoritative, fair and objective. Her Great Grandfather was David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Great Britain during the war from 1916 on.

In her book of 20 chapters she spends 17 of them examining the period from 1900 to 1914. She discusses the many Balkan crises and the Moroccan crises, pointing out how these had all been settled diplomatically. She, like others, mentions how the war had surprised many Europeans given the economic, technological and commercial progress during the previous 30 years. Those like Ivan Bloch, the Polish entrepreneur, who gave, in five brilliant volumes, dire warnings about the nature of a war in the 20th century, were ignored by generals for the simple reason his views, if believed, would have put them out of a job, as were the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war and the American Civil War. This was not the first or last time that the past was to be ignored. The other major reason why few were willing to believe that warfare had changed was because in all previous interstate wars it had been possible to turn a flank. Come Xmas 1914 this was no longer possible. Siege warfare became the name of the game. No general had any knowledge of this nor was it taught in our Staff College. No wonder the learning curve was almost vertical.

Given the focus and structure of her book, it could have been entitled: "European History: 1900-1918." It is `not' a military history book, there being hundreds of those available. Whereas they deal with the: How, When and Who, this book deals with the far more complex question 'Why'.

She addresses the key question, namely, how did an incident in a far away country result in a terrible war, or why did peace fail in 1914 when it held in 1908 and 1912? It is a question that has perplexed many, many historians.

She points out that the war took place among much bellicosity and militarism, and that it was confidently believed that if war came it would be limited as had the wars of 1866 and 1870-71. Only in the Epilogue does she touch briefly on the war and its conduct. The author discusses the various plans for war. These have been misunderstood by many who know little of military matters. These 'plans' reveal that it was only the German plan which involved an attack upon another power (France). It was only that plan which involved the violation of a neutral country, and it was only in the German plan that mobilization meant not preparation but war.

The author , unusually in books on the war, includes a chapter on the importance of the Peace Movement, that was instrumental in setting up the Hague Conferences. This important movement in fact began after the Napoleonic Wars largely due to Quakers and liberal middle class business men. It drew on the ideas of Bentham, Say, Turgot, and James Mill. Its aim was to end war. In fact although it flourished in Britain, France and The USA it met opposition from growing militarism by 1900.

There is very little that is new in this book-how could there be? What makes it so good is the way the author synthesizes the mass of evidence available in such a convincing manner. It is not, to use an overused word, definitive. When interpretation and judgment are the name of the game, there can never be a final agreed verdict.

Her view that it was the handful of decision-makers who failed to control the crisis from escalating, I believe, is very sound. They had grown used to peace. It is people, not systems that cause war. They say, like Bush and Blair did:'Yes' instead of 'No'. What if Kennedy had allowed the Air force Chiefs to have their way and bomb the missile sites in Cuba? What if Obama had not listened to critics and gone ahead and bombed Syrian bases? What if Truman had agreed to 'bomb the Soviets back to the stone age's one very senior general advocated? Wars are determined not by vast impersonal forces. They are the result of deliberate policy decisions by men (almost always men) who are at the mercy of the whole range of human frailties. Unfortunately, there are few signs that our decision-makers today are any different or better than those in 1914 despite the availability of computers and a bevy of special advisers.

The author does not shrink from making a number of analogies with problems in today's world.

However she rightly places little importance on the Sarajevo assassination. It was, at best a pretext for action by Austria-Hungary (with the help of Germany) to destroy Serbia. She could have mentioned also that assassination was all the rage after 1890. Four Presidents (2 American), two Queens, two Prime Ministers, a Shah, two Kings and a Crown Prince were murdered in this period. None it should be noted caused a war.

She also mentions that already on June 30 1914 (5 days before Hoyos's trip to Berlin to discuss it) Wilhelm II wrote:The Serbs must be disposed of, and that right soon.(The War That Ended Peace, p.563)

On July 3, 1914, in fact, the German General Staff expressed that they considered German involvement in a coming war likely and favored it. Or as General of the German Cavalry Wenninger, wrote to the Saxon Minister of War;Berlin, 3 July 1914:

I have to report to your Excellency that in responsible circles here the political situation is regarded as very serious - also for us. At the memorial service for His Imperial Highness Archduke Franz Ferdinand I had the opportunity to talk things over with Generalmajor Count Waldersee, Generalquartiermeister in the Great General Staff. What he said seemed to be the opinion of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army. He opined that we might become involved in a war from one day to the next. Everything depended on what attitude Russia took in the Austro-Serbian business. In any case the course of events was also being closely watched by the Great General Staff. I gained the impression that they would regard it with favor if war were to come about now. Conditions and prospects would never become better for us.

According to MacMillan even the Emperor of Austrian-Hungary showed little concern over the Archduke's demise. The Archduke was disliked by many, yet ironically as he was anti-war he may have been the only person who could have prevented the lemming-like process.

Finally, she also attempts to explain irregular behavior and the difficulty of prediction. Small changes can make systems unstable; this certainly happened in the 19th century.

At the end of the war European dominance of the globe had ended. After the fighting on the Western Front, and elsewhere, Europeans could no longer speak of a civilizing mission to the world. Did it end war? Unfortunately not. We are still awaiting the solution to that question. One fears it will be a long wait.

The Bibliography and Notes are excellent. The maps are adequate, given the focus of the book. I have tested the index, it is sound. It is very pleasing to see that Macmillan thanks her team of researchers: so often these very hard working people are overlooked.

I repeat, it is not definitive, but taken together with Annika Mombauer The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and Military Documents (Documents in Modern History) annotated Edition published by Manchester University Press (2013) these two together come as close to being definitive as is possible given the available evidence.

The war was not, as MacMillam says, inevitable. However, as the author shows once it began its course depended on a range of contingent factors. Finding out why war broke out is a very important historical and political endeavor for we need to learn lessons from it even today.

In conclusion also a word of caution, no book of this magnitude and complex subjects combined in one, will be without also some weak points.

For example Macmillan seems to have been to some degree influenced by the latest book about the origins of WWI at the time of writing her own book, Clark The Sleepwalkers,the only other book that makes the unwarranted comparison of those involved with the assassination of the Archduke and Islamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaeda.

This wonderful book brings the people and events of the years before 1914 alive. You get a real sense of how it was possible for countries to make the tragic mistakes that would destroy Europe. A solid historical account that reads like a thriller.

Excellent research, exposition, and analysis. This is the fifth book I have read in succession on the subject of WWI. Clark's SLEEPWALKERS preceded this one. It is a great companion to MacMillain's. I like the way this book is organized which makes for better understanding of the players and event--there are so many leading up to the War. The author leaves blame to no one; only sets out the possibilities that may have ignited the start. This is wonderful fruit for thought and motivation, at least for me, to continue with my quest to read more books on this compelling subject.

I very much enjoyed reading this book. Margaret MacMillan is a very talented historian and author who writes an accessible style. Over the past few years, I've read several books on World War I and its origins, and this book is one of the better ones. I think Ms. MacMillan's book "1919" on the Paris Peace Talks was actually a little better, but both of these books are well worth reading. If you want "junk history," look elsewhere. This is a serious book on a serious subject. OBTW, the only books I award 5 stars are ones that I think are true literary classics. This book isn't quite there, but it's still very good. And far better than anything I could write!

MacMillan presents a conventional retelling of the origins of the war. Other recent books have tried to find different scapegoats but MacMillan mostly avoids the blame game. However, she suggests that the German army's need for a quick victory was perhaps the main cause. MacMillan presents the facts and allows you to reach your own conclusions. She believes that the statesmen in 1914 could have done more to stop the war and shows that that things would probably have turned out differently had Germany been less belligerent. She tries to avoid controversy. MacMillan's thesis, as her title implies, is that Europe was a peaceful place before 1914, but harmony was interrupted when a few powerful people became convinced of the wisdom of war. MacMillan shows that the war could and should have been avoided. Her book is well written but light on analysis.

MacMillan starts by explaining the fears of each of the belligerents. She provides entertaining profiles of the strange cast of characters who made the decisions. Her observations are often funny and irreverent. Most of the statesmen appear odd to a modern reader. Few of the leaders can be described as wise or prescient. Macmillan writes that "it was Europe and the world's tragedy in retrospect, that none of the key players in 1914 were great and imaginative leaders who had the courage to stand out against the pressure building up for war."

By the late 19th century Germany had become Europe's largest economy and the Kaiser wanted a "place in the sun." MacMillan mentions that Wilhelm II may have suffered brain damage at birth which may help explain his erratic behavior. Wilhelm scared people with his bombastic and belligerent statements. He alienated his relatives in the British royal family. Both Edward VII and Lord Salisbury questioned his sanity. Germany had begun throwing its weight around, unnerving its neighbors. MacMillan believes that had Bismarck still been around things would have turned out differently.

France was scared of Germany after its crushing defeat in 1871. It wanted allies and worked hard to woo Britain and Russia. The French provided financial support to Russia. This alliance dragged France into the Balkans where it came to Russia's aid. Britain traditionally favored a policy called splendid isolation. MacMillan includes a quote from British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury who once said that "English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boat-hook to avoid collisions." Britain's policy changed in the early 1900s. It was worried about the growing threat of the German navy and decided it needed allies. It picked France and Russia. Former Prime Minister, the Earl of Roseberry, predicted that an alliance with France would lead to war with Germany.

Herbert Asquith, the British prime minister from 1908 to 1916, delegated foreign policy to Sir Edward Grey who had been Foreign Secretary since 1905. Grey was pro-French and viewed Germany as Britain's chief enemy. However, he was also secretive and duplicitous. He maintained, even in his memoirs, that Britain was a free agent and had no formal obligations to France. Grey had apparently given verbal assurances to France and Russia that Britain would come to their aid if they were attacked, but he was careful not to put anything in writing. Grey also left it too late to get involved when the situation started to unravel in the summer of 1914. Nobody was quite sure where Britain stood and if it would choose war.

The break-up of the Ottoman Empire created tensions in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Russia all competed for influence. Germany wanted allies but the only country left was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire which was falling apart. The price of the alliance was high, drawing Germany into the clash between Austria and Russia. The Austrians were worried about their many Slavic subjects rebelling. Serbia, which had recently broken away from the Ottoman Empire, was looking to expand and grab territory from Austria. MacMillan describes Serbia as "reckless" while Christopher Clark, has called it a rogue state. The Austrians viewed the Serbs as dangerous neighbors and an existential threat. After the assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist, Austria-Hungary delivered a harsh ultimatum to Serbia. Rather that rein in Austria the Germans offered them a blank check. Russia saw itself as a protector of the Slavic peoples, including the Serbs. As a result, Austrian and Russian interests clashed head-on.

The German army reported to the Kaiser, but by 1914 it was acting independently. When Wilhelm tried to persuade Austria to moderate its actions in the Balkans, Moltke, the head of the German army, was at the same time advising the Austrians to crush the Serbs. Moltke fell-out with the Kaiser over the inflexibility of the Schlieffen plan. When the Russians mobilized their army, the Kaiser decided he wanted to go to war with Russia but not France. He was told this was impossible by Moltke. The decision to invade Belgium, brought Britain into the war and alienated the United States. Moltke decided that a quick victory was Germany's only chance of winning the war so he wanted a war sooner rather than later. Moltke feared that by 1916 or 1917 Russia would become too powerful to attack. He also did not fear Britain, the British army was too small to worry about, and he expected the UK to enter the war on the side of France.

The British cabinet was originally split between interventionists who wanted to help France (e.g., Grey, Churchill and Asquith) and those that favored neutrality. Moltke solved the problem when he sent the Belgians an ultimatum. This became the final straw for Britain. David Lloyd George had considerable influence in cabinet. He would become prime minister in 1916, and he had been sitting on the fence. After the ultimatum Lloyd George moved into the pro-war camp and a majority now favored war.

MacMillan does not agree that Germany deliberately started the war but argues that the country effectively chose war by giving Austria unconditional support and through the army's refusal to modify the Schlieffen plan. MacMillan also seemed to imply it was mostly Moltke's fault because he seemed to be constantly meddling and pushing Germany towards war. .

The causes of the first WW always were unclear to me. How did it started? What were the events that lead to it? Who were the foremost leaders and how did they think? What about the alliances? How did that work?

Well, “The road to 1914, the War that ended Peace” will unfold the drama from 1871 forward, will clearly explain the building tension between the European Powers and set the table for what was to follow.

Margaret MacMillan work will make you an expert on the causes of WW1, and more importantly, will urge you to learn more about the war the Western World wants to forget. Highly recommended, high praise all around.

Margaret MacMillan's The War That Ended Peace is one of the most informative books I have ever read. It's difficult to imagine the time and effort she invested in the documentary and archival research that was necessary to produce this densely detailed volume, but it seems reasonable to speculate that it is the product of a life time of disciplined inquiry done by a devoted historian who was determined to be as complete, accurate, and evenhanded as possible in telling the story of the circumstances that occasioned World War I

It is true, nevertheless, that students of military history in the strict sense may be disappointed in this long and complex book because it is not about World War I as a discrete existential phenomenon. Instead, it is first and foremost an historical account of why this horrifically bloody clash occurred, even though its untold costs in slaughter and destruction were easy to foresee. At the outset, the stakes, by most measures seemed not all that high when precipitating events were placed in the massive and massively complex context provided by early 20th Century Europe and areas further east. But when Austria-Hungary declared war on small but aggressively nationalistic and acquisitive Serbia, it proved to be enough to initiate a circuitous sequence of events, some of them wholly self-serving and preordained, that culminated in a world war.

When all is said and done, a simple and certain answer to the question "Why massive war?" is not in the offing. Instead, we are given a set of conditions within which the War took place, and we can examine it for ourselves and reach our own conclusions with the insightful and remarkably well informed guidance of the author. Realistically, any straightforward, unambiguous, and certain consensus as to the War's genesis very likely will not be forthcoming, even with our best efforts. The powerful and overwhelmingly varied forces are just too numerous, inter-connected, and complicated. Perhaps the primary accomplishment of the author of The War That Ended Peace is to show us that even a century ago, Eurasia and the rest of the world were simply too intricate, convoluted, and multifaceted to grasp, study, and master as a coherent whole.

As one works through The War That Ended Peace, the reader is reminded again and again that the run up to World War It was a time of fast-paced, multi-dimensional social change of the sort that makes personal and national identity slippery and uncertain. As a result, the highest government officials, the civilian aristocracy, and those in lesser positions at various levels were eager to assert a national claim, something that gave them a secure sense of identity and belonging. These yearnings, acknowledged by the brilliant turn-of-the-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim with his concepts anomie and egoism, can and do give rise to a fierce, even rabid, commitment to a nation, its language, ethnic composition, religious character, and overall cultural makeup. Given the intensity of this sort of nationalism, threats to the integrity of a nation and its people may set the stage for violent confrontations. Formerly discrete and independent nations that have been swallowed up and incorporated into other national entities, may be willing, even eager, to break free and re-establish their original national status.

Within nations, moreover, changes in social relationships and class structure wrought by advances in science and technology as manifest in rapid industrialization and productivity-intensive changes in traditional agriculture transformed the connections among individuals and groups in ways that threatened to undercut established cultures and sources of identity. Revered notions of honor, status, and traditionally sacrosanct ways of doing things were weakened and further diminished the senses of identity and belonging that provided cohesion for a nation and its citizenry. Again, additional sources of uncertainty, insecurity, and lack of trust in the world as it was known.

In a context where a state of social, cultural, and political flux were predominant, trust was hard to find. This was especially true among nations looking for an advantage over their neighbors, or a defensive position that would secure their borders, or opportunities to enhance national prestige and economic strength through conquest or colonization. Even when formal alliances had been created, ostensibly for the benefit of two or more countries, uncertainty endured. Would the terms of an alliance hold in times of strife? Would a defensive alliance be misunderstood by other nations as evidence of aggressive intent, thereby increasing tensions that might lead to war? Was national honor threatened by unforeseen, short-term conflicts that flared unexpectedly for reasons that were often difficult to discern? Would preventive war take shape as a primary defensive measure?

In a world as complex and fraught with uncertainty, mistrust, misguided self-seeking, and relentless jockeying for position as this one, war hardly seems an unlikely outcome. The prevailing fear of misinterpreting events in a way that diminished a nation's position relative to those with which it was interconnected, along with new and unforgiving military technology, inevitably exaggerated the likelihood that any war could escalate into large-scale slaughter.

This review is incomplete and flawed in a variety of ways, and it is abstract throughout. However, when evaluating a book as rich with information and insights concerning a difficult-to-interpret time and place such as the context that yielded World War I, themes and ideas seem better suited to the task than efforts to identify culpable agents. Given the foregoing, perhaps each nation was, in some sense, culpable, and each nation was a victim.

The War That Ended Peace is a long and densely informative book that, with regard to some issues discerns, for better or worse, parallels between the world that gave us World War I and the world of today. It is a time-consuming read, but it is sufficiently well written and richly instructive to make taking its full measure well worth the effort. In the end, I think The War That Ended Peace raises a truly frightening question: if the world of the earliest years of the 20th Century was so intractably complex that a predictably horrible war could not be prevented, what about the immeasurably more dangerous 21st Century?

In closing, I think that the author, talented as she is, makes an uncharacteristically naive assertion when she judges that there are always choices. But how many choices by how many actors would it have taken to prevent World War I? MacMillan's account of circumstances prevailing at the time makes the notion of decisive choices seem like nothing more than an obligatory tribute to the supremacy of human agency at a time and place where unbridled contextual forces were clearly ascendant.

This is an excellent book that must be read. It is a perfect companion to Margret MacMillian's previous work: Paris 1919. In m view, it sets a new standard. She covers an enormous amount of ground. What caused WWI? Well, it wasn't just one thing -- so many many things contributed and she somehow makes that very real.

In addition, it is very well written. Each sentence, each paragraph is simply lovely. She also makes very real something that we are all aware of, but lack the words to express -- the loss. the cost in human life was truly horrible, but we also lost a civilization that was like no other in human history and to which we still owe so terribly much.

One comes away from this book subdued. It had to happen? Sort of, and some of that comes through, but did it really -- no, not really, but it did and the human species lost a great deal in the process.

She and Barbara Tuchman (sic) are of a set, different and very helpful in getting us to understand.

A beautifully written and edited account of the years leading up to the start of WWI in Aug. 1914. Well researched with detailed analysis of the personalities and the issues surrounding the start of the war. The focus is, with a few minor exceptions, on the leaders of Russia, Austria/Hungary, France, England, and Germany but with enough analysis of lesser players to pull the story together.
McMillan makes a limited attempt at placing blame on Germany and Austria/Hungary but declares the leadership and political systems of all the world powers were dysfunctional.
Well worth a second read in the future.

I have to give this three stars mainly because it is so long and so often repetitious. No doubt that for the aficionado and the academic this is a great work - perhaps the best ever - but for the educated layman it is far too detailed. Unless you are prepared to slug it out for countless pages and pages and pages and pages, go for something like 'Kaiser Wilhelm II' by Christopher Clark or even the brief summary given by Davis in his 'Europe' (p.879-896).

Time spent studying the origins of World War One is almost never wasted. The 1914-1918 war created the geopolitical world we live in, no less after the fall of Soviet communism than before. As we approach the centennial of the assassination at Sarajevo that started it all, we're blessed with a wealth of great resources to aid that study. "The War that Ended Peace" has made its ways to many "Best of 2013" lists, and I would argue justifiably. Although it's been many years since I read Tuchman's celebrated (and by now somewhat inevitable) The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I, first assigned in high school, I think "The War that Ended Peace" at least equals Tuchman in readability and, obviously, surpasses her in the additional decades of work on the topic now available. This would be an excellent starting point for someone seeking an introduction to the topic.

Naturally, though, I can't let pass the opportunity to recommend further reading, since there's always more to be gained from a variety of perspectives. Sidney Bradshaw Fay's classic Origins of the World War is worth tracking down, while Massie's Dreadnought fleshes out MacMillan's discussion of the vital matter of the naval arms race. Not covered in "The War the Ended Peace," obviously, is America's entry into the war. Fleming's The Illusion Of Victory: America In World War I, Gamble's The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, and the relevant chapters of The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John V. Denson, help here. The war itself is covered well in Ferguson's The Pity Of War: Explaining World War I, while valuable social perspectives (with a UK focus) are added in To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 and The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos.

An extraordinary account of the build up toward the First World War. Margaret MacMillan writes about this complex period of world history with the ease of a novelist. Should be required readings in school.

I recently read that World War I is being forgotten. That the lessons and battles are receding into a memory overshadowed by World War II. The fault is our own. The stories as intricate and important a story today as they ever were. This book, The War That Ended Peace, beautifully dances between the roles France, Germany, the U.S. and so on played in the war. Read it my highest recommendation and see why this book and this war are not to be forgotten. Then take a different turn and read The 8th Assassin, a well-researched novel that begins with the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife then traces the fictional lives that act affected.

I'm a huge fan of Margaret MacMillan's work. PARIS 1919 was a masterful work that ably -- and readably -- bridged the gap between scholarly and popular history. She understands that good history is not only well researched and carefully argued, but also vividly written, with a broad, nonspecialist audience always in mind. Where PARIS 1919 focused on the termination and resolution (or lack thereof) of World War I, THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE examines that war's beginning. It's a topic, given the years of conflict that followed, that has attracted much attention over the years, mostly famously perhaps by Barbara Tuchman in THE GUNS OF AUGUST. Already this year, as we look ahead to next year's centennial of the Great War's outbreak, there have been a number of books on the causes and beginning of the war, by Max Hastings, Christopher Clark, and others. These books might equal MacMillan's, but they do not best it. In fact, I prefer MacMillan's telling, which, in vibrant prose, covers the decades of diplomatic conflict preceding the war, the personalities involved, and so much more. This should be the go-to book on the origins of World War I for the 100th anniversary and beyond.

The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan. This is a good source of information about the time leading up to the First World War. It has some good and some bad analogies to the current era. One good one is the comparison of the terrorists from Serbia who assassinated Leopold and Sophia with the terrorists of 9/11. It is a shame that the author does not follow that to its logical conclusion in explaining how the Concert of Europe could have avoided war, by recognizing and addressing the threat of international terrorism before and during the crisis in 1914. As it was, there was only one recognized way to deal with it, through war, nation against nation. I was amused that the author, who I believe is British, believes that the Democrats can do no wrong and the Republicans can do no right.

Margaret MacMillan surpasses her masterpiece on the Paris Peace Conference and presents a truly magnificent book in The War That Ended Peace. Named one of the outstanding books of the year by most literary publications, this wonderful volume was met with universal acclaim for its unmatched scholarship and outstanding insights. MacMillan is a superb writer and researcher and once again brings fresh, brilliant work to the bibliography of the Great War.

McMillan is both a talented research and historian as well as a skilled writer, a combination that you really appreciate when you later read a history book where only half that equation is true.

My first impression of the book is that he made some interesting conclusions. Other fairly notable works on the period talk about how eager many of the leaders were to go to war, and how many saw it as a forgone conclusion. Her focus on the various peace movements and beliefs of many that it was a new age of peace, while contradictory to other works on the subject, are no less interesting.

I also appreciate how detailed she got in examining the conflicts and notable events that slowly pushed the continent closer to war and how the death of one archduke could take Europe over the brink. This isn’t an examination of the war as a whole, rather a look at what made the war happen. Most books tend to focus on the battles and the death toll and only give a portion of a book to the pre-war years. It is nice to have a very readable and comprehensive book dedicated to the period.

This book was very informative and gave a lot of behind the scenes interplay between the monarchs of the various countries in Europe and their ministers. For people who like to read history,it gives more then just dates times and the basic information of the key events leading up to the Great war. My criticism of it is that perhaps it was too long in that many facts are repeated more than a few times, possibly because she gives the view from each of the key players. Finally I thought she made too many comparisons, with recent history and in this she showed a bias.

A few years ago I read MacMillians book on Nixon and Mao. It was a terrific book, but did not really break any new ground. I feel the same way about The War That Ended Peace. MacMillan can write! She has used a number of great sources, both primary and a lot of more recent secondary, and has written a wonderfup popular history of the origins of the Great War. However, unlike the recent "Sleepwalkers" I did not feel it broke much new ground. "Sleepwalkers" was quite provocative in its views on the origins of WWI, it was also a pretty challenging read at times. MacMillan's book is not challenging at all to read, but in my opinion is not very provocative. Sure is goes beyond the old MAIN for the causes of WWI, which we all learned in school, but its not saying much that in my opinion we have not heard before about WWI. However, she tells a great story and again incorporates info from a lot of other recent books on WW1.

This a good book but also a very long and detailed one. It is defiantly not a book for the casual reader. The events of the decades leading up to WWI are extremely complicated but too much detail spoils the effect of this book. A better summary of these events may be found in Part One of David Stevenson'S "Cataclysm - The First World War as Political Tragedy>"

. . . I have to confess that I really struggled with this book for a number of reasons.

* I felt that with the exception of Kaiser Wilhelm, the biographical information on the various monarchs was superficial and stereotypic. King Edward VII was more politically astute than he was given credit for being; Czar Nicholas, while a weak ruler by all accounts, was not as stupid (and a great deal more religious) than portrayed; and Franz Ferdinand had far more depth than portrayed.

* An editor was badly needed. I suspect that 50-100 pages could have been trimmed with minimal loss of content. I love reading history and non-fiction for fun, but if the author wanted to appeal to a somewhat broader market, then editing was needed.

* The author's use of parenthetical "asides", especially in the first half of the book (when they appeared on nearly every page) just about drove me to distraction. PLEASE! Just write the book, and let the reader draw his/her own conclusions -- and save the editorializing for an epilogue.

In other words, this was a book with a fascinating premise, but which failed to deliver.

A work of commendable scholarship. Every meeting, crisis, event, and individual directly or indirectly involved in the events leading up to World War l are woven into a gripping narrative. Having also recently read "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark, another extraordinarily scholarly account, however, one is again faced with a mass of confusing, sometimes contradictory details to deal with. There is little to guide the reader toward a better general answer to the question of why people and events intersected in such a way in July 1914 so as to spark a catastrophe which caused over 37 million casualties, when some of the same people and other, similar, prior events and crises did not. Perhaps Clark's book does a marginally better job in this regard.

The fascinating (and probably unanswearable) question of who was responsible, or chiefly responsible for the outcome will forever be with us, of course. After the war during the Versailles conference, it was fashionable to blame Germany and the Kaiser. It appears to this reader that perhaps Tsar Nicholas bore greater responsibility. He initially wisely resisted his General Staff's demands that Russia mobilize but he was eventually steamrollered by his hawks, and in the enormous tension of the time the Germans interpreted this as the intention to attack them, and the rest is history. It is possible that if this had not happened the conflict could have been contained to the Balkans.

This was obviously a labour of love, with a massive amount of research into the personalities present during the decades leading up to World War 1.
At times the minute details did seem a bit over done but on the whole added to the sense of the time and era.
Not a light read but for those serious about wanting to know the causes and influences of the period.
A huge undertaking by the author and very detailed, I would recommend this to anyone who really wants to get to grips with the history and players during the turn of the century.
I learned a lot about figures who had been just names in the history books and did enjoy the gossip like style of the information given.

“The War That Ended Peace” is an extensively researched study of the people and events that led Europe to World War I. The Road To 1914 did not begin in Sarajevo. Author Margaret MacMillian begins with the state of Europe in 1900 and then examines the countries, leaders and issues that drove history down that road. The readers learn much about the Kaiser, Kings Edward VII and George V, Tsar Nicholas, Emperor Franz Joseph, colonial rivalries and the flare-ups over places like Morocco and the Balkans and shifts in relative power that threatened to bring the Great Powers into conflict. With the background laid MacMillan examines the plans for war and peace and the interests that threatened to reshuffle the alliances in the days leading up to war. Finally the narrative covers the downward slope through the assassination, ultimata, negotiations, mobilizations and declarations until “The lamps are going out all over Europe.”

This is historical writing at its finest. I do not, by any means, consider myself an expert on World War I. Despite that limitation this book never left me confused or bored. What I found to be a rare but fascinating quality is the ability to draw parallels between events of a century ago and more recent ones. The comparison between the visit of King Edward VII to Paris and President Nixon to Beijing is one example. Many of us will will become much more familiar with World War I during the upcoming Centennial. “The War That Ended Peace” is a great introduction to the Great War.

An excellent analysis of events leading up to the declaration of WW. Perhaps the sadest point which comes out was that Russia insisted on supporting Serbia against the Austrian Hungarian Empire as a result of the disagreements arising from the latter's earlier invasion of Bosnia. Russia was well aware of the consequencies with the rigid Triple Entente and Triple Alliance groupings. National pride and honour got in the way of a rational solution to the isolated mistake of the relatively insignificant Sarajevo assassination. However MacMillan's discussion of the complex cultural, historical and economic background provides huge material for "what if" debates. Interesting that virtually all the participants with the notable exception of the Kaiser regreted their roles in the lead up to the declarations.

If, like me, you believe the Second World War was really little more than an extension of the first, understanding how it all started goes a long way to putting the 20th century into perspective. Margaret MacMillan does a brilliant job of it in this book.

It’s easy to criticize the individuals involved in making the decisions that led Europe to war in 1914. Perhaps a little too easy. To fully appreciate how a tragedy of this magnitude could be allowed to happen, one really needs to step back and look at the period in question as a whole, the politics of the age and the social and economic trends that conspired to lull so many into a false sense of security in what was, in retrospect, a powder keg waiting for a match. This book is a detailed, thoroughly researched and brilliantly written account, offering a look at the wider picture so essential to gaining a true understanding of the period. From the inherent dangers of autocratic rule to the influence of social Darwinism and the unintended consequences of strategic alliances, the author exposes the intriguing web of interconnected circumstances and historic shifts that conspired in the most monumental calamity of the modern age.

I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone wishing to gain a deeper insight into this dark chapter in history, much of which still shapes the continent today.

Periodically throughout the book the author makes bizarre statements such as comparing the Austrian's fear of cross border military invasion by the Slavs in the early part of the 20th century to today's Republicans fearing that Mexico will militarily invade the U.S., what? Another time she stated that President Bush used a trumped up reason for invading Afghanistan because he wanted to go to war completely ignoring the fact that Afghanistan harbored the people, including Osama Bin Laden, who had just murdered 3,000 American civilians. It makes you question MacMillan's scholarship on all other matters.

As a more or less novice student of the history chronicled in this book, I cannot comment on the book's factual accuracy nor on the many 'editorial' judgements its author makes. That said, the author is a distinguished historian with a track record of excellence in her field. I trust that this book -- as many professional reviewers have noted -- meets the highest standards. What I will comment on -- as an avid lay reader of history -- is the quality and cogency of the writing itself. TWTEP is a superbly engaging and entertaining book about a fascinating period of history. It is both a wonderful read and rich food for thought.

As someone who always tended towards science subjects at school and university, I never paid enough attention to history as a subject - now 40 years later, my interest has changed..... This is a really accessible and well wrtitten volume that helped me understand the perspective of the leading characters, and countries in the lead up to the outbreak of war.

The author is able to take advantage of the perspective of time to compare with other crises since the Great War, and show the relevance to the world today.

Oxford credentials? This book is all that, plus. How often that I must read that Russia cozied up to France for loans to build railroads? Apparently once per chapter and now I'll never forget it.

It also adds personal insight and opinions based on events in the 21st century. Thanks, but no, I signed on for study of events leading to WWI, not Stormin' Norman's discapture of Baghdad. And the opinions? My sixth grade teacher came down on me hard for opining in a history assignment. Never did it again.

New stuff though-- on page 405 I learned it was the assassination of Austrian "Emperor Franz Ferdinand" that seized Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Turk. Editing, Oxford? You really meant Franz Josef, nicht? At least that's what I read from the photocopies and handouts from high school history class, let alone St. Hilda's College. High school also taught me to use commas and avoid run on sentences, which are both neglected and delighted in, respectively, throughout this tepid volume.

The book overworked so much material that it could have been 100 pages less. It was exceedingly dull reading, with spelling and grammatical errors that are so unbecoming of an Oxford author. I expected much, much more and am irritated that I was the sucker to buy it. Also, the ergonomics of the book wanted as the leaf misalignment caused browsing or rereading to be virtually impossible. It is very difficult to thumb through versus books with a flush cut to their pages.

A much needed and well written history of the numerous factors which preceded and caused World War I. From a stubborn, yet quickly diminishing, european monarchy to rising Marxism this books covers each thoroughly and scholarly. A great resource of any history buff..

Brings to focus all issues relating to the causes of WWI, with particular emphasis on the roles of nationalism, ethnicity, and social ideology; makes understandable the otherwise very confusing relationships between the Balkans with each other, and with their Western European and Ottoman neighbors. You have not understood the complex history leading to WWI until you have read this fascinating book.

If you're looking for a book that sets the global political stage prior to WWI, this is it. It covers the relationships between the major players in detail. My only complaint is that the writing was very dry and read like a textbook.

This book has its good moments. Macmillan does a reasonably good job of rebuilding the geopolitical ambiance of the times. But she has her hobby horses and for some reason her past successes seem to justify in her mind that it's OK to ride those dubious steeds in an historical work. The footnotes are poorly presented and tend to not be immediately helpful. The reader has to do alot of digging to interpret them. But the worst abuse of this work seems to be the use of the anonymous opinion. A couple examples, p 268: "'We learnt', said a distinguised British soldier, 'to believe the English were the salt of the earth, etc.'" Who is this distinguished soldier? We don't know and the footnotes don't tell you. Another on p. 284: "As one [anti-war liberal] said in Britain, 'Long immunity from the realities of warfare has blunted our imaginations. etc.'" Who is this worthy sage? We have no idea and the footnotes don't tell you. More examples appear on pages, 270, 277, 299, 300, 329, 399 . . and I got tired of writing them down. The other detestable practice was this author's cheap shots at George W Bush?! They were anachronistic and not contextual. The tragedy of 9/11 did, indeed, influence decisions to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. But what Ms. Macmillan seems to forget is that 9/11 was an overt act of war that killed thousands of people. Americans and Britains were justifiably outraged and supported proactive government measures to get those responsible. The invasion of Afghanistan was supported by the public and justified by members of both political party's. The military intervention in Iraq was justified by UN resolution 1440 and supported by 85% of the members of the US national legislature and not by just a bunch of 'hotheads' (?) in the Bush administration. The war likely would have remained popular had not the occupation been bungled and an insurgency allowed to develop. And this has NOTHING to do with W W I. This is an academic who hates Bush and wanted to get in her digs in under the guise of a work of scholarship. You want to read a better account of the pre-war period before the Great War. I recommend the two works by Robert Massie - "Dreadnought" and "Castles of Steel". Massie is less tempted to such anti-intellectual digressions, and his appreciation of the main characters of the time is more insightful, less cliched, and more nuanced in the best sense of that word. He doesn't grind axes.

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed "June 1919" I am not surprised by the superb research and attention to detail and brisk writing style which makes Ms MacMillan so eminently readable. The history is well known but her ability to put extra flesh on events and particularly on the lesser known secondary characters who also played their part in the run up to disaster is real page turning stuff.

One of the best pieces of history I've read. Without giving too much away about Macmillan's approach to the topic, she is able to illustrate a very broad point with an approachable style and interesting historical anecdotes. It's not a short book, but well worth a read and will give you a new perspective on the interrelation of current events.

Very different perspective being peace as the norm and what caused the peace to end, rather than the war to start.

I agree with earlier comments that the book could have used some editing (trimming).

Author's attempts to reach to current events relevance by trying to relate to say, the Iraq war, were clunky, incongruous and the weakest part of the book. Although I quite enjoyed the book, these references were so poor that I dropped my review to 3 stars.

A well documented, historically detailed analysis of the people ,events and nations which culminated in the war to end all wars
A must read for the serious student of world history, and the events that shaped it

great book that puts the march to war into a helpful broader context. intriguing that many leaders saw it as a secondary concern to domestic issues, inevitable and perhaps a good thing to get over with even if they weren't confident they could win.

MacMillan would have done well to avoid pigeonholing her progressive take on current events into history. Unfortunately, like most progressives, she can't help herself, and instead makes embarrassing comparisons to current events that discredit the whole. Like a builder who skimps on the windows, we're left to wonder if she's skimped on the foundation as well. I certainly wouldn't recommend the book as an unbiased history, and if it's not that, then a novel would have been more entertaining.

The War that ended peace was too long, it was as though MacMillian simply fell in love with this book, and this subject, and it became extremely boring, it should have drastically cut and shortened. Neither my husband nor I could finish this book, it would have been far better having this be smaller time period ; like 1913 just prior to the war starting ,and then covering maybe the first few months of the war, something like that.

Readable? Yes. But what am I to think of a book about World War 1 which begins with a detailed description of Louvain? Ms. MacMillan mentions "Germany, Austria, Russia . . ." but inexplicably omits Great Britain and France. Does Ms. MacMillan imagine that the British Ententes (1904, 1907) with both members of the explicitly anti-German Franco-Russian Alliance had nothing to do with the Great War? She writes that "France did not want war." WHAT? Has she never heard of Monsieur Poincare and his unquenchable thirst for Alsace/Lorraine? Has she never heard of Russia;s equally unquenchable obsession with the Straits of Constantinople? She does not mention Russo-Serb collaboration in the systemic undermining of Austria-Hungary. She does not bother to quote Sasonov's very incriminating statements with regard to the future of the Dual Monarchy. Finally she passes lightly over the Russian general mobilization which occurred in the middle of German pressure on Vienna and did not have even the excuse of military necessity. The book is a useful introduction but more advanced students of WW1 are advised to look elsewhere.

I found the book informative, but too complicated. Too many characters, to many treaties, not enough details about the multiple crises. Not enough detail about the character of Czar Nicholas, King Edward, and the influence of the growing Revolutionary movement in Europe at the time.

WWI was an awful war. But generally school and history only teaches us about the war itself but it's really the decades before the WWI and WWII that truly laid the foundations for these calamities, particularly the late 1800s and early 1900s. This books fills in the gap of the decade that led to 1914. It's well documented and well written. Seriously consider reading this if you're at all curious about what caused this terrible war.

A very interesting history of how World War I burst upon the earth. Although it is said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, I don't think there is any adequate explanation for the 20th century world wars centered in Europe.

I had this on my wishlist because of her other books - which I had not yet read, but had heard great reviews.
This one is tough to read. A bit on the long-winded, dare I say, boring, side. Not a summer read. And, I typically read this genre...so it's not new to me. But, this book was simply boring - and have chosen not even to finish it. I'll take it to the used bookstore..maybe someone can find more meaning in it than I.

The author needlessly inserted assertions about recent American presidents to depict motivations of actors in years immediately preceding World War I. These shallow stereotypes were often demonstrably false and caused me to dismiss as mere speculation many descriptions she offered.

I have in front of me two books on the Great War: one by Margaret MacMillan and the other one by Peter Hart , both issued this year. I find it fascinating that the two authors have produced, should I say, entirely different stories on the same subject. Peter Hart's carries stories on the down-to-earth trench war, if not the bloody hand-to-hand fight of the francs-tireurs, while MacMillan's "watches" the distant fights on the Continent sitting on the armchair of an Oxon-Cantab college or hall. Her description of the Great War has been discolored by the halo of the Diamond Jubilee and of social Darwinism theories. I imagine myself watching Macmillan on the high table of St Antony's College mulling over the crabbed hands of historians like herself(?) Could any Oxon-Cantab dons in the Governing Body meeting or dining under the benign smile of Henry VIII at Cambridge's Trinity College dinning hall be immune from this prejudice? Remember, war is sweet to those who have not tried and tasted it, as Pindar once had it.

I began to get my antennae up when Ms MacMillian observed that WW I was started by "old white males" and that no women were involved in the decision making that led to war. Everybody already knew that without being told.

The British were ultimately drawn into the war because the Kaiser [Germany] had a war plan that involved the invasion of Belgim and Luxumbourg [which were neutral countries] as a inasion route to France. Similarily, the American "Kaiser" Abe Lincoln ordered 75,000 troops raised to march south and put down the rebellious Confederacy. This would require marching Union troops thru Virginia and North Carolina, which were effectively "neutral" states because both VA and NC had recently voted NOT to secede from the Union. Bcause of Lincoln's actions and his plan to invade the neutral and soverign states of NC and VA both states now voted to secede and to join the Confederacy which guaranteed a bloody and prolonged war.

Of course, the author did not make this comparison, but she did compare political intransigence in Britian over the issue of "Home Rule" with the "Republicans" in the US Congress refusing to raise the National Debt Limit. But for some reason she fails to mention that Democrats in the US Congress have frequently employed the exact same attitude/politics when the Presidency was controlled by the other party.

The author made far too many "asides" and gratuitous remarks thruout the book that actually did not add, but rather detracted from the reading of the book. It is particularly distressing when the comparisons invallid and or inaccurate.

This is not a full review but a partial commentary. On page 549 Macmillan, as most writers cashing in on the centenary of the 1914 assassination. "Young Bosnia" was an organization comprising Orthodox Serbs, Muslims and Catholic Croats. Macmillan has used English language sources, but not Serbian. The phrase "six bombs and four revolvers" will be doubly misunderstood by most readers. "Revolver" is used in Serbian (and German) for automatic pistols, as well as what the English world calls "revolvers". "Bomb" is another misleading term: Serbian "bomba" here should be translated "hand grenade". Macmillan also copies the oft-told myth that Dragutin Dimitrijevic's nickname "Apis" is the Egyptian word for a bull, purportedly because of the man's robust physique. He was not a particularly big man. The Egyptian "Apis" is a name for the god Osiris in the appearance of a calf, not a bull. Apis, moreover, is not Egyptian, but Latin for the busy little honey bee. Apis's schoolmates gave him the moniker for his unremitting industriousness.

Disclaimer: did not read. But the title intrigued me and I clicked on it to see what it was about. Sounds like a rehash of David Fromkin's, 1989 book, "A Peace to End All Peace". Even the title sounds like she's copying that? Fromkin's book is excellent, insightful and answered all the questions I had on "how did the Middle East get like this?"

https://www.the store.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation-ebook/dp/B003X27L7C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1523974284&sr=1-1&keywords=a+peace+to+end+all+peace&dpID=513vtxj-MQL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

i found reading this book extremely tiresome. the text was repetitious and pedantic. although macmillan refers to a plethora of political, social and military incidents that occurred prior to the war, she fails to weave them into a cogent explanation as to how they actually impacted on the onset of the conflict. in making every effort to compare events leading up to the war with contemporary political events, the author reveals her ultra liberalism and, frankly, her lack of common sense. 645 pages should have been edited in half. if you will, a prime example of literary flatulence run amok.

Margaret MacMillan, like a good magician, keeps her readers occupied with endless detail with one hand, while with the other hand repeating endlessly English political prejudices in polemical defense.

While the detail may be interesting or not and significant or not, the endless prejudice without even a semblance of justication cannot be accepted by anyone concerned with historical truth.

Kindle edition more expansive than hardcover, a more and more common practice, which is, in my opinion, quite difficult to justify.
(Otherwise, the book is an excellent on, almost as good as the fantastic 1919, from the same author)

This "item" is full of misinterpretations and false information. It's a shame!.It is hard to understand and accept(I refuse to) that more and more books each year are getting published and are simply politically motivated and authors base their careers on working for special interest groups. Do we all need to become like that?
Please stay away from this "paper product", that's the only thing you can do.