My last World War I selection for this year was The Lost History of 1914 by Jack Beatty. Having finished the book, I am still unsure what the author's point in writing it was in the first place.

Ostensibly, he is writing about the "other events" that could have, according to Beatty, changed the war or averted it. He devotes a chapter each to Prussian militarism vs. socialism in Germany, Irish Home Rule in the UK, the Mexican Revolution and the US, the Caillaux affair in France, a scenario in which Franz Ferdinand lived in Austria, and the lack of preparedness in Russia for war.

Oddly, I find that Beatty himself has undercut his own arguments that the war might have been averted. When discussing Prussian militarism, he blandly concedes that the middle classes wholeheartedly supported the army, and that German popular opinion felt the army was the instrument needed in German foreign affairs. How, then, could a socialist movement have caused a real civil war in Germany? When discussing the Mexican Revolution, his sole argument as to how it might have affected the war is that, if Wilson had just not supported Villa in the first place, the Zimmermann Telegram would never have been sent, but yet he shows how Wilson would have intervened if US interests were threatened anyway. The Caillaux Affair is probably the weakest chapter, completely disregarding the war fever that was gripping a France obsessed with restoring Alsace and Lorraine to the Republic. On the Russian chapter I didn't really feel that Beatty understood pre-war Russian politics at all.

I do think that, of all his arguments, the notion that Home Rule could have started a major civil war in Ireland that would preclude the UK's involvement is a valid one. With no BEF forces to stop the Germans, the "miracle of the Marne" would likely not have been possible. However, might that not have been a good thing? How many fewer people would have died in a four-year struggle if Germany had just won? Looking at the EU today, it's clear that Germany is destined to dominate Continental Europe anyway.

Beatty's book is frustrating on many levels. First, and foremost, any attempt at reconstructing "what if" scenarios is really the ambit of fiction writers, not individuals who aspire to be writing historical accounts. Second, his attempt comes off in a very amateurish fashion. He uses controversial authors who suit his aims, like Terence Zuber, in an attempt to discredit universally acclaimed authors who don't, like Barbara Tuchman. He also makes juvenile errors that would be excusable in an internet article or school paper but not in a work that purports to be serious fiction, mislabeling the Nazis as the "NSDP" rather than the "NSDAP", and calling the Austrian policy on Hungary the "Augsleich" instead of the "Ausgleich". It's bad editing, to be sure, but it's bad editing of a bad draft. Third, his narrative is at times barely coherent, jumping around the timeline in an irresponsible fashion.

At its most fundamental level, however, Beatty's book displays a level of blindness about the causes of the war. Beatty discusses the Balkan Crisis, the Agadir Crisis, the Morocco situation generally, and other potential flashpoints that didn't lead to war, without noting that in each case, public opinion in the respective countries was becoming ever more war-crazy. Rather, he does note it, in passing, but fails to discuss it when he makes his analysis of what might have happened.

Following his "what if" chapters, he then discusses trench warfare generally and has two chapters about the suffering on the home fronts. In none of these three chapters did I see any connection to anything that had gone before from a thematic perspective. They were just tacked on to a narrative that had lost any center it might have attempted to find, dangling in the wind.

Ultimately, I suspect that Beatty's entire book was born of the radical Left fallacy that the war was the evil design of capitalists that tainted the workers' movement for decades or more, and that war in general is avoidable and to be avoided, but he never actually had the courage (or perhaps clarity) to say it, unlike others like Robert Fisk. While I personally think World War I was a tragedy that should have been avoided, following the logic of people like Fisk and (presumably) Beatty, no war is ever necessary, and that seems to me to be just as fallacious as the thinking that led to World War I.

People who have read a lot about World War I may find this book interesting as a touchstone for further discussion, but I don't think that most people would enjoy the read, which would probably be confusing for the average reader given Beatty's poor style.