JOURNALIST, historian and author Max Hastings is well-known for providing refreshingly even-handed accounts of past conflicts. So when he turns up promising a fresh angle on the commencement of the First World War, it’s not without some intrigue that we sit up and listen.
Here, he argues that, despite those who claim the appalling human cost of the Great War was simply too immense to have ever justified it, the British were actually right to enter the conflict and oppose Germany’s war aims.
He explains why the events of 1914-18 were neither avoidable nor futile, painting a picture of a German Empire which, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, was determined on attaining primacy, whether by peaceful means or by war.
Scholars and military historians including Michael Howard, Hew Strachan, John Rohl and Margaret MacMillan add their thoughts.
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