Sleepwalkers in defiance of a wake-up call that Clark's had not
According to its mission statement, Aufa100 is focussing on the history and memory of the final stages of World War One as well as the (first) post-war order. The warlike events of our own time, however, cause us to return to the fore-end of this war (1914⎼1919).
How come the bulk of an extended bilateral readership of 'The Sleepwalkers' seems to have slipped in the title's role? This highly questionable role of sleepwalking into global warfare appears to be modelled by the West's military (NATO) and political elites.
Imaginations of both the 1919 Paris/Versailles order and the post-Soviet parallel to this particularly Western history of dictatorial imperialism including an exclusively British sub-imperialism suggest the alarming state of denying easily recognizable facts from the present decades. The first ran from 1919 into the 1930s, in other words, the era of a 27-state plus five British colonies' diktat to a retreated enemy in transition to a liberal democratic successor state. The other runs from the mid-1990s until the first quarter of this century. The most intriguing parallel from our time is not so much the Weimar Russia thesis, but ignorance of the mutually acceptable agreements ending the Cold War and subsequently crossing the increasingly isolated Russian Federation's red lines time and again.(1) These violations cannot be regarded as a result of sleepwalking. They occurred in full consciousness. Followed by British and, with some delay, Brussels proxies, all United States governments pushed for this Versailles-like policy as of the Bill Clinton administrations.(2) As of President Vladimir Putin's second term, this consciousness was declining. Anti-Russian expansions of the West's military alliance were taken to the limit. Together with mainstream media of this seemingly successful expanding West, the politically responsible for this alliance went sleepwalking. With an army of Western journalists and leaders, such as Ursula von der Leyen, Keith Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Mark Rutte and Clinton's successors until now, both the hundred-year-old and recent history's denial comes with a shrugging acceptance of losing the peace of 1990⎼1991, which means no less than tacit support for the outbreak of a (possibly nuclear) world war.
Sleepwalkers Then
The way to responsible knowledge starts with a reconstruction of our days as well as decades. At the time of the 2008 financial crisis, preparations for the First World War's hundredth anniversary had a timely start. In 2012, Australian historian Christopher Clark published Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914. In contrast to evaluations about its reception within the original language community, its translation into German (2013) is being focussed on here. After a few years, one may say that Die Schlafwandler did not find any title in translation that sold an equally high amount of copies. Particularly from the viewpoint of Germany's readership, Clark managed to challenge mainstream historiography on the origins of the devastating world war and the appropriate crisis of civilisation. His main argument was that no nations in particular, but the whole of Europe's leadership underestimated the dangers of escalation.
By the way, in terms of a Vergangenheitsbewältigung-like process of coming to terms with the past, the crisis of civilisation is enduring until today. The unilateral focus on Second-World-War history and memory stands in the way. For example, Germany's Great-War taboo remained intact in spite of many publicity about the recent anniversaries (2014⎼2019). Perhaps this is why the West's ruling elites happened to be sleepwalking today.
In contrast to the original success, the renowned author's specific profile contributed to the bestseller's German-language follow-up. His excellent command of German is not shared by a lot of colleagues. Fellow countrymen Matthew Fitzpatrick and Dirk Moses (Historikerstreit 2.0) make up for a trio of historically compelling bilingualism. Furthermore, a German art historian was married to him. Profiles like this seem a necessary condition to do away with Anglo-Saxon-predominated historiography. Just David Sutton's article 'Complications and Compromise. The Paris Peace Conference and the End of the Great War' serves as an actual example of the seemingly never-ending flow of accounts from this unilateral perspective. No proof of linguistic diversity can be detected with this Australian. In general, both cultural and language barriers keep blurring the narrative on the 'seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century' (George Kennan). These were overcome by Clark. At the same time, this historian missed out on the global, imperialist dimension of what is captured in the title as Europe's war.(3) Even more than Europeans, a different person like him must be left in the dark. In the summer of 1914, none of Europe's navy or military personnel, but Australian colonists were among the first to attack their overseas colleagues from Germany.
Thus, it will not surprise that the domains of memory and history converge when it comes to the currently burning house of Europe. In 2024, the warring Russian Federation was disinvited from participating in the eightieth anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp's liberation. On January 27th, 2025, Poland is supposed to receive survivors and other people from all over the world. On the same day, 1945, the Nazi death camp was liberated by the multinational armies of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. Two weeks later, the British responded with aerial bombardments of the non-military city of Dresden. The centre of Saxonia's baroque capital was wiped out. Tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom were refugees, died in a single night of firestorm and complementary terror. Among them were those who had taken refuge in the Elbe river. In a new wave of assaults after the bombing, Royal Air Force personnel gunned them down. Through my own civil partnership, I do not need to revert to any history books to be given a wake-up call. A few months before the inferno's eightieth anniversary, my German partner's mom told her survivor's story all over again. While sitting around the kitchen table having her on the telephone, we were not asking for anything more than the usual small talk. A few minutes later, we felt with her telling the worst nightmare all over again. In previous cases, I had asked her not only to recall her experiences, but also to go into the details to comply with my professional standards as a historian whose way was marked by the experiences as a Western youngster in Dresden, German Democratic Republic (1985, 1987 and 1988). At the time, Heike was a five-year-old downtown. At their mother's hand, her two-year-old sister and she found refuge in the third of three bunkers at the main railway station. Amid the terror night, when the parent was blinded by the smoke, the little girl went missing. Little Heike was put through a hole that helpers from outside managed to enforce through the reinforced concrete walls. Fresh air was vital to help the children and women survive in the smoke-filled shelter. Once being out, another lifetime nightmare began. Among piles of burned bodies, the kid was summoned to look for her sister. At this point, a foreign observer like me will spare you the details. After a fortnight of desperate searching, the two-year-old was found alive in a safe place in the countryside. The women survived with a mother having back her eyesight. In the other shelters, all people were reported dead.
Not only at night, the now 85-year-old survivor is haunted by female voices. The return of this cerebral noise takes turns between the daytime and dark hours.
Would it have been imaginable to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of D-Day (2024) without British participation? Imagine the Brits would have been blocked by an alliance under the lead of the French host, most notably due to their invariably anti-European politics. In 1944, when the invasion finally restored the exclusively German dilemma of Zweifrontenkrieg, the Soviet armies had been pushing back the Nazis for years. In 2025, Eastern Europe, the Auschwitz committee wishes to stand together with the liberators of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Russians, including many people from the Soviet empire, happened to mourn millions of women and men more than the Reich's western enemies.
Sisters and Brothers in Sleepwalking
On September 27th, 2023, Clark was interviewed by one of Germany's well-known television moderators. With reference to the First World War, the question to the Cambridge-based professor was if 'das, was wir gerade um uns herum sehen, aus Versehen hineinschlittern könnte in einen großen Weltkrieg?'(4). In contrast to the many thousands of demonstrators at the February 2023 rally for peace at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the historian answered negatively. Having arrived in the second decade of the 2014 war, he should be given another interview by an alternative moderator. Would he stay straight and repeat the negative answer, which suggests the audiences at home and on the set can go to bed in peace and quiet? After all, it seems the sleepwalker of the 1910s is alive and kicking.
You are not alone. Many sleepwalkers are accompanying you. They sleepwalk from one year into another. Wake up. Wach auf. Réveillez-vous. During holidays or at home, you may well sleepwalk for a night. After that, turn away from mainstream media, start thinking and do rethink. Read Clark's centenary volume without judging our sleepwalking great-grandfathers. Because of these examples and lessons at our disposal, their offspring in the third and following generations should know better. However, the opposite seems to come true. In historical terms, the current generation's sleepwalking may derive from an even higher level of ignorance, a failure of introspective memory as well as Geschichtsvergessenheit. Long live Romain Rolland, long live John Maynard Keynes as well as George Kennan.
Peter de Bourgraaf
Footnotes
1. Preview at Aufa100, aufa100.com/l/pubwww.
2. Glenn Diesen, Time for NATO to Retire?, September 24th, 2024, https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/time-for-nato-to-retire?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2670149&post_id=149348792&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=250x7m&triedRedirect=true.
3. Jost Dülffer, Rezension zu: Die Schlafwandler. Wie Europa in den Ersten Weltkrieg zog, C. Clark. HSozKult, https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-20294.
4. ARD Maischberger, September 27, 2023, https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/maischberger/maischberger-am-27-09-2023/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL21lbnNjaGVuIGJlaSBtYWlzY2hiZXJnZXIvMjAyMy0wOS0yN18yMi00NS1NRVNa. One by one, the other guests represented media or political parties that invariably adhere to the Scholz/Habeck government of shedding Ostpolik as well as a no-negotiations policy of NATO-support for the Ukrainian side. Also available on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOohDEdrUK0.
