"Austria-Hungary thought ... France is reset, Serbia refuses ... " under these phrases are sometimes concealed the complexities of the internal life of nations, with a simplified terms nominalism. It's more accurate to say "the Austrian government thought ... the French government decided to reset" ... conditions, that if, for the internal power balance . It should make the reader reflect on this important point, all governments, including always theoretically autocratic systems are influenced or directed by their respective publics and in the period of mass society that is consolidated in the XIX-XX centuries, the multiplication of the popular press and sensationalist insight into the collective mind, the appearance of new methods and ways of communicating and relating, in short, opinion-forming strengthen the concept of "public ." Remember that usually segmented, and segments are more or less able to influence the government to form pressure groups.
PHOTO. DEMONSTRATION OF RETIREES IN MUNICH TO PLEAD THE WAR. IN THE CIRCLE, a 25-year-old Adolf Hitler in the crowd.
In July 1914 there was a political strife within each European country before the crisis, patriotic enthusiasm spilled over into early August with the declarations of war. The vast majority of political parties and public closed ranks around their governments and abundant street demonstrations supporting government decisions. Prevailed rooted moral effect of fear, hatred and accusations against the other side, imposing nationalism. In parliament this consensus around the national cause was the name of "Sacred Union " or "Burgfrieden" with the approval of large budgets for military equipment, temporary waiving strikes, decrease of civilian control over military decisions, etc.
In previous years statesmen rather pacifists in general (many were wary of the domestic consequences of a serious conflict) were drawn as to the obstacles faced in international politics that quickly filtered to the internal debate . Normally, the output was the arms race, which became an irreversible trend, a growing effort to increase the margin of superiority or not to be overcome. The temptation to use the formidable armed forces as a pressure tool advantageous to any dispute between countries was irresistible, agreeing to get to the end if necessary. It was a fatalistic mentality, epitomized in the phrase of Poincare: "We do not want war, but fear not ." We have seen the presence of this philosophy in the crisis that followed the assassination in Sarajevo. The concept of "preventive war" was handled with ease in the Staffs of the armies, and ultimately war was considered according to the terms of Clausewitz: "continuation of politics by other means"
In addition, there existed cultural versions of the war described as purifying process and rise above small meanness and mediocrity of daily life, a heroic sacrifice for the survival of the national body, the only truly immortal and that debian individuals devotion. The prestige of the martial, the worship of force as an engine of change concepts were inserted by the national education systems. Even further, the war was interpreted as a natural phenomenon or conscious choice of legitimate violence, a "higher form of existence " in the words of Nietzsche, war become an end in itself ... von Bernhardi explained, in a work of 1911: "war (...) is a biological need, is to implement the natural law based on which all other laws of nature, the struggle for existence "
One of the writers Pan-Germans of the late nineteenth century, Paul de Lagarde, in his" Deutsche Schriften "castigated what he considered too acomoditicía attitude of the bourgeoisie and the political life of Germanic and preached his solution, a crude nationalism as a factor of catharsis : "There has never been even a German state (...) The current status is a caste politics is a farce, public opinion (...) a cowardly whore live in the midst of civil war, which only temporarily takes its course without gunpowder and lead, but instead, with the most vile by the silence and slander ( ...) the belief in immortality becomes for us more and more indispensable condition under which we can only cope with life in the Jewish-German Reich composed of mud and iron (...) Nations does not arise from generation physical, but historical events, but are subject to the action of Providence. Nations why they are of divine institution, they are created (...) permanently recognize the mission of their nation means dip in the fountain that gives eternal youth: always serve this mission means for acquiring them higher and higher life. "
One of the theorists of Nazism, Alfred Rosenberg, wrote in 1934 referring to the time of uncertainty and transformations: " For the nineteenth century there is even a mitigating circumstance: that his humans were in the midst a swift current of industrialism was born, and like many others were also taken by surprise by the new. Felt, by the way, shake old values, but who would condemn them if they saw no dawn, but that died? "
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