It is actually disturbing how little German history I knew before taking up AJP Taylor’s “Course..”.  I hope this might be a fairly common ‘home bias’ in historical awareness, i.e. tending to know history of other countries in as much as it does overlap with the history of your own in some generally tragic manner.

Before opening the book it is worth spending just a bit of time looking up the author, an ‘An Unusual Kind of Star‘ of the British TV and the ‘only really anti-German British historian‘. It would help the reader to prepare for a sharp take off in the first chapters.

The book itself is a very opinionated narrative of the German history covering the period from early XIX to mid XX.  There are certain interesting details about European economic history, for example the Zollverein customs union, but what I liked most were the following two more general ideas:

• Ambitious foreign policy tends to come at price of less liberal policies at home (p.185): “[…] it served only to underline the contradiction of German wishes: the great majority of Germans wanted a Germany overwhelmingly strong, asserting by means of this strength her claim to ‘a place in the sun’, and basing her security on Power, not agreement with her neighbors; at the same time they wanted a constitutional system inside Germany and resented the arrogance and predominance of the military caste. few Germans felt the absurdity of desiring to dominate all Europe and yet to escape domination themselves […].”
• Stable distribution of rights and political powers tends to be a result of the reluctant compromise, it cannot be bestowed from above or imported: (p.146): “If social security had been won by political struggle, it would have strengthened the confidence of the working-class movement to make political claims; as it was, the workers seemed to have received social security as the price of political subservience, and the drew the moral that grater subservience would earn a year greater reward”.

Some more quotes:

On German liberals in 1792-1814 (p.25): The German liberals had no agrarian program and no sympathy with the property-less masses, whom they despised as obscurantist and reactionary; nor had they any feeling that liberal institutions needed to be fought for and defended – they expected them to be bestowed from above.

On 1848 revolution (p.36): In other countries the revolution gave the people universal suffrage; in Prussia it gave them universal military service.

…and some more on 1848 (p.69): German history reached its turning-point and failed to turn. This was the faithful essence of 1848.

…and yet more (p.71): The revolution of March 13th in Vienna and the revolution of March 18th in Berlin, which together cleared the way for the German revolution, were both glorified unemployed riots.

On the decline of parliament (p.120): The abdication of the Prussian liberals and the defeat of parliamentary government had a profound social result. Parliament did not control the state; therefore it could never be for the individual the path to power. Henceforth only man of the second rank went from the middle classes into politics. The intellectual ability of the politicians steadily, relentlessly, declined; all that survived was the gift of sterile negative criticism. Political parties became inevitably interest groups, solely concerned to win concessions from the state, but never supposing that they might have to accept responsibility. The really able and ambitious members of the middle class shunned politics and turned exclusively to industry and finance.

On creative destruction (p.139): The financial crash of 1873 was a normal event of the age of capitalism […]. In England when the speculative bubble burst, those who had blown it took the consequences […]. But the German industrialists had not the long tradition of self-help which made British capitalists fend for themselves until long into the twentieth century. Besides, they had made an implicit bargain with Bismarck: they had renounced political power in return for economic wealth, and now they expected Bismarck to keep his bargain.

I have reservations about an extent to which studying history is ‘useful’ from the applied perspective. Historical method, in my view, has limited potential to identify more or less general and reliable regularities in the social mechanics from the economic policy point of view.

Thus the criteria on which books, such as Clark’s Sleepwalkers, should be judged are literary and entertainment value. Anyway judging it more rigorously is well beyond my expertise.  Instead of providing a review of the book (which was done by many more qualified individuals) I’ll just share three ideas that I pondered when reading the book:

• Civil/military divide within the government. Clark provides an overview of the military-civil conflicts within the governments of the Entente and the Triple Alliance. The story is the same across Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, France and UK: the defense minister is lobbying for higher tax revenue to be allocated for modernization of the military while the finance minister more or less vigorously opposes military spending build up. The conflict lost none of its topicality in one hundred years it seems. There’re some interesting details on the Russian situation with the clash between the P.Stolypin successor PM&Finance Minister Kokovtsov and Defense Minister Sukhomlinov. Clark quotes Nicolas II telling Kokovtsov (p.218): “In your conflicts with Sukhomlinov you are always right. But I want you to understand my attitude: I have been supporting Sukhomlinov not because I have no confidence in  you, but because I cannot refuse to agree to military appropriations”.
• Monarchy. The idea itself is quite original: let’s employ the same techniques that we use to improve domesticated animals to selection of country leaders. Why would anyone accept it as normal? The power of status quo, I suppose. However, what Clark argues is that at the operational level the monarchs’ discretion has been materially limited by late XIX century. As far as I understood, the web of blood relationships between the monarchs of Europe served as an alternative less formal diplomatic communication channel, however the messages that have  been transmitted were formulated or at least heavily influenced by professional bureaucracy. The same goes for internal affairs. The telling quote is on p.184: “Nicholas II could favor this or that faction or minister and thereby undermine the cohesion of the government, but was unable to set the agenda, especially after the fiasco of the Russo-Japanese War”.
• Ideological homophily. What the book illustrates is how persistent are personal opinions. For the likes of Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf no amount of evidence could challenge the necessity of aggressive action against Serbia. What’s worse is the ability of such individuals to strategically influence the composition of their own ministries and the government in favor of others who share their vision or avoid challenging it. The result seems to narrow the ‘field of vision’ and the set of alternative courses of action.

Overall the book is highly recommended reading. Probably the last time I’ve enjoyed the book so completely was ‘Farewell to Russia’ by A.Levandovsky (thanks to VG for this).

Otherwise, just a handful of quotes:

• On international finance, p.30: ” […] fragile debtors like Serbia […] could secure loans on reasonable terms only if they agreed to concession of fiscal control that amounted to the partial hypothecation of sovereign state functions. For this reason among others, international loans were a political issue of the highest importance, inextricably wound up with diplomacy and power politics.”
• On investor relations, p.231: “Early in 1905, the Russian were distribution GDP8ooo a month to Parisian press, in the hope of stimulating public support for a massive French loan. “
• On fiscal priorities, p.32: “In 1905, pressed to ratify a new revenue source, the peasant dominated assembly of Skupstina chose to tax school books rather than home distillation. The result was a strikingly low rate of literacy, ranging from 27% in the northern districts of the kingdom to only 12% in the south-east”
• On the choice of the assassination target, p.49: “[…] the archduke was not targeted on account of any alleged hostility to the Slavic minorities in the Austro-Hangarian Empire, but, on the contrary, because, to borrow the words of his assassin, Gavrilo Pricip, ‘as future Sovereign he would have prevented our union by carrying through certain reforms’. […] The targeting of the archduke thus exemplified one abiding strand in the logic of terrorist movements, namely that reformers and moderates are more to be feared than outright enemies and hardliners.”
• On the use of press by officials, p.195: “From behind the scenes key officials lime maniacally Germanophobe Maurice Herbett […] used his extensive newspaper contacts to sabotage negotiations by leaking potentially controversial conciliatory proposals to the French press before the had been seen by the Germans. […]”

Short resume of the book  by the author: