THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR I

World War I as the "greatest error of modern history." 

Rejecting the common characterization of World War I as a tragedy, since a tragedy is "something we are taught by the theatre to record as ultimately unavoidable," historian Niall Ferguson insists that World War I was "nothing less than the greatest error of modern history."  While other historians dispute some of Ferguson's conclusions regarding "The Great War," most agree that that the decision-making processes which led to the outbreak of war, as well as the strategies and combat tactics pursued, were fraught with error.  To a significant degree, the ineffectiveness of these decision-making processes was attributable to ineffective communication and coordination, as well as a failure to internalize clear lessons and act upon them quickly.

World War I began as a dispute, albeit a serious one, between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian empire.  The dispute snowballed into a World War involving Germany, Russia, France, the United States, Great Britain, and the Ottoman Empire (which included Turkey and the Middle East).  Colonial and commonwealth troops from as far as Australia, New Zealand, and Africa were pulled into the conflict.  This unfortunate escalation from a localized conflict to a World War has been one of the most widely-studied failures in decision making and policy implementation, spawning dozens of books. 

Whether or not one agrees with Ferguson that WWI was "the greatest error of modern history," there is no question that the outbreak and escalation of the war represented a great failure on the part of the relevant decision makers.  The war, which broke out in August of 1914, was generally expected to be over, with the troops back home, by Christmas of that year.  Instead, those troops who did return home barely made it by Christmas of 1918.  The general expectation was not only for a quick war, but one with relatively few casualties.  Instead, the casualties vastly exceeded the worst expectations: almost 10 million soldiers were killed in WWI, and over 20 million were wounded.  In addition, a large number of civilian deaths could be attributed directly or indirectly to the conflict.  For example, many of those who died in the flu epidemic of 1918 would have likely survived if not for the poor general health conditions caused by the war.

This document will obviously not attempt to summarize all of the information which has been generated by the extensive research into the causes of World War I.  Rather, it will simply identify several of the underlying causes which led to such disastrous decision making. 

Ineffective coordination and poor collaborative decision making within most national governments

Most of the national governments which became involved in WWI badly lacked a cohesive national security strategy, and lacked the processes and mechanisms necessary for effective, collaborative decison making among their multiple governmental bodies.  In fact, the relevant governmental agencies and organizations generally operated within rigid organizational "silos" or "stovepipes," to use current business terms.  A number of senior government officials involved in national security matters were not even allowed to see the detailed war plans which had been developed by their country's military officials over many years.  These civilian officials often did not fully realize that their country's existing war plans would substantially limit the decision-making flexibility of their governments in a crisis situation. 

(In part to address these general types of issues, the United States government attempted to overhaul its national security structure in 1947.  According to the Washington Post, "The 1947 legislation that established the National Security Council envisioned a body that would advise the president on the integration of domestic, foreign and military policies, and foster interagency cooperation.")

The specific issue where effective communication was most important, and failed most dramatically, involved the impact of issuing orders for the general mobilization of troops.  Such orders were to become the trigger mechanism that plunged Europe into all-out war.  Yet, according to historian John Keegan, "Only Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador in St. Petersburg, and Jules Cambon, the French ambassador in Berlin, fully comprehended the trigger effect exerted by one mobilization proclamation on another and the inexorability of deployment once begun."  Unfortunately, Keegan writes, "Mere ambassadors as they were, however, and far from home in an age of formal and indirect communication, their voices lacked weight and, worse, failed to convey urgency." 

There appears to be a consensus among historians that once the Russian Tsar Nicholas cancelled his previous cancellation of orders for general mobilization, allowing those mobilization orders to take effect, World War I became inevitable.

Of course, a special issue which further hampered governmental decision making immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I was the fact that some of the final decision makers were hereditary emperors (e.g. Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany).  As such, they were assigned a unique role in coordinating and reconciling input from multiple governental agencies, and were perhaps assumed to possess unique capabilities which in fact they badly lacked. 

Failure to learn from relevant experience, and failure to "connect the dots."

The notion of decision makers failing to "connect the dots" has of course received a great deal of emphasis in the context of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  Analysis of the failure to prevent the attacks has shown that while U.S. government decision makers did not possess any single piece of intelligence that pointed directly to the attacks prior to their occurence, the government did possess isolated pieces of relevant intelligence, and that connecting those isolated pieces effectively might possibly have led to a prevention of the attacks.

Similarly, while it would overstate the case to claim that decision makers should have predicted the catastrophic consequences of the outbreak of WWI, it also true that decision makers were in possession of critical pieces of relevant information.  The nature of potential conflicts in the Balkans was very well understood, as these conflicts had not only simmered for years, but had broken out into hostilities on previous occasions.  Also relatively well understood was potential danger of the existing alliance system, and its capability of quickly pulling numerous countries into a conflict with local origins. 

The area where decision makers failed most dramatically was in their inability to assess the impact of technological progress on warfare.  Europe had enjoyed a long period of relative peace, at the same time that rapid technological progress had occurred.  Some of this technological progress had worked its way into modernized weapons and other machinery of war.  Yet governmental decision makers were very slow to realize that the presence these modernized weapons created the potential for casualities on a scale previously unimaginable, and thus necessitated proactive, aggressive steps to prevent the outbreak of war. 

The presence of modern weapons also necessitated a dramatic revamping of military tactics, which was unfortunately very slow to take place.  In particular, military leaders failed to quickly internalize the lesson, obvious in retrospect, that modern weapons had altered the balance of power between defensive and offensive military forces, to the advantage of defensive forces.  The highly-orchestrated offensive charges which had been effective in years past were, in the presence of weapons like machine guns, almost suicidal in nature. 

A concrete illustration of these concepts can be seen in the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where the British infantry charged defensive positions which had not been adequately undermined by previous British bombardments.  In this first day of battle, the British suffered approximately 57,500 casualties, almost half of the men who participated in the attack.  According to historian Saul David, the casualities on this single day of battle were "more than the British had lost or would lose in the Crimean, Boer, and and Korean wars combined." 

Lessons learned

It is difficult to find silver linings in the cloud of World War I.  However, perhaps one such silver lining is the fact that President John F. Kennedy of the U.S. internalized the lessons of the outbreak of World War I, and utilized those lessons during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.  At the time of this crisis, Kennedy had recently read Barbara Tuchman's book about the outbreak of WWI, The Guns of August, and understood how quickly events could escalate out of control and lead to war.  He also understood the strong parallels between the general mobilization of troops in the WWI context, and a nuclear first-strike in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Consequently, his decision making was deliberately skewed on the side of caution, despite of the advice of his staff, a number of whom argued strongly for more aggressive military action.  Several times during the course of deliberations, Kennedy explicitly referenced Tuchman's book in explaining that his top priority was to avoid taking actions that might cause a snowballing effect in which each side would lose control of the situation, likely generating a nuclear exchange.

According to author Irving Janis, Kennedy and his cabinet also employed a number of specific group decision-making approaches during the Cuban Missile Crisis which allowed them to find the type of creative solutions to the crisis which were unfortunately lacking in August of 1914.