The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

Name: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
SKU: 174564
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4.5 | 4,226 ratings

Price: 38.58

Last update: 02-24-2025

About this item

One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark's riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I.

Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict.

Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe's descent into a war that tore the world apart.

Anne Mills

Splendid Examination of An Open Question: Was World War I Inevitable?

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2015

Was World War I inevitable? This splendid and readable book argues that it was not, focussing a series of specific policy choices made by individual national leaders in several different countries. Taken together, these choices unleashed the maelstrom, but Clark suggests that different choices could have been made, and that a different and more peaceful outcome might have followed.

This brings us up against two key themes -- or more accurately points of disagreement -- in World War 1 historiography. First, there's what another reviewer succinctly describes as the powder keg vs. the match. The "powder keg" view argues that political and economic tensions in Europe in 1914 were so intense that war was inevitable, making the Sarajevo assassination and subsequent events nothing more than a trigger: had they not happened, something else would have done. The "match" view argues that a general European war was not inevitable, which makes Sarejevo very important indeed.

Clark argues that the match mattered a great deal, more by detailing what actually did happen than by presenting counter-factuals. For me, this was a compelling approach. His detailed presentation of the Balkan situation and of Serbian internal politics is particularly enlightening, suggesting that Austria's response was not as irrational as is often assumed. And his discussion of the domestic pressures working on various political leaders taught me a great deal that I did not know. As well as specific issues -- he argues that much of the British military establishment saw a European war as something that could stop Home Rule in Ireland -- he discusses the cultural and even personal pressures that worked on key actors. Overall, he describes a policy environment in which internal communications were poor and lines of command blurred -- an environment in which mistakes were all too possible.

Second, there is question of national war guilt, which has been a central issue ever since the Treaty of Versailles put all of the guilt on Germany. This was of course a major political issue in the interwar period, which tended to be pushed aside after World War II. But Fritz Fischer reopened the argument with a bang in 1961; in "Germany's Aims in the First World War", Fischer argued that Germany planned the war as a step towards European domination, making Hitler's policies a continuation rather than an aberration. The debate that Fischer opened up is still wide open. Some who disagree with him argue that another country (Russia, or France, or England) bore at least a large part of the responsibility, while others argue that war was triggered by a series of mistakes that left all participants (or no participants) responsible. All involved have tended to move towards more nuanced points of view, but big differences persist.

Clark's title makes it clear where he stands in this debate: "Sleepwalkers" argues that the war resulted from mistakes rather than intention, though several national leaders were only too ready to move towards the brink. The institutional issues are critical here, in that leaders did not have accurate information, and did not communicate clearly, on a national as well as an international level. Moreover, he describes a situation in which all the major players had belief systems -- different and contradictory belief systems -- which allowed them to convince themselves that highly aggressive actions were in fact defensive.

Overall, this is an illuminating and very interesting book. Any historian of course selects and arranges his evidence, and Clark does so quite brilliantly. I am not entirely convinced that the war could in fact have been avoided. But reading this book has certainly shown me how much individual misjudgements and random chance had to do with the war's outbreak,and how much Sarajevo really did matter.

D.V. KOKKINOS

The slow road to Perdition 4 1/2 stars

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2013

This is a masterpiece.It is the clearest and best documented account in one volume of why and how the 1st WW happened,not by the Sarajevo assassination but by events going back many years.
Reading this very well written book one understands the strength of the possible when it becomes probable until,"Some stupid thing in the Balkans"happens, as Bismarck had foreseen thirty years previously.
The book combines deep and broad research,diligent and profound analysis and intelligent and rational synthesis of a tremendous amount of data.It also provides a rationale (to the extent that a rationale exists)for the acts of the various players of that period up to the start of the War.Every nation's and every caste's within the nations are examined exposed and understood better than before.
The shaping of intentions and the shaping of actions by intentions ,all originating in perceptions is clearly demonstrated ,analysed and exposed for our judgement
The best way I can describe this book is that it shows how the various political,diplomatic and military clouds formed, how these clouds interacted within a nation,between two nations,and in the whole of Europe and the results of these interactions.
It shows how every year from about 1905 to 1914 ,brought the conflict closer and the probability of a war increasing as time went by.
Reading the book is like watching a collision in slow motion.The irreconciiability of perceived interests of every nation with opposing nations led to the formation of the two alliances.Professor Clark demonstrates also that Great Britain was not the undecided bystander in this conflict as often presented,but there also a Team of Players in power ,with or without parliamentary legitimization in a convoluted way,contributed to the build-up of the momentum that led to the collision.
The principal conclusion of the book is that there ware no innocent parties except Belgium,and each,unable to act for Peace,dominated by fear ,perceived potential danger,and greed and forced to a confrontational rectitude by the stiffness of their male egos,accepted by steps the fatality of war.
The book is significant not only for its Academic Honesty and Intellectual Integrity but also for the depth of its perception of causes an effects even the very minor ones,and the presentation of them all for the reader to be the final judge.
The first part of the book is the most interesting part ,also because the second part is much more written about and known.The author elegantly avoids to assign responsibilities in a more even handed than necessary and somewhat insipid way,hence my 4 1/2 stars instead of 5.
The writing by a gifted storyteller is in an elegantly simple and free of conceit prose,arranging the real events in such a way as to create the interest to the reader.It is a pleasure to read.
D.V.Kokkinos
PS It is the sarcasm of History that Serbia was grown to Yugoslavia after the 1st WW for the wrong reasons and was reduced again to small Serbia after 75 years again for the wrong reasons by the Great Powers of the times

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