Pastor Tracy Reads | The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark

February 12, 2025 | Pastor Tracy Troxel

We are familiar with how World War II began. Germany invaded Poland in 1939. The United States Navy suffered significant losses at Pearl Harbor in 1941. We are less familiar with how and why World War I started. This question motivated me to read Christopher Clark’s excellent work that describes how Europe went to war in 1914.

The standard treatment that I absorbed in high school declared that nationalism and war-hungry nations plunged Europe into war. Christopher Clark not only dispels that argument but provides a far more nuanced and complete picture of the steps that moved Europe to war.

What surprised me was how most, if not all, of the principal foreign policy leaders in Europe were trying to avoid war. Nobody wanted Europe to slide into this horrific conflict. Multiple treaties and agreements designed to lessen the outbreak of hostilities combined to push nations into this conflict. And there were other unofficial agreements, unknown to governments, that also led to this conflict.

Every leader and foreign policy coordinator in every country suffered significant trauma in the weeks and days leading up to World War I. Shockingly, the conflict that everyone opposed was the
conflict that engulfed Europe. The title Sleepwalkers appears to signal that the leadership of Europe blindly entered World War I. It might be better to describe the leadership of Europe as those whose eyes were wide open to the risks. Yet, their delicate interlocking treaties and agreements could not stop the war that they desperately opposed in every respect.

If you have never read a detailed account of how World War I started, you should read the book. You will see again the wisdom of very capable leaders, dissolving into folly and
destruction. We have a broken world. This treatise recounts a plethora of broken leaders making decisions that led directly to the result that everyone was trying to stop.