C20 Peters

I’ve been reading Margaret MacMillan’s highly informative The War That Ended Peace.  She shows how all the relevant countries – Germany, Russia, France, Austria-Hungary and Britain – were constantly feeling their way round each other, testing out existing alliances/ententes and sounding out new ones in a revolving set of courtship dances.

Macmillan war book The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm’s character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  – at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively for the slide to war.  MacMillan suggests that Wilhelm secretly knew that he was not up to the task of running the country.

The single most striking account is of Kaiser Wilhelm’s character.  Here was a playground bully totally used to getting his own way, an immature adolescent in charge of a country, and an army and navy.  MacMillan shows him blundering around in diplomatic exchanges  – at times laughably so, except that the consequences were dire;  not that she blames him exclusively for the slide to war.  MacMillan suggests that Wilhelm secretly knew that he was not up to the task of running the country.

Which makes him an unusual example of the Peter Principle – except of course that he did not rise to his position but inherited it (a good argument for democracy if ever there was one).  On the other hand Helmuth von Moltke the younger was promoted to his position, as chief of German general staff, a position he held from 1905 to 1914.  His father had held it before him, but this did not give the younger Moltke complete self-confidence:

“Moltke was a big, heavy-set man who looked the picture of a bold Prussian general but in reality he was introspective and insecure….Moltke never mastered the work of the general staff in the detail Schlieffen [he of the Schlieffen plan] had done and tended to let its various departments run in their accustomed fashion while he spent more time on managing the Kaiser [see above….] and his Military Cabinet.”

These are not ideal examples of incompetence, but ones who played a very significant part in moving things on to their catastrophic conclusion.  Macmillan suggests that both were at least to some extent aware that they were beyond their level of competence.   She doesn’t let senior politicians or military men from there countries off lightly either.   I guess we could build up a long list of examples of the Peter Principle in history;  selecting which were the most significant would keep the conversation going for a while….

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