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. 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…
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