How the First World War Began: The Triple Entente and the Coming of the Great War of 1914-1918

Tim Cook is the transport archivist at the Government Archives and
Records Disposition Division, National Archives of Canada, and the
author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

How the First World War Began is an interesting and well-written account
of the many political and diplomatic maneuvers and back-room deals that
led to the formation of the Triple Entente and the isolation of Germany
before the First World War. This book offers some delightful insights
into how the politicians developed their foreign policies (often to the
total disregard of the wishes of their governments or sovereigns) and
the influential role of the newspapers, especially in Great Britain, in
building and buttressing public opinion against Germany. McCullough
effectively argues that the making of the Anglo-French Entente was
essential in ensuring France’s security on the Continent, and that it
pushed Germany into allying itself with the fading Austrian Empire, a
move that ultimately left Germany in the unenviable position of being
surrounded on two sides by powerful armies, with Great Britain’s navy
completing the circle.

The claim by McCullough that this book offers a new synthesis of the
available information is, unfortunately, never substantiated. Strangely,
the book appears to have been written several decades ago; as a result,
McCullough cites none of the rich sources published in the last decade,
and almost nothing published from the 1980s. It is obvious that no
author can claim to offer a grand historical view of the topic without
having first read the recent literature. Equally worrisome, this book is
almost exclusively old-fashioned diplomatic history, and although it is
done well, there is almost no account of the interplay of other
important factors—like, for instance, the role of the European armies
and their preparations for war.

Although How the First World War Began does not succeed as a
revisionist grand narrative, it is a useful read for those interested in
the diplomatic history of the European Powers and their inexorable slide
into the Great War that killed ten million, destroyed empires, and paved
the way for a century of conflict.