When Your Allies Steal the Stage in Your Theater of War

Many wars start for one reason, but continue for another - the Trojan war comes to mind as a classical example. The war may have started over a stolen wife, but that was not why it continued. Howard makes a similar argument, "Left to themselves, the original protagonists, Russia and Austria-Hungary, would almost certainly have done so. But the original causes of the war were now almost forgotten" (37). After a certain point, perhaps a war develops into too much lost life to give into a peace? People of a nation start to want the war for other reasons. They think they should keep fighting because look what happened in Ypres. They think now the other side has to pay for those losses in new losses of their own. So, it does become about who can declare the most glory or "manhood" and it stops being about what it started for all together. I mean Achilles didn't go to fight Trojans to get back Helen, and none of the Allies really went to war for the reasons they claimed either.

Howard, Michael. The First World War: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press,
2007.

Comments

This is interesting because every war's critics question why the war was being fought in the first place. With the Civil War, the Second World War, and even the Cold War there were always explanations of some sort. However, your right the Great War really does not have one big explain-all to describe its causes. I agree with the idea that the war continued in part due to honor. Even after their men began to desert en mass, France decided executing deserters was more honorable than surrender. This mentality is one of the remote causes of the war's beginning but the prime reason that it lasted so long and cost so many lives.