Sleepwalkers in Defiance of a Wake-up Call that Clark's Did not Have

According to the 2020 founding manifesto and 2023 mission statement, Aufa100 focuses on the history and memory of the final stages of World War One as well as the (first) post-war order. The warlike events of our own time, however, caused us to return to the conflict's fore-end.

How come that the bulk of Christopher Clark's 'The Sleepwalkers' extended readership appears to have slipped in the title's role? At the same time, following the lead cannot be denied. This highly questionable role of sleepwalking into a state of global warfare was modelled by the West's military (NATO) and political elites.

From the perspective of peace research and security policy, historicising the practice and theory of the 1919 Paris/Versailles order and the post-Cold-War parallel to this particularly Western history of dictatorial imperialism, including an exclusively British sub-imperialism, suggests this state of denial. In contrast, a monolith of unilaterally created facts from the recent decades should have rung a bell throughout the transatlantic-Eurasian space.

The first post-war order ran from 1919 into the 1930s, in other words, the era of a 27-state plus five British colonies' diktat towards a disengaged enemy in transition to a liberal democratic successor state. The beginnings of a comparable order, three generations later on, should not be confused with the mutually acceptable agreements on the end of the Cold War, most notably the 1990 Paris Charter for a New Europe.(1)  It developed as a consequence of the triumphant unilateralism of US-led Europe security policies on from the mid-1990s. Thus, the most intriguing parallel from our time, including the first quarter of the 21st century, is not so much the Weimar/Russia debate, but rather the West's abandonment of these agreements including the charter. As a result, the increasingly isolated Russian Federation's red lines were crossed time and again. These violations cannot be regarded as a result of sleepwalking. They were inflicted in clear consciousness. Followed by British and, with some delay, Brussels proxies, every United States leadership since Bill Clinton pushed towards this Versailles-like policy.(2)  As of President Vladimir Putin's second term, the Western mainstream may be generally diagnosed with historical amnesia in many respects.

In contrast, internal differentiation marked the historical case-study. The all-European missing out on the 2019 Versailles and League-of-Nations anniversaries was compensated by the United States World War One Centennial Commission's multifaceted observance.  At the same time, this US success failed to be translated into corrective observations about the present order's derailment. After the Franco-German resistance subsided around 2010, the Atlantic alliance's anti-Russian expansions were taken to the limit. Ultimatively, this means that its politically responsible parties were, so to say, sleepwalking. In their chronically dizzy walk, they were joined by mainstream media. With an army of Western journalists and leaders, such as Ursula von der Leyen, Boris Johnson, Keith Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Mark Rutte and all of Clinton's successors, historical denial and ignorance is accentuated by a shrugging acceptance of losing the peace of 1990⎼1991, which means no less than tacit support for the outbreak of a (possibly nuclear) world war.(3)

Sleepwalkers Then

To acquire peace promoting knowledge about Russia's Europe policies, the other Europeans and the United States' overtly anti-Russian tendencies of decades before and after Y2K must be analysed. Concerning the twentieth century, Aufa100 offers multiple studies in a trilingual format. The events of the past decades should be reconstructed with the same vigour. In a double interview on Austrian television, Germany's retired general Harald Kujat termed 2008, more specifically NATO's controversial and historically much debated Bukarest Summit, the political turning point in East-West relations.(4)  This year's development of a severe crisis on the world's capital markets could not be attributed to a recovering Russia, but to the same actors in the West. At the same time time, in nations such as England, the start was given for preparations of the First World War's hundredth anniversary. In 2012, Clark published his acclaimed centenary volume Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914. In contrast to the original success, an even more successful translation into German (2013) may be termed a surprise. From the viewpoint of Die Schlafwandler's readership, the Australian historian managed to challenge mainstream historiography on the origins of the devastating world war as well as the resulting crisis of civilisation. His main argument was that no nations in particular, but the whole of Europe's leadership failed to acknowledge the general-peace undermining policies. Consequently, one after another government would climb further up the escalation ladder.

In terms of a Vergangenheitsbewältigung-like process of coming to terms with the past, the crisis of civilisation has persisted until today. It needs to be acknowledged that the unilateral focus on Second-World-War history and memory stands in the way. For example, Germany's taboo on the lost generation of the Great War as well as its fifth and final year remains intact in spite of the publicity about the recent anniversaries. This does not help in countering today's apparent 'sleepwalking' throughout the West.

The renowned author's specific profile contributed to the success of the bestseller's translation in German. Not many colleagues can be attributed any fluency in this language. In contrast, fellow countrymen Dirk Moses (Historikerstreit 2.0) and Matthew Fitzpatrick make up for a non-European trio of historically compelling bilingualism. Clark is married with an art historian from Germany. This may have been conducive to doing away with Anglo-Saxon-predominated historiography, a quest that was put forward in 2001 by British-American historian Zara Steiner.(5)  Only David Sutton's article 'Complications and Compromise. The Paris Peace Conference and the End of the Great War' serves as an actual example of the seemingly never-ending flow of accounts in the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon narrative. With this Australian, no proof of linguistic diversity can be detected. In general, both cultural and language barriers keep blurring the narrative on the 'seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century' (George Kennan). These obstacles were overcome by Clark. At the same time, he missed out on the global, imperialist dimension of what is captured in the bestseller's title as Europe's war.(6)  Not only Europeans, but also many others were left in the dark. In 1914, before the western front was opened, British-Australian colonists were among the first to attack their overseas colleagues from Germany, that is before the western front was opened.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that the domains of memory and history converge at the sight of Europe's granary aka Ukraine, if not house being in shambles.(7)  In 2024, the warring Russian Federation was uninvited from participating in the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp's liberation (27 January 2025). Instead, Poland's hosts welcomed survivors and other people from all over the world. On this day in 1945, the Nazi death camp was liberated by the multinational armies of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (1922‒1991). Two weeks later, the British responded with aerial bombardments of the non-reinforced city of Dresden. The centre of Saxonia's baroque capital was wiped out. Tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom refugees, died in a single night of firestorm and complementary terror. Among them were those who sought shelter in the Elbe river. In a new wave of assaults following the bombing, Royal Air Force personnel gunned them down. As a consequence, Germans in particular should not need a wake-up call to prevent sleepwalking. A few months before this inferno's 80th anniversary, my German partner's mother told her survivor's story once more. While sitting around our new home's kitchen table and having her on the telephone, we were not asking for anything more than the usual small talk. A few minutes later, Heike recalled her experiences for the first time on her own initiative. In previous cases, I not only needed to ask for it, but also to reassure her to go into the details in order to comply with my professional standards as a historian whose way was marked by the experiences as a Western youngster in Dresden, German Democratic Republic (1985, 1987 and 1988). At the time, she was a mere five years old, living downtown. At their mother's hand, her two-year-old sister and herself found refuge in the third of three bunkers at the Hautpbahnhof. Amid the terror night, the younger girl went missing as her mother went blind due to the smoke. The remaining daughter was heaved through a hole that helpers from outside managed to enforce through the bolstered concrete walls. Fresh air was vital to help the children and women survive in an increasingly toxic shelter. Once outside, the next traumatic nightmare awaited. Among piles of burned bodies, the child was implemented in the search for her sister. At this point, a foreign observer like me will spare you the details. After a fortnight of desperate searching, the two-year-old was found alive in a safe place in the countryside. The three women survived with a mother slowly regaining her eyesight. In the other shelters at the railway station, all people were reported dead.

Both day and night, the today 85-year-old survivor is haunted by female voices. Admittedly, she has never related this pain to these wartime experiences.

Would it have been imaginable to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day (2024) without Brexit Britain's participation? Imagine if the Brits would have been blocked by an alliance under the lead of the French host, most notably due to their invariably anti-European politics. In 1944, when the invasion finally restored the Germany's exclusive dilemma of Zweifrontenkrieg, the Soviet armies had been pushing back the Nazis for years. In 2025, Eastern Europe, the Auschwitz committee wished to stand together with the liberators of France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Russians, including many people from the Soviet empire, happened to mourn millions of women and men more than the Reich's western enemies.

Sisters and Brothers in Sleepwalking

On 27 September 2023, Clark was interviewed by one of Germany's well-known television moderators. With reference to the First World War, the question for the Cambridge-based professor was if 'das, was wir gerade um uns herum sehen, aus Versehen hineinschlittern könnte in einen großen Weltkrieg?'(8)  In contrast to the many thousands of demonstrators for peace in February 2023 at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the historian answered negatively. Shortly after, having arrived in the 2014 proxy war's second decade, he should be given another interview by an alternative moderator, preferably one from the Berliner Zeitung. Would he really stay true to his analysis? Whatever affirmation suggests that the audiences at home and on the set can go to bed in peace and quiet. After all, it seems as if the sleepwalker of the 1910s, the revered writer's tragic figure, is alive and kicking.(9)

You are not alone. All around the western world, sleepwalkers are accompanying you. They sleepwalk from one year into another. Wach auf. Réveillez-vous. Wake up. During holidays or at home, you may well sleepwalk all night through. In the aftermath, though, turn away from mainstream media, start thinking and put your finger on entrenched thinking. Without judging our sleepwalking our and your great-grandfathers, read or reread 'the centenary's international bestseller'.(10)  Because of these one-of-a-kind lessons at our disposal, their enlightened offspring should be able to reflect as well as correct. If not, the curse is likely to give birth to great evil. In historical terms, that is from a comparative perspective, the current generations' sleepwalking may derive from a commensurately higher level of ignorance, a failure of introspective memory as well as Geschichtsvergessenheit. To their predecessors, any precedents were lacking.

Peter de Bourgraaf

Footnotes

1. Hermann Wentker, review of Andreas Rödder, Der verlorene Frieden. Vom Fall der Mauer zum neuen Ost-West-Konflikt, Munich 2024, in: Sehepunkte 25 (2025).

2. Glenn Diesen, Time for NATO to Retire?, G. Diesen's substack, 24 September 2024.

3.  Jost Dülffer, Rezension zu: Die Schlafwandler. Wie Europa in den Ersten Weltkrieg zog, C. Clark. H-Soz-Kult.

4. Michael Fleischhacker's broadcast interview with colonel Markus Reisner and former NATO general Harald Kujat, Servus TV, 26 November 2024.

5. Zara Steiner, The Treaty of Versailles Revisited, in: M. Dockrill and J. Fisher (eds.), The Paris Peace Conference, 1919. Peace without Victory?New York 2001, pp. 13–34, p. 17.

6. Jost Dülffer, Rezension zu: Die Schlafwandler. Wie Europa in den Ersten Weltkrieg zog, C. Clark. H-Soz-Kult.

7. Michael von der Schulenburg, 'Europe's civilisation is on the ground', lecture at Eurasien Gesellschaft, 14 January 2025.

8.  Germany's broadcasting network ARD Maischberger, 27 September 2023. One by one, the other guests represented media or political parties that invariably adhere to the Scholz/Habeck government of shedding Ostpolik as well as a no-negotiations policy of NATO support for Ukraine. Also available on Youtube.

9. Benjamin Abelow, How the West Brought War to Ukraine, Massachusetts 2022, p. 51.

10. Christoph Cornelissen and Arndt Weinrich, German Historiography on World War I, 1914–2019, in: idem (eds.), Writing the Great War. The Historiography of World War I from 1918 to the Present, New York-Oxford: 2021, pp. 147–191, here 170.