Christopher Clark. The sleepwalkers. How Europeans went to war in 1914. Gordon Martel. The month that changed the world. July 1914.

Christopher Clark, the author of laudatory Prussian history, "Iron Kingdom" recycles lies of contemporary and post-War German propaganda absolving the Kaiser and his generals of starting the  WWI. In that he twists and bends history right and left.

The first declaration of war between major parties was Germany declaring war on Russia on behalf of the "offended party", the Austro-Hungary, and then invading... Belgium. Austro-Hungary vacillated whole five days (during which France and England declared war on Germany) to respond to "Russian provocations." While all governments were blind to the impending threat of the world conflict, Germany's Wilhelm pursued the cause of war with the single-mindedness, which completely contradicts the traditional (and correct) accounts of the war guilt.

In goose-step with Kaiser's propaganda Clark stoops to obvious lies. There was no symmetry in Russian and German "mobilizations" because in the German military lexicon this word meant "war" (p. 535), i.e. the set of actions to be undertaken on declaration of hostilities. In Russian military statutes this word meant recall of reservists, cancellation of officers' vacations and other internal and purely military contingencies not necessarily involving crossing borders or any other hostile action. This fact is well known to historians but not, obviously, to Clark.

Gordon Martel's book is not ideologically motivated as the opus of Clark. This is re-chewing of well-known facts--some with new archival sources--but without any major insights until nothing is left even to regurgitate.