Goodbye To It All Again Analysis

In Goodbye to it all again, John Rohl looked at Fischer’s thesis on why Germany was ultimately responsible for the war. His thesis revolved around one central theme. Rohl spends his whole essay outlining Germany’s desire for world domination and how a confluence of events caused the whole world to go to war. Germany laid out a set of plans that showed they would ultimately support Austria-Hungary in the event that they went to war with Serbia. Russia would therefore react in order to help a fellow Slavic country, which would then cause Russia’s allies to enter the war.

In order to prove this point, Rohl looked at Bethmann-Holweg’s September programme that Fischer found in the Potsdam archives as one of the main pieces of evidence. Not only did the September programme outline Germany’s war aims but the date was also mentioned. The date was of significance because it signaled that Germany was preparing for the eventuality of war even before the war began. Other evidence further showed that was the idea was not to avoid war but to ensure it was fought under the most favourable conditions. Bethmann also made another series of decisions, including sending the Kaiser away and withholding documents from Germany’s Ambassador to London, that could have changed the trajectory of the war. Those decisions proved vital because it had allowed the war hawks in Germany to ultimately go to war because if the Kaiser had stayed, he would have pulled out of the war, knowing Britain’s involvement.

However when Muller diary was found in 1965, there was renewed optimism because he was the head of the naval cabinet, was staunchly in favor of war and his diaries proved that although the war counsel meeting had pushed back the war, it had not changed Germany’s