Germany was not the militaristic nation of caricature but it was a nation in play. There were different forces within Germany that saw war as an opportunity to get rid of all the things they didn't like. As soon as the war broke out the Kaiser and his circle were talking about getting rid of the Reichstag, suspending the constitution and rounding up the Jews. The British expeditionary force turned the tide at a time when it looked like France was going to be defeated. We will never know how close we came to a repeat of the summer of 1940,. I think it is highly likely that Germany had won.
For this week's Sunday Debate, we're dipping back into the archive to 2014, when we gathered a panel of expert historians to debate whether Britain was right to fight in the First World War, a tragedy that laid the foundations for decades of destructive upheaval and violence across Europe. To debate the issue, we invited leading historians Margaret MacMillan, Max Hastings, John Charmley and Dominic Sandbrook to an event hosted by journalist, columnist and national security expert, Edward Lucas.
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