But he does make clear that whiskered ogres in pointy helmets alone could not, and did not, drive all Europe into a disaster whose outcomes still shape our lives. He never excuses or underplays elite, reactionary militarism in Germany (indeed, he studied it for decades). The primary casualty of what became known as the “Clark Effect”, of course, was the notion of sole German culpability.
It happened thanks to the convulsive but unplanned breakdown of a multi-player game of great-power rivalry in which all parties thought that they understood and controlled the risks as they gambled for advantage. His magisterial 2012 book The Sleepwalkers argued, with formidable research and a propulsive narrative drive, that the catastrophe that struck Europe, then the world, after August 1914 came about not because of secret grand designs, plots or conspiracies.
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