5/29/2023 0 Comments The sleepwalkers clark![]() ![]() ![]() And so was Edward’s least favourite nephew, Wilhelm II of Germany. So was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. The king’s sister-in-law, the empress consort of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, wife of Alexander III, was there. Tuchman’s story begins with Edward VII’s funeral on. Fifty years ago, Barbara Tuchman’s bestseller The Guns of August taught a generation of Americans about the origins of the First World War: the war, she wrote, was unnecessary, meaningless and stupid, begun by overwhelmed, misguided and occasionally mendacious statesmen and diplomats who stumbled into a catastrophe whose horrors they couldn’t begin to imagine – ‘home before the leaves fall,’ they thought. ![]()
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