'I think that Putin knows that this would be a sort of self extinction,' says Clarkstopher about the possibility of World War III. DW's Louisa Schaefer spoke with the historian, who just received the CharlemagneAward for his work on Anglo-German history.
Historian Christopher Clark, author of"The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" discusses with DW the complexities of war, and why Putin's behavior does not represent Russia.DW: Your book"Sleepwalkers" caused people to rethink the First World War, and whether it was just Germany starting the war, or whether it was rather many European nations sleepwalking into a massive battle.
For example, if you think about the current war in the Ukraine, if we simply decide Mr. Putin is a very bad man and he caused a war and that's the end of it, we will learn nothing from this war.We can learn much more if we think about the whole story of how this situation came about. It wouldn't in any way ease his responsibility for what has happened, which I think is unquestionable. But it would at least enable us to learn how to manage these situations better in the future.
It starts in a place nobody expects, down in the Balkans, in Sarajevo, with an assassination.
Clearly, a lot of the senior people in his system were not aware of this decision until it was actually made. It's very much Putin's war. And he's currently, as far as we know from intelligence reports, actually personally playing a role in the management of this war. He makes decisions even at the level of operations.You formulated the First World War as a"modern event.
I do think that the EU is a kind of learned historical lesson. It's the lesson of the two world wars turned into a political order.
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