Germany’s forgotten war

Britain is braced for the anniversary of the outbreak of world war one. Memorials and events are taking place across the country this weekend. Not so in Germany, where reticence reigns.  This week’s Spectator features a piece by Antonia Oettingen, a descendant of Karl Max von Lichnowsky, the Kaiser’s ambassador in London from 1912-1914. She explains why Germany is shy about the Great War.

‘In 1912 Kaiser Wilhelm had an ambitious task for my great-great-great uncle Karl Max von Lichnowsky. He sent him to London to be our ambassador there, with orders to try to ensure Britain’s neutrality (at the very least, in cases of conflict with Russia and France). Although Lichnowsky already had a sympathetic relationship with Britain’s foreign minister, Edward Grey, who also hoped to avoid a war, his mission failed. His personal objective — to deter the Kaiser from going to war — fell flat too. In a telegram sent on 18 July 1914 he pleaded with Kaiser Wilhelm to ‘spare the German people a war from which nothing can be gained but everything lost’.