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Prophets of the Great War: Friedrich Engels, Ivan Bloch, and
Pyotr Durnovo
ANATOLY KARLIN • MAY 5, 2010 • 3,300 WORDS • 11 COMMENTS

Though there are plenty of caveats and exceptions, it is safe to generalize that
predictions of what the “next war” was going to be like before 1914 were
completely inaccurate. The Great War would not be the quick, clean affair
typical of the wars of German unification in the 1860′s-70′s or the
sensationalist literature of the antebellum period. The generals were as
wrong as the general public and war nerds. France had an irrationally fervent
belief in the power of the offensive and dreamed of the Russians steam-rolling
over Berlin before winter, while the Germans gambled their victory on the
success of the Schlieffen plan. When the war finally came, the linear tactics of
previous wars floundered in the machine guns, artillery, mud, and barbed wire
of trench warfare. The belligerent societies were placed under so much strain by
this first industrial total war that by its end, four great monarchies would vanish
off the face of Europe.

Nonetheless, there were three theorists – a Communist, a Warsaw banker, and a

Russian conservative minister – who did predict the future with a remarkable,
even eerie, prescience. They were Friedrich Engels, Ivan Bloch, and Pyotr
Durnovo.

Friedrich Engels

Way back in 1887, Friedrich Engels, the famous Communist theorist, wrote this
remarkably accurate prediction of the next war.

… world war of never before seen intensity, if the system of

mutual outbidding in armament, carried to the extreme, finally bears
its natural fruits… eight to ten million soldiers will slaughter
each other and strip Europe bare as no swarm of locusts has ever
done before. The devastations of the Third Years War condensed into
three or four years and spread all over the continent: famine,
epidemics, general barbarization of armies and masses,
provoked by sheer desperation; utter chaos in our trade, industry and
commerce, ending in general bankruptcy; collapse of the old states
and their traditional wisdom in such a way that the crowns will
roll in the gutter by the dozens and there will be nobody to pick
them up; absolute impossibility to foresee how all this will end and
who will be victors in that struggle; only one result was absolutely
certain: general exhaustion and the creation of circumstances for the
final victory of the working class.

Engels was completely right on the “total war” aspect. The number of
 military deaths in the war, 9.7mn, was within his predicted range. And indeed
by 1918 there was a severe epidemic, the Spanish flu, and a year later the
crowns of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey were all rolling in the
gutter. The working class only got their “final victory” in Russia (though they
came close in Hungary, Slovakia, and Bavaria).

Ivan Bloch

Ivan Bloch was a Warsaw banker, railway planner, and campaigner against
Russian anti-Semitism. In 1899, he wrote a book Is War Now Impossible?, in
which he argued that its costs would be such that the inevitable result would be
a struggle of attrition and eventual bankruptcy and famine. His hope was that
by getting people to comprehend the vast costs and uncertainties of future war,
he could forestall it. Though he was unsuccessful in that goal, he did at least get
the muted privilege of being almost 100% right about its nature. For instance,
see this direct extract from his book.

At first there will be increased slaughter – increased slaughter on

so terrible a scale as to render it impossible to get troops to
push the battle to a decisive issue. They will try to, thinking that
they are fighting under the old conditions, and they will learn such a
lession that they will abandon the attempt forever. Then, instead of
war fought out to the bitter end in a series of decisive battles, we shall
have as a substitute a long period of continually increasing
strain upon the resources of the combatants. The war, instead of
being a hand-to-hand contest, in which the combatants measure their
physical and moral superiority, will become a kind of stalemate, in
which neither army being willing to get at the other, both armies will
be maintained in opposition to each other, threatening the other, but
never being able to deliver a final and decisive attack… That is the
future of war – not fighting, but famine, not the slaying of men, but
the bankruptcy of nations and the breakup of the whole social
organization… Everybody will be entrenched in the next war. It will
be a great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as
indispensable to the soldier as his rifle… All wars will of
necessity partake of the character of siege operations… soldiers may
fight as they please; the ultimate decision is in the hand of famine…
Unless you have a supreme navy, it is not worthwhile having one at
all, and a navy that is not supreme is only a hostage in the hands of
the Power whose fleet is supreme.

This is, of course, a pretty accurate prevision of WW1. It was a stalemate of

artillery and entrenchments. The German home front collapsed in late 1918 in
large part as a result of dearth resulting from being cut off from global food
imports and the requisitioning of the chemical fertilizer industries for munitions
production. And the Kaiserliche Marine was indeed bottled up in port for most
of the war. To further demonstrate Bloch’s predictive genius, I will quote from
Niall Ferguson’s summary of his book in The Pity of War.
 In Is War Now Impossible? (1899), the abridged and somewhat
mistitled English version of his massive six-volume study, the Warsaw
financier Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch argued that, for three reasons, a
major European war would be unprecedented in its scale and
destructiveness. Firstly, military technology had transformed the
nature of warfare in a war that ruled out swift victory for an attacker.
“The day of the bayonet [was] over“; cavalry charges were too
obsolete. Thanks to the increased rapidity and accuracy of rifle fire,
the introduction of smokeless powder, the increased penetration of
bullets and the greater range and power of the breech-loading
cannon, traditional set-piece would not occur. Instead of hand-to-
hand combat, men in the open would “simply fall and die without
either seeing or hearing anything“. For this reason, “the next
war… [would] be a great war of entrenchments“. According to
Bloch’s meticulous calculations, a hundred men in a trench would be
able to kill an attacking force up to four times as numerous, as the
latter attempted to cross a 300-yard wide “fire zone“. Secondly, the
increase in the size of European armies meant that any war would
involve as many as ten million men, with fighting “spread over
an enormous front”. Thus, although there would be very high rates of
mortality (especially among officers), “the next war [would] be a
long war“. Thirdly, and consequently, economic factors would
be “the dominant and decisive elements in the matter”. War
would mean:

entire dislocation of all industry and severing of all the

sources of supply… the future of war [is] not fighting,
but famine, not the slaying of men, but the
bankruptcy of nations and the break-up of the
whole social organization.

The disruption of trade would badly affect food supply in those

countries reliant on imported grain and other foodstuffs. The
machinery of distribution would also be disrupted. There would be
colossal financial burdens, labour shortages and, finally,
social instability.

He pretty much nails it! Now yes, Bloch wasn’t 100% spot on. He was
slightly wrong about alliances. His was wrong in his conjecture that “the city
dweller is by no means as capable of lying out at nights in damp and exposed
conditions as the peasant”, which coupled with her agricultural self-sufficiency,
would give Russia the advantage in a war with “more highly organized”
Germany. And most of all, he was wrong in predicting that social instability and
revolution would doom all the belligerent states – after all, the key war objective
 would only be to remain the last man standing.

Pyotr Durnovo

While reading Secular Cycles by Turchin & Nefedov, I came across a

reference to a truly, remarkably prophetic document called the Durnovo
Memorandum. It was penned by Pyotr Durnovo, a member of the State
Council and former Minister of the Interior in Witte’s cabinet, and presented to
the Tsar in February 1914. A conservative Russian nationalist, he emphasized
that it was not in Russia’s interest to fight a costly and uncertain war with fellow
monarchy Germany, a war he saw as only serving to further Albion’s aims. His
fears were all astoundingly prescient and eventually, tragically realized. More
than anything, this discovery spurred me to write this post.

After digging around I found that Douglas Muir had already written about it in
History: The Durnovo Memorandum at A Fistful of Euros. It is an
excellent summary and analysis, and I recommend you go over and read it in its
entirety. In this section, I will liberally quote and paraphrase Doug’s post.

Under what conditions will this clash occur and what will be its
probable consequences? The fundamental groupings in a future
war are self-evident: Russia, France, and England, on the
one side, with Germany, Austria, and Turkey, on the other.

Italy, if she has any conception of her real interests, will not join the
German side. … [Romania] will remain neutral until the scales of
fortune favor one or another side. Then, animated by normal political
self-interest, she will attach herself to the victors, to be rewarded at
the expense of either Russia or Austria. Of the other Balkan States,
Serbia and Montenegro will unquestionably join the side opposing
Austria, while Bulgaria and Albania (if by that time they have not yet
formed at least the embryo of a State) will take their stand against the
Serbian side. Greece will in all probability remain neutral…

Both America and Japan–the former fundamentally, and the latter by

virtue of her present political orientation–are hostile to Germany, and
there is no reason to expect them to act on the German side. …
Indeed, it is possible that America or Japan may join the anti-German
side…

Right off the bat, in February 1914, Durnovo correctly sketches out the WW1
alliance system, despite that “Italy was still officially allied with Germany and
Austria, Ottoman Turkey was firmly neutral, and Romania was ruled by a
Hohenzollern”.

Are we prepared for so stubborn a war as the future war of the

European nations will undoubtedly become? This question we must
 answer, without evasion, in the negative… [T]here are substantial
shortcomings in the organization of our defenses.

In this regard we must note, first of all, the insufficiency of our war
supplies… the supply schedules are still far from being executed,
owing to the low productivity of our factories. This insufficiency of
munitions is the more significant since, in the embryonic condition
of our industries, we shall, during the war, have no opportunity to
make up the revealed shortage by our own efforts, and the closing
of the Baltic as well as the Black Sea will prevent the
importation from abroad of the defense materials which we
lack.

Another circumstance unfavorable to our defense is its far too great

dependence, generally speaking, upon foreign industry, a fact which,
in connection with the above noted interruption of more or less
convenient communications with abroad, will create a series of
obstacles difficult to overcome. The quantity of our heavy
artillery, the importance of which was demonstrated in the
Japanese War, is far too inadequate, and there are few
machine guns…

The network of strategic railways is inadequate. The railways

possess a rolling stock sufficient, perhaps, for normal traffic, but
not commensurate with the colossal demands which will be
made upon them in the event of a European war. Lastly, it
should not be forgotten that the impending war will be fought among
the most civilized and technically most advanced nations. Every
previous war has invariably been followed by something new in the
realm of military technique, but the technical backwardness of
our industries does not create favorable conditions for our adoption
of the new inventions. …

[A] war will necessitate expenditures which are beyond Russia’s

limited financial means. We shall have to obtain credit from allied
and neutral countries, but this will not be granted gratuitously. As to
what will happen if the war should end disastrously for us, I do not
wish to discuss now. The financial and economic consequences
of defeat can be neither calculated nor foreseen, and will
undoubtedly spell the total ruin of our entire national economy.

“Bang, bang, bang: too few heavy guns, not enough munitions production,
inadequate rail network and rolling stock, too much reliance on imports,
financial weakness. Durnovo doesn’t identify every problem Russia would have,
but he’s hit about half of the top ten.” In particular, I was impressed with his
negative assessment of Russia’s railways (which would break down later in the
war resulting in food riots in the cities) and his gloomy perspective on the
productivity and innovation potential of Russia’s military industrial complex.
Obviously, he leaves out a set of other crucial factors – the administrative and
political failings of the Russian state itself (the corruption and incompetence of
many Russian ministers like Sukhomlinov, the personal foibles of the Tsar
and the malignant influence of court lackeys, etc). Whether this omission was
due to political considerations or Durnovo’s own blind-sidedness as a
conservative stalwart is open to interpretation.

If the war ends in victory, the putting down of the Socialist movement
will not offer any insurmountable obstacles. There will be agrarian
troubles, as a result of agitation for compensating the soldiers with
additional land allotments; there will be labor troubles during the
transition from the probably increased wages of war time to normal
schedules; and this, it is to be hoped, will be all, so long as the wave
of the German social revolution has not reached us. But in the
event of defeat, the possibility of which in a struggle with a
foe like Germany cannot be overlooked, social revolution in
its most extreme form is inevitable.

As has already been said, the trouble will start with the
blaming of the Government for all disasters. In the legislative
institutions a bitter campaign against the Government will begin,
followed by revolutionary agitations throughout the
country, with Socialist slogans, capable of arousing and rallying the
masses, beginning with the division of the land and succeeded by a
division of all valuables and property. The defeated army, having
lost its most dependable men, and carried away by the tide
of primitive peasant desire for land, will find itself too
demoralized to serve as a bulwark of law and order. The
legislative institutions and the intellectual opposition parties, lacking
real authority in the eyes of the people, will be powerless to stem the
popular tide, aroused by themselves, and Russia will be flung
into hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be
foreseen. …

No matter how strange it may appear at first sight, considering the

extraordinary poise of the German character, Germany, likewise,
is destined to suffer, in case of defeat, no lesser social
upheavals. The effect of a disastrous war upon the population will
be too severe not to bring to the surface destructive
tendencies, now deeply hidden. … there will be a revival of the
hitherto concealed separatist tendencies in southern Germany, and
the hidden antagonism of Bavaria to domination by Prussia will
emerge in all its intensity.

Things went, as they say, to the letter. Not only does Durnovo seriously
entertain the prospect of Russia’s defeat, but he spells out its consequences with
an almost eerie accuracy. The Empire was indeed wracked by social revolution,
as the railway system and food supply system began to disintegrate by late 1916
 and popular resentment against the government was inflamed by court scandals.
The soldiers in St.-Petersburg in February 1917, many of them recently drafted
peasants who did not want to fight for a regime under which they were non-
propertied and disenfranchised, would join the workers demonstrating for bread
instead of dispersing them. Within another year, Russia was wracked by total
anarchy. Likewise, following its defeat, Germany experienced political fissures
between the far right and the far left, and even saw the emergence of the short-
lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. If one were very generous, Durnovo’s mention of
“destructive tendencies” could even be said to have hinted at the coming of
Nazism.

“Durnovo glosses over a lot, and gets some details wrong. His contempt for
intellectuals and the Duma is very clear in the last part of the memo, and it
leads him down a couple of dead ends. But he’s so right about so many things
that picking out his errors is really quibbling. In the last hundred years of
European history, I’m not aware of any document that makes so many
predictions, of such importance, so correctly. And I’m astonished that it doesn’t
get more attention from western historians.”

The German General Staff

This is not to say that all European armies were infatuated with the offensive
and the bayonet. In particular, certain thinkers from the elite German General
Staff stand out for their prescience. They feared that rapid Franco-Russian
military modernization meant Germany had to plan for a two-front war of
attrition instead of a rapid, one-front campaign of annihilation. Thus Moltke the
Elder foresaw that the convergence of social and technological trends would
make the Prussian tradition of ‘total force applied in limited ways for limited
objectives’ obsolete, or in his last Reichstag speech of 1890, that the “age of
cabinet war” would have to give way to “people’s war”.

His disciple Colmar von der Goltz had expounded on these views in his
influential book Das Volk in Waffen back in 1883, which advocated the
mobilization of all human and material resources under firm military rule for
the duration of the war. (Although, unlike Bloch or Engels he did not cover the
impact on the civilian role in much detail, e.g. how to feed the population or
maintain industrial production – on which total war would make unprecedented
demands – under harsh conditions of blockade). Köpke , the Quartermaster of
the General Staff, wrote in 1895: “Even with the most offensive spirit…nothing
more can be achieved than a tedious and bloody crawling forward step by step
here and there by way of an ordinary attack in siege style – in order to slowly
win some advantages”.

Yet for all the brilliant foresight of a few members of the German General Staff,
as a body it institutionalized the military philosophy of the past. The best proof
is its fixation on the Schlieffen Plan, described by B.H. Liddell Hart as a
“conception of Napoleonic boldness”, which aimed to knock out France early in
the war so that Germany would not have to confront the geo-strategic horror of
waging a two-front war against the Entente Cordiale. But while it may have
worked a decade or two before WW1, by 1914 it suffered from a host of
unwarranted assumptions that made its success highly uncertain – e.g., a lack of
effective Belgian resistance, a slow Russian mobilization, the ineffectiveness of
 the British Expeditionary Force, and underestimation of French logistical
capacities and overestimation of their own. So even an institution as brilliant as
the German General Staff was trapped between the Scylla of past experience and
the Charybdis of new technologies; they were just somewhat more aware of this
trap than the other European armies.

What’s the point of this post? It is really a confluence of several interests – the
history of World War One, history in general, and futurism. It might not
challenge any existing “narrative”, but I do think it adds a bit of richness to the
subject, and reinforces the theme that sometimes the “conventional wisdom”
(among both masses and elites) can be very, very wrong, and only recognized as
so by a few pundits coming from surprisingly varied, even opposed, ideological
positions.

(Reprinted from Sublime Oblivion by permission of author or representative)