Fritz Fischer's ‘Programme for Revolution’: Implications for a Global History of Germany in the First World War

Abstract

In the autumn of 1914 the German Foreign Office launched a sweeping programme of global insurrection, which created networks of agents and information reaching from Berlin to Tehran, Calcutta and San Francisco. Yet Germany's pioneering role in instigating ‘revolutionary subversion' during the First World War has to date not been fully explored. In Germany's Aims in the First World War, Fritz Fischer placed insurrection at the centre of his study of war aims and strategies, yet what he called the ‘revolution programme' was quickly sidelined as a topic during the early years of the Fischer controversy. This article explores this absence. It analyses the historiographical place of the revolution programme in the Fischer controversy and argues for a general re-evaluation of Fischer's work in order to raise questions about how Germany's Aims could contribute to a ‘global turn' in the exploration of German actions in the First World War.