那么如何解释金融市场在风暴来临之际的相对平静呢?这要怪历史学家。有些人认为,一战的根源是20世纪初欧洲独有的诸多弊病,如帝国主义、军国主义、民族主义和秘密外交,对这些人来说,如今的危机没什么可担心的。因为现代欧洲人已经放弃了帝国主义,差不多解除了武装,对民族主义感到尴尬,并且通过Twitter而不是秘密电报来开展外交。
Even more complacent are those who insist on laying all the blame for 1914 on Germany. Today’s Germans prefer winning world cups to losing world wars. In almost every respect, Angela Merkel, their chancellor, is the historical antithesis of Kaiser Wilhelm II: female, democratically elected, supremely cautious and almost comically circumspect when asked what makes her feel proud to be German. (“Our well-sealed windows,” she once told Bild newspaper.)
那些将1914年战争全都归咎于德国的人甚至更加满不在乎。如今的德国更喜欢赢得世界杯,而不是输掉世界战争。从几乎所有方面来说,德国总理安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)就是德皇威廉二世(Kaiser Wilhelm II)的历史对立面:默克尔是女性、经由民主选举上台、极为谨慎,在被问及什么让她对身为德国人感到自豪的时候,她谨慎得近乎好笑——她曾经向《图片报》(Bild)表示:“是我们密封良好的窗户。”
Yet the narratives woven by historians over the past 100 years must be treated with caution. Whether they blame “isms” or Germans, the majority of academic explanations of the first world war suffer from a fundamental flaw. The deep-seated causes they posit seem largely to have been missed by contemporaries, for whom – with very few exceptions – the war came as a complete surprise.
【第一大战爆发100周年 世界不该这么快遗忘警示】相关文章:
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