July 1914 escalates because of a deterrence failure. Germany and Russia were playing a game of chicken. The kaiser stood firm; he believed that Russia was not prepared for war and would therefore back down. The tsar likewise stood firm; he vowed not to back down again after the Bosnian Crisis – and he thought that Germany would ultimately back down because it would not want to fight the combined power of Russia, France, and the United Kingdom. With neither side yielding, the crisis continued to escalate. A second dynamic contributed to escalation as well. At some point – probably on July 30 – the actors changed strategy. Instead of using coercion to deter their opponent, they started taking coercive measures to increase the likelihood that they would win a war, if one began. Each side mobilized, and mobilization led to war. Beneath all this lay rivalry and the repetition of crises between the major states. Finally, once war broke out between Germany and Russia, the alliance structure caused the war to spread rapidly. From this crisis, we learn many lessons, including that a balance of power and relatively equal military capabilities are associated with war onset; they do not prevent war.

The Franco-Prussian War was both unnecessary and imprudent. France initially received all that it demanded from King William of Prussia. Pressure from the legislature and the people of the boulevard, however, then caused French leaders – including Napoleon III – to expand French demands. This allowed Bismarck, the chancellor of Prussia, to manipulate France into declaring a war that he knew Prussia could win. Two characteristics proved fatal for France. First, the French polity and key French leaders succumbed to war hysteria. This allowed emotions to guide their decision-making, rather than rational calculations. Second, an arrogance among French leaders led to military overconfidence and an element of wishful thinking (e.g., about prospective allies). France was, in other words, less powerful than its leaders thought it would be. Finally, the war was imprudent from the French perspective as well. Within two weeks, as a result of French decisions, Napoleon III went into exile, France lost Alsace-Lorraine, a revolt occurred in Paris, and the German states unified.

This chapter examines the Italian occupation between June 1940 and November 1942. Despite covering only a small area of territory, the Italian government saw the occupation as essential to its policy of prestige. Rome, therefore, sought to impose Italianisation, seeing its occupation zone as an opportunity for annexation by stealth. The Italian occupation was thus more akin to the German treatment of Alsace-Lorraine or northern France than the wider German zone of occupation. Defending French territorial integrity was at the heart of Vichy’s claim to legitimacy. However, the French government’s political choices ultimately determined its response. Vichy’s decision to prioritise collaboration with Berlin over objecting to the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine constrained its ability to oppose similar developments in the Italian zone of occupation. Vichy, therefore, consigned itself to accepting ‘relative’ sovereignty over French territory. In so doing, it experienced further humiliation in failing to prevent de facto territorial annexation by an Italian army whose claims of victory it rejected.