Stefan Zweig was an Austrian Jew, and in his book “The World of Yesterday” he begins by describing the civilization of Europe before 1914, as seen through the eyes of a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was far from perfect; it had its virtues and its weaknesses. But it was a world of peace and stability for the ordinary citizen, with the prospect of gradual liberal reform of society as the years went by. He goes on to describe the first part of the destruction of that civilization by the German attempt at world conquest between 1914 and 1945. He says in terms that his book is not a personal reminiscence, but a record of the times told through his experiences. The two World Wars were really one, with a twenty year armistice in between; but Stefan Zweig did not see it like that. He became a successful writer in the 1920s, with his books being translated into many languages; and Hitler’s rise to power took him completely by surprise. When the full horror of that finally dawned on him, he was able to flee from Hitler’s power in good time; but he evidently felt he had made more than enough new-beginnings, and so he committed suicide in Brazil in August 1941. The war was not going well for the British Empire and Russia at that time; and it must have seemed to many that Germany would win. At any rate, he had had enough!
Had he lived long enough to see this catastrophe in its completeness, I suspect he would have said that the destruction of this civilization, with its sense of honour and public spirit, was a crime second only to the crucifixion of Christ. And that is certainly a tenable point of view. Without civilization and peace of a kind, nothing is possible; not even the life of the Saviour. Roman civilization was pretty cruel and brutal; but the Rule of Law was enforced, and there was a good deal of integrity. And it is really inconceivable that the Saviour should have been born, either before it matured or after it began its decline. Nor was this destruction of Europe an unfortunate and unexpected combination of political circumstances. It was a deliberate crime. The Schlieffen plan was conceived by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, when he was Chief of the German General Staff between 1891 and 1906. It was to be a repetition of Frederick the Great’s battle of Leuthen (1757) on a gigantic scale. The army in Lorraine would first hold the French, and then fall back before them; whilst the right wing would march through Luxemburg, Belgium, and Holland at Maastricht, swing round and advance West of Paris, and drive the rear of the French armies pell-mell into Germany and Switzerland. In 1906, he handed it to his successor, General Helmuth von Moltke – the younger, who fortunately was only the shadow of his uncle, and mismanaged the whole plan.