ABSTRACT
The topos of the inevitability of an impending major war was propagated most effectively a short time later in General Friedrich v. Bernhardi’s book Deutschland und der nAchste Krieg, published in the spring of 1912, and greatly acclaimed by the national press. The anti-Russian campaign, in which the topos of the inevitability of war played an important part, was conducted during those months by the right-wing press and agitational organisations with scarcely diminished vociferousness. Hence all the pre-conditions necessary to establish the topos of the inevitability of a major European war firmly in the minds of the German public did in fact exist. Indeed it is apparent that the rhetorical figure of the inevitability of a future war or, as Oron Hale has called it, ‘the cult of inevitability’, gradually found support in ever wider circles. The topos of the ‘inevitability’ of a great European war had finally transcended the level of biased propaganda and nationalist agitation.
