Gordon (1974) on Fischer

On the Fischer side of the debate, for instance, he and his sympathizers have tried to uncover the degree to which German foreign policy was prompted by the logic of domestic bargaining maneuvers-by concern for the social status quo, for the prestige of the imperial regime, for the needs of the economic elites. In Fischer’s second book, this domestic impact even becomes decisive. Its argument-stripped to the bone-amounts to a thesis of aggressive war, launched by the principal German policy makers in 1914 to preserve an expansionary future in the belief that expansion alone could preserve the threatened status quo at home. Michael R Gordon, Domestic Conflict and the Origins of the First World War: The British and the German Case. Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp. 191-226