Oswald Spengler's response to Agadir provides a warning about retrospective history. Attempts to turn the crisis into a device for predicting the future are poor history, even though contemporaries could recognize a serious danger of general war. Claims that Agadir suddenly revealed German encirclement by the Entente are also suspect because those diplomatic arrangements and their limits were already visible. This historiographical aside prepares the later argument that the crisis deepened Anglo-French cooperation without making 1914 inevitable.
Notable Point · 49:48-50:44
Spengler and the hindsight of inevitability
Oswald Spengler's response to Agadir prompts a critique of retrospective accounts that turn the crisis into proof of an inevitable general war.