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Clearly The Sleepwalkers has touched a nerve of the German consciousness of history. For this success says more about German attitudes than about the book itself. This cannot explain its success in Germany, however. So far we are talking about an important and exciting book. But until now, it has not been possible to read, in such colourful detail, the complexity and the contingency that imprinted the perceptions of the decision-makers of 1914 and determined their actions.

One may, with good reason, question the adequacy of this portrayal and of the title itself. This lends the title of the book a certain plausibility, one which indeed suggests that those actors lacked awareness and understanding. The image that emerges is one of a diplomatic labyrinth in which European monarchs, statesmen and diplomats lost all sense of direction and from which the only way out lay in war. He delves deep into his source material to reconstruct the parameters in which those who decided between war and peace acted, and demonstrates the lack of clarity with which they were confronted. He examines the international system, its players and the underlying structure of interests equally in Belgrade and Vienna, Paris and London, Berlin and St Petersburg. Moreover, Clark, like no other before him, treats the July 1914 crisis as a European crisis. The Sleepwalkers is a probing, well-written book that provides significant, and in part new, insights where Clark draws on archival material. One reason for its success lies in the quality of the work itself. This phenomenon is, at first glance at least, surprising and worthy of explanation. Rarely does an almost 900-page history book by a university professor, densely written and replete with source material, meet with such an overwhelming response from the German public. The success of The Sleepwalkers, however, is on another level. His biography of Wilhelm II, which followed shortly after, was also generously received.

In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. The Cambridge-based Australian historian Christopher Clark was not unknown in Germany when he published his latest book, The Sleepwalkers.