In military terms, however . . . I recall one German diplomat or officer reported to the Kaiser, “Sire, we are allied with a corpse!”
And before that, one of Otto’s most exquisite bon mots:
When asked what the Court of Vienna would do next, in response to some situation, he thought for a moment…
“What’s the silliest thing you can think of ?”
If you are really interested in this stuff I highly recommend Dan Carlin’s podcast Blueprint for Armageddon. This first episode (three hours long and only part one of several podcasts) explores this particular question of yours. It really is worth a listen (as are his other episodes on other historical topics). Great stuff for a commute or car trip.
The short answer to your question is it was a sort of perfect storm of global-political circumstances/treaties and there were really no capable diplomats left (the Kaiser was a singularly unimpressive person in a time when you needed the skills of Otto von Bismarck).
Oh, really? :dubious:
Seems to me that the country most responsible for turning a regional war (of which there had already been one in each of the past two years) into a global conflict was Russia. They had about as much business getting in Austria-Hungary’s face as the Habsburgs would have had for getting in Russia’s about matters in the Caucasus or Central Asia, i.e. none. Nobody forced Russia to be the “Defenders of Eastern Orthodoxy and All Slavs Everywhere”. That’s a mantle they took upon themselves.
Also, while Allied governments (aside from Russia, of course) may have worked harder than their Central Power counterparts to avert the coming war, there was certainly no shortage of popular bloodlust in Britain and France (and to a lesser degree, Italy).
You may be tired of “revsisionist history”. I’m tired of blaming the Germans and Austrians for everything, and for not holding the Russians to account.
Well, that and the fact that Austro-Hungary was looking for a pretext on which to invade Serbia and crush its nationalist faction. They just didn’t expect to get quite as good a pretext as they did.
Nicholas was telegraphing Wilhelm periodically trying avert war.
Of course, the Tsar would have been a good local Fire Chief or county bureaucrat, and the Kaiser was mainlining testosterone.
Oh, of course. I don’t think Nicholas personally wanted war, but the policies and conduct of the government that he personally headed (I wouldn’t really say “led”) were what turned a regional spat into a wider conflict.
No disagreement here :D.
You beat me to it. Dan Carlin is fantastic.
Russia was pushing Serbia to knuckle under to Austria’s demands or at least find a reasonable compromise. They were no less aggressive historically than Germany and Austria, but they did not really want this particular fight.
Quite true. But nobody asked England to declare themselves defenders of Protestants and Jews in the contemporary Ottoman state, nor France to claim the mantle of the defenders of Catholicism, ditto. This was a feature ( or bug, if you like ) of 19th/early 20th century nationalism, which occasionally took religious overtones. The Russians were by no means the only practitioners.
This is interesting:
“Anyone with constant occasion in the last years to observe the relation of Austria to Serbia could not for a moment be in doubt that a stone had been set rolling whose course could no longer be arrested.”
Remember the reason the Austrian’s had not already attacked Serbia was because the Serb’s had an ally in Russia (both by treaty and tradition). The Russians kind of have to come to Serbia’s aid.
No, of course not. The war the Russians were looking to advantage of was the one which they foresaw happening with the inevitable splintering of the Habsburg empire. They just got the sequence wrong (first revolution in A-H, then attack them, not the other way around as happened historically). Too stupid to be proper vultlres.
All three - busybody assholes cynically exploiting religious and separatist movements for their own gain. Two of them with their own slave empires, and the third who didn’t even free its freakin’ serfs until 1861. Not that the Habsburgs (or Saxe-Coburgs, for that matter) had exactly clean hands, either. All of the Great Powers were fairly monstrous back then.
I agree. That was an interesting passage. I particularly like the part where the benefits and pitfalls of placing excessive faith in the personhood of the Emperor were illustrated.
I strongly disagree with your last sentence. The Russians most certainly do not have to assist Serbia to the point of armed conflict in this case. Shitstirrers like that guy ‘Apis’ count on just this kind of rationale to provide cover for their ill-advised actions. Of course, one could say much the same in regards to A-H hiding behind Germany’s apron as well.
I think this misjudges the realities of global politics.
Sure a rational person would say if you continually twist the tiger’s tail then kill its cub you get what’s coming to you and it’s your own problem.
There is really no way Russia would sit idly by at that time and let A-H have its way with Serbia though. There is a reason A-H first asked (and seems to have gotten) a commitment from the Kaiser in Germany to back them up before going after Serbia in the hopes that would make Russia back off.
It’d be akin to the US wanting to invade Cuba in the 60’s but knows the Soviets will not sit still for that so first gets the commitment of US allies in Europe to back us up hoping that would be enough to forestall the Soviets from attacking.
Well, if we can’t trust Adolf Hitler’s analysis of the international situation, who can we trust?
Well, at least Austria-Hungary checked with Germany first before pushing their luck. Did the Serbian government (at least those parts of it that must have known of the activities of the Black Hand and, at best, ineffectually opposed it or, at worst, actively supported it) check with Russia before they signed off on Franz Ferdinand’s death warrant?
If some kind of subject/client status is being conferred on Serbia, then it is upon their ostensible overlord to do a bit of vetting and supervision.
Zing!
While some members of Black Hand were in the Serbian government I am not clear how much any of this was a concerted effort by the Serbian government or if it was a group working towards their own ends who happened to have positions in the government.
Further, Black Hand is at a bit of remove since it was Young Bosnia who carried out the assassination attempt. While there seems to be some affiliation with Black Hand it seems we are going further down the ladder towards some idealists with too much time on their hands.
Excuse me? What made the entire Balkans vassal territory of Austria-Hungary, where no other power could form alliances?
Austria-Hungary had legitimate grievances against Serbia as a result of the assassination. Had they chosen to pursue those grievances in anything close to a civilized manner, the world would have backed them. Instead they delivered a 48-hour ultimatum which made some of the most extravagant demands in the history of diplomacy, such as the right of Austria to remove any official from the Serbian government or military, without presenting any evidence whatsoever to anybody. They permitted no negotiation, no extension of the deadline, and no third party intervention or mediation.
For Russia to abandon her ally under those circumstances would have been an act of craven appeasement. I attach no blame to them for threatening to intervene–and it was the mere threat (mobilization) that led Germany to declare war on Russia.
I wonder… If France had launched a pre-emptive strike against Germany through Belgium, would Great Britain have honored its treaty by declaring war on them?
Honestly, Austria-Hungary probably should have just invaded Serbia right away, and the problem would have been solved, because they were pretty clearly in the right there. But, of course, for domestic reasons (The Hungarians and Count Tizla) they couldn’t, and it was the Empire’s inconsistency that helped lead to the situation’s escalation.
And the Russians were the first to mobilize. Russia mobilized as soon as the ultimatum was issued…before the Russian government had even read it, and the Russian mobilization was accompanied by the freezing of German assets. They definitely deserve some sort of moral responsibility for the situation, because they had committed to war before anyone else.