I think you could argue that the biggest blunder Germany made was not sticking to the Schlieffen plan.
As for blame, you have to wonder why Russia thought it was in their strategic interest to back up Serbia.
I think you could argue that the biggest blunder Germany made was not sticking to the Schlieffen plan.
As for blame, you have to wonder why Russia thought it was in their strategic interest to back up Serbia.
Because they wanted to take over the other Balkan nations, and didnt want AH to horn in.
Because they didn’t think they’d lose. I attended a lecture once in which the lecturer* argued that wars are always a result of miscalculations. No one goes to war thinking that they’ll lose. I personally don’t entirely buy it, but certainly hindsight is 20/20. It’s obvious now that backing Serbia against the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a disastrous decision for Imperial Russia, but it couldn’t have been that obvious at the time.
As with so many, many wars, all of the top decision-makers seemed to expect a short, sharp war, with the troops home by Christmas.
*I can’t remember the gentleman’s name or anything else about him, but I think he was giving a guest lecture on a book he had recently published on the topic.
Well, after all the Franco-Prussian war lasted only from July 1870 to January 1871. And less than 200K dead.
Anyone?
Autocorrect?
From John Keegan’s “The Face of Battle”:
If I understand Keegan’s argument, he contends that when two groups of individual human beings go into battle, individuals on both sides must place “moral” concerns (honor, loyalty, duty, wanting to be seen and to think of themselves as courageous and moral) above self-preservation. A battle, he argues, can only be decisively won if one side suffers a moral collapse - if the bulk of individuals on one side decides to give in to urges towards self-preservation and place individual survival above “moral” concerns.
This is a trivial answer. No country starts a war in the expectation of losing. The question is what made Russia want to fight this particular war (that it thought it would win). It faced no imminent external threats, had no territorial ambitions in the region, and was not hoping to gain any particular resources. Defending Serbia against the perfectly legitimate complaints of AH was asinine.
Not that there were not other asinine factors. Arguably the British should have stayed out as well. The existing diplomatic and alliance system was ill-constructed.
But Russia is hardly a blameless victim swept up in the tide. They could have told Serbia from the jump, “So sorry, but murdering royals isn’t something we’re going to support.”
Interesting - thanks.
Or, you could read the thread.
And here we are, still getting posts like this:
That’s not just arguably wrong: it’s also unattractive.
That, and Slavonic brotherhood. But the Balkans were becoming an area of contention between the two competing power blocs of A-H and Russia as the Ottoman empire receded. And both felt a great need for a short sharp war to keep the populace happy.
As for the Schlieffen plan, I have seen a statement that it was too ambitious and could not work with the means of transport of that time because France could have regrouped in time to defend Paris. It was a close thing as it was.
Russia, A-H, Germany and France were competing for influence, and the first three wanted to expand. To that extent Germany and Russia represented a threat to each other, and A-H and Russia were in danger of going head to head in the Balkans.
It has also been suggested that Germany wanted to repeat Bismark’s strategy of picking off smaller countries (Denmark), or of singling out and diplomatically isolating bigger ones (A-H, France). They had covetous eyes on Belgium, especially the eastern part. There were also contingency plans for a preemptive strike against France. In that respect Germany miscalculated, perhaps thinking that the alliances would not be honored.
But, at the end of the day, all the parties involved grossly over-estimated their military capabilities. A-H and Russia in particular.
Britain very definitely did not want to be involved, and only came in after Belgian neutrality was violated because it was a guarantor under the 1839 treaty.
Given the tensions, it is clear nowadays that something had to happen sooner or later. But there are three reasons why this was not just the Third Balkan War:
Obviously, this should have called for mediation instead of the activation of the military alliances. Germany was in a position to do and could have told A-H to be more reasonable, and also applied diplomatic pressure on Russia to back off in view of the fact that Serbia was clearly in the wrong. The problem remains that Serbia had more or less officially started the whole thing, due to the involvement of its secret service, and would have to pay for it in some way. And Russia should have realized this. And what could Serbia have done to redress matters with A-H? Any ideas?
It’s interesting to think about other series of blunders that could have led to a different version of WWI - for example, the Dogger Bank incident, in which Russian warships sank British fishing vessels (mistaking them for Japanese (!) warships). One could easily imagine that incident leading to a war with Britain, Germany and Japan lined up against Russia and France.
It’s not at all arguably wrong. You may argue that the US wasn’t necessary to win the war but their entry can in no way be likened to a mere straw that broke the camel’s back.
Not just the first three, France also.
True.
Not true, they were hitting hard with anti-german propaganda well before August 1918. They wanted to get rid of Germany’s fleet, which was a challenge. Belgium was jut s a excuse. Britain had ignored such treaties before.
Sorry, apparently I answered a question you didn’t ask*.
As to what made Russia want to fight this particular war, I’m not a subject matter expert, but here’s my understanding.
As Brayne Ded points out, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and France were all competing for influence in the Balkans. Russia and Austria-Hungary, in particular, both saw the Balkans as their “near abroad” and as falling naturally within their sphere of influence. Both saw them as strategically vital. Neither side felt like it could safely back down in any conflict in the Balkans.
Pan-Slavism was an important ideological movement at the time, in Russia and in Slavic regions of the Balkans and Austria-Hungary, with pan-Eastern Orthodoxism being an implicit element. A large part of the Romanov’s self-perceived legitimacy came from their claim of representing and protecting all Slavic, and Eastern Orthodox, peoples. Serbia was pretty much the poster child for a minor Slavic, Eastern Orthodox power that Imperial Russia as a Great Power, and the Imperial Russian family in particular, was supposed to be supporting and protecting. Austria-Hungary was mostly Germanic and partially Magyar, with Slavs being a distant third place ethnic group. It was also explicitly a Roman Catholic Great Power. Ideologically, Imperial Russia was pretty well boxed in to supporting Serbia at all costs. If they didn’t back Serbia, they would have lost (or at least the decision makers feared they would lose) all credibility in the Balkans. In the future, they would (the fear went) constantly face pressure from other, hostile powers, who would expect them to back down, and smaller powers wouldn’t feel they could safely ally or tilt towards Russia.
Then there’s the age-old Russian/Soviet/Russian quest for a warm water port. Russia desperately wanted a port on the Adriatic with a secure land corridor to the Russian heartland, and/or firm control of the Dardanelles. A weak, Austro-Hungarian-dominated Serbia would be an effective block to either ambition.
And Russia absolutely did face external threats. Germany was an expansionist power, rubbing up against Russia directly. It was not as obvious then as it is now that Austria-Hungary was a hollow power - the Russians almost certainly viewed it as a direct threat. As they did the Ottoman Empire. More than that, though, less than a decade before WWI, Russia fought and effectively lost a war against a swiftly rising Japan. While that’s on the other side of the continent, that war really drove home just how weak Russia’s blue water navy was, and just how important it was to their pretensions to great power status, which brings us back to their quest for a warm water port, and how strategically important a piece Serbia was in that quest.
Also, Russia did, in fact, have some territorial ambitions against Austria-Hungary, particularly in Galicia, but that was probably a very minor factor.
Finally, although we now know with reasonable certainty that the Serbian intelligence service was directly involved in the assassination of Grand Duke Ferdinand, as far as we know, the Russian government didn’t know that. They may have suspected, but ideological blinders, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning are powerful. It’s quite possible, even probable, that the upper reaches of the Russian government bought the story that the assassination was purely the action of local disgruntled pan-Slavic extremists, and that Austria-Hungary was using the assassination as pretext to weaken the blameless Serbs.
*I don’t actually think my point was trivial or as obvious as you apparently do, but that would be a whole other thread…
Austria-Hungary and Germany had a reason for seeking a war in 1914. Nobody else did.
The Austro-Hungarian government was weak and the empire was shaky. The main thing holding it together was the personal prestige of Emperor Franz Joseph, who was 84 in 1914. Many government officials worried that when he died, the Empire might collapse.
So some people felt that a quick victorious war against a foreign enemy would build up the prestige of the government and unite the country long enough to get them through any succession crisis.
Austria-Hungary didn’t want a general war. They only wanted a war with Serbia, which they expected they could win quickly. They thought that German support would keep Russia and other countries from interfering in the small local war they were seeking.
Germany, however, wanted a general war. The German government felt that a general war was going to happen at some point and it was just an issue of when. And from a strategic perspective, 1914 was a better time for Germany to fight a general war than any point in the foreseeable future.
Because the Germans could see that their strategic situation was getting worse. Their allies were Austria-Hungary, Italy, and unofficially the Ottoman Empire. Austria-Hungary, as I mentioned above, looked to be on the verge of a possible collapse. The Ottoman Empire was in the same situation. Italy was stable but its connection with Germany was weak. The Italians hated the Austrians and the Turks and Germany was having a lot of difficulty in keeping them in an alliance with countries they saw as enemies.
Germany could also see that France and Russia were in the middle of political crises that currently weakened them. But given time, they could recover and be stronger opponents. Russia was also beginning a plan of upgrading its industry and military which would leave them stronger. Meanwhile, Britain was still ambivalent over its commitment to France and Russia but it looked like it would be heading towards a closer alliance.
So the German government looked at how things were and the directions they were heading and decided that Germany’s chances for winning a war in 1914 were as good as they were going to get. So a war should be fought now rather than later. (Apparently, the German government never considered the possibility that a general war might be avoided entirely.) Their intent in backing up Austria-Hungary was to provoke such a war.
Serbia (like Russia) was a Slavic nation, and its destruction by Austria-Hungary was politically unacceptable.
Interesting theory but I fear it lacks a factual basis, similar to your claim that France wanted to “expand” (if a military conflict was provoked by Germany they were certainly willing to reclaim Alsace and Lorraine, but actual expansionism was not in the cards due to Germany’s military superiority and France’s alliances with other nations.
Difficult as it may be, you need to accept that the lion’s share of blame for WWI falls on the actual aggressors, Austria-Hungary and Germany.
Russia’s big interest was in the Turkish Straits and access to the Mediterranean. They had no direct interest in the Balkans but they didn’t want any other major power to control the Balkans because such a power would have been in a position to threaten the Turkish Straits.
On its own, Russia would have been okay with the various small Balkan countries remaining independent. But if that wasn’t possible, Russia felt the Balkans had to be under Russian control rather than Austrian control or the control of some other major power (including their allies).
Gee, but then England , being mostly germanic , shoudl have been on the side of Germany. The idea of “slavic” is silly. Russia was interfering in Serbian politics and wanted to take over parts of the balkans.
France wanted their overseas empire to expand. They also wanted more influence in the balkans.
Why do you call them “aggressors”? Serbia assassinated the heir to the AH throne, a aggressive move.AH responded, and then Russia became the aggressor by mobilizing on AH. Russia had no alliance with Serbia, it didn’t have to it did so only to get its share of the Balkans.
Here’s a timeline of who declared on who:
*• 1914 •
July 28: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
Aug. 1: Germany and Russia declare war on each other
Aug. 3: Germany and France declare war on each other
Aug. 4: Germany declares war on Belgium, United Kingdom declares war on Germany
Aug. 6: Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia, Serbia declares war on Germany
Aug. 12: United Kingdom and France declare war on Austria-Hungary
Aug. 22: Austria-Hungary declares war on Belgium
Aug. 23: Japan declares war on Germany
Aug. 25: Japan declares war on Austria-Hungary
Aug. 28: Austria-Hungary declares war on Belgium
Nov. 2: Russia and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire
Nov. 5: United Kingdom and France declare war on the Ottoman Empire
• 1915 •
May 23: Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary
Aug. 21: Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire
Aug. 28: Italy declares war on Germany
Oct. 14: Bulgaria declares war on Serbia
Oct. 15: United Kingdom declares war on Bulgaria
Oct. 16: France declares war on Bulgaria
Oct. 19: Russia and Italy declare war on Bulgaria*
All of the various Imperialistic powers of the Great War share equal blame.