Welcome back.
We’ve been talking about long-term causes of the Great War.
I want to talk about some more immediate causes here.
Let’s go back to 1908.
The War starts in 1914, so six years before – and you can look at the map to see the
importance of this – I mentioned Serbia’s ambitions, this notion of creating a great
southern Slavic state, which of course, will happen – Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia only ended in the mid-1990s in a very bloody civil war, many of you were
quite young when this occurred and don’t remember it – obviously – but if you’ll
look just to the West of Serbia, you’ll see the large province here of Bosnia.
In 1908, the Austria-Hungarian Empire is going to annex Bosnia, make it part of the empire.
They do this to forestall Serbian ambitions in that direction.
Bosnia has many Slavic-speaking peoples and the empire knows that Serbia covets that portion
of the Balkans.
So Austria-Hungary snatches it away from her by annexing it and making it part of the empire.
Now let’s flash forward – We’re in the summer of 1914, the heir apparent to the Habsburg
throne is the Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
He and his wife, Sophie, are going to make a diplomatic trip to Bosnia to the capital,
Sarajevo.
This is sort of a flag-waving trip to show that the empire is committed to Bosnia and
is determined to retain Bosnia as part of the empire.
It’s the 28th of June, 1914, the archduke arrives, he has a series of meetings planned
for that day – and you can see the pictures here of the archduke and Sophie, his wife
– as they leave one meeting and are bound for the next one.
Serbian assassins – or assassins sympathetic to Serbia’s cause – the so-called Black
Hand is a conspiratorial group – Serbian assassins are in the city.
I can’t remember now exactly the number, like a half a dozen.
One of these assassins tosses a bomb at the archduke’s motorcade as it passes and I
believe the bomb hits a car behind the archduke.
The explosion injures some of his bodyguards and some of his entourage.
This of course, infuriates the archduke, who now insists on breaking his schedule and going
to the hospital to visit these wounded members of his party.
By breaking the schedule like this, it puts the archduke at risk.
What happens is that the driver of the archduke’s limousine makes a wrong turn and in correcting
this mistake it allows for another Serbian assassin – a young man named Gavrilo Princip.
Suddenly, there’s the archduke right in front of him in the street, and he steps up
and shoots the archduke and Sophie and kills them both.
Now, why is this significant?
Everybody points to this as the beginning of the Great War.
I want you to think of all these long-term causes that we’ve been discussing.
Think of them as safely-stored dynamite.
As long as they’re safely stored, there’s no danger.
You can think of the assassination of the archduke as a lit fuse tossed into that safely-stored
dynamite.
It’s going to begin a series of events that are going to lead to this catastrophic war.
So the archduke and Sophie are killed on the 28th of June, 1914.
Back in Vienna, the capitol of Austria-Hungary, the government decides to send an ultimatum
to Serbia.
It’s the 23rd of July, so nearly a month has passed.
Serbia receives the ultimatum and realizes that she’s in deep trouble.
She agrees to most of the points, except for the one that would require Serbia to give
up her sovereignty, and essentially become part of the empire.
This she will not do.
In response Austria declares war on Serbia the 28th of July, 1914.
Back in Vienna, the idea here is that this gives us an opportunity.
The assassination of the archduke has opened up a golden opportunity for the empire to
settle its problems with Serbia.
Now, of course, Austria-Hungary’s ally, Germany, is going to be drug into this.
The Kaiser, I believe, was actually on vacation – when this started – in the North Sea.
He gets back to Berlin, and he delivers to Austria-Hungary what historians call ‘the
blank check’.
If you’ve ever gotten a blank check, you know that it’s a red-letter day in your
life.
You know this is when someone signs the check and then lets you fill in the dollar amount.
Well, the Kaiser assures Austria-Hungary that he’s with them; he’s got their back.
If they want to solve their problems with Serbia, that Germany will support them.
So the blank check emboldens Austria-Hungary to go to war with Serbia.
Now knowing what you know about the long-term causes of the War, you can guess what’s
going to happen next.
As Austria-Hungary mobilizes her forces against Serbia, who’s now going to come to Serbia’s
aid?
Russia.
Russia begins to mobilize her forces against Austria-Hungary.
Hmm – now what?
Well, Germany is allied with Austria-Hungary and has assured her that she will have Germany’s
support in this war against Serbia.
But not Russia is mobilizing.
So, the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, sends a message to his cousin, Nicholas the II, the czar of
Russia.
You’ll notice a lot of these royal families have been intermarrying for centuries and
they’re all sort of connected.
Nicholas and Wilhelm have known each other all their lives; they refer to each other
as Willy and Nicky.
And the Kaiser asks Nicky to please stop the mobilization of the Russian forces, and Nicky
talks this over with his general staff, and they decide that they can’t do this, that
once Russian begins to mobilize she has to continue.
To stop would throw all the plans into chaos.
So Nicky sends a wire back to Willy describing the situation and his difficulties.
Willy sends another wire and says, I don’t think you understand, cousin, if you continue
mobilization, we’ll have to mobilize against you to protect our ally, Austria-Hungary.
I believe the last telegram send by Nicky said something to the effect that, it’s
out of my hands.
So you can see, having these incompetent leaders – Wilhelm and Nicholas – at the heads
of two great states, it’s going to lead to catastrophe.
Germany is going to declare war on Russia as a result of Russia’s mobilization.
August the 1st, 1914, Germany declares war on Russia, but what does she do?
She doesn’t immediately attack Russia; she follows the Schlieffen Plan and attacks France,
Russia’s ally, and of course, to attack France you have to go through Belgium.
So on the 3rd of August, Germany declares war on France, and then on the 4th of August,
the German troops cross the Belgian frontier to carry out the Schlieffen Plan, which causes
Great Britain to now declare war on Germany.
We have created a giant mess here, haven’t we?
We’ve taken a small local conflict in the Balkans, a conflict between Austria-Hungary
and Serbia, and we’ve turned it into a general conflagration in Europe because of the Schlieffen
Plan, because of pan-Slavism, because of Serbia’s ambitions, because of Austria-Hungary’s
fear that their empire is going to fly to pieces – all these things are now going
to kick in.
These long-term, systemic causes are now going to kick in and take Europe into a disaster,
the most disastrous War in our history up until that time.
So I’ve got the War started now.
In our next lecture we’ll characterize the actual fighting on the Western front.
Thank you.