My Name is Indy Neidell and
this channel, The Great War, follows World War I week by week exactly 100 years later,
but before we can do that properly, we thought we’d give you a little background on Europe in 1914.
Okay, the immediate cause of World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
which we’ll cover in a separate special episode. Today, I’m going to talk a little
bit about the cultural hatred and nationalistic fever that led up to his assassination. This
was something that was happening all over Europe, heck, it was happening all over the world, but especially
in the Balkans. So let’s take a look at the empire of Austria-Hungary and the Balkan nations.
Now, this empire, even as it still grew, was slowly being torn apart by the tensions of its multi-ethnic
states, in particular the Slavic ones. Now, in 1908, Emperor Franz Josef had formally annexed
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now this annexation
inflamed anti-Austrian hatred throughout the Balkans, but especially in Serbia who were
denied the chance of an Adriatic port by Austrian expansion into 375 miles of predominantly Slavic
territory. This also gave Austria a base that she could use for any military adventures against Serbia.
Now, what you have to realize is that the Slavs were split up between Austria, Serbia,
Montenegro, and Bulgaria and most of them dreamed of a pan-Slavic nation. These nations,
though, except for Austria, had been not only part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries,
but often violently oppressed parts of the Ottoman Empire and only recently were they finally
able to determine their own fates. So, seeing Austria suddenly gobble up new territory with
a sizable Slavic population... well...
not good.
If you look at Serbia in the first decade of the 20th century – here’s what you find:
First and foremost: a young and proud nation. Serbia had only gained its independence from
the Ottoman Empire in 1878, and it was intensely nationalistic. The rest of Europe looked at
Serbia suspiciously, though, and its catchphrase “where dwells a Serb, there is Serbia”...well,
you can see how that didn’t sit well with a lot of people, and let’s face it, the
only way for Serbia to have united the southern Slav peoples would have been to bring down
Austria-Hungary for good, which would’ve taken a war, which is kind of what happened.
Fewer than five million people lived in Serbia, though, so all intentions aside, that wasn’t
going to happen by itself. However, in the search for allies, Serbia alienated a lot
of Europe by the brutal and often violent repression of its own minority peoples, especially Muslims,
in much the same way Serbs and other minorities were repressed by Austria-Hungary, so they
didn’t get a whole lot of sympathy, and also: endless Balkan violence was nothing
new to people. In fact, it was just one of those things that most Europeans were resigned
to reading about in the papers from time to time
another murder, another bombing, in that far off corner of Europe where such things
just seem to happen and regime change was often by murder.
Actually, stereotypes aside, the last did happen – in 1903. King Alexander and Queen
Draga were murdered in their private apartments by a group of young army officers and their
bodies were mutilated. Now, one of the men responsible, Dragutin Dimitrijevic, became a national
hero when he was wounded by Royal Guards. He was also known simply as Apis and had been a founding
member and leader of the Black Hand – who organized the hit on the king and queen.
The Black Hand. You just sort of know from the name that these guys aren’t going to
be devoted to, you know, starting soup kitchens or maintaining city parks.
Anyhow, by the beginning of the first World War there were thousands of members of the
Black Hand, many of them Serbian army officers and even government officials, and this secret
organization did pretty much what you would expect of a terrorist organization-
plan political murders, train and equip guerillas, and so forth,
and they and Serbian nationalist goals in general got a big boost in 1912 and 1913 from
the two Balkan wars, which I’m going to tell you about right now.
Okay, not RIGHT now, because to talk about the Balkan Wars I first have to talk about the Moroccan crises.
Now, there were two of these, one in 1905 and one in 1911, and you can look them up for details,
but what they very basically and very generally involved was the Kaiser trying to drive a
wedge between England and France and hopefully even form an alliance between Germany and
England. But they succeeded in doing the opposite-
and made the alliance between France and Britain stronger than ever and drove a deeper
wedge between them and Germany.
Another result was that France took control of Morocco. Now, at the time, Britain had
Egypt, right? So what happens next is very important.
Italy saw Ottoman land being seemingly handed out, and thought “I
gotta get me some of that!”... So Italy went to war. Now, because of all the Moroccan foolishness,
Italy figured – correctly – that England, France, and Germany would do nothing to
stop her, so she attacked the Ottoman Empire. The war lasted less than a month and Italy
successfully took Libya.
And the dominoes start to fall...
The Balkan states, seeing how easily the weakest of the powers could beat the Ottoman Empire,
got together and attacked in the First Balkan War. Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria,
with Russian influence, formed the Balkan League and together succeeded in driving
the Ottomans out of the Balkans entirely for the first time in 500 years. It was a big
loss for the Ottomans. However, one month after the war Bulgaria, unsatisfied
with the way the conquered territories were split up, turned around and attacked Serbia and
Greece. A side note here: Serbia occupied Albania in the 2nd Balkan war and finally
had a seaport of her own, but Austria issued an ultimatum to remove all Serbian forces
from Albania within eight days. Serbia complied.
Now, as you may guess, this was all a complete mess, and here are some important results:
Serbia pretty much doubled her territory in the Balkan Wars, even without Albania, and
if you asked a Serb in early 1914 they’d probably say that wars seemed to work out
pretty well for them, but they’d pay a terrible price in the end:
between 1912 and 1918 one out of every six Serbs – men, women, and children – would die violently.
After the collapse of the Balkan League and Russia’s clearly Pro-Serbian position in
the second war, Russia was left with only Serbia as an ally in the entire area,
and Russia really wouldn’t have much choice but to unconditionally support Serbia in 1914.
Both Austria-Hungary and Germany were worried by Serbia’s growth in both size and stature,
and since a lot of German speaking people saw Serbia as a Russian satellite, well, Austria
was ready and willing to put its foot down on Serbian growth and Slavic nationalism.
At the same time, after losing a war to Japan in 1905 and being unable to prevent the Bosnian
annexation in 1908, the Tsar in Russia was willing and ready to put his foot down to prevent any
further loss of face for Russia.
And that’s where we were in June 1914. All of these sides playing off one against the another
and at the epicenter of it all, in the Balkans, an organization that used terrorism and political
murder to try and achieve its goals.
And then Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo.
If you missed our Prelude to War Special number 1 you can click here and watch it right now.
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