![]() ![]() The remarkable fact is that few of the powers that entered the war really understood what form it would take. By August 4, 1914, all the major powers of Europe were at war. Britain sided with France when the Germans invaded Belgium, which was in violation of the agreement to respect its neutrality. When Austria finally invaded Serbia, Germany prepared to attack France. The German military persuaded the German emperor to let them carry out the so-called Schlieffen Plan, to attack France first and then to turn and defeat Russia. In Berlin, it was assumed that Russian mobilization was the result of French and British encouragement. #MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER WW1 FULL#Austria got full support from Berlin, but Russia - fearful that Austria would use the crisis to dominate the Slavic Balkans and stall Russian imperial ambitions in the region - backed up Serbia and began to mobilize. Austria was prepared to go to war with Serbia without the other powers intervening, but it needed the support of Germany, its ally, and the neutralization of any threat from Russia. Armaments did not cause war, as many believed at the time, but they contributed to a growing sense of instability and antagonism, and lessened the capacity of states to restrain the military when crisis beckoned. Each power's fear of the other powers fueled an arms race that produced large armies and navies with little to do but plan ways of outmaneuvering perceived enemies. In the 10 years before 1914, many such crises had arisen. None of the other European powers had expected or planned for war in 1914, but it was a fear that each of them had harbored. This was the trigger for Austria's declaration of war. The Serbs accepted parts of Austria's ultimatum but balked at other portions. They blamed Serbia for encouraging the Black Hand society to which Princip belonged, and demanded that Serbia accept Austrian interference in their internal investigation of the murder. The Austrian authorities demanded action. ![]() On June 28, 1914, on an official visit to Sarajevo (capital of the recently annexed province of Bosnia), the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, together with his wife Sophie, were assassinated by a young Bosnian terrorist named Gavrilo Princip. In Vienna, fears arose that the Serbs would provoke the breakup of the old order. Backed by the independent state of Serbia, Slav nationalists in the empire looked for a southern Slav state (Yugoslavia). Most acute of all was the crisis with the southern Slav populations of the monarchy. The empire seethed with conflicts - between rival nationalities, between different classes, and between the new democratic parties and the authoritarian monarchy that ran the system. It is no accident that it was there, in the national patchwork of the Habsburg Empire, that the immediate origins of the war of 1914-18 are found. Its rulers maintained a precarious hold on a territory that comprised a dozen nationalities, many of them eager for autonomy. This issue was at its most acute in the Habsburg Empire, whose capital was in Vienna. Throughout Eastern and Southern Europe, where there existed a mixture of nationalities under imperial Prussian or Austrian or Russian rule, mass politics led to agitation for national self-determination. The new working classes, thrown up by rapid industrialization, offered a different kind of threat, though many of them could be won over to a patriotic cause. But by the turn of the 20th century, the old regimes were in retreat and modern political movements - many of them strongly nationalist in outlook - had begun to emerge. National competition became the key characteristic of the age.Įarlier, in the 19th century, these states had collaborated to keep the peace, because the kings and aristocrats who dominated the political scene had a strong interest in avoiding conflict. Before 1914 Europe had entered a new phase in its history with the emergence of a group of powerful, industrialized, and heavily armed states, each of which had imperial interests to defend. The victorious Allies blamed Germany and Austria-Hungary for causing that war, but the explanation is more complex. The origins of this humiliation lay five years before, in the crisis that led to the outbreak of what became known as the Great War. ![]()
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