William Tyler
The Origins of WWI
William Tyler - The Origins of WWI
- Thank you very much, Judy. Thank you, and welcome to everyone who’s joined me this evening. The evening here in England, a very dark and miserable evening, I have to say. So let’s sort of lighten it up with some history, shall we? Those of you who were with me last week, will remember that I ended with the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. From the moment that the Bosnian terrorist student, Gavrilo Princip, fired his fatal two shots on Sunday, the 28th of June, 1914, a dreadful domino effect started to happen that eventually led to war two months later in August, 1914. A war that is to embrace the world. I’m sure all of you as children, my three-year-old grandson is absolutely mesmerised by domino crashing down. You build the dominoes up, and you knock the first one, and they all go down in sequence. And that is exactly what happened after the assassination of the Archduke in June, 1914. In a book called “The First World War,” which is original material, the editor, Lewis, writes this, “Two shots rang out, the first of the First World War, and the heir to the rackety Hapsburg empire was lying dead in his car in a street in Sarajevo. In truth, the incident was obscure, only enough in itself to start another, interminable Balkan war, but in old Europe, riven with imperial rivalry, arms races, and diplomatic alliances, it served as a pretext for war. A month after Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary took her revenge and declared hostilities against Serbia. Russia mobilised to defend her Serbian ally.
Germany declared war on Russia, then on Russia’s ally France, when Germany invaded ‘poor little Belgian’ on the 4th of August, Britain, almost against its will, was sucked into the fray on the side of France and Russia, and the world was at war.” Now I’ve spoken many times in my life about the origins of the First World War from a British point of view, but I’m not doing that obviously today. I’m looking instead at it from an Austro-Hungarian point of view. And that assassination is an Austro-Hungarian event and it puts them right there in the very beginning and in the front of the steps that are taken, the dominoes that go down, which lead to war across Europe by the beginning of August 1914. Now assassinations did not lead necessarily to war. As Lewis said, it was a pretext for war and that’s perhaps important to remember. In fact, the last decade or so of the 19th century and the opening 14 years of the 20th century are known by historians at the age of assassinations. Five prime ministers were assassinated. They included the Bulgarian, the Serbian, the Spanish, the Russian, and the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Five kings were assassinated, Umberto I of Italy, Alexander II of Czar, the Grand Duke Sergei, another aristocrat in Russia, the Prince of Montenegro, the King of Serbia, and the King of Portugal. And perhaps saddest of all for Franz Joseph was the assassination of his beautiful wife, Sisi, on the shores of late Geneva in 1898. So assassinations didn’t necessarily lead to war. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo did, and we’ve got to look at why that happened. Causes of the First World War, as catalogued subsequently by historians, are very complex. It’s not straightforward.
When we were at school, many of us would have done wars and the causes of war, given something like five or six causes, and you had to memorise them if you were my age and then repeat them in an examination. Five causes of World War I, one, two, three, four, five. But life isn’t quite like that. And the reality is that the causes of the First World War are deep and complex. And they’re long term. They’re not short term. In other words, they’re long term before the assassination of the Archduke in June 1914. As Lewis pointed out, it was a pretext. After the assassination of the Archduke, there were short term causes. That’s the dominoes going down. Because you know, if you play a dominoes game with children and line them all up, there’s always one child, my grandson being one of them, who removes one of the pieces. And of course, the dominoes stop at the place he’s removed them. And so it was between June and August 1940. There were opportunities to stop the whole thing from collapsing. If some right decisions would be made, and if someone had removed one of the pieces from the domino effect, then it would have stopped. But it doesn’t happen. So there’s two sets of causes, the long term causes before the assassination of the Archduke and the short term causes afterwards. And in that context of the short term, the question is, why did no one say stop? If you look at long term causes, well, the first thing you can say is that they were both political, territorial, and economic. There was militarism. There were alignments and misalignments. There was imperialism. There was nationalism. And there was a power vacuum created in Europe by the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the far east of Europe.
Some would go further and say the power of the Austrian Hungarian Empire in the centre of Europe was also collapsing. Now all these reasons, deep rooted reasons, historians now argue about and so can you. And if we were meeting in a university over the course of a term, and we met two or three times a week, we would look at those in turn and see how strong a cause they were and how weak a cause they were. And we would never, I’m sure, I assure you, none of us would ever agree with anybody else. So we’ve got the long term causes, but the short term causes after the assassination of June 1914 could have been stopped. But the deeper causes before the assassination made it more rather than less likely that there would be war. One of the interesting things about the start of the 1914 war is how in every country, without exception, the war was welcomed. Now that seems to us in 2022, an extraordinary state of affairs, but people went on to the stage cheering their leaders, because they’ve gone to war, cheering in the streets of Berlin, cheering in the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow, cheering in the streets of Paris and Vienna and Budapest. Cheering in the streets of London, cheering in Serbia, cheering everywhere, even in the streets of Tokyo. Now that does seem to us strange. It can only be explained by the fact that everyone thought two things, I think. One, that war was inevitable in Europe by 1914. It’s like a pressure cooker. It had to blow at some point. And secondly, no one had any idea of the nature of the First World War. Everyone had been brought up on the daring do of the 18th century and earlier. No one understood how dreadful, how dreadful this first technological war would be. And yet, if you take Britain, we had observers with the Union Army during the Civil War in America. They’d seen trenches outside Gettysburg.
No, they had not seen machine guns, but they had seen the face of modern war, and they never, ever seem to have taken it on board. I find that extraordinary. I’ve always found that extraordinary, because they taught the American Civil War at Sandhurst, the British Military College, to young men training to be officers. And yet when the war broke out, and in England they called for volunteers, they brought men out of retirement, NCOs, who had fought in South Africa on the veldt of South Africa, on open planes and taught people how to crawl across open country. At my public school in the 1960s, I also was taught all these crawls that came from the First World War. And when I told my dad that’s what I did, he said, “Well, that’s what I did at school after the First World War in the cadet corps. We also learned the monkey crawl, the leopard crawl, and so on,” all entirely useless when we face the reality of the trenches on the Western front, and yet, and yet we had seen those trenches at Gettysburg and no one had taken this on board. So the war was welcome, and we must not forget that. This isn’t a war led only by the elite, which is what is often said of the First World War. They had the populace behind them. Now as I said, my focus is on Austria-Hungary. Then my focus is on Serbia. Sarajevo is where the Archduke was murdered in Bosnia and Bosnia is divided between the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims, often called Bosniaks. But it’s the Bosnian Serbs that are important. And Serbia, an independent country of Serbia, had a developing policy prior to 1914. Its policy was to create a greater Serbia. And those of you who know your history in the 20th century know that greater Serbia actually happened between, well for 70 years it happened, between the end of the First World War and the coming down of Marxism in Eastern Europe. And we call that country Yugoslavia. And if you translate the word Yugoslavia, it means the land of the southern Slavs, the northern Slavs being Russian, the southern Slavs being Yugoslavs. And that is what is meant by greater Serbia. And greater Serbia had this dream.
But it also involved if it had this dream of acquiring countries within the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had Serbs in them. Bosnia being the outstanding example, but also what we today call Slovenia and parts of Dalmatia. They felt that that should be part of Yugoslavia, of a greater Serbia. So there’s a clash. There’s a clash developing between the aims of the Serbian state and the desire of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to keep its empire together. And those things were bound in the end, whether there came a First World War or not, would have, my opinion, have bound to have led to clashes. Because they had this policy, Serbian nationalism was running rife before the First World War. And they thought assassination was a perfectly legitimate means of achieving nationalist aims. It’s deep in the culture of ordinary, remember, I’ve just said about ordinary people. It’s deep in the culture of ordinary Serbs that they wanted a greater Serbia. They’re looking back to a historical rosy past before the Ottoman Empire entered the region in the 14th century. And they’re looking back to the great days of Serbia and they want to recreate it. And Austria-Hungary, frankly, stands in its way. They had a powerful ally in Russia. The Serbs are Orthodox Christians. The Russians are Orthodox Christians. The Serbs are Slavs. The Russians are Slavs. And Russia was their protector, if you like. And Serbia thought that they could get away with whatever they wanted to do, maybe even militarily, because they have the backing of mighty Russia. Russia on its own hand regarded Serbia as a potential client state. Think Putin and East Ukraine and Crimea and potentially West Ukraine. West Ukraine remains confident, maybe without much cause, that NATO and the United States, well, the United States particular within NATO, but the European NATO nations as well, will not allow Putin to get away with it.
They may or may not be right, as Serbia may or may not have been right in this period. But that’s what they thought. If we look at Austria-Hungary specifically, there are steps towards war which with hindsight we can identify. And I’m using a book here, which is a very old book. It was published in 1932, called “Heirs to the Habsburgs.” I put on my blog a new mini-booklist about the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I. And this book is on it. But this book has been long out of print. You might be lucky to get it on Amazon, secondhand, or eBay, or whatever you use. And the first and most important event occurred in 1908. And this is talking about Austria-Hungary. The last phase of the empire’s existence may be said to have begun with the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908, which we’ve already spoken about. These former vassal states of Turkey had never belonged to Serbia, but they were populated by Serbs, and Croats, and Muslims. Although owing to their strictly Orthodox Mohammedanism, they were commonly spoken of as Turks. That doesn’t matter. It’s the Serbs there that matter to Serbia. The annexation frustrated the hopes of those Serbs of achieving a Yugoslav unity outside of Austria-Hungary. And the bitterness caught in Serbia was out of all proportion to the largely barren area and small population acquired, for Bosnia-Herzegovina was regarded in Serbia as the original centre of Yugoslav civilization. And there you have the rub. There you have the rub. History says that Bosnia is where the Slavs, the southern Slavs, started, in the same way as Putin realises today in 2022 that Russia began with Kiev and Rus in Kiev.
Kiev, now in Ukraine. In terms of America, it’s as though Philadelphia belonged to Canada or in Britain that London belonged to France. That’s how strongly the Serbs felt about Bosnia and Herzegovina. From this date, 1908, pan-Serb pan-Serb, all the Serbs together, pan-Serb propaganda, urged on by powerful protector in the form of Russia, look forward to the day when a favourable opportunity for conflict might occur, a favourable opportunity. What was that first quotation I read from Lewis talking about the assassination of the Archduke? It was a pretext. It wasn’t that alone that led to war. It was a pretext for war. And here is Gedye saying precisely that, that Serbia is looking, after 1908, for some way of getting hold of Bosnia. In 1911, three years after they take Bosnia, a terrorist group with state sponsorship, I think that’s the phrase we will use today, a terrorist group with state sponsorship called Black Hand was formed. Let me read. A further milestone on the road to conflict was marked by the formation in 1911 of the famous Black Hand Secret Society with its motto, “Union or death,” the Union of Yugoslavia or death. The leading members were mostly regicides who plotted the murder of Alexander of Serbia in 1903. I’m not going into that. There were two royal families in Serbia and they were always at daggers drawn with each other. And the king murdered in 1903 wasn’t thought strong enough in achieving a pan-Slavic state of Yugoslavia. At the head of the Black Hand was a colonel who was the head of the espionage section of the Serbian general staff. And almost certainly he was heading the plot that ended in the assassination of the Archduke.
So there is a terrorist group with state affiliations through this man, who’s known normally by his codename of Apis, A-P-I-S, Latin for bee, the apis. One consequence of the growth of pan-Slavism in these years before 1914 was that the old alliance in Europe, which was called the Three Emperors’ Alliance, because it was an alliance between the Tsar of Russia, the Emperor Francis Joseph, and a emperor, or kaiser, of Germany, the Three Emperors. And it lost all its strength because of pan-Slavism. Why? Well, because the Russian Tsar support Serbia, the Austro-Hungarians are anti-Serbia, and the Germans, interestingly, the Germans manoeuvre around a bit. They at one point support Serbia, and of course in the end, blood is thicker than water, and they support their fellow Germans in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But that alliance, which had somehow kept peace on the European mainland, is shattered by pan-Slavism. There’s no straight and common ground anymore. It’s rather like Germany and NATO today. Germany dare not be as open in its support of Ukraine as France and Britain, because it’s so dependent upon Russian oil and gas. And we shall see how that works out. But this is an earlier example of the failure of these countries to come together and resolve problems because pan-Slavism drove an arrow straight at the heart of these Three Emperor Alliance.
And that’s one of the problems always, that alliances work until something happens that breaks the alliance. And that may be the argument today, with Putin and the Ukraine, NATO is not united. The Europeans aren’t certain how far the Biden administration may or may not go. Britain and France, with Britain outside of the EU, are back to being daggers drawn. And Germany is at very best pusillanimous in its support of NATO action. And so we look weak. Any time a country looks weak, its enemies and potential enemies see an opportunity. And clearly, that is what Putin has seen. Whether he is right or whether he is wrong, watch this space. None of us know. But that is the story of some of the things that were going on before we reached 1914, with an exception, I have yet to tell you that war did come. Now, what is interesting is that war came in 1912 and in 1913 to the Balkans. Now, the Balkans is always a particular tinderbox. We’ve seen that in recent times with the fall of Yugoslavia, that Balkans are always a tinderbox, have been in history. And the Balkans had been weakened by the fact that the Ottoman Empire was so weak in Eastern Europe and on its last legs. I might also add, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was basically on its last legs. And Russia is looking with envious eyes, not necessarily over territory, but over client states, because it’s not only looking at Serbia, it’s looking at Bulgaria as well. So trouble erupted with no major power, unless you count the Ottomans, no major Western European power, not Austro-Hungarians, not Russians, who were involved in two wars in the Balkans in 1912 and 1913. In the first Balkan War, four of the Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire. In the second Balkan War, the Ottomans changed sides, and Bulgaria was defeated.
The end result of all this is the Ottoman Empire lost nearly all of its territory in Europe. It’s a busted bluff. Austria-Hungary wasn’t involved in the Balkan Wars, but it’s seriously weakened because Serbia has enlarged itself at the end of these two Balkan Wars in 1912-13. And it was the beginning of trouble. Now with hindsight, you could have said that there should have been water poured on the situation. Well, there was indeed a conference held in London, 1912-1913. And that conference agreed to create an independent Albania. And Serbia was very unhappy because it wanted access to the sea and they wanted a port, an Albanian port, to give it access to the sea. But they are refused Albania. Albania is given, the country as we know it today, with a coastline. And Russia accepted that and did not come to Serbia’s aid and argue. So in one sense, in London, the big powers managed to restore what they thought was peace. But it wasn’t, because Serbia’s nose has been put well out of joint. Having lost a port in Albania, Serbia announced it wanted reparations for that. It doesn’t, in fact, get them. There is no war, because Austria-Hungary might have gone to war to push Serbia’s moves towards Yugoslavia back, but Germany would not support Austria-Hungary. And at this stage, Russia wouldn’t support Serbia. So you could say that the large big powers had isolated the problems to the Balkans. So 1913, could you have been optimistic?
Well, no, you couldn’t. By September 1913, Serbia moves into Albania anyhow, and Russia accepts it. It doesn’t help, but accepts it. Serbia goes further and says it will not respect Albania’s territorial integrity. And says there has to be frontier modifications between Serbia and Albania. They are panicking in Vienna. And they send Serbia a warning, followed by a warning to Germany and Italy, because the Austro-Hungarians are petrified that Serbia will move on Bosnia and its other Yugoslav possessions, Dalmatia and further north in Slovenia. Serbia ignored the ultimatum. This is October 1913. But things got tough. And the Serbs were told to evacuate Albania within eight days. And the Serbs backed down. Without Russian support, they could not take on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At this point, Germany changed sides. The Kaiser visits Vienna. And blood is thicker than water. And Germany and Austria-Hungary come to an agreement. Germany and Austria believe that Russia has recovered from its own war with Japan in 1904 and ‘05, its own defeat. But think that they’re not prepared for war yet, because they’re buying arms from France. And the full amount of those arms won’t be in Russia until 1917. So German calculations and Austro-Hungarian calculations are that Russia will do nothing at the moment, but will do something when it feels strong enough. Do something means to support Serbia. That is why Germany now supports Austria-Hungary, because Germany, remember, the ancient enemies, are the Slavs of Russia.
And they believe now, at the end of 1913, better to have a war with Russia now than when Russia is prepared in three or four years’ time. So this is all before the assassination of the Archduke. So you cannot say that the Archduke’s assassination was the cause of the war. You can argue that it was the immediate cause to set the domino fall. But there’s lots of other things that are going on prior to that. This is Martyn Rady in his paperback, “The Habsburg Empire.” And he writes this, “Serbian expansion southwards into Ottoman Macedonia during the bulk of the wars of 1912-1913 fueled the suspicion in Vienna that with Russia’s backing, Serbia would soon seek to liberate, in verticality, the Serbs who lived within the Habsburg Empire.” In other words, the dominoes are being, just got out of the box at this point. Germany and Austria-Hungary fear, well, Austria-Hungary fears Serbia. Austria-Hungary points out that that will involve Russia. Germany fears Russia involvement. So the Slav question of Serbia has involved Austro-Hungary and Germany. You can discount the Ottoman Empire. It’s a broken reed. Yes, I know. It comes in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War. And I know it gives Britain a bloody nose in Gallipoli. But in truth, it is a broken reed. And of course, it’s dissolved at the end of the First World War. I’ve written here on my notes, “The drums of war could now be heard loud and clear in what was to prove the last year and months of peace.”
Now remember that there are exceptions like the Crimean War, yep, we know that. We know the troubles in 1848. But to a large extent, Europe had managed to avoid major warfare since the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the establishment of the Congress of Vienna. And the system of Congresses, the system of alliances, the system of talking things through diplomatically, even if Britain had largely withdrawn from that exercise, that had kept Europe at peace. It doesn’t say anything about imperial empires. Doesn’t say anything about the Crimean War. No, no, I know all of that. But largely, Europe had been at peace for 100 years. One of the reasons, of course, that the local ordinary citizenry across Europe, as I said at the beginning, were supportive of this war. It was all terribly patriotic in a way that we find, I think we find, I think the younger generations find difficult to understand. But then that is because we have all had the experience of a horror of two huge European wars. And since then, the horror of other wars and the horror of mechanised warfare across the globe, and we are less, far less happy about a country going to war. Goodness knows what would happen if NATO was actually, or America on its own, was to go to war against Russia and the Ukraine. It’s almost unthinkable. And that’s a problem, because the Russians know that. Is Biden going to go to war in Eastern Europe?
Would he carry the American people with him? Is Johnson going to force NATO into a war with the Germans screaming that they don’t want to go in? And the French being difficult? Or will France take us in and the British be difficult? Putin must be, if we let him get away with Ukraine, then what happens next? The three Baltic states? The three Baltic states really do threaten Russia. And what about Poland? What about Poland? In Britain, we could say we’ve been here before. Will we defend Poland this time? It’s all very tricky. And it was all very tricky in 1914. Now, pray God, the second part of the story I’m telling this evening is not going to be the story of Ukraine, Russia, and NATO in 2022. Pray God, it isn’t. Pray God, we can stop the dominoes going down. But there seems a lack of leadership in the West, which in a way there was not. Although the West is against, the West, if you want to put it like that, in World War One, that there’s not a lack of leadership. There was a lack of understanding. Now, this is a book which I put on the list “For God and Kaiser” by Richard Bassett. It’s the story of the Austrian army. So you have to look at it for bits that relate to the First World War. It isn’t a history. It’s a brilliant book. And for those interested in military affairs, I’d recommend it. For those who are not, no, it’s very big. It’s very heavy. “The two Balkan wars,” he writes, “were wars illuminated the landscape like forks of lightning before the storm.
By 1913, no one in public affairs could honestly pretend that peace lay ahead.” People are aware that war is coming. “The military attaché in Belgrade, Major Otto Gellinek, the Austrian military attaché, noted that every Serbian officer expected to invade Bosnia as soon as Franz Josef died. A report from a Romanian diplomat sent to Vienna in May 1913 disclosed the view that some circles in Serbia wished to invade Russia in a great,” sorry, “wished to involve Russia in a great European war that would dismember the Habsburg Empire’s Slav provinces.” So the rumours circulating in diplomatic circles in the summer of 1913, a year before the assassination, is, war is coming. The Serbs are absolutely on the starting blocks waiting, sorry about this, waiting for the firing shot to start the race. And that shot is fired in June 14 at Sarajevo. “The Serbian Prime Minister,” I read, “during his visit to Russia, to St Petersburg, five months earlier, at the beginning of 1913, had requested artillery and other weapons for the ‘imminent war,’ promising the Russians that he would ‘tie down at least one Austrian division.’” So that’s a year and a half before the assassination. The Serbian Prime Minister is talking to his Russian opposite number, saying, “Give us the weapons and we promise we will take out at least one Austro-Hungarian division.
If you attack from the north, we shall attack from the south.” “In Vienna, ordinary people were under no illusions. The writer, Stefan Zweig, recalled bumping into Bertha von Suttner, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, on the streets of Vienna in early 1914 and her terrifying expression as she warned him that war was imminent and that ‘the entire apparatus of armaments was being relentlessly cranked up. People do not realise what is going on.’ She’d almost screamed at him. Pope Pius X in the Vatican saw very clearly that Europe would be engulfed in a terrible war. In 1913, the Pope warned a stunned, departing Brazilian ambassador, ‘A terrible European war would come before 1914 was out.’” These are mere indications that the actual assassination itself was of almost minor importance. There would have been something else that would have led to war. One final quotation is from the 1932 book. “Many legends have been created about the pacifism of the dual monarchy, Austro-Hungary. In particular, the Hungarians present their own Prime Minister, Count Tisza, as the man of peace who was opposed to the war-like policy in Vienna. It is perfectly true that he did not want a war at that moment. His pacifism was in no way, however, idealistic. Firstly, he feared a European combination against the central powers which would result in their defeat.” So, first of all, he’s worried that Austro-Hungary is going to be defeated and Hungary will be defeated.
But then he feared a victory. If Austria-Hungary won and they absorbed Serbia, then it will no longer be a dual monarchy, but a triune monarchy of Austrians, Hungarians, and Slavs. And the Hungarians didn’t want that because it would water down their own influence on Vienna. There are many different views, but the common view is that war is coming. If anyone knew their history in 1940, they would have recorded in 1888 the Chancellor of Germany, von Bismarck, remarked, “One day, the Great European War will come out of some damn foolish thing in the Balkans.” And that damn foolish thing happened on Sunday, the 28th of June, 1914, when Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, are shot dead by Princip in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. But it is not the cause. Could Europe have come back from that point and stopped war, or at least contained it to within the Balkans? That’s a question for you and each of you individually to answer. The story, the facts are that they didn’t, and that Europe and the world went to war. Two days after the assassination, that is the 30th of June, the foreign minister in Vienna, a man called Count Berchtold met with the emperor, Franz Josef, and agreed that, quote, “A policy of patience with Serbia has to end.” A firm line must be taken. No more diplomacy, in effect, they’re saying, but war. On the 5th of July, the Austro-Hungarian diplomat, the Count of Hoyos, visited Berlin to work out what the Germans might do, because Austria-Hungary does not want to go to war with Serbia without German backing. Why not?
Because Russia, they fear, will be involved with Serbia, and Austria-Hungary will find itself fighting on two fronts, one against Serbs, and the other against the Russians. And I guess they were of the opinion that even though it’s only the Russians, the Austro-Hungarian army is not guaranteed victory. The German army, on the other hand, is considered the best in Europe. On the 6th of July, the Germans gave unconditional support to Austria-Hungary, and this is the famous blank cheque. Now at this point, if Germany had said no, the situation might have calmed, but Germany gave the green flag to Austria-Hungary to take action against Serbia. And historians cite this as why you can blame Germany for the start of the First World War. The blank cheque it’s called. It said that Germany will give unconscionable support in the wake of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The blank cheque would provide military support for Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian leadership in Vienna thought, “We’re okay. We can sort Serbia out.” And if Russia intervenes, well, because obviously, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a massive army, could easily defeat Serbia, and Serbia knows that. So the Austro-Hungarian say, “Okay, we can go now, because if the Russians are stupid enough to attack us in support of Serbia, then Germany will come to our aid.”
And so it is Germany that’s blown the second whistle, or fired the second starting gun, however you like to think about it. So by the end of the first week in July, 1914, the sides are manoeuvring together, Germany and Austria versus Serbia and possibly Russia. France and Britain are not in this. The Germans still thought the Russians would not intervene, because they had not fully armed. Moreover, they thought that Tsarist Russia would not intervene on the side of a state that had, and they all knew through their secret services, a state that had, at the very least, turned a blind eye, at the worst, supported the assassination of a royal Franz Ferdinand. They didn’t think Nicholas II would have the guts to do it. But we all know, if a government is in trouble, and the Russian government is seriously in trouble, if you’re in trouble, best to blame an enemy. You know when Britain’s politics are going badly, because you’ll get headlines about the dreadful French, and vice versa as well. On the 7th of July, the same time as the blank cheque is issued, the Austrian prime minister made a comment. And his comment goes like this. “A purely diplomatic victory will not suffice with Serbia. If from an international point of view, previous diplomatic action must be taken, it must be carried on with the firm intention that it shall finish only with war.” So Vienna is now set with the backing of Germany. It’s no good talking to these Serbs. They won’t listen, unless it’s going to come to war. On the 20th of July, the French President, Raymond Poincaré, visits the Czar in St. Petersburg, and is in transit. Interesting that today Macron is meeting Putin, and I guess is equally in transit.
Poincaré says, “We must stop any Austro-Hungarian measures against Serbia. Serbia is an independent country. The French are supporting all of that. They want the Russian support. On the 23rd of July, as Poincaré returns to Paris, Vienna sends an ultimatum to Serbia, containing demands, the main one of which is to hand over members of the Black Hand for justice in Austria-Hungary. And it gives Serbia 48 hours to comply. The following day, the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who incidentally was a keen bird watcher, a man of the old sort, Sir Edward Grey. The government in Britain is a liberal government, a very liberal, small government, a very reforming government, one of the most radical governments we’ve ever had. Sir Edward Grey, speaking for and on behalf of a government, says to Germany and to France, "We have no direct interest in Serbia. We should act together for the sake of peace.” Germany, France, Italy, Britain appeals to. Germany, of course, has no such intention now. And so the message becomes clear in London. We are moving by the end of July to a very serious situation indeed. On the same day that Edward Grey sought an international intervention, Serbia asked Russia for support. Russia says, “Don’t accept the ultimatum from Austria-Hungary.” And on the same day, Germany publicly declares its support for Austria-Hungary.
The dominoes are lining up. Germany, Austria-Hungary, on one hand, Serbia and Russia on the other. On the 25th of July, Serbia responds to the ultimatum, which is basically a two-finger gesture to Austria-Hungary. It doesn’t satisfy anyone. It wasn’t in fact meant to satisfy anyone. Austria-Hungary breaks its diplomatic relations with Serbia and begins to mobilise its army. On the 26th of July, thanks to Sir Edward Grey, a meeting between ambassadors of Britain, Germany, Italy, and France is set to meet and the Germans don’t turn up. On the 28th of July, war comes. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. On the 29th of July, the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Edward Goschen, is informed by the German Chancellor that Germany is contemplating war with France and wishes to send its army through Belgium. And it’s Germany and Britain who, long time before the 1830s, guaranteed Belgian neutrality. He also said, “Well, Britain doesn’t need to get involved. You will remain neutral.” On the 30th of July, general mobilisation is declared in Russia by the Czar. On the 31st of July, general mobilisation is called by the Viennese government in Austro-Hungary. On the 31st of July, Germany sends an ultimatum to Russia demanding a halt to their mobilisation within 12 hours. Russia refuses. France and Germany are asked by Sir Edward Grey to declare their support for the ongoing neutrality of Belgium. France agrees. Germany doesn’t reply.
First of August, German general mobilisation was ordered. Same day, France, in response, orders general mobilisation. Same day, Germany declares war on Russia. The Czar responds by telegram. “I would gladly have accepted your proposals had not the German ambassador this afternoon presented a note to my government declaring war.” The Czar was still prepared to talk whilst Germany had already declared war. On the 3rd of August, Germany declared war on France and states it would treat Belgium as an enemy if it did not allow German troops through. Germany begins an offensive on August the 4th. The British cabinet is divided. There are many pacifists in this Liberal government of 1914. But the men with power in the government, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, then a Liberal, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, and Sir Edward Grey lean on Asquith, the Prime Minister. And Britain goes to war, and the pacifists resign. And we declared war on Germany in Britain because we gave Germany notice to assure some neutrality of Belgium. They wouldn’t give any assurance. And so at midnight on the 4th of August, we declare war. And so unimportant did it seem that the Prime Minister didn’t even go down to the House of Commons to tell the House. He sent the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey instead. And when I was at school in Britain, we were taught that Britain went to war in 1914 for the sake of little Belgium. No, we did not. We went to war in 1914 on a very old principle of British foreign policy first enunciated by Queen Elizabeth I. “If the Channel ports are in the hands of the enemy, then England will be next.”
And as Churchill said, “Better to fight in the fields of northern France than in the fields of Kent.” And so Britain goes to war with its old ally Germany, goes to war against its old ally Germany, and allied, sorry, I’ll say that again. We go to war with Germany, our old friend, and we’re allied to our old enemy, France. France, Britain, and Russia are now bound together. And so war has come. On the 6th of August, Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia. On the 23rd of August, Japan, who has an agreement with Britain, Anglo-Japanese alliance declares war on Germany. And on the 25th of August, Japan declares war on Austria-Hungary. The world is now truly at war. One final quotation comes from the Hungarian Minister of Religion and Education in the Hungarian Parliament at this time. And he says in that Hungarian Parliament, the following. When the news of the declaration of war comes through, he shouted out across the House, “At last!” Everyone wanted war. Everyone wanted war. Churchill thought, “It’s all going to be great fun.” And it wasn’t. This war is going to see four empires crash. The Russian Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. As King Farouk of Egypt remarked a few years later, “There will soon be only five kings left. The King of England, King of spades, the King of hearts,” et cetera.
The world was turned upside down by the First World War. And I would certainly argue that the pieces have yet to settle properly. It wasn’t the Second World War that caused the problems within Europe, post-war. It was the First World War. And our story of Austro-Hungary continues next week with that war. In the middle of which Franz Josef dies, and Austria-Hungary comes out of the war before Germany. Because the new emperor doesn’t want to fight at all. The new emperor is far more of a pacifist, recognised by the Catholic Church as a martyr. All of that is to come. Thanks for listening tonight. I’m sure there’s lots of questions. Yes, there are. I’ll have a go at some of the questions.
Q&A and Comments:
Oh, yeah, Michael, that’s very clever. Good. In our high school, we had a history teacher who told us to say every word seven courses, plus three points for style. I know, it makes history teaching so nonsensical. Margaret Macmillan, of course, very readable. Yes, that’s on my list. Oh, well, thank you for that. And it’s now black outside.
And Esther says, “Thank you from sunny, beautiful, blue-sky Los Angeles, California.” Well, good for you. It’s terrible here. World War One. Well, the Netherlands was neutral because it wasn’t involved in that war. It didn’t need to be. It was outside of it. In World War Two, Hitler is determined to crush all of Europe and the Netherlands and all of that. I’ve been watching the fall of egos make clear the close relationships between the monarchs, the Russian, Austrian, and British empires.
Q: Could the cousins not prevent the war?
A: Certainly the British could not because the British King, or emperor, if you like, has almost no political power. And so he’s out of the equation. Could the Russians and the Austrians? Potentially, but they didn’t, they didn’t because the Austrian emperor is in cahoots by the beginning of the war with the German emperor, and Russia has been left outside of that.
Oh, this is Adrian, “Recommendation of a novel about an Austrian doctor posted to the Austro-Hungarian Eastern Front, conveying the bleakness of the area and the end of empire, ‘The Winter Soldier’ by Daniel Mason, an American medical doctor, but has written some historical novels.” I didn’t know of that novel. Thank you. That will go on my reading list.
Absolutely. “An excellent book, ‘The Sleep Waters’ by Christopher Clark.” That is on my, says Warren, that’s on my short reading list.
Q: Do I see the current situation by Russia and Ukraine as potentially start a new domino effect?
A: Unfortunately, I do. And the domino effect would then take place in the north against the Baltic states and then potentially Poland. And it all smacks to me of the Rhineland in the 1930s, when France and Britain did not stand up to Hitler. We sometimes over-egg about why we didn’t stand up to Hitler, but I think there are too many, there’s too many contacts here, too many similar things happening that makes me nervous. I’m nervous about it. Let me put it that way. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
“The Radetzky March” is a wonderful book by Joseph Roth that examines the attractiveness and the fragility of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Yes, I think that’s important. I think it was fragile. Christopher Clark, I didn’t go into this because I didn’t think I had time. Christopher Clark argues that the Austro-Hungarian empire was strong in 1914. I simply don’t agree. I think it was so riven by nationalism, in particular Hungarian nationalism, that it was very, I think without the First World War, it was too late for the new emperor, Charles, to have done anything about it before it lay with Franz Joseph.
Q: Can you explain how rulers who were related could fight each other? Was nationalism stronger than family bloodlines?
A: The quick answer to that, Arlene, is yes. The longer answer is because they had to take into account the political elements. So in England or Britain, George V cannot make decisions. The decisions are made by, he can advise the government, but he himself was in favour of war for the same reason as Asquith’s government or the hawks in the government were, that if the ports on the channel were in enemy hands, we would be next. That he believed in. As regards Russia, well, Russia wants to go to war because it’s weak at home. Think Putin, except it was far weaker. And the czar was an extraordinarily weak man, sad. He was in the wrong job. He would have been a very nice English country gentleman, but instead he was ruling this vast empire and hadn’t a clue. The Germans, no, the Germans wanted, the Germans were egging for a war. The French, the French were quite keen to have a war because they wanted to recover Alsace-Lorraine, which had been taken by the Germans from them at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, ‘71. And when they went to war, the crowd were shouting Alsace-Lorraine or Strasbourg, the main city.
Q: Why did the common population want war?
A: Because the propaganda pushed them into it. The propaganda in Britain, thanks to the Daily Mail, amongst other newspapers, told the British, “Poor little Belgium, we must fight for Belgium.” Many Belgian refugees landed up right across Britain in quite small country towns, there were lots of Belgians. And so there was a tremendous outpouring. But it wasn’t the reason, but the government could use it as a reason.
Q: What defines a Slav?
A: I go, wow, who asked that? David, I can’t answer that in one word because ethnicities are very difficult. A Slav is distinct from a Teuton, a German. To get into that ethnicity question is very difficult. And it would take me a whole lecture or more to do that. I’m sorry, but I really can’t go down there tonight.
Q: Was there a role played by anarchists?
A: Oh, no, Monty, that is an intriguing question. During the war, no. After the war, yes. Before the war, yes. Anarchism was quite alive across Europe. We’d had an incident here four years before the war in Liverpool, where they thought the anarchists were taking over and had manoeuvred the trade unions into it. Very difficult. Yes, there was anarchists around.
Q: What was the justification for the annexation of Bosnia?
A: Well, because they had been ruling it for a long time, in terms of running the country, with the Ottoman Empire only nominally in charge. In 1908, they simply rubber stamped that situation. And they had made huge improvements in Bosnia, the Austria-Hungarians in terms of hospitals, roads, schools, all sorts of things, position of women, all sorts of things.
Jonathan says, “I was fortunate enough to meet Margaret Macmillan just after she had published 'The War That Ended Peace.’ She told me that she considered ‘The Guns of August’ to be the best book on the origins of the war. And Barbara Tuchman to be probably the best author.” Yes, the problem in history is it moves on. And I think it’s moved on a bit since then. But don’t, I’m not going to say that too loudly. Oh, yes. Oh, thank you, Irene. Thank you.
“William, your description of the eagerness for the War of ordinary British people is portrayed very movingly in ‘Oh! What a Lovely War,’ where Maggie Smith played the two-faced siren, attracting the men to take the king shilling and volunteer, and the men rushed to join up. Fiction, but based on fact.” Yes, in Britain, if you didn’t know, we were the only major power that did not have conscription. And we didn’t have conscription until after the song. We have volunteers and we’re calling on volunteers. And if you look to be a young man, a perfectly healthy young man, and you weren’t in uniform, women would present you with a white feather. And if you dared to take a girl to a cinema, and in those days, the seats at the back of cinemas were double seats for what my mother would have called hanky-panky. Well, if any hanky-panky was going on, there were women patrolling the aisles of the cinemas and shouting out when they discovered hanky-panky going on and delivering a white feather to the young man who should have been at war. Head of Serbia is the king.
Q: Did Germany’s Protestantism cause a problem for its lives with Catholic Austria-Hungary?
A: No, it did not. No. Sorry, I didn’t, that sounded rude, Barbara. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. And the answer is no.
Oh, Victor’s read “The Sleepwalkers.” Good. Yes, I do agree that it is a masterpiece. I don’t necessarily agree with all his analysis. But that’s life. That’s what history is meant to be. Challenge and challenge again. I’ve read that the Germans and the Kaiser, jealous of other empires, especially the Kaiser’s cousin, were itching for war. Correct. And they weren’t ready for war because they simply hadn’t got the German fleet up to a size that was bigger and larger than the British fleet. And that was a major error that they made. But then the Prussians always ignored shipping, always ignored the Navy, think Hitler.
“It took Russia so long to mobilise at once. It was almost to recall the troops,” said Jonathan. No, that isn’t actually true. They actually managed to mobilise quite fast. And they used railways and they actually managed to get into Prussia itself in Germany before they were pushed back. It really alarmed the Germans. So successful were the Russians that the Germans had to withdraw troops from the Western Front, which meant unlike Hitler, that they never took Paris and brought the French government down. And the Schlieffen Plan was the plan constructed by Germany before the war, which was to hit France so hard that it will be defeated in a matter of weeks, if not days. They calculated that the British wouldn’t come, but if they did, they’d defeat them as well. Having once defeated France, they would turn all their army onto Russia. But in fact, the Russians had mobilised quickly. And as I say, had actually got into Prussia and they had to redeploy troops on the Western Front, the French Front, to the Russian Front. Yet surely Slavs were already part of the Austria, yes. No, well, the Slovaks weren’t in this. No, the Slovaks are not in this. They’re not considered in that sense by the Serbs as Slavs. The Serbs interest in Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire is Slovenia. Slovenes aren’t really Slavs, but they call them Slavs. The Dalmatian Slavs, the Croats, well, yes. And the Bosnians in particular, that Slovakia doesn’t come into. I will talk about Slovakia, I think probably in about two weeks time, when we look at what happens after the war. Slovakia is playing second fiddle to the Czechs.
Q: Why is Germany blamed for the war? Russia could also have decided not to fight to defend the Serbs.
A: Because Germany was, as somebody asked just now, because Germany was determined to go to war anyhow, and the assassination and what followed were an excuse. And France and Britain would not have stood aside. And Russia was allied to France and Britain. I think it would have been very difficult. I don’t think Russia can be blamed in this sense for the war. The toll of World War I was France, Germany, and Britain, yes. No, the royal families couldn’t. I think I’ve answered that one. I’ve answered the one about.
Oh, Shoket. It’s your email name. Robert Massie’s book Dreadnought, a fantastic book. Another huge blockbuster of a book, suggests war between UK and Germany was inevitable. The race for naval power and the push for world influence. Yeah, there is some truth in that, but there’s also other arguments.
Q: Couldn’t Britain have kept out of the war?
A: No, because, well, we could have kept out of the war, but had we done so, what would that have meant? A German-controlled France, and that would have been us next. I don’t think we could. I really don’t think we could.
I recommend a great movie, “Au revoir la-haut,” or “See You Up There,” which deals with the horrors and consequences of World War I in Europe based on a book by the same title. You’re all so well read. I’m terribly impressed.
Q: Catherine Peter says, “Apart from the Kaiser, who were the key individuals in Germany routing for war?”
A: The military. Large, overwhelmingly the military.
Margaret Macmillan wrote, “The War That Ended Peace” consider the guns. Yes, I think I’ve done that question.
Q: And then, what did Italy believe?
A: Oh, well, Italy in World War I is on the side of the Allies and thus is interested in gaining territory from Austria-Hungary, particularly South Tyrol and the Trentino provinces from Austria-Hungary, which, it also had an interest over the other side of the Adriatic, which it wasn’t successful, but it did gain South Tyrol. I’ll talk about that next week.
Edward Grey said, “Absolutely right, Adrian. The lamps have gone out in Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime,” he said. From your narrative, it is the Serbs who sound like the bad guys. Well, I think that’s true. But interestingly, that totally changes during the war, because the British help the Serbs in the war. And that is fascinating, because of course, we’re fighting on behalf of Serbia against Austria-Hungary and we get wonderful stories. It’s PR again. We get wonderful stories in the British press about the brave Serbs. So we become very pro-Serb, actually.
Q: Oh, you asked about, why did Germany go to war with France?
A: Because, this is all old rivalries that Germans want. The German interest, in terms of policy, foreign policy, is “weltpolitik,” world policy. It’s no different than Hitler’s. They want to control everything. France is the ancient enemy. They took it out in 1870. We can take it out in weeks, if not days, in 1914. France is happy to go to war. It wants Alsace-Lorraine back. Your description of the Dominoes was accurate.
Q: How could it have been stopped with the rising tide of East European nationalism?
A: A very good question. And that’s a very good question, because it’s not one I can easily answer. If the great powers, Germany, France, Britain, Russia, had come together, they might have been able to limit it or they might have been able to get a diplomatic answer. And if you say, “Oh, well, that is ridiculous, William,” well, you may be saying that’s ridiculous, looking at Biden, Macron, and Johnson as regard Ukraine, can you get an agreement with someone like Putin? That’s what they’re trying to do. Well, I’m glad I’m not negotiating with Putin.
Please share your blog address. Easy. www.talkhistorian.com. And if you want, forward slash blog, www.talkhistorian.com. If you put “talk historian,” it’ll come up anyhow.
Jillian, absolutely correct. Britain has always intervened militarily when any continental part, e.g., and I would add, Spain, France, or Germany, and now Russia wants to dominate. Yes, absolutely 100% true.
Susan, you make a very interesting and sad point. Unfortunately, the shades of World War I today, including a pandemic, they had flu, 1918, 1990. From an American point of view, the flu was appalling. Wilson had promised that every American boy that died, the body would be brought home. But in fact, so many deaths occurred on the ships taking Americans to the continent in 1917, 18, that they have far too many, and they just lumped the bodies overboard into the Atlantic. One of the reasons that America had a terrible flu epidemic was because they brought the civilians who were joining the army to army camps on the East Coast. And they put them together, and they came from all over America. So if you came from a place that had little flu, you met it in these camps, and you caught it. Worse, they kept the troops inside the camps to stop them mixing with the population outside. But they said officers could mix. So officers went out of the camps carrying flu with them, or catching flu when they were outside. It was, the American experience of flu was disastrous.
I’m not answering the question, why, why did Trump not learn from, well, I’m not answering that question. But what I’ve just said about the American troops is true.
Q: Why was the horror so glorified, when the horrors of Crimea have been exposed by foreign sighted death?
A: No. The truth of the matter is, although there had been reports about the Crimea, it was not highly publicised in Britain. And when it was, it was all that nonsense about the charge of the light brigade. So no, it wasn’t exposed. Oh, she, Florence Nightingale exposed poor quality medicine, along with Mary Seacole, but the medical, the medical services available in World War One were totally inadequate for this new form of warfare. Thanks for people who say thanks. Thank you back for listening. Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, this is the problem of history. You mentioned one thing, and everybody else wants wants to listen to it.
Q: Is the portrayal of Black Hand in “Vienna Blood” accurate?
A: I hadn’t seen that particular episode or episodes, but everything else in “Vienna Blood” seems to me to be wonderfully accurate.
Vera Brittain’s “Testament of Youth.” Yes, another excellent book. There are some wonderful books about the First World War.
Q: If we had the technology of social networking, Google, would that have prevented World War One?
A: Let me ask you the question back, David, is it going to prevent the Ukraine, Russia invading Ukraine, has it in any way contained China’s action against Uyghurs, against Hong Kong, and against Taiwan?
Other novels? Yes, “Beware of Pity” by Stefan Zweig. Anything by Zweig is worth reading. I think, probably.
Oh, that’s a good. Oh, gosh, Robin, that’s a, you asked too difficult a question. What a lovely statement.
Q: What’s more dangerous, lack of understanding or lack of leadership?
A: Oh, wow, Robin, that is a really difficult question. It’s a really interesting question. A lack of understanding or lack of leadership? The answer is both, I suppose. A lack of leadership is really. We are worried in the Western world now with Ukraine, there’s a lack of leadership. There’s no leadership coming from Germany. The leadership in America, Britain, and France is tainted, is a nice way of putting it. No, you do need leadership. A lack of understanding probably goes with a lack of leadership. How much history does Biden know? How much does Macron know? How much does Johnson know? If the other two are like Johnson, they think they know more than they actually do. It’s just a good question. There’s no easy answer to that.
Q: Military circles say, “Amateurs talk of strategy and professionals of logistics.” What does this say of the Ukraine situation?
A: Oh, Michael, you’re all asking such wonderful questions. I’m not Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. I know no answers to those questions. These are really difficult questions. Amateurs talk of strategy, professionals of logistics. What does this say of the Ukraine? The politicians are talking about strategy. The military are talking about logistics. How about that for an instant and rather silly reply. I can’t think of anything better. I think I better stop. It’s 25 past six.
[Judi] Thank you, William.
[William] I think I better stop. I’m losing my voice.
[Judi] Would you like me to send you a copy of the questions tomorrow?
Do, please.
[Judi] I’ll send you a copy of those questions. Thank you very much, and thank you to everybody who joined us. We’ll see everybody in about 35 minutes for Robert Fox. Thank you so much. Bye bye.
Bye bye, oh, bye bye.