“...it was with great sadness that I heard the news of Franz’s death, from that point on we were all thrown towards the gates of Hell that was the war...” - Archduke Charles
At the turn of the century Europe had been in a state of uneasy peace since the end of the Napoleonic wars, so much so that idealists and economists were beginning to predict that a major war was no longer possible due to inter-dependant trade. This was merely a facade and one that was to be brought crashing down, and the journey to war began in 1903, when Serbian military officers led by Dragutin Dimitrijević, known more commonly as Apis, stormed the Serbian Royal Palace and brutally murdered the King and his wife. The Coup brought with it a nationalistic and militaristic executive, bent on re-creating the 14th century Empire, causing rising tensions with the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Balkan wars. After the Second Balkan War, tensions between the two powers were markedly increased, with Austria supporting the Albanians in the west cutting Serbia off from the sea. Apis, by now head of Serbia’s Military Intelligence, believed that Archduke Franz Ferdinand represented a double threat with his support of triadism, under which Austria-Hungary would be reorganized by combining the Slavic lands within the Austro-Hungarian empire into a third crown, and his supposed hawkish views on war with Serbia. In fact the heir to the Dual-Monarchy was, along with the Hungarian prime minister Count Tisza, were the staunchest advocates of peace. Nikola Pašić, prime minster of Serbia did not see any advantage in war with its northern neighbour and twice tried to undo the work of Apis, once trying to detain Princip and then giving warning to Vienna.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand
In the event the Black Hand, a group of mainly disaffected Bosnian Serbs, were armed and trained by the insidious head of Serbian intelligence and sent forth with the mission to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. So on the 28th of June 1914, the Archduke’s motorcade passed by six assassins, the first two failed to act, and when the third threw his bomb it bounced off Ferdinand’s car, severely damaging another behind it. The assassin, Nedeljko Čabrinović, swallowed a cyanide capsule and dove into the river. Unfortunately for him, the capsule only induced vomiting and with his suicide attempt thwarted he was set upon by an angry mob. The other three assassins also failed to act as the motorcade past by them at great speed. The party had made its way to the town hall where Ferdinand thanked the people of Sarajevo for their ovations "as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination." It was decided that they should visit the victims that had been injured by the bomb-thrower, it was while on route to the hospital that the driver made a fatal mistake. Having not been informed properly of the route, he took a wrong turning and ended up in front of a fortunate Princip. The man used his FN Model 1910 to shot twice, the first hit the Archduke and the second his beloved Sophie. Anti-Serb rioting broke out in Sarajevo and various other places within Austria-Hungary in the hours following the assassination until order was restored by the military.[4]
The destruction of the peace in 1914 was precipitated by the events of Sarajevo, but above all the feeling of fear in the major capitals. The first fear was that of Vienna, since the middle of the last century, it’s natural sphere of influence had been taken by first the creation of Germany and then of Italy. This caused the Austrians to look south to the Balkans and also pushed it into a downward spiral in regrade to the other Great Powers. In 1914, after the assassination, the situation looked grim Vienna had to act against Serbia, otherwise it would loose all of its influence in the Balkans and may even see a general uprising of the ‘south Slavs’. Vienna was also concerned by Russia and so sought assurances from its northern ally Germany. Berlin had seen that Bismark’s legacy was becoming endangered, after he had defeated France he sought to isolate her so as to protect against revanchism and possible future conflict. Since his fall from power, however, first Russia and then Great Britain had moved into friendly waters with France. Kaiser Wilhelm II knew that he had only one reliable ally left, as Italy was seen quite rightly as ‘flaky’ and so the Germans knew that they must support their Germanic brothers.
Europe in 1914
On the Entente side many parallels ran between its fears and those of its adversaries. In St. Petersberg, the Tsar’s position was still unstable from the aftermath of the 1904-05 war with Japan that had seen much discontent directed at Nicholas and forced him into accepting reforms. Pan-Slavism, was a major concern that could complicate the issue as was the fact that Russia saw the Balkans as within its sphere of influence, one that had taken a knock with the annexation of Bosnia by the Dual-Monarchy in 1909. Paris’s view, meanwhile, held a strong similarity with that of Berlin, as they had only just come out of diplomatic isolation and could not let one of its new allies fall to the Central Powers, this along with its vitriolic views upon German control of Alsace-Loraine, meant that they too could not stand back from war. Over the Chanel in London things did not seem so drastic, after all they were not at threat of loosing any continental positions. The case for war, however, was still overwhelming for Britain feared that if it left its allies to tackle the Central Powers alone, a victory for either side would mean control of the Chanel ports would be in the hands of a now opposing power and the balance of power in Europe would be lost. So Britain too could not afford, it seemed, to stand aside from its allies and would have to be involved in the coming war.[5]
For the remaining European powers, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, the case was no so straight forward. They had little to gain and no strategically important allies to loose, if they chose to enter the conflict at its start. It was to their benefit to stand on the sidelines until they could either see who the victor was likely to be, or which side could ‘bribe’ them with the best offer. The two extra European powers, Japan and the United States of America, had little interest in the matter in 1914 and were far from interested.
Alfred von Schlieffen, co-author of the France first plan
The Great War was, therefore, almost a forgone conclusion from the time that the megalomaniac Serbian intelligence unit drew up its plans for assassination.[6] Once Franz Ferdinand was dead a general European conflagration was hard to avoid. The added factor was each countries expectations that the war would be short and decided upon the timetables of mobilisation as much as the field of battle. Once the Austro-Hungarian empire had declare war upon Serbia and the Tsar gave the order for mobilisation, little else matters. Some ‘academics’ claim that a general mobilisation need not have caused a war and cite that it was only Germany’s war plans that needed a immediate entry of troops into Belgium that made turning back impossible. This as we have seen is not the case, and even though the Schlieffen-Moltke[7] plan did mean that German mobilisation did mean war, then general European conflict was by then inevitable anyway. So on the 1st of August, 1914, the Great War had begun.
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[4] All this is as in our time line (OTL)
[5] This, I believe pretty much sums up the fact that that by mid July war was inevitable
[6] The author has a pro-Austrian bias and so seeks to place all the blame upon the Serbs - these are not my views per se
[7] The fabled Schlieffen Plan was really only a forray into the idea of a France first scenario, and much of the credit/blame should rest with Helmuth von Moltke the Younger.
