-
1—July 1914
- Cornell University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
C H A P T e r 1 July 1914 summer 1914: at the end of June in sarajevo, Bosnia, a serbiantrained assassin shot dead the heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary; at the beginning of August, the chanceries of the Great Powers exchanged declarations of war. Hell gaped open. The Great War, much predicted and much delayed, stalked forth. Blood and darkness enveloped europe in the first cataclysm of what would become the century of catastrophe. A civilization constructed upon political, social, and economic revolutions broke apart. An abyss lay between what had been and what was to be.1 rumors of war had circulated for almost a decade. In 1905 and 1911, Germany contested France’s protectorate over Morocco. In 1906, 1912, and 1913, Austria-Hungary and russia squared off over claims in the Balkans. France prevailed in Morocco through support from Great Britain. Austria-Hungary extended its control in the Balkans through support from Germany. These five crises originated from two fundamental alterations in the european power structure. The first was the long-term deterioration of the Ottoman empire, whose writ once ran across North Africa, throughout the Middle east, and north into Hungary. Its retreat before nationalist revolts and the encroachment of the european Great Powers began in the late 1600s and, by the middle nineteenth century, threatened to become a rout. Great Britain, France, Italy, and later Germany jostled for empire in North Africa. russia and Austria-Hungary competed 12 Y e A r s O F P L e N T Y , Y e A r s O F W A N T for control of the Balkans. The second transformation was the sudden emergence of Germany as a Great Power. Prussia unified the disparate German states under its rule by defeating the two previously dominant land powers in continental europe, Austria-Hungary in 1866 and France in 1871. Diminished, France sought compensation through an overseas empire, Austria-Hungary through extension of power over slavic regions rebelling against the Ottomans. During the nearly five decades that preceded the Great War, europeans fought almost continually—but not against each other except in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, which were brief and contained. Thanks to the Industrial revolution, they possessed modern weapons and modern transportation (supremely summed up in the “gunboat”), which made British and French colonial wars in Africa or Asia, and russia’s war against the Ottomans in 1877–78, triumphal processions. europeans, leaders and peoples, simply had no conception of general war among Great Powers. By 1914, modern weaponry was a synonym for “lethality”: machine guns, rapidfiring highly accurate artillery, massively armed battleships, military aircraft, and poison gas. each Great Power expanded its standing army, with both France and Germany having roughly 7 percent of their adult males in uniform. The greatest innovation of the period was the formation of peacetime alliances—previously, they had been concluded during war or in anticipation of it. The greatest humiliation France suffered from defeat by Prussia in 1871 was the loss of two eastern provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, to the new Germany. Its chancellor and the genius behind German unification, Otto von Bismarck, recognized that France would be a permanent enemy and reconciled with Austria-Hungary by emphasizing the threat to both from russia. The result was the 1879 Dual Alliance, which became the Triple Alliance in 1882 through the inclusion of Italy. Because Bismarck believed that the most serious threat to Germany lay in any new general war, the alliance promised assistance only if a member were attacked. Confronted by this coalition of Great Powers in central europe, French diplomacy worked to encircle it. The first step was a defensive pact with russia in 1894, a triumph of expediency: reactionary [54.156.48.192] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:29 GMT) July 1914 13 russian tsardom allied with republican France because Germany was the danger each feared the most. The second was an agreement with Great Britain, the entente Cordiale (Friendly Understanding) in 1904, which settled all disputes between the world’s two largest empires—and would lead afterward to semiformal pledges of mutual defense in a war against Germany. The third, almost simultaneously, was a détente with Italy, estranging it from the Triple Alliance. Never mind that what was increasingly called the “Triple entente” also provided certain support only if a member were attacked, the european Great Powers had divided themselves into competing blocs. The inevitable conclusion was...