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World War I: A Narrative
World War I: A Narrative
World War I: A Narrative
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World War I: A Narrative

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At the end of the First World War the victors decided to punish the aggressors and while doing so to establish free, democratic governments of ethnic groups which would, supposedly, have no reason to go to war. A League of Nations was established with the main aim of confronting potential aggressors with overwhelming force, and with the secondary aim of eradicating possible causes of war such as injustice and economic hardship. But it failed. Hundreds of books have been written about various aspects of the First World War: official and unofficial histories, specialist books in medicine, artillery, logistics, etc., personal reminiscences, and novels which were often autobiographical. Today, with hindsight, a hundred years on, we can see the achievements and mistakes of the time. Many conflicts of the present may be traced to origins in the 1919 peace settlements: it is, of course, easy to be wise after the event. With the mass of material available, the writer and reader of today may see the war in perspective and form judgements which were previously impossible. In this chronological narrative Philip Warner, a former senior lecturer at Britain’s world famous Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, once more cuts to the heart of the matter with his searing analysis as he unfolds the main events, supporting it with a look at women in their new roles and the literature the war provoked. Perhaps the last word, the final summary, the ultimate definitive view can never be made, but we are now in a better position to see the war in its proper perspective than any of our predecessors have been.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 14, 2014
ISBN9781859595374
World War I: A Narrative
Author

Philip Warner

Philip Warner was a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and the author of over 40 books.

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    World War I - Philip Warner

    WORLD WAR ONE. A NARRATIVE

    By Philip Warner

    Index of Contents

    Preface

    The Causes of the First World War

    Chapter 1 – 1914

    Chapter 2 – The First Shot

    Chapter 3 – The Schlieffen Plan

    Chapter 4 – 1914–1915

    Chapter 5 – 1915–1916

    Chapter 6 – Deadlock

    Chapter 7 – 1916–1917

    Chapter 8 – 1917–1918

    Chapter 9 – April 1918

    Chapter 10 – Women in the War

    Chapter 11 – The Final Stages

    Chapter 12 – Peace Treaties

    Chapter 13 – The Literature of the War

    Chapter 14 – Was the War Avoidable?

    Appendix – Seeing for Yourself

    Appendix – Further Reading

    Picture Gallery

    Philip Warner – A Short Biography

    Philip Warner – A Concise Bibliography

    Preface

    In general the pattern of the book has been to describe events as they were happening. However, when certain developments were remote from the main theme or did not last for the entire period the outcome has been given in the text even though it meant taking the narrative into a later period.

    Hundreds of books have been written about various aspects of the First World War: official and unofficial histories, specialist books in medicine, artillery, logistics, etc., personal reminiscences, and novels which were often autobiographical. Most of them are long out of print.

    In the 1990s we encounter the eightieth anniversaries of the outbreak and its ending. In hindsight we can see the achievements and mistakes of the time. Many conflicts of the present decade may be traced to origins in the 1919 peace settlements: it is, of course, easy to be wise after the event.

    With the mass of material available, the writer and reader of today may see the war in perspective and form judgements which were previously impossible.

    The last word, the final summary, the ultimate definitive view can never be made, but the student in the 1990s is probably in a better position to see the war in its proper perspective than any of his predecessors have been.

    The Causes of the First World War

    Although the immediate cause of the First World War was the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, this merely precipitated a conflict between the major powers which had become inevitable. The main reasons were the ambitions, apprehensions, and miscalculations of Germany, Russia, France and Britain. All, in their different ways, considered that their vital interests were threatened.

    Austria felt that the stability of her territories, which contained 23,000,000 Serbs, was threatened by Serbia, which saw herself as the leader of a Pan Slav movement. The assassination of the Archduke, who was heir to the Austrian throne, was thought to have been encouraged by the government of Serbia. Austria therefore attacked Serbia.

    Austria was already allied to Germany, who saw her as a reservoir of valuable manpower for any conflict in which Germany might herself become involved; Austria was a useful stepping stone to Germany’s aspirations for influence (and perhaps possessions) in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Germany had colonies in Africa and the Pacific, with which her communications were extremely vulnerable. Germany also felt she was encircled and contained by France and Russia on land, and Britain by sea.

    Russia felt she was under an obligation to support Serbian aspirations, as a fellow Slav state. She also hoped to use her connections with Serbia to gain influence on the Mediterranean seaboard.

    France was allied to Russia because both were apprehensive of German ambitions. Their defensive treaty meant that Germany would be deterred from attacking either, as this would immediately lead to a war on both east and west, which Germany dreaded. France was highly suspicious of Germany’s alliance with Austria and Italy.

    Britain noted that Germany was making great efforts to expand her navy, building submarines and large ships in an effort to challenge Britain, whose navy was so large that peace had been maintained at sea for nearly a hundred years with the exception of a battle between Russia and Japan in 1905.

    However Britain was not immediately drawn into the war by a challenge to her seapower but by a guarantee she had given to defend Belgian neutrality. When Germany attacked France she violated Belgian neutrality as part of her strategic plan. In the longer term German naval expansion was seen as threatening the British Empire, which included Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, and many other territories. In 1917 America, outraged by Germany’s ruthless submarine warfare, often directed against neutral ships, joined the Allies. Turkey had joined Germany and Japan had joined the Allies, both in 1914.

    Although one bullet had killed the Austrian Archduke and effectively started the war it was later estimated that for every man subsequently killed 50,000 rifle bullets were fired.

    By 11 November 1918, Germany and her allies (known as the Central Powers) had had 3,500,000 killed and the Allies 5,250,000. These are minimum figures. At least another 11,000,000 had been wounded and probably incapacitated for life.

    CHAPTER  l

    1914

    4 August was a blazingly hot day in Britain. It was also a Bank Holiday. For many people these official holidays were the only free days they ever had apart from Sundays, for at that time there was no statutory right to a holiday. In consequence, vast numbers rushed to the seaside or the country, although that day there was an inexplicable shortage of trains. When they came back late that night, hot, tired, but probably happy, they learned that Britain was about to go to war with Germany and that other countries, such as France and Russia, were in it too.

    It was a bewildering piece of news, but rather exciting. Nobody expected the war to last long. Britain always won and although Britain had never fought the Germans before there was no reason to believe that they would be any more of a problem than the Russians, the French, the Spanish, the Turks, the Chinese and all those other countries which had mistakenly tried to check the advance of the British Empire.

    No one had the faintest idea of the fact that the world would never be the same again and that millions of able bodied men would be slaughtered or disabled for life in unimaginably sordid circumstances, that women would suffer appallingly when their husbands or sons, or the men whom they might have married, were remorselessly wiped out. Nobody visualised that by 1918 the status of women would have changed so much that it was possible that one day they might even be allowed to vote. (Until 1918, only male householders had the vote.)

    Although the newspapers had been talking of a crisis in the Balkans, or of German military and naval ambitions, these reports had no more effect on the average reader than the reports there had been of floods in China or earthquakes in South America, where that son of thing was to be expected. But suddenly the situation had changed. The searchlight, instead of picking out distant objects for a moment or two, had swung round and focused on them and stayed there. Twenty-five years later, when Britain once more found herself at war with Germany, there was a much clearer view of why this had happened. Most people had a radio (which they called a wireless) in 1939, and they had also seen a lot of menacing newsreels in the cinemas, which were attended by hundreds of thousands of people every week. But even in 1939 there was a sense of bewilderment, of why, and what it would be like, and how would it all end. Today, when television and hourly radio news bulletins overwhelm everyone with facts about events at home and abroad, there is no reason why anyone should fail to understand the causes of a conflict. Yet if small wars should spread and a third world war seem imminent, the same bewilderment would shock people again, perhaps with even more sense of foreboding. All it needs is for some fanatical leader of a small, belligerent state, perhaps, to acquire enough modern highly lethal weapons, nuclear, chemical or bacteriological, to challenge the western world. For a while, no doubt we would be as bemused as our ancestors in 1914 at this threat to our ordinary, orderly existence.

    Of course, some people knew very well what was happening in 1914 and were in a position to influence events, though not necessarily responsibly. There was the German High Command, there was the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there were the watchful, opportunist, leaders of Russia, there was the apprehensive government of France which had been trounced by the Russians 43 years earlier, and there was the British Foreign Office, whose mission was to hold the Empire together and thwart attempts by other nations to obtain advantages in the Middle East. The Foreign Office stressed that sacrifices might have to be made in one area in order to prevent larger, more vital, concessions being made in another. It hoped that war could be avoided by clever diplomacy: unfortunately, games of chess, however brilliantly played, end suddenly when someone tips up the board and scatters the pieces on the floor.

    In hindsight we all know that war was probably inevitable. For years Germany had been building an army and navy, and working out plans to expand its empire. The Germans had come too late into the field of imperial expansion and had to accept what other countries did not want. Germany also had apprehensions about Russia and France, suspecting that one day the latter would seek revenge for the crushing defeat and humiliating peace of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871.

    In 1895 Germany had completed the construction of the Kiel Canal, thus giving the Baltic fleet clear entry to the North Sea. Five years later, the German Navy had stipulated that Germany must build a fleet capable of challenging (and defeating) the mightiest naval power, that is Britain. For years German officers had been drinking toasts to ‘Der Tag’ – the day when they would wrest control of the oceans from the Royal Navy. The French Secret Service also knew of a complex military plan by which Germany expected to win a victory over France before France’s ally, Russia, could come to her assistance. The French response was to build a series of frontier forts. Nobody expected Britain to become involved in a war on the Continent. There were contingency plans, of course, there always are. But the French suspected that British sympathies inclined more towards Germany than France. After all, the British royal family was of German extraction and the Kaiser was Queen Victoria’s nephew, even though Edward VII had been a Francophile.

    As always, there were forces under the surface which were likely to upset any neat diplomatic solution to a crisis.

    By 1914 the leading countries of the world had gradually grouped into two main camps. Britain, though principally concerned with the maintenance of her vast empire, was well aware of the growing power and ambition of Germany, which now had a well-trained army, a disconcertingly strong navy, and a powerful industrial base. Germany was also unpredictable. Just before the outbreak of the South African (Boer) war in 1899, the Kaiser had shown considerable friendliness to the Boers, who had been adequately supplied with excellent guns from Krupps of Essen: those guns had caused great damage to British troops when the conflict had begun. And that was when Queen Victoria was still on the throne. Edward VII (1901–1910) felt considerably less affection for his German cousins: he preferred France and its way of life; he liked the French aristocracy and he could converse fluently in their language. Edward VII did not concern himself with trying to influence foreign policy, but the personal Entente Cordiale which he established paved the way for certain political agreements in 1904; these defined spheres of influence and therefore helped to remove possible sources of friction between Britain and France.

    Rather surprisingly Britain entered into a similar arrangement with Russia in 1907. In spite of its crushing defeat by Japan in 1905, Russia still seemed to entertain expansionist ambitions. Its vast size – eight million square miles – did not appear to satisfy it so much as to fuel its imperial ambitions, or so it seemed to people outside Russia. Inside Russia, matters looked somewhat different. Vast areas of the country were totally unproductive, whereas just beyond its borders lay territories which contained all the materials which Russia coveted, and also warm-water ports. Several attempts to force a way through the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean had been made during the nineteenth century, but all had ended in frustration, of which the Crimean War in 1854–6 had probably been the most humiliating. Persia, along its south-western frontier, was a tempting prospect, but this was an independent country under British influence. India, also to the south, was an even more alluring prize, but that was part of the British Empire and any attempts to invade it would encounter formidable resistance. So far Russian attempts to probe at India had been limited to stirring up trouble in Afghanistan and on the North-West Frontier. Britain already had enough trouble with turbulent tribesmen who were always on the alert for a swift raid on towns on the plains. However, in 1907 Britain had joined the Entente Cordiale with Russia and France. The agreement gave Russia a large, exclusive trading zone in northern Persia on the understanding that there would be no more Russian interference in Afghanistan or Tibet. The south and east (on the Persian Gulf) were to be in the British Zone, and the central zone would be neutral. Persia would still be an independent country.

    These non-military arrangements seemed innocuous enough to Britain, France and Russia: to Germany they looked like deliberate and successful attempts to encircle her.

    Germany was undoubtedly highly sensitive in this matter, a fact which becomes more understandable when one reflects that it had only been a united country for less than a hundred years. But, having been transformed by Bismarck into a dynamic, industrial state, Germany was now looking for a place in the sun. Unfortunately for this ambition, all the best sunny spots were already occupied by its European neighbours, rather like bathers placing their towels on the best places on the beach with the intention of denying them to any later arrivals.

    To Germany there appeared to be two ways out of this deadlock, as they saw it. The first was to strengthen her position in Europe itself, by a close alliance with Austria and later with Italy, then by giving Britain so much cause for concern in her maritime Empire that there might be opportunities to acquire colonies by bargaining.

    ‘Austria’ was, of course, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a ramshackle collection of states in southern Europe, of which Austria and Hungary were the largest. It was the successor to the former Holy Roman Empire (described by Voltaire as neither holy, Roman, nor an empire) and contained a number of small, turbulent peoples, many of whom had been driven there, or left behind as earlier conquerors had ravaged through the area. However, in 1879, Austria looked a very promising partner for Germany, with its huge resources of manpower. Bismarck therefore linked Germany with Austria in the secret Dual Alliance of that year, the basis of the alliance being that each country would assist the other if either was attacked by Russia. On the surface this did not seem a very likely possibility but both were well aware that Russia had ambitions to reach the Mediterranean, which would involve breaking through Austro-Hungarian territory and that, if she were successful, she would create an effective bar to German ambition to expand into the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

    Italy had been united even more recently than Germany but Italy too occupied an immensely important strategic position. With her new-found status as an independent power, with no foreign armies now on her soil, Italy soon joined in the fashionable clamour for colonies. The obvious and easy place for Italy to acquire one was in North Africa and her eyes fell on Tunis. Unfortunately for this intention, France acquired Tunisia in 1881 on the basis that the disturbances there were endangering the next door territory of Algeria, which was already a French colony. This immediately provoked a wave of hostility against the French, although the latter had been very helpful to Italy at the time of Italian unification. Bismarck therefore had no difficulty over drawing Italy into the Dual Alliance, which in consequence became the Triple Alliance in 1882. Italy might regret her hasty decision later, for she was really much more at ease with France than Austria, her new ally. But the Triple Alliance remained in force until 1914, although it did not develop quite as Bismarck had wished.

    France, seeing herself isolated by Germany, realised she must make new friends quickly. She mollified Italy by an agreement that neither country would interfere with each other’s intentions in North Africa. She also persuaded Italy that her future welfare lay with France, not Austria or Germany, although Italy would have to help defend the latter two if they were attacked, provided the attacker was not France. Subsequently in both the First and the Second World Wars Italy began as the ally of Germany but finished up as an ally of the Allies.

    In hindsight it is clear that only a miracle could prevent this clash of interests and tangled diplomacy ending in war. Ironically all this was happening when philosophers were seriously contending that wars could never happen again because civilisation had now reached a point at which such barbaric methods of solving problems were now obsolete.

    In spite of her flirtation with Italy, France knew very well that the country whose help she really needed against the growing power of Germany was her traditional enemy, Britain. Although Britain had defeated France in the 22-year-long Napoleonic Wars a century earlier, and the two countries had fought side by side against the Russians in the Crimean War (1854-6), there were several occasions in the late nineteenth century when France and Britain nearly came to blows. The huge underground forts inland from Portsmouth and many other British coastal defences date from that period. But by the turn of the century the French knew where their best interests lay. The 1904 Dual Entente gave evidence of that.

    However, behind these genteel diplomatic moves were some crude driving forces, which may be euphemistically described as national interests. Britain’s national interest was to control the sea lanes of the world, the North and South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. In order to safeguard British interests in the Far East, where Russia might be thought to have designs, Britain had signed a treaty with Japan in 1902. It was a dangerous move for it was directed against Russian expansion in the Far East, and Britain needed to cultivate Russian friendship (as she did, later, in 1907). Britain also gave Japan help with shipbuilding, a move she would regret later.

    France’s national interests were to keep Germany under control in Europe, maintain a strong naval presence in the Mediterranean, develop interests in the Middle East and colonise Indochina. The increasing demand for oil would soon bring her into rivalry with Britain in the Middle East.

    Russia’s national interests have already been mentioned. Although Communist propaganda always described pre-1914 Russia as a backward country which was only transformed into a modern state by the miracle of Marxism, this, like most other Communist claims, is untrue. Before 1914 Russia was one of the leading industrial powers: it was seventy years of Communist domination which reduced it to chaos. It was Russia’s industrial strength which made a warm-water port such a necessity. One means of achieving this was to back the Serbs, who might then gain access to the Adriatic. Serbia, which is featuring strongly in the news at the time of writing (1992), is a Slavic state which gives her much common ground with Russia (as with many other countries). In the fourteenth century Serbia had controlled a small empire, but this successively fell, first under the domination of the Turks and then of the Austrians. By 1882, after various wars, it became an independent kingdom again.

    Austria’s annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1908 both incensed Serbia and fired her ambitions, and she promptly formed a Balkan League with Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece. This declared war on Turkey in 1912 and again in 1913, on a flimsy pretext, but with the intention of acquiring territory from the moribund Turkish Empire. After various bitter conflicts Serbia, Greece and Romania gained territory and Bulgaria (who had quarrelled with the League) lost some. This victory encouraged the Serbs in their ambition to wrest further territory from the more powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire, whom she felt, probably rightly, was determined to thwart her plans.

    These incessant, bitter, and apparently petty conflicts in the Balkans (as the area was known) were observed by the governments of the Great Powers, who occasionally wondered whether they might be utilised for their own interests: Germany hoped that her ally Austria might gain some advantage if Russia pondered how to encourage her Slav kinsfolk the Serbs, and further her own ambitions in the process. Italy hoped that these squabbles might enable her to gain control of the Adriatic and perhaps wrest some territory from Austria. Although Austria was scarcely in control of her cumbersome empire she had ambitions to expand it, mainly at the expense of Turkey, whose empire was in an even worse state than her own. Austria was already in control of Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast, which contained two useful ports, Spalato and Cattaro: these were coveted by landlocked Serbia. Albania, which was also former Turkish territory, also had two ports but these were not likely to become available to Serbia.

    Although these conflicts of interests, and consequent tensions, eventually led to the outbreak of the First World War, it needs to be remembered that there were also a host of other minor rivalries as well as projects which were bound to upset neighbours.

    Now that the First World War has been pushed into the background of memory by the Second, one occasionally encounters people who claim that the First could have been avoided, though not the Second. Certainly it seems incredible that thousands of young men could have been killed on the Somme and at Passchendaele because of nationalists squabbling in countries they had probably never heard of, or if they had heard of, would not be able to place on a blank map. Unfortunately, as we have learnt by bitter experience, events in distant countries can have dramatic repercussions on events at home. Czechoslovakia and Poland had no significance for the ordinary inhabitants of Britain until Chamberlain went to Munich to resolve the Czech ‘crisis’ in 1938, and Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Similarly, few people had heard of Korea in 1950 but the conflict when the North invaded the South subsequently saw the deaths of many British soldiers and at one point looked like developing into the Third World War.

    Doubt about another country’s intentions has often resulted in war. In 1982, the Argentine government decided that the British withdrawal of the survey ship Endurance signified that Britain had lost interest in the Falkland Islands. In consequence Argentine forces invaded, only to find that they were ejected after a brief but bloody war. In 1991 Saddam Hussein of Iraq decided that he could invade his neighbour Kuwait and the Western Powers would shrug their shoulders at the ‘fait accompli’.

    Similar miscalculations precipitated the First World War. Germany assumed that she could knock out France with a devastating blow long before Russia could assist her Entente partner. She also assumed she could violate neutral territories with impunity. Britain assumed that her sea power would easily overwhelm the German navy, and that the Turks were opponents who could easily be brushed aside in the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia (Iraq). France thought she could hold Germany on her frontiers. War seems to begin with miscalculations and continue with mistakes.

    Russia assumed that the steamroller effect of her massive armies would soon overwhelm the Germans. She learnt otherwise, at appalling cost, and three years later the unimaginable occurred, the Tsar and his family were deposed and murdered and a Marxist oligarchy put in their place.

    In times of peace it is difficult to forecast the future; in times of war it seems impossible. Although it is sometimes said that war settles nothing and the peace treaties always contain the seeds of the next war, neither statement is entirely true. The First World War prevented Germany conquering and occupying France. In the Second, Nazi Germany occupied France and inflicted the horror of the Gestapo and the holocaust on that nation. She was only ejected by a supreme effort using all the resources of modern technology. It has been said that Germany could have been defeated by a naval blockade alone in the First World War. This is nonsense. By occupying France, Germany could have defied any naval blockade.

    War, unfortunately, is the only means by which powerful tyrants can be defeated.

    CHAPTER 2

    THE FIRST SHOT

    The events which precipitated the outbreak of war in 1914 seem, in retrospect, as bizarre as they were tragic. On 28 June 1914 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, nephew of the Emperor Franz Josef (who had been Emperor since 1848 but was still alert and healthy), decided to pay a state visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Bosnia was a former Turkish province which, in the peace treaty after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–8, had been put under Austro-Hungarian administration although still nominally a Turkish province. In 1908 Austria had formerly annexed the province, an act which caused less annoyance to the Turks than to Serbia, which was Bosnia’s neighbour.

    The Austro-Hungarian Empire was the twentieth century survivor of the medieval Holy Roman Empire and had been created by a mixture of conquests and marriage contracts. During its turbulent history it had acquired a population of minorities, speaking different languages and having little in common. Nevertheless it had been a great power for many centuries. The complexities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are too numerous to be explained here, but the upshot was that the empire was precariously held together by the prestige of the Emperor, who, it is said, could speak all the languages of the minorities. However, even without the effect of the First World War, nationalism would probably have fragmented the empire soon after the Emperor’s death in 1916. As we have subsequently seen, the experiment of creating new states by the post-1918 peace treaties has not produced the harmonious development which had been hoped for. It is said that the assassinated Archduke was a man of liberal ideas who would have done much to satisfy the aspirations of some of the minority groups. This may be so but his behaviour in 1914 prior to his death does not suggest either wisdom or foresight.

    The chief thorn in the flesh of the Austrian government was the small but hyperactive state of Serbia, whose turbulent history has already been described. In order to impress the Serbians that Austria was in no mood to stand any nonsense in Bosnia, the Archduke first of all held some military

    manoeuvres in Bosnia and then decided to pay an official visit, the first since the country had been annexed six years earlier. Rather unwisely he chose 28 June although he must have known that this was a national holiday for Serbs, celebrating the day Serbia had gained her own independence. It was also a Serbian saint’s day, their patron saint being St Vitus.

    The Archduke’s arrival had been greeted by some inaccurately thrown bombs and he was most dissatisfied with the reception. When he was leaving, his chauffeur took a wrong turning and drove into a cul-de-sac. As he reversed the car to drive out, he was spotted by a young student sitting in a cafe. Although a Bosnian, the student was a member of a Serbian secret society called the Black Hand, which had supplied him with a gun. In a flash he had rushed out of the cafe, jumped on the running board and shot the Archduke and his morganatic wife who was accompanying him. The young man, whose name was Gavrilo Princip, had hoped to shoot the Archduke earlier in the day but had been unable to get near him. He escaped, survived, and later became a museum curator. The vehicle in which the Archduke was travelling is now in the Heeresgeschichtliches (military) Museum in Vienna, where its very convenient running boards along the side may be inspected, though there are no visible bloodstains.

    The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was an event which seemed likely to have unpredictable consequences. Although Serbia was not officially involved, there was considerable suspicion as to how far she had encouraged this dramatic killing. The ‘Great Powers’ (Britain, France, Germany, and Russia) watched the situation with interest and apprehension; it seemed unlikely that Austria would let slip the opportunity to demand some sort of recompense from Serbia, perhaps in the form of territory, probably that which Serbia had recently wrested from the Turks. In the event of the Serbs being defiant, it seemed likely that Austria would declare war and take revenge and compensation by force; it offered an excellent opportunity to cripple the Serbs, one way or another. As a centre of Slav nationalism, Serbia was an inspiration to Slavs in the Austrian empire, and the Great Powers could hardly believe that such a golden opportunity to cripple her would be missed by the Austrians: they were therefore astonished when there was no immediate reaction.

    But Austria was cunningly biding her time. She knew that a premature and rash step could easily bring Russia into the struggle, in support of Serbia. If that happened, Austria could be in a very difficult position; she therefore made approaches to Germany to discover whether she would have German support if Russia came into the war. With the possibility that attacking Austria in support of her Serbian protégé might bring Germany into the war, Russia might decide it was in her best interests to leave the Serbs to their fate. Somewhat rashly the Germans gave their assurance.

    Austria now had all the cards in her hand. She could draw up demands which would hold down the Serbs for the foreseeable future, and if this was refused she could go to war, backed by her powerful ally Germany, and gain by force what she had failed to gain by diplomacy. During the three weeks in which Austria was perfecting her plans, the other European powers optimistically assumed that the crisis was gently drifting away. Then on 23 July Austria suddenly delivered an ultimatum to the Serbs, which they thought would be unacceptable, with the proviso that, if all ten demands were not conceded within forty-eight hours, Austria would launch a full scale war. As this ultimatum required Serbia to suppress all anti-Austrian societies and propaganda, remove from the Serbian army and Civil Service all those whom Austria specified were anti-Austrian, and to

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