The Outbreak of WWI - From Local Conflict to World War in 1914 I THE GREAT WAR Week 1

My name is Indy Neidell and this channel – The Great War – is going to cover the first world war,

week by week, as it unfolded 100 years later. From today until November 2018,

so you can really get a sense of just what happened as it happened. The active weeks, the passive weeks,

the weeks of carnage and the weeks of hope – we'll follow them all one by one.

And we've made a couple of special episodes about the prelude to war so you can get some

idea of all of the forces in motion. We've also made an episode about the assassination

of the archduke and his wife as it was one of the pivotal

moments in our history. All three of these episodes will come out in the next few days.

AustriaHungary

100 years ago today, on July 28th, 1914, the empire of Austria-Hungary declared

war on the Kingdom of Serbia. Now, as you are probably aware, this snowballed within days into the

First World War.

Now people often talk of the “blank check” – when Kaiser Wilhelm said on July 5th, 1914

that he would unconditionally support Austria in whatever actions she took against Serbia,

and this is seen as the main argument for Germany’s responsibility for the war, but

this is a little too simple.

In the days following the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo

by the Serb Gavrilo Princip, there were anti-Serbian riots and demonstrations in much of Bosnia

and official dispatches to Vienna that there was Serbian complicity in the plot, but general

European reactions to the killings were quite mild. Austria, however, had big ideas, many

of them coming from Army Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf. And I love that name.

Conrad was a vehement imperialist for Austria and Austrian greatness. He’s also

been described as being “the most dangerous kind of officer...both stupid and intensely energetic."

There you have it.

In fact, in the year and a half before today, 1914, he asked his government

to go to war no less than 26 times. And it’s very important to note here that his main

counterweight, the man who repeatedly urged emperor Franz Josef against war with Russia

or war with Serbia, not to listen to Conrad, was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, now deceased.

The assassination was, to Conrad, a heaven sent means to curb Serbian power and ambition.

Now to understand the next few weeks we really need to look a bit at both Germany and Russia

In 1912, the Kaiser had told army chief of staff von Moltke and Grand Admiral

von Tirpitz that “Austria had to act vigorously against the foreign Slavs... If Russia were

to support the Serbs war would be inevitable for us.”

Although we think of pre-war Russia today as a backwater,

this was not really the case. Russia had become the world’s fourth largest economy by 1914.

Okay! Shortage of money had always meant before that she had never been able to build and

equip her army like the Germans could, but more importantly, her railways. By 1914, though,

Russian currency was on the gold standard and the railroads were booming and Russia

would be able to easily and quickly defend her borders in only a few years.