7.1: The Coming of War

The Coming of War

The unification of Germany upset the balance of Europe. Not only did the new German nation aspire to become an imperial power like Britain, France, and Russia, it had rapidly built up its military and industrial power. By the first two decades of the twentieth century, Germany surpassed Britain to become the largest economy in Europe and second in the world. German scientists won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation besides the United States. And Germany’s navy was racing to surpass Britain’s.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "Portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1902," Thomas Heinrich Voigt, in the Public Domain.

 In 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II took the imperial throne when both his grandfather and father died in rapid succession. Wilhelm I, the King of Prussia whom Bismarck had made an emperor, ruled until he was 90. Figure 7.1.1 is a headshot of Kaiser Wilhelm II taken in 1902. In this portrait, the last emperor of Germany and last king of Prussia is dressed in military uniform. Kaiser Wilhelm II's grandson took the throne at 29. Due to the elaborate intermarriages of the European ruling families, Wilhelm II was also the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria of England. Perhaps taking inspiration from the British Empire, Wilhelm II launched Germany on a “New Course” toward overseas imperialism. The Kaiser ordered his military leaders to read Alfred Thayer Mahan’s book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which had also impressed Theodore Roosevelt in the United States. By 1914, the German Navy was second only to the British Royal Navy. The new emperor also dismissed Bismarck as Chancellor in 1890 and began looking for ways to make Germany a colonial empire, through a much more aggressive foreign policy than that envisioned by his chief advisor.

The eighty-four-year-old Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef had been reigning since 1848. His nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand (age 50) was the Crown Prince and expected to soon become the next Emperor. In the area of southeastern Europe between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea called the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman empires each claimed control. The Ottomans had gradually been losing power in Europe since the 1700s. By the end of the nineteenth century, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, and Serbia had all asserted themselves as newly-independent nations in former Ottoman territory. The Orthodox Russians dreamed of reestablishing Constantinople in Istanbul and felt that a shared ethnic and religious identity made them a natural fit to be the leading power in a Balkans region filled with their fellow Orthodox Slavs like the Serbs and Bulgarians. 

The Balkan conflict Bismarck had predicted was made more likely to begin in 1908 with the Austro-Hungarian takeover of Bosnia from the Ottoman Empire. Since Bosnia contained many ethnic Serbs, Serbian nationalists believed that the territory naturally belonged to Serbia. The desire to fulfill their national aspirations pushed Serbia to deepen its alliance with Russia which they hoped could check the expanding influence of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. The competition between two Great Powers in the region made the situation even more volatile.

The independent nations of the Balkans fell into war in 1912-1913, first with the Ottomans, resulting in an independent Albania, and then with each other as ethnic and religious boundaries were contested. These were bloody conflicts that included attacks on civilian populations in waves of ethnic cleansing. The Balkan armies on both sides dug into trenches as new arms and technology limited the movement of troops.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): "Arrest of a suspect just after the assassination Franz Ferdinand and Sophie," Walter Tausch, in the Public Domain.

The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

To strengthen Bosnian ties with Austria, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife made an official visit to the regional capital of Sarajevo on June 30, 1914. A secretive Serbian nationalist group, that had been encouraged and supported by Serbian military officers, plotted the assassination of the royal couple as their motorcade made its way through the city. After some initial bungling, one of the conspirators, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed the Archduke and his pregnant wife. Figure 7.1.2 is a photograph taken in 1914. It shows Austrian troops arresting a man suspected of assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. It turned out that the suspect in the photograph was an innocent bystander by the name of Ferdinand Behr and not the assassin Gavrilo Princip.

For much of July 1914, Germany had prodded the Austro-Hungarian government to take military action against Serbia. Finally, on July 28th Austria-Hungary made a series of demands for restitution from the Serbian government. These demands were so onerous as to be virtually impossible for Serbia to accept. When Serbia refused, Austria declared war. Austria’s invasion of Serbia activated the European alliance system: Russia sided with the Serbs, France supported Russia, and Great Britain decided to honor earlier agreements with France. Confusingly, Germany which entered the war under the pretext of defending Austria-Hungary from Russia immediately invaded France instead. A war that had been precipitated by national and imperial rivalries in the Balkans quickly came to be fought primarily along two massive fronts to Germany’s east and west. The Balkan War was basically over with the occupation of Serbia from November 1915, but the larger war, fought among Europe’s four greatest powers, would rage on for three more years.

Review Questions

• How did the emergence of a unified Germany upset the balance of power in Europe?
• Why were the Balkans a potential source of conflict by the beginning of the 20th century?