The First World War (1914-1918)
Senior 6 · History
The First World War (1914-1918)
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
On Sunday 28 June 1914 a nineteen-year-old student, Gavrilo Princip, shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Thirty-seven days later Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain were at war with one another.
Royal and presidential murders were not rare in that age. Empress Elisabeth of Austria was stabbed in Geneva in 1898, King Umberto I of Italy was shot in 1900, President McKinley of the United States in 1901 and King George I of Greece in 1913. None of them caused a general war. So the historian's question is not "what triggered the war?" but "why could this murder, in this summer, not be contained?" Study the timeline before you read on, and notice the moment at which a quarrel between two states became a war between five.
Definition
July Crisis: the five weeks of diplomacy and decisions between the Sarajevo assassination (28 June 1914) and the outbreak of a general European war (1–4 August 1914).
Mobilisation: calling up reservists and moving an army onto a war footing, with railways, horses and supplies, ready to attack or defend. In 1914 general mobilisation was widely read as the step just before war.
Alliance system: the two blocs of pre-war Europe. The Triple Alliance (1882) joined Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. The Triple Entente grew out of the Franco-Russian alliance (1894), the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France (1904) and the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907).
Weltpolitik ("world policy"): Germany's aim, from the late 1890s, to become a world power with colonies and a great navy, not only a European one.
Schlieffen Plan: Germany's war plan for a war on two fronts. It sent most of the army through Belgium to defeat France in about six weeks, before turning east against Russia.
Many students learn the long-term causes as a list (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism). At A-level a list is not enough: you must say how each condition raised the danger of war, and why it does not explain on its own why war came in 1914.
| Condition | Evidence before 1914 | How it raised the danger | Why it is not enough on its own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alliances | Triple Alliance (1882); Franco-Russian alliance (1894); Entente Cordiale (1904); Anglo-Russian Convention (1907) | A local war could draw in partners; Germany feared being "encircled" by France and Russia | Britain's ententes were not binding alliances, and Italy stayed neutral in 1914, then joined the other side in May 1915 |
| Militarism and the arms race | The Anglo-German naval race after HMS Dreadnought (1906); bigger armies in Germany, France and Russia in 1912–14, including France's Three-Year Law of 1913 | Generals believed that whoever struck first would win, and mobilisation timetables left statesmen little time | Arms races do not always end in war; by 1912 Britain had clearly won the naval race and Anglo-German relations had eased |
| Imperial rivalry | The Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911; the scramble for Africa; German Weltpolitik | Bred mistrust and pushed Britain and France closer together | Colonial disputes were settled by bargaining: the 1911 crisis ended with Germany receiving a large strip of the French Congo for its colony of Kamerun. The war began in the Balkans, not in Africa |
| Nationalism | Serbian nationalism and Russian Pan-Slavism; French bitterness over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871; national movements inside Austria-Hungary | Austria-Hungary, an empire of many nations, saw Serbia as a threat to its survival | It explains why Austria-Hungary wanted to fight Serbia, but not why that war became a general one |
| Balkan instability | Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia (1908); the Balkan Wars (1912–13), from which Serbia emerged much larger | Russia, humiliated in 1908, was determined not to back down again | The Balkan Wars were contained by the powers in 1912–13; something changed in 1914 |
The table points to one conclusion: these conditions made a general war possible, even likely, but they did not make it inevitable. The crisis of 1914 turned a dangerous situation into a war because of decisions taken by a small number of men in a few capitals.
Important
Source analysis: the Kaiser reads Serbia's reply. Serbia's reply to the ultimatum was handed over just before the deadline, at about 6 p.m. on 25 July. Wilhelm II read it in Potsdam on the morning of 28 July and wrote in the margin of his copy:
"A brilliant performance for a time-limit of only forty-eight hours. This is more than one could have expected! A great moral victory for Vienna; but with it every reason for war drops away, and Giesl might have remained quietly in Belgrade! On the strength of this I should never have ordered mobilization!"
Wilhelm II, marginal note on the Serbian reply, 28 July 1914 (Kautsky documents, No. 271). Giesl was Austria-Hungary's minister in Belgrade, who left the city on 25 July.
At 10 a.m. the same day he wrote to his foreign secretary, Gottlieb von Jagow:
"I am convinced that on the whole the wishes of the Danube Monarchy have been acceded to. The few reservations that Serbia makes in regard to individual points could, according to my opinion, be settled by negotiation. […] Naturally, as a result, EVERY CAUSE FOR WAR HAS VANISHED. But a GUARANTY that the promises WILL BE CARRIED OUT is unquestionably necessary. That could be secured by means of the TEMPORARY military occupation of a portion of Serbia […]."
Wilhelm II to Jagow, 28 July 1914 (Kautsky documents, No. 293); the capitals are the Kaiser's own underlinings. Both extracts are from Outbreak of the World War: German Documents Collected by Karl Kautsky, translated by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Oxford University Press, New York, 1924), pages 254 and 273.
This is the "halt in Belgrade" proposal: let Austria-Hungary occupy Belgrade as a pledge, then negotiate. It did not stop the war. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia that same day, and Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg passed the idea to Vienna only that night, without the Kaiser's words that every cause for war had vanished. Historians read the episode in two ways. For some it shows that the Kaiser did not want a general war and that his officials pushed on regardless. For others it shows how little Berlin did to restrain Vienna even when its own ruler doubted the case for war. Notice too what the letter leaves out: the extract has been cut at the […] marks, where the Kaiser insults the Serbs as a people. A source can be evidence of prejudice as well as of policy.
Warning
Two common errors. (1) Writing that "the alliances forced every country into war". The Triple Alliance did not bring Italy in on Germany's side, and Britain had no binding alliance with France or Russia; it fought over Belgium and over its own security if Germany dominated the continent. (2) Treating the assassination as the cause. It was the trigger: the event that set the long-term conditions in motion. An essay that spends most of its length on Sarajevo has misjudged the question.
Few historical questions have been argued as long as this one. Each answer reflected the politics of its own time as well as the evidence.
| Interpretation | Who put it forward | The argument | A criticism |
|---|---|---|---|
| German war guilt (1919) | The victorious Allies, in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles | Germany and its allies were responsible for the war and all its damage | A verdict written by the winners, partly to justify reparations |
| Shared responsibility (1920s to 1950s) | The American historian Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War (1928); David Lloyd George, Britain's wartime prime minister, in his memoirs | No government planned a general war; the alliances, the arms race and the mobilisation timetables dragged them all in | It plays down the deliberate choices made in Vienna and Berlin in July 1914 |
| The Fischer thesis (1961) | The German historian Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961; in English Germany's Aims in the First World War, 1967) | Germany's leaders wanted a war to make Germany a world power and to defeat socialism at home; the "September Programme" of 1914 listed vast war aims | War aims written after the war began do not prove that they caused it; Fischer said little about other powers' choices |
| Shared and contingent (2010s) | Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers (2012); Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace (2013) | Leaders in every capital, including Belgrade, St Petersburg and Paris, took risks they did not fully understand; the outcome was not fixed in advance | Critics say that spreading the blame hides the fact that Vienna started the war and Berlin backed it |
Most historians today accept a middle position: Austria-Hungary and Germany bear the main responsibility for turning the crisis into a war, because they chose war against Serbia and accepted the risk of a general war, but Russia's early mobilisation, France's support for Russia and the rigid war plans of every general staff made the escalation faster and wider.
In 1914 Rwanda was part of German East Africa. Its borders had been fixed by Europeans: in 1910 a conference in Brussels settled the frontiers between German East Africa, the Belgian Congo and British Uganda, and areas that the Rwandan kingdom claimed, such as Bufumbira in the north, were placed outside the German colony. When the great powers went to war, their colonies went with them. Nobody in Rwanda had been consulted about the alliances, the naval race or the Schlieffen Plan, yet within weeks there was fighting along Lake Kivu, and German officers began to recruit soldiers and carriers there. Lesson 3 follows that war in Africa.
Tip
Answering "How far…?" questions. For "How far was Germany responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914?", build a balanced argument: (1) the case for German responsibility (the blank cheque, the Schlieffen Plan, Weltpolitik, the Fischer thesis); (2) the case against (Austria-Hungary's own aims, Russia's early mobilisation, French support for Russia, Serbian nationalism); (3) a judgement that weighs them, such as "primary but not sole". Name at least two historians and say what evidence each used.
Important
Discuss. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles placed the blame on Germany and its allies, and German historians spent the 1920s trying to disprove it. Can a peace treaty ever be a fair judge of a war's causes? What does the long debate tell you about how politics shapes the writing of history?
Crash Course World History #36, "Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I" (CrashCourse). John Green asks why one assassination led to a world war. Watch for his treatment of alliances and nationalism, and test it against the table and the historians' debate in this lesson.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the timeline, the tables, the definitions and the exercises.
