Emperor franz joseph purpose of visit to balkans

Emperor Franz Joseph
 Purpose of visit to Balkans
 Bosnia
 AH administration 1878
 AH annexation 1908
 Reaction of…?
 Serbia is unhappy

July Crisis Timeline
The Sarajevo assassination 28
th
of June 1914
 28 June: Assassination by Bosnian Serb
 Relevance of date? Serbia was defeated and apart of the ottoman empire
 Serbian role?
 5 July: German “blank cheque” to AH
 AH banks on German victory (wants to help)
 Gives them a big protector
 23 July: AH blames Serbia & issues ultimatum (for assassination)
 “The most formidable document ever presented by one independent state to
another.” (FM Grey)
 28 July: AH declares war on Serbia
 28/30 July: Russian mobilization starts (stop AH!)
 1 August: German reaction: Declares war on Russia
 3 August: Germany declares war on France
 4 August: German invasion of (neutral) Belgium
 4 August: Britain declares war on Germany
 Diplomacy “failed” | Alliances activated | Peace broken
Military balance in 1914
 Entente Powers
GB 0.7 million
Fr 3.5
Russ 4.4
Total 8.6
 Central Powers
Germ 3.8 million
A-H 3.0
Total 6.8
Why so savage and long??
 Schlieffen Plan failed
 Defensive war: Advantage in defense
 Trenches
 Stalemate
 Technological parity
 Weapons production > | money
 War enthusiasm (debate)
 Numbers of men
 e.g. The Somme July-Nov. 1916
 Allied counter-attack to Verdun
 3 million men | 23 miles |360 attacks

 + 1 million casualties
 Gain 5 miles
Weapons production
 Mobilizing women (“the home front”) for war
USA April 1917
Military and home front implication
2 million troops total
Armistice 11 nov 1918
 Germany alone Nov
 Domestic opposition >
 Kaiser abdicates nov. 9
 German republic under F. Erfurt (SPD)
Results of WW1
 European-wide devastation
 Displacement, refugees
 Destruction land, livestock, industry, cultural capital
 “Hidden” economic costs
 e.g. wounded; war widows
 European debt
 USA
 The war generation
 Youth <
 Implications for interwar years
Wilfred Owen 1893-1918
 “If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
 Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
 And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
 His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
 Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
 Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
 Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
 To children ardent for some desperate glory,
 The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
 Pro patria mori .”
 It is sweet and honurable to die for one’s country. (FAMOUSSSS)
 Imperial houses of Germany, Austria & Russia collapse

 Creation of “modern eastern Europe”
Conclusion
 Costs of war
 New world
 Postwar effort to deal with WWI devastation
 Solutions : Communist, Fascist, Liberal variants of modernization
 Jarausch
Lecture 3
The Russian Revolution(s) 1917
 Russia before and in WW1
o Where was it heading
 Feb revolution 1917