Austria Formally Declares War on Servia; Russia Moving Troops; Peace of Europe In Kaiser's Hands

NewYorkTimes ^ | July 28, 1914 | Special Cable

[dighton]

Oh man, the markets are gonna tank on Monday.

;-)

[weikel]

Czar Nicholas was responsible for WWI the Serbs then were like the Palestinians now. If Russia hadn't interfered Austria would have moved in and killed a bunch of terrorist then left. Woodrow Wilson was responsible for the horrible World Order that emerged after Versailles( as well as being the father of American socialism).

[weikel]

It was Wilsons fault mainly. Wilson was a communist he insisted on deposing the Hohenzollrens and Hapsburgs if they were left in place the Nazis never would have risen.

[swarthyguy]

GreatWarPing.

[wardaddy]

ping!

[nofriendofbills]

By cracky we'd better get that Kaiser and make him pay this time.

[Snickersnee]

Something bad could come from this -- let's call it the Twentieth Century....

[RightWhale]

That's right, Austria declared war on Serbia, and then everyone declared war on Germany even though Germany actually hadn't done anything but enter into some severely misguided treaties.

[Chi-townChief]

I have to agree that Wilson entering the World War was one of the most bone-headed moves in American history.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

By an odd co-incidence, I was listening to a recording of Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess when I logged on this afternoon.

The NYT was as medacious in 1914 as it is now. When they say that peace is in the Kaiser's hands, what they mean is that the Kaiser should roll over and let Austria-Hungary be trashed by the Russians. And maybe if Germany is real real lucky, the English won't just attack the High Seas Fleet without bothering to declare war, as suggested by Lord Fisher.

Had Kaiser Wilhelm been as unprincipled as his Opa and Prince Bismarck, he would have let Austria-Hungary be dismembered by the Russians, Servians, and Italians, and stepped in to pick up deutsch-Oesterreich as the price of betrayal. But he wasn't . . . so HM and Prussia have been vilified ever since by Anglo-American "historians."

Es lebe das Haus Hohenzollern!
Hoch, Habsburg!

[weikel]

Still you have to put your own country 1st. I would have joined up with Russia rather than risk being two fronted in a similiar situation.

[aristeides]

I just reread Frederic Morton's Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914, which is out in a new paperback edition. Recent events have made me more receptive to conspiracy theories, and I have long been aware of suspicious circumstances regarding Franz Ferdinand's fatal visit to Sarajevo: he went there on the most sacred day of Serb nationalists, Vidovdan, St. Vitus Day (the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo,) despite warnings from the Serbian ambassador; his route in Sarajevo was published in the press; the governor of Bosnia was kept in the dark about the trip, so that security was curiously deficient; Franz Ferdinand and his party, having escaped an attack in the morning, were urged on by the military governor of Bosnia to visit the wounded from the earlier attack; Princip's attack on the prince only succeeded because the prince's car came to a stop (the car ahead of it had taken a wrong turning, and had to back up.) A lot too much like Dallas 1963.

But what a rereading of Morton reminded me of is what reasons people in the Austrian government had for wanting to be rid of the heir apparent Franz Ferdinand. Kaiser Franz Josef had nearly died in the spring, and Franz Ferdinand had made clear his hostility both to the Army commander Conrad and to the Hungarian premier Count Tisza. I strongly suspect that those who felt threatened by his policies and by Serbian irredentism saw a way to be rid of both threats: let Serb hotheads kill him, and then he's gone, and Austria is free to attack Serbia.

I don't know if my suspicions are right, but, if World War One, which nearly resulted in the extinction of Western civilization, was caused by a government conspiracy in Vienna, I find that thought disturbing in the extreme.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

To an extent, Prussia's greatness was founded on the unprincipled conduct of Frederic II, whose theft of Silesia was inexcuseable. Prince Bismarck followed in that tradition with his 1866 war that completed the exclusion of Austria-Hungary from German affairs.

I consider Kaiser Wilhelm II the most honourable of the Hohenzollerns, on a par with Friedrich Wilhelm I. It is one of history's tricks that Prussia's destruction (or, more hopefully, abeyance) was brought about precisely because the German Kaiser did not regard his alliance with Austria-Hungary as a "scrap of paper," even when it would have been in his nation's best material (but not moral) interest to do so.

[weikel]

The great and Illustrious Fredirick almost lost his throne over seizing Silesia despite his efforts he had to fight on 3 fronts at once only the death of Empress Elizabeth saved him from deposition and probably the gallows.