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Index of Lectures on The Balkans in
the Age of Nationalism by Steven W Sowards
Lecture 15:
The Balkan causes of World War I
Few issues in modern history have received as much attention as assigning blame for the
outbreak of the World War in 1914. The debate began during the war itself as
each side tried to lay blame on the other, became part of the "war guilt"
question after 1918, went through a phase of revisionism in the 1920s, and was revived in
the 1960s thanks to the work of Fritz Fischer.
This lecture also deals with the causes of World War I, but does so from a Balkan
perspective. Certainly Great Power tensions were widespread in 1914, and those tensions
caused the rapid spread of the war after it broke out, but many previous Great Power
crises had been resolved without war. Why did this particular episode, a Balkan
crisis that begin with a political murder in Bosnia, prove so unmanageable and dangerous?
Some questions will help to frame our inquiry:
- What was the purpose of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28,
1914?
- Who was responsible for the killing, besides the assassins themselves?
- Was a war inevitable after the murder, or did policy-makers let the crisis escape
control?
- Finally, why did a Balkan crisis lead to a world war in 1914, when other crises had not?
FOCUSSING ON THE BALKANS
From a Balkan perspective, it is crucial to look at the actors and decision-makers who
were at work during the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, the two states
involved in the original Sarajevo crisis. Doing so highlights factors that are
somewhat different from those at work among the Great Powers at large, or those cited in
general explanations for the war.
General treatments of the European crisis of 1914 often blame Great Power statesmen for
their shortsightedness, incompetence, or failure to act in a timely or effective way to
keep the peace. A common theme is the passive nature of Great Power policy: leaders
reacted to events instead of proactively managing the crisis. With some justification,
scholars conclude that French leaders had little choice: France was the object of a German
invasion. England in turn entered the war because a successful German attack on France and
Belgium would have made Germany too powerful. Both Germany and Russia mobilized their
armies in haste, because each one feared defeat by powerful enemies if they delayed.
Germany and Russia also rashly committed themselves to support Balkan
clients--Austria-Hungary and Serbia, respectively--because Berlin and St. Petersburg
feared that failure to do so would cost them the trust of important allies and leave them
isolated. This view treats Balkan matters largely as influences on policy elsewhere.
An analysis rooted in a Balkan perspective, on the other hand, can evaluate the
proactive steps taken in the region from the start of the crisis. Unfortunately,
when Austrians, Hungarians, and Serbs made important decisions early in the crisis, they
consistently avoided compromise and risked war. Two months passed between the murder of
Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Bosnian Serb high school
student on June 28, and the coming of general war at the end of August. In other words,
there was plenty of time for calculation, caution and decision. Who chose to risk war, and
why?
THE PURPOSE OF THE MURDER ITSELF
The murder itself was hardly a mystery. There were scores of witnesses and the killers
were immediately arrested: we even have a photograph of Gavrilo Princip being wrestled to
the ground by police. The conspirators willingly confessed: transcripts of their trial
statements have been published. Nor was the fact of murder per se crucial. It was an age
of assassins: Franz Joseph's wife, the Empress Elizabeth, had been murdered in 1898 in
Switzerland by an Italian, but Austria did not seek war with Italy or Switzerland. It was
the significance of this particular crime for Austro-Serbian relations that mattered.
SERBIAN BLAME: THE ASSASSINS
To assess the degree of Serbian guilt, we should look in three places: the young
Bosnian assassins, their backers in Serbia, and the Serbian government.
Franz Ferdinand, his wife Sophie Chotek, and Governor Potiorek (in an open car) passed
seven assassins as their procession drove through Sarajevo. A look at the actual
participants tells us something about South Slav nationalist dissatisfaction in
Habsburg-ruled Bosnia.
The first conspirator along the parade route was Mehmed Mehmedbasic, a 27-year old
carpenter, son of an impoverished Bosnian Muslim notable: he had a bomb. After planning a
plot of his own to kill Governor Potiorek, Mehmedbasic joined the larger plot. When the
car passed him, he did nothing: a gendarme stood close by, and Mehmedbasic feared that a
botched attempt might spoil the chance for the others. He was the only one of the
assassins to escape.
Next was Vaso Cubrilovic, a 17-year old student aremed with a revolver. Cubrilovic was
recruited for the plot during a political discussion: in Bosnia in 1914, virtual strangers
might plot political murders, if they shared radical interests. Cubrilovic had been
expelled from the Tuzla high school for walking out on the Habsburg anthem. Cubrilovic too
did nothing, afraid of shooting Duchess Sophie by accident. Under Austrian law, there was
no death penalty for juvenile offenders, so Cubrilovic was sentenced to 16 years. In later
life became a history professor.
Nedelko Cabrinovic was the third man, a 20-year old idler on bad terms with his family
over his politics: he took part in strikes and read anarchist books. His father ran a
cafe, did errands for the local police, and beat his family. Nedeljko dropped out of
school, and moved from job to job: locksmithing, operating a lathe, and setting type. In
1914 Cabrinovic worked for the Serbian state printing house in Belgrade. He was a friend
of Gavrilo Princip, who recruited him for the killing, and they travelled together back to
Sarajevo. Cabrinovic threw a bomb, but failed to see the car in time to aim well: he
missed the heir's car and hit the next one, injuring several people. Cabrinovic swallowed
poison and jumped into a canal, but he was saved from suicide and arrested. He died of
tuberculosis in prison in 1916.
The fourth and fifth plotters were standing together. One was Cvetko Popovic, an
18-year old student who seems to have lost his nerve, although he claimed not to have seen
the car, being nearsighted. Popovic received a 13-year sentence, and later became a school
principal.
Nearby was 24-year old Danilo Ilic, the main organizer of the plot; he had no weapon.
Ilic was raised in Sarajevo by his mother, a laundress. His father was dead, and Ilic
worked as a newsboy, a theatre usher, a laborer, a railway porter, a stone-worker and a
longshoreman while finishing school; later he was a teacher, a bank clerk, and a nurse
during the Balkan Wars. His real vocation was political agitation: he had contacts in
Bosnia, with the Black Hand in Serbia, and in the exile community in Switzerland. He
obtained the guns and bombs used in the plot. Ilic was executed for the crime.
The final two of the seven conspirators were farther down the road. Trifko Grabez was a
19-year old Bosnian going to school in Belgrade, where he became friends with Princip. He
too did nothing: at his trial he said he was afraid of hurting some nearby women and
children, and feared that an innocent friend standing with him would be arrested unjustly.
He too died in prison: the Austrians spared few resources for the health of the assassins
after conviction.
Gavrilo Princip was last. Also 19-years old, he was a student who had never held a job.
His peasant family owned a tiny farm of four acres, the remnant of a communal zadruga
broken up in the 1880s; for extra cash, his father drove a mail coach. Gavrilo was sickly
but smart: at 13 he went off to the Merchants Boarding School in Sarajevo. He soon turned
up his nose at commerce, in favor of literature, poetry, and student politics. For his
role in a demonstration, he was expelled and lost his scholarship. In 1912 he went to
Belgrade: he never enrolled in school, but dabbled in literature and politics, and somehow
made contact with Apis and the Black Hand. During the Balkan Wars he volunteered for the
Serbian army, but was rejected as too small and weak.
On the day of the attack, Princip heard Cabrinovic's bomb go off and assumed that the
Archduke was dead. By the time he heard what had really happened, the cars had driven by.
By bad luck, a little later the returning procession missed a turn and stopped to back up
at a corner just as Princip happened to walk by. Princip fired two shots: one killed the
archduke, the other his wife. Princip was arrested before he could swallow his poison
capsule or shoot himself. Princip too was a minor under Austrian law, so he could not be
executed. Instead he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis in
1916.
We can make some generalizations about the plotters. All were Bosnian by birth.
Most were Serbian, or one might say Orthodox, but one was a Bosnian Muslim: at their
trial, the plotters did not speak of Serbian, Croatian or Muslim identity, only their
unhappiness with the Habsburgs. None of the plotters was older than 27: none of them were
old enough to remember the Ottoman regime. Their anger over conditions in Bosnia seems
directed simply at the visible authorities. The assassins were not advanced political
thinkers: most were high school students. From statements at their trial, the killing
seems to have been a symbolic act of protest. Certainly they did not expect it to
cause a war between Austria and Serbia.
A closer look at the victims also supports this view: that symbolic, not real, power
was at stake. Assassination attempts were not unusual in Bosnia. Some of the plotters
originally planned to kill Governor Potiorek, and only switched to the royal couple at the
last minute. Franz Ferdinand had limited political power. He was Emperor Franz Joseph's
nephew, and became the heir when Franz Joseph's son killed himself in 1889 (his sisters
could not take the throne).
This position conferred less power than one might think. Franz Ferdinand's wife, Sophie
Chotek, was a Bohemian noblewoman, but not noble enough to be royal. She was scorned by
many at court, and their children were out of the line of succession (Franz Ferdinand's
brother Otto was next). Franz Ferdinand had strong opinions, a sharp tongue and many
political enemies. He favored "trialism," adding a third Slavic component to the
Dual Monarchy, in part to reduce the influence of the Hungarians. His relations with
Budapest were so bad that gossips blamed the killing on Magyar politicians. There have
been efforts to say that Serbian politicians had him killed to block his pro-Slav reforms,
but the evidence for this is thin.
SERBIAN BLAME: THE BLACK HAND
The assassins did not act alone. Who was involved within Serbia, and why? To understand
Serbian actions accurately, we must distinguish between the Radical Party led by Prime
Minister Pasic, and the circle of radicals in the army around Apis, the man who led the
murders of the Serbian royal couple in 1903.
The role of Apis in 1914 is a matter of guesswork, despite many investigations. The
planning was secret, and most of the participants died without making reliable statements
. Student groups like Mlada Bosna were capable of hatching murder plots on their own.
During 1913 several of the eventual participants talked about murdering General Oskar
Potiorek, the provincial Governor, or even Emperor Franz Joseph.
Once identified as would-be assassins, however, the Bosnian students seem to have been
directed toward Franz Ferdinand by Dimitrijevic-Apis, by now a colonel in charge of
Serbian intelligence. Princip returned from a trip to Belgrade early in 1914 with a plan
to kill Franz Ferdinand, contacts in the Black Hand who later supplied the guns and bombs,
and information about the planned June visit by the heir, which Princip would not have
known without a leak or tip from within Serbian intelligence. In 1917, Apis took credit
for planning the killing, but his motives can be questioned: at the time, he was being
tried for treason against the Serbian king, and mistakenly believed that his role in the
plot would lead to leniency. In fact, the Radical Party and the king were afraid of Apis
and had him shot.
Those who believe Apis was at work point to "trialism" as his motive. Apis is
supposed to have seen the heir as the only man capable of reviving Austria-Hungary. If
Franz Ferdinand had reorganized the Habsburg Empire on a trialist basis, satisfying the
Habsburg South Slavs, Serbian hopes to expand into Bosnia and Croatia would have been
blocked. In early June 1914, Apis is said to have decided to give guns and bombs to
Princip and his accomplices, and arranged to get the students back over the border into
Bosnia without passing through the border checkpoints. Later in the month, other members
of the Black Hand ruling council voted to cancel the plan, but by then it was too
late to call back the assassins.
SERBIAN BLAME: PASIC AND THE STATE
While Apis may or may not have been guilty of planning the murder, the murder did not
necessarily mean war. There was no irresistable outburst of popular anger after the
assassination: Austria-Hungary did not take revenge in hot blood, but waited almost two
months. When the Habsburg state did react against Serbia, it was in a calculated manner as
we will see in a moment. For now, suffice it to say that the Austrians chose to blame the
Pasic government for the crime. How culpable was the Serbian state?
There is no evidence to suggest that Pasic planned the crime. It is unlikely that the
Black Hand officers were acting on behalf of the government, because the military and the
Radical Party in fact were engaged in a bitter competition to control the state. After the
Balkan Wars, both military and civilian figures claimed the right to administer the newly
liberated lands (the so-called Priority Question). After 1903, Pasic knew that Apis'
clique would kill to get their way.
Pasic's responsibility revolves around reports that he was warned of the intended
crime, and took inadequate steps to warn Austrian authorities. Despite Pasic's denials,
there is substantial testimony that someone alerted him to the plot, and that Pasic
ordered the Serbian ambassador in Vienna to tell the Austrians that an attempt would be
made on the life of the heir during his visit to Bosnia.
However, when the Serbian ambassador passed on the warning, he appears to have been too
discreet. Instead of saying that he knew of an actual plot, he spoke in terms of a
hypothetical assassination attempt, and suggested that a state visit by Franz Ferdinand on
the day of Kosovo (June 28) was too provocative. Austrian diplomats failed to read between
the lines of this vague comment. By the time the warning reached the Habsburg joint
finance minister (the man in charge of Bosnian affairs), any sense of urgency had been
lost, and he did nothing to increase security or cancel the heir's planned visit. After
the murders, the Serbian government was even more reluctant to compromise itself by
admitting any knowledge, hence Pasic's later denials.
If we agree that the Pasic government did not plan the killings, what can we say about
their response to the crisis that followed? War in 1914 was not inevitable: did the Serbs
work hard enough to avoid it?
BLAME IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
Before we can answer that question, we must look at the official Austrian reaction to
the killing. This took two forms. First, the police and the courts undertook a
wide-ranging series of arrests and investigations. Hundreds of people were arrested or
questioned, sometimes violently. Twenty-five people were finally tried and convicted,
though only a few were executed, because so many of the defendants were minors.
Second, the Austrian foreign ministry and the emperor's closest advisors considered
what to do about Serbia's role in the plot. Investigators quickly learned that the murder
weapons came from Serbian sources, but Austrian intelligence failed to distinguish between
the roles of the Pasic administration and unofficial nationalist groups: for that matter,
they blamed Narodna Odbrana for the crime, apparently unaware of the Black Hand.
Austria's blame for the war attaches to its calculated response to the murders. Early
councils were divided. The chief of staff, General Franz Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorf,
wanted a military response from the beginning. Conrad had previously argued that the
Monarchy was surrounded by enemies who needed to be defeated individually, before they
could combine. In other words, he wanted a war against the Serbs and Russians,
followed later by a confrontation with Italy. Leopold Count von Berchtold, the Habsburg
foreign minister, generally agreed with Conrad's analysis. Berchtold took no strong
position in the crisis: he was apparently convinced by Conrad, and his only hesitation
involved the need to prepare public opinion for war.
The only real opposition to a policy of confrontation and war came from the Hungarian
Prime Minister, Count Stephan Tisza. Tisza was personally opposed to militarism and took
the risks of war more seriously than Conrad. Also, as a Magyar, Tisza realized that a
Habsburg victory would be a domestic defeat for Hungarians: if Austria annexed Serbia, the
delicate ethnic balance in the Dual Monarchy would be lost. Either the Slavic population
of Hungary would increase, leaving the Magyars as a minority in their own country, or
trialism would replace the dualist system, again discounting Magyar influence.
The early Austrian deliberations included another, calculated element that shows their
limited interest in peace: in weighing the merits of a military response, Vienna first
sought the reaction of her German ally. The Austrian ambassador in Berlin found that the
Germans, especially Kaiser Wilhelm, supported a war to punish Serbia and offered their
full support. This was in clear contrast to events during the Balkan War of 1912, when
Berlin refused to back Vienna in any intervention. Like the Austrians, the Germans feared
a future war with Russia, and preferred to fight at once, before their enemies grew
stronger.
When the Austrian Council of Ministers met again on July 7, the majority favored war.
To satisfy Tisza, the council agreed to present demands to Serbia, rather than declare war
at once. In the belief that a diplomatic victory alone would not be enough to
destroy Serbia as a threat, the demands were deliberately to be written in such
extreme terms that Serbia could not accept them: Serbia's refusal to comply would
then become the excuse for war. Within a week, Tisza himself consented to this
plan: his only reservation was insistence that no Serbian territory be annexed after the
war.
The final 10-point ultimatum demanded the suppression of anti-Austrian newspapers and
organizations (including Narodna Odbrana), a purge of anti-Austrian teachers and officers,
and the arrest of certain named offenders. Two points seriously interfered in Serbian
sovereignty:
- Austrian police would help suppress subversives on Serbian territory, and
- Austrian courts would help to prosecute accused conspirators inside Serbia.
The document had a 48-hour deadline. The council finalized the demands on July 19 and
sent them to Belgrade on the 23rd. The war party in Vienna hoped that the Serbs would fail
to agree, and that this could be an excuse for war. As further evidence, the 48-hour time
limit altered the document from a negotiating piece, to an ultimatum.
We can say three things about how the Austrian process of decision bears on Austria's
responsibility:
- First, the majority in the Council of Ministers assumed from the first that war was the
appropriate response. Only Count Tisza opposed it, and he did so largely for reasons of
domestic politics. His objections were overcome by the promise to seek no annexation of
Serbia. The negotiations with Serbia were really a sham, to create a good impression: even
the 48-hour ultimatum shows that crisis, not compromise, was the intent.
- A second clue to Austria's intent is Vienna's approach to Berlin, for Germany support in
case of war. After the Berlin government responded with the so-called "blank
check," the war party saw no further reason to seek peace.
- Third, the terms of the ultimatum show that the Austrians came to a decision even
though they were acting on incomplete information. The ultimatum was issued well
before the trial of the assassins could establish the facts of the crime. Vienna knew
nothing about the Black Hand or its role, but it made no difference: the decision for war
was based on expediency, not justice or facts.
THE SERB REPLY
The Serbs in turn failed to do their utmost to defuse the crisis. When Serbia first
received the ultimatum, Pasic indicated that he could accept its terms, with a few
reservations and requests for clarification. As time passed, however, it became clear that
Russia would support Serbia regardless of the situation. After that , Pasic gave up
seeking peace. While a long reply was written and sent, Serbia rejected the key points
about Austrian interference in domestic judicial and police work. Pasic knew this meant
war, and the Serbian army began to mobilize even before the reply was complete. While this
was prudent, it did not imply a strong commitment to peace. Because the Serbian
reply did not accept every point, Austria broke off relations on July 25.
The tough positions taken by both Austria and Serbia brought the situation too close to
the brink to step back, and in a few days matters were out of control. Again, the specific
arguments raised by each side matter less than their mutual willingness to take risks.
This policy of brinkmanship made war more likely than negotiation.
WHY A BALKAN WAR?
This leads us to the last question: why did the Balkan crisis of 1914 lead to World War
I, when many other crises were resolved without a general war in Europe?
This is really two questions:
- First, why did the crisis led to a war between Austria and Serbia? and
- Second, why did that conflict soon involve the rest of the Great Powers?
From what we have seen about risktaking by the Austro-Hungarians and the Serbs, we can
say something about why those two states went to war in 1914.
In the first place, both governments believed their prestige and credibility were on
the line, not only in the international community, but at home.
For the Austrians, a personal attack on the royal family required a strong response,
especially if it involved Serbs, who had defied the Dual Monarchy during the Pig War, been
labelled as traitors during the Friedjung Trial, and recently destroyed southeastern
Europe's other dynastic empire (the Ottomans). Failure to act in the summer of 1914
invited greater turmoil later.
For the Serbian regime, the humiliating Austrian terms would have undone all the
progress made since 1903 in achieving independence from Habsburg meddling. The economic
Pig War, Austria's annexation of Bosnia in 1908, and now the demand to send police into
Serbia, all implied renewed Austrian control. In addition, Pasic and his ministers faced a
real risk that right-wing extremists would kill them if they backed down.
On the international stage, both sides were one defeat away from being marginalized:
Austria-Hungary had no intention of replacing the Ottoman Empire as the "Sick Man of
Europe," and Serbia refused to be treated as a protectorate.
Second, in 1914 both sides believed that they were in a strong position to win if war
came. The Austrians had German backing; the Serbs had promises from Russia. Neither side
considered the chance the war would spread across Europe.
Third, neither side really believed that their differences could be settled by
negotiation. Only one regime could rule the South Slavs in Bosnia.
Fourth, both sides focussed on the fruits of victory, and ignored the costs of defeat.
We have already discussed the Great Serb ideas that became Belgrade's war aims: annexation
of Bosnia, Croatia, Vojvodina and so forth. Despite promises to Tisza that the war would
bring no annexation of unwelcome Slavs, by 1916 the Vienna government drew up plans for
the annexation of Serbia and Montenegro, as well as border districts in Russia and Italy,
and an economic plan to make Albania and Romania into economic dependencies.
Fifth, there was too little fear of war. After the Greco-Turk war of 1897, the ethnic
fighting in Macedonia, the two Balkan Wars, and the Italian war with Turkey in 1911, war
in the Balkans was not unusual. A little warfare had become commonplace, a normal aspect
of foreign relations. No one foresaw what the World War would mean.
In sum, too many leaders on both sides in 1914 deliberately decided to risk crisis and
war, and the initial Austro-Serb combat was the result.
Finally, why was the local war between Austria and Serbia so significant that it grew
into a World War? Here, we can draw inferences from what we know of the Eastern Question
and past Balkan politics. An essential element of Greek, Serb and Bulgarian nationalism
had always been the destruction of the Ottoman Empire: the achievement of national unity
necessarily meant the achievement of Ottoman collapse.
The same choice pertained to Austria-Hungary. Concessions to Serbian nationalism could
only make Vienna's problems worse, not solve them: after the South Slavs would come the
Romanians, the Italians, the Czechs and Slovaks, each with their demands. Once the
Habsburg Monarchy started down that road, it would inevitably disappear as a Great Power.
The potential collapse of Austria-Hungary was important not only for the Vienna
government, but for Austria's German ally, for the other Great Powers, and for the balance
of power system. Because the clash with Serbia in 1914 affected an issue of such
magnitude, it is not surprising that all the Powers soon became involved: all of them had
interests at stake. The specific steps to the World War, and the division into two sides,
reflected local considerations from Poland to Belgium: but the risk of world war, and not
just war, entered the equation because of the ethnic issues behind the Sarajevo crisis of
1914.
This lecture is a portion of a larger Web site, Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern
Balkan History (The Balkans in the Age of Nationalism); click here to return to the Table of Contents page.
This page created on 4 February 1997; last modified 3 November 1998.
URL=http://www.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect15.htm
Copyright 1996 by Steven W. Sowards |
Document compiled by Dr S D Stein