What if Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had not been Assassinated?

Few events in history have had such far-reaching consequences as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. This single act of violence set off a chain reaction that led to the First World War, reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the world. However, what if Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated? What alternate course might history have taken? Delving into the speculative realm of "what ifs" we can consider the potential ramifications of a world where the Archduke either was not assassinated or survived the assassination attempt.

Terry Bailey considers this question.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The first and most immediate consequence of Franz Ferdinand's survival would have been the avoidance or delay of the First World War. His assassination served as the catalyst for the conflict, prompting Austria-Hungary to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, which in turn led to a series of alliances being invoked, drawing Europe into a devastating war. Without this trigger, the delicate balance of power that existed among the European nations might have persisted, potentially averting the catastrophic conflict that claimed millions of lives.

With the potential avoidance of the First World War, the geopolitical landscape of Europe would have remained vastly different than we understand it today. The collapse of empires such as the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian, and German would not have occurred in the same manner, altering the course of history for countless nations and peoples. The rise of communism in Russia, the Treaty of Versailles, and the subsequent economic turmoil that paved the way for the Second World War, all these pivotal events might have been drastically different or potentially avoided altogether.

One of the key factors in Franz Ferdinand's assassination was the simmering ethnic tensions within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Archduke, who was heir to the throne, advocated for a federalist solution that would grant greater autonomy to the empire's various ethnic groups. Had he lived, Franz Ferdinand may have pursued these reforms more aggressively, seeking to defuse the ethnic tensions that ultimately led to his assassination. His vision of a more inclusive and decentralized empire could have laid the groundwork for greater stability and harmony within Austria-Hungary.

Diplomacy

Furthermore, Franz Ferdinand was known for his pragmatism and skepticism towards war. Unlike some of his more hawkish counterparts within the Austrian government, he favored diplomatic solutions over military intervention. His survival could have shifted the course of Austrian foreign policy towards a more conciliatory stance, reducing the likelihood of conflicts that could escalate into global wars.

Beyond Europe, the survival of Franz Ferdinand could have had significant implications for the fate of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. With Austria-Hungary's focus redirected towards internal reforms and diplomatic solutions, the empire might have been less inclined to support the Central Powers during the First World War. This could have weakened the Ottoman Empire's position and altered the outcome of events such as the Armenian Genocide and the subsequent partitioning of the Middle East by European powers.

Moreover, the survival of Franz Ferdinand could have influenced the trajectory of the United States' involvement in global affairs. Without the impetus of the First World War, the United States might have remained more isolationist, avoiding the entanglements that ultimately drew it into the international arena. The absence of American intervention could have altered the balance of power during the war and shaped the subsequent peace negotiations in unforeseen ways.

Technology and culture

In the realm of technology and culture, the avoidance of a World War could have led to different innovations and artistic movements. The war,  as all wars do, spurred advancements in military technology and medicine, but it also brought about immense human suffering and destruction. In a world where the First World War never occurred, resources that were diverted towards military efforts could have been invested in other areas, potentially accelerating scientific progress for peaceful means, in addition to, cultural developments.

Naturally, it is impossible to predict with certainty how history would have unfolded if Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated. The interconnectedness of events and the myriad factors at play make any speculation inherently hypothetical. However, by examining the potential consequences of a non-assassination or his survival, we gain insight into the pivotal role that individuals can play in shaping the course of history and the profound impact that seemingly small events can have on the world stage.

In conclusion, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria set off a chain reaction that led to the First World War and its far-reaching consequences. However, by considering the hypothetical scenario where Franz Ferdinand survived, we glimpse a different path, one where war and upheaval might have been averted, and the course of history irrevocably altered. While we can only speculate on the details of such an alternate reality, the exercise serves as a reminder of the fragility and complexity of human history.

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Portugal During World War I

The Western Front of World War I conjures up images of trenches, bunkers, and an artillery scarred no-man’s-land. On one side was the German Empire, on the other was France, the British Empire, and, eventually, the United States. It has long been forgotten that there was another Allied nation that fought in the trenches of Northern France and Flanders. Two divisions of the Portuguese Army fought in the British sector of the line from April 1917 to April 1918. This is not even to mention the equally large number of troops sent to fight in Angola and Mozambique against German colonial troops. Tens of thousands of Portuguese soldiers would serve in the trenches of northern Europe and in Africa. They would fight in major battles, and yet the role of Portugal in World War I is generally not acknowledged or understood.

Matt Lowe explains.

Portuguese troops going to Angola during World War I.

Revolution and a New Republic

On October 5, 1910, the Kingdom of Portugal ceased to exist. A republic was established in its place, one of only a handful in Europe. The Portuguese monarchy had been gradually weakening for decades, with numerous incidents highlighting its shortcomings at home and abroad. Notably, a disagreement over colonial boundaries in southern Africa in 1890 led to diplomatic humiliation at the hands of Britain, Portugal’s oldest ally. On February 1, 1908, King Carlos I and his heir Luis Filipe were assassinated by militant republicans. The king’s second son thus ascended to the throne as Manuel II at only 18 years of age. The monarchy was on its last legs by this point, and it was Manuel’s poor fortune to reign during such turbulent times. When the revolution finally came two years later, Manuel was forced into exile in Great Britain. A devout Portuguese patriot until his death in 1932, he would never return to his homeland. Unsurprisingly, the new republic proved to be politically unstable with a revolving door of governments over the next several years. Many Portuguese politicians wanted to prove to the rest of Europe that Portugal was no longer a political and cultural backwater. When war broke out across the continent in 1914, there was finally an opportunity to show the world that the republic was strong and that Portugal had entered the modern age politically and militarily.

A Global Conflict Begins

When the First World War began on July 28, 1914, a series of alliances rapidly brought most of the
European great powers into conflict with one another. Although Portugal did not formally join the war at this point, the war came on its own to the Portuguese colony of Angola. German South West Africa (modern day Namibia) lay directly south of Angola, and it became a battlefield as soon as news of the outbreak of war reached it from Europe. South Africa, a major British possession, had around 40,000 troops stationed there, a much larger military force at its disposal than the roughly 3,000 men of the Schutztruppe plus lower quality militia in German territory. The fighting in German South West Africa would take place mostly in the southmost parts of the colony against South African forces. Notably, however, the German military commanders in the region learned that a Portuguese expedition was being sent near the southern Angolan border. This combined with the knowledge that Portugal was Britain’s ally made them believe that this was going to lead to a Portuguese invasion from the north in conjunction with the British one in the south. Thus, the German commanders decided to send a portion of their forces to the north to launch a preemptive strike against the incoming Portuguese expedition before it could do the same to them. What they did not know, was that Portugal had no intention at the time to do anything of the sort, with the expedition’s primary role being to secure the border from German incursions and local rebel activity.

Portuguese metropolitan and colonial troops had seen intermittent fighting in southern Angola for decades and there was a fear that the war could spillover into Portuguese territory and potentially ignite a new wave of fighting. The German decision to attack was therefore almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of bringing Portugal into the war. Starting in October of 1914, a series of small battles were fought in southern Angola, most of which were won by the better trained German forces. Virtually all of these skirmishes were too small to ever be given names by either side’s historical records. The largest battle occurred on December 18 at a town called Naulila near the border, which ended in a hard-fought German victory and involved around 1500 Portuguese and 600 German troops. Ultimately, the Germans were able to occupy parts of southern Angola until July 1915, before withdrawing as the rest of South West Africa began to collapse and surrender to South African forces. As the Portuguese government predicted, there was an uptick in local rebel activity in southern Angola after it was re-occupied by Portuguese troops, due in part to the Germans distributing weapons to such groups in an effort to destabilize the region. Still, Portugal chose not to formally join the war, because, as of yet, there was more to be gained by using its neutrality to keep it safe while aiding Britain in more indirect ways.

Portugal’s Strategic Situation and Entry into the War

In spite of the 500-year-old alliance between Portugal and the United Kingdom, Portugal itself did not immediately join the war. This was largely at the insistence of the British government, as it viewed neutral Portuguese ports and shipping as more valuable assets than Portuguese troops on the battlefield. The British had a long history of exploiting its weaker ally, and the first half of World War I was merely a continuance of this trend. Between the revolution in 1910 and its formally joining the war in 1916, Portugal experienced a rapid succession of short-lived governments of different persuasions, although they were all pro-republic, they differed on their stances on formally joining the war. One of the reasons various Portuguese leaders at the time favored joining the war was to use it as a way to legitimize the republic to the rest of the world as it would fight against the arch conservative Central Powers and show that Portugal was no longer some culturally backward relic. As mentioned above, there was also a very real concern about maintaining security further from home in the African colonies. In spite of these motivations, it was not seen as being overall beneficial to fight and Great Britain exerted its not-so-subtle influence on the country. The ports of Lisbon and Porto were of great strategic value, while the Portuguese armed forces were of dubious quality at best. British diplomats knew the Portuguese would not act without the approval of the United Kingdom, and thus kept Portugal on a short leash. With Portugal officially neutral but decidedly oriented towards British interests, the United Kingdom would reap the most benefits without needing to invest many of its own resources.

This could not remain the situation, however, as the war continued to consume more and more British lives, material, and money. Most importantly, British merchant ship losses were constantly increasing. The neutral Portuguese ports offered a unique opportunity. There were dozens of German merchant vessels that had anchored in Portuguese waters early on in the war to avoid being captured by the Royal Navy. The British government made a formal request to the Portuguese Republic to confiscate these ships and hand them over for British use. Portuguese leaders had been waiting for this request and proceeded to take control of the German ships on February 24, 1916. Germany was understandably upset at this sudden violation of supposed neutrality and went on to declare war on Portugal on March 9. Portugal was now at war, although it would be several months until Portuguese troops would see combat in Mozambique and over a year until they would see combat on the Western Front.

The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps Arrives in France

The declaration of war from Germany did not translate into the immediate sending of Portuguese troops to the Western Front. Although Portuguese leaders had been seeking this outcome and the army had been mobilized since 1914, it would still take time before the necessary units could be gathered and trained sufficiently. The British, French, and Portuguese planners met to hammer out the details for how the Portuguese army would be equipped and where it would be stationed on the front. Ultimately, it was decided that the Portuguese would fight alongside the British in Northern France and Flanders. The infantry would be supplied with British arms and equipment to ease logistical concerns. A separate artillery unit would be supplied by the British as well, but it would operate under French command in a different sector. The first Portuguese troops landed in France on February 2, 1917, nearly eleven months after formally entering the war. After further training and equipping, the first units of the Corpo Expedicionário Português (CEP) would take their places in the front lines on April 3. Over the following year, the CEP would grow to two divisions with a total of 55,000 men, initially under the command of General Fernando Tamagnini de Abreu.

The section of the front the Portuguese occupied was relatively quiet. This was on purpose as it allowed the British pull out two of its divisions to use elsewhere. That is not to say that the sector was safe or inactive, however. The first Portuguese fatality on the Western Front was António Gonçalves Curado, who was killed by mortar fire on April 4. Portuguese troops treated their assignments seriously and sought out opportunities to take the fight to the Germans. The Portuguese patrolled often and conducted trench raids to capture prisoners and gather intelligence on enemy displacements. Throughout the rest of 1917 and first months of 1918, the Portuguese proved to be competent soldiers when trained and equipped properly. The primary problems that would torment the CEP, however, came from back home. Political instability had become the norm, and a de facto military junta came to power when army officer Sidónio Pais became prime minister in December 1917. In spite of the army having immense political influence, public opinion had never been strongly in favor of joining the war in the first place, and each successive government (including the junta) found it easier to ignore the problems that come with organizing and supplying a military campaign far from home. Over time, reinforcements began to dwindle, and the amount of time units spent at the front grew to ridiculous lengths. Whereas their British counterparts would cycle in and out of the front line trenches every few weeks, Portuguese soldiers had to stay for months at a time. The Portuguese logistical situation was poor and there were simply not enough spare men to go around. For their part, the British did very little to help and did not offer to replace the CEP in the line to allow for rest and refitting until spring 1918. The timing could not have been worse, because the battle that was coming would prove catastrophic for the British and the Portuguese especially.

East African Campaign

Meanwhile, the war was also being fought thousands of miles away in East Africa. German East Africa (modern day Tanzania) had been the location of major fighting since the war began, and by the time the Portuguese had formally joined the war, the German troops in the colony had begun a successful guerilla campaign against the British and Belgian invaders from the neighboring colonies. Once Portugal had formally joined the war in 1916, it sent an expedition of 4,500 metropolitan troops to Mozambique in July to shore up the colonial garrison of around 5,000 African askaris. Minor efforts were made to cross the southern border of German East Africa by Portuguese troops, but these were unsuccessful. By September of that year, the Germans had been pushed to the southern third of their colony by British and Belgian advances from the north and west respectively. At the forceful encouragement of the politicians back in Lisbon to take a more active role in the campaign, Portuguese troops launched a larger attack across the Rovuma River into the German colony. After some initial success, this attack too was pushed back across the border in October. The border area between the Portuguese and German colonies remained relatively quiet for a year. Portuguese leaders were doubtful of the value of their African colonial units and instead relied disproportionately on the metropolitan units sent all the way from Portugal. In fact, Portugal was the only country involved in the East African campaign to send significant numbers of European troops to the region. Regardless of where the Portuguese troops originated from, the German-led colonial units proved to be more effective than virtually all of the Portuguese units that fought against them. After the failed offensive, another expedition was sent from Portugal to reinforce their depleted units during the first half of 1917.

As the Allies in the north continued to press the Germans into a smaller pocket of their colony, the German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck decided to invade Mozambique to acquire supplies and some breathing space for his troops. In late November 1917, the Germans attacked across the Rovuma and routed the Portuguese defenders for very few losses. With few exceptions, the Portuguese faired very poorly and the Germans captured vast quantities of food supplies, clothing, and weapons that they would put to good use for the rest of the war. British-led troops were landed on the northern coast of Mozambique to reinforce their Portuguese allies, but this only partially stabilized the situation. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces remained at large in Mozambique until late September 1918 when they crossed back into German East Africa and then on into Northern Rhodesia (modern day Zambia). The war ended a month and a half later with the German forces in East Africa being the last Central Powers troops to surrender on November 25, 1918. The Portuguese performance during the East African campaign was their worst showing of the war. Poor leadership, insufficient training, low morale, and ill health all contributed. The only territorial gain awarded to Portugal for its participation in the war was the Kionga Triangle at the mouth of the Rovuma River. It was a small, economically insignificant area of muddy land that seems to be symbolic of Portugal’s poor fortunes during the campaign.

The German Spring Offensives and the Battle of the Lys

On March 21, 1918, the first phase of the German Spring Offensives began, with the primary aims of pushing the British army back towards the sea and gaining a stronger position before the arrival of significant American forces on the front could tip the balance in the Allies’ favor permanently. The Lys Offensive, or Operation Georgette, would be the second major effort of the offensives, and focused on the Franco-Belgian border area. By April 1918, the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the CEP had been at the front without break for nine and five months respectively. The 1st Division had been scheduled to start cycling out of the line in March, but the German attacks further south delayed this for nearly three weeks. The 1st Division was finally pulled out of the line on April 6, but it was not replaced by any British units. This left the 2nd Division to spread itself thin to cover several miles of the front lines by itself in the meantime. Three days later, on April 9, Operation Georgette began. Twelve German divisions attacked the weakest sector of the line, that was held by the Portuguese 2nd Division and the British 40th Division. The Germans had not specifically targeted the sector because it was held by the Portuguese, but they could not have picked a better time to take advantage of its particularly weak disposition. The British and Portuguese units in the area fought back as hard as they could but were quickly overrun and those that could began to retreat. That day thousands of Portuguese soldiers were either killed or captured and, after a year of frontline operations, the CEP had effectively ceased to exist as a unified fighting force.

Although the German Spring Offensives of 1918 were ultimately unsuccessful, they did provide a severe shock to the Allies and showed that the German army would be a very difficult opponent in the coming months. The entire British line had been defeated during the early days of Operation Georgette, and the generals looked for a reason. A convenient scapegoat was found in their Portuguese allies. False claims were made that the Portuguese troops had fled without fighting and left the British units on their flanks dangerously exposed. This had not been the case, and, if anything, the Portuguese had fought as hard as any of the men that were unfortunate enough to be at the front that day. Unfortunately, the British unit histories from the time maintained the narrative that the Portuguese had shamefully faltered and condemned their allies to an ignominious defeat. The fact is that the CEP had been neglected by its government at home and its allies at the front. There was no lack of courage in the average Portuguese soldier, but this can only go so far. It was inevitable that they would not be able to hold in the event of a major attack. The Portuguese army, although still based in France, would not contribute any significant forces to frontline operations for the remainder of the war.

Conclusion

History has not been kind to the fighting men of Portugal during World War I. The memory of their exploits, limited as it is, has been defined by their failures. The burden of the most spectacular of these failures, as previously described, was unduly placed on the CEP in order to save the reputation of a supposed ally. The fact of the matter is that the Portuguese contribution to the First World War was a mixed bag. Its performance in the African theaters was mediocre at best and shambolic at worst. The performance of the CEP on the Western Front, however, was of a much higher quality. In spite of the considerable failings of the British and Portuguese leadership, the CEP was generally better led, equipped, and motivated than their countrymen further afield. Over the course of a year, the Portuguese soldiers in northern France proved that they were perfectly capable of fighting in the full complexities and horrors of modern warfare. The CEP was in the wrong place at the wrong time and has paid for this unfortunate circumstance for over a century. Overall, Portugal lost approximately 8,700 European and colonial troops during the war: 657 in Angola, 2,103 in France, and 5,961 in Mozambique (mostly due to illness).  One can only hope that the legacy of the Portuguese war effort can be rehabilitated now that it is clear that its poor reputation was largely manufactured by British historians during and immediately after the war. Today, there are a handful of solemn reminders of the sacrifice of the Portuguese soldiers. Most, of course, are located in various cities throughout Portugal. There are two, however, in France. One is a memorial sculpture outside the Catholic church in the town of La Couture in northern France, not far from the Belgian border. The other is located in the nearby town of Richebourg. Here is the Portuguese Military Cemetery, where almost 2,000 Portuguese soldiers are buried. Although these sites are small compared to the many other Great War monuments scattered throughout the region, they at least offer a quiet dignity to the men so long maligned and forgotten.

What do you think of the role of Portugal in World War I? Let us know below.

Now read about Portugal during World War II here.

References

Abbott, Peter. “Armies in East Africa 1914-18.” Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing, 2002.

Barroso, Luís. “A Primeira Guerra Mundial em Angola: O Ataque Preemptivo a Naulila.” Relações Internacionais, September 2015, pp. 127-148. http://www.ipri.pt/images/publicacoes/revista_ri/pdf/ri47/n47a07.pdf

Duarte, António Paulo, and Bruno Cardoso Reis. “O Debate Historiográfico sobre a Grande Guerra de 1914-1918.” Nação e Defesa, 2014, pp. 100-122. https://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/17732/1/ICS_BCReis_Defesa_ARN.pdf

Pyles, Jesse. “The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in World War I: From Inception to Combat Destruction, 1914-1918.” University of North Texas, May 2012. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115143/m2/1/high_res_d/thesis.pdf

Tavares, João Moreira. “War Losses (Portugal).” 1914-1918 Online, April 2020. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/pdf/1914-1918-Online-war_losses_portugal-2020-04-20.pdf

A Shooting in Sarajevo: First World War Historiography Today – Part 2

With the centenary of the First World War’s outbreak in 2014, historians are revisiting and reanalyzing the events of the July Crisis in greater depth and breadth than ever before. In Part 2, we explore the current historiographical landscape, and identify key battlegrounds for the historians of today. Avan Fata explains.

If you missed it part 1 here introduces the debates on World War 1 historiography.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in Tangier, Morocco. Part of the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06).

In the previous article, we delved into the development of the historiography on the origins of the First World War. From the immediate postwar revisionist-orthodox debates to the ‘comfortable consensus’ of an inadvertent “slide” into war in the 1930s, to the revival of the debate over war guilt with Fritz Fischer in the 1960s. All of these debates were marked by one inescapable theme: that historians writing about 1914 were also reflecting their contemporary political situations. Many of them had fought in the war; more had lived through the turbulent 20th century which had stemmed in some way from the postwar settlement at Versailles. Yet now, in the 21st century, the First World War has faded into a distant memory – with the last veterans having passed away, it is no longer an event etched into the personal histories of our modern society. 

Even so, the events of July 1914 continue to fascinate historians and the larger public as a whole. Commemorative events to mark the centenary of the war’s outbreak were also accompanied by the publication of dozens of works on the origins of the war. Rather than finally settling the question of who started the conflict, these works represent the continuation and diversification of the debate on the beginning of World War I. This part of the article deals with that broadening of the debate, identifying the key “battlegrounds” and historiographical approaches which recent historiography has popularized.

Focuses

What made 1914 different from other crises?

This is the specific question which we might ask in order to understand a key focus of monographs and writings on the origins of World War I. Following the debate on Fischer’s thesis in the 1960s, historians have begun looking beyond the events of June - August 1914 in order to understand why the assassination of an archduke was the ‘spark’ which lit the powder keg of the continent.

1914 was not a “critical year” where tensions were at their highest in the century. Plenty of other crises had occurred beforehand, namely the two Moroccan crises of 1905-06 and 1911, the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09, and two Balkan Wars in 1912-13. Why did Europe not go to war as a result of any of these crises? What made the events of 1914 unique, both in the conditions present across the continent, and within the governments themselves, that ultimately led to the outbreak of war?

Even within popular history narratives, these events have slowly but surely been integrated into the larger picture of the lead up to 1914. Even a cursory analysis of these crises reveals several interesting notes:

• The Entente Powers, not the Triple Alliance, were the ones who tended to first utilize military diplomacy/deterrence, and often to a greater degree.

• Mediation by other ‘concerned powers’ was, more often than not, a viable and indeed desirable outcome which those nations directly involved in the crises accepted without delay.

• The strength of the alliance systems with mutual defense clauses, namely the Triple Alliance and the Franco-Russian Alliance, were shaky at best during these crises. France discounted Russian support against Germany in both Moroccan crises for example, and Germany constantly urged restraint to Vienna in its Balkan policy (particularly towards Serbia).

Even beyond the diplomatic history of these crises, historians have also analyzed the impact of other aspects in the years preceding 1914. William Mulligan, for example, argues that the economic conditions in those years generated heightened tensions as the great powers competed for dwindling markets and industries.[1] Plenty of recent journal articles have outlined the growth of nationalist fervor and irredentist movements in the Balkans, and public opinion has begun to re-occupy a place in such investigations - though not, we must stress, with quite the same weight that it once carried in the historiography.[2]

Yet perhaps the most often-written about aspect of the years prior to 1914 links directly with another key focus in the current historiography: militarization.

Militarization

As touched on in the first article, this aspect of the historiography is essentially the idea that Europe was ‘dragged’ into a war by the great powers’ heightened state of militarization, and that the interlocking series of mobilization plans which, once initiated, could not be stopped. In the 1990s, scholars began to re-examine these claims, which had sat so comfortably and dominantly in the interwar consensus of the 1930s and remained a key implicit assumption of Cold War historiography as well.[3]

These historians argued that despite the militarization of the great powers and the mobilization plans, the civilian statesmen remained firmly in control of policy, and that the decision to go to war was a conscious one that they made, fully aware of the consequences of such a choice.[4] The generals were not, as Barbara Tuchmann exaggeratedly wrote, “pounding the table for the signal to move”.[5] Indeed, in Vienna the generals were doing quite the opposite: early in the July Crisis Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf remarked to Foreign Minister Berchtold that the army would only be able to commence operations against Serbia on August 12, and that they would not even be able to mobilize until after the harvest leave finished on July 25.

However, the recent historiographical shift has re-emphasized investigating how militarization influenced the diplomacy of the great powers during the July Crisis.[6] Recent studies have studied in depth how the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 and the two Balkan Wars of 1912-13 demonstrated to Vienna and St. Petersburg that military force was a helpful tool when it came to achieving their respective diplomatic aims.[7] Yet the extent to which this thinking influenced the minds of the statesmen of 1914 remains a key area under debate, with particular focus on the ‘calculated risk’ argument – the idea that all the governments understood the consequences of their mobilizations, and chose to undertake them anyways. 

These rebuttals of the “inadvertent war” thesis have proven to be better substantiated and more persuasive, thus the current norm in historiography has shifted to look further within the halls of power in 1914. That is, the analyses have shifted to look beyond the generals, mobilization plans, and military staff; and instead towards the diplomats, ministers, and decision-makers who made those fateful choices during the July Crisis.

Decision Makers

Who occupied the halls of power both during the lead up to 1914 and whilst the crisis was unfolding? What decisions did they make and what impact did those actions have on the larger geopolitical/diplomatic situation of their nation?

Although Europe was very much a continent of monarchs in 1900, those monarchs did not hold supreme power over their respective apparatus of state. Even the most autocratic of the great powers at the time, Russia, possessed a council of ministers which convened at critical moments during the July Crisis to decide on their country’s response to Austro-Hungarian aggression. Contrast that to the most ‘democratic’ country of the great powers, France (in that the Third Republic did not have a monarch), and the confusing enigma that was the foreign ministry - occupying the Quai D’Orsay - and it becomes clear that understanding what motivated and influenced the men (and they were all men) who held/shared the reigns of policy is tantamount to better understanding how events progressed the way they did in 1914.

A good example of just how many dramatis personae have become involved in the current historiography can be found in Margaret Macmillan’s chatty pop-history work, The War that Ended Peace (2014). Her characterizations and side-tracks about such figures as Lord Salisbury, Friedrich von Holstein, and Theophile Delcasse are not out of step with contemporary academic monographs. Entire narratives and investigations have been published about the role of an individual in the lead up to the events of the July Crisis, Mombauer’s Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (2001) or T.G Otte’s Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey (2020) stand out in this regard.

Not only has the cast become more civilian and larger in the past few decades, but it has also come to recognize the plurality of decision-making during 1914. Historians now stress that disagreements within governments (alongside those between them) are equally important to understand the many voices of European decision-making before as well as during 1914. Naturally, this focus reaches its climax in the days of the July Crisis, where narratives now emphasize in minutiae just how divided the halls of power were.

Alongside these changes in focus with the people who contributed to (or warned against) the decision to go to war, recent narratives have begun to highlight the voices of those who represented their governments abroad; the ambassadors. Likewise, newer historiographical works have re-focused their lenses on diplomatic history prior to the war. Within this field, one particular process and area of investigation stands out: the polarization of Europe.

Polarization

Prior to the developments within First World War historiography from the 1990s onwards, it was not uncommon for historians and politicians - at least in the interwar period - to propagate theses which pinned the war’s origins on factors of “mass demand”: nationalism, militarism, and social Darwinism among them. These biases not only impacted their interpretations of the events building up to 1914, as well as the July Crisis itself, but also imposed an overarching thread; an omnipresent motivator which guided (and at times “forced”) the decision-makers to commit to courses of action which moved the continent one step closer to war.

These overarching theories have since been refuted by historians, and the current historiographical approach emphasizes case-specific analyses of each nation’s circumstances, decisions, and impact in both crises and diplomacy. Whilst these investigations have certainly yielded key patterns and preferences within the diplomatic maneuvers of each nation, they sensibly stop short of suggesting that these modus operandi were inflexible to different scenarios, or that they even persisted as the decision-makers came and went. The questions now revolve around why and how the diplomacy of the powers shifted in the years prior to 1914, and how the division of Europe into “two armed camps” 

What all of these new focuses imply - indeed what they necessitate - is that historians utilize a transnational approach when attempting to explain the origins of the war. Alan Kramer goes so far as to term it the sine qua non (essential condition) in the current historiography; a claim that many historians would be inclined to agree with.[8] Of course, that is not to suggest that a good work must not give more focus to one (or a group) of nations over the others, but works which focus on a single nation’s path to war are rarer than they were prior to this recent shift in focus. 

Thus, there we have a general overview of how the focuses of historiography on the First World War have shifted in the past 30 years, and it would perhaps not be too far-fetched to suggest that these focuses may very well change in and of themselves within the next 30 years too. The next and final part shall deal with how, within these focuses, there are various stances which historians have argued and adopted in their approach to explaining the origins of the First World War.

Personalities vs. Precedents

To suggest that the First World War was the fault of a group of decision-makers is leaning dangerously close to reducing the role that those officials played in the lead up to the conflict - not to mention to dismiss outright those practices and precedents which characterized their country’s policy preferences prior to 1914. There was, as hinted at previously, no dictator at the helm of any of the powers; the plurality of cabinets, imperial ministries, and advisory bodies meant that the personalities of those decision-makers must be analyzed in light of their influence on the larger national, and transnational state of affairs. 

To then suggest that the “larger forces” of mass demand served as invisible guides on these men is to dismiss the complex and unique set of considerations, fears, and desires which descended upon Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, London, Vienna, and Belgrade in July of 1914. Though these forces may have constituted some of those fears and considerations, they were by no means the powerful structural factors which plagued all the countries during the July Crisis. Holger Herwig sums up this stance well: 

“The ‘big causes,’ by themselves, did not cause the war. To be sure, the system of secret alliances, militarism, nationalism, imperialism, social Darwinism, and the domestic strains… had all contributed toward forming the mentalite, the assumptions (both spoken and unspoken) of the ‘men of 1914.’[But] it does injustice to the ‘men of 1914’ to suggest that they were all merely agents - willing or unwilling - of some grand, impersonal design… No dark, overpowering, informal, yet irresistible forces brought on what George F. Kennan called ‘the great seminal tragedy of this century.’ It was, in each case, the work of human beings.”

I have therefore termed this battleground one of “personalities” against “precedents”, because although historians are now quick to dismiss the work of larger forces as crucial in explaining the origins of the war, they are still inclined to analyze the extent to which these forces influenced each body of decision-makers in 1914 (as well as previous crises). Within each nation, indeed within each of the government officials, there were precedents which changed and remained from previous diplomatic crises. Understanding why they changed (or hadn’t), as well as determining how they factored into the decision-making processes, is to move several steps closer to fully grasping the complex developments of July 1914. 

Intention vs. Prevention

Tied directly to the debate over the personalities and their own motivations for acting the way they did is the debate over intention and prevention. To identify the key figures who pressed for war and those who attempted to push for peace is perhaps tantamount to assigning blame in some capacity. Yet historians once again have become more aware of the plurality of decision-making. Moltke and Bethmann-Hollweg may have been pushing for a war with Russia sooner rather than later, but the Kaiser and foreign secretary Jagow preferred a localized war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. Likewise, Edward Grey may have desired to uphold Britain’s honor by coming to France’s aid, but until the security of Belgium became a serious concern a vast majority of the House of Commons preferred neutrality or mediation to intervention. 

This links back to the focus mentioned earlier about how these decision-makers came to make the decisions they did during the July Crisis. What finally swayed those who had held out for peace to authorize war? Historians now have discarded the notion that the generals and military “took control” of the process at critical stages, so now we must further investigate the shifts in thinking and circumstances which impacted the policy preferences of the “men of 1914”. Perhaps the best summary of this battleground and the need to understand how these decision-makers came to make the fateful choices they did is best summarized by Margaret Macmillan: 

"There are so many questions and as many answers again. Perhaps the most we can hope for is to understand as best we can those individuals, who had to make the choices between war and peace, and their strengths and weaknesses, their loves, hatreds, and biases. To do that we must also understand their world, with its assumptions. We must remember, as the decision-makers did, what had happened before that last crisis of 1914 and what they had learned from the Moroccan crises, the Bosnian one, or the events of the First Balkan Wars. Europe’s very success in surviving those earlier crises paradoxically led to a dangerous complacency in the summer of 1914 that, yet again, solutions would be found at the last moment and the peace would be maintained."

Contingency vs. Certainty

“No sovereign or leading statesmen in any of the belligerent countries sought or desired war - certainly not a European war.” 

The above remark by David Lloyd George in 1936 reflects a dangerous theme that has been thoroughly discredited in recent historiography: the so-called “slide” thesis. That is, the belief that the war was not a deliberate choice by any of the statesmen of Europe, and that the continent as a whole simply - to use another oft-quoted phrase from Lloyd George - “slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war”. The statesmen of Europe were well aware of the consequences of their choices, and explicitly voiced their awareness of the possibility of war at multiple stages of the July Crisis. 

At the same time, to suggest that there was a collective responsibility for the war - a stance which remained dominant in the immediate postwar writings until the 1960s - is to also neutralize the need to reexamine the choices taken during the July Crisis. If everyone had a part to play, then what difference would it make if Berlin or London or St. Petersburg was the one that first moved towards armed conflict? This argument once again brings up the point of inadvertence as opposed to intention. Despite Christopher Clark’s admirable attempt to suggest that the statesmen were “blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world”, the evidence put forward en masse by other historians suggest quite the opposite. Herwig remarks once again that this inadvertent “slide” into war was far from the case with the statesmen of 1914: 

“In each of the countries…, a coterie of no more than about a dozen civilian and military rulers weighed their options, calculated their chances, and then made the decision for war…. Many decision makers knew the risk, knew that wider involvement was probable, yet proceeded to take the next steps. Put differently, fully aware of the likely consequences, they initiated policies that they knew were likely to bring on the catastrophe.”  

So the debate now lies with ascertaining at what point during the July Crisis the “window” for a peaceful resolution to the crisis finally closed, and when war (localized or continental) was all but certain. A.J.P Taylor remarked rather aptly that “no war is inevitable until it breaks out”, and determining when exactly the path to peace was rejected by each of the belligerent powers is crucial to that most notorious of tasks when it comes to explaining the causes of World War I: placing blame. 

Responsibility

“After the war, it became apparent in Western Europe generally, and in America as well, that the Germans would never accept a peace settlement based on the notion that they had been responsible for the conflict. If a true peace of reconciliation were to take shape, it required a new theory of the origins of the war, and the easiest thing was to assume that no one had really been responsible for it. The conflict could readily be blamed on great impersonal forces - on the alliance system, on the arms race and on the military system that had evolved before 1914. On their uncomplaining shoulders the burden of guilt could be safely placed.”

The idea of collective responsibility for the First World War, as described by Marc Trachtenberg above, still carries some weight in the historiography today. Yet it is no longer, as noted previously, the dominant idea amongst historians. Nor, for that matter, is the other ‘extreme’ which Fischer began suggesting in the 1960s: that the burden of guilt, the label of responsibility, and thus the blame, could be placed (or indeed forced) upon the shoulders of a single nation or group of individuals.

The interlocking, multilateral, and dynamic diplomatic relations between the European powers prior to 1914 means that to place the blame on one is to propose that their policies, both in response to and independent of those which the other powers followed, were deliberately and entirely bellicose. The pursuit of these policies, both in the long-term and short-term, then created conditions which during the July Crisis culminated in the fatal decision to declare war. To adopt such a stance in one’s writing is to dangerously assume several considerations that recent historiography has brought to the fore and rightly warned against possessing: 

• That the decision-making in each of the capitals was an autocratic process, in which opposition was either insignificant to the key decision-maker or entirely absent,

• That a ‘greater’ force motivated the decision-makers in a particular country, and that the other nations were powerless to influence or ignore the effect of this ‘guiding hand’,

• That any anti-war sentiments or conciliatory diplomatic gestures prior to 1914 (as well as during the July Crisis) were abnormalities; case-specific aberrations from the ‘general’ pro-war pattern,

To conclude, when it comes to the current historiography on the origins of the First World War, the ‘blame game’ which is heavily associated with the literature on the topic has reached at least something resembling a consensus: this was not a war enacted by one nation above all others, nor a war which all the European powers consciously or unconsciously found themselves obliged to join. Contingency, the mindset of decision-makers, and the rapidly changing diplomatic conditions are now the landscapes which academics are analyzing more thoroughly than ever, refusing to paint broad strokes (the “big” forces) and instead attempting to specify, highlight, and differentiate the processes, persons, and prejudices which, in the end, deliberately caused the war to break out.

What do you think of World War One historiography? Let us know below.

[1] William Mulligan, The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 

[2] A good overview of the recent historiography with regards to these aspects is Geppert, Dominik, William Mulligan, and Andreas Rose, eds. The Wars before the Great War: Conflict and International Politics before the Outbreak of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 

[3] Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (New York: Routledge, 2003).

[4] A critical article which progressed this shift is Marc Trachtenberg, “The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914.” International Security 15, no. 3 (1990): 120-150. 

[5] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, 1962.

[6] A good overview of the historiographical developments in this regard is William Mulligan, “The Trial Continues: New Directions in the Study of the Origins of the First World War.” The English Historical Review 129, no. 538 (June 2014): 639-666. 

[7] See for example, David Stevenson, “Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914.” International Security 22, no. 1 (1997): 125-161; David Stevenson, “War by Timetable? The Railway Race before 1914.” Past & Present 162 (1999): 163-194. 

[8] Alan Kramer, “Recent Historiography of the First World War (Part I),” Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift Für Moderne Europäische Geschichte / Revue D'histoire Européenne Contemporaine 12, no. 2 (2014): 160-161