On 28 June 1914 two shots were fired in Sarajevo. Thirty-seven days later most of Europe was at war.
Nearly every line here comes from the documents the governments themselves published. Much of the German and Austrian record reaches this story through the English of the historian Sidney Fay, who took a side in the argument over blame; the story says so when it gets there. Who was to blame is still disputed, so each answer gets its say, and the story does not pick one. Dates are in the modern calendar.
28 Jun 1914
On the morning of 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, rode through Sarajevo in an open car. Nedeljko Čabrinović knocked the cap off a bomb and threw it. It bounced off the folded hood and wrecked the car behind.
Come on. The fellow is insane. Gentlemen, let us proceed with our program.
28 Jun 1914
Later that morning the driver took the wrong street. He stopped to back up at the corner where a student, Gavrilo Princip, was standing. Princip “stepped forward and fired two shots point blank.” Count Harrach, on the running board, heard the Archduke say: “Sophie, Sophie, don’t die. Stay alive for the children!” Both died.
but Potiorek called out. "That's the wrong way! Drive straight down the Appel Quay!" The chauffeur put on the brakes in order to back up.
24 May 1914
Young Bosnia was “impatient with the politicians.” In Belgrade in May, by the Austrian court record, a Serbian major asked one of the plotters: “Are you the man? Are you determined?” The Serbian scholar Stanoje Stanojević wrote that Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as Apis, “took over and organized” the plot.
the inspiration for the plot sprang from the group of Bosnian revolutionaries—Gatchinovitch, Princip, Ilitch, and others—all of whom had been in Belgrade and in close touch with “Black Hand” members.
Jun 1914
Sidney Fay read this to mean that ministers knew a month ahead and “took no effective measures.” R. W. Seton-Watson replied that the onus lay on Belgrade to show its information was vaguer than this, or that it had warned Vienna some other way. Fay found no official warning reached Vienna’s Foreign Office. The point is still disputed.
that certain persons [neki] were making ready to go to Sarajevo to murder Franz Ferdinand who was to go there to be solemnly received on St. Vitus' Day.
5 Jul 1914
Vienna’s ambassador lunched with Kaiser Wilhelm II. By his report, the Kaiser would be sorry if Vienna “left unused the present moment.” Next day Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg wrote that the Kaiser “will faithfully stand by Austria-Hungary.” Historians call this the “blank check.” Those are their words, not the documents’.
His Majesty authorized me to report that in this case also we could reckon on Germany's full support.
7 Jul 1914
Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold asked whether the time had come “to make Serbia harmless once for all.” Hungary’s Prime Minister, István Tisza, “would never agree to a surprise attack.” The others wanted demands that Serbia would have to refuse.
their rejection would be a foregone conclusion, and so the way would be prepared for a radical solution through a military attack.
23 Jul 1914
At 6 p.m. on 23 July, Vienna’s minister handed Belgrade a note. The answer was due by 6 p.m. on Saturday. Among the demands: that Austro-Hungarian officials work inside Serbia against the movement aimed at the monarchy.
I had never before seen one State address to another independent State a document of so formidable a character.
25 Jul 1914
Serbia accepted most of the ten points, with conditions, and offered to let The Hague or the Great Powers decide. It refused one thing. Vienna’s minister left Belgrade that night.
As far as the cooperation in this investigation of specially delegated officials of the I. and R. Government is concerned, this cannot be accepted, as this is a violation of the constitution and of criminal procedure.
28 Jul 1914
The Kaiser read the reply on the morning of 28 July, and told his Foreign Secretary that “every cause for war falls to the ground.” That same day Vienna telegraphed Serbia. Austria-Hungary, it said, “considers herself henceforward in state of war.”
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
29 Jul 1914
The Tsar and the Kaiser telegraphed in English, signing Nicky and Willy. Russian military measures, wrote Wilhelm, “would precipitate a calamity we both wish to avoid.” Nicholas answered: “It would be right to give over the Austro-Serbian problem to the Hague Conference.”
In this most serious moment I appeal to you to help me. An ignoble war has been declared to a weak country.
30 Jul 1914
The Tsar signed for general mobilization on 29 July, then called it off that night after the Kaiser’s telegram. Next afternoon Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov pressed him for nearly an hour. “I will decide,” said the Tsar, and ordered it. Sazonov telephoned the general: “Now you can smash the telephone.”
"Think of the responsibility which you are advising me to take!" said the Tsar. "Think of the thousands and thousands of men who will be sent to their death!"
1 Aug 1914
Germany gave Russia twelve hours and France eighteen. At 7:10 p.m. on 1 August its ambassador declared war on Russia. On 3 August at 6:45 p.m. it declared war on France, citing French aviators over German soil. France had already called one such German report “pure invention.”
Understand you are obliged to mobilize but wish to have the same guaranty from you as I gave you, that these measures DO NOT mean war and that we shall continue negotiating for the benefit of our countries and universal peace dear to all our hearts.
3 Aug 1914
Germany’s way to France ran through Belgium. On 2 August it asked to cross, saying it had to “anticipate” an attack. Belgium said no. “Necessity knows no law,” Bethmann told the Reichstag on 4 August, as a Belgian envoy reported it. “For the wrong which we are thus doing, we will make reparation.”
The Belgian Government, if they were to accept the proposals submitted to them, would sacrifice the honour of the nation and betray their duty towards Europe.
4 Aug 1914
Britain wanted an answer on Belgium by midnight. That evening its ambassador called on the Chancellor, who spoke for about twenty minutes. To attack Germany now, he said, was “like striking a man from behind while he was fighting for his life against two assailants.”
just for a word — “neutrality,” a word which in war time had so often been disregarded — just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her.
3 Aug 1914
On 3 August Grey told the Commons: “We are going to suffer, I am afraid, terribly in this war whether we are in it or whether we stand aside.” The line he is remembered for comes only from his memoir, eleven years later, and from a friend’s memory. Thirty-seven days after Sarajevo, the deadline ran out.
My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words: 'The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."
11 Nov 1918
The soldiers’ dead are counted four ways, from 9,164,000 to 10,057,600. The civilian dead, wrote Antoine Prost, are “impossible to calculate with precision.” On the front line the Allies paid the highest price, he found. On the home front, the Central Powers and Russia paid more.
9.2 to 10 millionSoldiers dead, in four counts by Urlanis, Winter, Overmans and Prost
TOTAL 9,164,000 9,450,000 9,206,000 10,057,600
28 Jun 1919
The treaty was signed five years to the day after Sarajevo. In Germany, no political camp accepted it as a verdict of guilt. The argument over who was to blame had only begun, and historians have given at least three answers.
The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected
1928
Much of the German and Austrian record in this story reaches us through Sidney Fay’s book. He was also a party to the argument. The war had many deep causes, he wrote, and he called for the treaty’s verdict to be revised.
and for that factor Serbian nationalism was primarily responsible. But the verdict of the Versailles Treaty that Germany and her allies were responsible for the War, in view of the evidence now available, is historically unsound.
1961
The German historian Fritz Fischer answered the other way. It was not a matter of everyone stumbling in, he argued: the leaders in Berlin knew the risk they were taking.
As Germany willed and coveted the Austro-Serbian war and, in her confidence in her military superiority, deliberately faced the risk of a conflict with Russia and France, her leaders must bear a substantial share of the historical responsibility for the outbreak of general war in 1914.
2012
The historian Christopher Clark called his book The Sleepwalkers. This story does not settle the question either. The telegrams are here, in the words of those who sent them.
none of the individuals who brought about this war - at least none of the civilian leaders who were really responsible for it - actually wanted war. And certainly none of them wanted the war that actually happened between 1914 and 1918.