By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Today, Japan is in
partnership with the United States, and the friction in today's case is with
China. Initially touted as 'the almost World
War', there is no doubt that the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 can be seen as a
precursor of the events in the Balkans that spilled over into the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914.
The official reaction
to the assassination was indignant outrage, but this outward appearance
was in stark
contrast to the privately held thoughts of some. One can say with a degree of
certainty that Serbia was up for a
Continental war.
One of the myths
about the late Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, promoted by legions of
historians, is that the Habsburg elites, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand in
particular, had seriously considered reforming the Empire in a way that would
tackle both their internal South Slav question
and the perceived external threat from independent Serbia. This supposed
project of reform centered on the so-called "Trialism." Except for
'von Aehrenthal', no one of any consequence among the statesmen of
the Monarchy had actually proposed Trialism.
On the day of the assassination in Sarajevo, Franz Joseph was enjoying himself at his
beloved Kaiservilla in the spa resort of Bad Ischl. Count Hoyos was the man with
the mission to Berlin; a
mission crowned by Germany's so-called "blank
cheque" of support to Austria-Hungary.
"We began the war, not the Germans and still less the Entente, that I
know." With this admission,
Baron Leopold von Andrian-Werburg, a member of the tight-knit group of young
diplomats influential in shaping Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy in the last
years of peace, began his memoir of July 1914.
What in the latter case led to 'a huge
war' in Berlin, the possibility of a Balkan crisis was greeted favorably by
military and political decision-makers, for it was felt that such a crisis
would ensure that Austria would be involved in a resulting conflict (unlike during the earlier Moroccan crises,
for example
The reason they were
so blasé about it is that they counted on the
backing of Germany.
The Munich Agreement signaled
the beginning of the Second World War, challenging this standard road to war,
however, one has to go back to the contentious issue of war guilt, which became divisive and passionately
debated as soon as the war had
broken out, it was the "stab in the back" (that Germany
didn't lose the First World War) myth hence the Germans who had
signed the Armistice on 11 November 1918 were stipulated as "November criminals." Most
historians agree the stab-in-the-back legend contributed to the
rise of National Socialism. To this one can add that this belief led to Hitler's push
for rearmament and the
revision of Germany's borders parallel with the Manchurian Incident, a situation aggravated by the empire's invasion
of China in 1937 and then brought to a breaking point in 1941
when Ribbentrop, told Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima, Germany, of
course, would join the war immediately. There is absolutely no possibility of
Germany’s entering into a separate peace with the United States under such
circumstances. The Führer is determined on that point. The Japanese did not
tell the Germans that the Combined
Fleet had already been put to sea. Whereby Berlin had, in effect,
issued Tokyo with a blank check, which it could cash at a moment of its own
choosing.
The Russian
leadership framed it as being forced rather than wanting it.
Some of its
consequences would be the Fascist Black Hundreds and the pro-German wing of the
Monarchists at the End of WWI.
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