Who is to be blamed for the outbreak of the First World War?

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                                                                                                     Michał  Gołębiowski, kl. II IB

Who is to be blamed for the outbreak of the First World War?

While talking about collective responsibility of states for the outbreak of the First World War it is necessary to mention the following faults: nationalism, economic rivalry, imperialism and colonial competition (‘Tangier Incident’ in 1905 and ‘Agadir Crisis’ in 1911), the fatalist mood of 1914, armaments, and miscalculation. Tension was heightened by the arms race. Increased armaments might have been justified in terms of defence and deterrence but had a cumulative effect.  System of alliances (formation of two opposite armed camps: Triple Alliance and Triple Entente) , although many historians claim that earlier events proved that there was in fact nothing binding about it, meant, according to George Kennan, American diplomat and historian,  the creation of an excessively rigid diplomatic framework, within which relatively small detonator- even a very localized conflict could produce huge explosion – a great European War. The several general staffs made their strategic plans to fit the alliance pattern, and the danger was that soldiers and civilian ministers could be locked into an irreversible sequence if it was triggered off. Mobilisation of forces had become so complex and speed was so critical that plans could not be easily changed without producing chaos. Additionally, according to interpretation put forward by Australian historian L.C.F. Turner, the real cause of the world war breaking out, was a “tragedy of miscalculation”. Most of the leading rulers and politicians seemed to be incompetent and made bad mistakes. Besides the reasons mentioned above, all of the states suffered from serious internal problems and it could be argued that war was seen by some soldiers and politicians as a temporary diversion from these domestic dangers and as providing the national rallying cause.  However, every state bears an individual part of responsibility for this what happened in the summer 1914. First, politicians during the  peace conference at Versailles in 1919, and later historians, felt obliged to  asses who bears the greatest burden of guilt for outbreak of the World War I, by analyzing the individual guilt of each particular state.

Nationalists ruling Serbia wanted to unite all the southern Slavs, including those Serbs and Croats who lived in the Austrian Empire ( particularly by incorporation of Bosnia and Herzegovina inhabited by nearly 3 million Serbs, annexed by Austria – Hungary in 1908) into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (an extended form of Greater Serbia). The Serb government was involved in underground and terrorist activities directed against Austria-Hungary.

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Austria-Hungary was worried about the possible dissolution of its empire. It desired to crush Slav nationalism, the main factor of instability. Austria – Hungary wanted the preventive war to survive at all as a multi-national state.  The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28th of June 1914 by a Serb nationalist Gawrilo Princip from “Black Hand” terrorist organization revived the Balkan question and enabled Austria-Hungary to reappear misleadingly as a Great Power. It is argued that Austria-Hungary did not need Germany to provoke her into an aggressive response to Serbia. Austria-Hungary played its own part in driving the crisis ...

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