1. Assassination in Sarajevo¶
Core Argument¶
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 was not the cause of the First World War but its catalyst, a historical accident that ignited a powder keg prepared over decades by the inexorable logic of capitalist development. The real causes lie in historical necessity: the economic evolution of German capitalism, inter-imperialist rivalry, the struggle for colonies, and the decay of the Ottoman Empire. The ‘Eastern Question’ dominated European great power diplomacy. Tsarist Russia, under the guise of pan-Slavism, sought access to the Mediterranean; Britain opposed this to protect India; France sought influence in the Levant; Austria-Hungary, terrified of change, desired the status quo; and Germany aimed to turn the Ottoman Empire into a client state via its Drang nach Osten policy.
The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 were proxy wars between Russia and Austria-Hungary. The Balkan League, engineered by Russia, defeated the Ottomans, but the allies then fought over the spoils in the Second Balkan War. These were not genuine wars of national liberation; each Balkan bourgeois clique was backed by a great power. The assassination was carried out by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia, inspired by anarchist ‘propaganda of the deed’. The Austrian visit to Sarajevo on Serbia’s national day was an act of extreme stupidity. The assassination gave the War Party in Vienna an excuse to attack Serbia, though Austria initially vacillated, needing first to ascertain Germany’s position.
The German government offered Austria unconditional support, a ‘blank cheque’, on 5 July 1914, despite the risk of war with Russia. Kaiser Wilhelm urged immediate action against Serbia, calculating that France and Britain might not support Russia, and that war would unite Germany against the rising social democracy. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, deliberately phrased to be rejected, demanded complete surrender of national sovereignty. Russia’s vacillating response — approving partial mobilisation in principle while army chiefs pressed for general mobilisation — convinced Berlin that Russia would not fight. Britain’s foreign minister Grey publicly claimed neutrality but privately acknowledged Britain could not stay out, fearing Germany’s seizure of Channel ports and needing French and Russian complicity to preserve British colonial rule. The text argues that even if Gavrilo Princip had failed, the Great War would have broken out on another pretext, driven by the contradictions between imperialist states. Every chief actor miscalculated: Austria’s war on Serbia destroyed the Empire; the Kaiser was swept away; Tsar Nicholas’s war to avoid revolution prepared the ground for the 1917 proletarian revolution.