History Austria Essay 2022

Running head: HISTORY
History
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HISTORY
Part I
The basic purpose of this paper is to analyze the various aspects of the July Crisis in the
year 1914 that was the initial action before the beginning of the First World War. The basic
reason for the July Crisis is deemed as the actions of the nationalist powers of Serbia and their
actions to attack Austria. The beginning of the First World War began in this manner and it
caused deaths of millions of people all over the world (Rauchensteiner, 2017). The escalations
were slowly growing up among the various major military powers across Europe. These powers
had engaged in brutal wars between themselves and all the incidents had begun when the
Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand had been brutally assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a
Serbian nationalist. The increasing tensions between these nations led other superpowers of
Europe to indulge into this conflict also. This essay will analyze the views of the different
historians and try to find out all the issues that could be held as the reason for the First World
War.
The beginning of the First World War had gone through several controversial events and
different historians have attributed different reasons for this kind of global conflict. Several
leaders of different countries came into the scene and they wanted to have their share in the
conflict because they wanted to show their power in these complex moments. After the war had
begun, major powerful countries of Europe were joining this conflict and all of them had
officially joined by the end of May 1915 (Rauchensteiner, 2017). The killing of Franz Ferdinand
took place in the year 1914 on 28th June at Sarajevo. The situations began to get complicated and
people became very much afraid indeed. The analysis of the different historians will be highly
relevant in this context since their portrayals are quite important. Several historians like Annika

2HISTORY
Mombauer, James Joll and many others have reflected their views on this global conflict and
tried to find out their interpretations as to why this conflict had actually begun (Watson, 2014).
“It alone had power to halt the descent to disaster at any time in July 1914 by withdrawing its
"blank cheque" which offered support to Austria for its invasion of Serbia”.
In order to locate this reason, one must understand the political tensions that existed
between Serbia and Austria before the actual beginning of this world war. The British forces had
declared the war on the German country and they believed they would gain much political
advantage through this action. The historical factors of the conflicts between Serbia and Austria
date back to the times of 1908-09 during the Bosnian crisis (Watson, 2014). The diplomats of
Australia were very much convinced about the fact that they would definitely engage with
conflict with Serbia at some point of time down the line. Aehrenthal had died in the year 1912.
Aehrenthal had been one of those personalities who could stop all sorts of war activities
in the different regions. Therefore, Graf von Berchtold did not at all have all the good qualities
that were needed to sort out all sorts of violent activities in the region. Therefore, the situations
began to worsen and people wanted to come out of such situations as soon as possible (Hall,
2014). The preventive measures against the war between Italy and Serbia were taken by
Aehrenthal but no more positive action had been taken by others after he died. The foreign
policies of Austria were in deep jeopardy during this time. The foreign relations of Austria and
Serbia were gradually escalating during this time. The members of the military forces as well as
young ministers in his country became very aggressive and he was unable to control their
agitation.

3HISTORY
The descriptions of James Joll on this issue are really very important to look at since he
has given much importance to the historical developments of this global war (Hall, 2014). He
mentioned that around 24th July, the overall implications of the assassination of Austrian
Archduke began to be felt outside the cities of Vienna and Berlin, the German capital. The
situation had escalated because Germany knew Austria was demanding Serbia and they were
very keen on this (Gatrell & Zhvanko, 2017). Therefore, they wanted to get into Serbia and
possess their capital. Germany was afraid of the fact this kind of aggression over Serbia might
lead Russia to intervene into this matter. Russia was one of the most successful and most
powerful countries at that time in Europe. So, Germany wanted to restrain Russia from entering
this conflict because their interference would cause overall war situation across Europe.
“Serbia bore the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of WW1. Serbian nationalism
and expansionism were profoundly disruptive forces and Serbian backing for the Black Hand
terrorists was extraordinarily irresponsible. Austria-Hungary bore only slightly less responsibility
for its panic over-reaction to the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne”.
Still, Germany believed that extreme aggression of Austria into the matter and
Germany’s strategy to back up their allies would stop Russia from intervening into the matter.
The Austro-Hungarians had to take this ultimate risk for their future survival. The entire blame
would have to be put on the shoulders of Germany if this issue escalated more (Gatrell &
Zhvanko, 2017). They were quite aware of the probable outcomes of this war and they wanted
to avoid it by any means. The historian James Joll opined that Germany had to give back up to
their Bavarian allies and sort out the situation properly otherwise the situation could have
changed at the blink of an eye. He also believed that the rigid actions of Austria and continuous
backing up given by Germany would not let Russia from deterring away from the situation.