July 1914: Countdown to War
By Sean McMeekin 
(Basic Books)

A Sarajevo chauffeur took a wrong turn, and Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip had his chance to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. In the resulting inferno of World War I, 9 million others died.

The conventional wisdom of the last 100 years holds that Germany’s desire for empire and cultural hegemony turned Princip’s deed into an excuse for war. Barbara Tuchman’s famed history, “The Guns of August,” makes the most of this case.

Sean McMeekin, an assistant history professor at Turkey’s Koc University, argues that ambitions in Russia and France were at least as responsible and traces the foibles of Europe’s major powers in a month that launched a disaster for them all.

Austria-Hungary, its heir to the throne gone, had cause to exact revenge on Serbia. Germany supported the Austrian cause but expected a quick war that would be over before Serbia’s ally Russia had a chance to intervene.

Instead, Austria-Hungary’s inept diplomacy, leaked intentions and poor military readiness gave Russia a month to prepare for a much larger war stretching from Constantinople to Berlin.

French President Raymond Poincare sailed into St. Petersburg three weeks after the archduke’s assassination. During this state visit, his ambassador to Russia had a conversation with Grand Duchess Anastasia, wife of the future army commander Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaeivich.

“There’s going to be war. There’s nothing left of Austria. You’re going to get back Alsace and Lorraine. Our armies will meet in Berlin. Germany will be destroyed!” she chortled.

She may have been ahead of the statesmen, but not by much. Poincare, who McMeekin writes was elected president in 1913 with secret Russian subsidies, had come to visit his Russian allies hoping to stiffen their resolve.

Russia mobilized its huge army even before Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia. Germany was the last of the continental powers to mobilize.

Germany’s great mistake was invading Belgium to flank the French, a move that made Britain a foe.

What started as a Balkan conflict swiftly morphed into a war between evenly matched alliances, with the Ottomans coming in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the British on the side of the French and Russians.

No one expected a long war. Czar Nicholas II tried to avoid a “monstrous slaughter” by ordering a halt to Russia’s military call-up, but his cabinet talked him out of it. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhem II and Britain’s King George V also saw their civilian governments run rings around them.

France and Russia expected to win a war that began with Germany outnumbered on two fronts, and with Britain controlling the seas.

Germany expected to lose, and bet all on a knockout blow against France.

McMeekin praises Tuchman’s 1962 epic for inspiring him to write “July 1914.” What he’s delivered is a strong challenge to “The Guns of August.” 

(MCT)