The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is historian Christopher Clark’s account of the events in Europe that lead to World War I.
Clark immediately sets the stage in Serbia by giving an account and background of the brutal assassination of King Alexander, Queen Draga and the oppressive Minister of War in June 1903 dubbed the Serbian “Revolution” by British Minister in Belgrade George
Bonham.
From this scene one can see the shadow powers emerge from the Radical Party that had won absolute majority of Skupstina seats in July 1901. Comprised of many powerful bankers and mercantile that were threated by Alexander’s autocratic manipulations and reform that was seen as pro-Vienna that was locking the Serbian economy into an Austrian monopoly and depriving the country’s capitalists of access to world markets.
It was during these grievances a military conspiracy was conceived around a Lieutenant Dragutin Demitrijevic later known as “Apis” that would play a critical role in the dawn of the Great War in 1914 as he continued efforts to undermine Austria-Hungary under the new regime.
After the assassination in June 1903 Apis was seen a national hero after the Skipstina thanked him for his role in the bloody conspiracy. Many of the June 11 conspirators would secure for themselves desirable military positions. However this would leave a legacy of fear in the new regime knowing what they were capable of.
This concern was raised in 1905 when Captain Milan Novakovic produced a manifesto calling for the dismissal of sixty-eight named prominent regicide. Novakovic was promptly imprisoned for two years and after his release continued to question the relationship between the army and civilian authorities to no avail. The matter being unreso...
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...would take them to the battlefields, the Third Baltic War known as the Great War or World War I.
Clark does a remarkable job of making a scholarly historical argument on the events leading to World War I interesting while at the same time presenting a new narrative that distributes culpability across Europe and not as the general narrative, exclusively to Germany. Perhaps what’s more significant is the relevance of diplomacy in the context of the ideals and culture each party held in forming decisions which, Clark argues was to avoid war however the dominance of masculinity, nationalism, and fear would end up writing a script that would lead to the Great War. Clarks account is definitely insightful and has given me a better understanding on how World War I started and on the Baltic conflict in the 1990s. he fills what I would call a gaping hole in European History.
details the causes of the first World war and describes the first month of the war. The book clearly illustrates how a local war became an entire European struggle by a call to war against Russia. Soon after the war became a world issue.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
Sister Claire Evelyn Trestrail was the eldest of five being born on the 10th of December, 1877 in Clare, South Australia. Trestrail served in the First World War as a nurse following in her mother’s footsteps who was a trained nurse, Acting Matron of King Edward Hospital in Perth and also had involvement within the Red Cross and the Saint John’s Ambulance Services. Trestrail’s younger siblings also had involvement within the First World War with her two younger brothers; John Henry and Amarald Glen, serving in the royal Flying Corps and respectively, 1 Machine Battalion. Amarald was also presented with a Military Medal for Gallantry at Villaret. Sister Ella also served as a nurse, got married, but tragically returned as an amputee. It was only her youngest sister Amy who did not serve during the war.
So when asking the question what the causes of World War One are its important to remember that the rivalries between European states were intensified by the imperialism of the 19th century. Which lead to tension which became fear of invasion that in turn resulted in an intricate system of alliances “ensured what might have been an isolated crisis in the Balkans became a general war”. Whilst the effects of imperialism may not be the single cause of the war, it was undoubtedly a contributing
McCullough Edward E. How The First World War Began: The Triple Entente and the Coming of the Great War of 1914-1918. North America: Black Rose Books, 1999. Print.
Reiss, Rodolphe Archibald, and Fanny S. Copeland. The Kingdom of Serbia Report upon the Atrocities Committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First Invasion ; Submitted to the Serbian Government. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1916. Print.
However, when confronted with a strict policy of appeasement, by both the French and the English, the stage was set for a second World War. Taylor constructs a powerful and effective argument by expelling certain dogmas that painted Hitler as a madman, and by evaluating historical events as a body of actions and reactions, disagreeing with the common idea that the Axis had a specific program from the start. The book begins with the conclusion of the First World War, by exploring the idea that critical mistakes made then made a second war likely, yet not inevitable. Taylor points out that although Germany was defeated on the Western front, “Russia fell out of Europe and ceased to exist, for the time being, as a Great Power. The constellation of Europe was profoundly changed—and to Germany’s advantage.”
Although Milosevic was a key figure during this period whose actions undoubtedly influenced the chain of events that unfolded, I believe his power-seeking motives were not unique to him; his actions in the former Yugoslavia could have been committed by a number of others who had the same desire for power driving them. Nevertheless, as he was president of Serbia and essentially commander-in-chief of Serb forces who carried out unconscionable acts of cruelty against Muslims and other non-Serb civilians, particularly in the attempt to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, he bears responsibility for his actions as an authority figure. Though his main goal seemed to be focused on territorial expansion of the Serbian state, he led military forces to deport and murder non-Serb civilians in massive numbers and therefore was in vi...
Accurately titled The Long Fuse, this memoir, by Laurence Lafore, describes the lengthy chain of events that led to the First World War. He begins his work by thrusting the reader in the midst of 1870 Europe and her hopeful situation. Nations were developing nationalism at every turn and were vying for a better world. The Second Industrial Revolution was in full swing and was changing how the world, and war, operated. Education and literacy were taking root in average lives and, in turn, the idea of Liberty took off. Thus the foundation for greatness was set. If Europe was destined for greatness, then how did it end up in total war?
The last two decades of the twentieth century gave rise to turbulent times for constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, eventually leading them to split apart. There were a number of damaging aspects of past history and of the political and economic circumstances that contributed to the breakup and eventually caused the situation to snowball into a deadly series of inter-ethnic conflicts. Yugoslavia was reunified at the end of the war when the communist forces of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Under Tito, Yugoslavia adopted a relatively liberal form of government in comparison to other East European communist states at the time and experienced a period of relative economic and political stability until Tito’s death in 1980. In addition to internal power struggles following the loss of their longtime leader, Yugoslavia faced an unprecedented economic crisis in the 1980’s. As other communist states began to fall in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some former Communist leaders abandoned communism and founded or supported ethno-national parties, blaming the economic suffering on the flaws of communism and other ethnic groups. The ethnic violence that followed would not have been possible without the willingness of politicians from every side to promote ethno-nationalist symbols and myths through media blitzes, which were especially effective due to low levels of education in the former Yugoslavia. Shadows of the events of World War II gave these politicians, especially the Serbs, an opportunity to encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities later in the century. The ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia can be traced back to a series of linked damaging factors such as the de...
Europe has seen many wars over its vast and broad history, some of which being quite immense and destructive. One such war would undoubtedly be World War One. A war powered by the brainwashing ways of militarism and the stubborn pride of nationalism. Once engaged in a war a country’s militarism will produce fine soldier ready to drop like dominos on the battlefield, while the nationalism works as fuel providing the naive determination to fight the war. This naïve determination and soldier production is why World War One, like every other war, continued with such persistency. But what started World War One? Was it militarism that trained young men since they were kids to become soldiers, nationalism propelling a nations pride forward or was it neither? While both of those aspects could be potential reasons their still not the main pillars of cause. The true reason’s that made World War One inevitable were the intimidating alliances, avaricious imperialism, and tedious tensions.
Milosevic’s main goal in Kosovo was to expel Kosovo Albanians population in an effort to ensure continued Serbian control over the province. Du...
To develop this investigation, I will look at a variety of sources including biographies of Slobodan Milosevic, research books on the conflict in Kosovo, and internet sources on Kosovo nationalism.
...ting power over Austria-Hungary, it assassinated its rival’s arch-duke as a means of disarming them and ridding them of a leader. The “Great War” came to be such, because countries which were significantly more powerful than Serbia and Austria-Hungary joined the war and chose sides to infiltrate and gain superiority over other countries. So the war was initiated by the power seeking of a small nation.
The importance of the alliance system that developed in Europe in the decades before World War I as a cause for it is still an important topic of debate and argument between modern historians. Some argue that the alliance system was a direct cause of the outbreak of war between all major countries in Europe while other historians prefer to state that the alliance configuration we observe before the war started was simply a symptom of the conflicts and disagreements, fears and envies that had been accumulating since the Bismarck system of alliances collapsed, and even before then. This last opinion is becoming more accepted as the one that describes the true importance of the actual alliance system as a cause of the war. In order to determine the importance of the alliance system as a cause for the war we must first explore the origins of these alliances. We will take high-point of the Bismarck system in 1878 as our starting point as the Franco-Prussian war is a key factor for the development of this system.