Extra History's World War 1 - Part 3 (The July Crisis) - Historian Reaction

welcome back everybody to part three of my continued reaction series uh through extra histories world war one uh you guys have been seeming to really enjoy this so far and i've been enjoying going through it with you uh if you didn't see the first two episodes which discuss everything from the end of napoleonic era all the way up to 1914 and then of course the assassination of franz ferdinand there's a link in the description that will take you back to the beginning of this reaction series but we're ready to dive into part three as always please don't forget to check out the original content creator they've got a lot of great stuff i've been very impressed so far make sure you check them out i'll put a link in the description for that please also hit like and leave a comment at the end of my video to let me know what you think of what we talked about here today so let's dive in [Music] the 5th of july 1914. the archduke and duchess are dead gavrilo princep is in jail but catastrophe is not yet certain act two begins we open on an austrian delegation arriving in potsdam it is now a week after the assassination of franz ferdinand the austrians want to take action they want war with the serbs who they think are behind the group of ragged young men that actually pulled the trigger but before they can have their war they decide they must consult with their much stronger ally the german empire so they send a delegation to potsdam to meet with the kaiser wilhelm ii they've been restrained before by germany held back from acting in the balkans so they need to know what germany plans to do they go to the kaiser and tell them that this is intolerable that they cannot abide such a humiliation that they cannot let this act of terrorism go unpunished now it shows the thing holding war but at least on the outside the austro-hungarians try to make it look like they're not completely hell-bent on war but they issued a set of i think there were 10 demands that they issued to the serbians knowing full well that they couldn't possibly give in to all 10 of these demands and i think the serbians actually acknowledge most of them they're just not willing to acknowledge all ten which is exactly what austria was after so i think he's just cutting to the chase and saying really they were expecting to go to war but i'm not sure that that's how they spun it to kaiser wilhelm when they went to him to make sure they had his backing because they knew they would need his backing not against the serbs but against the serbs big brother the russians and the kaiser says to them we'll back you whatever you do just act and act quickly germany is behind you without reservation the kaiser thinks that general war can be avoided that if the austrians strike while all of europe is enraged over this assassination if they act while the brutal slaughter of the archduke and duchess is still fresh in people's minds no one will raise a finger to defend serbia so really what he's saying here is that the kaiser actually is okay with the war he just figures that it's going to be a regional conflict it's just going to be the austro-hungarians in serbia russia is not going to get involved they don't want to risk what would end up being this all-out war because of course if you're a student of world war one you know that this is a series of alliances and all of that goes back to this idea of balance of power once the german empire forms in the early 1870s and upsets that balance of power they caused this domino effect of a series of alliances and the main alliance is russia and france the the major players that are bordering the germans on either side on the east and west they've got this alliance and of course russia also then has alliance with serbia so war with serbia between austria the austro-hungarians in serbia potentially means war for germany with russia and france and that's not something they're hoping for and even if even if the russian empire decided that they wanted to protect their serbian allies if the austrians can strike quickly it'll be a fed accompli the war will be over before the russians can mobilize their forces this is what he thinks as he tells the austrian delegation that they have a blank check and this goes back to the faulty uh premise that russia can't mobilize quickly and i'm sure we'll talk more about this but the whole plan that was in place for the germans in the eventuality of a war with russia and france is what's called the schlieffen plan which is this idea that we can't fight a long-term conflict on both fronts but we can individually defeat each country so if we can very quickly take france out of the war before giant uh big slow russia can mobilize by the time russia's ready to go to war we will have already defeated france and then we can rush our troops to the eastern front and deal with them so they're figuring if austro-hungarians can defeat serbia fast enough then by the time russia's even ready to fight it'll all be over and it won't matter and they won't bother that germany will back them whatever they do and then he goes on vacation on a boat for three weeks where he can't be reached so the austrians come home german assurance is in hand but in austria there's disagreement the hungarian part of their empire initially objects to war they hope that a peaceful solution might be found but their voices alone where were the other voices of reason or the other arguments for peace dead on the streets of sarajevo the archduke was perhaps the greatest defender of the serbs in the empire and so when moderation was called for the parties for war simply had to point to his death and say he was their greatest friend look what they did to him what do you think they're gonna do to us that's absolutely true and again you remember austro-hungarian empire is very different than most of the other empires in that it is a hodgepodge of dozens of ethnicities and nationalities and languages it's very much made up of countries that really are being ignored in favor of what the austrians want to do even though you know austria and hungary are the kind of two major players and and the the emperor of austria is also technically supposed to be the king of hungary hungary finds itself left out of all of this and all arguments were quelled so at last the hungarians relented on one condition a condition that that'll be important later that the austro-hungarian empire would not annex a foot of serbian land and with that the austrians began drafting an ultimatum to serbia but this ultimatum is delayed by a chance for peace two men rivals in the heart of serbia in belgrade the very capital in the center of this crisis are two of the only men farsighted enough to see the clouds gathering on the edge of europe they are the ambassador from austria and the ambassador from russia to serbia they both have come to the same conclusion about where the storm will end so they plan to put aside their differences and meet to perhaps work out a plan for peace on the 10th of july the russian ambassador arrives at the house of the ambassador from austria-hungary the details are agreed to the plan is set all that's left is one final meeting to perhaps smooth out tensions to avert world war they talk they take cigarettes both sides are open things are going well and then wham the russian ambassador falls dead of a heart attack you cannot make this stuff up and this is honestly just the first of several key moments in july of 1914 that could have put a stop to this it's one of the most tragic things in history because it's one of the most avoidable wars we've ever had and it was one of the deadliest and of course it led to the deadliest war in human history with world war ii all of it could have been avoided avoided but things like this happen and it's not the last thing that happens in july that could have stopped all this nothing signed no war stopped the serbians blamed the austrians rumors circulate that they had the russian ambassador assassinated that the austrian ambassador killed him in his own house worse still this leaves the russians without an ambassador in serbia as events begin to accelerate toward war they have no diplomatic channel at the center of everything no lines of communication no eyes or ears on the ground they have nobody with the experience connections or familiarity with serbia that the former ambassador had that's true and the the primary uh diplomatic ties that happened then are these series of messages that go back and forth between kaiser wilhelm and tsar nicholas who are cousins um and they right up to the last moment were messaging each other even though they had governments that were also doing this but what it came down to was that the voices of the military drowned out the voices of the civil governments in both countries uh and they really never had a chance to send out and even if they did it'd take weeks to get them appointed and shipped from moscow to sarajevo weeks they don't have but with this hold on a second i got to double check this and maybe i'm wrong about this but i don't think that the government of russia this time is in moscow shouldn't it be in saint petersburg i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure it would have been in st petersburg last overture turning to catastrophe the austrians decide it's finally time to send their ultimatum but they can't again they delay you see president poincare the leader of france is going to russia to meet with the tsar and the austrians ever nervous decide that they can't send the ultimatum while their two greatest adversaries are meeting together in the same place it would never do they could make decisions too quickly they could coordinate in ways they normally couldn't when they're a thousand miles apart so the austrians delay they wait until poincare is 100 miles out to sea before sending their ultimatum but at last on the 23rd of july an ultimatum is sent from the austrians to the serbs the serbs have 48 hours to agree to all points or face war and think about this again this has to lead you to conclude that they wanted war 48 hours we're giving you this list of of these 10 demands these impossible to meet demands these things that we know you'll probably never agree to and we're only going to give you 48 hours to do it at a time when there's already a diplomatic crisis this was all headed in one direction the ultimatum asks many things but most of all it asks that austrian police be granted free reign to investigate the assassination on serbian soil this is impossible to agree to such a thing is tantamount to giving up sovereignty no nation would accept this but that's alright because the ultimatum is only a ruse anyway a cover for what the austrians really want the austrians want war they want the ultimatum to be rejected because they want to appear to the world as though they gave the serbs a chance to avoid a conflict it wasn't our fault we did everything we could to avoid conflict we gave them a chance to negotiate we gave them a chance for peace they rejected it they want to appear blame free for the invasion they're planning and here's where things begin to speed up europe begins to boil up until this point the crisis in the balkans is just another event on the world stage but all of a sudden with the release of this ultimatum people start to clue into what's happening powers outside of austria germany and serbia begin to pay attention but for us we're going to turn our attention to one man sergey sanov sergey sazenov was the foreign minister of russia and for him the 24th of july is about to be a very very busy day in the morning he wakes to receive the terms of the ultimatum that austria sent to serbia he reads quietly to himself then turns to an aid and faithfully utters it's a european war a cabinet meeting is hastily assembled the highest levels of the russian government are all there they resolved to ask the austrians to give the serbs more time while at the same time pushing the serbs not to resist to the austrians so here again it's not like russia at least they're diplomatic channels were hell-bent on war they're asked they're trying to deal with both sides they're saying hey austria give them more time let them deal with this serbia you need to seriously consider giving in to these demands and so they're they're playing the kind of the middle ground even though they're allied with serbia they're not just taking serbia aside they're trying hard to avoid this but there is the voice of the military as well they also make the fateful decision to begin a partial mobilization of their forces along the austrian border and what happens and why that's a fateful decision is that the argument then becomes well we've already started mobilizing we can't stop now it's such a big you know it's this idea of momentum we've started the ball rolling down the hill it's only going to go faster and faster and once we've pushed it off the edge we can't stop it it's a ridiculous argument but it's the argument that the military makes trying to play all the angles at once in the schizophrenic chaos that seemed all too common in the days just before the war now it's noon sazinov takes lunch with the french and british ambassador the french ambassador reiterates france's complete support the british ambassador says that britain sympathizes but that he can't make any commitments now it's afternoon the russian ministers reconvene with sazhanov confirming the unwavering support of the french they decide to fully back serbia even to the point of war and now it's evening sazhanov meets with portaleis the ambassador from germany portulais begs sazanov to call off russian mobilization he tells him that there must be solidarity between the monarchies that they must work together or all fall alone the argument gets heated portales tells sazinov there will be revolution revolution in europe if the monarchies did not work together if they don't work together all the crowns will fall and he's a hundred percent right on that now not all the crowns fall but think about it by the time this is over the russian tsar has been overthrown and murdered along with this family the kaiser uh wilhelm ii in germany has had to abdicate uh franz joseph dies and then his heir to the throne also ends up having to step down and so these three major monarchies are gone in the next four years and he's right within five years all the great monarchies of europe true monarchies and monarchies where the monarch was the head of state would collapse within five years the ottoman empire the austro-hungarian empire the russian empire and the german empire would be no more their kings dispossessed thousands of years of monarchical tradition burned away in the fires of cataclysmic war then something tragic happens it's one of those small tragedies that lines the path to the first world war those things that tear you up as you read about these events with perfect hindsight it's one of those moments that almost makes this seem like a script like a high drama constructed for the stage until you realize how real it is real enough to wipe out a generation for you see sazinov utters the words if austria-hungary swallows serbia we will go to war did you catch it if not that's all right neither did portilais poor portales who so desperately wants to avoid war you see russia's main concern was that austria would annex serbia if the austrians planned to conquer serbia then it had to be war but remember earlier when the austro-hungarians were arguing among themselves about the ultimatum that hungarian element wouldn't lend its voice to war unless the other members of the austro-hungarian empire agreed that they would not annex a foot of serbian soil well nobody told portales he was the german ambassador not the austrian ambassador and somehow the memo never got to him that the austrians had no plans to actually take over serbia so there's a misunderstanding that leads to war the russians think that one thing is happening but that's not what's happening and that misunderstanding is what ends up leading to world war one it's just again one of multiple things that happened that could have stopped this if people had just communicated more effectively and i think if there had been more time they would have gotten that straightened out but this happened so quickly between when the ultimatum was given and how quickly it had to be responded to there just wasn't time for this to be figured out so in their whole discussion he never gets to communicate this to sazanov this may be one of the last moments where the world could have avoided this war portaleis impassioned begging for peace sazonov firmly stating the russian case the two diplomats meeting in the quiet st petersburg night but the world hinges on small things and in that gentle night one of the last the world would know for years the opportunity is missed the hands of fate tighten around the neck of europe the next day the austrians reject demands that they extend the deadline the kaiser at last decides to return to germany and two minutes before the ultimatum expires the serbians send austria their reply but that's a story for next time we'll see you then it's it's it really is a tragedy it's an absolute tragedy because over and over and over again you see these moments where if somebody just would have made a different decision it all could have been avoided avoided it goes back to the assassination if the driver takes a different turn if the archduke decides not to go visit the hospital uh if uh gavrilo princip decides not to eat in that restaurant if the ambassador doesn't have a heart attack if the german ambassador knows about the plans not to annex serbia by austria-hungary it could have been avoided and this is not the end of it if russia didn't fully mobilize in those early hours as they were also trying to work on peace if if if and again remember we're not just talking about world war one we're talking about everything else that world war one leads to world war ii the cold war the korean war probably vietnam afghanistan 911 all of it probably gets avoided if world war one goes differently so let me know your thoughts about all that let's continue the conversation use the comment section below drop a like if you haven't already we'll see you again next time thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

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Keywords: world war i, archduke franz ferdinand assassination, extra history, extra credits, archduke franz ferdinand, extra history ww1, extra history reaction, world war i reaction, extra history reaction mr terry, world war 1, reaction video, history lesson, franz ferdinand, world war i video, the great war, historian reacts, world war i history, extra credits reaction

Id: _oPEfQInTkw

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021