♪ ♪ [male narrator]
Human history is equal parts heroism, tragedy,
and misunderstanding. Very rarely have we displayed
all three to such a degree as in the
First World War. This war is called the seminal
catastrophe of the 20th century because without it, there is
no Stalin and no Hitler; no fascism
or World War II. Without it, we don't have a Cold War
that leads us to the very brink of annihilation. Nor do we see the Middle East carved up
by old men still bitter from four years of meaningless,
self-inflicted catastrophe. Without this war,
we probably don't have 9/11 or the turmoil in the
Middle East today. This war ushered
in the modern age. Born in a crucible of
gunpowder and toxic smoke and the blood
of ten million men. Blood spilled in war from the fields
of France to the waters off America. From the Russian frontier
to the sands of the Middle East. From the Chinese mainland
to the deepest parts of the sea. This war broke empires. It shattered the past and forced us to give up
our last ties to our medieval understanding. When the smoke cleared and a stunned
world climbed out of its trenches, we lived in a new age with new powers,
new ideas, and new terrors. It is the defining event
of the 20th century. It is the Great War. But it's not the war itself that
we’re here to talk about today. Hopefully, over the course
of this show, a bit at a time, we’ll slowly,
story by story, cover the sprawling events
of this turning point in history. But today? Today we are focused on
the events that led to this war. For if the war itself is the seminal
catastrophe of the 20th century, then the weeks before
the war are its seminal tragedy. In these next few episodes, we’ll focus on
the very human, very personal stories that led Europe
to consume itself, to ignite itself in one suicidal blaze
from which it still hasn't recovered, because it is a tragedy
of the highest order. It's like a play,
a Greek epic, a story so grand we would
think it must be fiction if the scars of the war couldn’t still
be seen on the fields of France. It’s Shakespeare
living out before us. It begins with the death of
a prince and his lady and ends in mass slaughter the likes
of which the world has never seen. So let's set the stage. For a hundred years,
Europe has been at peace. There have been wars, sure, but they were
minor wars, wars on the periphery, wars without many of the
Great Powers involved. Not since Napoleon did the great
states of Europe vie in bloody battle. For after the ravages
of the Napoleonic Wars, the statesmen of Europe
had come together to try to stop such a catastrophe
from ever happening again. They created a system called
the Concert of Europe so that whenever war
seemed perilously close, the nations of Europe would come
together in a congress, a conference, and instead come to a settlement
that all parties would abide by. But Europe has changed since those
weary of the Napoleonic conflicts first came together to
create the Great Concert. The first and most major change
was the formation of Germany. At the time our story begins, it's important to remember Germany
as a nation was only forty years old. It's a young nation,
a strong one, a nation looking
to claim its own. But to say that Germany was a strong nation
is to undersell the magnitude of its creation. I mean to say that
the birth of Germany was something perhaps unique
in the history of the world. For overnight, with the
signing of a few papers, the middle of Europe was transformed
from a thousand tiny squabbling states to the greatest land power
the world had ever known. In one night, suddenly the most
powerful nations of Europe, Russia, France,
Austria-Hungary, and England were not the most powerful nations
in Europe any longer. Overnight in the very heart of
Europe had been created a nation with more manpower, natural resources,
and economic strength than any other nation in the world,
except perhaps for Great Britain. Moreover, this creation was
cemented in the defeat of France, which at the time was considered
the strongest land power in Europe, and at the time of our story, that defeat
and its memory still run deep. And now look at the world from the perspective
of that powerful new German nation. Here they are, arguably the most
powerful country in the world, and yet they see themselves being denied
all the rights of a great world power. Britain and France held
territories across the globe. Even the Netherlands, a nation which
the might of the new Germany can wipe off the face
of the earth in a week, had colonies from Asia
all the way to Africa. But Germany,
for all their strength, had been denied those possessions
simply because their nation was young. Imagine what this does
to the balance of power. Imagine what this does
to the geopolitical scene. Think what would
happen today if, say, the entire EU declared
themselves a single nation with a single economy, a single military,
and a single foreign policy. Imagine if they said that they want
greater access to Middle Eastern oil. And Russia and
the United States said, “No, we were here first.” Imagine now if representatives from
Russia and the United States smiled and told this young nation
that they’d be happy to continue to sell them oil
at an inflated price, though. This was the position
Germany found itself in. How was the Concert of Europe, a system built around a balance
of power and compromise, to last in these
circumstances? And yet, for forty years, it did. And this brings us to the second major
change since the Napoleonic Wars: The men. The seventy years after those
wars was a time of giants, men who towered
over the world stage. Time and again here, Europe
rolled well on the dice of history and came up with leaders who were
capable of navigating an increasingly complex and increasingly modern
geopolitical world. In the 1800s, Russians saw
men like Alexander II, who understood that Russia
needed to modernize to survive. He began dismantling serfdom,
reformed the judicial practices, encouraged universities
and pursued peace, understanding that Russia was in no
position to fight the major European powers. Like all the men here, this guy was
not all chuckles and sunshine. Alexander II brutally suppressed
revolutionaries and separatists in the territories
Russia controlled. Still, he was effective
without question. By 1900, we have
in Russia Nicholas II, a deeply reactionary,
deeply conservative man, who history records
as being of middling intellect with neither the training
nor the inclination to properly rule. His reign is a catalog of
embarrassing mismanagement. This is the man who fell under
the sway of the mystic Rasputin. This is a man who couldn't
even coordinate his own coronation, a man who let 1300 people die in a
human stampede on the day he was crowned because, I kid you not, there was
not enough beer and pretzels. And this is the man who held
a ball that day anyway because, hey, while let a few hundred
deaths spoil your day. And this is the man
who will, in the end, hold the fate of
the world in his hands. And by this point in Austria, we have
as emperor an 84-year-old man, two years away from his death and
battered by the weight of the life he's led. His foreign minister, Berthold, is neither
a bad man nor a stupid man, but he is a weak
and vacillating man at a time when European
politics are all about strength. And Germany? Germany during the twenty years
following its creation had unquestionably one of the greatest diplomats
the world has ever seen: Otto von Bismarck. This is a man of great
ability and great appetite; a man known to smoke
three cigars at once and down a bottle of
champagne at breakfast; a man who probably deserves
an entire episode just to himself, but for our purposes, he is the man
who held the Concert of Europe together under the incredible strain of the
creation of the new German state. His life's work was to ensure that
France and Russia never allied so that Germany would
never be surrounded. This was his nightmare,
his greatest fear, and in this, like in many things,
he turned out to be right. He famously said that the great
European conflagration would come from some
damn fool thing in the Balkans, and he warned Kaiser Wilhelm II
that within 20 years his bellicose policies would
destroy the Kaiser Reich, and he was correct,
almost to the day. But he was fired
by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who has too much historical baggage
to get an accurate view of. Suffice it to say that the Kaiser often ends up
with a reputation for feeling inadequate, having been born
with a withered arm and growing up hounded
by his mother, he came to believe that he had
to prove he was masculine, and so set out to break
with Bismarck’s policies and show that
he was his own man by abandoning the German
alliance with Russia and moving Germany toward a
much more expansionist stance. He was known for being brash
and impulsive with little tact, crumbling the carefully
balanced alliances that had for so long kept
the Concert of Europe in place. Now to all this we have to add
one last piece to the stage: Fear. The fear of the dying empires; the fear of those
once great nations that now so clearly saw the shadow of death
approaching them from behind. The Ottoman Empire,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Empire. The Ottoman Empire was long known
as the sick man of Europe. Its decline had been
long and slow with the surrounding nations taking
bites out of its carcass as it slowly died. The Austro-Hungarian Empire looked
at the fate of the Ottomans and saw shadows
of what was to come. They feared they'd be
like the Ottomans— dismantled, taken apart piece by piece
until they were too weak to fight back. They had once been the most
powerful state in Europe, but they ruled over many
nations and many peoples, and over the 19th century, those
people had asserted themselves, crying out for their own nations,
crying out to be free, to as people decide
their own fate. And so through
the 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire
saw its territory chipped away as the other great nations of the
Concert of Europe ruled in their conferences that those people
had a right to be free. And with each loss, those peoples that the Austro-Hungarian
Empire still maintained control of agitated for their own freedom
to a greater and greater extent, causing unrest that rocked
the empire to its very core. And lastly,
we have the Russians. The Russian czars ruled
the largest country in the world, but like the Ottomans, their military,
economy, and infrastructure were woefully
behind the times. And in 1905 when the Russians
lost the war with the Japanese-- the first time a European power had lost
a war to an Asian one in modern history-- their weakness became
eminently clear to the world. This loss caused a revolution
that forced the czar to accept the parliament
and a constitutional monarchy. But it wasn't in the nature of
Alexander II to accept the parliament, and he rebelled against
these constraints, leaving his country precariously
perched on the verge revolution. So with a new superpower
in the midst of Europe, fear driving crumbling empires
to irrational and desperate decisions, and a group of leaders simply
not equal to their forebears at the task of guiding
the ships of state, the players are all in place. The stage is set and
the curtain begins to rise on the war
to end all wars. Join us next time for
an improbable assassination, the death of a prince, and a sandwich which
changed history. ♪ ♪ Captions Provided by: The University of Georgia
Disability Resource Center 114 Clark Howell Hall
Athens, Georgia 30602 706-542-8719 Voice
706-542-8778 TTY
There is a pretty good series on youtube, "The Great War" that started in 2014. Every week it does 5-10 minutes on the events from that week 100 years ago. The host has some annoying habits but the research and history are very well done, a person could learn a lot from it. WWI was indeed an accident and a lesson for why the world needs calm, sane, leaders.
That video is more or less about individuals at high levels of power trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution. This happens every time was is about to break out between states. This video acknowledges that these desperate negotiations by a few individuals were done against the backdrop against thousands of proud, hawkish nationalists who wanted a war. This was the age of nationalism, when people were endless whining about insults and injuries against their people by other peoples. German nationalism, Serbian nationalism, etc. For many countries, the Great War was about honor and their people were quite happy to march off to it. The Great War was not an accident. These people were spoiling for a fight for years. Then a few incidents happened and they said "right, we're doing this."