Talk:July Crisis

The original Fischer thesis

For those thinking that Fischer & Fromkin are too heavy used, its worth considering that Fischer actually 'discovered' nothing in the 1960s. All he did was to re-discover what the world already knew in 1919 but was then made to forget through relentless German propaganda in the 20s and 30s. At Versailles, the allies did not, as the Germans later claimed, just rock up and declare them guilty, but held a two month committee of inquiry to look at all the evidence. The Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties had access to the Bavarian archives opened and made available to them by Klaus Kautsky. When they reported back two months later their report showed how the Germans and Austrians had, as Fisher later showed, engineered the war and deliberately defeated any attempt by Britain, France and Russia to mediate & stop it happening. The report can be read here; [[1]]

It is basically the Fischer thesis, including the bit about the Kaiser being sent on a cruise to give the impression that Berlin was relaxed about the situation. Kautsky was quickly assassinated by a German nationalist for giving the Allies access to the archive and making German war guilt clear to the world.--Godwhale (talk) 14:58, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

yeah, he 'rediscovered' how to tell a one-sided tale, by focusing all on what one government and its attaché were doing and while ignoring what everyone else was doing, except for to the extent that it could fit in the pieces to the narrative Fischer was creating. Any fool could do this, but only a certain kind of fool would not see how this was done to blind the world to how this was done. And that kind of fool has done well to influence this article. Here is the record from all sides. https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Timeline_of_Events

the fact that it took over a month for an action to be taken ALONE suggests there was a reluctance to move to war. Had the Germans just ramped up and invaded, you may have a point. But if it had been actual towards and against Serbia, then how would the Germans be to blame for what France and Russia did in response? What you have not addressed is that France for some reason just had to give its assurance that its military would support Russia. Likewise, for what reason France would be bankrolling Russia's military and informing Russia multiple times of the UK's interest in supporting a war? None of this support and "activism" is presented in the article, or in your argument, both which focus very heavily on the "activism" of Germany, to present the thesis of "German expansionist militarism". Note that part of the reason the German plan against these parties did not work in the end is because of all the preparation that everyone was already doing. So basically "German expansionist militarism" did not work because the doctrine of "German expansionist militarism" was not followed by the Germans from the get-go, while others were ramping up for war, therefore we blame "German expansionist militarism" for the war.

You imply, as does the article, that the enthusiasm of the military is evidence of what the German government was "thinking", that all of that leading up to the actual decision for war shows or compliments the decision. A nice cherry-picking, for sure, especially because it is relying on given that the every-day General Buck Turgidson in the military is going to be pro-war. And of course the article does not include what the Buck Turgidsons of the other militaries of the other powers were saying, or how they were supposedly implicitly influencing their governments to make the decisions that they made. But a closer eye, and right in front of us, over and again, we see other officials who, like the military in Germany, COULD have sway and influence on the decision-makers in their respective countries, enthusiastically beating the war drum. Looking at the ambassadors in Russia, it is clear that Russia had its interests in the Balkans in mind. But ultimately war was down to the decision makers - it doesn't matter if the things Austria was whispered, when the Kaiser's message was manipulated, are hawkish or not, because that concerns war with Serbia. It does not concern a world war, the one the other parties were obviously interested in when the mobilized up to the border and then de-mobilized, mobilized and then demobilized again, like it was some kind of game. You obviously have nothing to say to them, not when they blow up bridges, not when they shoot at Germans across the border, nothing. Let's see how long that charade would last in a modern setting without an actual, perhaps even accidental escalation. Oh, right, they had to "honor" their treaties. Just like the UK and France totally laughed at their alliance obligations in 1904 because it wasn't the war they wanted to pretend they had to fight.

And then the Coup de grâce to your insane thesis: you actually think the victors would have had a serious inquiry into the cause of war, and then come to some conclusion that implicated themselves? I suppose the "commission" responsible for implicating Saddam would have found the U.S. government responsible for that, too, in the 2000s, is that right? And you clearly have no idea what was on the line - do you have any idea how useful the reparation-consuming diet was for the major corporations that had already made billions off of the war? Your naiveté - it's blinding --Wambook (talk) 20:08, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I tried to access your link. I get a message saying that the document has been deleted, for whatever reason.

Then a few words about Fritz Fischer: He was a Nazi stormtrooper and member of the Nazi party who wrote and distributed vile inflammatory pamphlets against Jews during World War II. In 1945, he was temporarily imprisoned by the Allies. His book "Griff nach der Weltmacht" also fully reflects the spirit of the times before 1945. The arrogance and haughtiness with which he spread his "theses" is difficult to bear today. He was also not a historian in the true sense of the word, but a dogmatist with his own school and followers who responded very aggressively to any criticism of him.

You have to go back to the time after World War II to understand this. Nazi Germany was defeated, but the Nazis were still there. Tens of thousands of mass murderers walked around completely unmolested and had to deal with their guilt somehow. And instead of admitting that they and their generation were solely to blame for the disaster, they looked for excuses like: "it started with the Kaiser" or even attributed a general villain gene to the German people that made them do what they did.

George Kennan's slogan about World War I as the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century was a godsend for these people. Because if everything was predetermined by World War I, they had no choice but to kill 6 million Jews. And they were also happy to blame the Kaiser and his advisors for this catastrophe, because this enabled them to dump their own guilt onto the shoulders of their fathers.

From a historical perspective, it is completely unacceptable to single out a country and, based on selected documents, assign blame to it for an event that was caused by clumsy back and forth between all the countries involved. The Germans were no more warlike than their opponents. The First Sea Lord of the British Navy, John Fisher, wrote in his memoirs that he twice suggested a preemptive strike against the German fleet to the British government. In 1912, Field Marshal Lord Roberts demanded in a public speech in Manchester that England should strike against Germany as soon as it had completed its armaments. It was an age of chauvinism and Darwinism. All European leaders behaved equally irresponsibly at that time.

Finally, a word about John C. Röhl, who is also frequently quoted here. He spent half his life trying to prove that the Kaiser was gay. In his eyes, that would obviously have been the ultimate proof that Wilhelm was a villain. Röhl's comments about Wilhelm and Philip Eulenburg are hard to bear today.

It's strange that the article wasn't flagged as controversial after all the comments. If it had been a critical article on early 20th century English or American history, this would have happened long ago. XeniaBW (talk) 21:57, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I still think that broadening the source base for the article can't be a bad thing. Your link doesn't seem to work, at least for me. Asburns52 (talk) 20:22, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

An interesting point. Also, I have fixed the link above. Does it work now? Zezen (talk) 08:22, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian irredentists

The name of this section is erroneous, Serbian irredentistm is a Serbian nationalist ideology, the assassins were members of a freedom fighting group that came from all three major Bosnian ethnic groups, they were looking to free their country of Austro-Hungarian rule and unite all the south-Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes not looking to create Greater Serbia. “At his trial and during the police investigation Princip consistently said that, even though he was an ethnic Serb, his commitment was to freeing all south Slavs. ‘I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria. Aeengath (talk) 10:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

To label these people "freedom fighters" is not scholarly. Regardless of what these people thought of themselves (Osama Bin Laden considered himself a "freedom fighter" too), irredentist is the correct scholarly term. 140.180.240.23 (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

"freedom fighters" only refer to how the members of the group perceived themselves, their motivation and goal is still a matter of dispute. Aeengath (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the Muslims and the Croats in Bosnia saw them as the exact opposite. They certainly had no desire to be part of Greater Serbia. XeniaBW (talk) 21:59, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how beyond mere appearance this could be confused for irredentism at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.245.38.250 (talk) 15:11, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

NPOV

Hard to know where to begin. Focusing on every internal interaction by one power is obviously going to lead, by omission, to the conclusion that one power is doing everything. This is the article's framework, and what other powers are doing is included only to the extent that it fits within that. One of the sources cited here repeatedly and often, Fritz Fischer, specifically set out to establish that one power was indeed doing everything, and so what we really have is a double-dip of bias: both in focus and in reference.

Unless you are looking to pretend otherwise, I would suggest reading Fischer. Much like A.J.P Taylor (famous for: If there had been a strong democratic sentiment...blah blah blah...[Germans] deserved what they got when they went round crying for a hero), Fischer rarely escaped his hatred for the subject of his obsession (ex: his rants about Germans and the Protestant Church) to the result that, either through tunnel vision or omission, the full story is not presented. Perhaps there is this idea that giving Fischer the podium is providing an international, or even German, view on the subject so as to cover all views. But his views are not organic anyway; they come after years of tunnel-vision propaganda and a guilt parade climate imposed on his people (and possibly his understanding of his own past).

Anyway, relied on to the extent that this article does with Fischer and the other pet author, the book The Russian Origins of the First World War by Sean McKeekin, would create a completely different article. That is not to say that article would be balanced of a view of the July Crisis if there were 1000 McKeekin references. But it is a side that is not represented at all - and, to demonstrate this, none of the primary source documents that point towards McKeekin's thesis are referenced by the secondary sources included in this article; for example, there is nothing in here about warm water ports 'in the straights' and beyond the Balkans, which were a key motivation and conversation topic for the Russians. Similar to the issue with Russia being just a fill in in a long narrative about what the Germans did when, there is little inclusion of France's interactions and internal memos in the article, and nothing about the UK's, only until the end (probably to manufacture the illusion of a reaction, as opposed to action, as it fits with the thesis of the article). Also, note that the article presents early July enthusiasm to take action against Serbia and do so quickly within the context of a long push to war (doing little to show the change of attitude by late July). There is no rationale for this or the other discrepancies based solely on what the article is supposed to be about, because the July Crisis was not that there was somehow a plot by Germany to create a "world war"; the July Crisis was just everything in July following, and pertaining to, the assassination that had to do with war and the failure of diplomacy. That's it. What should be included that isn't? Well, I have already given a few examples. But another is this: nobody told Russia it had to mobilize against Austria-Hungary. And nobody told France it had to mobilize when Germany started to mobilize. And nobody told them, or the UK, that they had to tie all the ends and do all the preparations that they did throughout July to ready themselves for war. But there is internal dialogue leading up to all of these decisions, and none of that is included in the article. It is only just shown and presented as action in response to action, like it just came out of the blue, while of course making it painstakingly clear, through devotion of focus, that the German action did not just come out of the blue. Have a look at this timeline for July, for example: https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Timeline_of_Events Arguably, the contents of the timeline for July are the July Crisis. You can already see many discussions and details for that period pertaining to getting ready or mobilization in multiple camps, unlike in the article.

So what can one do? Can one just insert a few snips, events or correspondences in the article from the July timeline, or McKeekin's or another author's work, to "fix" the problem? I am not certain that is possible, based on how each section is divided. The way the article is laid out contradicts the impression one gets just browsing the timeline, and the article is already very heavily laden with who said what on what date that I feel adding just more from other sides would a) make the article far too long and b) make the article not encyclopedic, but more like a stenography sample and far too scientific. Still, it is clear that the article fails because everything that does not fit in topically to the idea of a German-manufactured war, or would fork off from that focus, has been flushed out. Again, that is not what the July Crisis is. The definition of July Crisis is 'not here are the primary documents to support the idea that World War I was a German plot. But that is the position the article takes. And why? Why is it always this? Why did those who wrote this feel it proper to turn an invasion against a terrorist-harboring nation into this idea that Germany thus started a world war in doing so, by so obviously and purposely conflating the two so that everyone overlooks what turned an obvious local war into a world war? I can't help but laugh that these are the surely the same people of the same societies that gives a thumbs up to an invasion of Afghanistan, and entire regime toppling in 2001, and they can also go through the mental gymnastics of convincing themselves that Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and threat of war there somehow constituted "starting a world war". Oh, sure, it was in the propaganda of 1914, no doubt. But so was the narrative about bayonetting babies, and this is the side that somehow also found the war of 1904 to be Germany's fault for Germany saying "hm, yea, rising Japan is bad" before Russia mobilized and fought it. I'm not sure why I am so passionate about this, probably because I see where this narrative led to, the contradiction as the forked-tongues who implicated Germany and rattle now in the new era for new war and forget the old rules and arguments or just write them out as they please all over again, all in contradiction, amidst a dumpster fire of a society we now live in, thanks to the road not taken, which has led to the sort of incompetence that has also led me to suffer a neurological injury. So, thanks. To be completely honest, I'm not the one who is neutral enough to edit this article, but I think it is clear what needs to be added, and that I have made my case. DO not remove the NPOV tag, the hope is that someone will read this in result and add a clearer picture of what was going on in other governments and top-military conversations in July - and not just to the extent that it can be placed to fit into the context of responding to what Germans were doing at point A, B and C. Wambook (talk) 18:27, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

NPOV2

I have read the text several times and I think that it is not good. In particular, the motives of the respective states are not sufficiently presented. For example, in addition to its political ambitions towards Bosnia, Serbia wanted to cover up its involvement in the assassination. After all, the assassins had been trained, smuggled in, armed and indoctrinated by the head of the Serbian military intelligence service and his apparatus. Austria-Hungary now wanted to finally solve the Serbian problem, which they considered tiresome. Russia wanted to maintain and expand its power base towards the Balkans and Constantinople. France tried to get Alsace-Lorraine back. Italy, which was still largely excluded, had claims and rivalries with France and especially Austria-Hungary. Germany, on the other hand, feared increasing strategic encirclement after its poor foreign policy. Only the British interests related to Europe were unclear, in any case the focus was on the German fleet. 194.96.51.197 (talk) 13:16, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

NPOV3

Addendum: Perhaps the more recent findings and representations of Christopher Clark and Sean McKeekin should be incorporated. This applies in particular to the basic attitude of most of those involved: "I don't want a war, but the others are forcing me into it!" The article also lacks the basic clue that in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, governments were more in favor of war, while the emperors or tsar were more likely to put the brakes on the brakes or attempt last-minute mediation as the conflict threatened to escalate. 194.96.51.197 (talk) 14:01, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

The 1914 prevailing, especially urban, enthusiasm for war among the European population should also be emphasized. The last Europe-wide wars were over 100 years ago and few had any idea of ​​the brutality of a modern industrial mass war with machine guns, modern artillery and later gas. Rather, everyone thought of a short masculinity-enhancing event. "Finally" the entire male population and not just a few professional soldiers could participate in "victorious engagements and battles and, above all, glory". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.96.51.197 (talk) 14:32, 11 March 2022 (UTC)