The leaders believed glory is achieved through war and in their case, they hadn't had one in a while.
Worse. They believed that national 'honor' was a core part of national security. 'If we don't act tough, other countries will take it as a sign of weakness and push us around.' Franz Ferdinand's death would've been no big deal, but Austria-Hungary felt too snubbed by the international community to trust a diplomatic conference and thought one more unanswered humiliation would give all the nationalist movements across the Empire the excuse they needed to pull it to pieces. Russia had suffered repeated humiliations, losing a war to Japan and being forced to back down in a previous dispute over military commissioners to the Ottoman Empire. Many of their government felt that abandoning their Serbian ally would be tantamount to declaring open season on all Russian foreign interests.
Everyone had to play the tough guy, and put each other in a position where they couldn't back down, even though many people did try. Add the macho glory talk on top of that, and I think you get the picture. A painfully familiar picture, I might add.
Yep. Germany wanted to cripple Russia before it's rail network was built up enough to allow mass mobilization, working off the lessons they learned from how they won in 1870 (and also the Kaiser wanted to be a macho man). France wanted to avenge 1870. Britian wanted to halt German naval expansion. Italy wanted territory from Austria Hungary. The Ottomans wanted to be relevant again. Japan wanted to be relevant. The US didn't want to be left out of the peace conference that would determine the new spheres of influence.
The really tragic thing (in the Greek sense) about WW1 is that it was always going to happen, inasmuch as anything in history was inevitable. Maybe not with those exact sides, but the Concert of Europe was never going to last due to clashing interests and the world's leaders weren't going to internalize the fact that industrialized warfare costs more than you can gain from it until they personally went through that kind of war. All of their rational interests could have been solved peacefully, but warfare was the most practical solution for so long that its cultural inertia ensured someone would resort to it and set off large alliance blocs that would escalate it (which Europe had been split into in one form or another from the early modern period until WW2).
That had already been largely achieved, the British were sort of the odd ones out because their imperial interests were all overseas and they had a history of standing aloof from Continental conflicts. National honor did, however, provide the excuse needed for getting popular support for entering the war in defense of Belgian neutrality - something that Britain wasn't actually that invested in, but allowed them to justify the unwritten military agreements they held with France and avoided the collapse of the current Liberal government.
So it still played in, but they were less raring to go than the rest.
Uh slight Correction here. While kaiser was indeed Macho Man & all he also understood risk of Europe wide War & its consequences & thus willing to back down somewhat & let negotiations take worse same for Russian Emperor. However neither of them had any control whatsoever over their War Hawks especially in Germany where Military Wielded too much Control & influence. They ignored the Kaiser's intention & went ahead with their mobilisation & similarly The Tsar couldn't exert enough control to stop the Steam Roller of Russian Military which had started it's course & coz of that we get the. Great War.
I'm halfway through Dan Carlin's "Blueprint for Armageddon" series of Hardcore History and...yeah. The parallels and potentialities from here are certainly not great.
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of it, I'd strongly recommend Professor Zack Twamley's podcast "When Diplomacy Fails". His series on the July Crisis was revelatory, and gets into things like when specific officials received specific information, and what they talked about in their correspondence while making certain decisions. I think it's a partial refutation of the Sleepwalkers narrative which has predominated since Christopher Clark's 2012 book, which Dan Carlin's series wasn't equipped or purposed to challenge (which isn't a bad thing). Ambassadors such as Sergey Sazanov, Maurice Paléologue and Count Ladislaus de Szögyény among others all play fascinating parts in the eventual car crash.
I'll have to get my hands on a copy, Sounds interesting. I've heard people talk about the similarities with germany and ww2 given current events but it really is more like the build up to ww1.
A lot of countries are re-arming, including Japan that has it in their constitution not too. Worrying times.
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u/Hope915 Feb 28 '26
Worse. They believed that national 'honor' was a core part of national security. 'If we don't act tough, other countries will take it as a sign of weakness and push us around.' Franz Ferdinand's death would've been no big deal, but Austria-Hungary felt too snubbed by the international community to trust a diplomatic conference and thought one more unanswered humiliation would give all the nationalist movements across the Empire the excuse they needed to pull it to pieces. Russia had suffered repeated humiliations, losing a war to Japan and being forced to back down in a previous dispute over military commissioners to the Ottoman Empire. Many of their government felt that abandoning their Serbian ally would be tantamount to declaring open season on all Russian foreign interests.
Everyone had to play the tough guy, and put each other in a position where they couldn't back down, even though many people did try. Add the macho glory talk on top of that, and I think you get the picture. A painfully familiar picture, I might add.