Dragutin Dimitrijević

Transcription

My Name is Indy Neidell and This channel, the Great War, follows World War One week by week exactly 100 years later, but before we can do that properly, we thought we’d give you a little background on Europe in 1914. Okay, the immediate cause of World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which we’ll cover in a separate special episode. Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about the cultural hatred and nationalistic fever that led up to his assassination. This was something happening all over Europe, heck, all over the world at this time, but especially in the Balkans. So let’s take a look at the empire of Austria-Hungary and the Balkan nations. The empire, even as it still grew, was slowly being torn apart by the ambitions of its multi-ethnic states, in particular the Slavic ones. In 1908, Emperor Franz Josef had formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now this annexation inflamed anti-Austrian hatred throughout the Balkans, but especially in Serbia who were denied the chance of an Adriatic port by Austrian expansion into 375 miles of Slavic coastline territory. This also gave Austria a base she could use for any future military actions against Serbia. Now, you have to realize that the Slavs were split up between Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria and most of them dreamed of a pan-Slavic nation. Those nations, though, except for Austria, had been not only part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but often violently oppressed parts of the Ottoman Empire and only recently were finally able to determine their own fates. Seeing Austria suddenly gobble up new territory with a sizable Slavic population... well... not good. If you look at Serbia in the first decade of the 20th century- here’s what you find: First and foremost- a young and proud nation. Serbia had only gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, and it was intensely nationalistic. The rest of Europe looked at Serbia suspiciously, though, and its catchphrase “where dwells a Serb, there is Serbia”...well, you can see how that didn’t sit well with a lot of people, and let’s face it, the only way for Serbia to have united the southern Slav peoples would have been to bring down Austria-Hungary for good, which would’ve taken a war, which is kinda what happened. Fewer than five million people lived in Serbia, though, so all intentions aside, that wasn’t going to happen by itself. However, in the search for allies, Serbia alienated a lot of Europe by the brutal and violent repression of its own minority peoples, especially Muslims, in much the same way Serbs and other minorities were repressed in Austria-Hungary, so they didn’t get a whole lot of sympathy, and also- endless Balkan violence was nothing new to people. In fact, it was just one of those things that most Europeans were resigned to reading about in the papers from time to time another murder, another bombing, in that far off corner of Europe where such things just seem to happen and regime change was often by murder. Actually, stereotypes aside, the last did happen- in 1903. King Alexander and Queen Draga were murdered in their private apartments by a group of young army officers and their bodies were mutilated. One of the men responsible, Dragutin Dimitrijevic, became a national hero when he was wounded by Royal Guards. He was also known simply as Apis and had been a founding member and leader of the Black Hand- who organized the hit on the king and queen. The Black Hand. You just sort of know from the name that these guys aren’t going to be devoted to, you know, starting soup kitchens or maintaining city parks. Anyhow, by the beginning of the first World War there were thousands of members of the Black Hand, many of them Serbian army officers and even government officials, and this secret organization did pretty much what you would expect of a terrorist organization- plan political murders, train and equip guerillas, and so forth, and they and Serbian nationalist goals in general got a big boost in 1912 and 1913 from the two Balkan wars, which I’m going to tell you about right now. Okay, not RIGHT now, because to talk about the Balkan Wars I have to talk about the Moroccan crises first. There were two of these, one in 1905 and one in 1911, and you can look them up for details, but what they very basically and generally involved was the Kaiser trying to drive a wedge between England and France and hopefully even form an alliance between Germany and England but they succeeded in doing the opposite- and made the alliance between Britain and France stronger than ever and drove a deeper wedge between them and Germany. Again, look them up for details. Another result was that France took control of Morocco. Now, Britain at the time had control of Egypt, right? And what happened next is very important. Italy, Italy saw Ottoman land being seemingly handed out, and thought “I gotta get me some of that!”... So Italy went to war. Because of all the Moroccan foolishness, Italy figured correctly that England, France, and the German Empire would do nothing to stop her, so she attacked the Ottoman Empire. The war lasted less than a month and Italy successfully took Libya. And the dominoes start to fall... The Balkan states, seeing how easily the weakest of the powers could beat the Ottoman Empire, got together and attacked in the First Balkan War. Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria, with Russian influence, formed the Balkan League- and together succeeded in driving the Ottomans out of the Balkans entirely for the first time in 500 years. It was a big loss for the Ottomans. However, one month after the war Bulgaria wasn’t satisfied with the way conquered territories were split up and turned around and attacked Serbia and Greece. A side note: Serbia occupied Albania in the 2nd Balkan war and finally had a seaport of her own, but Austria issued an ultimatum to remove all Serbian forces from Albania within eight days. Serbia complied. As you may guess, this was all a complete mess, and here are some important results: Serbia pretty much doubled her territory in the Balkan Wars, even without Albania, and if you asked a Serb in early 1914 they’d probably say that wars seemed to work out pretty well for them, but they’d pay a terrible price in the end: between 1912 and 1918 one out of every six Serbs- men, women, and children- would die violently. After the collapse of the Balkan League and Russia’s clearly Pro-Serbian position in the second war, Russia was left with only Serbia as an ally left in the entire area, and Russia wouldn’t really have much choice but to unconditionally support Serbia in 1914. Both Austria-Hungary and Germany were worried by Serbia’s growth in both size and stature, and since a lot of German speaking people saw Serbia as a Russian satellite, well, Austria was ready and willing to put its foot down on Serbian growth and Slavic nationalism. At the same time, after losing a war to Japan in 1905 and being unable to prevent the Bosnian annexation in 1908, the Tsar was ready and willing to put his foot down to prevent any further loss of face for Russia. And that’s where we were in June 1914. All of these sides playing off against one another and at the epicenter of it all, in the Balkans, an organization that used terrorism and political murder to try and achieve its goals. And then Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo. If you missed our prelude to war special number one you can click here and watch it right now you can also check out our other social media platforms like facebook or twitter in the infobox below for more information about The Great War