![]() ![]() ![]() “Slipping back to barbarity, to war between the peoples of Europe, was as unimaginable as witches and ghosts.” “It was a golden age of security,” Austrian author Stefan Zweig would write later. Vienna before 1914 was a grand imperial metropolis of two million people, a city of light and technology, its crystal-mirrored cafes a haven for intellectuals, scientists, avant-garde artists and musicians. Only once it became clear that Russia was mobilising was it realised how dramatic the situation was.” Belle epoque They thought this was just another Balkan crisis, of which there had been several. “Berlin didn’t realise what it was getting into. In Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm II, grandson of Britain’s Queen Victoria, had issued in early July his famous “blank cheque” saying that 83-year-old Franz Joseph could rely “in this case, as in all others, upon Germany’s full support”. it was thought that their ally Germany, either with threats or by entering the war, could keep Russia in check,” Ortner said. “Vienna thought it was probable that Russia would enter the war but. On August 4, with Germany invading Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and two days later on France. Instead of a short war - and one confined, as Vienna had thought, to the Balkans - this was the start of World War I, four years of conflict drawing in all the great powers of the time and killing nine million soldiers.Ī day after Austria-Hungary’s declaration, Serbia’s ally Russia began mobilising. “But Vienna was playing a game of very high risks.” “Maybe people didn’t think it would be over by Christmas, but the feeling was that it would be done by mid-1915,” historian and Austrian Military Museum (HGM) director Christian Ortner told AFP. Special editions were ripped out of newspaper sellers’ hands, and in Vienna at least, nationalistic songs were sung late into the summer night, triumphant speeches were made and thousands thronged the streets. It was a month after a Bosnian Serb revolutionary had assassinated Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, and the aim was to give the Serbs a long-deserved bloody nose. ![]()
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