Do you know what was the ideological justification for the outbreak of World War I?
No, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo created the well-known pretext for war. And the main reason for the war for its main driving force, Germany, was the desire to preserve by any means the extremely unfavorable conditions of the 1894 economic treaty for Russia, the term of which expired in 1914, and the chances of its extension were practically zero. Just as Russia wanted to get rid once and for all of the enslaving conditions of cooperation imposed on it, which resembled the relations of a colony with a metropolis.
All sides in the conflict at the same time incited hatred among the population towards potential opponents as much as possible, and against the background of what was called «patriotic frenzy» in Soviet times, the justification put forward by Austria-Hungary for the attack on Serbia, which became the beginning of the world war, was somehow forgotten. The Viennese authorities then declared that there was no other way to stop Serbian propaganda that was destroying their state except by conducting a military operation.
The Serbian government assured that it was not doing anything to support the Slavic peoples who wanted to get out from under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty. And it argued that, given the freedom of the press existing in Serbia, it could do nothing about the speeches of individual radical newspapers, whose articles, by the way, did not cause any harm to Austria-Hungary, since the import of Serbian publications was prohibited there. And the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminded its Austro-Hungarian colleagues that anti-Habsburg texts were being distributed, and in a distorted form, by government Austro-Hungarian and German agencies, and that their reports were being published by pro-government printed media.
But all these arguments were rejected in Vienna and Berlin, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary, Count Leopold von Berchtold, declared on July 13, 1914*:
«All-Serbian propaganda is undermining our very home, our dynasty. To tolerate it any longer would mean deliberately allowing the collapse of the monarchy. The destruction of this propaganda at its roots is a matter of life and death for Austria-Hungary, as a great power. We must demonstrate our great powerhood.»
The justification for the military operation against Serbia, which Russia considered its duty to defend, was ready, and two weeks later the war gradually began to turn into a world war.
This issue of the monthly Kommersant-History is about them — the decorous and decent justifications that have in all centuries concealed the naked truth from prying eyes.
Contents
“Bringing horror to everyone” /What does the intransigence of employers lead to?
“We eat some kind of infusoria” /Why crayfish stopped wintering in Russia
“Those taken prisoner provide valuable information” /What side effect did attack on a naval base
«Aviation needs a gliding mine» /What effective new thing is a well-forgotten old
«They went for every possible deception» /What danger is typical when an army advances westward
*All dates before February 1, 1918 are given according to the old style.
Свежие комментарии