Austro-Hungarian entry into World War I

rdf:langString Austro-Hungarian entry into World War I

rdf:langString On 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, long-standing mobilization plans went into effect to initiate invasions or guard against them and Russia, France and Britain stood arrayed against Austria and Germany in what at the time was called the "Great War", and was later named "World War I" or "First World War". Austria thought in terms of one small limited war involving just the two countries. It did not plan a wider war such as exploded in a matter of days. British historian John Zametica argued that Austria-Hungary was primarily responsible for starting the war, as its leaders believed that a successful war against Serbia was the only way it could remain a Great Power, solve deep internal disputes caused by Hungarian demands, and regain influence in the Balkan states. Others, most notably Christopher Clark, have argued that Austria-Hungary, confronted with a neighbor determined to incite continual unrest and ultimately acquire all of the "Serb" inhabited lands of the Monarchy (according to the Pan-Serb point of view included all of Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and some of the southern counties of the Hungary (roughly corresponding to today's Vojvodina), and whose military and government was intertwined with the irredentist terrorist group known as "The Black Hand", saw no practical alternative to the use of force in ending what amounted to subversion from Serbia directed at a large chunk of its territories. In this perspective, Austria had little choice but to credibly threaten war and force Serbian submission if it wished to remain a Great Power. The view of the key figures in the "war party" inside the Tsarist government and many military leaders in Russia, that Germany had deliberately incited Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia in order to have a pretext for war with Russia and France, promoted by the German historian Fritz Fischer from the 1960s onwards is no longer accepted by mainstream historians. One of the key drivers of the outbreak of war were two key misperceptions that were radically at odds: The key German decision-makers convinced themselves Russia would accept an Austrian counter-strike on Serbia and weren't ready for or seeking a general European war, instead engaged in a bluff (especially because Russia had backed down in both earlier crises, in 1908, and again over Albania in October 1913); at the very same time the most important Russian decision-makers viewed any decisive Austrian response as necessarily dictated by and fomented in Berlin, and therefore proof of an active German desire for war with the Tsar's Empire. There was no serious joint planning with Germany before the war started--and little during the war itself, as leaders in Vienna distrusted German ambitions.