The strange "Great" War, page 1

Originally posted by Gorgonos
I am reffering to the First World War, which started for no obvious reason (I don't think anyone has ever explained in a satisfying way why the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the cause for the beginning of the war).

What?

The archduke was assasinated by nationalists/anarchists in serbia. The serbs were traditional russian allies. It wasn't an isolated incident, and the Dual Monarchy was have real problems with different natioalities wanting to leave the empire. This aggitation, which lead to the assasination, set off a chain reaction. The Russian Imperials started mobilizing their troops, the Austro-Hungarians requested aid from the Prussian lead Germans. The Germans knew that the Russians had alliances with I think the French, the French also had alliances with the Russians, and the Ottomans were too close to the situation to not get involved. Once the Germans were asked to help, and saw the the Russians were mobilizing, they decided to attack France pre-emptively, because they knew that the french were required to respond because of their treaties.

This has allways been know. An entangling system of alliances was just waiting to be thrown into effect. The instability of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was just the actual even that triggered it.

you want to be the best and you want the rest to be under you

The war was not motivated by a land grab. There is nothing in the various histories or documents that indicates this. Most of the Empires were satisfied with their current holdings. Indeed, they were not fighting for land, had the russians won in the east, they'd've traditionally set up independent kingdoms/republics in the area. No one wanted to have to muck around with the nationalists/socialists/anarchists in teh region.

assasination of the Arch Duke (ruler of Austria-Hungary).

The arch duke was a very high level official, but not the Dual King of Austria and Hungary.

it all kicked off from there.... silly really.

Silly and disturbingly inevitable. Its somewhat similar to the Cold War if you think about it. Nothing wrong with the setup in and of itself, but one small thing can set the whole thing off.

All of a sudden everybody attacked everybody else.

You have not been paying attention. The killing of the archduke was not the reason for the war. The major participants had nothing to do iwth the assasination, and the two sides were not a pro-arch duke and anti-arch duke set. It was the system of interconnected alliances, agreements to respond on another countries behalf if they were attacked, the caused the war. The assasination just made the russians wary and resulted in their mobilization. This caused the Germans to realize that they'd have to respond to their treaty, and that the french and english would have to repsond if russia was attacked, so that Germans had to attack both Russia and France, before the war had even started.

There was a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia

Serbia was part of the vast and expansive Austro-Hungarian Empire. Technically all that was required was a police action, maybe some martial law, to put down the Black Hand terror cell that had done the assasination.

But, any action against their serbs by the AH was making the Russians, (technically a different nationality than slavs) old allies of the serbs, nervous. Nervousness on the part of russia, and the demand of their alliance with the AH on the part of germany, made germany extremely nervous, since they were flanked by russia and their ally France, and also had to content with the British Navy at the same time. Once the Germans made the decision that the russians would be going to war, that was the end of it.