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A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.
July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914 by Thomas Otte
bookshelves: e-book, ipad, nonfiction, published-2014, net-galley, wwi, war, skim-through
Read from April 03 to June 22, 2014
Description: An unprecedented panorama of Europe on the brink
July 1914 is a definitive account of the crisis that led to the First World War. Offering a multi-national perspective on the events of that fateful summer, it focuses on the often haphazard and chaotic nature of decision-making in the capitals of Europe, showing how Europe descended into a largely inadvertent war. It is a riveting story of misperceptions and deliberate deceptions; of “doves” and “hawks” who struggled to comprehend a complex international situation; and of the collective failure of Europe’s ruling elites.
Going behind the scenes—from Berlin to London to St. Petersburg and beyond—July 1914 offers a powerful antidote to assumptions of the war’s inevitability.
P47: The assination of Franz Ferdinand had also removed the one man who on previous occasions had restrained the 'war party'.
One hundred years ago the war that was to end all wars was brewing up. Otte has put together an erudite brick of a book chocablock with footnotes, references and sources. This is everything one would expect from university press however I was more beguiled by Tuchman's approach: 'I never did understand how France, on the defensive, managed to capture Alsace' which sent her off to research and won the Pulitzer with her book The Guns of August.Another easier read that had everything nailed wasGeorge, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
Wiki bare facts:
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim), coordinated by Danilo Ilić. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. Serbian military officers stood behind the attack. The assassination led directly to the First World War when Austria-Hungary subsequently issued an ultimatum against Serbia, which was partially rejected. Austria-Hungary then declared war, marking the outbreak of the war.
The Latin Bridge in Sarajevo, close to the site of the assassination.T. G. Otte is a professor of history at the University of East Anglia.
Commemorating the First World War: Titles from Cambridge
The Centennial of the First World War
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