by Bert Meinders

Created on: January 31, 2009

In August 1914 in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist with no training in assassination and terminally ill with tuberculosis, fired two pistol shots and killed the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Archduchess Sophie. Almost immediately the Austrian government served Serbia with an ultimatum which no responsible government could have accepted. Among other conditions it demanded free and unimpeded passage for Austrian soldiers anywhere in Serbia. Serbia said "no" as politely as possible, but it made no difference, and Austria declared war. Treaty obligations brought Russia into the war in Serbia's defence, Germany in alliance with Austria and raised the possibility of Britain and France taking part (The Triple Entente bound each of the three parties, Britain, France and Russia, to come to the aid of any of the others if that other party was attacked.). The Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, decided to bring France into the war by activating the Schlieffen Plan, a brilliant strategy with one fatal defect - it was conceived exclusively from a military point of view. The plan was simple; the German army marched towards Paris by the shortest and most direct route, across Belgium. This was guaranteed both to bring Britain into the war and to make things awkward for Germany if defeated, as the Emperor had guaranteed Belgian neutrality just two years before. His head, admittedly, had little under its crown.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand did not cause the war, and the Serbian ultimatum was merely a pretext. No evidence has ever been found to link the government of Serbia with the event. It did not even start the war, which had already begun years earlier on two other continents with the upsetting of the imperial equilibrium on which the tenuous peace depended.

In 1898, the United States became an imperial power by beating Spain in what was described as "a splendid little war". The battleship USS Maine exploded at its anchorage in Havana harbour while on a goodwill visit. To this day the official American explanation is that Spanish saboteurs detonated a mine under the ship. Very clever saboteurs, they must have been, to set up a mine under such a well-guarded ship (The master of the ship decided where it was to be moored, presumably to prevent it being mined in this manner.). The probable cause of the explosion was a spontaneous magazine explosion, which happened occasionally until navies learnt that cordite was dangerous unless it was kept cool

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