Folly and malice ...

[The Ibis]

Has anyone read the book Folly and malice: the Habsburg empire, the Balkans and the start of World War One by John Zametica? I've just ordered it. The reviews I've seen, including those by Hew Strachan and Vernon Bogdanor, are very positive.

 

 

[Michael Thomas]

Yes, I have read John Zametica´s Folly and Malice and can highly recommend it.  What amazed me in particular was the way in which he demolishes some widely accepted stories about the run-up to the outbreak of the war.  For example, Zametica deconstructs the Black Hand conspiracy theory about the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and shows that the Black Hand leadership in Serbia not only had had nothing to with the assassination but was in fact desperate to prevent it as it had much better things to do at the time, such as staging a coup d´etat and grabbing power in Serbia.  Equally, Zametica is unimpressed by the argument that the Archduke was intending to reform the Habsburg Empire in a way that would make the South Slavs, after the Austrian Germans and the Hungarians, constitutionally the third factor in the Monarchy.  But, oh dear, Zametica´s book demonstrates that Franz Ferdinand had a complete aversion not only to the Slavs, but even more so towards the Hungarians - far from seeking a three-way constitutional reform (“Trialism”), he really wanted to establish the supremacy of the Austrian Germans with himself on top of a highly centralized state.  With regard to the July crisis of 1914, the best thing in Zametica´s book is that he actually finds the “smoking gun” in the war guilt debate - the German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg refused point blank on 6 July to accept the Austrian offer not to attack Serbia if Germany thought the international outlook not to be conducive.  Instead, Bethmann Hollweg urged Vienna to go ahead. I now consider all those historians who have recently been telling us that Germany´s role in 1914 was no more sinister than the roles played by the other Great Powers as being either naive or wicked.

[yperman]

You've sold it to me. By the way is it me or is Franz Ferdinand's death getting a bit like JFKs?

[Michael Thomas]

Is Franz Ferdinand´s death getting a bit like JFK´s?  Well, up to a point.  In the case of JFK we still don´t know for certain whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or whether there really existed a wider conspiracy. In the case of FF, John Zametica in his book “Folly and Malice” debunks the equivalent myth of powerful forces in Serbia (i.e., the Black Hand secret nationalist officers' organization) being behind the young Bosnians who assassinated the Archduke.    However, Zametica´s book newly-reveals a different conspiracy: that by the Austro-Hungarian government and Habsburg establishment, who apparently knew that Franz Ferdinand´s trip to Sarajevo might end in an assassination attempt, yet failed to stop him making that journey or even to tell him just why it might not be a good idea.

Now we know that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a highly unpopular figure at home, hated by the Habsburg elites, by his uncle Emperor Franz Joseph, and by the Hungarians, who saw FF as a deadly menace, rightly fearing that he would, once on the throne, try to dismantle the dualist system of the Monarchy.  Zametica's key evidence for a resultant conspiracy against Franz Ferdinand has to do with  the famous Serbian warning to the Austrians, delivered in early June 1914 by the Serbian representative in Vienna, Jovanovic, to Leon von Bilinski, the Austro-Hungarian minister in charge of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Jovanovic had been privately instructed to try and stop the Archducal visit to Bosnia - by buddy Colonel Apis, unofficial head of the Black Hand, who at that time scheming a putsch in Serbia, had found out about the plot against Franz Ferdinand and did not want any such complication arising with Austria-Hungary. Standard history books have dismissed this Serbian warning to Vienna as being too vague, claiming that Bilinski subsequently failed to to act following his meeting with Jovanovic.  But Zametica shows that Bilinski did act, that Foreign Minister Berchtold did receive the warning and that even the Emperor may have been informed.  

Moreover, it seems that the Germans, too, knew about the warning.  The respected Anglo-German historian John Röhl has repeatedly pointed out that there was something funny going on in the German Army just days before the Sarajevo assassination.  Analysing the Serbian warning to Vienna, Zametica draws attention to Röhl's startling but much neglected discovery: that on 16 June 1914 Georg von Waldersee, the Quartermaster-General of the German General Staff, ordered the military plenipotentiaries of Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg to cease communicating with their war ministries until further notice (Zametica, Folly and Malice, p.418). Why?  Because, according to Röhl, the German Army may have had foreknowledge of the Sarajevo assassination plot.  According to Zametica, the Germans may have obtained this information from Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff.  For by June 1914, having fallen out with Franz Ferdinand, Conrad knew that he was on the way out.   And as for the Germans, had they or had they not been scheming to start a European war ever since their famous “War Council” of December 1912, presided over by the Kaiser? Here was the excuse. That makes the FF conspiracy even more significant than any which may have got rid of JFK.

[yperman]

So along with France, Russia, Serbia, and  Germany we can now add Austria as the possible cause of  the Great War. I am eagerly awaiting my copy of 'Malice and folly' .

[MarkoG]

Actually, having read Folly and Malice recently, I'd say we can take the first three off the war-causing list. Russia? Too weak to want a war, and knew it, constantly telling Serbia not to provoke the beastly Austro-Hungarians, even if it was attacked by the latter. Serbia? Had its hands full with its post-Balkan War territories (Macedonia, Kosovo), and didn't want to fight an Empire ten times bigger. France? Wouldn't go in if Russia didn't, and neither of them fancied tangling with Germany. It was Austria-Hungary which felt there was nothing better to do than destroy Serbia and take proper control of south-eastern Europe, Russia's south-western flank. Germany liked the sound of that as well, and further felt that if things upscaled into world war as looked probable it would be a great time to wage it, with Russia still weak. It's not rocket science. The smoking gun of this German-Austrian arrangement on July 6, 1914, aka war guilt, is in the book.

Edited 11 February , 2018 by MarkoG

[Loader]

It was once stated somewhere, I can't recall, that it was the USA at fault for the war starting. Seems the theory was that it  President Wilson had been more forceful he could have talked the other nations into pulling back & talking. At the time the USA was not a strong nation, small army & navy compared to others & we had little influence in the world. Our hands full with Mexico as well. Nobody of the standing of the European nations would have given such pleas much notice & certainly act on them.

 I did also read once that Queen Victoria had been alive it never would have gotten to the point of war but who can say?

This new book sure does offer new events for consideration.

[BullerTurner]

Fond as I am of counter factuals and bombarded by TV documentaries bogging up Vicky's relationship with Kaiser Bill, I think I find it difficult to see how she could have stopped the war, had she been alive?  If the predicate is that she had a special relationship with Wilhelm, it is necessary to consider who was the real actor in that?  I feel that Wilhelm wasn't looking for a peace between our nations but rather for some personal leverage over firstly Edward VII and later over Nicky and George!  

 

The politics, papers and analysis of the period from Agadir onward make it clear that Wilhelm fully supported a European War, regardless of in which direction it initially focussed.

[MarkoG]

Don't think we can blame US or Britain. No one would have listened to faraway Americans, and even nearby Britain wasn't quite important enough to stop it.  It really was a war willed by the tops of the German and Austrian political trees - German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg enabled it to happen when he realised the whole Habsburg establishment was gagging for it

[Michael Thomas]

By the way, the classic argument for Britain´s share of war guilt is that Sir Edward Grey had failed to make it perfectly clear to the Germans that Britain would inevitably fight on the side of France and Russia in any continental conflict - as if Grey could have known this in advance!

[The Ibis]

Thanks everyone. It is indeed a very interesting book.