By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--September 1, 2024

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There’s a kind of scheduled ritual I find myself settling into each year during the summer. The days are longer and even after a day’s work there is time in the evening to look back. June 28 was the terrible day in 1914 when Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia, killing both of them. Years ago I had to make an effort to remember the day as it approached, but now there is no escaping it. The assassination set in motion a crisis that simmered all through July, ending in mobilization and the clash of arms in the first days of August, 1914. Toward the end of June I usually pick up one of the memorable histories of those days. This year it is Max Hastings’ Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War. Knopf published it in 2013. In these pages one finds great drama, desperate struggles, villains, heroes and sometimes brilliance.

I start to read about the diplomatic crisis and the cables and responses that went back and forth between emperors and the Tsar and presidents and prime ministers and foreign secretaries. We have near-perfect knowledge now of just how the calamity developed in the heat of that summer. Europe had been an armed camp for many years by the time the Archduke went to visit Bosnia to show the flag of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. When a Serb fanatic touched a spark to the tinder, the alliance system crafted to keep the balance of power in Europe provided a straight road to war. Millions on all sides joined the fray.

The Austrians and Russians and Germans and the French and then Britain mobilized their forces in the first days of August 1914, then secret plans many years in the making were put into play. Austria focused on the Serbs and the Russians moved toward Austria and the German lands in East Prussia. The French moved into Lorraine because it was the shortest way to get to Germany. Britain moved her small army across the Channel to stand with the French. The Germans moved north and then west, attacking Belgium and violating her neutrality before turning west and then southwest into the Battle of the Frontiers and a full-blown invasion of France from the northeast. Along the Belgian frontier and then in northern France, the French and British resisted when possible but........

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