July 1914
Countdown to War
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4.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The definitive account of the month after Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, revealing how reckless statesmen directly led to World War I.
“Almost impossible to put down ... A punchy and riveting narrative.” —New York Review of Books
When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, no one could have imagined the shocking bloodshed that would soon follow. Indeed, as acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for the actions of a small group of statesmen in the month after the assassination. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind—from Austrian Foreign Minster Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French President Raymond Poincaré—each sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand’s murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 draws on troves of new evidence to show how a single month—and a handful of men—changed the course of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McMeekin's newest (after The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany's Bid for World Power) is a superbly researched political history of the weeks between the assassination of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of World War I. Many historians believe that had Austria acted decisively in that interim, the "War to End All Wars" may have been averted. Instead, the Austrian government vacillated, finally taking decisive action after more than a month of convoluted and awkward diplomatic maneuvering. Relying on extensive research in numerous archives, as well as diaries and correspondence from key national leaders, McMeekin examines the intricacies of Austrian politics and diplomacy to explain the delay, carefully reconstructing the exploits of leading actors particularly the Austrians and their crucial false assumption that Russia would not mobilize in defense of Serbia. Though the account is full of honest men making difficult decisions under extreme pressure, there are also numerous examples of intentional deceit, even among allies like Austria and Germany, and France and the United Kingdom. McMeekin's work is a fine diplomatic history of the period, a must-read for serious students of WWI, and a fascinating story for anyone interested in modern history. 17 b&w images.
