Why Austria-Hungary was RIGHT to Invade Serbia

June 28 1914 is a well-known date the heir to the austr Hungarian Throne France Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Saro by gillo princip a member of the black hand this event set off a chain reaction we all know too well about Austria declared war on Serbia leading Russia and much of Europe to get involved igniting World War I many essays articles and books cover the battles conflicts and political climate of the war there are countless YouTube videos detailing the Battle of done or explaining how the War Began however there's often a noticeable

Gap in discussing the very first action that set Europe a blaze the austr Hungarian Empire's declaration of war on Serbia this topic is covered somewhat but important facts and context are often missing it's clear the austrians were eager to settle the Serbian question and went through Great Lengths to do so the austr Hungarian military especially Field Marshal Conrad Von huten off frequently called for war the ultimatum sent to Serbia where they agreed to all but one demand gave Austria the perfect excuse to declare war at the end of the day the general view plenty of

people have is that that Serbia was an oppressed and innocent little country wholly lacking in responsibility for the assassination of the arch Duke and desirous of doing everything within the bounds of reason to satisfy the utterly unjustifiable and absurd demands of Austria Hungary who wanted to crush them in order to satisfy their militaristic and Savage thirst for blood in fact the commission appointed by the peace conference at Paris in 1919 even wrote in their reports that a crime committed by an austr Hungarian subject within territory of the dual monarchy can in no way compromise Serbia

the war had Arisen as a consequence of Austria hungary's deliberate intention to destroy this Brave Little Country overall it's not a good look The austr hungarians Have And even as someone who considers himself Pro Central Powers I have also seen people who share my thoughts on this also having a similar view of the matter at hand saying how Germany was trying its best to hold back the Rabid Austrian dog from igniting a fullscale European conflict so this time I want to take a step further I want to argue today in this video that there was

not only significant Merit to the concern of the austrians but even that The Invasion could be seen as completely Justified and that it really was the only way for the austrians to solve the issue of terrorism and instability in their South Slavic territories it's definitely not the boldest take in the history of my channel but it certainly is something that could raise some eyebrows and no worries I believe I do have sufficient points to bring to the table I believe that the time has finally come to re-evaluate Austria's intentions and concerns and interpret them not

as a brutal War mongering Nation but rather one that eventually chose the absolute Last Resort after everything else had failed but before going into the July crisis we need to take a small step back to the early 19th century from how everything went down one may get the impression that Serbia and Austria were some kind of sworn enemies clashing with each other for hundreds of years when the funny part is around 50 years before World War I Austria could have been considered Serbia's greatest Ally and the two had friendly relations with one another in 1881

when Serbia wasn't even a kingdom Prince Milan I signed a convention with the dual monarchy which would make their relationship official and this convention was mutually beneficial for both sides Christopher Clark in the Sleepwalker book considered the best modern work on the events leading up to World War I would write about the Convention as follows in June June 1881 Austria Hungary and Serbia agreed a commercial treaty 3 weeks later it was supplemented by a secret convention negotiated and signed by Prince Milan himself which stipulated that Austria Hungary would not only assist Serbia in its efforts

to secure elevation to the status of a kingdom but would also support Serbian claims to territorial annexations in Macedonia Serbia for its part agreed not to undermine the monarchy's position in bosan heroina Article 2 stated that Serbia would not permit any political religious or other Intrigue to be directed from her territory against the austr Hungarian monarchy it was a win-win situation for both sides the austrians would not have to worry as much about their National Security in the South while the serbs received both the political and Military Support needed to realize their Southward Ambitions and

eventually proclaim a proper her kingdom the austrians would also support Serbia four years later during the serbo Bulgarian War which could have gone worse for the serbs had the monarchy not demanded Bulgaria to stop its Invasion and this relationship would continue on for many more years with King Alexander the trying his best to continue the Austrian policy set about by his father and everything was looking up until on the 10th of June 1903 Military Officers with the support of the people's radical party surrounded the Royal residents and assassinated King Alexander his wife draga and the

then Serbian prime minister alongside any other royal family members they came across and the sworn Rivals of the arenovich dynasty the karajovic ascended the position of the official Serbian royal family now the conspirators had several different grievances with with King Alexander the and this was by no means an act with a singular motivation but among the Grievances was the fact that they believed Serbia was a tad bit too friendly with Austria and their goal was to Cozy up to Russia instead and secretly continue the Ambitions of destabilizing ostros Slavic territories with the end goal being

their total emancipation from the Austrian yoke and the majority of the conspirators including one Dragon Dimitri would later become members of the black hand with dmitrievich becoming its leader Austria was naturally shocked and outraged at what took place in Belgrade not only had they lost a vital Ally in the Balkans but the royal family was literally [Music] slaughtered which abs absolutely did not look good for the korovich Dynasty and yet the austrians decided to First approach this crisis diplomatically after 6 years of tensions Austria and Serbia finally came to an agreement which would supposedly see

the tensions ease in what is called the March 1909 agreement it was pretty similar to the 1881 convention with the serbs renouncing their claims on Austrian territory and suppressing anti-austrian insurrectionary groups in return the austrians would recognize the new Serbian royal family and return relations to a more neutral point but Serbia could not count on Austrian support unlike previously at this point the only thing the dual monarchy wanted was for its National Security to not be threatened and as long as Serbia fulfilled those promises they would be satisfied Clark would write in the event Austria

Hungary of course prevailed and Belgrade was for fored formally to renounce its claims on the 31st of March 1909 with great difficulty the government managed to calm the agitation Belgrade promised Vienna that it would disarm and break up its quotequote volunteers and bands cska Nara Odana was divested of its insurrectionary and War waging functions and transformed outwardly at least into a peaceful pan Serbian propaganda and information agency Serbia would show its commitment to the agreement by as Clark stated declawing the Nara odbrana Association of any insurrectionary sentiments but as you will see later on in

the video this would be the only and last time Serbia would act on This Promise as we all know in June 1914 France Ferdinand was assassinated by the black hand and this was the justification for the dual monarchy to invade Serbia plenty of people could call it a stretch for the dual monarchy to invade Serbia due to this one incident but the assassination of the arch Duke was not an isolated case in 1910 only a year after the 1909 agreement Serbian revolutionary Bogdan jerich attempted to assassinate the governor of Bosnia Marian vesin but was unsuccessful

whether jerich had any association with revolutionary associations in Serbia is unknown and it could have very well B that he was acting on his own but one thing remains certain jerich had an enormous impact of inspiration for other groups especially for the black hand which would be officially founded only a year later in 1911 since the assassination attempt on vesin the Empire saw an enormous Spike of insurrectionary and terrorist activities within her South Slavic Clans a large number of them having a connection to the Black Hand Clark would write shite's attack marked the beginning of

the systematic use of political terrorism against the political Elite of the Habsburg Empire there were seven further similar incidents and more than a dozen other abortive plots were detected in the South Slavic provinces of the Empire during the three years between J's death and the Fatal shots of the 28th of June 1914 in Saro the black hand carried out their operations by training indiv uals within Serbia first with weapons then smuggling them back secretly across the austr Hungarian border alongside weapons to carry out the attack and then either have them drink poison in the aftermath

or smuggle them right back into Serbia to avoid Imperial authorities it was basically the political terrorist equivalent of hidden run tactics and since all of these groups were headquartered in Serbia and planned and Supply their operations from there there really was not much the austrians could do on their home turf to successfully root them out Sean mcmein in his book on the July crisis would write how the black hand pretty much established an underground Railway for terrorists to use back and forth the black hand provided more to the wouldbe Assassins than weapons and training over

the years the organization had built a sort of Underground Railroad or tunnel of terrorism it was not hard to smuggle individuals with fake papers onto Austrian territory but smuggling weapons required a deaf touch gabilo princip and his co-conspirators would in fact be trained within Serbian territory first on how they could shoot guns and throw bombs and then be easily later on smuggled into imperial territory to carry out the deed on the arch dukee the assassination was not an isolated incident there was an entire underground systematic terrorist Network headquartered in Serbia which would carry out these

attacks for around 3 years the killing of the arch Duke was just the last straw which made the dual monarchy finally react and here comes the Crux of the issue whether you believe the Imperial government was correct in their attitude towards Serbia was the Serbian government involved in any way with the assassination and if so to what extent I will come out and say this directly the government had absolutely no association with the black hand nor is there evidence to suggest that they had any involvement in the assassination whatsoever you are not for many people

this is an open and shut case if the government was not involved in any way then they should not bear any responsibility for what happened and here comes the main argument of my point while it is true that it had no involvement the government was not only only aware of the plot beforehand but they even attempted to cover it up potentially on behalf of the black hand after the fact so stick with me here for a moment in 1924 a few years after the end of the war a considerable volume was published in Belgrade celebrating

the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of the war and the realization of Greater Serbia and the unification of the South slaves one article within his volume was titled the blood of slav them written by the then minister of Education lamir yovanovich under the cabinet of prime minister Nicola pasic who oversaw the July crisis and in this article yovanovich dropped an absolute bombshell confessing that the Serbian prime minister as well as the entire cabinet were fully aware of the assassination plot against the arch Duke a full month beforehand at the outbreak of World War I I

was minister of educ in pich's cabinet I do not remember whether it was at the end of May or the beginning of June when one day pasich said to us that certain persons were making ready to go to Saro to murder France Ferdinand who was to go there to be solemnly received on St VI day as they told me afterward this plot was hatched by a group of secretly organized persons and by patriotic Boston students in Belgrade but I will give credit where credit is due it would be PA to say that the government did

absolutely nothing to warn the empire pasich did in fact send some kind of warning to vien beforehand I am saying some kind of because this warning was extremely vague to the point of not being helpful and probably could not even be considered a proper warning the warning basically consisted of not advising the arch Duke to visit Saro due to Regional unrest and that was it nothing of a planned assassination plot just a vague mention of recent unrest something the dual monarchy absolutely could not work with historian Henry Elmer Barnes in his book The Genesis of

the world war would write how this could not even have been considered a proper warning in spite of this information in the possession of the Serbian cabinet the Serbian government took no active Steps either to frustrate the plot or to warn the Austrian government of the danger to the arch Duke in his prospective visit to s Evo as Professor Fay puts it the Austrian foreign office never received any proper warning of any kind from the Serbian government even Clark concedes that this message was absolutely not adequate to the situation at hand and that it wouldn't

be outrageous to say that it perhaps even was a covering maneuver that if the assassination did take place and the government was under scrutiny they could refer to the warning and claim that they did their job in short a warning of sorts was sent but not one that was adequate to the situation in retrospect it was the look of a covering maneuver yovanovich could have issued a more specific and forthright warning by providing the austrians with the best information to hand in Belgrade pasich 2 could have informed the austrians directly of the danger rather than

via yovanovich he could have launched a real investigation of the conspiracy and risk his own office rather than the peace and security of his Nation when the assassination eventually did take place there was of course a lot of outrage in Vienna and several parties were indeed calling for war but the Imperial government did agree to first attempt to clear up the issue diplomatically in cooperation with the Serbian government the dual monarchy sent a request to Serbia to conduct an inside investigation into the matter first and while they did go through with it it was extremely

clear that this was no proper investigation at all the Serbian investigation was Hasty to say the least concluding in just a week that no ties existed between the plotters and Belgrade and that one of the plotters Milan sigovich had apparently never even existed clarkwood state yet despite official assurances the Serbian authorities never conducted investigation proportionate to the gravity of the crime and the crisis to which it had given rise at the gr's prompting interior Minister protic did to be sure order vasil lazarovich chief of police in the Serbian Capital to look into the Assassin's links

with the city a week lazarovich closed his quotequote investigation with a cheerful announcement of the effect that the assassination Saro had no connection whatsoever with the Serbian Capital no one by the name of sigovich the chief of police added existed or had ever existed in Belgrade plent of Imperial diplomats notably willhelm runto did genuinely try working with the Serbian government in regards the black hand and what other connections they had within their country and while pasich assured them that they would receive all the support they needed I will let Clark elaborate on this when St

solicited the assistance of the Serbian police and foreign Ministry in locating a group of students suspected of planning a further assassination he was provided with such a model of obfuscation and contradictory information that he concluded that the Serbian foreign Ministry was incapable of operating as a trustworthy partner despite the assurances of Nicola pasich there was no preemptive Crackdown against the black hand appus the leader of the black hand remained in office and pasid dentive investigation of the Border regiments involved in smuggling operations fell far short of what was needed even MCM acknowledges this in his

book that prime minister pasage did not make any genuine efforts to assist the austrians in this regard pasich almost certainly did not approve of the plot when he learned of it but he made only an ineffectual half-hearted effort to foil the assassination whether because he feared a coup or the reaction from Vienna if he revealed what the black hand was up to the only things we know for certain are that high Serbian officials were complicit in the crime and that pasich neither prevented it nor gave the austrians any genuine help in investigating it but there's

certainly was a strategy here in the way Serbia was quotequote cooperating the serbs naturally saw themselves as the victims here and they also believed that the dual monarchy deserved what happened for pasich the assassination had nothing to do with quot unquote official Serbia from this Viewpoint any action taken against those involed D in the assassination would imply that Serbia was responsible for the crime on the other hand by keeping a cool distance Belgrade would send the message that they saw the issue as purely a hapsburg problem that Vienna politicians were unfairly trying to exploit against

Serbia from their point of view Serbian leaders saw the Dual monarchy's accusations as an unprovoked attack on Serbia's reputation and they responded with cold silence while this made sense within Serbian politics I don't think it's hard for you to imagine how much his approach and unwillingness to properly cooperate infuriated the austrians to them it just confirmed that Serbia shared responsibility for the disaster above all the repeated denials from Belgrade and unwillingness to work with Vienna just convinced the Empire that any form of actual diplomatic means to resolve the crisis would fall on deaf ears keep

in mind the dual monarchy had attempted previously to deal with Serbia through diplomacy in 1909 Serbia promised to crack down on insurrectionary groups and they completely failed in that regard and as a consequence the arch Duke was shot on top of that they refused any proper cooperation with Imperial authorities after the assassination and the message sent to Vienna was clear we will not work with you go screw yourself as you can imagine the Empire saw the situation as dire for policy makers in both Vienna and Budapest Serbia was now little more than a rogue State

action was not a question or a suggestion anymore it was a necessity thus leading the Empire to decide on one last measure on the 23rd of July 1914 the dual monarchy officially gave out the infamous ultimatum to the Serbian government failure to meet these demands would mean War the Empire made that point very clearly and Serbia responded as everyone knows by accepting All Points except for a singular one and that this was enough of a justification for the war hungry Empire to declare war and crush them again this does not look good for the dual

monarchy at first glance and I would not fault people for getting that impression but as always let let's dig a bit deeper there were two controversial points in the ultimatum with Serbia denying the fifth one and they are point five to accept the collaboration in Serbia for representatives of the austr Hungarian government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the territorial Integrity of the monarchy and point six to take judicial proceedings against accessories to the plot of the 28th of June who are on Serbian territory delegates of the austr Hungarian government will take

part in the investigation relating there too it's pretty clear that these points demanded that the dual monarchy would take part in investigation of the matter on Serbian soil alongside Serbian authorities and that Serbia would prosecute those involved with the assassination with Imperial supervision these were the two supposedly outrageous points Serbia could not under any circumstance accept these two points most definitely do violate Serbian sovereignty since they involed involve authorities from another country being involved in investigations and Court proceedings but I ask you considering how the Serbian government acted beforehand can you blame the austrians for

demanding this there had been absolutely nothing to give credibility to the fact that the Serbian government was reliable and trustworthy to carry out these proceedings on their own they could just as easily close the case after a week and then claim another guy apparently never existed just like they did before the dual monarchy gave the serbs plenty of chances to prove themselves to be willing to cooperate and every single time that proved futile Clark would also very much concede on this point the reason is obvious enough Vienna did not trust the Serbian authorities to press

home the investigation without some form of Austrian supervision and verification and it must be said that nothing the Serbian government did between the 28th of June and the presentation of the ultimatum gave them any reason to think otherwise furthermore it also needs to be brought up that every other point in the ultimatum depended on points five and six only with Imperial supervision could the rest of the ultimatum be enforced by denying either of these two which were the most important of any other point it would be as if the Serbian government had denied the entirety

of it that one point Serbia denied was not some strange isolated one as many were led to believe the entire ultimatum depended on it Barnes would emphasize this as well it is certain that the total failure of Serbia's past promises to put down intrigues against Austria within our boundaries had made it quite apparent to the Vienna Statesmen that Serbia could not be trusted to carry out her promises in this regard if there was to be any Prospect of a suppression of the nationalistic plots this would have to be achieved under Austrian supervision it must be

clear then that 0 five was the real core of the Austrian ultimatum for Serbia to reject this meant for all practical purposes the rejection of the whole ultimatum but this was exactly the point which Serbia refused to conceive I do recognize that there is more or less an ongoing debate on the exact nature of the ultimatum plenty of people say that the ultimatum was genuine and expected to be accepted While others claim that the ultimatum was purposefully made very harsh and expected of Serbia to be rejected in order to give way for war but in

my personal opinion and this is not a citation but just my view on the matter while it is for certain that a good portion of the austr Hungarian political Elite sought War if the ultimatum was expected to be rejected it would have been a lot harsher I believe that those who say that the ultimatum was extremely harsh even those people at the time did not fully grasp the situation and climate that made the dual monarchy give out those demands someone who looked into the ultimatum without any previous knowledge or context on what was going on

naturally would see it as extremely harsh but putting it all into context and considering Serbia's previous track record while it does still sound harsh it wasn't completely unreasonable even if we for the sake of argument do say that the ultimatum was expected to be rejected it still does not change the fact that one Serbia failed to uphold her promises from 1909 to the Serbian government being aware of the plot but refusing to properly warn and three being completely unwilling to cooperate with Imperial authorities after the ACT due to these three points the Empire naturally came

to the conclusion that any further diplomatic efforts were futile the serbs had three chances to prove themselves and they did not act upon them the only way one could argue that the measures undertaken by the Imperial government were immoral or unjustified is by proving in some way that the Serbian government was willing to and genuinely try to cooperate but unfortunately it just doesn't look like it I will finish this section off with one more quote from Barnes who put it beautifully the fact that Austria from the beginning intended war and that the ultimatum was not

only severe but not made in good faith does not in itself demonstrate that Austria was wrong or immoral in her conduct such a concl clusion could be arrived that only by proving that anything less than War would have been adequate to clear up the Serbian Menace and by showing that Austria could have proceeded to a war with Serbia in some manner less likely to incite Russia and France to legitimate intervention no one to the writer's knowledge has yet been able to bring forward conclusive evidence to establish either of these two potential indictments of Austrian procedure

the dual monarchy faced a difficult Choice back down and risk humiliation on the world stage which would embolden the black hand and other Insurgent groups leading to increased terrorism and Chaos in their South Slavic territories thus endangering National Security alternatively they could declare war on Serbia believing the conflict would remain localized similar to previous conflicts like the Balkan Wars or the Italo Turkish War austr Hungarian policy makers thought that such a minor conflict wouldn't disrupt The Diplomatic stability of Europe and well we know how that turned out for them the security and integrity of the

empire were the top priorities and who could blame them really I know what some people are now expecting me to say that I believe Serbia should be blamed for causing the first world war but despite believing Serbia was in the wrong here and that the dual monarchy was just justified in its approach I would not go as far as to claim that they should be seen as some main culprit because remember what I have talked about here should only be seen as one aspect in the complex topic that is the first world war focusing solely

on Serbia and the Empire during the July crisis I have not even talked about what role Russia had played I was planning to but then I realized that this script would take up 10 more pages and then I would have to bring up France and oh boy does it go on and on let me be absolutely clear here there were no villains in The Great War it was simply a clash of conflicting national interests that could not be reconciled every country was acting to advance their interests and spot on the world stage including Serbia I

absolutely do not fault them for having the Ambitions that they had from their perspect perspective it did make sense as to why they acted the way they did why it was of course to unify the South slaves under their rule so naturally they're going to act in ways to realize this very clearly going against hapsburg interest and security and in the end they did get their dream do I believe that I could switch everyone to the austr Hungarian team with this video with everything I have presented here no not really in fact I know well

that there will be people who will acknowledge everything here but still prefer to side with Serbia either because they like them or see their interests aligning with theirs and you know what that is completely fine I don't think it's inherently bad for someone to believe that one side had good reasons to act the way they did and still side with the other side I mean imagine a Serb going up against their own country because of this and cheering on Imperial soldiers entering Belgrade it's just ludicrous attempting to do this is like trying to make your

dog or cat vegan as the saying goes s but for those who are looking into this through a more neutral and curious Viewpoint I at least hope it has helped you shape your understanding of the complex topic of which there are hundreds and hundreds of layers of you don't have to agree with me on everything nor do I really expect you to but I would say my main point of this video has been to challenge the commonly held perspective and caricature of the Dual monarchy as a warmongering beast that was waiting for any opportunity to

attack Serbia and I do believe that I have succeeded in some regards to this in the field of History It's always important to consider different perspectives challenging both ourselves and The Wider historical narrative within reason of course it provides us with a unique and meaningful Insight not just on how historical events took place but most importantly of all shed some light on the multifaceted nature of the driving force behind it all the Human Condition anyway that has all been for today and I will see you all next time