Summary of Sean McMeekin's July 1914

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the declaration of war by Serbia on Austria-Hungary. It quickly spread across Europe, and the government officials in Austria decided that the only response was war.

#2 Conrad, the army chief of staff, was as stubborn as Franz Ferdinand. He had been advocating the destruction of Serbia since the First Bosnian Crisis in 1908, and he was never going to back down now.

#3 The news of the assassinations shocked Vienna. Some thought it was an inside job, cooked up by German or Austrian intelligence. Others suspected Hungarian minister-president Tisza, who may have seen Franz Ferdinand as a threat to Hungary’s privileged position in the dual monarchy.

#4 The mood in Vienna was somber, while in Bad Ischl, the alpine spa town southwest of Vienna where the Habsburg emperor preferred to spend the summer months, the atmosphere was more lighthearted. The picture beginning to emerge in reports from Sarajevo was disturbing but also clarifying: there had been multiple assassins on the Appelquai, all of them Bosnian Serbs with murky ties to secret societies inside Serbia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822526198

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Sean McMeekin's July 1914

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the declaration of war by Serbia on Austria-Hungary. It quickly spread across Europe, and the government officials in Austria decided that the only response was war.

#2

Conrad, the army chief of staff, was as stubborn as Franz Ferdinand. He had been advocating the destruction of Serbia since the First Bosnian Crisis in 1908, and he was never going to back down now.

#3

The news of the assassinations shocked Vienna. Some thought it was an inside job, cooked up by German or Austrian intelligence. Others suspected Hungarian minister-president Tisza, who may have seen Franz Ferdinand as a threat to Hungary’s privileged position in the dual monarchy.

#4

The mood in Vienna was somber, while in Bad Ischl, the alpine spa town southwest of Vienna where the Habsburg emperor preferred to spend the summer months, the atmosphere was more lighthearted. The picture beginning to emerge in reports from Sarajevo was disturbing but also clarifying: there had been multiple assassins on the Appelquai, all of them Bosnian Serbs with murky ties to secret societies inside Serbia.

#5

The war party in Austria was making progress, as the Hungarian minister-president Tisza called on Franz Josef I to protest the planned attack on Serbia. The Hungarian was loyal to Austria, not Germany.

#6

The chief of staff, Conrad, proposed that Austria-Hungary mobilize against Serbia beginning on Wednesday, 1 July. Berchtold, taking a different tack than he had with Tisza, said that public opinion must be prepared.

#7

The chief of staff, Count Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, was a reflective man who had given serious thought to the roiling national tensions that threatened to tear asunder the dual monarchy. He was bent on war, backed by Austria’s minister-president and the common imperial finance and war ministers.

#8

Franz Josef I, the emperor of Austria-Hungary, was 81 years old when he heard about the assassination. He had just recovered from a bout of bronchitis severe enough that, in April, Ferdinand had kept an engine under steam to whisk him to Vienna if he died. Many feared that the empire would die with him.

#9

The Habsburg emperor, Franz Josef, was noncommittal during his audiences with Berchtold and Tisza, but he did reveal his deepest forebodings about Russia not to Berchtold or Tisza, but to the German ambassador, Tschirschky.

#10

On 1 July, the same day Tisza presented his antiwar memorandum to the Emperor, Conrad visited the Ballplatz to sound out the foreign minister. Berchtold informed the chief of staff of Tisza’s stout opposition to waging war on Serbia.

#11

The funeral of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to take place in Vienna on Friday, 3 July. It would be the perfect occasion for the Austrians to approach the Germans with Tisza’s peace initiative and win