[male narrator] The 5th of July, 1914.

The Archduke and Duchess are dead.

Gavrilo Princip is in jail

but catastrophe is not yet certain.

Act Two begins.

We open on an Austrian delegation arriving in Potsdam.

It is now a week after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

The Austrians want to take action.

They want war with the Serbs,

who they think are behind the group of ragged young men

that actually pulled the trigger.

But before they can have their war,

they decide they must consult with their much stronger ally:

The German Empire.

So they send a delegation to Potsdam

to meet with the Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

They've been restrained before by Germany,

held back from acting in the Balkans,

so they need to know what Germany plans to do.

They go to the Kaiser and tell him that this is intolerable,

that they cannot abide such a humiliation,

that they cannot let this act of terrorism go unpunished.

And the Kaiser says to them, “We'll back you, whatever you do.

"Just act and act quickly.

Germany is behind you, without reservation.”

The Kaiser thinks that general war can be avoided,

that if the Austrians strike while all of Europe is enraged over this assassination,

if they act while the brutal slaughter of the Archduke and Duchess

is still fresh in people's minds,

no one will raise a finger to defend Serbia.

And even if--

even if the Russian Empire decided that they wanted to protect their Serbian allies,

if the Austrians can strike quickly it'll be a fait accompli

The war will be over before the Russians can mobilize their forces.

This is what he thinks as he tells the Austrian delegation

that they have a blank check,

that Germany will back them whatever they do.

And then he goes on vacation--

on a boat for three weeks, where he can't be reached.

So the Austrians come home, German assurances in hand,

but in Austria there's disagreement.

The Hungarian part of their empire initially objects to war.

They hoped that a peaceful solution might be found.

But their voice is alone.

Where were the other voices of reason or the other arguments for peace?

Dead on the streets of Sarajevo.

The Archduke was perhaps the greatest defender of the Serbs in the Empire,

and so when moderation was called for,

the parties for war simply had to point to his death and say,

“He was their greatest friend and look what they did to him!

What do you think they're gonna do to us?”

And all arguments were quelled.

So, at last, the Hungarians relented on one condition,

a condition that will be important later--

that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would not annex a foot of Serbian land.

And with that, the Austrians began drafting an ultimatum to Serbia.

But this ultimatum is delayed by a chance for peace.

Two men, rivals in the heart of Serbia,

in Belgrade, the very capital in the center of this crisis,

are two of the only men farsighted enough

to see the clouds gathering on the edge of Europe.

They are the ambassador from Austria and the ambassador from Russia to Serbia.

They both have come to the same conclusion about where this storm will end,

so they plan to put aside their differences

and meet to perhaps work out a plan for peace.

On the 10th of July, the Russian ambassador arrives

at the house of the ambassador from Austria-Hungary.

The details are agreed to.

The plan is set.

All that's left is one final meeting to perhaps smooth out tensions,

to avert world war.

They talk, they take cigarettes.

Both sides are open, things are going well,

and then WHAM--

The Russian ambassador falls dead of a heart attack.

Nothing signed.

No war stopped.

The Serbians blame the Austrians.

Rumors circulate that they had the Russian ambassador assassinated,

that the Austrian ambassador killed him in his own house.

Worse still, this leaves the Russians without an ambassador in Serbia.

As events begin to accelerate toward war,

they have no diplomatic channel at the center of everything.

No lines of communication.

No eyes or ears on the ground.

They have nobody with the experience, connections, or familiarity with Serbia

that the former ambassador had to send out.

And even if they did, it'd take weeks to get them appointed

and shipped from Moscow to Sarajevo.

Weeks they don't have.

But with this last overture turning to catastrophe,

the Austrians decide it's finally time to send their ultimatum.

But they can't.

Again, they delay.

You see, President Poincaré the leader of France,

is going to Russia to meet with the czar.

And the Austrians, ever nervous, decide that they can't send the ultimatum

while their two greatest adversaries are meeting together in the same place.

It would never do.

They could make decisions too quickly.

They could coordinate in ways they normally couldn't when they're a thousand miles apart.

So the Austrians delay.

They wait until Poincaré is a hundred miles out to sea

before sending their ultimatum.

But at last, on the 23rd of July,

an ultimatum is sent from the Austrians to the Serbs.

The Serbs have 48 hours to agree to all points,

or face war.

The ultimatum asks many things,

but most of all it asks that Austrian police be granted free reign

to investigate the assassination on Serbian soil.

This is impossible.

To agree to such a thing is tantamount to giving up sovereignty.

No nation would accept this.

But that's all right because the ultimatum is only a ruse anyway,

a cover for with the Austrians really want.

The Austrians want war.

They want the ultimatum to be rejected

because they want to appear to the world

as though they gave the Serbs a chance to avoid a conflict.

They want to appear blame-free for the invasion they're planning.

And here's where things begin to speed up.

Europe begins to boil.

Up until this point, the crisis in the Balkans is just another event on the world stage,

but all of a sudden, with the release of this ultimatum,

people start to clue into what's happening.

Powers outside of Austria, Germany, and Serbia begin to pay attention.

But for us, we're gonna turn our attention to one man:

Sergei Sazonov.

Sergei Sazonov was the foreign minister of Russia,

and for him the 24th of July is about to be a very, very busy day.

In the morning,

he wakes to receive the terms of the ultimatum that Austria sent to Serbia.

He reads quietly to himself,

then turns to an aide and fatefully utters,

“It's a European war.”

A cabinet meeting is hastily assembled.

The highest levels of the Russian government are all there.

They resolve to ask the Austrians to give the Serbs more time,

while at the same time pushing the Serbs not to resist the Austrians.

They also make the fateful decision to begin a partial mobilization

of their forces along the Austrian border,

trying to play all the angles at once in the schizophrenic chaos

that seemed all too common in the days just before the war.

Now it's noon.

Sazonov takes lunch with the French and British ambassador.

The French ambassador reiterates France's complete support.

The British ambassador says that Britain sympathizes,

but that he can't make any commitments.

Now it's afternoon.

The Russian ministers reconvene.

With Sazonov confirming the unwavering support of the French,

they decide to fully back Serbia, even to the point of war.

And now it's evening.

Sazonov meets with Pourtàles, the ambassador from Germany.

Pourtàles begs Sazonov to call off Russian mobilization.

He tells him that there must be solidarity between the monarchies,

that they must work together or all fall alone.

The argument gets heated.

Pourtàles tell Sazonov there will be revolution--

revolution in Europe if the monarchies did not work together.

If they don't work together, all of the crowns will fall.

And he's right.

Within five years, all the great monarchies of Europe,

true monarchies, monarchies where the monarch was the head of state,

would collapse.

Within five years, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

the Russian Empire, and the German Empire would be no more,

their kings dispossessed,

thousands of years of monarchical tradition burned away

in the fires of cataclysmic war.

Then something tragic happens.

It's one of those small tragedies that lines the path to the First World War,

those things that tear you up

as you read about these events with perfect hindsight.

It's one of those moments that almost makes this seem like a script,

like a high drama constructed for the stage,

until you realize how real it is.

Real enough to wipe out a generation.

For you see, Sazonov utters the words

“If Austria-Hungary swallows Serbia, we will go to war.”

Did you catch it?

If not, that's all right.

Neither did Pourtàles.

Poor Pourtàles, who so desperately wants to avoid war.

You see, Russia's main concern was that Austria would annex Serbia.

If the Austrians planned to conquer Serbia, then it had to be war.

But remember earlier

when the Austro-Hungarians were arguing among themselves about the ultimatum,

that Hungarian element wouldn't lend its voice to war

unless the other members of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

agreed that they would not annex a foot of Serbian soil.

Well, nobody told Pourtàles.

He was the German ambassador, not the Austrian ambassador,

and somehow the memo never got to him

that the Austrians had no plans to actually take over Serbia.

So in their whole discussion,

he never gets to communicate this to Sazonov.

This may be one of the last moments where the world could have avoided this war.

Pourtàles' impassioned begging for peace.

Sazonov firmly stating the Russian case.

The two diplomats meeting in the quiet St. Petersburg night.

But the world hinges on small things,

and in that gentle night,

one of the last the world would know for years,

the opportunity is missed.

The hands of fate tighten around the neck of Europe.

The next day, the Austrians reject demands that they extend the deadline;

the Kaiser at last decides to return to Germany;

and two minutes before the ultimatum expires,

the Serbians send Austria their reply.

But that's a story for next time.

We'll see you then.

♪ ♪

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