Name: World War I: The Seminal Tragedy - The Final Act - Extra History - #4
Uploaded: 2022-06-26T23:01:57.000Z
Duration: 11 min 55 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

A group of haggard-looking men sit  in a dim room in the ministry in Belgrade.

One of them holds the Austrian  ultimatum in his hands.

They've spent the day  debating how to reply.

Defeated, they're about to  give in to all demands.

It says that the Russians  have started to mobilize.

They change their reply,  and the final act begins.

In their reply, the Serbians agree  to nine out of ten Austrian demands.

They only refuse to allow Austrian officials  to have police powers within Serbia.

an act of genius in  the way it concludes.

For, at the end, it says that if the  Austrians don't find their terms to be fair,

the Serbians are more than willing to  submit to the resolution of a conference.

But if you'll remember,  the Austrians hate conferences.

They are always getting  out-voted at those things.

but like always, they turn to their  German allies for advice.

so Austrian's foreign minister Berchtold  goes to consult Bethmann Hollweg

and Moltke, the head of  the German army.

We're losing the sympathies  of the people of Europe."

You see, after the  assassination of the Archduke,

public opinion in Europe  weighed heavily against Serbia.

It was politically impossible  for anybody to support them then.

and this reply, this meeting of  most of the Austrian demands

and this offer for mediation, made  the Serbs seem like the reasonable party.

After all, what more could  Austria want?

So with the rebukes of the  Germans driving him,

and for the first time speaks  with Conrad von Hötzendorf,

the Chief of Staff of  the Austrian army.

“You needed to tell us weeks ago  if that's what you wanted to do!

“The Austrian army won't be ready for war  until the 14th of August, weeks from now!

“Plus, we don't even know  who we're mobilizing against.

“You want us to prepare  for war with Serbia?

“Yeah, not when Russia's  mobilized against us, we aren't.

“Get us a guarantee of Russian  neutrality and then maybe,

maybe, we can talk about  mobilizing against the Serbs."

Despondent, pressured toward  war by the Germans,

told that Austria isn't ready  by his own Chief of Staff,

Berchtold returns home  and begins to think.

As the hours grow later, he starts to  convince himself there's way out of this.

He starts to reason that declaring war  isn't necessarily the same as being at war.

he'll placate the Germans  and be able to use that threat

before he even needs the Austrian  army to be ready to fight.

Now we can all see this for the  desperate rationalization that it is.

We've all at one time or another gotten  ourselves into an impossible situation

and let ourselves believe in  some wild, hair-brained solution

Only when we do that, the fate of the world  isn't usually hanging in a balance.

with Berchtold all the while believing  he's going to bring peace by declaring war.

But that morning,  the morning of the 28th,

That very morning, the Kaiser  read the Serbian response

"With this, every reason  for war drops away."

And here is one of the great tragedies  of those frantic July days leading to the war.

This man, Wilhelm II, for all his  inadequacies, for all his failings,

for once in his life steps up and  tries to become the man he should be,

the man who deserves to rule  the most powerful nation in the world.

And yet, despite his  best attempt, he's too late.

things spiral into chaos, war comes,  and his empire will fall.

Belgrade, the Serbian capital, is just a few  miles from the Austrian border.

If the Austrian army  occupies the capital,

while showing the rest of Europe  that they don't plan to annex Serbia.

And they can do it quickly enough to  perhaps keep the Russians out of the war.

But this proposal has  to go through Bethmann,

Now get this: It's 1914,  so as impossible as it seems,

there was no telephone line  between Berlin and Potsdam.

He's pretty skeptical of the  Halt in Belgrade plan,

but instead of making the drive  to Potsdam for clarification,

字幕リスト動画再生

World War I: The Seminal Tragedy - The Final Act - Extra History - #4

struggle

force

attempt

convince