The Final Crisis 881
“The Vortex—Will the powers be drawn in?” This image of the Balkan Wars, 1912—
1913, had a ring of prophetic accuracy.
South Slav nationalism gained more adherents in the Balkans. After
backing down against Austria-Hungary for the second time (the first having
been the Bosnian Crisis in 1908), Sazonov irresponsibly placated the Serbs
by telling them that their promised land lay inside the frontiers of Hungary.
Some Serb political leaders sympathized with the young fanatics of “The
People s Will” and “The Black Hand” nationalist organizations. In 1910, a
boy who had been taught to shoot a gun by a Serb officer attempted to use it
on the Austrian governor of Bosnia; the youth committed suicide after fail
ing, becoming a martyr in Serbia. A few Habsburg personages, possibly
including the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, may have been willing to con
sider the South Slavs as partners in a tripartite empire—the mere sugges
tion of which infuriated almost all Magyars and most Austrians. But the
Austro-Hungarian government considered the South Slav nationalists to be
threats who would ultimately have to be crushed. Because of the Balkan sit
uation, the German military command once again turned its attention to
readying its army, reacting to Russian measures of military preparedness.
But in 1914 Europe seemed far less close to war than it had been in 1905
and 1911, the years of the two Moroccan Crises.
The Final CrisisThe powers of Europe were poised for conflict, divided into two armed
camps by two rival alliances. While the outbreak of war was probably not
inevitable—although many nationalists and military planners believed it to
be—it was likely. Furthermore, once two powers seemed on the verge of war,
the entangling alliances that pitted the Triple Alliance against the Triple
Entente seemed likely to bring all of the European powers into the conflict.
The crisis that precipitated World War I occurred in the Balkans, when Serb