Disclaimer: My degree is in international relations, not history, so I tend to focus more on geopolitics and IR theory.

I suppose it comes down to what they believed was inevitable. World leaders are unlikely to have predicted the length, devastation and overall scope of the war however, tensions Europe had been boiling over for quite some time, and conflict certainly seemed inevitable.

The key here is to look at the 50 or so years of slowly building geopolitical tension that ultimately resulted in WW1. To simplify things, you can state that there are two major geopolitical conflicts occurring. The first is something of a colonial conflict between the Britain and France, and Germany. A lot of academics attribute the start of the build-up to war to the re-unification of Germany in 1871. When Germany became a single state it shifted the balance of power in Europe considerably, and forced France (and to a lesser extent, Britain) to take notice.

From the reunification, under Otto Von Bismarck, Germany pursued a pragmatic and rather successful policy of realpolitik. Chancellor Bismarck can be seen as one of the most successful politicians and diplomats in European history, and it was through his shrewd diplomacy that peace was found in Europe (to an extent). This ended in 1891 (following Bismarck’s 1890 dismissal) when Wilhelm II introduced a policy of Weltpolitik (world policy). This essentially meant that the Germans had decided to challenge the colonial powers (particularly Britain and France) on the world stage. Essentially, the Germans had decided to become involved in the scramble for colonial holdings in Africa.

The first consequence of the policy of Weltpolitik was the initiation of the Anglo-German naval race. The Germans couldn’t start an empire or challenge British supremacy without reaching near-parity with the British navy. From 1898 the British and Germans engages in a huge naval arms race in order to battle for global supremacy. By the time WW1 came around, the two countries had been preparing for a naval conflict for the last 16 years.

Another serious consequence of the policy of Weltpolitik is the rise of geopolitical tensions, between France and Germany, centred in Africa. The most serious incidents to occur in the build-up to WW1 were the two Moroccan Crises. The first Moroccan crisis occurred in 1905, just after France and Britain signed the Entente Cordiale. At this time, France was planning to Colonise Morocco, an eventuality Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to avoid due to his own ambitions towards colonialization in the area. In an attempt to embarrass France, the Kaiser travelled to Morocco and gave a speech in favour of Moroccan independence. Germany succeeded in aggravating France so much that the French mobilised it’s armies in the direction of the German border, causing the other European powers to step in and alleviate the conflict, forcing Germany to compromise at the Algeciras conference.

In the second crisis in 1911, Germany sent a gunboat into Moroccan waters in order to aggravate the French and gain some kind of compensation for their losses at the Algeciras conference. Britain, alarmed that Germany was trying to assert naval dominance, sent a number of vessels to intercept the German gunboat. Once again, the Germans were forced to compromise, now acknowledging Morocco as a French protectorate. We can assume, judging by France’s aggressive reaction to the first Moroccan crisis, the Germans were willing to risk conflict. The crisis also served to further the rift between Germany and the Entente.

From roughly 1890 it’s clear that the situation between Germany and the colonial powers had really started to boil over, and it certainly would have looked like some form of conflict was on the horizon. There was, however, a great deal going on in Eastern Europe too, bringing us to our second major geopolitical conflict between Austria-hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

It can be argued that a great conflict within Europe became more and more inevitable as tensions began to rise in the Balkans, leading to a conflict between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire; two of the great powers within Europe. To understand why they clashed, one must first understand the situation in the Balkans at the start of the twentieth century. The Balkan area was a part of the waning Ottoman Empire, and the land within it was of interest to both Austria and Russia. The Russians wanted to annex into the Balkans because they saw themselves as the leaders of the “Slavic” race, and felt the need to assert this title, coupled with a desire to gain warm water ports in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, the Austrians had been trying to take Ottoman land for hundreds of years and saw the decline of the empire as their chance to do so. These conflicting interests were brought to a head with the first Balkan Crisis in 1908 in which Austria annexed Bosnia, land which the Russians saw as Slavic. The Austrian annexation aggravated both Serbia and Russia, however, Russia was forced to back down as a result of German backing of the Austrian cause.

Although the crisis was solved, it did not decrease tension between the Russians and the Austrians, tensions which seemed to be heading in the direction of war. The intervention of Germany in the matter also meant that another great European power had entered the Balkan conflict. This is the point at which we start to see that a true outbreak of war between Austria and Russia could never be localised to the Balkan area, and would always involve the other great European powers; one of the first warnings that a pan-European war could be inevitable.

The two parties clashed once again in 1912 with the second Balkan crisis. The crisis began with the Italian invasion of Libya. As a consequence of the Italian invasion, taking advantage of a distracted Ottoman Empire, Russia persuaded the Balkan nations to form the Balkan league and initiate a war against the Turks. Russia’s main motivation was to gain access for Russian warships into the Bosporus. Although the Balkan states succeeded in the conflict, Russia once again lost out. The Concert of Europe was called to put an end to the crisis and, under Austrian and Italian insistence, created the independent state of Albania, putting an end to any hope that the Russians could gain access to the Bosporus. Perhaps one of the most vital consequences of this crisis was the anger that Serbia felt at the concessions that it was forced to make to Austria and the newly formed Albania. These concessions were a significant motivation behind the assassination of Franz Ferdinand on 28th July 1914.

This ended up being a little longer than expected (I’ve never contributed to the sub, so I hope it’s not too long). So, to conclude, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was simply the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. European powers had been dancing around a major conflict for decades by the time that WW1 broke out. Was war absolutely inevitable? Almost certainly, and European leaders had certainly been preparing for it (think: German Schlieffen plan).

I’ll leave you with a 1916 quote from a close confidant of the German Chancellor on Germany’s motivation for the war:

“defence against present day France, preventative war against the Russia of the future, struggle with Britain for world domination.”

Sources:

Bullen. R, Bridge. F The Great Powers and the European States System 1814-1914 (London, Longman 2004)

Michigan State University, The Balkan Causes of World War 1. Available from: http://staff.lib.msu.edu/sowards/balkan/lect15.htm

Best. A, Hanhimaki. M, Maiolo. J, Schulze. K. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. (Oxon, Routelage 2008)

Marks, S. The Ebbing of European Ascendancy, an International History of the World (London, Bloomsbury Academic 2011)