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Balkan whirlpool

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Germany is getting sucked into this area of the world and its issues

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the Balkans are "toxically anti-imperialist"

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against the Austrian-Hungarian Empire

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against the Ottoman Empire

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they've thrown off imperial rule, but now they are full of quarrels with each other, the Balkans has become a battle ground of warring new nationalities

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1908: Bosnia is annexed by the Austro-Hungarian empire

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1912-1913: various Balkan wars

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players: the old Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Romanians, Montenegrans, Macedonians, Greeks, Catholics, Greek Orthodox adherents, Muslims

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the bordering empires care what happens here

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Austria-Hungary doesn't want their empire to get broken up by these aggressive, ambition anti-imperial nationalities

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the Turks feel threatened

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the Russian empire empathizes with their Slav counterparts in Serbia

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the result is proxy wars

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Austria-Hungarian Empire is backing the Albanians against the Serbs

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the Russians are on the Serbian side

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Serbs have large ambitions to become a South-Slav Empire

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for Austro-Hungarian empire and its German allies, Serbian nationalists haven't been sufficiently dealt with

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the Russians are frustrated and angry that the Austro-Hungarians were able to get their way with German backing

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much resentment is focused on Britian

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the 1912 Balkan war was settled by the treaty of London which attempted to "put a lid on the situation", Germany felt that through this treaty it and Austria-Hungaria had not been allowed to properly deal with the nationalists in the Balkan area

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accelerants (1912-1913)

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an example of an accelerant is gasoline

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the agitated situation in the Balkans is like gasoline lying around waiting to be set alight

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December 1912: German War Council

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British have just gotten involved to put a stop to the war of 1912 and keep the Austro-Hungarians from "putting a boot into the Serbs"

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the Germans are furious about this, and it's the form their fury takes that is so interesting

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Wilhelm II's notes: "The final struggle between the Slavs and the Teutons will see the Anglo-Saxons on the side of the Slavs and the Gauls."

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instead of talking about the states as states, he is talking about them as racial groups and for him it's a contest of races coming to a final struggle, it's that kind of apocalyptic feeling that leaps from the page

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the cold facts of what's going on in the Balkan crisis would not cause any dispassionate observer to come to these conclusions, Wilhelm II's conclusions are more a result of his racial and imperialistic world view

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German decisions

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preventive war

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the final struggle is coming, it will be better to have a preventive war before the Russians get too strong along with their French allies

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Austria-Hungary

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let's Austria-Hungary know that the next time they have a serious crisis in the Balkans, Germany will be behind then 100%, and Germany encourages them to "take a hard line in the Balkans"

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war plans

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decided on a further build-up of the German army, and took actions to lock them into a plan that even if a war starts in the Balkans, the Germans will be prepared to wage that war in France and Belgium

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Russia and France are responding to this military build-up in Germany

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Germany increasingly reaches out to make common cause with the Turks

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by 1913, there is a lot of gasoline lying around the Balkans, and in 1914, the match will be struck there