A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

by G.J. Meyer

“the great seminal catastrophe”—the one out of which a century of catastrophes arose.

Thirty-four long, sweet summer days separated the morning of June 28, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was shot to death, from the evening of August 1, when Russia’s foreign minister and Germany’s ambassador to Russia fell weeping into each other’s arms and what is rightly called the Great War began.

Suddenly there was a loud crack: the sound, as police investigators would later determine, of the percussion cap on a Serbian-made pocket bomb being struck against a lamppost. A small dark object was seen flying through the air: the bomb, thrown by someone in the crowd. It was on target, but the driver of the royal car saw it coming and accelerated, so that it fell inches behind the archduke and his wife.

Franz Ferdinand too saw it, swung at it with his arm, and deflected it farther to the rear. It exploded with a shattering noise as the car sped off, damaging the next vehicle in the procession and injuring several people. A tiny fragment of shrapnel grazed Sophie’s neck.

Within minutes Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were both dead. (Princip, in prison, would express regret at Sophie’s death, which he had not intended; the bullet that killed her had passed through the door of the car before striking her in the groin and severing an artery.)

The leader of the Black Hand was the country’s chief of military intelligence, one Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a monomaniacally dedicated Pan-Serb nationalist whose physical strength had caused him to be nicknamed “Apis” after a divine bull in ancient Egyptian mythology. Apis had been the mastermind behind the strategy that led to Serbia’s successes in the Balkan wars. Now, in 1914, he was the mastermind behind the plot to kill Franz Ferdinand. But there has never been any evidence that Pasic’s cabinet was involved.

Germany, in 1914 the most modern and efficient of Europe’s industrial giants, could mobilize with a speed that was dazzling by comparison with either Russia or Austria-Hungary.

“All the courage in the world cannot prevail against gunfire.” —CAPTAIN CHARLES DE GAULLE

The war began in earnest on August 2, when an advance force of German cavalry moved into Luxembourg to seize its network of railways.

The new face of war: a German Uhlan, or lancer, could seem a figure out of ancient legend except for the mask that protects him from poison gas.

President Wilson, once he was safely reelected on a campaign slogan of “He kept us out of war,” set out eagerly to become the world’s peacemaker.

President Woodrow Wilson “He kept us out of war.”