Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

The Austrian ultimatum had been drafted in anticipation of certain rejection, to justify an Austrian declaration of war. But on July 26, Serbia accepted nine of Austria’s ten demands, balking only at Vienna’s demand to send a delegation to Belgrade to oversee the investigation and prosecution of the conspirators who had murdered the archduke. Yet, even on this point, the Serbs agreed to refer the matter to the International Court of Justice. The Kaiser was relieved and elated. Austria had scored a brilliant diplomatic coup and he could not see what more she wanted. “It was a capitulation of the most humiliating sort,” exclaimed the Kaiser. “With it disappears every reason for war.”8 But when the Austrian ambassador in Belgrade received the Serb reply, he picked up his packed bags, boarded the first train out, and, once over the frontier, telephoned Vienna. When news hit that Serbia had failed to submit to all ten Austrian demands, crowds were in the streets clamoring for war. On July 27, the Austro-Hungarian empire declared war. On the twenty-eighth, Belgrade was shelled from across the Danube.