[curmudgeonII]

Whilst some are musing over what has happened to Sebia over the years, it may be well to remember that Serbia was directly responsible for the First World War which, in turn, was responsible for the Second World War.
[ And how many tens of millons of deaths in consequence?]

[Imal]

Gavrilo Princep represents all Serbs about as much as Lee Harvey Oswald represents all Americans.

Your thesis and post are absurd and offensive, and, though it should not matter, I'm not even remotely Serbian.

[Kenny Bunk]

Serbia was directly responsible for the First World War ?!?

What ho, Curmudgeon? When the Austrians demanded concessions and reparations from the Serbs for shooting Ferdinand, the Serbs agreed! Yes, the Serbs were willing to meet just about every Austrian demand.

The Austrians attacked anyway, and promptly had their clocks cleaned in a series of massive defeats administered by the outgunned, outnumbered, and poverty-stricken Serbs (and Montenegrins)! Quite a campaign ... shot'em up real good.

The Czar mobilized to protect the Serbs, the Germans mobilized to bail out the Austrians, The French Mobilized to back the Czar, etc.

Now how is this the fault of the Serbs? OK, shooting Ferdinand was not a good thing, but jeez, the Serbs said they were sorry! (I can hear those Serbs now: "Relax, It was just a splinter group. Crazy Radicals. We'll pay. Wadda you Austrian guys want? Name it. It's yours") True, the Serbs (and Montenegrins) were mighty perturbed that they had just whipped the Turks and that Austria was going to grab Bosnia. But the Serbs did accept pretty darn near all of Austria's demands.

[joan]

Austria knew the assassination was going to happen and set it up. The ultimatum was written two weeks BEFORE the assassination:

Review: What led to World War I

But it really didn't matter whether Serbia accepted or rejected the ultimatum, Fromkin says. Austria had decided to go to war against the Balkan kingdom, regardless of its response. The ultimatum served to Serbia, deliberately worded to elicit a rejection by any nation prizing its own independence, had been drafted two weeks before the murder of the Archduke. The assassination was only a convenient excuse.

"The Hapsburg leaders wanted to destroy Serbia before the assassination. They would have launched their campaign not in 1914, but in 1912 or 1913, had they not been blocked," Fromkin writes. "The opinion of Europe had stood in their way, as did the fear of Russia and as did the lack of German support."

However intense Austria's urgency to crush Serbia, the fragile Empire would not have embarked without German support on a military adventure that almost surely would draw Russia, France, and Britain onto the battlefield. And Germany, regardless of the Kaiser's erratic pacifism, wanted that war as badly, precisely to provoke the Russians into entering the battlefield. Why?

Even as Austria was afraid of Serbia, Germany -- especially its chief of the Great General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke (known as Moltke the Younger) -- was anxious about Russia.