Michael: Everyone thinks they know how World War I started: Germany invaded Belgium. But what if the real story begins eleven years earlier, with a gruesome royal murder where the King and Queen were hacked to pieces and thrown from a palace balcony? Kevin: Whoa, hold on. Hacked to pieces? I thought this was about Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a single gunshot. What are you talking about? Michael: That bloody event is the starting point for our discussion today on Christopher Clark's monumental book, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Kevin: And Clark is no lightweight. He's the Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, a leading expert on modern Europe. It's fascinating that he, an Australian historian, has been knighted for his services to Anglo-German relations. Michael: Exactly. And that background is key. This book, which won the LA Times Book Prize for History, isn't about finding a single villain. It's about understanding how a whole generation of leaders, all acting rationally from their own perspectives, collectively sleepwalked into the abyss. Clark’s focus is on how the war happened, not just assigning blame. Kevin: So it's less of a whodunit and more of a… how-dunit? A cascade of errors. Michael: Precisely. It’s a story of agency without foresight. And to understand the final, fatal steps of 1914, we have to go back to that horrific night in Belgrade in 1903.

Michael: In the early hours of June 11, 1903, a group of Serbian army officers, furious with their king, Alexandar Obrenović, stormed the royal palace. They were angry about his autocratic rule and his deeply unpopular marriage to Queen Draga, a woman with a scandalous reputation. One minister had even told the king to his face, "Sire, you cannot marry her. She has been everybody’s mistress – mine included." Kevin: Wow. That is… direct. So this wasn't some fringe group? This was the military establishment. Michael: This was the heart of the Serbian military. Led by a charismatic and ruthless lieutenant named Dragutin Dimitrijević, better known as Apis, they blew open the palace doors with dynamite. After a frantic search, they found the king and queen hiding in a secret closet off their bedroom. Kevin: This sounds like something out of a movie. What happened then? Michael: It was a slaughter. The officers unloaded their revolvers into the couple, then stabbed them with their sabers until their bodies were, in the words of one witness, a "sieve." Then, they threw the mutilated corpses from the second-floor balcony onto the palace lawns below. Kevin: That's just unbelievable. What was the public reaction? Riots? Uproar? Michael: That's the most chilling part. The British minister in Belgrade sent a dispatch to London that night with a simple observation: "Town quiet people generally seem unmoved." The old dynasty was so hated that this brutal regicide was seen by many as a necessary, even heroic, act. Kevin: So the assassins became heroes? They weren't punished? Michael: Far from it. They became the power behind the new throne. This "regicide network" embedded itself deep within the Serbian state. Apis, the ringleader, would go on to become the head of Serbian Military Intelligence and the founder of the secret society "Union or Death," better known as the Black Hand. Kevin: The Black Hand! I've heard of them. They were behind the Sarajevo assassination, right? Michael: Exactly. And here’s the crucial point Clark makes: the Black Hand wasn't some rogue terrorist cell. It was an extension of the Serbian state, operating with a kind of plausible deniability. The government couldn't fully control them, but it also couldn't disown them. An Austrian official at the time remarked, "The King is a nullity. The whole show is run by the people of 11 June." Kevin: Okay, I'm starting to see it. Serbia isn't just a small, victimized nation. It's this incredibly volatile place with a political culture where assassinating your own king is a legitimate tool. It’s a hornet's nest. Michael: A hornet's nest fueled by a powerful ideology: the dream of a "Greater Serbia," uniting all Serbs. This wasn't just a political goal; it was a cultural myth, rooted in epic poems about avenging the 14th-century Battle of Kosovo. This created what Clark calls a "geopolitical trigger" on Austria-Hungary's border. The state itself was intertwined with this radical, expansionist dream. Kevin: So when Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand, kills Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, it's not just one man's act. It's the hornet's nest finally stirring. Michael: Precisely. It’s the spark. But a spark only starts a fire if the whole forest is dry. And in 1914, all of Europe was tinder.

Kevin: That leads to the big question, then. If Serbia is this obvious powder keg, how do the great powers—Germany, Austria, Russia—all manage to get caught in the explosion? Weren't they supposed to be the adults in the room? Michael: This is the heart of Clark's "Sleepwalkers" thesis. They were all adults, but they were all walking in a fog, blinded by their own unique anxieties and misperceptions. Let's start with Austria-Hungary. Vienna saw the assassination not just as a tragedy, but as an existential threat. Kevin: Because the heir to the throne was killed? Michael: Yes, but more than that. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a fragile, multi-ethnic state, famously described as "desperate, but not serious." It was constantly dealing with nationalist movements. For the hawks in Vienna, Serbia's aggressive nationalism was a cancer that had to be cut out, or the whole empire would die. The assassination was the final proof. Kevin: And the Archduke himself, Franz Ferdinand, what was his role? Michael: Here's the deep irony. Franz Ferdinand was one of the most powerful voices against war in Vienna. He knew a war could shatter the empire. His assassin, Gavrilo Princip, later said he targeted the Archduke specifically because he feared his proposed reforms would make Slavs happier within the empire, thus killing the dream of a Greater Serbia. Kevin: Wow. So the assassin killed the one man who might have prevented the war? Michael: In a tragic sense, yes. His death removed the biggest brake on the war party in Vienna. Now, let's look at Germany. The common story is that Germany pushed Austria into war. Kevin: Right, the infamous "blank cheque." Germany told Austria, "Do whatever you want, we've got your back." Michael: They did, but Clark argues we need to understand why. Germany's leaders weren't necessarily itching for a world war. They were terrified that their only reliable ally, the rickety Austro-Hungarian Empire, was about to collapse. The "blank cheque" was a desperate gamble to show strength and prop up Vienna. It was based on a massive miscalculation: they believed Russia, a fellow monarchy, would never back Serbia, a nation of "regicides." Kevin: A fatal assumption. What was Russia thinking? Michael: Russia was in a bind. It had been humiliated in past Balkan crises and couldn't afford to lose face again by abandoning its Slavic "little brother," Serbia. But it was more than just pan-Slav sentiment. For Russia, the Balkans were the strategic key to the Turkish Straits, the waterway through which a huge percentage of their grain exports flowed. Allowing Austria to dominate the Balkans was seen as a direct threat to Russia's economic and military security. Kevin: This is where I know some critics push back on Clark. By spreading the responsibility around and calling them all "sleepwalkers," doesn't he let Germany, with its aggressive naval race and militarism, off the hook too easily? Michael: That's the central controversy of the book. Clark's response would be that it’s not about innocence, but about understanding the mindset of the actors. German policy was certainly aggressive and paranoid. But he argues that every power was operating within its own bubble of paranoia. It's like a multi-car pile-up on a foggy highway. Is the driver who was speeding the most the only one to blame? Or is the catastrophe a product of the conditions—the fog, the speed of all the cars, the lack of communication? Clark argues we learn more by studying the entire system of failure. Kevin: So it’s not one person's crime, but a collective, tragic failure of vision. Michael: Exactly. Each leader was making what they saw as a rational, defensive move. But when you put all those "rational" moves together, the sum was total, irrational catastrophe.

Michael: And that brings us to the final, frantic days of July 1914, when the system itself seemed to take over. The sleepwalkers had built a machine they could no longer control. Kevin: The dominoes start to fall. Where does it begin? Michael: It begins with the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. It was, as the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey called it, "the most formidable document he had ever seen addressed by one State to another." It was deliberately designed to be impossible for Serbia to accept fully. For example, it demanded that Austrian officials be allowed to operate inside Serbia to suppress subversive movements. Kevin: No sovereign country would ever agree to that. It’s basically demanding they hand over their police force. Michael: Precisely. It was a pretext for war. But Serbia's response was a stroke of genius. Clark calls it a "masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation." They agreed to almost every point, but with subtle conditions that effectively meant nothing. They appeared completely reasonable while rejecting the core demands. Kevin: So they called Austria's bluff. How did Vienna react? Michael: They didn't care. They had Germany's "blank cheque," and they were determined to cash it. On July 28th, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. But the real escalation, the one that turned a local war into a world war, came from St. Petersburg. Kevin: Russia mobilizes. Michael: Yes, but it's more complex than that. Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, initially ordered a "partial mobilization" against Austria-Hungary only. But his generals told him it was technically impossible. The Russian war machine was designed for one thing: total war against both Austria and Germany. It was all or nothing. So, on July 30th, the Tsar, after immense hesitation, approved a full mobilization. Kevin: And for Germany, that was the point of no return. Michael: Absolutely. Germany's entire war strategy was based on the Schlieffen Plan. It was a rigid, timetable-driven plan to deal with a two-front war. The logic was simple: Russia would be slow to mobilize, so Germany had to knock out France first and fast. This meant invading France through neutral Belgium. The moment Russia mobilized, the clock started ticking for Germany. They had to attack. Kevin: So the military plan completely dictated the political options. Could anyone have stopped it? Could the Kaiser have just said "no"? Michael: He actually tried. In a moment of last-minute panic on August 1st, the Kaiser received a misleading telegram suggesting Britain might stay neutral if Germany didn't attack France. He was overjoyed and ordered his top general, Moltke, to halt the invasion of Luxembourg and turn the entire German army east. Kevin: And what did Moltke say? Michael: He essentially had a nervous breakdown. He told the Kaiser it was impossible. The mobilization of millions of men was an intricate, unchangeable process. To alter it would be to create a "starving, disorganized mob." He famously told the Kaiser, "Your Majesty, it cannot be done." In that moment, the military machine proved more powerful than the monarch. Kevin: Wow. So the sleepwalkers had literally built a machine that they couldn't turn off. They were passengers in a train they had designed, and it was hurtling towards a cliff. Michael: That's the ultimate tragedy Clark outlines. The war wasn't willed by any one man or nation, but it was a consequence of a million small, calculated, and ultimately blind decisions that created a momentum no one could stop.

Michael: The tragedy of The Sleepwalkers is that it wasn't a story of villains, but of flawed men, trapped in a system of their own making. Each country's leaders saw themselves as acting defensively, responding to threats, yet their collective actions created the very catastrophe they all claimed to want to avoid. Kevin: They were all protagonists in their own stories, but they were antagonists in everyone else's. And the result was a shared European suicide. Michael: Clark's argument is that the war was a result of a fractured political culture. There was no international community, no shared understanding of the rules. There were just empires and alliances, each with its own set of fears, ambitions, and "unspoken assumptions." Kevin: It makes you wonder, in our own interconnected but fractured world, what are the crises we're sleepwalking into today? What are the 'unspoken assumptions' guiding our own leaders? Michael: That's a powerful question, and one that makes this book, written about events over a century ago, feel incredibly urgent. We'd love to hear what you think. Join the conversation on our social channels and share your thoughts on the lessons from 1914. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.