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Germany and France are at odds. to get around the french defences along the french-german border, the men had to cross Belgium and attack the French army from the North. The Belgians refused to let them in so the Germans decided to invade Belgium by force on August 4th 1914

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When a Serbian nationalist assesinates Archdue Frans Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, kicking off the first world war

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On July 28, 1914, Austria - Hungary formally enters WW1, exactly 1 month after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist

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Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all entered the battle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia that became known as WW1. in less then a week, Austria-Hungary had to go to war with Russia, which is Serbias alli and the worlds largest army at the time

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- 11 June 1903 to 1 December 1918, King Petar the first was in control.
- Prince Regent Aleksander Karaorevi (24 June 1914 – 1 December 1918)
- Prime Minister Nikola Pai, who presided over the country from September 12, 1912 to December 1, 1918.

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July 28th, Austria-Hungary issues a formal declaration of War on Serbia, a month after the assassination of archduke Ferdinand and Sophie.

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A month before the declaration, Austria-Hungary issues an ultimatum which became Austria’s strategy (in coordination with Germany) to force a military conflict that Austria could win before the rest of Europe could react.

Russia and Serbia do not accept the terms of the ultimatum, and instead ignore the proposal.

- Austria becomes furious with Serbia and blames Serbian Government.

- Austria asks for an assurance from Germany to assist in defeating Russia and its allies.

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Albert I (April 8, 1875-February 17, 1934, Marche-les-Dames, near Namur) was King of Belgium from 1909 to 1934. He led the Belgian army throughout World War I and directed the country's reconstruction after the war.

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Austria-Hungary archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were murdered by assassins part of the "Black Hand", a Serbian nationalist group.

Austria-Hungary released an ultimatum on Serbia where they sought to make an inquiry on the assassination and the motivations behind, which Serbia denies.

Serbia and Russia start to mobilise in preparation, which Austria tells them to stop. Austria is ignored.

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By September 28th, 1918, the Belgian army had been organised into 12 infantry divisions. They were part of the Belgian, french, British army group Flanders, lef by king Albert the first of Belgium and his french Chief of staff, General Jean Degoutte

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Austria-Hungary was soon ruled by Franz Joseph, a leader who considered military power became the definition of a country's strength. Opposed to Ferdinand's moderate leadership, Franz Josep was neo-absolute, and an extremist.

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TWE Remembers: Austria-Hungary Issues an Ultimatum to Serbia

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Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. That adage applies to governments as well as to people. A case in point is the ultimatum that Austria gave Serbia on July 23, 1914. Austrian offic…

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The failure to achieve a federalist solution satisfactory to all nationalities had exacerbated relations among them. In 1867 it had become obvious that a compromise had to be made with the restive Hungarians. The newly appointed prime minister Beust was, however, insufficiently informed about conditions in the various parts of the Austrian Empire. The result was the kaiserliche und königliche Doppelmonarchie, the "imperial and royal Dual Monarchy" in which an Austrian and a Hungarian half coexisted in equal partnership. The compromise, however, gave the Hungarians considerable leverage to extend their influence. The losers were the Slav peoples, for the Bohemians (Czechs) and Poles did not share in the privileged position of the German Austrians in the Austrian, or western, half of the empire, while the Croats, Slovaks, and South Slavs had none of the prerogatives enjoyed by the Hungarians in the Hungarian, or eastern, half. With this preferred treatment, which Franz Joseph recognized as such, the multinational state had violated its inner law of the basic equality of all national groups. The individual crownland's relationship to the emperor, which in each case had been the result of a long historical evolution, was now replaced by the submission of the various nationalities to German-Austrian or Hungarian overlordship. Internal restlessness thus continued unabated. A final attempt at reform by which the Slavic languages were to be given equal status with Hungarian and German was vetoed by Franz Joseph under pressure from the German-Austrian nationalists. But, under the influence of the Viennese sociologist Albert Schäffle, the emperor, who on the whole had little use for party politicians and their influence on public life, seems to have followed the continuing process of democratization in his empire with some sympathy.

Franz Joseph Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.

The question of recognition and restoration of ancient Czech rights hobbled Austro-Hungarian foreign policy and poisoned domestic politics. Even more of a handicap was the problem of the South Slavs. From 1867 on, the Hungarian-ruled Croatians found themselves subjected to a continuing process of Magyarization. Hungarian domination eventually turned Serbia, inhabited by fellow Slavs, into the Dual Monarchy's mortal enemy.

Franz Joseph, who wholeheartedly supported the (the Hungarian Compromise) as the constitution of the Dual Monarchy, failed to grasp the negative aspects of that highly complex document. Interested primarily in questions of foreign policy and military leadership, he paid too little attention to domestic affairs to understand the nationalities problem in all its gravity. In particular, he failed to see the connection between Austro-Hungarian internal affairs and their effect on the monarchy's relationship with Russia and on the political situation in the Balkans.

The emperor's peace policy

Although Franz Joseph always considered foreign policy his own specialty, he was in effect guided by the ablest among his foreign ministers: Andrássy, Gusztav Siegmund, Graf (count) Kálnoky von Köröspatak, and Alois, Graf (count) Lexa von Aehrenthal. Andrássy not only launched the alliance with Germany in 1879, but, by carrying out the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Franz Joseph had advocated and the Congress of Berlin (1878) had sanctioned, he also gained the first great foreign-policy success of the empire in the Balkans. Franz Joseph defended the German alliance against all opposition. He was considerably more reserved toward Italy, which had joined Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance in 1882, and Romania, with which Austria-Hungary had concluded a secret treaty in 1883; in fact, his reticence contributed to the eventual alienation of both of those allies.

The style of Franz Joseph's foreign policy was dynastic and personal. Just as he had contributed decisively to the creation of the League of the Three Emperors ( Dreikaiserbund) by appearing in Berlin in 1873 by the side of Tsar Alexander II, he endeavoured also on later occasions to forestall potential conflicts with Russia through personal contacts, without realizing the fundamental nature of the antagonism between the two countries. On a visit to St. Petersburg in 1897 and again after Tsar Nicholas II's visit in 1903, he tried to delimit Austrian and Russian interests in the Balkans-a policy that was rashly jeopardized by Aehrenthal during the crisis leading to the annexation of occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. By then, however, the days were long past when foreign policy was a matter of friendships between sovereigns; conflicts of interest, or for that matter pan-Slav propaganda, could no longer be neutralized on the dynastic level. Also, the emperor found it increasingly difficult to get along with his fellow sovereigns, many of them relatives, of the younger generation. Yet he seems to have appreciated the energetic, dashing, and optimistic manner of William II of Germany.

In the period 1908-14 Franz Joseph held fast to his peace policy in the face of warnings by the chief of the general staff, Franz, Graf (count) Conrad von Hötzendorf, who repeatedly advocated a preventive war against Serbia or Italy. Yet, without having fully thought out the consequences, he let himself in July 1914 be persuaded by Leopold, Graf (count) von Berchtold, the foreign minister, to issue the intransigent ultimatum to Serbia that led to World War I.

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Franz Joseph - The Hungarian compromise and the dual monarchy

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The failure to achieve a federalist solution satisfactory to all nationalities had exacerbated relations among them. In 1867 it had become obvious that a compromise had to be made with the restive Hungarians. The newly appointed prime minister Beust was, however, insufficiently informed about conditions in the various parts of the Austrian Empire.

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Russia's leader at the time Tsar Nicholas was the leader of Russia and was becoming less popular in regard to his leadership style and understanding of war. Russias involvement in World War One began on the 28th of July 1914.

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The United States of America, A country dominated by migrants and immigrants from the very continent at war, They began as neutrals in a war claiming millions by the years. The Country was overall divided as German Americans had a large influence on US society whilst others claimed Germany were threatening the very Democracy the United States stood under. Everything changed when a message attempting to reach Mexico was intercepted and decyphered by British Intelligence that asked for an alliance with Germany to attack the United States in return for US territory.

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The United states began their involvement in the Great War on April 6th 1917 due to the Zimmerman telegraph, leading the the US congress majority voting on getting involved in the War on European soils.

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Woodrow Wilson, during the beginning of the War;  he leant towards the Entente, however, his goal was to keep The United States out of war and serve as a peacemaker. This did not last long, Through the events of the Zimmerman telegraph; his argument in joining the cause were to "make the world safe for democracy". After the War he helped create the groundworks for the United Nations by starting the League of Nations.

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Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to “make the world safe for democracy.”

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The US entered World War I because Germany embarked on a deadly gamble.

Germany sank many American merchant ships around the British Isles which prompted the American entry into the war.

Rochester political scientist Hein Goemans answers the question why Germany was willing to risk American entry into the war.

Woodrow Wilson did not want war.

When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, the 28th U.S. president pledged neutrality, in sync with prevailing American public opinion.

But while Wilson tried to avoid war for the next three years, favoring instead a negotiated collective approach to international stability, he was rapidly running out of options. Tensions heightened as Germany tried to isolate Britain in 1915 and announced unrestricted attacks against all ships that entered the war zone around the British Isles.

In early April 1917, with the toll in sunken U.S. merchant ships and civilian casualties rising, Wilson asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy." A hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, Congress thus voted to declare war on Germany, joining the bloody battle-then optimistically called the "Great War."

"The U.S. declaration of war, in essence, was a recognition of the fact that Germany had chosen to impose a very risky gamble on the U.S.-risky for Germany, but the only way they thought they could obtain the victory they needed at home," says University of Rochester associate professor of political science Hein Goemans.

A specialist in international relations and conflict, Goemans is the author of War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton University Press, 2000). Since then, he has also coauthored a book on leaders and war initiation, Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

IN THIS EPISODE OF THE QUADCAST: In an interview with associate professor of political science Hein Goemans, the expert on conflict points out that Germany was aware that its unrestricted submarine warfare would provoke America to enter WWI.

"The Germans were well aware that the U.S. could not and would not accept unrestricted submarine warfare, but launched it anyway," says Goemans. "The U.S. declaration of war was thus already taken into account when the final decision for unrestricted submarine warfare was made in January 1917. Indeed, Hindenburg explicitly admitted the day before 'We count upon war with America.'"

So why would the German leadership under Paul von Hindenburg take such a big risk?

"It was a gamble, which was very likely to hurt them in the long run," explains Goemans. "They thought the gamble would open up a window of opportunity in which they could defeat the British. If they defeated the British, then they could prevent Americans from coming to the mainland and they would have a victorious end to the war."

Goemans argues that the Germans had seen how long it had taken the British soldiers from the time they arrived in France until the time they were ready for a major offensive at the Somme. The Germans calculated correctly that it would take the Americans at least as long to get their troops across the sea and ready to fight.

"The British thought: 'We fight the war by heroically stepping out of the trenches and locking arms and looking threateningly at the Germans and thereby defeat them,' " Goemans says. "The British were shot down in large numbers, the Americans made the same mistake. They refused to learn the technical and strategic lessons learned at great cost by the French and British."

Meanwhile, the German ruling class, led by an alliance of aristocratic landowners and industrialists, was fighting for its very own survival, threatened by seismic social and political upheaval.

"A victorious ending to the war was necessary for them because without victory, without spoils to divert those who had been loyal Germans-loyal to the old regime-they would face a revolution on the home front, and a revolution not unlike the one that the Russians had experienced," explains Goemans.

"You have to ask also, 'Why does this form of dispute resolution work? Why does killing hundreds of millions of people make an agreement possible where there was no agreement possible before?' "

While unrestricted submarine warfare is, of course, the textbook answer as to why the U.S. entered the war, there's also the infamous Zimmerman telegram.

Cabled by German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann in January 1917 to the Mexican embassy, the secret diplomatic communication was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. In the telegram, Zimmermann proposed a military alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan-should the United States enter the war. It basically said, "If you want to, we will help you in the effort of helping you regain some of your lost territories from the United States. The territory you lost in 1848 and subsequently," explains Goemans, who calls the telegram "a ludicrous proposal."

Mexico would be given Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico as spoils, according to the German plan. While Goemans says he never found any indication in official notes and papers from the time that the U.S. government took this threat seriously, it nevertheless became "a propaganda gift that could be used against the Germans more than it was a real factor in the decision making of the Americans [to go to war]." However, once its contents were splashed across newspaper front pages, American public opinion turned strongly against Germany, enflaming pro-war sentiments.

Three years earlier, long-smoldering rivalries in Europe over territory and borders had come to a head with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist on June 28, 1914. The assassination, while ultimately a scapegoat, became the catalyst for the start of World War I, exactly one month later.

By the end of 1915, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were battling against the Allied Powers of Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Japan.

Germany formally surrendered on November 11, 1918. In those 19 months of U.S. engagement, more than two million American soldiers served on the battlefields of Western Europe-and 50,000 of them lost their lives.

WW1 dates

World War 1 was fought from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918

To Goemans, World War I illustrates a modern insight into the nature of war-that it basically takes two sides to fight. One side can always capitulate or accede to the other side's demands, trying to avoid war. It raises the question of why all players decide to fight.

"I study war not because it's cool, or because there are big explosions and big weapons, but because it's truly horrific," says Goemans. "But at the same time you have to ask also, 'Why does this form of dispute resolution work? Why does killing hundreds of millions of people make an agreement possible where there was no agreement possible before?' "

Alas, the peace that followed the "war to end all wars," lasted only two decades.
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Tags: Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science, Hein Goemans, World War I

Category: Society & Culture

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One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, Congress voted to declare war on Germany, joining the bloody battle-then optimistically called the "Great War." Rochester political scientist Hein Goemans explains why Germany was willing to risk American entry into the war.

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United Kingdom, A Great Imperial European Power with a massive naval might, one left unchallenged at that, saw their hand played in a massive European conflict. The United Kingdoms initial entry into the war came from an expired ultimatum to Germany in which demanding the immediate retreat from Belgium was not met. Their entry was also to prevent French capitulation which would see Germany as the rulers of Western Europe.

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Doesn't he look strangely familiar to someone we all know and love 

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King George was provoked into joining the War as their Guarantee of independence on Belgium had been broken leading to a swift entrance onto the front lines. King George played a role in the War effort such as visiting the front and military hospitals many times for example; he became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war.

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In 1914, the king embodied the British state and empire. He was the most important symbol of British identity. This is why, at the outbreak of the war, he was front and centre in a surge of patriotic recruitment material. Posters and speeches played on the nation's romantic attachment to their king, encouraging men to do their duty to him and fight. In 1915, George personally backed an army recruitment drive via a direct Royal Appeal.

Duty also applied to the royal family itself. From the king down to the most minor of royals, the monarchy felt an immense obligation to support the war effort. At the outbreak of the conflict, George's wife, Queen Mary, took charge of mobilising women in the UK to knit clothing for the troops; her Needlework Guild had 60,000 members in London alone. The Prince of Wales' National Relief Fund was set up to provide aid to those suffering penury due to the conflict. By the end of 1914, Edward, Prince of Wales, was serving as a staff officer at the front, while Prince Albert, the king's second son (and future George VI), was in the navy and would serve in the battle of Jutland.

George V was placed front and centre in the recruitment drive that accompanied the outbreak of war, as this poster from 1914 shows. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

For Christmas 1914, Princess Mary, the monarch's only daughter, set up a fund to send a Princess Mary Gift Box to all serving soldiers and sailors. This was the first time that the war's working-class troops, many of whom did not yet have the vote, had received any form of national recognition.

In the early stages of the war, the king ceased all royal entertaining and cut luxurious foods from royal menus, telling his chef that visitors "should be grateful for anything". He then donated £100,000 of the money he'd saved to the Treasury. He famously gave up alcohol during the war, something the writer and soldier CE Montague noted made him popular with troops who saw it as an unexpected "act of willing comradeship with the dry throat on the march". The women of the royal family - in particular Queen Mary - regularly served refreshments to soldiers in railway stations and to war workers in deprived districts.
Listen: Heather Jones discusses the role of the British royal family during the First World War on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast:
A king in the crossfire

George believed he should inspect all troops heading overseas to fight in his name - so much so that soldiers soon realised that a royal review meant they were about to leave for the front. He felt an overwhelming duty of care for the troops and visited the front six times during the war, hoping to boost morale, check on soldiers' well-being and show royal empathy for what they were enduring.

These visits were not without risk. Sir Charles Cust, the king's equerry, noted that, on 26 October 1915, while the royal party was in the communication trenches, "the German batteries fired three shells over their heads". On the same trip, the king suffered a life-threatening accident when his charger reared and fell upon him. He had to be transported home in a hospital train. On other occasions the Germans shelled locations just after he had left.

The most remarkable royal visit to the front occurred shortly after the start of the Ludendorff offensives in late March 1918, a massive German onslaught that aimed to force the Allies to sue for peace. With British forces in headlong retreat, the king travelled to France for a three-day visit that saw him visiting casualty clearing stations, and witnessing "very sad and dreadful sights" among the wounded.

With the British in retreat, the king rushed to the front, where he witnessed 'very sad and dreadful sights'

While one soldier, Raynor Taylor, recalled war-weary troops refusing to cheer the king during this 1918 trip, this was unusual. Soldiers, for the most part, appreciated the monarch's efforts. When, in the 1930s, schoolchildren were asked to explain the king's popularity, many cited his visits to the frontline almost 20 years earlier.

Although he was only symbolically commander-in-chief, with no command role, the king liaised constantly with the generals and was quick to inform them of his opinions. He was crucial in Douglas Haig retaining his position as commander in the field after Haig had lost the confidence of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The king witnessed the start of the battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 and on that same day, during an artillery inspection, he ordered a heavy artillery gun to fire on Douai station, scoring a direct hit on a German troop train.

On the home front, the king and queen constantly visited war factories, shipyards and, most importantly, the war wounded in hospital. A wounded officer, Lieutenant DC Burn, recalled that he "had a long talk" with the king in his ward and "found his guttural voice and laugh very engaging".

The king personally conferred 50,000 awards for gallantry during the war, in many cases to badly disabled men or to distressed next-of-kin. Sometimes war widows brought their small children up to receive their dead father's medal. "If it wasn't for you I should break down," the king wrote to Queen Mary.

Honouring the wounded

The introduction of conscription in 1916 was accompanied by an emphasis on the burdens of the war being shared equitably. This new spirit of egalitarianism even extended to Buckingham Palace, which hosted a series of tea parties at which hundreds of war wounded of all ranks were treated as honoured guests, served by the royals themselves. (One newspaper noted that Prince Albert carried the teapot.) Ordinary people were encountering the monarchy in newly personal ways - and that only served to enhance the wartime popularity of the crown.

The royals constantly witnessed wartime death. Frederick Ponsonby, the keeper of the Privy Purse, described the king visiting a hospital near the front in 1915. "Some of the men there had been gassed and it was painful to watch them, blue in the face and gasping for breath. I found one was a German and regretted the pity I had wasted on him; but the king rebuked me and said that after all he was only a poor dying human being, in no way responsible for the German horrors."

When working-class districts of east London were subjected to a major Gotha bombing raid on 13 June 1917, killing 162 people, George visited the bombed-out areas within hours. Queen Alexandra, the king's mother, also visited in the evening to condole with the mothers of 18 children who died when their school at Poplar suffered a direct hit.

Pulses of unrest

While the British royal family handed out medals, visited the front and consoled the widows of fallen soldiers, their counterparts on the continent were facing a series of existential threats. From 1917, Europe was convulsed by a wave of revolutions, often virulently anti-monarchist in their aims.

While George V handed out medals, Europe was convulsed by a wave of virulently anti-royalist revolutions

The British royals weren't entirely insulated from these pulses of unrest. The second half of the war saw a limited increase in anti-monarchism here, too - and, when the February Revolution toppled Russian tsar Nicholas II, elements in the leftwing press were quick to wonder aloud if this was a fate that awaited all European monarchies. Left-leaning politicians also voiced their concerns that, overwhelmed by the demands of a long war, the cabinet was increasingly passing legislation via the Privy Council rather than parliament, using the royal prerogative.

It was around this time that sustained press criticism of the British royal family's continental connections first appeared, shining an unsympathetic light on the fact that George V was a cousin of Russia's Nicholas II, the German kaiser Wilhelm II and unpopular pro-German Greek king, Constantine I. George V's response to this new threat was ingenious - and ruthless. In 1917, he changed the name of his dynasty from the Germanic "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to "Windsor", and he pressurised the government into rescinding its offer of asylum to the tsar, who was later murdered with his family by revolutionaries in July 1918.

This dual response may have been radical, but it worked. As 1917 progressed, press coverage become more favourable. Journalists increasingly noted the king's support of the extension of suffrage in the UK, and his willingness to engage with ordinary workers. They hailed the British royal family's exceptionalism from other European monarchies; it was different, they argued, because it was "democratic". The widely popular name change to Windsor was cited as an example of this exceptionalism.

George V (right) with Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany. While the British king struck up a rapport with his nation's soldiers, his German cousin cut a distant, aloof figure. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

So, despite the rocky ride of 1917, anti-monarchism in Britain ultimately remained fragmented and marginalised. Even the leftwing Daily Herald was forced to concede that republicanism was not "of any importance comparable with the economic issue between capital and labour".

In a bid to cement their popularity across the political spectrum, George and Mary reached out personally to wartime Labour figures. Returning from a visit to revolutionary Russia, radical Labour MP Will Thorne was immediately invited to visit the king. He was won over: "I had expected to meet a haughty, stand-offish man with a highly polished university twang; but I found him a very different person."

In 1917, faced with widespread strikes in the north of England and Glasgow, the cabinet sent the king and queen to the striking areas to calm the situation. This does not suggest a monarchy in danger of being swept away by revolution.

Defeated and toppled

Victory in the war mattered. Defeated nations were far more likely to see their monarchies toppled. But how these monarchies handled the war was also significant. Aloofness to the suffering of the people often triggered anti-monarchism, which in turn drove revolution. It was no accident that the British, Belgian and Italian monarchies - who displayed compassion for the sufferings of troops and workers, and made a point of tightening their purse strings in the face of wartime austerity - all survived.

Kaiser Wilhelm, by contrast, rarely visited munitions factories or Germany's wounded during the conflict - a fact that contributed to his overthrow in November 1918.

By the end of the war, the royal family had found a new role: that of key symbolic conduit for national grief

Just after the Armistice, the British monarchy was described in parliament as existing "by consent" of the people. This was an institution, it was claimed, whose raison d'etre was to serve its subjects - unlike those autocratic dynasties collapsing on the continent. This may have been a generous interpretation of the reality. Yet there was little doubt that King George V and Queen Mary's wartime efforts to support ordinary people meant that this rhetoric of "service" was no idle phrase. Their determination to stay connected to the people had given Britain's crown a fresh purpose as a new era dawned of mass democracy and of greater socio-economic and political freedoms.

So, instead of hastening the British monarchy to extinction, the First World War gave the royal family greater relevance and new roles - one of which was to become the key symbolic conduit for national and imperial war grief. The king sent letters of condolence to families of the fallen throughout the conflict, and was chief mourner at the burial of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey. By honouring the war dead in this way, the monarchy enhanced its own image and purpose.

But successfully overcoming the challenges of the First World War had taken a huge emotional toll on the royals. When, in the 1930s, international tensions rose once more, George V raged at David Lloyd George: "I will not have another war. I will not. The last war was none of my doing, & if there is another one & we are threatened with being brought in to it, I will go to Trafalgar Square and wave a red flag myself sooner than allow this country to be brought in."

George V was haunted for the rest of his life by the horrors he had witnessed during the First World War. The royal family, he believed, must always serve the people devotedly to honour their terrible sacrifices. This ethos would inform the rest of his reign - and remains the conflict's primary legacy to the modern monarchy.
Heather Jones is professor in modern and contemporary European history at University College London. Her book For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War is published by Cambridge. She This article first appeared in the October 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine presented The Frontline Prince, a BBC Radio 4 documentary about the future Edward VIII's experiences in the First World War

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In 1914, the king embodied the British state and empire. He was the most important symbol of British identity. This is why, at the outbreak of the war, he was front and centre in a surge of patriotic recruitment material.

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Russia's involvement in World War One began as a reaction to the Serbian rejection of the ultimatum give to them by the Austro-Hungarian government.
- He probably wanted power idk
- Russia was allied with Serbia