Page - 30 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

30 On the Eve One facet of the patterns of action was also that violence was used with increasing fre- quency, and after two Balkan wars, the question on everyone’s lips was : when would the third war break out ? Russia had mobilised. The manpower for the Imperial and Royal troops had been increased and to a certain degree had also been mobilised. Threats were made, and the German Empire declared its support of the Habsburg Monarchy in order to deter the other major powers from intervening. Finally, attempts were made to broker an agreement  – only to see the entire process start all over again from the beginning. One more detail from the October crisis of 1913 deserves mentioning. Since Em- peror Franz Joseph was not averse to a military solution as long as the Monarchy acted on a solid legal basis, in other words, according to the terms agreed at the London Conference, the Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, proposed an advance on to Ser- bian territory from Syrmia across the Sava River in order to occupy the town of Šabac, and to retain it as security until Serbia gave way. Naturally, Conrad von Hötzendorf failed to see any benefit from Berchtold’s plan.41 In his view : ‘[…] either we want war or we don’t. If not, we’d do better to keep our mouths shut.’ He expressed his opinion even more clearly to the Emperor : ‘We would do well to exploit the current rebellion in Albania in order to take measures against Serbia, in other words : to wage war through to the very end […] Now perhaps the last opportunity to intervene has presented itself.’ What place did a security have in this scenario, he asked. And yet once again, Conrad was unable to convince.42 He then issued a warning : ‘The Army will not be able to tol- erate another mobilisation without gaining even one piece of land.’43 It became clear how far the situation had come to a head since 1908. Whilst Aehren- thal had been able to still take the steps he wanted without the risk of war, and even without threatening violence directly, the Balkans had not quietened down since that time. No year and hardly a single month passed in which there was no war and no prospect of military deployment. Now, counterfactual history can again be considered with regard to what would have happened if the Danube Monarchy really had freed the passage to the Adriatic for Serbia. Would anything have changed ? If Serbia had suc- ceeded more rapidly in its desire to become a medium-sized power, would Albania ever have been created ? Would Serbia have been satiated by reaching the Adriatic coast ? Would Italy perhaps have begun to settle earlier and more permanently on the Balkan Peninsula, and would the main conflict have been between Serbia and Italy ? It is almost pointless to wonder. One thing is certainly clear : Serbia would never have given up its ambitions with regard to the southern Slav territories of the Danube Monarchy. The constant tensions surrounding the Balkans not only had a sensitising effect : conversely, they also led to a blunted reaction. As the Chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, noted in July 1913 : ‘We are all somewhat deadened by events in the Balkans. Nobody knows what is to come of the situation.’44 However,