Only a Film Two recent television film productions and

their contribution to the ongoing debate about the causes

of the First World War.

The outbreak of the First World War was the Pandora's Box of the Twentieth
Century. No amount of counterfactual speculation can assure us what course
world history might have taken if the chauffeur driving a certain car had not
taken the wrong turning or, having done so, had not been advised of his error
straight away by the man who had invited Archduke Franz Ferdinand to visit
Sarajevo, planned the route of the ill-fated motorcade and had failed totally to
provide adequate security arrangements to protect Archduke Ferdinand; who
had moreover exposed the archduke to extreme danger by having him parade
though Sarajevo on Saint Vitus Day of all days, for this commemorated the
Battle of Kosovo when the Serbs were defeated by the Turks; who, far for being
reprimanded for gross negligence, was rewarded by high honor and given a
leading role in the invasion of Serbia when it came. I refer to Oskar Potiorek,
the governor of Bosnia in 1914.
The sinister implications of these and other anomalies surrounding the
assassination in Sarajevo were not lost on the Austrian film producer Andreas
Prochaska, who in collaboration with the screenwriter Martin Ambrosch made
the film entitled Das Attentat Sarajevo 1914, which incorporated features of a
documentary and detective thriller. We share the perspective of Leo Pfeffer, the
judge assigned with the prickly task of cross-examining the young men who
had played a part in the plot to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand with a
view to filing a report that was expected to establish the complicity of the
Serbian state in aiding and abetting the mission of Gavrilo Princip and his
companions in crime. However, he is soon struck by certain facts than run
counter to the expected conclusions and as a result is thrown into an intense
inner conflict. Can he endorse a statement that is to be used as a part of a

pretext for war? At last he does so under pressure but salves his conscience by
presenting his minority report on the current situation as he sees it.

Does the film keep within the bounds of historical truth? True enough, a Leo
Pfeffer did lead the investigation into the background of the assassination of
the royal couple and there can be no doubt that he was aware of the
geopolitical environment in which he found himself. The conflict of conscience
with which he contended according to the film adds a strong element of
human interest to the film if seen from a dramatists point of view, but there is
scant evidence that the real Leo Pfeffer saw himself as a potential saviour of the
world.
Two characters in the film find no basis in the details of historical fact but they
play an important role as those who personify and condense the general
tensions and fears of the time. The pursuit of investigation leads Pfeffer to the
residence of the a leading local patrician who happens to be an ethnic Serb
and here he meets his daughter, Marija Jeftanovic. She informs Pfeffer, and us
in the audience into the bargain, about the situation of the Bosnian Serbs and
the true reason why the leaders of Austria-Hungary and the German Empire
are bent on invading Serbia. Here material interests of industrial
entrepreneurs join forces with military strategists who see Serbia as an
obstacle in the way of the realization a grand design to extend the military and
economic power of the Central Powers to Baghdad and the Indian Ocean.
Pfeffers and Marijas brief love affair adds a touch of glamour to the film with
little or no bearing on the course of history.
There is another fictional character to consider, the sinister Dr. Sattler. He
embodies the aggressive nationalism of those who envisaged the creation of a
German world empire and he even has traits of a proto-Nazi extreme
nationalist. Though a friend of Pfeffer, he distains his Jewish roots and seems
to be fishing in the murky waters of crime and illegal drug trafficking combined
with efforts to infiltrate the main Serbian militant organization the Black Hand,
to which the assailants under investigation belong. Implicitly we are led to
speculate about precisely who is involved in the assassination of Franz

Ferdinand; only the teenage assassins, who may have been the unwitting
agents of a sinister conspiracy the extent of which was not known to them?
Is Das Attentat Sarajevo 1914 just a common or garden thriller with a
historical backdrop, or does it have something worthwhile to contribute to the
discussion of the causes of the First World War? Writing in the cultural section
of the Sddeutsche Zeitung Willi Winkler dismisses any claim the film might
have to being a serious statement on the assassination in Sarajevo. It is only a
film, after all, for it mingles historical facts with the invention of fictional
characters, namely Dr. Sattler, in whom Winkler perceives yet another example
of the stereotypical beastly German that appears in so many films, and Marija.
What is the basis of this reasoning? Friedrich Schiller, perhaps the initiator of
the modern historical drama, not only consented to the introduction of
fictional characters into a historical drama but allowed for the dramatic
representation of events that never could have taken place on the factual plane,
for example the accidental meeting of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart in the
English countryside, which on a figurative or allegorical level exposed
underlying realities that otherwise would have remained hidden

I venture to suggest that Winklers readiness to dismiss as absurd this films

speculative foray into the murky realm of Austro-Hungarian or German
influences springs from a defensive reflex so typical of those with an
entrenched world view. The fact that various establishments throughout
history have been very selective in the choice of evidence that serves their
policies came to view in more recent times when Tony Blair expressed
dissatisfaction with the first draft of David Kellys report on the supposed
weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Husseins arsenal. There can be no
question that the investigation into the background of the assassination was
crucial as a way of legitimizing the war policy of the Austro-Hungarian
government, a policy already formulated in the days that immediately followed

the assassination, if not before.1 In the cabinet meetings of the AustroHungarian government from the 28th of June to the fourth of July all but the
Hungarian prime minister Istvn Tisza were for military action. General
Conrad, the highest ranking soldier in Austro-Hungary, demanded an
immediate attack. He had been raring to eliminate Serbia for years with or
without a convenient pretext. Count Leopold Berchtold, the foreign minister,
was more circumspect. Quite apart from the desirability of keeping world
opinion on side, he foresaw that Italy, though a member of the Dreibund, would
not join forces with Austria in the absence of a casus foederis, that is to say,
unless any war against Serbia could be construed as defensive. As things
turned out, the report conducted under Pfeffers auspices could provide no
more than circumstantial evidence of Serbian complicity, such being the fact
that the weapons used by the conspirators were drawn from Serbian military
stocks; also the assailants received backing from officers in the Serbian army
regarding weapons training and methods of entering Bosnia undetected.

In his article Leo Pfeffer der ratlose Richter (Leo Pfeffer the stymied (or
clueless) judge), Hubert Wetzel takes the film to task from a different angle.
From his point of view Pfeffer failed to bring his assignment to a successful
conclusion. But what conclusion? To one that would undermine the project of
proving Serbian complicity? No, to the contrary, he should have proved that the
charge of Serbian complicity was well founded. According to Wetzel the truth
came to light in 1916 during the trial of Dragutin Dimitrijevi, alias Apis, later
executed, the infamous double-dealing head of Serbian security. It was he
who supplied the young conspirators with their material needs and set them
up in Bosnia. In somewhat vague terms Wetzel tars Apis and the entire
Serbian leadership with the same brush, thus in effect claiming there was ex
post facto evidence to justify the Austrian assertion that Serbia was behind the
assassination at Sarajevo after all. However, Wetzel paints only one side of the
picture. On the other we have to consider the probability that Nikola Pai, the
Serbian prime minister received a tip off that the a group of conspirators was
1 At their tte-- tte in Carlsbad in May 1914 Conrad and Moltke exchanged
views on the course of what they considered would be an imminent conflict in
Europe and their predictions turned out to be remarkably accurate.

planning an attempt on the life of Franz Ferdinand and that as a consequence

he attempted to prevent them from crossing the Serbian-Bosnian frontier.
Recognizing this failure, he instructed the Serbian ambassador in Vienna to
warn the Austrians, albeit in rather nebulous terms, that the life of Franz
Ferdinand would be in grave danger from prospective assailants, should he not
break off the scheduled visit to Sarajevo, which was in any case a foolhardy
venture.. The warning fell on deaf ears. Incidentally, all this comes over to us
today as vaguely familiar if we recall a similar warning supposedly given by
CIA agents to U.S. security officials prior to the nine-eleven attack on the twin
towers in New York.
I stick to my initial position that the issues raised by those taking sides in the
Historikerstreit debate reverberate in the world of TV film productions and the
critical comments they arouse. Indeed, Winkler evokes the authority of
Christopher Clark, the author of Die Schlafwandler / Wie Europa in den Ersten
Weltkrieg zog (The Sleepwalkers / How Europe Went to War in 1914), when
reaffirming the opinion that the Serbs shared a large portion of blame for the
situation that led to the First World War while somewhat inconsistently
pleading at the same time that extenuating circumstances lessened the
burden of guilt borne by the Austrians and Germans on the premise that no
one side could be singled out for condemnation for starting a war that sprang
from some kind of European misunderstanding.
Again, it is odd that Willi Winkler refers to the masochistic Viennese in
connection with his critique of Das Attentat. It is one thing to dismiss as
absurd dark suspicions of Austrian and even German involvement in the
assassination in Sarajevo; it is quite another to attribute such suspicions to
mental sickness. One wonders exactly who is being uptight here.

Bernd Fischerauers film Europas letzter Sommer (Europes Last Summer) is a

film which displays a documentary approach to questions arising from the
fateful assassination that took place in Sarajevo in 1914. It acquaints us with
the main actors that guided the course of events leading to the outbreak of the
First World War and in so doing implicitly negates theories that obfuscate the

question of moral responsibility under a fuzzy cloud of arguments about

impenetrable complexities and all-pervading miscomprehensions. A discussion
of such complexities has its place no doubt, as long as excessive brooding over
the nebulosity of things does not interfere with our common ability to
understand the motives and actions of individuals and their immediate
consequences.
The introduction of the film presents an idyllic scene on a glorious summer day
in Berlins Tiergarten. Demure young ladies turn to their heads as they walk
past gallant soldiers. A man whom we recognize later as Gottlieb von Jagow,
the German Foreign Secretary, rows a boat on a lake in the company of his
newlywed bride. Then the assassination itself is depicted but only with stark
brevity. At Schnbrunn Palace Count Leopold von Berchtold, Imperial Minister
for Foreign Affairs, informs the aging emperor Franz Joseph of the tragedy and
we learn in the next scene, in which von Berchtold discusses the situation
with leading colleagues, that the emperor accepted the bad news with cool
philosophical detachment, merely stating that Providence had taken a weight
from his shoulders. After a perfunctory admission that a crisis has arisen that
threatens to embroil Europe in a major war Berchtold broaches a discussion
among his colleagues as to future action in response to so blatant an outrage.
The participants in this discussion fall into opposed groups with Field Marshal
Franz X. J. Conrad von Htzendorf and the diplomat Count Ludwig Alexander
G. von Hoyos advocating war with Serbia and the Hungarian prime minister
Count Istvan Tisza and the finance minister, Chevalier Leon de Bilinski,
advising caution. Berthold outlines the strategy which, as events were to prove,
would unfold in the following weeks. In von Berchtolds view war should be
declared on Serbia but for the sake of appearances a police investigation should
first establish the complicity of the Serbian government in the assassination
after the conclusion of which a harsh ultimatum with humiliating terms
should be imposed on Serbia. In order to protect Austria from Russia, which
would in all probability take sides with Serbia, a guarantee of German
solidarity was essential. Von Hoyas is given the assignment of travelling to
Berlin, there to present to Kaiser Wilhelm an appeal for help from Franz
Joseph and a memorandum declaring the need to act aggressively toward
Serbia. Berchtold insists that nothing should disturb the surface calm of

apparent normality in Austro-Hungary in order not to provoke

countermeasures in Serbia and Russia. The scene switches to the office of the
German chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg in Berlin. Here we encounter Kurt
Reizler, the close advisor and confident of the Chancellor. He gleefully receives the
news of the murders in Sarajevo, promising as it does a heaven-sent opportunity
for war to be waged in furtherance of Germany's manifest destiny of universal
domination or, as he puts it himself, the achievement of an organic unity. He
plays the role of an obsessed ideologue and one that is perhaps a little overdrawn
as a latter-day Mephistopheles with his cynical quips, his habit of chain smoking,
his breathing down the necks of wavering socialists as he paces behind them like a
caged panther, and with the ability of his fertile brain to invent any number of
deceptive ploys in the form of disinformation. Reizler is not the only one to
unreservedly press for war. General Erich C. A Falkenhayn, the Prussian Minister
of War, displays a supercilious and condescending air and utters About time
when news of Russias mobilization arrives a quarter of an hour before the
deadline at which Germany would have to unilaterally declare war and open itself
to being branded the chief aggressor. Helmuth Moltke the Younger, raring to
implement the Schlieffen plan (or his whittled down version of it) which involved
invading Belgium so as to afford German armies a corridor on their victorious
march on Paris. He is depicted one as one with an almost infantile attachment to
the project of waging war on France, not letting any opportunity slip by to mention
Luxembourg as an essential part of the imminent invasion. Disconcerted by the
last-minute misgivings of Bethmann and von Jagow due to the prospect of Britain
entering the war, he furtively and prematurely initiates the process of mobilization
and misinforms the press that Russia has declared war on Germany. At the last
moment before war breaks out he reminds Bethmann that the process of
mobilization is now irreversible, a point later endorsed by the renowned historian
A. J. P. Taylor when observing that the strategy of war depended on keeping to a
strict timetable subject to the availability of railway connections.
In Bethmann Hollweg we find the central player in the July Crisis. He believes in
the efficacy of a policy of calculated risk, a hangover from the nineteenth century
in an age when Bismarck and Clausewitz regarded war, if resorted to with
due judicious circumspection, as a necessary concomitant of diplomacy and
believed its consequences to be predictable, manageable and dirigible. Only
when Sir Edward Grey declares that Great Britain would not remain neutral in

the case of an invasion of Belgium, does he realize the coming war would be far
from manageable or predictable and vainly tries to restrict the coming war to one
between Germany and Russia, but it is too late. In its final days the July crisis
reveals the limits of what mutual exploitation under the cover of solidarity could
achieve. Austria refuses to back down at the last minute to prevent a continental
war and Germany orders Austria to direct its main military effort towards Russia
though this means easing off Serbia, ostensibly the prime cause of all this
trouble. Paul von Metternich, who as German ambassador in Constantinople
made an urgent plea for action to prevent the massacre of Armenians in 1915,
characterized von Bethmann Hollweg as a man whose good intentions paved the
way to hell (We note here an allusion to a line in Edward Youngs poetry and
possibly to a root meaning of the word Hollweg). 2In the film Bethmann Hollweg
cuts a very dubious figure indeed; he tampers with communication in order to
increase tension between Austria and Serbia in a manner reminiscent of
Bismarcks dispatch of the Ems telegram.
In the film the Kaiser comes over as an irascible, vainglorious and essentially
insecure person who would have preferred to keep Germany out of a war with

Russia and even Serbia if he had been granted more honour. Von Hoyos plays
up to his romantic notion of medieval chivalry to extract the so-called blank
cheque and seeks to appeal directly to the Kaisers sense of honour over
Hollwegs head, not that such a cautionary ploy proved at all necessary. After
all, Bethmann would not have deleted any conciliatory parts of
communications to and from the Kaiser if he had counted on Wilhelms resolve
to wage war on Russia. The Kaiser resents having been cooped up on a naval
vessel for two weeks in order to keep up the appearance that Germany and
Austria were not preparing for war. The Kaisers absence also prevents him
from meddling in the delicate process of setting up the conditions for a
declaration of war.
In the final meeting in the chancellors office before the outbreak of war, behind
a not so thin film of tobacco smoke, Riezler, von Moltke and Zimmermann
outdo each other as they think up ever more outrageous pretexts for war
2 Research World War I, Ed. Robin Higham, Westport CT, 2002, 28.

against France, these involving reports of French troops in Prussian uniforms

crossing the Rhine and a French aerial bombardment near Nuremberg. Arthur
Zimmermann, undersecretary to the Foreign Office, would later reveal his
inventive talents by masterminding schemes to spur undercover provocations
in Mexico, Ireland and Russia .
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the film is the process of persuading the leaders
of the Social Democrat Party to do their bit in the Reichstag by voting to
release war credits. Though at first determined to reject war as an affront to the
international solidarity of the proletariat, socialist leaders such as Philipp
Scheidemann and Friedrich Ebert cave in to threats, bribes, media-stirred
patriotic hysteria and not least the promise of acceptance as full members of
the Vaterland. Scheidemann reaches the height of cynicism in the remark: So
we dont need a general strike to achieve universal male suffrage (viz. the
abolition of the three-class Prussian voting system) when the war will do the
trick. Only Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Franz Mehring stand firm
against the movement to war. To think that it would be under a Social
Democratic government led by Friedrich Ebert that Rosa Luxemburg and
Liebknecht would be arrested and brutally murdered in January 1919.
To cap it all the film ends with a scene in which several German soldiers
cautiously advance down a street in Belgium and come under fire. Having
located the house where the offending shot was fired, the troops round up the
civilian occupants of this house, including young women and the elderly, and
summarily execute them by firing squad.
Scenes at the Baltazzi Palace in Vienna offer a measure of relief from
preoccupations with grave matters of state and rumors of war. Cancan
dancing plays no small part in offering a suitable diversion. Attractive young
ladies naughtily lock arms with generals and diplomats under the watchful
guidance of a charming middle-aged countess. It was in this palace, the high
repute of which was hardly spotless, that the ill-fated lovers Crown Prince
Rudolph and Baroness Mary Vetsera began their tragic affair which signaled
the precipitous decline of the fortunes of the House of Hapsburg. Marks of this
decline in its final stage appear in a scene in which Franz Joseph, out hunting

in the woods, slays a white stag with his gun. The story recalls a report that
Franz Ferdinand did likewise and thus invoked the curse that pursued him
to Sarajevo and the grave.
Those with a religious penchant could discern significance in other
unpropitious circumstances that surrounded the advent of the First World
War. The first of August in 1914 fell on the Jewish fast day of Tish b Av (The
Ninth of Av) that commemorated the destruction of the First and Second
Temples in Jerusalem. In August 1914 Pope Pius X died. At least some element
of hope and blessing shows through in the name that next pope chose for
himself - Benedict. Some have even interpreted the number plate of the car in
which Franz Ferdinand and his wife were mortally wounded, as a prophetic
sign pointing to Armistice Day, for it bore the letter A followed by the number
111118. Between fate and pure chance we find the area in which most
explanation seekers operate and at least one has suggested that the concept of
Russian roulette provides the most suitable basis on which to contend with the
problem of correlating the fundamental and immediate causes of historical
events. With Russian roulette, however, chance has only as much scope as
design will allow it. I am back to the question of the reckless way Franz
Ferdinand and his wife were exposed to known danger.
As the two films outlined in this article stem respectively from a German and
an Austrian source, no one can suspect them of being an intended slur on the
character of any nation or people. Nor can either of them be construed as an
exercise in self-debasement or the effect of masochism; they point to an honest
and sincere attempt to understand a time when something went tragically
wrong with the hoped-for progress of European civilization in general and with
the destinies of Germany and Austro-Hungary in particular. Those who feel
some relief that Professor Christopher Clarks seminal work on the origins of
the First World War somehow lets the Germans off the hook, labor under the
misapprehension that any one wanted to place Germany on this putative hook
in the first place. I can certainly agree with Clark that it is not only academic
interest that has promoted in recent years such heated discussions concerning
the causes of the First World War. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Americas
rise to the status of the worlds last remaining superpower and the descent of

the world into a period of uncertainty and disorientation we are approaching a

state of affairs not unlike that which pertained in 1914. If ever there was a time
to learn lessons from history, it is now.
Films on Youtube: German language
Das Attentat Sarajevo 1914 Review
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/sarajevo-das-attentat-sarajevo-1914695600
Europas letzter Sommer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enb-wdJhNNM
Reviews and comments

Willi Winkler, Finstere Interessen, Suddeutsche Zeitung 2014.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/zdf-fernsehfilm-das-attentat-sarajevofinstere-interessen-1.1944811
Hubert Wenzel, Leo Pfeffer der ratlose Richter, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, April 2014

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/ermittler-im-mordfall-franz-ferdinand-leopfeffer-der-ratlose-richter-1.2015666
Works of reference
Christopher M. Clark,(2012). The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.
London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9780713999426. LCCN 2012515665.
Die Schlafwandler: Wie Europa in den Ersten Weltkrieg zog. Aus dem Englischen von
Norbert Juraschitz. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Mnchen 2013, ISBN 978-3-42104359-7 (Januar 2014 in 10. Auflage).
No Questions are Forbidden To Research" pp. 155161; "Letter to the Editor of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 November 1986" p. 198; "Jrgen Habermas,
Karl-Heinz Janen, and the Enlightenment in the Year 1986" pp. 222236 & "My
Concluding Remarks on the So-Called Historikerstreit, 12 May 1987" pp. 268269
from Forever In The Shadow Of Hitler?: Original Documents Of the Historikerstreit,
The Controversy Concerning The Singularity Of The Holocaust edited by Ernst Piper,
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-391-03784-7.