#43: 30 July 1914 V - Britain on the Fence

When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

Zack Twamley

19th Century, 20th Century, International Relations, Politics, Thirty Years' War, Korean War, 18th Century, First World War, Phd, 17th Century, European History, History, War

4.8 • 773 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The 30 July was a turning point for the British Cabinet. When the German Chancellor made his bid for British neutrality, yet refused to guarantee the independence of Belgium or to rule out annexations of French colonies, it set in motion a terrible chain of events.

Sir Edward Grey planned to use this faux pas to pile more pressure on the non-interventionists, who seemed to be growing in power every day. His Cabinet was thoroughly divided, but there was one bright spark - Ireland. Thanks to a last minute compromise between Nationalist and Unionist figures, the Home Rule crisis was postponed, for now.

Although the Cabinet was united in revelling in this good news, it was not agreed when it came to the question of intervening in the unfolding crisis. As the full details of the arrangement with France were unknown to them, non-interventionists could not imagine any reason why their country should join the war on her side. Some felt so strongly about maintaining British neutrality, in fact, that they were willing to topple their own government from the inside...

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In summer 1914, the world went to war.
0:04.6	Now 110 years later, we go back to those figures, to those debates, to those questions,
0:12.1	in the greatest failure in the history of diplomacy.
0:16.3	I am Dr. Zach Twomley. You're listening to When Diplomacy Fails, and this is the July
0:23.2	Crisis. War situation, I fear, much worse tonight.
0:57.8	Pray God, I can still smash our cabinet before they can commit the crime.
1:04.0	British colonial secretary Louis Harcourt describes the atmosphere in his diary 30th of July 1914.
1:14.8	Another day in the July crisis, and say it with me, another enormous episode on Britain.
1:21.5	By now, we've seen the rise and fall of German skepticism towards Vienna.
1:26.5	We've seen the mobilizations either be approved
1:29.4	or carried out in Austria, Russia and Germany. We saw how Russian intelligence gathering
1:35.5	highlighted Austria's sinister intentions to strike Serbia and Russia at once, replicating the
1:41.7	previous crisis of 1912.
1:47.8	It seemed little effort was made to grapple with such a leap in logic,
1:52.0	because it confirmed what Sazanov and his colleagues had suspected all along.
1:55.2	This, of course, was not a solely Russian sin.
1:57.6	Contemporaries were wearing blinders,
2:00.5	often in the form of biases and suspicions, established several years before.
2:03.2	Optimism gave way to fatalism, sometimes in the space of 24 hours, and yet somehow, the idea
2:09.2	that a mediated solution could be reached was still floating around. By now, it was floating
2:15.4	far too high above the heads of those that truly mattered.
2:19.2	You could argue that once mobilization procedures were finalized in the key Eastern empires,
	...

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