Dedoviæ and Andersen, Serbian histories of the outbreak of FWW

According to history books from the interwar period, the causes for the war were to be sought in Austria. One book, a history teaching manual for junior officers, simply declared that ‘the causes to the war lay in the great hatred that Austria felt towards Serbia.’ History textbooks for primary and secondary school suggested that Austria-Hungary was worried by Serbia’s expansion in the Balkan wars, and that the Empire wanted to prevent any further strengthening of the Serbian state. According to one of Serbia’s leading historians in the interwar period, Vladimir Ćorović, Austria-Hungary feared a united Balkans dominated by Russia. Therefore ‘leading circles in Vienna found that the only medicine for everything would be just to break Serbia.’ Yet, Austria needed an excuse – or a pretext – for attacking, and that was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, even though Serbia could not at all, according to the books, be held responsible for that. A primary school textbook stated that: ‘one day in the year 1914, without any just cause, Austria-Hungary declared war on little Serbia. As at that time on Vidovdan in Sarajevo the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne was murdered by a young Serb from Bosnia, Gavrilo Princip, it [the Empire] declared that Serbs from Serbia were involved in this. And that was the pretext to declare war on Serbia.’ A secondary school textbook simply writes: ‘To find an excuse for war, Austria-Hungary accused Serbia for the murder of their heir to the throne.’ And Ćorović emphasized how Austria ‘without any proper documentation’ accused Serbia itself for the murder of Franz Ferdinand, though Serbia was not involved. Ismar Dedoviæ and Tea Sindbæk Andersen, Answering Back to Presumed Accusations: Serbian First World War Memories and the Question of Historical Responsibility. The Twentieth Century in European Memory. Brill (2017)