This Day in World War 1 History: JUNE 30, 1914 : EUROPEAN POWERS MAINTAIN FOCUS DESPITE KILLINGS IN SARAJEVO

In an editorial published on the final day of June 1914, two days after the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife by a Serbian nationalist during an official appearance in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the London Times urges a continued focus on domestic affairs.

Although what happened in Sarajevo obviously filled “the first place in the public mind,” acknowledged the Times, and the outcome of the investigation into the killing would no doubt “occupy the attention of all students of European politics,” it was imperative that Britons keep their priorities straight, because “our own affairs must be addressed.” At the time, the United Kingdom was threatened by the possible outbreak of civil war over the future status of Ireland; this presumably was the principal “affair” to which the Times was referring.

In Britain, as in many of the European capitals, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was at first viewed in a less alarmist light than might be assumed given the enormity of the war that the event would later precipitate. The archduke had not been widely liked, within his own country or without, and as the British ambassador to Italy reported to his government in London: “It is obvious that people have generally regarded the elimination of the Archduke as almost providential.” In Paris on June 30, at the first cabinet meeting since the events in Sarajevo, President Raymond Poincare’s biographer reported later that the killings were “hardly mentioned.” The attention of the French public, meanwhile, was riveted on the scandalous case of Madame Caillaux, a politician’s wife who had murdered the editor of a right-wing newspaper after he threatened to publish damaging material about her husband.

Even in Vienna, the archduke’s own capital city, Franz Ferdinand’s death seemed to arouse little strong feeling from the public. As the Austrian government and military leadership hurried to obtain assurances of German support if the Austrian pressure on Serbia over the assassinations led to war with Serbia and its powerful ally, Russia, the reaction among the Austrian population was mild, almost indifferent. As historian Z.A.B. Zeman later wrote, “the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday [June 28 and 29], the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine?as if nothing had happened.”

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June 30, 1914 : European powers maintain focus despite killings in Sarajevo

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

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  June 30, 1914 : European powers maintain focus despite killings in Sarajevo

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/european-powers-maintain-focus-despite-killings-in-sarajevo

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  June 30, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: JUNE 29, 1915 : AUSTRIA-HUNGARY PROTESTS SHIPMENT OF U.S. MUNITIONS TO BRITAIN

On June 29, 1915, Foreign Minister Istvan von Burian of Austria-Hungary sends a note to the United States protesting the U.S. sale and shipment of munitions in enormous quantities to Britain and its allies for use against the Central Powers–Austria-Hungary and Germany–on the battlefields of World War I.

When war broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, the United States maintained a position of strict neutrality. The commercial opportunities of the war, however, were enormous, and neutrality did not impede the U.S.–by 1910 the leading industrial nation, with 35.3 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity, compared with 15.9 percent for Germany and 14.7 percent for Britain–from carrying on a brisk trade of munitions from the first months of the conflict. Beginning with guns and proceeding to boats and submarines, a steady flow of war materials soon began to travel across the Atlantic. Due to the naval blockade of the Central Powers by the mighty British navy, in place from the autumn of 1914, the great majority of these war materials were bought by Britain and France, a situation Burian considered intolerable and incompatible with the U.S. profession of neutrality.

In his note of June 29, 1915, Burian deplored “the fact that for a long time a traffic in munitions of war to the greatest extent has been carried on between the United States of America on the one hand and Great Britain and its allies on the other, while Austria-Hungary as well as Germany have been absolutely excluded from the American market.” He went on to make the case for a violation of neutrality, stating that “a neutral government may not permit traffic in contraband of war to be carried on without hindrance when this traffic assumes such a form or such dimensions that the neutrality of the nation becomes involved thereby.”

On August 15, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing issued the official reply to Burian’s note. In it, he vigorously refuted Burian’s suggestions of a violation of neutrality and claimed that a comparable situation had existed during the Boer War of 1899-1902, during which Austria-Hungary and Germany had sold munitions to Britain, even as British dominance of the seas prevented a similar trade with Britain’s enemies, the Boer population of South Africa. “If at that time Austria-Hungary and her present ally had refused to sell arms and ammunition to Great Britain on the ground that to do so would violate the spirit of strict neutrality,” Lansing pointed out, “the Imperial and Royal Government might with greater consistency and greater force urge its present contention.”

Austria-Hungary was as entitled as Britain to purchase U.S. munitions, Lansing continued, but the U.S. required that the munitions be collected by Austro-Hungarian ships from American ports, as to transport war materials in U.S. ships would, in fact, violate the principles of neutrality. If the inability of Austro-Hungarian (or German) ships to do this was due to the overwhelming threat of the British navy, Lansing maintained, it was not the fault of the United States. He concluded the statement by thoroughly dismissing Burian’s claims, asserting that “The principles of international law, the practice of nations, the national safety of the United States and other nations without great military and naval establishments?are opposed to the prohibition by a neutral nation of the exportation of arms, ammunition, or other munitions of war to belligerent Powers during the progress of the war.”

Article Details:

June 29, 1915 : Austria-Hungary protests shipment of U.S. munitions to Britain

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

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  June 29, 1915 : Austria-Hungary protests shipment of U.S. munitions to Britain

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/austria-hungary-protests-shipment-of-u-s-munitions-to-britain

• Access Date

  June 29, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: JUNE 26, 1917 : FIRST U.S. TROOPS ARRIVE IN FRANCE

During World War I, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops land in France at the port of Saint Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of German submarines, but by the time the Americans had lined up to take their first salute on French soil, an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. However, the “Doughboys,” as the British referred to the green American troops, were untrained, ill-equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front.

One of U.S. General John J. Pershing’s first duties as commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to set up training camps in France and establish communication and supply networks. Four months later, on October 21, the first Americans entered combat when units from the U.S. Army’s First Division were assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France. Each American unit was attached to a corresponding French unit. Two days later, Corporal Robert Bralet of the Sixth Artillery became the first U.S. soldier to fire a shot in the war when he discharged a French 75mm gun into a German trench a half mile away. On November 2, Corporal James Gresham and privates Thomas Enright and Merle Hay of the 16th Infantry became the first American soldiers to die when Germans raided their trenches near Bathelemont, France.

After four years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and more than 50,000 of these men had lost their lives.

Article Details:

June 26, 1917 : First U.S. troops arrive in France

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  June 26, 1917 : First U.S. troops arrive in France

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-u-s-troops-arrive-in-france

• Access Date

  June 26, 2015

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This Day in World War 1 History: JUNE 24, 1915 : FIRST OPERATIONAL FLIGHT OF NEW GERMAN FIGHTER PLANE

On June 24, 1915, young Oswald Boelcke, one of the earliest and best German fighter pilots of World War I, makes the first operational flight of the Fokker Eindecker plane.

The years of the First World War, 1914 to 1918, saw a staggering improvement not only in aircraft production, but also in technology, on both sides of the conflict. The war began just a decade after Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic 12-second flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina; by 1918, fighter airplanes had been developed that could serve purposes of observation and reconnaissance, tactical and strategic bombing, direct attack on ground and air targets and use in naval warfare.

The Fokker Eindecker, a plane equipped first with one and eventually with two machine guns that could fire straight ahead through the aircraft’s propellers, would have a huge impact on air combat in the Great War and would put the Luftstreitkrafte, the German Air Service, far ahead of the Allied air forces for several months during the summer of 1915. The British referred to this as the Fokker Menace or the Fokker Scourge. The plane’s designer, Anton Fokker, had based the concept of synchronization, or the precise timing of the propeller blades to avoid being struck by the machine gun bullets, on an aircraft designed by France’s Morane-Saulnier corporation and flown by the famous French ace Roland Garros when he was shot down in April 1915 by the Germans. The Fokker Eindecker, or Fokker E, plane made German pilots like Boelcke and Max Immelmann into national heroes, as the number of their kills increased exponentially.

By the end of the summer of 1915, the Allies had managed to develop their own planes to rival the Fokkers, and balance was restored. Another German air menace reared its head in early 1917, though, as the new German Albatros planes decimated the British Royal Flying Corps in the skies over France. Soon, however, Allied aviation technology and production began to far outstrip the German efforts, as aerial combat became less a question of individual battles by heroic pilots than a matter of mass-production capability. In the last year of the war, Britain, France and the United States jointly produced an average of 11,200 aircraft and 14,500 engines per month, while their financially struggling German counterparts managed below 2,000 of each.

Article Details:

June 24, 1915 : First operational flight of new German fighter plane

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  June 24, 1915 : First operational flight of new German fighter plane

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-operational-flight-of-new-german-fighter-plane

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  June 24, 2015

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  A+E Networks