ABSTRACT
On June 28, 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was assassinated during an official visit to the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. At 2 p.m. on Thursday, July 30, 1914, Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918), Russia’s ruler, met with his foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov (1860-1927), to discuss the crisis that was engulfing Europe following the assassination. The Tsar, under pressure from his generals to mobilize Russia’s armies to meet the possibility of war, balked, declaring that he did not want the moral responsibility for “the thousands and thousands of men who will be sent to their deaths.”1 The foreign minister insisted, arguing that it was vital “to do everything necessary to meet war fully armed and under conditions most favorable to us.” Nicholas finally gave way, and Sazonov telephoned the army’s chief of staff with this message: “Now you can smash your telephone [so that the tsar could not change his mind again]. Give your orders, General!”2 Although the tsar’s decision made war inevitable, in his diary he wrote, “After lunch I received Sazonov and Tatischev. I went for a walk by myself. The weather was hot . . . had a delightful bathe in the sea.”3
