ABSTRACT
A hodgepodge of national and religious divisions, the Balkans prior to World War I experienced a rising sea of nationalist fervor that led to occasional wars and threatened to tear apart the two empires in the region, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. With the Ottoman Empire clinging tenaciously to its last few square miles of European soil, the Balkan peoples turned their attention to the other multinational empire in their midst, Austria-Hungary. In hindsight, German leaders faced a difficult set of circumstances in 1914. The German high command, on the verge of ordering full mobilization, suddenly recognized that France might choose to do nothing until Germany was fully engaged in fighting Russia. German infantry across the way, having clear sight lines and no other enemy troops attacking them, fired their machine guns into the massed Canadians. The incompetence of the Austrian high command forced the Germans to take greater control of the Austro-Hungarian army, undermining its morale.
