Chapter 201: The Great War Begins
To say that the world was on the verge of being lit aflame after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife was no exaggeration. In Bruno's previous life, the Habsburg Dynasty sent a list of demands to the Kingdom of Serbia, including the matter of an international investigation into the murder of their heir apparent.
There was a common misconception that Serbia had agreed to all of these demands except for one, which was the one that would give up their sovereignty as a nation, choosing instead to fight to remain an independent kingdom.
The reality was that the ultimatum, which "put Serbian sovereignty into question," was the demand that Austria be allowed to conduct a bilateral and international investigation into the assassination of their heir.
Why would Serbia reject such a request? The answer was threefold. Russia had told them in advance that they would back the Serbian army no matter what happened, and had already begun to mobilize their forces for this effort.
France had also told Russia they would back them no matter what, and communications were already being held on how to win the war before the deadline for this ultimatum was reached. And thirdly, Serbia could never allow this last point of the six-point ultimatum, which was intended to de-escalate the situation before it turned into war, because their own
intelligence agencies had supplied the assassins with the weapons, training, and safe houses to conduct the attack.
They knew for a fact that they were guilty, and this revelation would damn them in the eyes of their potential allies. So it was better to drag the world into war than to be obliterated by the combined might of Austria-Hungary and the German Reich.
When combined with the fact that the German parliament had given Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" to do as they pleased while the Kaiser was on vacation, this compounded into the start of the Great War, which led to the destruction of Western civilization.
This was not, however, how things had proceeded in this timeline. Austria-Hungary was, of course, sending a similar series of demands almost immediately after diplomatic exchanges had begun. Meanwhile, Bruno stood in the Kaiser's palace along with the rest of his General Staff, each of whom had an opinion on the matter.
While the Kaiser did not have the means to approve an offensive, the man was still being informed of what was happening. And Bruno intended to be the devil on his shoulder. Thus, while the other generals were arguing over the matter, Bruno was leaning against the wall at the back of the room, entirely unfazed as he smoked a cigarette.
Once he had finished the tobacco contained within the device, he stamped it out on a nearby ashtray before speaking, and when he did, everyone became silent.
"We all knew that this day would come sooner or later... Is this not the reason we have spent the last decade preparing for such an eventuality? There is only one solution: there must be war! God himself has willed it the moment he deemed fit to permit the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.