The Bee That Stung the World

“. . . this bee spread no honey. This bee started World War I.”—By Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—5/19/2014—His nickname was Apis.

The sobriquet comes not from Apis, the bull god, but rather from apis mellifera, the honey bee.

Only this bee spread no honey.

This bee started World War I.

This year is the centennial of the war’s onset.

There is a great gushing of tomes about the war’s origins.

Few of these tomes identify the right culprits.

Most American and British reviewers favor those books that tax Germany with principal responsibility for the war.

These books are plain wrong.

Germany might have prevented the outbreak of war had it acted more wisely.

But it certainly didn’t start the war.

Nor did it seek a war that, according to some commentators, would allow it to dominate Europe. As these commentators apparently fail to understand, in 1914, Germany already dominated Europe, although it mistakenly feared that its economic dominance was threatened by Russian industrial progress.

The war started in Bosnia with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The assassination plot was the brainchild of our Apis, whose real name was Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević.

Dimitrijević headed Serbian military intelligence. He was energetic and forceful (busy as a . . . ).

He was also a deluded patriot, whose paranoid brain conceived the notion that the Austrian archduke was planning to make war on Serbia.

The truth was just the opposite. The archduke, though he disliked Serbians, was a force for peace, constraining perennial saber-rattlers, such as Austrian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf.

Dimitrijevic took his plot to his paymaster, the Russian military attaché, Colonel Artamonov, for approval.

Artamonov consulted Saint Petersburg, which signed off on the plot.

The archduke was duly assassinated, and his murder set off a chain of events, the consequences of which are still being experienced a century later.

Whenever we hear charges of fascism and Naziism bandied about, we should remember that both “isms” had their origins in the crises that followed, and stemmed from, World War I.

Whenever we hear about violence in the Mideast, we should remember that there would be no violence were it not for the existence of Israel, and there would be no Israel were it not been for the aforementioned “isms,” the tragic sequelae of World War I.

In truth, that was one helluva bee sting!

3 Comments

Alan Ichiyasu

May 21, 2014 at 11:33 am

SANFORD:

I ASKED THE EIC AS TO “WHY WWI STARTED?” MY WISH CAME TRUE.

THANKS,

ALAN ICHIYASU

Slobodan Cekic

August 9, 2014 at 5:53 am

The chief of British navy, Fisher, predicted at least as early as 1910 the outbreak of war with Germany for October 1914. He understood Germany needed war as soon as possible, but not before the completion of the strategically important Kiel Canal.

Whoever reads the transcripts of the German Imperial War Council Session from Dec. 1912 must be impressed with the Fisher’s insight. The Kaiser says he wants the war at once, time running out on German arms supremacy; the Army chief says the same – and the naval chief Tirpitz says – well, not before we finish the Kiel Canal.

By the way, Fisher couldn’t have known this at the time but the Germans accelerated the reconstruction of the Kiel Canal. It was finished end of June, 1914.

What you say boils down to this: The war started practically by chance, one bullet caused it all.

Please, do read the European history of the two decades before the war, marked by an arms race without precedent. Which has been started by Germany.

Apis has been described as a Germanofile, and is said to have been closely related to the Russian circles well-disposed to Germany.

EU seems to be an ever greater financial burden for the today’s Germany, and the EU proponents could try sweetening the deal for the Germans, giving them more influence in the institutions, I imagine. That needs preparatory work on the German image. Academicians and media are doling out the stories just like this one here. Don’t get swayed. Or do; it’s up to you.

S. Rose

August 9, 2014 at 12:50 pm

Very interesting remarks but much at variance with the consensus of authorities who have made the most painstaking analyses of that period. I recommend that, at minimum, you read Luigi Albertini’s magisterial three-volume study of the war’s origins. He faults Germany, not because it wanted war, which it didn’t, but because it meddled needlessly in Balkan affairs and because it overestimated the worth of its alliance with Austria-Hungary.
One can find numerous quotations of surpassing bellicosity from the kaiser, but the fact remains that when war became imminent, the kaiser took fright and asked his chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, to rein in the Austrians. The archives contain a memo from the kaiser saying that the Serbians had, in effect, capitulated to Austrian demands and that in consequence “all reason for war had disappeared.”
Of course, the war did not happen by chance. Nationalism, racialism, and militarism were undeniable causes. But the blindness of people on all sides contributed mightily to the debacle.
Had the grand duke not been assassinated, Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister, might have been able to stay the hand of his warmongering chief of staff, as he had in previous periods of high tension.
Had the Serbian press not publicly celebrated the assassination, Count Tisza might not have given his reluctant assent to the draconian ultimatum Austria-Hungary sent to the Serbians.
Had Sir Edward Grey sent unequivocal notice to the Germans in early July that, in the event of war, Britain would stand behind France and Russia, the Germans, who were somehow convinced that Britain would remain neutral, would have have acted to restrain Austria-Hungary several weeks before they finally tried, thereby forestalling the Russian mobilization that in effect launched the war.

Alan Ichiyasu

May 21, 2014 at 11:33 am

SANFORD:

I ASKED THE EIC AS TO “WHY WWI STARTED?” MY WISH CAME TRUE.

THANKS,

ALAN ICHIYASU
Slobodan Cekic

August 9, 2014 at 5:53 am

The chief of British navy, Fisher, predicted at least as early as 1910 the outbreak of war with Germany for October 1914. He understood Germany needed war as soon as possible, but not before the completion of the strategically important Kiel Canal.

Whoever reads the transcripts of the German Imperial War Council Session from Dec. 1912 must be impressed with the Fisher’s insight. The Kaiser says he wants the war at once, time running out on German arms supremacy; the Army chief says the same – and the naval chief Tirpitz says – well, not before we finish the Kiel Canal.

By the way, Fisher couldn’t have known this at the time but the Germans accelerated the reconstruction of the Kiel Canal. It was finished end of June, 1914.

What you say boils down to this: The war started practically by chance, one bullet caused it all.

Please, do read the European history of the two decades before the war, marked by an arms race without precedent. Which has been started by Germany.

Apis has been described as a Germanofile, and is said to have been closely related to the Russian circles well-disposed to Germany.

EU seems to be an ever greater financial burden for the today’s Germany, and the EU proponents could try sweetening the deal for the Germans, giving them more influence in the institutions, I imagine. That needs preparatory work on the German image. Academicians and media are doling out the stories just like this one here. Don’t get swayed. Or do; it’s up to you.
S. Rose

August 9, 2014 at 12:50 pm

Very interesting remarks but much at variance with the consensus of authorities who have made the most painstaking analyses of that period. I recommend that, at minimum, you read Luigi Albertini’s magisterial three-volume study of the war’s origins. He faults Germany, not because it wanted war, which it didn’t, but because it meddled needlessly in Balkan affairs and because it overestimated the worth of its alliance with Austria-Hungary.
One can find numerous quotations of surpassing bellicosity from the kaiser, but the fact remains that when war became imminent, the kaiser took fright and asked his chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, to rein in the Austrians. The archives contain a memo from the kaiser saying that the Serbians had, in effect, capitulated to Austrian demands and that in consequence “all reason for war had disappeared.”
Of course, the war did not happen by chance. Nationalism, racialism, and militarism were undeniable causes. But the blindness of people on all sides contributed mightily to the debacle.
Had the grand duke not been assassinated, Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister, might have been able to stay the hand of his warmongering chief of staff, as he had in previous periods of high tension.
Had the Serbian press not publicly celebrated the assassination, Count Tisza might not have given his reluctant assent to the draconian ultimatum Austria-Hungary sent to the Serbians.
Had Sir Edward Grey sent unequivocal notice to the Germans in early July that, in the event of war, Britain would stand behind France and Russia, the Germans, who were somehow convinced that Britain would remain neutral, would have have acted to restrain Austria-Hungary several weeks before they finally tried, thereby forestalling the Russian mobilization that in effect launched the war.