Talk:July Crisis

message: The name of this section is erroneous, Serbian irredentistm is a Serbian nationalist ideology, the assassins were members of a freedom fighting group that came from all three major Bosnian ethnic groups, they were looking to free their country of Austro-Hungarian rule and unite all the south-Slav peoples, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes not looking to create Greater Serbia.  Aeengath (talk) 10:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: "freedom fighters" only refer to how the members of the group perceived themselves, their motivation and goal is still a matter of dispute. Aeengath (talk) 10:53, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian irredentists

message: Hard to know where to begin. Focusing on every internal interaction by one power is obviously going to lead, by omission, to the conclusion that one power is doing everything. This is the article's framework, and what other powers are doing is included only to the extent that it fits within that. One of the sources cited here repeatedly and often, Fritz Fischer, specifically set out to establish that one power was indeed doing everything, and so what we really have is a double-dip of bias: both in focus and in reference. 
Unless you are looking to pretend otherwise, I would suggest reading Fischer. Much like A.J.P Taylor (famous for: If there had been a strong democratic sentiment...blah blah blah...[Germans] deserved what they got when they went round crying for a hero), Fischer rarely escaped his hatred for the subject of his obsession (ex: his rants about Germans and the Protestant Church) to the result that, either through tunnel vision or omission, the full story is not presented. Perhaps there is this idea that giving Fischer the podium is providing an international, or even German, view on the subject so as to cover all views. But his views are not organic anyway; they come after years of tunnel-vision propaganda and a guilt parade climate imposed on his people (and possibly his understanding of his own past). 
Anyway, relied on to the extent that this article does with Fischer and the other pet author, the book The Russian Origins of the First World War by Sean McKeekin, would create a completely different article. That is not to say that article would be balanced of a view of the July Crisis if there were 1000 McKeekin references. But it is a side that is not represented at all - and, to demonstrate this, none of the primary source documents that point towards McKeekin's thesis are referenced by the secondary sources included in this article; for example, there is nothing in here about warm water ports 'in the straights' and beyond the Balkans, which were a key motivation and conversation topic for the Russians. Similar to the issue with Russia being just a fill in in a long narrative about what the Germans did when, there is little inclusion of France's interactions and internal memos in the article, and nothing about the UK's, only until the end (probably to manufacture the illusion of a reaction, as opposed to action, as it fits with the thesis of the article). Also, note that the article presents early July enthusiasm to take action against Serbia and do so quickly within the context of a long push to war (doing little to show the change of attitude by late July). There is no rationale for this or the other discrepancies based solely on what the article is supposed to be about, because the July Crisis was not that there was somehow a plot by Germany to create a "world war"; the July Crisis was just everything in July following, and pertaining to, the assassination that had to do with war and the failure of diplomacy. That's it. What should be included that isn't? Well, I have already given a few examples. But another is this: nobody told Russia it had to mobilize against Austria-Hungary. And nobody told France it had to mobilize when Germany started to mobilize. And nobody told them, or the UK, that they had to tie all the ends and do all the preparations that they did throughout July to ready themselves for war. But there is internal dialogue leading up to all of these decisions, and none of that is included in the article. It is only just shown and presented as action in response to action, like it just came out of the blue, while of course making it painstakingly clear, through devotion of focus, that the German action did not just come out of the blue.
Have a look at this timeline for July, for example: https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Timeline_of_Events Arguably, the contents of the timeline for July are the July Crisis. You can already see many discussions and details for that period pertaining to getting ready or mobilization in multiple camps, unlike in the article. 
So what can one do? Can one just insert a few snips, events or correspondences in the article from the July timeline, or McKeekin's or another author's work, to "fix" the problem? I am not certain that is possible, based on how each section is divided. The way the article is laid out contradicts the impression one gets just browsing the timeline, and the article is already very heavily laden with who said what on what date that I feel adding just more from other sides would a) make the article far too long and b) make the article not encyclopedic, but more like a stenography sample and far too scientific. Still, it is clear that the article fails because everything that does not fit in topically to the idea of a German-manufactured war, or would fork off from that focus, has been flushed out. Again, that is not what the July Crisis is. The definition of July Crisis is 'not here are the primary documents to support the idea that World War I was a German plot. But that is the position the article takes. And why? Why is it always this? Why did those who wrote this feel it proper to turn an invasion against a terrorist-harboring nation into this idea that Germany thus started a world war in doing so, by so obviously and purposely conflating the two so that everyone overlooks what turned an obvious local war into a world war?  I can't help but laugh that these are the surely the same people of the same societies that gives a thumbs up to an invasion of Afghanistan, and entire regime toppling in 2001, and they can also go through the mental gymnastics of convincing themselves that Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and threat of war there somehow constituted "starting a world war". Oh, sure, it was in the propaganda of 1914, no doubt. But so was the narrative about bayonetting babies, and this is the side that somehow also found the war of 1904 to be Germany's fault for Germany saying "hm, yea, rising Japan is bad" before Russia mobilized and fought it. I'm not sure why I am so passionate about this, probably because I see where this narrative led to, the contradiction as the forked-tongues who implicated Germany and rattle now in the new era for new war and forget the old rules and arguments or just write them out as they please all over again, all in contradiction, amidst a dumpster fire of a society we now live in, thanks to the road not taken, which has led to the sort of incompetence that has also led me to suffer a neurological injury. So, thanks. To be completely honest, I'm not the one who is neutral enough to edit this article, but I think it is clear what needs to be added, and that I have made my case. DO not remove the NPOV tag, the hope is that someone will read this in result and add a clearer picture of what was going on in other governments and top-military conversations in July - and not just to the extent that it can be placed to fit into the context of responding to what Germans were doing at point A, B and C. Wambook (talk) 18:27, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I have read the text several times and I think that it is not good. In particular, the motives of the respective states are not sufficiently presented. For example, in addition to its political ambitions towards Bosnia, Serbia wanted to cover up its involvement in the assassination. After all, the assassins had been trained, smuggled in, armed and indoctrinated by the head of the Serbian military intelligence service and his apparatus. Austria-Hungary now wanted to finally solve the Serbian problem, which they considered tiresome. Russia wanted to maintain and expand its power base towards the Balkans and Constantinople. France tried to get Alsace-Lorraine back. Italy, which was still largely excluded, had claims and rivalries with France and especially Austria-Hungary. Germany, on the other hand, feared increasing strategic encirclement after its poor foreign policy. Only the British interests related to Europe were unclear, in any case the focus was on the German fleet. 194.96.51.197 (talk) 13:16, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV2 

message: Addendum: Perhaps the more recent findings and representations of Christopher Clark and Sean McKeekin should be incorporated. This applies in particular to the basic attitude of most of those involved: "I don't want a war, but the others are forcing me into it!" The article also lacks the basic clue that in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, governments were more in favor of war, while the emperors or tsar were more likely to put the brakes on the brakes or attempt last-minute mediation as the conflict threatened to escalate. 194.96.51.197 (talk) 14:01, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV3