Author(s): Sean McMeekin

History

Popular historian Sean McMeekin's story of Europe's countdown to war, told through the eyes of men who, even a century later, still seem larger than life. We meet the brooding Habsburg heir Archduke Ferdinand, the fanatical Bosnian Serb assassins plotting his murder, and the Austrians seeking to exploit his death, recklessly encouraged by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov was trying to live down a reputation for cowardice, abetted by two French statesmen. Winston Churchill, alone among Cabinet officials in London, saw the threat in time to take action. It is not true that, as often claimed, no one wanted conflict. Individual statesmen conjured up the conflict - some oozing with malice as they rigged the decks for war. Groundbreaking and powerful, July 1914 makes clear as never before the men responsible for the horrors of the First World War.