Transcript

The story I would like to tell is about the interaction between five great powers and intermittently also lesser players, in particular the Balkan states, and how these interactions created a climate of distrust, levels of trust were very low even within the European alliances but certainly between them, a high level of aggressivity, the anticipation of feared future aggression, arms races, and how against that background, the interactions between at least five executive decision-making centres in the capital cities of Europe produced and then escalated a Balkan crisis producing the outcome which we call the First World War.