Pan-Slavism and the Origins of the First World War

While the growth of Slav nationalism in the Balkans can be said to have led to increasing tensions in that area, and indeed can be seen to have caused the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the designated beginning of the July Crisis of 1914, it is not the necessary condition which plunged the European continent into what Lloyd George called ‘the abyss’. Rather, other factors in the run up to war – such as the war plans of the powers and the aggression of certain states, notably Russia and Germany – were the determining factors in the eventual continental conflagration.