On 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, long-standing mobilization plans went into effect to initiate invasions or guard against them and Russia, France and Britain stood arrayed against Austria and Germany in what at the time was called the "Great War", and was later named "World War I" or the "First World War". Austria thought in terms of one small limited war involving just the two countries. It did not plan a wider war such as exploded in a matter of days.
The British historian John Zametica argued that Austria-Hungary was primarily responsible for starting the war, as its leaders believed that a successful war against Serbia was the only way it could remain a Great Power, solve deep internal disputes caused by Hungarian demands and regain influence in the Balkan states. Others, most notably Christopher Clark, have argued that Austria-Hungary, confronted with a neighbor determined to incite continual unrest and ultimately acquire all of the Serb-inhabited lands of the empire (according to the Pan-Serb point of view, they included all of Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Hercegovina and some of the southern counties of the Hungary (roughly corresponding to today's Vojvodina)) and had a military and government that were intertwined with the irredentist terrorist group known as "The Black Hand", saw no practical alternative to the use of force in ending what amounted to subversion from Serbia directed at a large chunk of its territories. In that perspective, Austria had little choice but to credibly threaten war and force Serbian submission if it wished to remain a Great Power.
The view of the key figures in the "war party" in the Tsarist government and many military leaders in Russia that Germany had deliberately incited Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia to have a pretext for war with Russia and France, was promoted by the German historian Fritz Fischer from the 1960s onwards but is no longer accepted by mainstream historians. One of the key drivers of the outbreak of war were two key misperceptions that were radically at odds. The key German decision-makers convinced themselves that Russia would accept an Austrian counter-strike on Serbia and were neither ready for nor seeking a general European war, but they instead engaged in a bluff, especially because Russia had backed down in earlier crises in 1908 and again over Albania in October 1913. At the very same time, the most important Russian decision-makers viewed any decisive Austrian response as necessarily dictated by and fomented in Berlin and therefore proof of an active German desire for war against Russia.
There had been no serious joint planning with Germany before the war started and little during the war itself, as leaders in Vienna distrusted German ambitions.
Key players and goals
A small group made the decisions for Austria-Hungary. They included the aged Emperor Franz Joseph; his heir, Franz Ferdinand; Army Chief of Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf; Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold; Minister-President Karl von Stürgkh; and Finance Minister Leon Bilinski, all of whom were Austrians. The key Hungarian leaders were Prime Minister István Tisza, the minister István Burián and the advisor Lajos Thallóczy.
Austria-Hungary avoided major wars in the era between 1867 and 1914 but engaged in a number of minor military actions. The Austro-Hungarian General Staff maintained plans for major wars against neighboring powers, especially Italy, Serbia and Russia. The major decisions on military affairs in 1867 to 1895 were made by Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, the nephew of the Emperor Franz Joseph and his leading advisor. According to the historians John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft: He was a firm conservative in all matters, military and civil, and took to writing pamphlets lamenting the state of the Army's morale as well as fighting a fierce rearguard action against all forms of innovation.... Much of the Austrian failure in the First World War can be traced back to his long period of power.... His power was that of the bureaucrat, not the fighting soldier, and his thirty years of command over the peacetime Habsburg Army made it a flabby instrument of war. As Europe engaged in an arms race from the late 1890s forwards, Austria-Hungary lagged behind by spending the least percentage of its economic potential on its armed forces of all the great powers (2.6% of GDP compared to Russia's 4.5% in 1912). Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff von Hötzendorf's repeated urgings of "preventative war" against nearly all of Austria's adversaries at one time or another had no rational basis in the actual balance of military power.