https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... -assuranceSmitty-48 wrote:Austria-Hungary was not a German proxy, Hohenzollern had no control over Hapsburg-Lorraine, "Germany declared war by proxy" is balderdash, you can't declare war by proxy, Austria-Hungary was not a proxy for Germany, and Germany never mobilized nor took any hostile military action on behalf of Austria-Hungary, nor against Serbia, nor against Russia.
As usual, you have to throw up a smokescreen of fallacies, to try to dig yourself out of the nonsense corner you have painted yourself into.
Yeah, I just made that up. They were two completely separate entities (*cough* Habsburgs *cough*), and Germany just decided to back them up out of the blue, as a favor. Totally weird, that.On July 5, 1914, in Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany pledges his country’s unconditional support for whatever action Austria-Hungary chooses to take in its conflict with Serbia, a long-running rivalry thrown into crisis by the assassination, the previous June 28, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by a Serbian nationalist during an official visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Wilhelm was outraged by Franz Ferdinand’s murder, and felt a sense of personal loss: the two had met at the archduke’s country estate just two weeks before the assassination to discuss the situation in the Balkans. Though he initially demurred and said he needed to consult the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, he eventually—when pressed by the ambassador—responded with uncharacteristic decisiveness, promising Germany’s “faithful support” for Austria-Hungary in whatever action it chose to take towards Serbia, even if Russia intervened. Later that afternoon, Wilhelm assembled a crown council, attended by Bethmann Hollweg, Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann, and War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn, among others. From this meeting, a consensus emerged backing the kaiser’s decision, which Bethmann Hollweg subsequently relayed to the Austrian representatives and Hoyos triumphantly carried back to Vienna.