Origins of the First World War, pt. 2 -- Serbia

We consider the history and explosive politics of the often-forgotten Eastern European nation that set the events of the First World War in motion: Serbia. We examine the country’s emergence and brief flowering as an Eastern Orthodox kingdom in the high Middle Ages, its fall to the Ottoman advance, its many years of quiet resistance in religion and song, its re-emergence amidst the Napoleonic wars and the Ottoman breakdown, and finally, its long-frustrated quest to fulfill its purported destiny of reunifying the Southern Slavs, which led a militant and conspiratorial secret society to murder their own country’s king and to smuggle teenage assassins across the border to kill their rivals’ crown prince. Image: Golubac Fortress, eastern Serbia, seen from across the Danube River Intro & Outro music: Bach, Sonata no. 4 in E Minor, played on clavichord by Balint Karosi