DBWI austria goes to war over the death of FF

I am surprised that Austria is choosing not to respond even after they found out that a SERBIAN killed the archduke.

why don't they just seek vengance after what happened?
 
((OOC: I'm confused- is this from the standpoint of observers in an alternate 1914, or in an alternate 2008?))
 
OOC: Hate to hijack your POD, old boy, but I wase really struggling to come up with reasons for a cool-minded Germany. Also: I know Scharnhorst was long dead, I'm just feigning ignorance in this TL in case I say something stupid :D.

IC: Well, one has to remember that the Serbians pretty much bent over backwards to Austria. You can only really have two scenarios for a war. One is that the Austrians just invade without an ultimatum, which would be morally shaky and very unlikely. Another is for Serbia to refuse Austria's ultimatum. That one's interesting. Apparently, the Austrians toyed with manufacturing a war by offering Serbia an ultimatum it couldn't fully accept while it maintained its sovereignty. Kaiser Fred talked them out of it and the Germans basically wrote the actual ultimatum for them.

The German military establishment wanted a war. They thought they had to fight by 1916, or France and Russia would be too strong, so I can come up with a dozen scenarios where German militarism shines through. Kill Frederick, for one thing (he was an old man in 1914, he might well have died earlier). Or just put the military in a slightly more influential position. Even have the Austrians going to pro-war diplomats and politicians first, perhaps.

As to the war, I'd put my money on German victory, but I'm not sure. France and Russia together were formidable, and there are about 4000 places where the plan some general (Scharnhorst?) had cooked up for beating the French could go pear-shaped. For one thing, invading Belgium could anger us Brits. What would with the whole nemesis complex we had with Russia, war is unlikely, but still, given our commercial power, pro-French neutrality would hurt the Germans. And some say that the Russians were better than anypne thought and could actually have got armies in East Prussia way before anyone thought. I'm not so sure about that, but if it's true, Germany's screwed. They had one army on the eastern front under this plan. The Russians would have, to coin a phrase, steamrollered them.
 
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