Thirteen months before the Assassination in Sarajevo and fourteen months before the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war to Serbia on the 28th May 1913 the Governor of BiH Oskar Potiorek sent a letter to the Minister of Finance, Leon Bilinski, to Vienna. The content of this letter convincingly testifies about intentions of Austria-Hungary to begin the Great War.
In the letter, published today in the Department of History of The Andrić Institute in Andrićgrad, Potiorek states that “as the main task of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy must be seen in the systematically preparing for, in a few years, the inevitable Great War that will be fought in extreme and severe situations.”
“It is interesting that during this quiet, better to say the preparatory period, we must try to create a tolerable relationship with Serbia. Of course, it would be a grave misconception, if we believed that, even at the cost of the greatest courtesy in the foreign and internal policy, we could achieve to make Serbia a reliable ally.
If, as it is likely to be, we do not use the current situation to unite Serbia with our Monarchy, at least in the form of trade, customs, and military convention, in order to make Serbia harmless, then we will have to unconditionally count on that this country will in every war, that is to come, fight with as an open and bitter opponent on the side of our enemies,” says the letter.
Potiorek says that we also must take into consideration the fact that Serbia will use this period before the war “to prepare the ground for themselves for the future war in Bosnia, Dalmatia, Croatia and southern kingdom of Hungary.”
“We should be satisfied if we manage a rural Serb population be hold in its lethargic state, and if we prevent Croat and Muslim intelligentsia and half-intelligentsia from crossing over to Serbian camp, to hold the unification of all the South Slavs, what is a common aspiration of people that are on anti-dynasty basis, “says the letter.
Potiorek’s letter – Testimony of the Austro-Hungarian war intentions | The Andri? Institute