Citizen Soldier: On the Brink of World War I

History often points to the June 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the event that started the Great War, but World War I was not started by any single event. Dr. John Allen Williams will moderate a panel discussion on existing interlocking alliances, economic priorities of combatant nations, and the geo-political impact of World War I that is felt around the world to this day. This program is presented in partnership with the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial and Shook, Hardy, & Bacon through the Charles Bacon Fund.

On the Brink: A Month That Changed the World, an exhibition by the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, examines the underground organizations, diplomatic communications and international newspaper reporting of the assassination and its political aftershock. It presents the assassination in a manner never seen before, incorporating a journalistic and documentary approach and portraying the story of the assassination and aftermath through a series of newspaper articles, photographs and quotes from diplomatic sources.

DORAN CART is Senior Curator of the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, MO. Since April 1990, he has been responsible for the museum’s collection, which began in 1920. He has a B.A. in History from Indiana University and an M.A. in Museum Studies and History from the University of California Riverside. Since the start of his professional career in 1974, Doran has worked in museums, historic sites and in historic preservation from Indiana to California to Florida. He has written a number of articles on historical subjects, appeared in several television shows and edited two books. 

DR. NIKOLAS GARDNER is an associate professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. From 2006-2011, Dr. Gardner taught in the Department of Strategy at the USAF Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, where he served as the first Academic Director of the Air War College Grand Strategy Program. He is the author of Trial by Fire: Command in the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 (2003)—runner-up for the Templer Medal Book Prize awarded by the Society for Army Historical Research—and has published numerous book chapters and articles in a variety of scholarly journals. 

DR. SAJE MATHIEU is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches classes on Global America and African American History. She earned a Joint Ph.D. in History and African American Studies from Yale University and has published numerous articles and books on the topic.

DR. JOHN ALLEN WILLIAMS will moderate this program. Williams is a professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago, with degrees from Grinnell University (B.A.) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A. and Ph.D.). He is a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy Reserves with a subspecialty in strategic planning.