37 Days

- Season 1

(2014)

June 28, 1914:- Young Foreign Office clerk Alec recounts his delivering a telegram to his German-born boss, assistant under secretary Eyre Crowe, informing that the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife have been murdered in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand gang who resent Austrian influence in Serbia. In Berlin another young civil servant Jens takes up the story, reflecting on the German Kaiser Wilhelm's friendship with the dead man. Wilhelm hates the Serbians and sees the slaying as an act of aggression by the nation. He sends ...

The Foreign Office is perturbed to learn that Austria wants war in the Balkans with an impossible ultimatum backed by Germany. Grey summons the Austrian ambassador to no avail and his peace proposal to the reasonable Lichnowsky is not immediately acceptable to the unstable Kaiser, particularly when he learns that the Russian army is mobilizing on its Austro-Hungarian border. Grey still holds out for mediation, appealing to Paul Cambon, ambassador to France, Russia's ally, not to let his country be goaded into war but Churchill surmises that Germany is trying to ...

Learning that Grey had advised Germany of French neutrality without the knowledge of France George V informs Wilhelm that there has been a 'misunderstanding', a statement that fuels the German belief in British duplicity. Hatred of socialism also makes war seem attractive and, to Jens' horror, the parliament vote for war credits. In England at another contentious cabinet meeting Grey and Asquith point out Britain's duty to upholding the Entente Cordiale supporting France in the likelihood of invasion, after which French ambassador Cambon requests a British military ...