5-6 pages essay

E U R O P E ' S

L A S T SUMMER

Who Started the Great War in 1914?

D A V I D F R O M K I N

T H I S I S A B O R Z O I B O O K P U B L I S H E D B Y A L F R E D A . K N O P F

Copyright © 2004. by David Fromkin

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.,

New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

All photographs are reprinted with the kind permission of the Illustrated London News

Library excerpt: "Colonel Edward House" and "Count GrafBerchtold" (Hulton-Deutsch

Collection/Corbis); "German General Erich von Falkenhayn" (Corbis); and "German

Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz" (Bettman/Corbis).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fromkin, David.

Europe's last summer: who started the Great War in 1914? /by David Fromkin.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-3 7 5 - 4 1 1 5 6 - 9

1. World War, 1914-1918—Causes. I. Title: Who started the Great War in 1914?.

II. Title. D$ 11.F746 2004

940.3'n—dc22 2003027391

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

/

The peremptory transition from an apparently profound peace to

violent general war in a few mid-summer weeks in 1 9 1 4 continues to

defy attempts at explanation.

— J O H N K E E G - A N , The First World War

C O N T E N T S

Map xiii

P R O L O G U E

(i) Out of the Blue 5

(it) The Importance of the Question 5

(Hi) A Summer to Remember 12

P A R T O N E

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

C H A P T E R 1 E M P I R E S C L A S H 1 7

C H A P T E R 2 C L A S S E S S T R U G G L E 2 1

C H A P T E R 3 N A T I O N S Q U A R R E L 2 5

C H A P T E R 4 C O U N T R I E S A R M 2 8

C H A P T E R 5 Z A R A T H U S T R A P R O P H E S I E S 3 9

C H A P T E R 6 D I P L O M A T S A L I G N 4 3

P A R T T W O

W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

C H A P T E R 7 T H E E A S T E R N Q U E S T I O N 4 9

C H A P T E R 8 A C H A L L E N G E FOR T H E A R C H D U K E

C H A P T E R 9 E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y 5 4

X C O N T E N T S

P A R T T H R E E

D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

C H A P T E R 10 M A C E D O N I A — O U T OF C O N T R O L 67

C H A P T E R 1 1 A U S T R I A — F I R S T O F F T H E M A R K 7 0

C H A P T E R 1 2 F R A N C E A N D G E R M A N Y M A K E T H E I R P L A Y

C H A P T E R 1 3 I T A L Y G R A S P S ; T H E N T H E B A L K A N S D O T O O

C H A P T E R 1 4 T H E S L A V I C T I D E 8 7

C H A P T E R 1 5 E U R O P E G O E S T O T H E B R I N K 9 4

C H A P T E R 1 6 M O R E B A L K A N T R E M O R S 9 8

C H A P T E R 1 7 A N A M E R I C A N T R I E S T O S T O P I T 104

P A R T F O U R

M U R D E R !

C H A P T E R 1 8 T H E L A S T W A L T Z 1 1 3

C H A P T E R 1 9 I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S 118

C H A P T E R 2 0 T H E R U S S I A N C O N N E C T I O N 129

C H A P T E R 2 1 T H E T E R R O R I S T S S T R I K E 132

C H A P T E R 22 E U R O P E Y A W N S 137

C H A P T E R 2 3 D I S P O S I N G OF T H E B O D I E S 144

C H A P T E R 2 4 R O U N D I N G U P T H E S U S P E C T S 146

P A R T F I V E

T E L L I N G L I E S

C H A P T E R 2 5 G E R M A N Y S I G N S A B L A N K C H E C K 153

C H A P T E R 2 6 T H E G R E A T D E C E P T I O N 162

C H A P T E R 2 7 B E R C H T O L D R U N S O U T O F T I M E 168

C H A P T E R 2 8 T H E S E C R E T I S K E P T 170

P A R T S I X

C R I S I S !

C H A P T E R 29 T H E FAIT IS N O T ACCOMPLI 175

C H A P T E R 3 0 P R E S E N T I N G A N U L T I M A T U M 185

C H A P T E R 3 1 S E R B I A M O R E O R L E S S A C C E P T S 1 9 5

C O N T E N T S

P A R T S E V E N

C O U N T D O W N

C H A P T E R 3 2 S H O W D O W N I N B E R L I N 201

C H A P T E R 33 J U L Y 26 206

C H A P T E R 3 4 J U L Y 2 7 2 1 2

C H A P T E R 3 5 J U L Y 2 8 2 1 7

C H A P T E R 3 6 J U L Y 2 9 225

C H A P T E R 37 J U L Y 30 229

C H A P T E R 3 8 J U L Y 3 1 234

C H A P T E R 3 9 A U G U S T 1 25 7

C H A P T E R 40 A U G U S T 2 243

C H A P T E R 4 1 A U G U S T 3 247

C H A P T E R 42 A U G U S T 4 249

C H A P T E R 4 3 S H R E D D I N G T H E E V I D E N C E 2 5 1

P A R T E I G H T

T H E M Y S T E R Y S O L V E D

C H A P T E R 4 4 A S S E M B L I N G I N T H E L I B R A R Y 2 57

C H A P T E R 4 5 W H A T DID N O T H A P P E N 259

C H A P T E R 4 6 T H E K E Y T O W H A T H A P P E N E D 269

C H A P T E R 4 7 W H A T WAS I T A B O U T ? 2 76

C H A P T E R 4 8 W H O C O U L D H A V E P R E V E N T E D I T ? 282

C H A P T E R 4 9 W H O S T A R T E D I T ? 286

C H A P T E R 5 0 C O U L D I T H A P P E N A G A I N ? 292

C H A P T E R 5 1 S U M M I N G U P 295

E P I L O G U E

C H A P T E R 52 A U S T R I A ' S WAR 299

C H A P T E R 53 G E R M A N Y ' S WAR 303

Appendix 1: T h e Austrian N o t e 3 0 7

Appendix 2: T h e Serbian Reply 313

W h o Was W h o 5 1 7

Notes 319

Bibliography 331

Acknowledgments 5 5 7

Index 339

i

P R O L O G U E :

( i ) Out of the Blue

Shortly after eleven o'clock at night on Sunday, December 29,1997,

United Airlines Flight 826, a Boeing 747 carrying 374 passengers

and 19 crew, was two hours into its scheduled trip across the Pacific

from Tokyo to Honolulu. It had reached its assigned cruising altitude

of between 31,000 and 33,000 feet. Meal service was about to be

completed. It had been an uneventful trip.

In a terrifying instant everything changed. The plane was struck,

without warning, by a force that was invisible. The aircraft abruptly

nosed up; then it nosed down into a freefall. Screaming bodies were

flung about promiscuously, colliding with ceilings and with serving

carts. A thirty-two-year-old Japanese woman was killed and 102 peo�

ple were injured. Regaining control of the jumbo jet, the captain and

cockpit crew guided Flight 826 back to the Japanese airport from

which it had taken off hours before.

What was so frightening about this episode was its mysteriousness.

Until the moment of impact, the flight had been a normal one. There

had been no reason to expect that it would be anything else. There

had been no warning: no flash of lightning across the sky. You could

3

4 P R O L O G U E

not see it coming, whatever "it" may have been. Passengers had no

idea what had hit them and airline companies were in no position to

assure the public that something similar would not happen again.

Experts quoted by the communications media were of the opinion

that Flight 826 had fallen victim to what they called "clear air turbu�

lence." They likened this to a horizontal tornado, but one that you

could not see. Some of the experts who were interviewed expressed

the hope that within a few years some sort of sensing technology

would be developed to detect these invisible storms before they

strike. Transparency, the public learned from this episode, signifies

little; a pacific sky can rise up in wrath as suddenly as can a pacific

ocean.

Something like such an attack of clear air turbulence is supposed by

some to have happened to European civilization in 1 9 1 4 during its

passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The world of

the 1890s and 1900s had been, not unlike our own age, a time of inter�

national congresses, disarmament conferences, globalization of the

world economy, and schemes to establish some sort of league of

nations to outlaw war. A long stretch of peace and prosperity was

expected by the public to go on indefinitely.

Instead, the European world abruptly plunged out of control,

crashing and exploding into decades of tyranny, world war, and mass

murder. What tornado wrecked civilized Old Europe and the world

it then ruled? In retrospect, it may be less of a mystery than some of

those who lived through it imagined. The years 1 9 1 3 and 1 9 1 4 were

ones of dangers and troubles. There were warning signs in the early

decades of the twentieth century that catastrophe might well lie

ahead; we can see that now, and military and political leaders could

see it then.

The sky out of which Europe fell was not empty; on the contrary,

it was alive with processes and powers. The forces that were to devas�

tate it—nationalism, socialism, imperialism, and the like—had been

in motion for a long time. The European world already was buffeted

by high winds. It had been traversing dangerous skies for a long time.

The captain and the crew had known it. But the passengers, taken

completely by surprise, insistently kept asking: why had they received

no warning?

P R O L O G U E 5

(i i) The Importance of the Question

In the summer of 1 9 1 4 a war broke out in Europe that then spread to

Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. Known

now, somewhat inaccurately, as the First World War, it ended by

becoming in many ways the largest conflict that the planet had ever

known. It deserved the name by which it was called at the time: the

Great War.

To enter the lists, countries of the earth ranged themselves into

one or another of two worldwide coalitions. One, led by Great

Britain,* France, and Russia, was called the Triple Entente;* the

other, led by Germany and Austria-Hungary, was known at first as

the Triple Alliance. 5

Between them the two coalitions mobilized

about 65 million troops. In Germany and France, nations that gam�

bled their entire manhood on the outcome, 80 percent of all males

between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine were called to the colors.

In the ensuing clashes of arms they were slaughtered.

More than 20 million soldiers and civilians perished in the Great

War, and an additional 21 million were wounded. Millions more fell

victim to the diseases that the war unleashed: upwards of 20 million

people died in the influenza pandemic of 1 9 1 8 - 1 9 alone.

The figures, staggering though they are, fail to tell the whole story

or to convey the full impact of the war on the world of 1 9 1 4 . The

consequences of the changes wrought by the crisis of European civi�

lization are too many to specify and, in their range and in their depth,

made it the turning point in modern history. That would be true even

if, as some maintain, the war merely accelerated some of the changes

to which it led.

On August 8 , 1 9 1 4 , only four days after Great Britain entered the

war, the London Economist described it as "perhaps the greatest

tragedy of human history." That may well remain true. In 1979 the

'Beginning in 1801, the official title of Great Britain was the "United Kingdom of Great Britain

and Ireland"; for short, the United Kingdom.

Called "the Allies" during the war.

HVith Italy as the third member in peacetime. Called "the Central Powers" during the war.

6 P R O L O G U E

distinguished American diplomat and historian George Kennan

wrote that he had "come to see the First World War, as I think many

reasonably thoughtful people have learned to see it, as the grand sem�

inal catastrophe of this century."

Fritz Stern, one of the foremost scholars of German affairs, writes

of "the first calamity of the twentieth century, the Great War, from

which all other calamities sprang."

The military, political, economic, and social earthquakes brought

about a redrawing of the map of the world. Empires and dynasties

were swept away. New countries took their place. Disintegration of

the political structure of the globe continued over the course of the

twentieth century. Today the earth is divided into about four times as

many independent states as existed when the Europeans went to war

in 1 9 1 4 . Many of the new entities—Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are

examples that come to mind—are countries that never existed before.

The Great War gave birth to terrible forces that would plague the

rest of the century. To drive Russia out of the war, the German gov�

ernment financed Lenin's Bolshevik communists, and introduced

Lenin himself into Russia in 1917—in Winston Churchill's words,

"in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of

typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great

city." Bolshevism was only the first of such war-born furies, followed

in years to come by fascism and Nazism.

Yet the war also set in motion two of the great liberation move�

ments of the twentieth century. As Europe tore itself apart, its over-

lordship of the rest of the planet came undone, and over the course of

the century, literally billions of people achieved their independence.

Women, too, in parts of the world, broke free from some of the shack�

les of the past, arguably as a direct consequence of their involvement

in war work—jobs in factories and in the armed forces—beginning in

1 9 1 4 .

Another kind of liberation, a wide-ranging freedom from restraint,

came out of the Great War and has expanded ever since in behavior,

sex life, manners, dress, language, and the arts. Not everybody

believes it to be a good thing that so many rules and restrictions have

gone by the way. But whether for good or ill, the world has traveled a

long way—from the Victorian age to the twenty-first century—along

paths that were blasted out for it by the warriors of 1 9 1 4 .

In searching for the origins of any of the great issues that have

P R O L O G U E 7

faced the world during the twentieth century, or that confront it

today, it is remarkable how often we come back to the Great War. As

George Kennan observed: "all the lines of inquiry, it seems to me,

lead back to it." Afterwards the choices narrowed. The United States

and even Great Britain had a choice, for example, of whether or not

to enter the First World War—indeed disagreement has persisted

ever since as to whether they were wise to do so—but, realistically,

the two countries had little or no choice at all about whether or not

to join battle in the Second.

There was nothing inevitable about the progression from the ear�

lier conflict to the later one. The long fuse could have been cut at

many points along the way from 1 9 1 4 to 1939, but nobody did cut it.

So the First World War did in fact lead to the Second, even though

it need not have done so, and the Second, whether or not it needed

to do so, led to the Cold War. In 1991 historians Steven E. Miller

and Sean M. Lynn-Jones maintained: "Most observers describe

the present period of international politics as the 'post-Cold War'

era but in many ways our age is better defined as the 'post-World

War F era."

From the start, the explosion of 1 9 1 4 seemed to set off a series of

chain reactions, and the serious consequences were soon apparent to

contemporaries: In the Introduction to The Magic Mountain (1924),

Thomas Mann wrote of "the Great War, in the beginning of which

so much began that has scarcely yet left off beginning."

Nor has it entirely left off today. On April 2 1 , 2001, the New York

Times reported from France the return to their homes of thousands

of people who had been evacuated temporarily because of a threat

from munitions left over from World War I and stored near them.

These included shells and mustard gas. The evacuees had been

allowed to return home after fifty tons of the more dangerous muni�

tions had been removed. But a hundred tons of the lethal materials

remained—and remain. So munitions from the 1 9 1 4 war may yet

explode in the twenty-first century.

Indeed, in a sense they already have. On September 1 1 , 2001, the

Muslim fundamentalist suicide attacks on the World Trade Center in

New York City destroyed the heart of lower Manhattan and took

some three thousand lives. Osama bin Laden, the terrorist chieftain

who seemingly conjured up this horror and who threatened more, in

his first televised statement afterwards described it as vengeance for

8 P R O L O G U E

what had happened eighty years earlier. By this he presumably meant

the intrusion of the Christian European empires into the hitherto

Muslim-governed Middle East in the aftermath of—and as a conse�

quence of—the First World War. Bin Laden's sympathizers who

hijacked jumbo jets had smashed them into the twin towers in pur�

suance of a quarrel seemingly rooted in the conflicts of 1 9 1 4 .

Similarly, the Iraq crisis that escalated in 2002-03 drove journalists

and broadcast news personalities to their telephones, asking history

professors from leading American universities how Iraq had emerged

as a state from the embers of the First World War. It was a relevant

question, for had there been no world war in 1 9 1 4 , there might well

have been no Iraq in 2002.

It was indeed the seminal event of modern times.

What was the First World War about? How did it happen? Who

started it? Why did it break out where and when it did? "Millions of

deaths, and words, later, historians still have not agreed why," as the

"Millennium Special Edition" of The Economist (January 1,

1000-December 3 1 , 1999) remarked, adding that "none of it need

have happened." From the outset everybody said that the outbreak of

war in 1 9 1 4 was literally triggered by a Bosnian Serb schoolboy when

he shot and killed the heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones.

But practically everybody also agrees that the assassination provided

not the cause, but merely the occasion, for first the Balkans, then

Europe, and then the rest of the earth to take up arms.

The disproportion between the schoolboy's crime and the confla�

gration in which the globe was consumed, beginning thirty-seven

days later, was too absurd for observers to credit the one as the cause

of the other. Tens of millions of people could not be losing their lives,

they felt, because one man and his wife—two people of whom many

of them had never heard—had lost theirs. It did not seem possible. It

could not, everyone said, be true.

Because the Great War was so enormous an event and so fraught

with consequences, and because we want to keep anything similar

from happening in the future, the inquiry as to how it occurred has

become not only the most challenging but also the biggest question

in modern history. But it remains elusive; in the words of the histo�

rian Laurence Lafore, "the war was many things, not one, and the

meanings of the word 'cause' are also many."

P R O L O G U E 9

In the 1940s and 1950s scholars tended to believe that they had

learned all that there was to be known about the origins of the war,

and that all that remained to be disputed was interpretation of the

evidence. Beginning in the 1960s, however, sparked by the research

of the great German historian Fritz Fischer—of whose views more

will be said later—new information has come to light, notably from

German, Austrian, and Serbian sources, and hardly a year goes by

now without the appearance of new monographs adding consider�

ably to our knowledge. Fischer inspired scholars to comb the

archives for what was hidden. What follows in this book is an

attempt to look at the old questions in the light of the new knowl�

edge, to summarize the data, and then to draw some conclusions

from it.

When and where did the march toward the war of 1 9 1 4 begin?

Recently, in a Boston classroom, I asked university students to pin�

point the first steps—before 1908—along the way. From their

responses, the following may illustrate how many roads can be imag�

ined to have led to Sarajevo.

The fourth century A.D. The decision to divide the Roman Empire

between the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East had

lasting consequences. The cultural divide that ramified into two dif�

ferent branches of Christianity, two calendars, and two rival scripts

(the Latin and the Cyrillic) persisted. The Roman Catholic Austrians

and the Greek Orthodox Serbs, whose quarrel provided the occasion

for the 1 9 1 4 war, were, in that sense, fated to be enemies.

The seventh century. The Slavs, who were to become Europe's

largest ethnic group, moved into the Balkans, where the Teutons

already had arrived. The conflict between Slavic and Germanic peo�

ples became a recurring theme of European history, and in the twen�

tieth century pitted Teuton Germans and Austrians against Slavic

Russians and Serbs.

The eleventh century. The formal split between Roman Catholic

and Greek Orthodox Christianity generated a conflict of religious

faith along the same fault line as those of ethnic group, alphabet, and

culture—Roman versus Greek—a fault line that threatened the

P R O L O G U E

southeast of Europe and was followed by the political earthquake

that struck in 1 9 1 4 .

The fifteenth century. The conquest of Christian eastern and cen�

tral Europe by the Muslim Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire deprived

the peoples of the Balkans of centuries of experience in self-

government. That perhaps contributed to the violence and fractious-

ness of that area in the years that led up to the 1 9 1 4 war—and

perhaps contributed to bringing it about.

The sixteenth century. The Protestant Reformation split Western

Christendom. It divided the German peoples politically, and led to

the curious relationship between Germany and Austria that lay at the

heart of the crisis of July 1 9 1 4 .

The seventeenth century. The beginning of the centuries-long

Ottoman retreat from Europe meant that the Turks were abandon�

ing valuable lands that the Christian Great Powers coveted. Desire to

seize those lands fed the rivalry between Austria and Russia that set

off war in 1 9 1 4 .

1 8 7 0 - 7 1 . The creation of the German Empire and its annexation

of French territory in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War

made another European war likely as soon as France recovered suffi�

ciently to try to take back what it had lost.

1 8 9 0 . The German emperor dismissed his Chancellor—his prime

minister—Prince Otto von Bismarck. The new Chancellor reversed

Bismarck's policy of allying with both Austria and Russia to keep the

peace between them. Instead, Germany sided with Austria against

Russia in the struggle to control the Balkans, which encouraged Aus�

tria to follow a dangerously bellicose policy that seemed likely to pro�

voke an eventual Russian response.

1 8 9 0 5 . Rebuffed by Germany, and seeing no other alternative,

reactionary, monarchical Russia was drawn into an alliance with

republican France. This convinced Germany's leaders that war was

inevitable sooner or later, and that Germany stood a better chance of

winning if it were waged sooner rather than later.

P R O L O G U E

1900 ^. Germany's attempt to rival Britain as a naval power was

seen in London as a vital threat.

1 9 0 3 . In a bloody coup d'etat in Serbia, army officers belonging to

a secret society butchered their pro-Austrian king and queen and

replaced them with a rival dynasty that was pro-Russian. Austrian

leaders reacted by planning to punish Serbia—a plan that if carried

out threatened to lead to a dangerously wider conflict.

1 9 0 5 . The First Moroccan Crisis was a complicated affair. It will

be described in Chapter 1 2 . In it Germany's aggressive diplomacy

had the unintended effect of unifying the other countries against

it. Britain moved from mere friendship with France—the Entente

Cordiale—to something closer to informal alliance, including con�

versations between the two governments and military staff talks, and

later to agreement and conversation with France's ally Russia. There

was a hardening of European alignments into rival and potentially

enemy blocs: France, Britain, and Russia on one side, and an isolated

Germany—with only halfhearted support from Austria-Hungary and

Italy—on the other.

To some extent all of these were right answers. Other dates—among

them 1908, which is discussed in the pages that follow—also served as

the starting points of fuse lines that led to the explosions of 1 9 1 4 . All of

them can be said to have contributed something to the coming of war.

Yet, in a sense all of them are wrong answers, too, to the question

of why the conflict came. Thirty-seven days before the Great War

the European world was comfortably at peace. Europe's leaders were

starting their summer vacations and none of them expected to be dis�

turbed while away. What went wrong?

All of the fuse lines identified by my students had been as danger�

ous to the peace of Europe in 1 9 1 0 and 1 9 1 2 as they were in 1 9 1 4 .

Since they had not led to war i n i 9 i o o r i 9 i 2 , why did they in 1914?

The question is not only why war came, but why war came in the

European summer of 1 9 1 4 ; not why war? but—why this war?

Why did things happen as they did and not otherwise is a question

that historians have been asking ever since Herodotus and Thucy-

dides, Greeks of the fifth century B . C , started to do so more than

P R O L O G U E

twenty-five hundred years ago. Whether such questions can be

answered with any accuracy remains debatable; often so many tribu�

taries flow into the stream that it is difficult to say which is its real

source.

In its magnitude and many dimensions, the First World War is

perhaps a supreme example of the complexity that challenges and

baffles historians. Arthur Balfour, a prewar British Prime Minister,

longtime Conservative statesman, philosopher, and named sponsor

of the Jewish state in Palestine, is quoted somewhere as having said

the war was too big to be comprehended.

, Not merely, therefore, is the explanation of the war the biggest

question in modern history; it is an exemplary question, compelling

us to reexamine what we mean by such words as "cause." There were

causes—many of them—for Europe's Great Powers to be disposed to

go to war with one another. There were other causes—immediate

ones, with which this book is concerned—for them to have gone to

war when and where and how they did.

(i i i) A Summer to Remember

To the man or woman in the streets of the Western world—someone

who was alive in the vibrant early years of the twentieth century—

nothing would have seemed further away than war. In those years

men who dreamed of battlefield adventure had been hard pressed to

find a war in which they could participate. In the year 1 9 0 1 , and in

the thirteen years that followed, the peoples of western Europe and

the English-speaking Americas were becoming consumers rather

than warriors. They looked forward to more: more progress, more

prosperity, more peace. The United States at that time (commented

an English observer) "sailed upon a summer sea," but so did Great

Britain, France, and others. There had been no war among the Great

Powers for nearly half a century, and the globalization of the world

economy suggested that war had become a thing of the past. The cul�

mination of those years in the hot, sun-drenched, gorgeous summer

of 1 9 1 4 , the most beautiful within living memory, was remembered

by many Europeans as a kind of Eden. Stefan Zweig spoke for many

P R O L O G U E

when he wrote that he had rarely experienced a summer "more luxu�

riant, more beautiful, and, I am tempted to say, more summery."

Middle- and upper-class Britons in particular saw themselves as liv�

ing in an idyllic world in which economic realities would keep

Europe's Great Powers from waging war on one another. For those

with a comfortable income, the world in their time was more free than

it is today. According to the historian A. J. P. Taylor, "until August

1 9 1 4 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and

hardly notice the existence of the state." You could live anywhere you

liked and as you liked. You could go to practically anywhere in the

world without anyone's permission. For the most part, you needed no

passports, and many had none. The French geographer Andre

Siegfried traveled all around the world with no identification other

than his visiting card: not even a business card, but a personal one.

John Maynard Keynes remembered it, with wonder, as an era

without exchange controls or customs barriers. You could bring any�

thing you liked into Britain or send anything out. You could take any

amount of currency with you when you traveled, or send (or bring

back) any amount of currency; your bank did not report it to the gov�

ernment, as it does today. And if you decided to invest any amount of

money in almost any country abroad, there was nobody whose per�

mission had to be asked, nor was permission needed to withdraw that

investment and any profits it may have earned when you wanted to

do so.

Even more than today, it was a time of free capital flows and free

movements of people and goods. An outstanding current study of the

world as of 2000 tells us that there was more globalization before the

1 9 1 4 war than there is now: "much of the final quarter of the twenti�

eth century was spent merely recovering ground lost in the previous

seventy-five years."

Economic and financial intermingling and interdependence were

among the powerful trends that made it seem that warfare among the

major European powers had become impractical—and, indeed,

obsolete.

One could easily feel safe in that world. Americans felt it at least as

much if not more than Europeans. The historian and diplomat

George Kennan remembers that before the 1 9 1 4 war Americans felt

a sense of security "such as I suppose no people had ever had since

1

4 P R O L O G U E

the days of the Roman Empire." They felt little need for govern�

ment. Until 1 9 1 3 , when an appropriate amendment to the Constitu�

tion was ratified, the Congress was deemed to lack even the power to

enact taxes on income.

Stefan Zweig, the Austrian-Jewish author, remembering those

antebellum years decades later, remarked that "When I attempt to

find a simple formula for the period in which I grew up, prior to the

First World War, I hope that I convey its fullness by calling it the

Golden Age of Security. Everything in our almost thousand-year-old

Austrian monarchy seemed based on permanency."

In the Western world, it was by and large true that ordinary people

felt no apprehension. As will be seen, there were leaders who wor�

ried, but in the winter and spring of 1 9 1 4 not even they expected war

to break out in the summer.

France, it is true, would have liked to recover territories taken

away by Germany decades before, but those well placed to judge

were certain that France would not start a war to get them back. Rus�

sia, as France's ally, was well informed on French official thinking;

and the Russian Prime Minister reported to the Czar on December

1 3 , 1 9 1 3 , that "All French statesmen want quiet and peace. They are

willing to work with Germany." These feelings seemed to be recipro�

cated by the Germans. John Keiger, a leading scholar of the politics

of those years, has argued: "There is no doubt that at the end of 1 9 1 3

Franco-German relations were on a better footing than for years."

Germany feared an eventual war with Russia, but in 1 9 1 3 , Berlin rec�

ognized that Russia was in no condition to wage a war, and would not

be able to do so for years to come. It was axiomatic that Britain

wanted peace. So, as Professor Keiger writes, "the spring and sum�

mer of 1 9 1 4 were marked in Europe by a period of exceptional calm."

None of the European Great Powers believed that any one of the

others was about to launch a war of aggression against it—at least not

in the immediate future.

Like airline passengers on United Airlines Flight 826, Europeans

and Americans in the glorious last days of June 1 9 1 4 cruised ahead

above a summer sea and beneath a cloudless sky—until they were hit

by a bolt that they wrongly believed came from out of the blue.

P A R T O N E

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

C H A P T E R 1 : E M P I R E S C L A S H

t the start of the twentieth century Europe was at the peak of

human accomplishment. In industry, technology, and science

J L . JL.it had advanced beyond all previous societies. In wealth,

knowledge, and power it exceeded any civilization that ever had

existed.

Europe is almost the smallest of the continents: 3 or 4 million

square miles in extent, depending on how you define its eastern fron�

tiers. By contrast, the largest continent, Asia, has 17 million square

miles. Indeed, some geographers viewed Europe as a mere peninsula

Yet, by the beginning of the 1900s, the Great Powers of Europe—

a mere handful of countries—had come to rule most of the earth.

Between them, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain,

Italy, and Russia dominated Europe, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and

even substantial parts of the Western Hemisphere. Of what little

remained, much belonged to less powerful European states: Belgium,

of Asia.

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

Holland, Portugal, and Spain. When all of its empires were added

together, Europe spanned the globe.

But the European empires were of greatly unequal size and

strength, an imbalance that led to instability; and as they were rivals,

their leaders were continuously matching them against one another

in their minds, trying to guess who would defeat whom in case of war

and with whom, therefore, it would be best to ally. Military prowess

was seen as a supreme value in an age that mistakenly believed

Charles Darwin's survival of the fittest to refer to the most murder- •

ous rather than (as we now understand it) to the best adapted. i

The British Empire was the wealthiest, most powerful, and largest

of the Great Powers. It controlled over a quarter of the land surface

and a quarter of the population of the globe, and its navy dominated

the world ocean that occupies more than 70 percent of the planet.

Germany, a newly created confederation led by militarist Prussia,

commanded the most powerful land army. Russia, the world's largest

country, a backward giant that sprawled across two continents,

remained an enigma; enfeebled by a war it lost to Japan in 1904-05,

and by the revolution of 1905, it turned itself around by industrializ�

ing and arming with financial backing from France. France, despite

exploiting a large empire, no longer was a match for Germany and

therefore backed Russia as a counterweight to Teutonic power. The

Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary ruled a variety of nationalities

who were restless and often in conflict. Italy, a new state, as a late�

comer aspiring to take its place among the powers, hungered to be

treated as an equal.

It was commonly believed at the time that the road to wealth and

greatness for European powers was through the acquisition of more

colonies. The problem was that the Great Powers already controlled

so much of the world that there was little left for others to take.

Repeatedly, in going forward, the European powers ran up against

one another. Time and again, war threatened, and only skilled diplo�

macy and self-restraint enabled them to pull back from the brink.

The decades before 1 9 1 4 were punctuated by crises, almost any one

of which might have led to war.

It was no accident that some of the more conspicuous of these

crises resulted from moves by Germany. It was because Germany's

emperor—the Kaiser, or Caesar—in changing his Chancellor in

1890 also changed his government's policy. Otto von Bismarck, the

E M P I R E S C L A S H

iron-willed leader who had created Germany in 1 8 7 0 - 7 1 , was skepti�

cal of imperialism.* Far from believing that overseas colonies bring

additional wealth and power, he apparently viewed them as a drain on

both. In order to distract France from thoughts of recovering territo�

ries in Europe that Germany had seized—in Alsace-Lorraine—

Bismarck encouraged and supported France in seeking new

acquisitions in North Africa and Asia. As such a policy would bring

France into frequent collisions with imperial England and Russia,

thus dividing Germany's potential rivals, it suited all of Bismarck's

purposes.

Post-Bismarck Germany coveted the overseas territories that the

Iron Chancellor had regarded as mere fool's gold. It positioned itself

to take part in the coming partition of China. But the rulers in Berlin

had come to the game too late. Germany no longer could win an

empire on a scale proportioned to its position as the greatest military

power in Europe. There was not world enough. No more continents

were there for the taking: no more Africas, no more Americas.

Nonetheless—heedlessly—Wilhelmine Germany displayed an inter�

est in overseas land.

As France moved deeper into Morocco at the beginning of the

twentieth century to round out its North African empire, Germany,

instead of offering encouragement and support, as Bismarck would

have done, stepped in to oppose. These German moves misfired and

sparked two of the more high-profile international crises of those

years: the Morocco crises of 1905-06 and of 1 9 1 1 . To the German

government these maneuvers may have been mere probes, but they

caused genuine alarm in Europe.

In retrospect, it is clear the problem was that Germany's post-1890

hunger for empire could no longer be satisfied except by taking over�

seas territories away from the other European countries. This was

not something likely to be accomplished by peaceful means. Could

Germany therefore content itself with remaining the leading military

and industrial power on the Continent but with African and Asian

empires smaller than those of England or France? Germans them�

selves disagreed, of course, about what the answer to that question

ought to be, and the climate of opinion was changing. Germany in

*For reasons not entirely clear, Bismarck briefly departed from this policy in the early 1880s,

when Germany acquired a small number of colonies.

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

I 914 was the only country on the Continent with more industrial

than farm workers, and the growing strength of its socialist and

working-class masses suggested that the nation might be compelled

to focus its attention on solving problems at home rather than on

adventures abroad. Alternatively, it suggested that Germany's leaders

would have to pursue an aggressive foreign policy in order to distract

attention from problems at home that remained unsolved.

J

C H A P T E R 2 : C L A S S E S S T R U G G L E

N or was Germany alone in being divided against itself.

Europe before the war was in the grip of social and eco�

nomic upheavals that were reshaping its structure and its

politics. The Industrial Revolution that had begun in eighteenth-

century France and England continued, at an accelerated pace, to

effect radical changes in those two countries, as well as in Germany,

and was making similar changes in others. Agrarian Europe, in part

still feudal, and smokestack Europe, bringing modernity, lived liter�

ally at the same time but figuratively centuries apart. Some still were

living as though in the fourteenth century, with their pack animals

and their slow, almost unchanging village rhythms, while others

inhabited the crowded, sprawling cities of the twentieth century,

driven by the newly invented internal combustion machine and

informed by the telegraph.

At the same time, the growth of an urban factory-working popula�

tion in the Industrial Revolution brought conflict between that pop�

ulation and factory owners over wages and working conditions. It

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

also pitted both workers and manufacturers, on the one hand, who

could expand their exports only in a free-trade world, against farm�

ers, who needed protection, and the cash-poor landed gentry on the

other. Class became a line of division and loyalty—the chief line

according to many. Domestic strife threatened all the countries of

Western Europe.

In Britain, the Labour party was formed to speak for a working

class no longer content to be represented by the Liberal party, which

sympathized with wage-earners but spoke as the voice of the profes�

sional classes and even some of the well-born. On the Continent,

labor also turned to socialism, with growing success at the polls: in

the German elections of 1 9 1 2 , the Social Democrats emerged as the

largest single party in the Reichstag. It should have been some con�

solation to German and British conservatives that workers in their

countries usually expressed their socialism peacefully by voting

rather than (as Syndicalists did in France, Spain, and Italy) by strikes,

riots, and terrorist attacks. But governments, in these times of fre�

quent war crises, worried that their peoples might not support them

if war broke out. The issue had another side to it: foreign adventures

could distract from class and social conflict and bring the people

instead to rally around the flag. Which would it be? Would class and

social clashes divide, or would international conflicts unite?

C H A P T E R 3 : N A T I O N S Q U A R R E L

T o socialist internationalism, the rival was nationalism, a pas�

sion that increasingly was taking priority over all else in the

minds and hearts of Europeans as the nineteenth century

departed and the twentieth arrived. Even Britain contracted the

fever. Ireland—or at any rate its Roman Catholic majority—agitated

violently for autonomy or independence, and clashed with the

Protestants of Ulster who prepared to take up arms to defend the

union with Great Britain.

Edwardian England already was a surprisingly violent country,

torn by such issues as industrial wages and working conditions and

also by the cause of woman suffrage. It was rocked, too, by a consti�

tutional crisis that was also a class crisis. The crisis focused on two

interrelated issues: the budget, and the power of the hereditary

House of Lords to veto legislation enacted by the popularly elected

House of Commons. Between them these conflicts eroded the sense

of national solidarity.

Now that the country also was polarized on the question of home

2 3

2 4

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

rule for Ireland, large sections of the army and of the Unionist-

Conservative party seemed prepared to defy law and government

in order to hold on to the union with Ireland. The precedent set by

the United States in 1861 was troubling. Would there be a British

civil war?

On the continent of Europe the flames of nationalism threatened to

burn down even structures that had endured for centuries. Hapsburg-

ruled Austria, a holdover from the Middle Ages that until recently

had been headed by the so-called Holy Roman Empire, remained, as

it had been in the nineteenth century, the principal enemy of Euro�

pean nationalism. The two great new nations of Germany and Italy

had been carved out of domains that the Hapsburgs once had domi�

nated. At universities, coffeehouses, and in the dimly lit hiding places

of secret societies and terrorists, in the Balkans and Central Europe in

the early years of the twentieth century, plans were being hatched by

ethnic groups that aspired to achieve something similar. The nation�

alists were in contact with one another and with nihilists, anarchists,

socialists, and others who lived and conspired in the obscurity of the

political underground. It was there that Serbs, Croats, Czechs, and

others plotted to disrupt and destroy the Austrian Empire.

The Hapsburgs were a dynasty that over the course of a thousand

years had come to rule a motley collection of territories and

peoples—a multinational empire that held no prospect of ever

becoming a homogeneous national state. Centered in German-

speaking Vienna, Austria-Hungary encompassed a variety of lan�

guages, ethnic groups, and climates. Its 50 million people comprised

perhaps eleven or so nations or parts thereof. Many of its lands orig�

inally had been dowries that had come with marriage to territorial

heiresses: whatever else you might say about them, the Hapsburg

family wedded well. At its height in the sixteenth century, when it

included Spain and much of the New World, the Hapsburg family

holdings comprised the largest empire in the world. Hapsburg roots

went back to Christmas Day 800, when Charlemagne the Frank was

crowned emperor of the Roman Empire in the West by the pope. As

Holy Roman Emperor, a post to which a Hapsburg was almost

always elected from the fifteenth century until it was abolished in the

early nineteenth century, the Hapsburgs dominated Central Europe,

including its many German- and Italian-speaking political entities.

N A T I O N S Q U A R R E L

In the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions, they lost their Italian pos�

sessions to the newly unified Italy, and they were excluded from

Prussian-organized, newly unified Germany in 1 8 7 0 - 7 1 . Once the

leader of Europe's Germans and Italians, the Hapsburg emperor was

left as the odd man out.

Left alone with a German core—of Austria's 28 million inhabi�

tants, only 10 million were German—and a restive empire of Central

European and Balkan peoples, mostly Slavs, the Hapsburg ruler

Franz Joseph found himself presiding over a political entity that

arguably was not viable. The solution that he found in 1867 was a

compact between Austria and a Hungary that was ruled by its Magyar

minority, in which Franz Joseph served both as emperor of Austria

and king of Hungary. The Dual Monarchy, as it was called, was a

state in which Austria and Hungary each had its own parliament and

its own Prime Minister, but there was only one foreign minister, one

war minister, one finance minister—and, of course, only one

monarch of both the Austrian empire and the Hungarian kingdom.

The peoples who ruled were the minority Germans of Austria and

the Magyar minority in Hungary. What they attempted to rule, in

the words of one Hapsburg statesman, was "eight nations, seventeen

countries, twenty parliamentary groups, twenty-seven parties"—and

a spectrum of peoples and religions.

Europe was rapidly becoming a continent of nation-states. As it

entered the twentieth century, a chief weakness of Austria-Hungary

was that it was on what looked to be the wrong side of history. But

what was threatening to bring it down was a force that was not

entirely progressive either; nationalism had its atavistic aspects.

Whether considered to be a political philosophy or its contrary, a

type of mass delirium, nationalism was ambivalent. It was the demo�

cratic belief that each nation had the right to become independent

and to rule itself. But it also was the illiberal insistence that nonmem-

bers of the nation should assimilate, be denied civic rights, be

expelled, or even be killed. Nationalism was hating some as an

expression of loving others. To add to the murkiness, there was no

agreement on what constitutes a nationality. The 1 9 1 1 edition of the

Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it a "vague term" and remarked that "a

'nationality'... represents a common feeling and an organized claim

rather than distinct attributes which can be comprised in a strict def-

2 6 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

inition." So there was no general agreement on which groups were

nations and which were not. It was one more issue for Europe to fight

about. Some thought—some still think—that it was the main thing

that Europe had to fight about.

In the absence of scientific measurement of public opinion through

polls, historians are unable to tell us with any certainty what the peo�

ple of Europe thought or felt in the pre-1914 age. This leaves a gap

in our knowledge. It is not so great a gap as it would be today, for a

century ago the public played little role in the formation of foreign

policy. But public opinion was of some significance, in that decision�

makers presumably did take it into account—to the extent that they

knew what it was.

Evidence suggests that the most widespread feeling in Europe at

the time was xenophobia: a great deal of hostility toward one another.

The ethnic groups of the Balkans provided a conspicuous example of

mutual hatred, but countries far more advanced exhibited such ten�

dencies too.

England is a case in point. It had been in conflict or at war with

France on and off since the eleventh century—in other words, for

about a thousand years. Anti-French feeling remained high well into

the twentieth century. Even during the First World War, in which

the two countries were allies, British and French officers schemed

and maneuvered against one another to take control of the postwar

Arab Middle East.

Britain came into collision with Russia much later than it did with

France, but once they did clash it was all across the board. The two

countries opposed each other on one point after another, economi�

cally, politically, militarily, and ideologically, until Britons grew to

object to Russians not merely for what they did but for who they were.

The story is recounted at length in a classic: The Genesis ofRussophobia

in Great Britain by John Howes Gleason.

Germany came into existence as a state only in 1 8 7 1 , and seemed

to be a possible ally—the idea was discussed at the highest levels

more than once—but the British became suspicious of Germany and

then antagonistic. This was for a variety of reasons, thoroughly dis�

cussed in Paul Kennedy's definitive account, The Rise of the Anglo-

German Antagonism.

So the British, though they believed themselves to be open-

N A T I O N S Q U A R R E L

minded, detested the peoples of the next three ranking Great Pow�

ers: the French, the Russians, and the Germans.

The questions that European statesmen attempted to resolve at

the dawn of the twentieth century therefore were being faced against

a background of peoples who harbored hostile, sometimes warlike,

sentiments.

The rise of independent mass-circulation newspapers in the nine�

teenth century in such European countries as England and France

brought to bear upon decision-making yet another powerful influ�

ence impossible to calculate precisely. Appealing to popular fears and

prejudices in order to win circulation, the press seems to have exacer�

bated hatred and divisions among Europeans. Of the anti-German

British press and the anti-British German press, the German

emperor wrote to the King of England in I Q O I : "The Press is awful

on both sides."

C H A P T E R 4 : C O U N T R I E S A R M

"ationalism, as preached by Giuseppe Mazzini and his disci�

ples in nineteenth-century Europe, was supposed to bring

_1_ ^| peace. Instead it brought war. So it was with an even more

profound development of the time: the energy revolution that was

made possible when Michael Faraday learned how to generate elec�

tricity.

Practically limitless power was the new thing that made almost all

else possible. Henry Adams, historian and prophet, the American

Janus who saw both behind and ahead, identified it. Marveling at the

dynamos he saw at the Chicago (1893) and Paris (1900) world fairs,

he speculated that they might render all past human history obsolete.

It would "upset schoolmasters," he observed, but "professorial

necks" had been "broken" a few times before since Europe began,

and of these few times, "the nearest approach to the revolution of

1900 was that of 3 1 0 , when Constantine set up the Cross." Indeed

the rays of electricity were something that Adams found almost

supernatural: an "energy like that of the Cross."

2 8

C O U N T R I E S A R M 2 9

It was natural that Adams should be optimistic; he was a child of

the century that believed history was the story of progress. Before the

nineteenth century began men had looked backward to a golden age.

Now they looked forward to it.

Europeans and Americans were fascinated by speculations about

the future. A new genre of fantasy fictions catered to their tastes.

Jules Verne and H. G. Wells were the pioneers in creating tales of

scientific and technological marvels: of flying machines, life below

the oceans, and interplanetary travel.

The focus on all the wonders that the future held in store for an

empowered humanity may have been somewhat unbalanced. Only a

few saw that the dark side of the otherwise Promethean story was

that the human race made use of its amazing possibilities by calling

forth explosive new powers of destruction.

In an often-quoted letter written when war came in 1 9 1 4 , Henry

James, the famous American novelist resident in England, wrote:

"The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and dark�

ness . . . is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which

we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradu�

ally bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous

years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic

for any words." Science had not made human beings more peaceful

and civilized; it had betrayed such hopes and instead had made it pos�

sible for armies to be more savagely destructive than warriors of ear�

lier times could have dreamed of being.

What Europe was building up toward was not a better world, but a

giant smashup, as, in the first twentieth-century war among modern

industrial societies, the accumulated explosive power that advanced

science had developed was concentrated on the goal of mass destruc�

tion.

Why did contemporaries believe that they were headed for a more

peaceful world? How could they dismiss the possibility of a war

among European powers from their fears and their minds? Why

were they taken by surprise by the outbreak of war? Did they never

look to see what their leading industry was manufacturing?

Looking back, perhaps the most remarkable feature of the prewar

international landscape was the accelerating arms race. The German

armaments firm Krupp was the largest single business in Europe. Its

giant rivals—Skoda, Creusot, Schneider, and Vickers-Maxim—also

3 ° E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

were enormous. In large part, in the new industrial age, Europe's

business had become the business of preparing to fight a war. In ret�

rospect the intense arms race was the most visible feature of Europe's

political landscape in those antebellum years. It is odd that the man

in the street did not see this with equal clarity at the time.

The European war economy had become immense in scale, but it

did not bring security. A technological breakthrough such as Britain's

development of the Dreadnought, rendering all existing battleships

obsolete, not merely forced a country to write off its previous efforts

and investments, but risked leaving it naked before its enemies dur�

ing the years required to catch up.

Each adjusted its military manpower requirements—its blend of

regular army, conscripts, and reserves of one sort or another—to at

least match the levels of its potential adversaries. The unrelenting

competitiveness achieved the opposite of what was intended. The

buildup in the armed forces was intended to achieve national security,

but instead undermined it: the arms race, driven by mutual fears,

ended by making all the Great Powers of Europe radically insecure.

All the Great Powers—even Russia, after the 1905 revolution—

were relatively open societies in which the appropriation of funds by

parliaments for military purposes could be scrutinized by rival states,

whose analyses were not infrequently colored by alarmism. As mili�

tary programs mandated by legislation embodied schedules, countries

were aware of one another's production timetables for armaments and

therefore could be tempted to launch a preemptive strike.

An innovation dating from the nineteenth century was that the

armed forces of the respective countries now routinely prepared con�

tingency plans for making war on their rivals should hostilities break

out. These, of course, were secret, although governments usually had

at least an idea of what each other's overall strategy would be.

There was no great mystery as to who potential enemies were

likely to be. France and Russia, despite major ideological differences,

were known to be allies, driven together by Germany's threat to both

of them. Germany was closely bound up with Austria-Hungary, and

also was allied with the unreliable Italians, even though the Italians

still harbored territorial claims against Austria. Great Britain, though

preferring to remain neutral, was being impelled by the growth of

German ambitions to draw closer to France and—for France's sake—

to Russia.

C O U N T R I E S A R M

The various war crises of the early twentieth century jolted the

Great Powers into initiating joint staff talks with the armed forces of

their allies. Secret army and navy discussions between Britain and

France in 1905-06 and 1 9 1 1 dealt with how to meet an attack by

Germany. In 1908-09 similar talks were begun by the chiefs of the

German and Austro-Hungarian general staffs and were focused on a

possible war with Russia. Secret naval talks between Britain and Rus�

sia were authorized by the British cabinet in May 1 9 1 4 and, when

Berlin learned of them, terrified Germany. Such joint talks did not

commit the European governments in a formal sense, yet in trans�

forming theory into practice Europe's governments somehow took a

further giant step on the road that led to 1 9 1 4 . And as it happened,

they did define the war to come. They produced a script that in fact

was to be followed. They provided a good indication of who would

stay with which coalition: Germany and Austria would stick together,

while Britain would decide to back France and Russia.

Whether or not their accelerating arms race made conflict

inevitable, as British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey claimed, the

Great Powers of Europe somehow brought the event closer by

engaging in what were essentially dress rehearsals for war—and not

just for any war, but for the opening stages of the very war they were

indeed about to wage.

Was it fear of one another, driven by the arms race, and feeding on

itself, that was pushing Europe to the brink? Or was it inborn aggres�

sion, pent up during the unnaturally long four decades of peace

among the Great Powers, that now threatened to explode? Or were

governments, as many were to say, deliberately maneuvering their

countries toward war in order to distract attention from domestic

problems that looked to be insoluble? Or were some governments

pursuing aggressive or dangerous policies they should have known

that other countries would be obliged to resist by force of arms?

Whatever the reasons, as Helmuth von Moltke, chief of Germany's

general staff, told the civilian Chancellor in a memorandum dated

December 2 , 1 9 1 2 : "All sides are preparing for European War, which

all sides expect sooner or later."

War plans were criticized and changed in the light of experience

gained in war games. They were updated in response to changing cir�

cumstances and to new information about enemy plans gleaned from

E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

espionage by the intelligence services. France was exceptional in that,

on the eve of war, it modified its war plans in the light of a fashionable

philosophy. The new French doctrine was that morale was the key to

victory. It was a view derived from the teachings of military officers

Ardant du Picq (1821-70)* and Ferdinand Foch ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 9 2 9 ) . That it

was the moral rather than the material that ought to be emphasized

seemed to be confirmed by the philosophy of Henri Bergson

( 1 8 5 9 - 1 9 4 1 ) , who saw in the elan vital—the life force—the energy

that propelled evolution. These views lent themselves to the glorifi�

cation of the attack—at the expense, perhaps, of prudence—and that

manifested themselves in the bias toward the offensive that many

were to criticize later in Plan XVII, the organizational and strategic

plan adopted by France in May 1 9 1 3 .

Of all the strategies explored in advance by the military chiefs of the

European powers, the one that was to figure most largely in later

thinking about the war was the scheme named after Count Alfred

von Schlieffen, the German general to whom the design was attrib�

uted. Schlieffen ( 1 8 3 3 - 1 9 1 3 ) served as chief of Germany's Great

General Staff from 1891 to 1906. The general staff of the Prussian

army had been called "Great" since 1 8 7 1 , to distinguish it from the

general staffs of other states in the German confederation: Bavaria,

Saxony, and Wurttemberg. An elite body of about 650 officers, the

Great General Staff served as the brains and nerve center of the

army.

In its first hypothetical war plan after German unification in 1 8 7 1 ,

the Great General Staff imagined a conflict in which the enemy con�

sisted of a coalition of France, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. This,

the most dangerous of possibilities, corresponded to the German

nightmare of being surrounded: the "Slav East and the Latin West

against the center of Europe," in the words of Helmuth von

Moltke—known as Moltke "the elder"—then chief of the general

staff. From 1879 on, following the alliance agreement with Austria-

Hungary, Germany's planning always made provision for a war

against France and Russia: an unlikely combination on ideological

grounds, for France was an advanced democracy and Russia was a

backward tyranny. Driven together—against the odds—by the Ger-

*Some sources give his date of birth as 1 8 3 1 .

C O U N T R I E S A R M

man threat, in 1894 France and Russia did indeed enter into an

alliance, and Germany's war plans stopped being hypothetical. Suc�

cessive chiefs of the Great General Staff asked not whether such a

war would occur, but when. The difficult challenge that they faced—

how to fight a two-front war successfully—had arisen because of the

ineptness of their country's leaders in foreign policy.

Moltke the Elder and his successor, Count Alfred von Waldersee,

planned to fight Russia in a limited war that would compel the Czar

to make peace quickly, while at about the same time battling France

with the objective of negotiating peace on favorable terms. It was a

moderate strategy, defensive in spirit, aimed at coming out ahead.

But it did mean splitting forces in order to fight both enemies at the

same time.

Count von Schlieffen took over as chief of the general staff on

February 7 , 1 8 9 1 . He was appointed despite his lack of combat expe�

rience. Lonely since the death of his wife, he was a solitary figure

with narrow professional interests. He was a sarcastic officer whose

twisted monocle made him look like the caricature of a Prussian.

Schlieffen conducted what was almost a university for the officers

under his command. He put them to work testing and reworking

deployment plans annually in the light of what was learned in fre�

quent war games and in horseback rides to study the terrain. Under

his supervision staff officers prepared forty-nine different overall

strategic plans for the European war they believed was coming: six�

teen against France alone, fourteen against Russia alone, and nine�

teen against them together.

In the event of a two-front war, Germany essentially had three

choices. One of them—fighting France and Russia at the same

time—seemed a risky strategy for an outnumbered Germany. Deal�

ing with Russia first seemed impractical; the Russians, even if

defeated, could retreat into the almost endless interior of their vast

country: they could not be dealt a quick knockout blow. Moreover,

the Russians were arming and building armies and railroads at a rapid

pace; they were becoming more formidable opponents all the time.

On the other hand, Schlieffen, as of 1905, held a low opinion of Rus�

sian military capabilities.

A number of factors pointed to a strategy of engaging France

first, and to the military mind, the only practical way for Germany

to attack France was through neutral Belgium. Some officers in

3 4 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

the French high command understood this. In Britain, Winston

Churchill knew..it; he had learned it at a confidential briefing of

Britain's Committee of Imperial Defence in 1 9 1 1 . The reasons for it

had been explained to the committee by Major General Sir Henry

Wlson, Director of Military Operations at the War Office.

At the end of Schlieffen's tenure as chief of staff, he composed an

informal memorandum outlining for his successor how such an inva�

sion of France through Belgium might be done. The memorandum

assumed that Germany had at its disposal for the hypothetical attack

ninety divisions—at a time when only seventy were available. Does

this mean that the memo was not really a proposal? Does it mean that

it really was only a demonstration on paper that Germany needed a

larger army than the war ministry was willing to raise? Was it a doc�

ument meant to persuade the war ministry to change its mind?

Whatever else it may have been, it served as a scenario and probably

is best viewed as such.

The Schlieffen memoranda of 1905-06 remain subjects of intense

controversy. After the First World War came to an end, German

generals who survived the war claimed that it had been lost only

because dead colleagues had failed to follow to the letter an alleged

secret Schlieffen plan that would have proved a guide to victory.

Their claim was in large part accepted. The plan supposedly called

for almost the entire German army to constitute a right arm—a right

flank—that would drive to the Dutch and Belgian coasts, and then

sweep down to envelop western France, then turn and scoop up Paris

on the way to a decisive victory east of Paris: a victory over a French

army that at that point would be completely surrounded. France

would be destroyed forever as a Great Power. It all would have taken

a matter of weeks, and the German army would then have been

transferred east to deal with Russia.

Throughout the twentieth century, and now into the twenty-first,

historians have debated the consequences of the so-called Schlieffen

plan. Its rigid timetable supposedly forced Germany to initiate the

war when and as it did. The course of events in the summer of 1 9 1 4

often is pictured as an example of automation, as though the gov�

ernment of Berlin were caught up in the grip of its own unchange�

able secret plan. We now can see that any such account is a distorted

one.

We have scholarly resources not available generations ago. Schlief-

C O U N T R I E S A R M

fen's papers, carried off by Americans, were discovered in Washing�

ton, D.C., in 1953 in the National Archives. After the pioneering

research of Gerhard Ritter in the 1950s, lucidly seconded in 2001 by

John Keegan, it became clear that, whatever else it might have been,

the Schlieffen memorandum of 1905, with its 1906 supplement, was

not a plan. It was not operational. It did not go into details or issue

orders. It can be viewed in context by reading a selection of Schlief�

fen's military writings, which has just appeared in English translation

by Robert T. Foley.

A further challenge—mounted as this is being written—is the pub�

lication of Inventing the Schlieffen Plan by Terence Zuber. Based on

archival material that he tells us has not been used before, Zuber

argues that even the memoranda we speak of as embodying the Schli�

effen strategy proposal do not express his actually proposed strategies

and his war plans and ideas.

Of course Germany did invade France through Belgium, as

Schlieffen's memorandum imagined it would do. But that was pur�

suant to what with more accuracy should be called the Moltke plan,

for it was during Moltke's tenure of office that the operational

document—the actual plan for invading France—was promulgated.

Reviewing the Schlieffen memoranda some five years later, in

1 9 1 1 , Moltke indicated in his notes that he agreed that France should

be invaded through Belgium. The decision exercised a sort of multi�

plier effect on Germany's quarrels. In the context of Germany's post-

1890 foreign policy, it created the very encircling coalition Germans

professed to fear. It also automatically transformed a German war

into a European war that as a result would become a world war. If

Germany attacked Russia, Germany would start by invading Bel�

gium, Luxemburg, and France, thereby bringing them, too, into the

war, thus also bringing Great Britain into the war, bringing in, in

addition, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and

others too, possibly including Britain's Pacific ally, Japan.

All of this rousing up of additional enemies was undertaken in pur�

suance of a strategy that even in the words of a scholar who believes

in the existence of the Schlieffen scheme, "never achieved the final,

perfected form that is sometimes imputed to it."

Schlieffen envisaged violating the neutrality of Luxemburg, Belgium,

and Holland in invading France. Moltke decided instead to leave

3 6 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

Holland alone. In the first place, Dutch armed resistance might tip

the scales against the invaders; in the second, if a war of attrition

developed, Germany would need a neutral Netherlands as a conduit

for supplies. These were both good reasons for respecting Dutch

neutrality.

One of the consequences of doing so, however, was to narrow the

invasion route through which the German forces were to move. It

would be a corridor twelve miles wide. It could be dominated by the

Belgian fortifications at Liege. So, relying on total surprise and a

sprinter's speed, German forces would have to seize Liege before the

enemy even knew that war was upon them. All this would be possible

only if there was complete secrecy. Moltke therefore did not allow

even Germany's other military leaders—let alone the civilian ones—

to share this information.

One other point later—in the summer of 1914—assumed great

importance. The increased speed of Russia's mobilization ability, and

the strengthening of its armed forces, meant that in the event of war,

Germany on its own might not have the ability to ward off Russia's

first blow. It would have to call on Austria-Hungary to help. That

was to prove a key to understanding the crisis of July 1 9 1 4 .

In the unified German federation that Prussia had organized into a

single power in the wars of the 1860s and 1870s, the armed forces

played a disproportionately large role and—through it—so did the

King of Prussia, who served not only as German emperor but also as

military chief. As Chancellor—Germany's civilian leader—Otto von

Bismarck wore a military uniform, seeking to identify himself with

the military service and thereby indicating where he, who had cre�

ated the new state and was the author of its constitution, believed

that power rested.

Vested in the Kaiser were almost dictatorial powers in the great

matters of war and peace: almost, but not quite. His was the power to

declare war or to make peace—so long as he could obtain the coun�

tersignature of the Chancellor. But as the Chancellor was appointed

by the Kaiser and served at his pleasure, this did not provide much of

a check on the monarch's power.

In the Imperial German army, the Kaiser served as supreme war�

lord. Immediately below him were three distinct bodies that some�

times competed with one another: the Prussian War Ministry, the

C O U N T R I E S A R M

War Cabinet, and the Great General Staff. Their functions were sep�

arate but sometimes overlapping. They, too, were appointed by the

Kaiser.

It often was said, after he was made chief of the Great General

Staff in 1906, that the younger Moltke had been chosen because Wil-

helm liked him. Moltke's biographer, Annika Mombauer, in a

recently published work based in part on previously unknown pri�

mary sources, tells us that he "had been the Kaiser's friend as well as

his long-term adjutant," that as a young man he was "a tall dashing

military figure," and that "his pleasant manners and varied cultural

pursuits made him an appealing candidate."

Born in East Prussia, Moltke came of the right stock. His candi�

dacy cannot have been hurt by the fact that he was a nephew of the

great Moltke—Moltke the Elder, as he was known subsequently—

the commander of Bismarck's armies who, in defeating Denmark,

Austria, and then France, had been the general whose victories cre�

ated modern Germany. The nephew knew what he owed to his

uncle's name. On the occasion of his general staff appointment, he

asked Wilhelm: "Does Your Majesty really believe that you will win

the first prize twice in the same lottery?"

Big and heavy, he was fifty-eight years old at the time of his

appointment. Although he painted, played the cello, and took an

interest in spiritualist matters, he held conventional military and

political views. Goethe's Faust is said to have been "his constant com�

panion"; but it would have taken much more than his rather ordinary

intellect to suspect that Faust might bear some relevance to the bid

for total power that Prussia was mounting in his time.

Appreciating that Austria was of vital importance to his plans, Moltke

worked with his Austrian counterpart, Franz Conrad von Hotzen-

dorf, to strengthen the Austro-German alliance. He succeeded in

restoring warmth to a relationship that had been strained. Both

chiefs of staff, it transpired nonetheless, held back and failed to give

their entire confidence to one another. Moltke did not reveal the

extent of his need for Austrian assistance in meeting the initial Rus�

sian attack that he expected. Conrad, in turn, did not admit that Aus�

tria was going to focus on destroying Serbia and would hope

Germany—by itself—would assume full responsibility for dealing

with the Czar's armies.

3 8 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

Until recently, the common view among scholars, especially in

Germany, has been that Moltke was inadequate, weak, and of less

than major importance. The appearance of Mombauer's biography

should change that view. Moltke was a figure of considerable signifi�

cance both for what he did and for what he did not do.

As a favorite of the Kaiser's who therefore was in a position to get

a hearing for his views, Moltke took the lead in advancing two propo�

sitions: first, that the alliance with Austria was absolutely central to

Germany and had to be given top priority; and second, that war

against the Triple Entente—Britain, France, and Russia, three coun�

tries that had pledged mutual friendship—was bound to break out

not much later than i o i 6 o r i o i 7 , and that Germany would lose the

war unless it launched a preventive attack immediately. Certain that

war would come, Moltke wanted it sooner rather than later. He

wanted it even though, like many of his colleagues, he feared that it

would bring European civilization to an end.

C H A P T E R 5 : Z A R A T H U S T R A

P R O P H E S I E S

T he greatest arms race the world had known was not only

waged among mutually hostile nations, busily planning to

destroy one another, but took place in a civilization in which

it was widely believed that only destruction could bring regeneration.

The prophet of the age was the powerfully eloquent, though unsys�

tematic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (i 844-1900). Nietzsche

preached the values of the irrational. Though he was German, his

message struck a chord in many countries. He was a European figure,

not a parochial German one. Fittingly, he made his home in Switzer�

land and Italy.

The French Revolution of 1789 had ushered in a century of revo�

lutions that had failed to achieve the dreams they embodied. Unful�

filled revolutions and revolutions betrayed had left Europe

frustrated, and in a mood—following Nietzsche—to smash things.

Rejecting Europe's inherited values, Nietzsche had proclaimed in

Thus Spake Zarathustra that "God is dead!"

The debut of the Stravinsky-Nijinsky ballet Le Sacre du Printemps

3 9

4 ° E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

on May 29, 1 9 1 3 , at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, is

often taken as the symbol of the Nietzschean rebellion in all the arts.

Crowds hating the ballet—a pagan celebration with deafening disso�

nances—screamed their protests against what they regarded as sav�

agery exalted in the place of civilization. Hysteria and frenzy seemed

to be the order of the day.

It may well be that the European sense of frustration—the sense of

stalemate in life, art, and politics—led to a violent sense of abandon,

of letting go: a sense that the world ought to be blown up, and let the

consequences be what they may. Europe's Nietzschean mood seemed

to play some sort of role in making the Great War possible.

As A. J. P. Taylor writes: "Men's minds seem to have been on edge

in the last two or three years before the war in a way they had not

been before, as though they had become unconsciously weary of

peace and security. You can see it in things remote from international

politics—in the artistic movement called Futurism, in the militant

suffragettes. . . , in the working-class trend toward Syndicalism. Men

wanted violence for its own sake; they welcomed war as a relief from

materialism. European civilization was, in fact, breaking down even

before war destroyed it."

In the opening years of the twentieth century, Europeans glorified

violence, and certain groups among them, at least, felt a need for rad�

ical change. Across the whole spectrum of existence, change was

overcoming Europe at a pace faster than ever before—and far faster

than Europe knew how to cope with. A panoramic view of Europe in

the years 1900 to 1 9 1 4 would show prominently that the Continent

was racing ahead in a scientific, technological, and industrial revolu�

tion, powered by almost limitless energy, that was transforming

almost everything; that violence was endemic in the service of social,

economic, political, class, ethnic, and national strife; that Europe

focused its activities largely on an escalating, dizzying arms race on a

scale that the world never had seen before; and that, in the center of

the Continent's affairs, powerful, dynamic Germany had made

strategic arrangements such that, if it went to war, it would bring

almost all Europe and much of the rest of the planet into the war for

or against it.

Given these conditions, does not the question "How could war

have broken out in such a peaceful world?" rather answer itself?

Z A R A T H U S T R A P R O P H E S I E S 4 1

Would it not have been more to the point to ask how statesmen could

have continued to avoid war much longer? How had they managed to

keep the peace for so long? Which is not to say that war could not

have been averted, but merely that, by 1 9 1 4 , it might have taken

extraordinary skill to keep on averting it.

Today, we take it for granted that governments hope to keep the

peace. It is our often unarticulated assumption. Since the develop�

ment of weapons of mass destruction, everybody would lose, we say,

if war were to break out among the Great Powers. The human race,

we are told, might not survive such a conflict. Our principal interna�

tional institution, the United Nations, is described as a peacekeeping

organization because preventing war is the primary reason that the

countries of the earth have joined together.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that a century ago world

leaders would have shared such a view. Their thinking at the time was

well expressed in what has been called "the first great speech" in the

political career of Theodore Roosevelt, newly appointed assistant

secretary of the navy in the incoming administration of U.S. Presi�

dent William McKinley. Addressing the Naval War College in 1897,

Roosevelt claimed: "No triumph of peace is quite so great as the

supreme triumphs of war." War, he declared, was a fine and healthy

thing. "All the great masterful races have been fighting races; and the

minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then . . . it has lost

its proud right to stand as the equal of the best." He argued: "Cow�

ardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." Some�

day circumstances might be different, he said, but until they were,

war would continue to be needed. "As yet no nation can hold its place

in the world, or can do any work really worth doing unless it stands

ready to guard its rights with an armed hand."

The speech was reprinted in full in all major American news�

papers, and the chorus of approval from the press all around the

United States made it clear that Roosevelt was not speaking for him�

self alone. He lived in a world in which war was considered desir�

able—even necessary.

Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, chief of staff of the Dual Monarchy's

armed forces, was another leader who frequently expressed his opin�

ion that war was "the basic principle behind all the events on this

4 2 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

earth." It also, as he saw it, was the key to personal success. He was

carrying on a love affair with a married woman, and was of the view

that if he could come back from the battlefield as a war hero, his mis�

tress could be persuaded to leave her wealthy husband.

The pursuit of "honor" was a frequent theme of the times. In Con�

rad's personal vision, a warrior's nobility wins him the love of women

and the acclaim of men. Heads of state and government in the con�

flicts of 1 9 1 4 were to argue that their country's honor compelled them

to join in the fray; U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used the concept

in his address to Congress in 1 9 1 7 asking for a declaration of war

against Germany. Some—Conrad was one, and his octogenarian

emperor Franz Joseph was another—at times felt that they had to

lead their country into a war because of their code of honor, even if

they were likely to lose.

These views—held by warriors and aristocrats on the one hand,

and by many artists and intellectuals on the other—were not neces�

sarily shared by the masses, including workers, farmers, and the

peace-loving commercial and middle classes. But the public played

no role in the war-and-peace decisions: decisions that they did not

even know were being made behind closed doors.

The several dozen leaders who did discuss and decide these mat�

ters lived in a world of their own, and it was a world in which war and

warriors were glorified.

C H A P T E R 6 : D I P L O M A T S A L I G N

mong the Great Powers of Europe, peace had prevailed from

187 1 to 1 9 1 4 . It was a long run. It is at least arguable that

JL A-what had made that achievement possible was not only the

skill but also the character and the outlook of Europe's statesmen. In

large part they were a sort of extended family: monarchs and aristo�

crats whom the French Revolution had failed to sweep away. Shaped

by the tolerance and the values of the eighteenth century, they had

kept their positions and their system throughout the nineteenth.

They were bound together by ties of education, of culture, and, in

many cases, of blood. The conduct of foreign affairs was their shared

vocation. Cosmopolitan and disinclined to prejudices, they tended at

times to put the welfare of Europe as a whole ahead of that of their

own country. Indeed, it was not unusual for a diplomat to take service

with a foreign country: for a German or a Corsican, for example, to

serve as foreign minister of Russia. Once—a long time before, it is

true—an Austrian, the Count of Stainville, had been Vienna's envoy

to Paris at the same time that his son was Paris's envoy to Vienna.

4 3

4 4 E U R O P E ' S T E N S I O N S

Hans Morgenthau (1904-80), the great twentieth-century theorist

of international relations, describes the way it used to be in terms that

exude nostalgia:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to a lessening

degree up to the First World War, international morality was the con�

cern of a personal sovereign—that is, a certain individual prince and his

successors—and of a relatively small, cohesive, and homogeneous group

of aristocratic rulers. T h e prince and the aristocratic rulers of a particu�

lar nation were in constant, intimate contact with the princes and aristo�

cratic rulers of other nations. T h e y were joined together by family ties,

a common language (French), common cultural values, a common style

of life, and common moral convictions about what a gentleman was and

was not allowed to do in his relations with another gentleman, whether

of his own or of a foreign nation.

In other words, they played the game of world politics as though it

had rules. The loss of aristocratic values and the weakening of ties

were what made the behavior of some of the statesmen in July 1 9 1 4

possible.

In our democratic age, we tend to forget how great a role contin�

ued to be played by kings and emperors and by the hereditary aris�

tocracy as recently as a century ago, not merely by their values and

their codes of conduct, but by themselves. We have been reminded of

it by a study that has just been published, Royalty and Diplomacy in

Europe, 1890-1914, by Roderick R. McLean. Personal friendships

among monarchs could help to bring countries together. The reverse

could also be true. Both possibilities could be seen at work in the

ambivalent relationship between the two most powerful Continental

emperors, Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. Each

could exercise almost absolute powers within his country in matters

of war and peace.

Czar Nicholas II succeeded to the Russian throne at the end of

1894 and was crowned the following year. Deferential and inexperi�

enced, he had been described only shortly before by his father as

inadequate: "He is nothing but a boy, whose judgments are childish."

Kaiser Wilhelm II undertook to guide his young relative through

the jungles of world politics. There was nearly a decade's age differ�

ence between the two. Moreover, Nicholas was hesitant where Wil-

D I P L O M A T S A L I G N

helm was assertive. The young Czar was so polite that the Kaiser

believed he was hearing agreement even when he was not. Wilhelm

initiated a secret correspondence with him that lasted for nearly two

decades. At first Nicholas welcomed the letters.

In 1896 the two emperors met for a conference in Breslau, in what

now is Poland. Agreements between them were reached easily. But

Wilhelm's desire to tutor and dominate turned Nicholas against him.

From then on, the Czar regarded the Kaiser with a dislike bordering

on hostility. Nicholas decided that he wanted to break off their corre�

spondence. Ignoring Nicholas's desires, Wilhelm continued to write

to him for a further eighteen years. On occasion the two rulers did

hold meetings. After one such, in 1902, Nicholas commented: "He's

raving mad!"

From time to time the Kaiser did seem to exert some influence; he

may have played a part in persuading the Czar to involve his empire

in a war against Japan (1904-05), a war that proved to be a disaster.

Mostly, however, Nicholas preferred neither to see nor to hear from

his tiresome relative. In this he was not alone.

Queen Victoria, the Kaiser's grandmother, warned Nicholas

against Wlhelm's "mischievous and unstraight-forward proceed�

ings." To her prime minister, Victoria described Wlhelm as "a hot�

headed, conceited, and wrong-headed young man." She did not

invite Wilhelm to her Diamond Jubilee (1897) or to her eightieth

birthday celebration (1899). In his own version of history, the Kaiser

described himself as Victoria's favorite grandson.

For all of the German emperor's failings, he was a blood relative

and was treated as such. This solidarity among cousins was a senti�

ment that made for peace and stability between the Czar and the

Kaiser. McLean tells us: "Until at least 1908, both monarchs

remained convinced that neither would undertake a hostile act

against the other."

These personal relationships played their role in the story of how

Europe managed not to have a war among the Great Powers in the

opening years of the twentieth century. But ultimately family ties did

not succeed in relaxing the tensions that arose among the powers.

Indeed it would have taken statesmanship of a high order to guide the

countries of Europe through the explosive issues with which they had

to deal. It was like walking through minefields.

P A R T T W O

W A L K I N G T H R O U G H

M I N E F I E L D S

C H A P T E R 7 : T H E E A S T E R N Q U E S T I O N

E ver since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the states�

men of Europe—the handful of prime ministers, foreign sec�

retaries, and chancellery officials who dealt with arcane issues

of foreign policy—remained convinced that they knew how (though

not when) their world would be brought to an end. The war among

the advanced industrial Great Powers, they believed, would be occa�

sioned by the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, as its vast and valu�

able territories excited the predatory instincts of the rival

expansionist European empires. There had been a time, centuries

before, when the Turks had ruled not just the Middle East but much

of North Africa and Balkan Europe as well—all the way to the gates

of Vienna. Now the Sultan's backward and demoralized forces were

in full, if slow, retreat before the Christians. Which European powers

would take, in particular, southeastern Europe for themselves—"the

Eastern Question"—was commonly seen as the most explosive long-

range issue in international politics. "One day the great European

4 9

5 0 W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,"

Bismarck was quoted as saying at the end of his life.

Fearing the cataclysm, with its incalculable consequences, Great

Britain traditionally tried to postpone facing the issue by propping

up the decaying Turkish empire. On the opposite side, Austria, later

joined by Russia, pursued expansionist policies at the Sultan's

expense, looking toward an eventual partition of the Ottoman

domains.

As so often happens when the political world focuses on a particu�

lar threat, the threat in question failed to materialize; the danger was

averted. Over the course of the nineteenth century, one Christian

people after another in southeastern Europe threw off the shackles of

Ottoman rule without then being absorbed by a Great Power. By the

first decade of the twentieth century Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia,

Montenegro, and Greece all had become at least de facto free coun�

tries. They were quarrelsome nations; some at times were aggressive

rivals; and each set its own course in world affairs. They coveted the

territories remaining to the Turks in Europe. By the beginning of the

twentieth century Constantinople mostly had to fear these local

states rather than the Great Powers. The greatest of the Great Pow�

ers—Britain, France, Germany, and even Russia—now preferred the

Ottoman frontier to remain where it was. In April 1897, Russia and

Austria-Hungary agreed to preserve the status quo in what remained

of the Ottoman Balkans.

In this respect, the chancelleries of Europe could breathe a sigh of

relief. For a century they had been walking through a minefield, and

they had emerged from it not merely alive but relatively unscathed.

C H A P T E R 8 : A C H A L L E N G E

F O R T H E A R C H D U K E

T he Hapsburgs had served as a ruling dynasty in Europe for

so long that it could easily be forgotten that the country they

ruled in 1914—Austria-Hungary, or the Dual Monarchy—

was of quite recent origin. It was so new that the man who created

it—the emperor Franz Joseph—was still alive and ruled. In 1 9 1 4 ,

Austria-Hungary was forty-seven years old; Franz Joseph, eighty-

four.

The Dual Monarchy was an improvisation. There had been an

urgent need of it in the 1860s when the Germans of Austria, expelled

from the world that Prussia consolidated, found themselves cut off

from other Germans and unable to stand on their own. A permanent

alliance with the Magyar rulers of Hungary was Franz Joseph's solu�

tion in 1867. The economic provisions of the agreement were not

permanent; they came up for renewal every ten years.

But Austria and Hungary had interests and ambitions that some�

times were antithetical. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Franz Joseph's

nephew and heir presumptive, had devoted much thought to the

5 1

5 2 W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

question of how he would reconstitute the Hapsburg lands when he

ascended the throne. One plan ascribed to him was to create a triple

monarchy, joining Slavs to Germans and Magyars as a governing

people of the empire, enabling Austro-Germans to play the Slavs off

against the Magyars. He seems to have dropped that scheme in favor

of others, all aimed at restoring Austrian greatness.

Franz Ferdinand deplored the consequences of his country's Hun�

garian connection. His feelings in this respect were both known and

reciprocated. It was not unreasonable to predict that when Franz

Joseph died and Franz Ferdinand ascended the throne with radical

constitutional changes in mind, disturbances would ensue.

Austria-Hungary was a ramshackle structure, then, only with diffi�

culty holding itself together, and maintaining its formal ranking as a

Great Power in part by courtesy of the others. So in retrospect the

Eastern Question—the issue of what to do with the European pos�

sessions of a collapsing Turkish empire—overlapped an emerging

Austrian question: what to do with the shaky Dual Monarchy. There

were those who asserted that, after the Sultan of Turkey, the Haps�

burg emperor was the new Sick Man of Europe. In the deadly game

of world politics, Austria-Hungary continued to hunt, but also was

being hunted. The Eastern Question had been turned upside down

and stood on its head. The Hapsburgs had coveted Balkan lands; now

Balkan peoples coveted Hapsburg lands.

Austria-Hungary was in area one of the largest states in Europe.

Two of its perhaps eleven nationalities, Germans and Magyars, exer�

cised most of the political power. In Austria the one-third of its pop�

ulation that was German tended to dominate the two-thirds that was

not; in Hungary, the 40 percent that was Magyar ruled the 60 percent

that was not.

Nationalism had been sweeping Europe since the days of the

French Revolution. It inspired a literature in which a repressive Aus�

tria was singled out as a villain. Thus, sinister and unbending, and an

implacable enemy of the liberties of mankind, Hapsburg Austria casts

a dark shadow over Europe in such works as Stendhal's Charterhouse

of Parma. Some, and maybe most, of the leading ardent nationalities'

movements in Europe—those of the Czechs, for example, and a

number of ethnicities in the Balkans—aimed at breaking up the

Hapsburg Empire, or at least decentralizing it.

A C H A L L E N G E F O R T H E A R C H D U K E

One of Austria-Hungary's weak spots was that it ruled so many

Slavic peoples—members of the largest ethnic group in Europe—

and that Slavic Russia, it was feared, could exert a pull on their loyal�

ties by sponsoring pan-Slavism.

Historians tell us that the Austrian army was strong, although it

had an astonishing record, going back more than a century, of losing

battles and wars.

The generals of the Dual Monarchy knew that they could not fight,

on their own, on equal terms against Russia, with its vast expanses and

enormous population. In order to stand a chance Austria-Hungary

would require the protection of Germany.

C H A P T E R 9 : E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y

s it entered the twentieth century, the German state was still

in its infancy. Yet in many ways it already had become—or

JL JL_perhaps had been from the start—out of date in its political

structure. In the thirty years of its existence, Germany had stopped

being an essentially agricultural country and had surged ahead to

become the Continent's most dynamic commercial and industrial

power. One result was that the country was now divided against itself.

As noted before, farming interests still demanded protective tar�

iffs in order to survive, while industry now pushed for the free trade

it needed in order to thrive. This was but one of the many contradic�

tions that made Kaiser Wilhelm IPs Reich so difficult to fathom—

and to govern. At the cutting edge of the modern world in some

respects, Germany was obsolete in politics, and therefore unable to

reconcile the diverse trends to which modernism gave rise.

According to Volker R. Berghahn, "the salient feature of German

domestic politics before 1 9 1 4 was . . . an almost total impasse." He

quotes Gustav Schmidt to explain: "The notion of several groups

5 4

E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y

blocking each other and hence blocking a way out of the deadlock

offers 'the key to an understanding of German politics in the last

years before the war.' " Some, under the spell of Nietzsche, believed

that the solution was to dynamite society. It was not easy to identify

an alternative that did not involve violence.

Until the nineteenth century the German peoples of Europe had

been fragmented. In the former Holy Roman Empire alone, they

dwelt in hundreds of principalities, cities, and other quasi-

sovereignties. Napoleon restructured them. The Allies who defeated

Napoleon tried their hand at restructuring too. In the end, unifica�

tion came from within the German-speaking world.

The country we know today as Germany derives from the Ger�

man Empire, which was created through a series of wars culminat�

ing in 1870-71 by militarist, Protestant Prussia, led by Otto von

Bismarck. Bismarck's new unified Germany contained less than half

the German peoples of Europe. It consisted of the kingdom of Prus�

sia, three other kingdoms, eighteen duchies, and three free cities.

But Bismarck deliberately excluded Austria, which had led the Ger�

man states of Europe. He did so, of course, in order to secure Prus�

sia's own leadership in German Europe. This also had the effect of

ensuring a Protestant majority in the German federation. A later

Chancellor of Germany, Prince Bernhard von Bulow, reminded his

government's representatives abroad in 1906 that if the German-

speaking Austrians were to be incorporated into Germany, "We

shall thereby receive an increase of about fifteen million Catholics

so that the Protestants would become a minority . . . the proportion

of strength between the Protestants and the Catholics would

become similar to that which at the time led to the Thirty Years

War, i.e., a virtual dissolution of the German empire." In Germany,

Bismarck had chosen to bring into the political world a smaller

country that he and his fellow Prussians could control rather than a

larger one that they could not, and that continued to be Berlin's

preference.

Yet it became Germany's belief that, in case of war, Austria would

be indispensable as an ally, even though Austria was weaker than

Germany. The continued existence of the Hapsburg Empire was

viewed in Berlin as a vital German interest, indeed, perhaps as Ger�

many's main vital interest in international politics.

5 6 W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

Prussia, undemocratic and militaristic in its culture, was controlled

by its army and the largely impoverished landowning Junker class

that led its officer corps. In turn, Prussia exerted considerable con�

trol, and in time of war almost total control, over the rest of Ger�

many. Germany, by industrializing rapidly, made itself into the

economic leader of the Continent, but in doing so necessarily con�

verted much of its population into an industrial proletariat. The

workers could not be admitted into the officer corps of the army

without diluting the aristocratic Prussian character of the corps—and

the regime it supported. So Germany, despite harboring ambitions to

dominate Europe and perhaps even the world, deliberately chose not

to increase the size of its army to the extent that would be required to

realize such expansionist dreams.

Admiral Alfred Tirpitz explained in 1896 that in the end the armed

forces existed "to suppress internal revolutions." The very industrial

revolution that was making Germany the greatest country on the

Continent was at the same time generating forces that were threaten�

ing the regime. It was only one of the many contradictions in Ger�

many's policies.

Driving Germany's industrial growth was the country's educa�

tional system. Here, too, was a contradiction. The best-educated

general public in Europe was unlikely in the long run to tolerate an

archaic government structure or a leadership drawn exclusively from

a narrow pool.

Long after the Great War, sympathetic foreign observers were to

make the argument that Germany's increasing greatness should have

been peacefully accommodated by the other powers: that they should

have appeased Berlin. Put this way, the responsibility for the outbreak

of war falls on the shoulders of the main countries—Britain, France,

Russia, and the United States—that eventually stood in the way of

Germany's rise to world power. They gave Germany, the argument

runs, no way to assert itself other than through war. As the French

historian Elie Halevy understandingly put it in the 1930s: "But sup�

pose that, presently, one nation is found to have gained immensely in

military or economic strength at the expense of one or many of the

others . . . for such a disturbance of equilibrium man has not yet dis�

covered any method of peaceful adjustment.... it can be rectified

only by an outburst of violence—a war."

Again, however, one arrives at a contradiction. As will be shown

E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y 5 7

presently, the Kaiser and other German leaders in 1 9 1 2 and 1 9 1 3

believed that their country was becoming weaker, not stronger, rela�

tive to the other powers. As will be seen, the chief of the general staff

felt that Germany ought to launch a war as soon as possible precisely

because the chances of winning it would be less every year. War was

necessary, in other words, not to accommodate German strength, but

to accommodate German weakness.

For a time, the arms race seemed to offer a way out. Germany, in

the process of overtaking Britain as Europe's leading economy, ought

therefore to have been able to outspend its rivals for military pur�

poses. But an archaic constitutional structure and the consequent

lack of a progressive tax system kept Germany from translating a

growing economy into growing government revenues. By the start of

the twentieth century Germany had reached the limits, spending all

that it could, and more than it should, on the military. In his authori�

tative study of pre-World War I Germany, Berghahn writes: "Ger�

man armaments policy was almost exclusively responsible for the

Reich's financial plight. Over the years a relatively constant figure of

about 90 per cent of the Reich budget had been spent on the Army and

Navy" (emphasis added).

A leader like Franklin D. Roosevelt might have lifted the eyes of Ger�

mans to some higher vision, and brought people together through

sheer charisma. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II seemed to aspire to

play such a role. He wore glittering uniforms and mounted noble

chargers, and, at times, uttered dramatic pronouncements. But he fell

short: he had no aptitude for the role.

Through the many years of his reign his support dwindled among

the German people, and plunged during several public scandals of

which more will be said later. It is curious that in foreign countries he

was taken as the embodiment of the Prussian Junker military tradi�

tion, when his popularity was so low among Prussian military

Junkers.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was half English; his mother was Queen Victo�

ria's daughter. He exhibited strange attitudes toward England—a

kaleidoscope of love, hate, envy, admiration, and a desire to be

accepted as at least an equal—and these contradictions are explained

by many biographers on the basis of his feelings for either his mother

or his grandmother.

5 8 W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

At birth he was found to be in a breech position in his mother's

body. The attending physicians were not fully capable of dealing with

this: at the time less than 2 percent of breech babies were born alive.

Wilhelm survived—barely—but with permanent injuries.

It seems likely that Wilhelm II was emotionally unbalanced

because of the various injuries suffered in childbirth. It remains an

open and controversial question whether he suffered brain damage.

His left arm remained permanently paralyzed, and the reactions of

others to his withered limb may have affected him in one way or

another. John Rohl, the leading student of his life and times, has con�

cluded, on the basis of considerable medical evidence, that Wilhelm

was deprived of oxygen during childbirth and suffered all his life

from the results: personality defects such as a lack of objectivity and

excessive sensitivity. This, in Rohl's view, was aggravated by the rig�

ors of his childhood, including the treatments of his twisted neck by

such methods as the use of a "headstretching machine" and the treat�

ment of his arm by inserting it into a freshly slaughtered hare. His

love of military uniforms, his devotion to hunting, and his identifica�

tion with Achilles suggest that he yearned for a martial glory that he

could never achieve.

In 1888, Wilhelm ascended the throne as King of Prussia and Ger�

man Emperor. By 1 9 1 3 , at the age of fifty-four, he therefore had

reigned for a quarter century. During that time he had presided over

affairs in a number of international crises that had threatened to

bring about a European war, and in all of them war had been avoided,

with Wilhelm himself in each case eventually coming down on the

side of peace. The decision was his to make. The constitution of the

German federation gave him the power to declare war. He often

toyed with the idea of doing so.

His was a disturbing influence. He was nervous, high-strung, and

mercurial. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, he would

threaten and posture, playing the warlord who would lead his nation

into battle; later he would take it all back. Military and civilian offi�

cials who worked with him learned never to rely on the decisions he

announced off the cuff; there had been too many false alarms.

The accounts left to us by his associates show an undisciplined and

inconsistent figure, on the childish side, emotionally taut, often on

the verge of breakdown, broadly ignorant but with no hesitation

about making unqualified announcements about any number of mat-

E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y

ters about which he knew nothing. Egotistical and inclined to mega�

lomania, he often spoke and even acted as though he were an

absolute ruler. This was particularly true in foreign affairs. To

Britain's Prince of Wales he once boasted: "I am the sole master of

German policy and my country must follow me wherever I go." He

might have exercised more influence over policy had he not been so

capricious and unpredictable, and had he not reversed himself so

often. As it was, ministers learned to disregard what the Kaiser told

them much of the time, and, as one does with a child, to "manage"

him. This was made easier because he was so rarely around; most of

the time he was away hunting or yacht-cruising. He was in residence

in Berlin only from January to May of a normal year.

Until Wilhelm II became the Kaiser, German policy was set

largely by the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. Wilhelm, an untried

young monarch, felt uncomfortable with the elderly veteran and his

policies. He disagreed with Bismarck on such matters as how to deal

with industrial strife: at the time Wilhelm sided with striking factory

workers, Bismarck with factory owners. In 1890, Wilhelm asserted

his authority by dismissing the Iron Chancellor.

In 1890, after Bismarck had been dismissed, the Kaiser's new min�

isters allowed the Reinsurance Treaty, a Bismarck creation, to lapse.

It had been an essential element in German policy, affirming German

friendship with Russia after already having affirmed friendship with

Austria-Hungary. In Bismarck's vision, it bound the three empires

together in such a way as to keep the rivalry in the Balkans between

Russia and Austria under control. Germany would throw its weight

against whichever of its two allies threatened to upset the delicate

balance between them. Berlin would keep both of them as allies, pro�

viding Germany with security on its eastern front. The treaties were

kept secret: Russia did not know of Germany's treaty with Austria;

Austria did not know of Germany's treaty with Russia.

For a century historians have blamed the Kaiser for allowing the

Reinsurance Treaty to lapse. Scholars now have shown that the

responsibility was not entirely his. On March 2 1 , 1890, Wilhelm

assured the Russian ambassador that he planned to renew the treaty.

On March 27, told that his foreign policy advisers were opposed to it,

he said, "then it cannot be done. I am extremely sorry." It was typical

of him, while claiming to be an absolute monarch, to allow himself to

be overruled.

6 O V A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

Fro -

A Bismarck, power passed within the German government to

those who looked east: who perhaps dreamed of expanding territory,

influence, or markets via the Balkans and perhaps Russia into the

Middle East and on to China.

' Behind this policy vision lay their dark historical vision of a fated

clash between Teutonic peoples, on the one side, and the peoples of

the East, Slavs and Orientals, in which the Easterners, if defeated,

were to become servants or slaves. It was the counterpart of the pan-

Slav ambitions animating some of the policymakers in St. Peters�

burg.

A question still debated is whether Wilhelm II played a great part

in formulating policy. One area in which his judgment did have a con�

siderable determining influence was in the shift of emphasis in grand

strategy in the late 1890s: Germany's new focus on naval policy.

The main figure with whom that strategy was associated was the

state secretary of the Naval Office, the newly ennobled Admiral

Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz represented, in a sense, the rising middle

classes. His plan seemed to solve several problems at once. It called

for the creation of a major battleship fleet. Building it might bring

high employment and prosperity, and thus buy off, as it were, a sec�

tion of the hitherto socialist working class.

This naval program consumed more and more money, and was

made possible only by the peculiar order of priorities of the army

ministry. According to Berghahn, "From the mid-1890s onwards,

naval expenditure increased enormously while, at the same time, the

expansion of the Army came to a virtual standstill. . . . There fol�

lowed two decades of stagnation." The funds were available to

expand the navy only because the army chose not to expand; "it was

the leadership of the Army itself that had called a halt to expansion."

The generals had done so in order to avoid opening the ranks of the

officer corps to what they regarded as unreliable elements: persons

lacking a Junker Prussian background.

As Berghahn writes, a function of the officer corps was "guarantee�

ing absolute loyalty to the existing order and its supreme military

commander, the monarch." Rather than enlarge, the better to com�

bat enemies abroad, the ministry of war chose to remain at current

force levels in order to combat enemies at home.

The naval expansion launched by Tirpitz supposedly would enable

Germany to compete against the other powers for colonies. It would

E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y

allow Germany to extend its reach anywhere in the world and not

just in and around Europe. Germany would engage in world politics,

not merely in continental politics. By its very nature the program

posed a challenge to Great Britain, against whom, in fact, it was

directed. In building a major navy, in attempting to obtain a colonial

empire, and in trying to play a role on the global stage, Germany was

setting out either to rival England or to take England's place.

In retrospect, this was a self-defeating policy. Germany, along with

its Austrian ally, is situated in the center of Europe. It has neighbors

on all sides. Geographically it is encircled. The German nightmare

has always been that of being encircled by a combination of hostile

powers. It was Wilhelmine Germany itself that translated that night�

mare into a reality, with its aggressive foreign policy and its unwise

alliance decisions.

To the west there was France, estranged by the loss of Alsace and

parts of Lorraine to Germany in the war of 1 8 7 0 - 7 1 . Bismarck, in his

day, distracted the French by backing their quest for empire; under

Wilhelm II, Germany instead deepened the-rift by opposing French

imperialism, notably during the Moroccan crises of 1906 and 1 9 1 1 .

To the east was Russia, which Berlin deliberately estranged by let�

ting the Reinsurance Treaty lapse. Germany made the fateful choice

to back Austria against Russia. Thus it had enemies on both sides,

east and west, conjuring up the very two-front war that haunted its

generals.

To the south, Italy had territorial assertions against Austria that

made it likely that Rome would rally to the other side. The German-

Austrian alliance might well have to fight on a southern front, too.

Now, in the early 1900s, the Tirpitz program estranged Great

Britain as well. England, France, and Russia, which were in many

ways natural enemies of one another, and had been in conflict for

more than a century as rivals for empire in Asia and elsewhere, were

given no choice but to band together. So the hostile encirclement

that Germany so much feared was achieved by Germany itself. But

the Kaiser and his entourage, including the country's military leaders,

chose instead to blame everyone else.

Insofar as he remained steady in support of any policy, the Kaiser

consistently backed Tirpitz and his naval policy. This brought the

monarch into alignment with a broad segment of the middle class

favoring expansion of trade, creation of a fleet to back up the drive

6 2 W A L K I N G T H R O U G H M I N E F I E L D S

for trade, and recognition by foreign powers of Germany's growing

greatness. It was a policy that aroused fear in Germany's neighbors.

On the other hand, it did not lead Germans to feel more secure.

Given the relative consistency with which he pushed navalism, the

Kaiser might well have been convicted of responsibility for the 1 9 1 4

war if it had come about as a result of the naval challenge that he

mounted against Great Britain. But it did not. Germany dropped out

of the naval arms race several years before the war began; navalism

then lost its relevance as a German world strategy.

It was the other and rival military party, the Prussian-led army,

that eventually led Germany along the road it took in 1 9 1 4 . To be

seen clearly, German militarism at that time has to be understood not

as a single phenomenon with two aspects but as two rival programs:

that of the navy and that of the army. Paradoxically—a word that,

along with "oddly," has to be used often in discussing Wilhelmine

Germany—Tirpitz and Wilhelm, whether they knew it or not,

headed the party of peace. This was because the navy, in the Tirpitz

grand plan, would take years to be ready for any possible confronta�

tion with England. And the navy did not want to fight until it was

ready. So Tirpitz was for peace now and war so much later as to have

little relevance to the politics of his time. To the navy, the enemy was

the British Empire; to the army, it was Russia.

The army was less than enthusiastic about the Kaiser. His backing

of the navy threatened Junker control of the German Empire; among

other things, it opened up paths for advancement to new men from

the professional and middle classes. Moreover, his tendency to

retreat from international confrontation whenever there appeared to

be a real risk of war was seen as cowardly through army eyes.

Gloom brought about by the Kaiser's inadequacies fed into a

larger worldview pessimism characteristic of pre-1914 Germany and

affecting such leaders as the younger Moltke. This pervasive gloom

was due, Fritz Fischer tells us, to devotion to the ideals of a vanishing

pre-capitalist world and its values, which could never be restored.

No portrait of Germany as it was a century ago would be complete

without mention of its cultural and academic preeminence. "Ein�

stein's Germany," as Fritz Stern has called it, was poised to lead the

world in learning and in the sciences. It produced great literature and

great music. German was the language of scholarship. Those who

hoped to pursue a serious career in classical studies, philosophy, soci-

E X P L O S I V E G E R M A N Y 6 3

ology, or the natural sciences were well advised to enter German uni�

versities. Germans, arguably, were the most accomplished people in

the world.

An advanced country inside a backward governmental structure,

broadly humanist yet narrowly militarist, Germany was a land of

paradoxes. Outside observers saw it as the coming country, the land

of the future, while its own leaders believed that its time was running

out. It was dazzlingly successful but profoundly troubled, powerful

but fearful to the point of paranoia. It was symbolized by its ruler,

who was both physically and emotionally unbalanced. Located in the

heart of Europe, Germany was at the heart of Europe's problems.

In retrospect, it seems odd that observers—the observers who

were surprised by the outbreak of war in 1914—did not see that

many of Germany's leaders were spoiling for a fight, and sooner or

later—if they could get around the Kaiser—might well have their

way. An American, Edward House, saw it, but many Europeans did

not.*

If House were to be believed, everything pointed to a war in which

Europe would go up in flames. The difficulty was in predicting when

and where the first step would be taken. In retrospect, a strong case

can be made for the proposition that the first step was taken in

Ottoman Turkey in 1908.

*For House, see p. 104.

J j

P A R T T H R E E

D R I F T I N G T O W A R D WAR

C H A P T E R 1 0 : M A C E D O N I A -

O U T O F C O N T R O L

The most difficult, Complicated, and long-lived problem faced by .. . [the

Turkish Sultan] was the Macedonian Question. ... From the Congress

of Berlin until World War I the issue occupied Ottoman and European

statesmen alike more than any other single diplomatic problem.

—Shaw and Shaw, History of the

Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey

I t looks very much as though the drift toward war began, insofar

as any movement in history has a beginning, in the old imperial

city of Constantinople: yesterday's Byzantium and today's Istan�

bul. Dominating the straits that separate Europe from Asia, it occu�

pies a site that has been at the center of world politics since the

fabled, and perhaps fabulous, Agamemnon, Ulysses, and Achilles

embarked for nearby Troy. For more than a thousand years after the

fourth century A . D . , Constantinople had served as the capital of the

Eastern Roman Empire. For five hundred years afterwards it was

the capital of the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire. It had outlived two

civilizations and in the early 1900s seemed poised to outlive a third.

6 7

6 8 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

It was, however, at a low point in its fortunes. Its glory was faded,

as was its beauty. It had not kept up with the times. Most of its streets

remained unpaved; the shoes and boots of its million inhabitants

were covered with mud when it rained and with dust when it did not.

Electricity had not yet been introduced. The city was known for its

powerful winds, blowing sometimes from one direction, sometimes

from another. That the winds of change would blow its empire away

sometime soon was a view commonly held, but it was less easy to pre�

dict from which quarter the winds would blow.

It was in Macedonia, a Turkish territory in the center of the turbulent

Balkans coveted by Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria alike, that the dis�

ruptive forces were unloosed. Macedonia was frontier country, law�

less and out of control; it resisted efforts to police it. It was a prey to

brigandage, guerrilla warfare, blood feuds, terrorism, assassinations,

massacres, reprisals, uprisings, and almost every form of violence and

bloodshed known to humankind. The Ottoman Third Army,

charged with the duty of pacifying it, was infiltrated by members of

one of Turkey's many subversive secret societies: the Committee of

Union and Progress (C.U.P.), known as the Young Turkey party. The

Young Turks advocated modernization. Their goal was to reform the

empire in order to stop Europe from taking any more Ottoman terri�

tory.

For Bulgaria, too, which regarded Macedonia as its southern half,

the fighting was an experience that gave rise to clandestine and mur�

derous ultra-nationalist military societies. Much later—in the 1920s

and 1930s—they would ally with Italian fascism and leave a blood�

stained trail through Balkan history.

Macedonia played much the same role for Serbia, another

claimant to the province. Serbian officers and other volunteers

underwent the same experience of guerrilla fighting and dirty war�

fare. In Serbia, too, one result of the turmoil was the creation of

secret societies by ultra-nationalist army officers. As will be seen

later, it was such a group in Serbia, the Black Hand, that often has

been blamed for starting the First World War. Macedonia was the

school that shaped the Serbian ultra-nationalists. Emerging from a

past that was incendiary, they played a direct role in setting their

world on fire. Like the Bulgarians, the Serbs took to assassination to

achieve their ends, and, like the Bulgarians, they turned on their own

M A C E D O N I A — O U T O F C O N T R O L 6 9

governments and politicians. The Turkish, Bulgarian, and Serbian

secret military societies were similar to one another except that each

wanted Macedonia for its own. And it was the Young Turks who sur�

faced first to achieve their aims.

The Young Turks were spurred to act by the news, in June 1908, of

a proposal by Russia and Britain to restore order in Macedonia by

sending in European officers to serve as a police force. If imple�

mented, which, in retrospect at least, seems to have been highly

unlikely, this would have meant that Turkey might well lose one

more province.

The Young Turks, surfacing briefly, contacted the European pow�

ers to protest against the proposal. Amidst great confusion, the Sul�

tan sent officials to arrest various C U T . leaders, but the Young Turks

evaded arrest and went on to spark a rebellion. Responding to the

mounting disorder, the Sultan, on July 24, 1908, decreed restoration

of the constitution, which was the main Young Turk demand. The

next year the Sultan abdicated in favor of his brother.

A new phase had opened up in Ottoman politics. It was not clear

who would lead or in which direction the leaders would go. Not until

1 9 1 3 did the Young Turks find themselves securely in control of the

Ottoman Empire. But Europeans were on notice that change might

finally be in the air.

To Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, the foreign minister of Austria-

Hungary, it seemed possible that the Young Turk rebellion might

represent a genuine revolution in Ottoman affairs. It might mean

that the reform and modernization that the Young Turks advocated

might actually be attempted—and might endanger Hapsburg inter�

ests in the Balkans.

Viewed in that way, a signal had been sounded. Now, it could be

argued, was the moment to act—or never. Time was running out.

Either the Young Turks would reinvigorate their empire and put a

stop to further annexations by European powers or the Ottoman

state would continue to disintegrate. The accession to power of the

Young Turkey party seems to have conveyed a message to Vienna: to

strike immediately while Turkey was still weak and before some other

European power struck first.

C H A P T E R 1 1 : A U S T R I A -

F I R S T O F F T H E M A R K

A s of 1908 the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary adminis�

tered the dual Balkan provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

whose nominal ruler continued to be the Ottoman Sultan.

Turkey had been in the process of losing the provinces in the 1870s

to a native rebellion and then a war with Russia when the other Great

Powers of Europe stepped in to settle matters and preserve the bal�

ance of power among themselves.

At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the powers had split the owner�

ship of the provinces in two: legal title to remain with Turkey, but

with the actual right to occupy—provisionally—being awarded to the

Dual Monarchy. The settlement did not, in fact, settle matters. The

Hapsburg Empire was obliged to send in an army of between

200,000 and 300,000 troops to quell the local fighters for indepen�

dence. The provinces were coveted by many; indeed each of the part�

ners in the Dual Monarchy, Austria and Hungary, wanted them for

itself, so a decision had to be postponed indefinitely in order to pre�

serve the Dual Monarchy's domestic balance of power. A decision as

7 0

A U S T R I A — F I R S T O F F T H E M A R K

to who eventually would replace the Ottoman Sultan as legal ruler

had to be similarly postponed to preserve the even more fragile bal�

ance of power among the states of Europe. Meanwhile the largely

Slavic inhabitants of the provinces cherished ambitions of their own

for national independence, while their fellow Slavs, in neighboring

Serbia, across the river, dreamed of annexing them.

Baron von Aehrenthal, foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy

(1906-12), elevated from Baron to Count in 1909, gloried in his rep�

utation as the most highly esteemed foreign secretary of his time. At

the foreign office, he surrounded himself with a staff of aristocratic

young aides who became his disciples. Admirers thought him clever;

detractors, too clever.

Aehrenthal saw in the Young Turk rebellion an opportunity to

score a dazzling success in the continuing rivalry among imperial

Great Powers. Whether taking the Balkan provinces proved to pro�

vide the first—or the last—chance to dismember the Ottoman

Empire hardly mattered; in either event Austria-Hungary would

move ahead of the other powers by striking first. It was a propitious

moment: Russia, formerly Austria's chief rival in the Balkans, was so

weakened by losing the war against Japan (1904-05) and by the revo�

lution of 1905 as to be practically hors de combat.

On October 6, 1908, the Dual Monarchy announced its annexa�

tion of Bosnia-Herzegovina. To distract attention from the procla�

mation, Aehrenthal encouraged Bulgaria, which nominally had

remained until then under Turkish sovereignty, to proclaim legal

independence the day before. Further throwing dust into the eyes of

Europe's other foreign ministers, he also proposed to withdraw

Hapsburg troops that he regarded as useless from the neighboring

Turkish district of Novibazar. Aehrenthal, who kept his own

monarch, Franz Joseph, in the dark about these maneuvers, lied

repeatedly to other European governments about what he was doing

and what he was pushing Bulgaria to do. It was an example of the ero�

sion of the aristocratic code of conduct that formerly had typified

European leaders.

The most violent reaction came from the small but vigorous

Balkan monarchy of Serbia, champion of South Slav rights. Serbia

long had regarded Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of its heartland. Many

elements in the government, in the military, and in the population

thought immediately of mobilization against Austria or of going to

7 2 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

war. Narodna Odbrana, a Serbian nationalist paramilitary organiza�

tion, sprang up to champion the Serbian cause.

Even the Kaiser was appalled, terming the annexation "fearful stu�

pidity" and lamenting, "Thus my Turkish policy, so carefully built up

over twenty years, is thrown away." He learned of the Austrian move

only from the newspapers and expressed himself as "deeply offended

in my feelings as an ally" by AehrenthaFs secrecy; to which Ger�

many's Chancellor responded: "Our problem could be stated as fol�

lows: we must not risk the loss of Austria—with her fifty million

inhabitants, her strong and efficient army, but still less must we let

ourselves be dragged by her into the midst of an armed conflict

which . . . might lead to a general war, in which we certainly had

nothing to gain."

Alexander Izvolsky, the foreign secretary of Russia, which was

Austria's main rival in the region, initially made no objection to the

Austrian grab. He believed that Aehrenthal had promised him that

the Hapsburg Empire would help secure compensation for the Czar:

free passage for Russia through Constantinople and the Straits.

Indeed, Izvolsky believed that he had a definite promise from

Aehrenthal in this regard and felt cheated that it was not kept. But a

bullying note in undiplomatic language from Berlin dissuaded the

Czar from championing the Serbian cause. Germany's acting foreign

minister, the aggressive Alfred von Kiderlen-Wachter, on Biilow's

behalf used menacing language—that of ultimatums—in communi�

cating with Izvolsky: "we expect a definite answer: yes or no; any eva�

sive, involved, or vague answer would have to be regarded by us as a

refusal." Russia, reeling from defeat and revolution in 1905, had little

choice but to submit. It was all the more humiliating to Izvolsky

because other leading figures in his government who did not share

his goals at the Straits were astonished that he had let Aehrenthal get

away with taking Bosnia.

Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina upset the fragile bal�

ance of power in the Balkans. Izvolsky, whether to hit back at

Aehrenthal or for some other reason, sent Nicolai Hartwig as minis�

ter to Serbia (1909-14). Hartwig was a pan-Slav militant with a fol�

lowing of his own in Russia. He set out to bring Balkan states into a

common front to take some or all of the lands still occupied by the

Ottoman Empire in Europe. This was a difficult task—getting the

quarrelsome rival states of the Christian Balkans to agree on any-

A U S T R I A — F I R S T O F F T H E M A R K 7 3

thing seemed hopeless at times—but, as Hartwig showed, it was not

impossible.

Hartwig began by forging an alliance between Serbia and Bul�

garia, and then joining that alliance to an accord with Russia.

Arrangements with Greece and Montenegro followed.

Chancellor von Biilow had approved the use of humiliating language

in dealing with Russia. Perhaps it was because he wanted to score an

evident triumph. He needed one.

Biilow had been appointed to his position largely through the

influence of Philipp Eulenburg, the Kaiser's best friend. Following a

series of homosexual scandals and prosecutions, Eulenburg had been

obliged to retreat into exile. Tales of transvestite follies and decadent

parties seemed to implicate the Kaiser himself.

As Chancellor, Biilow had been obliged to recognize that Ger�

many could not keep up the naval arms race with Britain, a contest

that had been central to the Tirpitz policy that he and the Kaiser had

embraced. He himself realized the difficulty of supporting the budget

and saw no way of raising the taxes that were needed to do so.

As the Bosnian crisis was playing itself out, Biilow faced another

scandal: a controversial newspaper interview given by the Kaiser that

had been cleared in advance by the Chancellor.

The interview had been granted by Wilhelm to a British friend,

who worked up his notes into an article that was published by the

London Daily Telegraph in October 1908. The article meant to show

that the Kaiser was pro-British and that England therefore had noth�

ing to fear from Germany. Wilhelm claimed that during the recent

Boer War in South Africa (in which German interests and sympathies

lay with the Boers and against England) he personally had prevented

other European powers from combining against Britain. Even more,

the Kaiser claimed to have devised and delivered strategic plans for

Britain that had enabled Britain to win the war. The British were

enraged, and in this they were not alone.

The German people, the German parliament, and all German

parties denounced Wilhelm. There was a question as to whether the

Kaiser might be forced to abdicate. Of course he had not, as he

claimed, provided the British generals with their campaign plans. But

Biilow, who had failed to adequately vet the indiscreet remarks of his

monarch, now failed to defend him. To save himself he lied and did

D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

not admit that he had cleared the interview. In 1909, Biilow resigned.

A new Chancellor took office, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, a

civil servant, but of an old and wealthy Rhineland family. Bethmann

knew he was not Wilhelm's preferred choice for the office, and his

willingness to stand up to the Kaiser was questioned then and is ques�

tioned still. Bethmann was an outsider—not Prussian, not military—

who did not have, nor did he ever develop, personal relationships

with the leaders of the armed forces or with the emperor.

For the Prussian military, demoralized by the discrediting of Wil�

helm, it seemed evident that the only way to save the monarchy and

therefore their way of life was to go to war. The chief of the Military

Cabinet, General Moritz von Lyncker, claimed that war was needed

in order to get Germany "out of the internal and external difficul�

ties." But he added that the Kaiser probably would not have the nerve

to adopt this solution.

Moltke, chief of the Great General Staff, believed that war was

inevitable, and the sooner the better. He was disappointed that the

Bosnian crisis was resolved peacefully; such an opportunity of war, he

warned, "will not come so soon again under such propitious circum�

stances."

Having completed the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aehren�

thal set out to preserve the new status quo in the Balkans. He wanted

no further changes. He tried to persuade the powers that Austria did

not intend to take Macedonia next. But Russia viewed what he had

done as aggressive and therefore believed that Austria-Hungary had

become expansionist. To counter that expansionism, Russia felt

impelled to organize pro-Russian, anti-Austrian sentiment in the

Balkans. In turn, the Dual Monarchy saw this as Russian expansion�

ism, requiring defensive measures of its own.

The treaty of 1879 between Germany and Austria had been a defen�

sive alliance: if either country were attacked—but only if it were the

country that was attacked—the other was bound to come to its aid.

But in January 1909, at the climax of the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis,

Conrad, Austria's chief of staff, had asked Moltke, his German coun�

terpart, what Germany would do if Austria invaded Serbia and

thereby provoked Russia into intervening. Moltke replied that Ger�

many would protect Austria anyway, even though Austria would have

A U S T R I A — F I R S T O F F T H E M A R K

started it. Moreover, Germany would go to war not only against Rus�

sia, but also against France, since France was Russia's ally.

In his history of Germany, Gordon Craig notes that Austria there�

after relied upon Moltke's pledge as a binding commitment: "In

effect, Moltke had changed the treaty of 1879 from a defensive to an

offensive treaty and placed his country at the mercy of the adventur�

ers in Vienna." It should be added that Moltke's pledge was backed by

the Chancellor.

C H A P T E R 1 2 : F R A N C E A N D

G E R M A N Y M A K E T H E I R P L A Y

,or a long time France had been eyeing Morocco. It was the last

territory in North Africa that remained independent, and it

_M_ would nicely complement the nation's holdings in Algeria and

Tunisia. France was moving to assert a presence in Morocco when, in

1905, Germany unexpectedly intervened. The Kaiser, albeit reluc�

tantly, was sent by his government on a trip—by ship, through a

Force 8 gale—to champion Moroccan independence. On Germany's

part this was a pretext aimed at disrupting the newly formed Entente

of Britain with France. But the German maneuver failed: Britain

sided with France. An international conference convened and sympa�

thized with France, too. The conference awarded France the leading

role in Moroccan affairs by a treaty signed at Algeciras in 1906. At

Germany's insistence the treaty pledged the Europeans to uphold the

rule of the Sultan, not to undermine Morocco's independence, as

France (or at least its colonialist party) actually aimed to do and in

fact went ahead to do.

In March 1 9 1 1 , according to French authorities, rebel tribes

F R A N C E A N D G E R M A N Y M A K E T H E I R P L A Y 7 7

brought disorder to the interior of Morocco and threatened one of

the capital cities, Fez. The Sultan of Morocco appealed to France to

send troops and to restore order. In Berlin it was believed that the

tribal uprising had been fomented by the French in order to provide

them with an excuse for occupying the country. Even if the uprising

were genuine, it was safe to assume that once French troops were

installed in Morocco, they would remain. The new German foreign

secretary, Alfred von Kiderlen-Wachter, decided to spring a trap.

Until the French acted he did nothing but remind them that to do so

would abrogate existing treaty arrangements and lead to negotiations

to replace them. His aim was to force France to offer Germany sub�

stantial compensation: enormous tracts in Africa. In turn, such a

diplomatic triumph would shore up the Berlin government's position

in the forthcoming parliamentary elections of 1 9 1 2 , where prospects

otherwise were quite bleak.

French troops occupied Fez on May 2 1 , 1 9 1 1 . Without consulting

even such key members of his own government as the armed forces

chiefs, Kiderlen sent a naval cruiser, the Panther, to anchor in the har�

bor of Agadir on Morocco's Atlantic coast. He then asserted Ger�

many's claims on July 1. Apparently he assumed that England, as

France's longstanding imperialist rival, would stay out of the conflict.

So would Russia, unwilling to risk war for a country as far away and

unimportant as Morocco. Austria-Hungary was an ally and so, at least

in theory, was Italy.

Kiderlen's calculation was that an isolated France would give way.

But it turned out that France was not isolated. Great Britain rallied to

its support: Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George,

though of radical, pacifist-leaning, anti-imperialist political origins,

made that clear in a rousing speech at a Mansion House banquet on

July 2 1 . Russia, too, with some ambiguity, seemed to sympathize with

France, while Austria-Hungary refused to extend even diplomatic

support for Germany. Italy was of no help.

The Kaiser and his political friends, reluctant from the start to let

the foreign secretary play out his risky hand, weighed in on the side

of peace. Germany backed down. Austria had gotten away with

annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina due to German support, so France

had gotten away with taking Morocco due to Britain's aid. France,

which already held Algeria and Tunisia, now received Germany's

recognition of its protectorate over Morocco too. In return, Ger-

7 § D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

many was awarded compensation in Africa that it deemed to be inad�

equate. All was agreed November 4 , 1 9 1 1 .

Everything seemed to fall into place in the wake of the Agadir cri�

sis. The outlines of a future war, although not its cause, became

increasingly clear. Germany had been put on notice that Great

Britain might well come in on France's side, and that Russia would do

so too if what was at stake was France's survival rather than a mere

colonial issue.

Germany could not rely on Italy, a nominal ally, nor even on the

Dual Monarchy. Regarding the Austrian alliance as vital, Germany

learned at Agadir that it was a one-way affair: Berlin would help to

pursue Vienna's interests, but Vienna would not help to pursue

Berlin's. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had known it

even before the crisis; he had told the Kaiser: "If it comes to a war, we

must hope that Austria is attacked so that she needs our help and not

that we are attacked so that it would depend on Austria's decision

whether she will remain faithful to the alliance." In other words, a

conflict would have to be Austria's in the first instance or else Vienna

would sit out the war.

The Agadir crisis alerted Germany to another danger: financial

vulnerability. It decided to collect all the cash that was owing to it.

Beginning in mid-summer 1 9 1 1 , Germany's central bank, the

Reichsbank, systematically called in foreign debts, a program that if

continued would have been completed within five years and would

have turned Germany into a total debtor. By 1 9 1 6 , Berlin would have

repatriated all of its own money. But it also would be holding hoards

of cash that it had borrowed from other European powers, and that

now would finance a war against them.

German deeds and words in the summer of 1 9 1 1 — t h e dispatch of

the Panther to Morocco and the language used in communicating

with the Great Powers—alarmed Europe and brought about a sharp

reaction. There is irony in this because they were the work neither of

the Kaiser nor of the Chancellor, but of a somewhat out-of-control

foreign secretary who died at the end of the year after downing six

cognacs.

David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Britain's

Liberal government, was one of those former anti-imperialists whose

mind was changed by and about the Germans. Hence the Mansion

F R A N C E A N D G E R M A N Y M A K E T H E I R P L A Y 7 9

House speech in which he pledged to spend whatever it took to

maintain England's supremacy. His young political protege Winston

Churchill, home secretary and a leading friend of Germany's as late

as the spring of 1 9 1 1 , reversed his position too and foresaw the com�

ing world war.

Churchill later recalled that on the afternoon of July 24, 1 9 1 1 , as

he walked with Lloyd George by the fountains of Buckingham

Palace, a messenger caught up with them to bring the Chancellor in

all urgency to see the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. In his room

at the House of Commons, Grey told them: "I have just received a

communication from the German Ambassador so stiff that the Fleet

might be attacked at any moment." And indeed, the Royal Navy was

put on alert immediately.

Grey, Lloyd George, Churchill, and other interested ministers

met irregularly during the summer as the crisis in Morocco played

itself out. Under the pressure of events, government leaders became

aware that Britain was unprepared for war. Secret staff talks with Bel�

gium and France in 1905-06, renewed from time to time along with

some exchanges of information, and discussions within the armed

services and within government committees, had arrived at contrast�

ing and inconclusive results.

A whole-day top-level conference of the Committee of Imperial

Defence convened August 23, on the initiative of Director of Mili�

tary Operations Major General Henry Wilson. It seems that this was

the only time before 1 9 1 4 that the two armed services, army and

navy, outlined their respective and competing strategies for waging

war. At the conference a decision was made between the two: Britain

would not merely fight the war at sea; it would also send an army—an

expeditionary force—to fight a land war on the continent of Europe

alongside France and against Germany.

Participants were shocked to discover two great failings on the

part of the Royal Navy. The fleet was not prepared to transport the

expeditionary force from Britain to the Continent, and it refused to

create the equivalent of the army's general staff. To ride roughshod

over the entrenched admirals, it would be necessary to find a new

civilian head of the Admiralty: someone dynamic. In October, Prime

Minister Asquith appointed controversial, energetic young Winston

Churchill a month before his thirty-seventh birthday. Churchill, in a

8 o D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

memorandum that he prepared and circulated, already had discerned

the main outlines of the coming world war and threw himself into a

frenzy of activity as he prepared to win it.

In Britain's war plans, Germany was the enemy. The ally was

France.

To tell of France in the world politics of 1 9 1 4 is to speak of its leader,

Raymond Poincare. His policy was—and remains—widely misun�

derstood. It was and is assumed that he aimed at reversing the results

of the Franco-Prussian War: that he sought to lead a crusade to

recover the lost territories, above all, territories in the land of his

birthplace, Lorraine. This was not so, according to his most recent

biographer, John Keiger. Rather, he was a moderate centrist who

preferred peaceful accommodations.

Remarkably little was known of his conduct of affairs until quite

recently. As late as the 1980s, his two biographers in France were

unaware that Poincare's private papers existed; indeed, the more

recent of the two claimed in 1984 that the French statesman had

destroyed his papers. It remained for Poincare's first English-

language biographer, Keiger, whose work was published in 1997, to

study and make use of these materials.

Raymond Poincare, born in the town of Bar-le-Duc in western

Lorraine on August 20, i860, a person of formidable weight and

solidity, grew to be the dominant public figure in the French politics

of his time. On his father's side, he came from a family of profession�

als distinguished in the sciences and in education for more than a

century. His mother's ancestors were judges and politicians. His

cousin Henri became one of the leading mathematicians of the twen�

tieth century.

Virtuous, cautious, abstemious, middle-of-the-road, and essen�

tially nonpartisan, he nonetheless was driven by a fierce competitive�

ness: by an ambition to win all of life's contests. At the age of twenty

he became the youngest barrister in France. At twenty-six he was

elected the youngest member of parliament. At fifty-two, on January

1 7 , 1 9 1 3 , he was the youngest person ever elected to be President, a

seven-year position. He also was the first to be elected directly from

the office of Prime Minister to that of President. As President, he was

a dominating figure. By the summer of 1 9 1 4 , he had taken almost full

control of French foreign policy. With regard to Germany, he stood

F R A N C E A N D G E R M A N Y M A K E T H E I R P L A Y 8 l

in a typically middle position among the center-left forces, between

his pro-German colleague Joseph Caillaux and the lone wolf Ger�

man-hating Georges Clemenceau. But an observer at the time might

have discerned a tilt in favor of Berlin. On January 2 0 , 1 9 1 4 , Poincare

dined at the German embassy—the first time a President of France

had done so since 1870.

Keiger suggests that Poincare's increased friendship with Ger�

many was the product of confidence, stemming in part from the

results of the First Balkan War, in which the Balkan forces, trained

and armed by France, defeated the Ottoman armies, trained and

armed by Germany. Moreover, Poincare took up the cause of the

French colonialist alliance, the Comite de l'Orient, which sought

control of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine should the Turkish empire

collapse—an objective which might well pit France against its allies

England and Russia.

Yet it transpired that as France set about rounding off its colonial

designs, Britain, its traditional rival, offered not opposition, but sup�

port. And Germany, which once had encouraged France's imperial

ambitions, now stood in the way. New alliances and alignments were

in the process of formation. Change was in the air.

Germany, having once again alienated the other powers in the Pan�

ther episode, now took measures to defend against the hostility it had

aroused. In the words of David G. Herrmann, an authority on the

pre-1914 arms race, "The most significant military consequence of

the second Moroccan crisis remained the German decision to

embark on an extraordinary program of land armament in the expec�

tation of a future war.... The resulting German army law started an

international spiral of land-armaments construction. The Germans

regarded themselves as responding to a threat from all sides,

b u t . . . they took the plunge in full expectation that their rivals

would react" in the same way, by a massive new arms buildup "and

that war would only be a matter of time. In due course, the prophecy

fulfilled itself."

As the Moroccan crisis drew to a close, another European power

staked out a claim to parts of the Muslim world: Italy, the peninsula

that stretches from central Europe to the middle of the Mediter�

ranean Sea. It had never been unified since the fall of Rome nearly

D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

1,500 years before. Its more than 30 million people now were search�

ing for a role in world affairs.

Italy was a geographical entity that had become a country only

recently, in the war of 1859. It had acquired its capital city of Rome in

the early 1870s. It claimed to rank as a Great Power and felt the need

to win colonies, such as older, more established countries possessed.

Italians harbored even more ambitious goals: they dreamed of their

ancestors in ancient Rome and hoped to win similar glory. Austria-

Hungary's move in the Balkans followed by France's in North Africa

jolted the Italians into pursuing such aims.

C H A P T E R 1 3 : I T A L Y G R A S P S ;

T H E N T H E B A L K A N S D O T O O

T he territory of Tripolitania, now part of Libya, was Italy's

first target. Under the indolent sway of the Ottoman gov�

ernment, Tripolitania, along with adjoining Cyrenaica, was

ruled minimally and defended inadequately. For years, Italian diplo�

mats had been clearing the way for a future takeover. In 1900, France

had waived any objections it might have had in return for Italy's sim�

ilar waiver in regard to France's hoped-for annexation of Morocco.

Later the Italians made similar arrangements with the Austrians in

regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina and with the Russians in respect to the

Straits of the Dardanelles. To keep Italy as an ally, Germany agreed

to the Tripoli venture; Britain concurred in hopes of detaching Italy

from that alliance.

So once Austria had moved on Bosnia, and France on Morocco,

the Italian press and public urged their leaders to go ahead before it

became too late. In a leisurely fashion more Mediterranean than

modern, the Italian government then gave the other powers notice of

its intention to go to war—some two months in advance.

8 3

8 4 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

As a young Italian diplomat later remembered it, " I . . . expected

that the communication itself would create a stir. Nothing of the

kind! Nobody took the slightest notice. . . . People thought that we

were bluffing."

On September 29, 1 9 1 1 , Italy declared war, accusing Turkey of

injuring Italian interests. Italy occupied the Libyan coastline quickly,

but then was bogged down in the interior. Fighting continued for

about a year. A cease-fire took effect October 1 5 , 1 9 1 2 , followed by a

peace that left Italy in possession not only of Libya but also of

Rhodes and other Dodecanese islands off the shore of Turkey in the

eastern Mediterranean.

The Italian war was a signal to Hartwig's Russian-inspired Balkan

alliance that their time had come to strike—and to preempt Austria.

The pace of conflict was accelerating; the clashes began to overlap.

The Italo-Turkish war started before the Second Moroccan Crisis

was resolved, and now out of the embers of countless local blood

feuds, the First Balkan War caught fire in 1 9 1 2 before the Italian

colonial war was concluded. Indeed, the main reason that the Turkish

government accepted Italy's terms for concluding hostilities was its

need to focus on southeastern Europe. There was a revolt in Albania,

a border conflict with Montenegro, continuing guerrilla warfare in

Macedonia, and, above all, turmoil in Constantinople, where oppo�

nents of the Young Turks briefly had come to power.

As seen earlier, on March 1 3 , 1 9 1 2 , Bulgaria and Serbia had been

brought together by the pan-Slav Russian Nicolai Hartwig, who

inspired them to take advantage of the Italian war to press their own

claims against a distracted Turkey. Greece joined later. So, by verbal

agreement, did Montenegro. Russia did not, at first, apprise France

of what was afoot; even later Russia did not keep France informed

fully. But even St. Petersburg may not have been kept advised:

Hartwig was running something close to a rogue operation. Izvolsky

and other leaders of the Russian government "denounced the dan�

gers of Hartwig's 'incurable Austrophobia' " and what the historian

Dominic Lieven has recently called "his disloyalty to overall Russian

foreign policy."

The Balkan peoples harbored murderous hatreds against one

another, and asserted rival claims to territories and frontiers, but they

acted together in order to strike at Turkey before it could make peace

I T A L Y G R A S P S ; T H E N T H E B A L K A N S D O T O O 8 5

with Italy. Mounting a crusade to free all that remained of the

Ottoman Empire in Christian southeastern Europe, Montenegro

declared war on Turkey on October 8, 1 9 1 2 , followed by its allies

Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece on October 1 7 . Turkey immediately

brought the war with Italy to an end.

The Ottoman forces were, to everyone's surprise, quickly and

utterly defeated. They were driven from almost all of Turkey-in-

Europe. In a month of lightning warfare, the Balkan states had prac�

tically brought the Eastern Question to a close. This was a role that

the Great Powers had always imagined that they themselves would

play. Now they scrambled to make sure that whatever settlement was

reached—by others—would not threaten their vital interests. Their

task was complicated by a change of personnel: the foreign secre�

taries of Germany and Austria died, the foreign secretary of Russia

resigned, and their replacements did not carry the same weight.

In December 1 9 1 2 a conference of ambassadors convened in Lon�

don. Sixty-three sittings ensued. Macedonia was partitioned. Bul�

garia felt cheated of its share by Serbia and Greece. A peace treaty

was signed May 3 0 , 1 9 1 3 , but did not last. A month later, on the night

of June 29-30, Bulgaria turned against its former allies, Serbia and

Greece, in a surprise attack ordered by King Ferdinand I without

consulting even his own government. It led to the so-called Second

Balkan War, in which Bulgaria was defeated by Serbia, Greece,

Turkey, and Romania.

The Treaty of Bucharest, signed on August 10, and negotiated by

the local states rather than by the Great Powers, brought the First

and Second Balkan Wars to an end. Austria-Hungary was taken by

surprise. It had wanted to see Serbia crushed—hoping and believing

that Turkey would win the first war and Bulgaria the second—and

might well have intervened to dictate different results had there been

time. As it was, the Hapsburg Empire feared for its future. The fears

centered on victorious Serbia and its sponsor, Russia.

Austrian fears were not unjustified. During the Balkan wars, Rus�

sia's new foreign minister, Serge Sazonov, told the Serbian ambassa�

dor in St. Petersburg that "we shall shake Austria to the foundations,"

and that in winning as much as possible in the peace negotiations "we

must be content with what we shall receive, regarding it as an install�

ment, for the future belongs to us."

It was Austria-Hungary itself, having annexed Bosnia-

8 6 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

Herzegovina, that had provoked Russia and Serbia to seek revenge. It

was possible that Serbia, which had doubled in size, and its allies Rus�

sia and the forces of pan-Slavism would continue their advance.

Aehrenthal had upset the Balkan balance of power in 1908 in Aus�

tria's favor. Now Hartwig had upset the balance in Russia's favor. In

turn, would the Dual Monarchy riposte? Or would Germandom

continue to retreat before Slavdom?

C H A P T E R 1 4 : T H E S L A V I C T I D E

T imes had changed. In the nineteenth century, when foreign

policy alignments and readjustments tended to focus on ide�

ology, Russia and the Germanic states of Austria and Prussia

had been the closest of allies. In 1 9 1 2 they still shared the same out�

look, the same reactionary politics, and the same values. But their

solidarity, based on common beliefs, gave way to a life-or-death con�

flict based on a clash of interests and a power rivalry.

The clash of interests was in the Balkans, where it was believed

that Austria, in order to survive, would have to put down all chal�

lenges by Slavic peoples. In turn, Austria's survival as a Great Power

was a vital German interest. Moreover, the sheer size of Russia, and

its startlingly rapid growth in power as it industrialized with French

financial backing, turned the czarist empire into Germany's potential

rival for supremacy on the Continent. The Teuton versus Slav aspect

of that potential contest reflected race hatred. Moreover in seeing

Germany's future in terms of penetration and exploitation of the

8 7

8 8 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

Middle East and Far East, the Kaiser imagined yet another goal that

could be achieved only by overcoming the Slavic world.

Inconsistent as he so often was, the Kaiser also was a latecomer to

these views. In the early days of the Balkan wars he found it unobjec�

tionable that the Ottoman Empire should be defeated. Its Young

Turks, he decided, deserved to be "flung out of Europe" for having

overthrown "my friend the Sultan." The future of the Balkans should

be determined by its peoples, he believed, and for the Great Powers

to intervene to "keep the peace" would only backfire: the peoples

would turn against the powers. Instead the powers should form a

"ring" within which the local forces could fight it out. "Let these

people get on with it," he wrote in his irresponsible, thoughtless, and

typically ambiguous marginal notes (which lend themselves therefore

to various readings). "Either they will take some blows or they will

deal some out. . . . The Eastern Question must be solved with blood

and iron." Decisions would be made on the battlefield. Blood would

be spilled; that was inevitable. But only after that could negotiation

play a role. "Afterwards there will be time to talk." But this process—

the Balkan ethnic wars, followed by a peace conference at which

terms were dictated largely by the local victors—in order to produce

an outcome acceptable to the German powers must occur "at the

right time for us! And that is now!"—while France and Russia

remained unprepared for war.

Shortly after scribbling these marginal notes, the Kaiser ordered

his foreign office not to "hinder the Bulgars, Serbs, and Greeks in

their legitimate quest for victory." In a marginal note he foresaw the

possible creation of a "United States of the Balkans" that might serve

politically as a buffer between Austria and Russia, thus solving that

problem. It also might provide an important market for German

exports.

As crisis loomed ahead in the final months of the First Balkan War,

with victorious Serbia and Montenegro seeking an outlet to the sea—

Scutari, on the Adriatic in formerly Ottoman Albania—and with

Austria opposing that claim, the Kaiser wrote to his foreign secretary:

"I see absolutely no danger for Austria's existence, or prestige, in a

Serbian harbor on the Adriatic" and "I think it unadvisable needlessly

to oppose the Serbian wish." He denied that the terms of the Triple

Alliance (Germany, Austria, and Italy) required his country to do so;

the alliance only "was intended to guarantee the integrity of current

T H E S L A V I C T I D E 8 9

territorial possessions." He added that "to be sure, some of the

changes wrought in the Balkans by the war are inconvenient and

unwelcome for Vienna, but none [is] so important that we ought on

that account to expose ourselves to a military involvement. I could

not carry the responsibility for that before my conscience or my peo�

ple."

He restated his position often: he would "under no circumstances

be prepared to march against Paris and Moscow on account of Alba�

nia." In a memorandum to the foreign office he called it absurd to

risk an "existential struggle with three Great Powers, in which Ger�

many may possibly perish" simply because "Austria doesn't want to

have the Serbs in Albania."

Among many other messages, Wilhelm cabled his foreign secre�

tary on November 9 , 1 9 1 2 : "have spoken in detail to the Reich Chan�

cellor along the lines of my instruction to you and have emphasized

that under no circumstances will I march against Paris and Moscow on

account of Albania."

The Kaiser wanted to make clear to Austria that only if Russia

attacked—and if Austria had not provoked the attack—would Berlin

back Vienna. He was dissuaded. Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg,

perhaps stiffened by the view of Admiral George Alexander von

Miiller, the Kaiser's naval aide, apparently argued that Austria would

lose faith in the German guarantee if such a message were sent to

Vienna and that the German public would be furious. Instead, the

government should urge Austria to demonstrate moderation so as to

make a German intervention "comprehensible to the German peo�

ple." (But if public opinion would be furious if Austria were aban�

doned, was not the Austrian case already "comprehensible"?)

In the last half of November, having met with service officers and

civilian officials, the Kaiser was satisfied. Public opinion, he decided,

now regarded Austria as the provoked party; "the position which I

wanted has been reached."

On November 21 the Kaiser's great friend Archduke Franz Ferdi�

nand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, arrived in Berlin and received

from Wilhelm and from Moltke assurances that Germany would

back Austria "in all circumstances" even at the risk of war with

Britain, France, and Russia. The Kaiser apparently was persuaded

that Austria now was the provoked party and that England and

France would not intervene. These may have been his conditions,

9 0 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

albeit unspoken. And German foreign office opinion was that "today

both Italy and England are on our side": the risk was far less than

might appear. Whether for that reason or another, the German lead�

ers made their secret commitment public. The foreign minister told

the parliament on November 28: "If Austria is forced, for whatever

reason, to fight for its position as a Great Power, then we must stand

by her side" (emphasis added). In London the British foreign secre�

tary was startled: did Germany, he asked, really mean to give Austria

"a blank cheque," and to support Vienna in whatever it did, even if it

were in the wrong, and even in a war of aggression that it had started?

Sir Edward Grey told the German ambassador that "the conse�

quences of such a policy" would be "incalculable."

Grey acted to make sure that the Kaiser did not misunderstand

England's position. If Germany would not let Austria disappear as a

Great Power, neither would England let France disappear as such.

Grey apparently spoke to R. B. Haldane, the Lord Chancellor, who

as war minister had remade the British army, and the result was a

message from London that sparked a fresh crisis.

The date was December 8 , 1 9 1 2 . On short notice, the Kaiser con�

vened a meeting in his Berlin quarters with a number of his military

leaders: four, according to one account, and six according to another.

They met at n a.m. to consider the import of the telegram from

London. In addition to Wilhelm the participants included Admiral

Muller, chief of the Kaiser's Naval Cabinet; Admiral von Tirpitz, the

naval leader; General von Moltke, the army chief of staff; Vice Admi�

ral August von Heeringen, head of the admiralty staff, and perhaps

also his brother General Josias von Heeringen, Prussian minister of

war, and the chief of the Military Cabinet, Moritz Freiherr von

Lyncker. Not present were the civilian leaders: Chancellor von Beth�

mann Hollweg and the foreign secretary, Gottlieb von Jagow.

This secret conference was drawn to the world's attention only a

half century later, when the historian Fritz Fischer showed that it

could have been evidence of a deliberate plan by the Kaiser and his

military chiefs to bring about a European war in June 1 9 1 4 . The

interpretation of the 1 9 1 2 conference remains an open question,

although most leading historians today tend not to accept Fischer's

views without at least some qualification. John Rohl, perhaps the

closest in his views to Fischer, makes the persuasive point that we

now have additional documentation in unusual abundance to help us

T H E S L A V I C T I D E

understand the notes by Admiral Miiller that, in an earlier garbled

version, had been our only source.

The Kaiser called the conference because Germany's Anglophile

ambassador in London, Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky, had

cabled him with news of a conversation he had just held with Lord

Haldane, Britain's Germanophile former minister of war. According

to the Kaiser, Haldane apparently spoke for Sir Edward Grey. Given

the channel of communication chosen—Lichnowsky and Haldane,

two men devoted to the cause of improving relations between En�

gland and Germany—it would have been safe to infer that Grey was

supplying medicine that, despite its apparent bitterness, was pre�

scribed for the patient's own good. The message from Grey brought

to the Kaiser's attention something that any student of international

relations ought to have known: that it was in Britain's vital interest to

maintain the balance of power in Europe. If Germany were to attack

France, Britain would intervene on France's side, for preserving the

independence and Great Power status of France was one of En�

gland's vital interests. Implied in the cable was the message that Lon�

don did not object if Germany increased its lead as the wealthiest and

most militarily powerful country on the Continent so long as other

powers, especially those of Western Europe, were allowed to retain

their independence. In his angry marginal notes on the text of the

telegram, Wilhelm described the English principle of the balance of

power as an "idiocy" which would make England "eternally into our

enemy."

The Kaiser, according to one secondhand version, was "in a most

agitated state" and "in an openly war-like mood." In Admiral von

Miiller's firsthand account, Wilhelm welcomed Haldane's message as

providing "a desirable clarification" of Britain's intentions, showing

those among Germany's planners who had wanted to allow for the

possibility of England's neutrality the error of their ways. In the light

of Haldane's message, Germany, if it went to war, should plan on

fighting Britain as well, and to that end, the navy should speed up

such measures as building its U-boat fleet.

According to the Kaiser, speaking in December, in the middle of

the Balkan wars, Austria "must deal energetically" with Serbia; and

"if Russia supports the Serbs, which she evidently does . . . then war

would be unavoidable for us, too." Moltke said, "I believe a war is

unavoidable and the sooner the better." But—and it was to prove a

D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

significant "but"—Moltke added that "we ought to do more through

the press" to build up popular support for a war against Russia.

The Kaiser and Moltke urged immediate war. Tirpitz, speaking

for the navy, agreed in part but asked "postponement of the great

fight for one and a half years." The fleet needed time to complete

widening and deepening the Kiel Canal and work on the base at

Heligoland. Moltke objected that the navy would not be ready even

then, and that the army, which was running out of money, would be

in a worse position.

The meeting seems to have disbanded in a show of pro-war senti�

ment but without arriving at an agreed decision. A target date had

been mentioned but had not been firmly set. A disappointed Admiral

von Miiller noted in his diary: "The result" of the conference

"amounted to almost o." Miiller wrote to the Chancellor that after�

noon, reporting what had been said and decided at what became

known as the "war council." Miiller transmitted the Kaiser's order to

use the press to prepare the people for a future war with Russia. In

the week or so following the conference, the Kaiser spoke often of

the coming war in excited terms, repeatedly describing it as a racial

conflict.

Ever since Fritz Fischer publicized evidence of the council, histo�

rians have wondered whether it could be a coincidence that one and a

half years later the war did in fact break out. (Shortly after the coun�

cil ended, Wilhelm told the Swiss minister that the racial struggle

"will probably take place in one or two years.")

In the nearly two years that followed the war council, Germans

started a new and more frantic arms race, but it had been decided

upon and set in motion long before. According to a leading student

of the arms race, David Herrmann, it had been undertaken, in part,

in an act of interservice rivalry, in which the army made a preemptive

strike against the navy, seeking a rise in funding large enough so that

an increase for the fleet too would be out of the question. Another

reason was that both the public and the army had been jolted by the

Moroccan crisis of 1 9 1 1 into an awareness that Germany would face

real challenges in a war against a European coalition.

But the First Balkan War, ending in December 1 9 1 2 at the time

of the war council, "had an even more galvanizing effect," we are

told by Herrmann, that "transformed the atmosphere of tension into

one of emergency." The Slavs seemingly were moving ahead, and

T H E S L A V I C T I D E

Austria-Hungary, in a paralysis of policy and power, was doing noth�

ing to stop them. German party leaders spoke openly of the possibil�

ity of a world war.

The war ministry persevered in trying to limit the army's numbers

in order to preserve Prussian Junker control of it, while the alarmed

Moltke proposed a nearly 50 percent rise in its size. The army bill of

1 9 1 2 was large, but that of 1 9 1 3 was the largest in German history.

The German peacetime military machine was running at full capac�

ity; the increases could not be fully digested until 1 9 1 6 .

As the German leaders were aware, their frantic arms buildup

would inspire other countries to try to match it. But they had arrived

at some kind of limit. As Germany was then constituted, it probably

was not possible to expand any further. The political organization

was too ramshackle; the taxation system too archaic and unprogres-

sive. Germany could not afford to continue its military expansion for

much longer. The only thing that could justify military expenditures

at their 1 9 1 3 level was to go to war in the immediate future. But Ger�

man public opinion was not ready for it. Moltke wrote to Conrad,

chief of the Austrian General Staff, in February 1 9 1 3 that it would be

hard to find a rallying cry that would persuade the German public to

go to war—yet.

C H A P T E R 1 5 : E U R O P E G O E S

T O T H E B R I N K

B etween 1908 and 1 9 1 3 the Young Turk revolt had been fol�

lowed by one European intervention after another in lands

that once had been or still were Ottoman. The uprising in

Turkey had led to Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

France then had made its move in Morocco, inspiring Italy to strike

at the Ottoman Empire in Libya and the Aegean, while Serbia, Mon�

tenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria attacked it in the Balkans. In those five

years the Great Powers had managed to steer clear of one another,

averting one clash after another, while at the same time moving ever

closer to ultimate collision. Total arms spending by the six Great

Powers between 1908 and 1 9 1 3 went up by 50 percent.

Taken together the events of those years worked a change in the

face of European politics.

• Britain, in the Agadir crisis, indicated that it would abandon its

traditional isolation in order to stand by France if France were

threatened by Germany—even if it were France's fault.

9 4

E U R O P E G O E S T O T H E B R I N K 9 5

• France, in the Balkan wars, showed that it would go beyond its

purely defensive treaty to back Russia in a conflict with Germany

started by Russia.

• Germany, isolated in the Agadir crisis despite its defensive treaty

with the Dual Monarchy, moved in the direction of supporting the

Hapsburg Empire—supporting it (as Moltke pledged to Conrad in

the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis) even in an act of aggression—

rather than be isolated again.

• Italy, unpredictable militarily even against the slow-moving

Ottoman Empire, was not to be relied upon.

• Turkey-in-Europe, liberated by the Balkan peoples themselves

rather than (as had been expected) by the Great Powers, fell prey

therefore to the volatile violence and passions of its rival ethnic

groups, rather than enjoying the stability that Great Power bal�

ance of power might have brought.

• Serbia, exulting in its lightning victories in two Balkan wars,

looked forward to expanding.

• Austria, mortally afraid of Serbian designs, came to believe that

striking first might be its only hope. Austria, regarding the Balkan

states as potentially a single bloc—and, as such, the equivalent of a

new Great Power—worried that it might become a Slav and Greek

Orthodox entity, aligned with Russia, which therefore might fun�

damentally shift the balance of forces in Europe in favor of

France/Russia.

• The Kaiser, for a time, saw the shift in the balance of power as cre�

ating a buffer that might solve the problem of Austro-Russian

rivalry, while allowing Christians to unite in expanding eastward

against Islam.

On October 23, 1 9 1 3 , Wilhelm described the outcome of the

Balkan wars to the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister by saying:

"What was taking place was an historic process to be classed in the

same category as the great migrations of people, the present case was

a powerful forward surge of the Slavs. War between East and West

was in the long run inevitable." He continued by saying: "The Slavs

are born not to rule but to obey." His bizarre conception at the time

was that Serbia could be persuaded to accept Austria's leadership and

save the West. Under Teutonic leadership, Christianity would look

eastward for expansion as once the tide of Islam had flowed westward.

9 6 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

Of all the shifts in inclination and perception that took place in

European international politics during the years before the war, per�

haps the one most at odds with our perceptions today was the belief,

widely held in Berlin, that Germany was growing weaker. In retro�

spect, what strikes us is that, to the contrary, Germany was surging

ahead industrially and militarily; it was growing stronger. The indus�

trial and other figures are there to prove it, and at the time such

astute British politicians and businessmen as Joseph Chamberlain

saw British decline vis-a-vis Germany as a reality. But Moltke spoke

for many in seats of power in Germany who regarded an eventual war

as unavoidable—and who were convinced that it could be won only if

fought sooner rather than later. If Austria needed a war today, Ger�

many needed one, in Moltke's view, no later than tomorrow.

Although, as the Kaiser's new perspective indicated, Europe was

pulling back from the brink, the brink remained close. Between 1908

and 1 9 1 3 , Europeans had moved the line permanently closer to it.

Earlier, the powers were bound by secret treaties of alliance that

pledged them to help each other in case of an attack. Now the

alliances no longer were defensive. France would fight for Russia,

and Britain might well fight for France, right or wrong, as would

Germany for Austria. The question that the war would settle would

be: which of the Great Powers would remain a Great Power? As of

1 9 1 4 , only one of them felt its status—and existence—immediately

threatened unless it took prompt action, and that power was Austria-

Hungary.

Encirclement was Germany's nightmare, and Germany had

brought it upon itself. Located in the heart of Europe, the country

had so effectively terrified its neighbors that they had banded

together in self-defense. In turn, what its neighbors had been driven

to do had further reinforced Germany's paranoia. What had started

as a dark fantasy was converted by Germany's own actions into a real�

ity. France, England, and Russia had no intention of attacking Ger�

many, but they were making contingency plans for combining

against the Kaiser's empire if and when it attacked them.

Culturally, in every way the most and best educated population in

Europe—that of Germany—was telling itself that it was being suffo�

cated by a European civilization that was pressing in on it from all

sides. It was not evident then nor is it now why the Germans felt that

way, but it is clear that they did.

E U R O P E G O E S T O T H E B R I N K 9 7

Such sentiments were certainly apparent in military and political

matters. Historians believe there was an easing of tensions between

England and Germany in 1 9 1 4 as they settled such conflicts as those

relating to the German plan to build a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway

and to appoint a German general officer, Otto Liman von Sanders, to

reorganize the Ottoman army. But when Germany's Anglophile

ambassador in London sent home a message urging Germany and

Britain to stick together, a high Berlin foreign policy official could

only imagine that the ambassador had been duped by the British:

"again put into swaddling clothes" (June 27, 1 91 4 ). When a Russian

newspaper urged Entente preparedness, "Against us" was the Kaiser's

marginal note; "they are working on high pressure for an early war

with us." To the newspaper's assertion that "Russia and France want

no war," the Kaiser scribbled "Twaddle!"

C H A P T E R 1 6 : M O R E B A L K A N T R E M O R S

I n the turbulent Balkans of the early twentieth century, peace

treaties seemed to be no more than temporary truces during

which the parties schemed at realignment for the next round of

fighting. So it was in mid-June 1 9 1 4 , as Kaiser Wilhelm II held dis�

cussions with his friend Archduke Franz Ferdinand. These talks were

followed by a far-ranging conversation between Franz Ferdinand and

Count Berchtold, foreign minister of the Dual Monarchy. These,

in turn, led to the drafting by several hands within the Hapsburg

foreign ministry of a memorandum outlining a grand strategy for

Austria-Hungary.

Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand met at the Archduke's country

estate, Konopischt, in Bohemia (today's Czech Republic). No tran�

script survives, but there is evidence that Franz Ferdinand had been

asked by his emperor, Franz Joseph, to obtain from Wilhelm a com�

mitment to continue to back Austria unconditionally, such as he had

given in November 1 9 1 2 , and that Wilhelm had avoided providing

9 8

M O R E B A L K A N T R E M O R S 9 9

such a statement. The Austrian government believed that Serbia

posed a mortal danger, but the Kaiser disagreed.

The political relationship between Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand

was far more complex than it appeared on the surface. For the Kaiser,

it was, at least in part, a friendship of convenience. He had set out to

form a bond with the Hapsburg heir apparent. In some respects that

was easy to do because of their shared tastes, including a passion for

hunting. Wilhelm made a point of treating Sophie, Franz Ferdi�

nand's wife, as an Archduchess, a position denied to her in her own

country. He dealt with the Archduke as though he were the political

partner that, upon the death of elderly Franz Joseph, he might well

become. He worked at making a friend of Franz Ferdinand, but

Franz Ferdinand may not have been entirely fond of Wilhelm. There

were tensions within the Austro-German alliance.

Both were men of autocratic temperament. They were impatient

and held strong biases. But Franz Ferdinand was Roman Catholic

while Wilhelm was Lutheran. And the Archduke deeply resented the

descent of the Hapsburg Empire from its first place among the pow�

ers of Europe to its position in 1 9 1 4 as a junior partner to Wilhelm's

Germany. He detested Hungary, and deplored the weakness that

drove Austria to make the Magyars a partner in government. Wil�

helm, on the contrary, spoke highly of Count Istvan Tisza, the Hun�

garian Prime Minister, but failed to convince Franz Ferdinand.

Both men entertained hopes of an eventual detente with Russia,

whose Czar shared their belief in royal absolutism. But just as Wil�

helm allowed his anti-Slav racism to overcome his monarchist ideol�

ogy, Nicholas subordinated his ideology to his country's national

interest. And it should be noted that the Kaiser had a paranoid fear

that Russia was planning a war against Germany.

Time and again, during the frequent war crises that were so con�

spicuous a feature of their time, both men chose peace, and were dis�

trusted by the military in their respective countries for having done

so. Both men were intemperate in their use of language: Franz Ferdi�

nand in dealing with people, Wilhelm in dealing with politics.

Though in theory they were closest allies, the Kaiser's Germany

pursued ambitious economic plans in Asia, and even in the Balkans

from which Franz Ferdinand's Dual Monarchy was excluded.

Austria-Hungary would not back Germany in Morocco; Germany

I o o D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

would not support Austria-Hungary in Albania. Regarding the bel�

ligerents in the Second Balkan War, Germany was for Greece and

Austria was for Bulgaria. Austrians could not understand how Ger�

many could fail to see why Serbia, which had just doubled in size, ter�

rified them. Serbia exercised a powerful magnetic pull on the

substantial Slavic population of the Hapsburg Empire.

In policy planning in June 1 9 1 4 , the question for the two empires

was which country should be their main Balkan ally: Romania or Bul�

garia? Germany chose Romania while Austria chose, once again, Bul�

garia. But on this issue Franz Ferdinand parted company with his

government; he, like the Kaiser, was for Romania.

Here they were in counsel together, two of the most disliked men in

European public life, yet, within the ranks of their own governments,

perhaps the only ones of consequence who again and again favored

pulling back from the brink of war. They were misunderstood by the

outside world. The Kaiser, who loved to talk tough, often ranted and

raved like a belligerent adolescent trying to impress his peers, but

while his tirades were bellicose, his decisions—when the time to act

arrived—by and large were not. There was no reason to misunder�

stand Franz Ferdinand, however; he spoke as well as worked to

achieve peace.

General Conrad, sometime Austrian chief of staff, recalled Franz

Ferdinand's aide-de-camp as saying in 1 9 1 3 , "The Archduke has

sounded the retreat all along the line, he will on no account have war

with Russia, he will not allow it. He wants not a plum tree, not a

sheep from Serbia." Berchtold, Austria's foreign minister, said to

Conrad, "The Heir Apparent is all on the side of peace." Reportedly

Franz Ferdinand told dinner guests that Austria had nothing to gain

from conquering Serbia; going to war would be "a bit of nonsense."

On March 1 6 , 1 9 1 4 , Conrad spoke, as he so often did, of going to

war as soon as possible against Russia. He was speaking to the Ger�

man ambassador in Vienna, who explained why it could not happen:

"Two important people are against it, your Archduke Franz Ferdi�

nand and my Kaiser."

A secret truth about the politics of 1914—something of which the

outside world had no suspicion—was that if these two men continued

to work together in pursuit of their common policy goals, the Great

M O R E B A L K A N T R E M O R S I O I

Powers of Europe might well have remained at peace. The wars of

1 9 1 4 would not have taken place.

Count Berchtold had come to Konopischt the day after Wilhelm left.

It was Sunday, June 14, two weeks before Franz Ferdinand's sched�

uled trip to Sarajevo. The two men and their wives spent the day

together. Afterwards Berchtold put his foreign ministry officials to

work on questions that were at issue. It was not really his staff. It con�

sisted of a clique of talented firebrands he had inherited from

Aehrenthal, who had known how to control their high spirits. Now

Berchtold was giving them their head. His aim was to summarize

Austria's current thinking on world affairs: where the Dual Monar�

chy was and where it hoped to go.

One concern was Albania, a country created by the European

powers as a buffer to contain Serbian expansionism. The assumption

had been that it would be Austro-German in orientation; indeed,

Albania had been provided with a German monarch. Yet Italy—nom�

inally the ally of Austria and Germany in the Triple Alliance—was

maneuvering to achieve hegemony in the newly created country.

Italy was becoming a rival and perhaps an enemy.

Was Russia a concern? Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand tended to

think not, and favored a thaw in relations with the Czar. However,

some in the foreign office in Vienna feared that, as in 1 9 1 2 , pan-Slav

Russians would be able to unite all the Balkan countries—only this

time against Germany and Austria instead of against Turkey.

Wilhelm thought that the Balkan states would remain disunited.

The trick was to back the right combination of them. Romania was at

the top of his list. Its monarch had secretly pledged—personally—to

support the Triple Alliance. That did not bind his country. Wilhelm

and Franz Ferdinand hoped for a public and secure commitment.

A problem was that Austria was bound to Hungary in the Dual

Monarchy, and Hungary and Romania had an apparently irreconcil�

able conflict—one that endures today. Franz Ferdinand was fiercely

anti-Hungarian, and wanted to ally with Romania at Hungary's

expense. The Kaiser would not face the issue; he admired Hungary's

premier, Count Istvan Tisza, and felt that the Hungary-Romania

conflict could somehow be made to go away. He also wanted to bring

in Greece as an ally, but lacked convincing evidence that Greece

I O 2 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

would wish to do so. Finally, he hoped to reconcile Serbia and

Austria—much to the disgust of the Austrians, who tried in vain to

convince him that Serbia was a menace that somehow had to be elim�

inated. In effect, the Kaiser was proposing to re-create the victorious

alliance of the Second Balkan War, but this time have it led by Ger�

many and the Dual Monarchy. He argued for going with what had

been the winning side.

Berchtold saw things the other way around. The Dual Monarchy's

foreign minister did not believe that Romania would be an ally of

Austria's; it would not back Austria-Hungary because of the Hungar�

ian conflict, and the Dual Monarchy would therefore have to ally

with Romania's enemy, Bulgaria. Bulgaria had ties with Turkey, so

Greece would have to be thrown on the other side. Therefore Berch�

told would essentially reconstitute the alliance pattern of the Second

Balkan War too, but he would take over what had been not the win�

ning, but the losing side.

On the eve of the world crisis, there was no agreement in Berlin or

Vienna as to who was the enemy or what was the quarrel in the trou�

blesome Balkans.

As regards Europe as a whole, the two empires were reasonably

clear as to who was on what side: they themselves, maybe joined by

Italy, on one side; Russia and France, maybe with England, on the

other. Moreover, the two chiefs of the general staff, Helmuth von

Moltke in Germany and Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf in Austria-

Hungary, were in close touch with one another and sometimes

discussed their respective war plans. Both generals often urged

launching preventive war.

Indeed, in the words of Hew Strachan, "Conrad first proposed

preventive war against Serbia in 1906, and he did so again in 1908-9,

in 1 9 1 2 - 1 3 , in October 1 9 1 3 , andMay 1 9 1 4 : between 1 January 1 9 1 3

and 1 January 1 9 1 4 he proposed a Serbian war twenty-five times."

But the generals were subordinated to monarchs who opted for

peace. And in Germany, Moltke also was opposed by Tirpitz, who

wanted a cold war—at least for many years to come—rather than a

hot one, and whose focus was on a conflict with England rather than

with the land powers of France and Russia. Then, too, lobbying

against Moltke was the ministry of war, which wanted to keep the

officer corps small enough to ensure Prussian control of Germany—

which was a level too low to win a war.

M O R E B A L K A N T R E M O R S 1 0 3

Eve|i Moltke, in the circumstances of 1 9 1 3 , had cautioned against

launching a war because it was the wrong time to do so. He contin�

ued to believe "that a European war is bound to come sooner or later,

in which the issue will be one of a struggle between Germandom and

Slavdom." But, in his view, a war should not be initiated until public

opinion could be rallied around the cause. In Moltke's words: "When

starting a world war one has to think very carefully."

As the twentieth century dawned, Europeans were richer and more

powerful than anybody ever had been before. They should also have

felt more secure than anybody had felt before. But they did not.

They—or at least their governments—were in the grip of fear. They

sensed the tremors. Where or when, they did not know, but they

were convinced an earthquake was going to strike.

Across the ocean, at least one American statesman was sufficiently

attuned to European realities to feel the same thing. His name was

Edward House. He could speak for the President, and he decided to

try his hand at preventing the cataclysm that threatened.

C H A P T E R 1 7 : A N A M E R I C A N

T R I E S T O S T O P I T

"ew York City, May 1 6 , 1 9 1 4 . An immense crowd gathered at

the docks to witness the departures of passengers on the

- 1 - ^1 transatlantic ocean liner Imperator bound for Europe.

Among those who could be observed boarding the vessel was Edward

House: Colonel House, to give him his honorary Texas title.

House, aged fifty-five, was described by the New York Sun as "a

slender, middle-aged man with a gray, close-cropped moustache, well

dressed, calm-looking" who walked quietly but firmly. He spoke qui�

etly too, at times in tones that seemed silken.

He was a lifelong insider in politics, although he was never a can�

didate for public office. He was someone to whom others confided

their secrets. He may have been the best listener of his time. Those

who spoke with him came away with the conviction that he had

understood them, which usually was true, and that he fully sympa�

thized with them, which often was not.

A man of independent wealth, on familiar terms with the great fig�

ures of Wall Street, he lived in Manhattan while maintaining a resi-

1 0 4

A N A M E R I C A N T R I E S T O S T O P I T 1 0 5

dence and his political power base in his home state of Texas. When

needed, he commuted by train to Washington, D.C., to meet at the

White House with his best friend and closest associate, the first-

term, reform-minded American chief executive Woodrow Wilson,

whom House had helped elect to the presidency in the freak election

of 1 9 1 2 . In that election the two Republican candidates, former Pres�

ident Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive, and incumbent

President William Howard Taft, had split the Republican majority

between them, allowing Wilson—the candidate of the minority

party, the Democrats—to slip through to victory with less than 50

percent of the popular vote, though far more than half of the elec�

toral college.

Woodrow Wilson was one of the oddest men ever elected to the

presidency. A recluse who felt at ease only with women and children,

he lacked a taste for politics or a liking for politicians, finding deals

and compromises distasteful, and political ambition—except his

own—sordid.

Serendipity brought Wilson together with House in the 1 9 1 2

election. House became his alter ego. Once Wilson was elected, to a

large extent House took charge of the political aspects of the presi�

dency: the chores that Wilson either could not or would not do for

himself. House often interviewed those who wanted jobs or favors

from the new administration. If there were deals to be made or trades

to be transacted, he did them. Scholars continue to dispute the

respective contributions of the two men to the positive accomplish�

ments of the Wilson administration, but House played a key role in

such important matters as the establishment of the Federal Reserve

Bank, tariff reform, and the institution of the income tax.

In the field of foreign affairs, at least in the opening two years of

the Wilson presidency, it was House, a gifted student of international

politics, who took an interest in European developments, while Wil�

son, who had no background in the field, did not.

House noted, in the spring of 1 9 1 4 : "the President had given very

little thought to the existing situation in Europe." He himself was

quite concerned by what he saw and foresaw. House apparently was

almost alone among American statesmen in understanding the impli�

cations of the Balkan wars, in sensing that they could end by threat�

ening the peace and stability of the world.

To head off the dangers that he perceived ahead, House proposed

i o 6 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

to go to Europe to negotiate the creation of a new international

structure that would bring a lasting peace among all the Great Pow�

ers. Wilson gave his full and admiring support to the endeavor.

House's own private name for the mission on which he was to embark

was "the great adventure."

House's effectiveness, and his value to the President, were due in

large part to his discretion. Secrets were confided to him because it

was believed that he could be trusted not to reveal them. Of course,

this aroused widespread popular curiosity. Picturing House as a man

of mystery, a newspaper editor told one of his reporters: "House sees

nobody. He can't be reached. Nobody knows his address, and his

telephone number is private." But that was an exaggeration; House

made himself available, as good politicians do. Thus aboard the

Imperator, and although preoccupied by thoughts of his secret mis�

sion, he found time to deal with a cable from a woman asking that her

husband, a U.S. consular official, be promoted from a posting in Rio

to one in London. "Even at sea there is no rest from the office seek�

ers" was House's comment.

The mission with which House had entrusted himself was to per�

suade Germany and Britain to join with the United States in an

alliance to keep the peace. It was a long-held idea of his that the chief

powers of Europe had accumulated so much power in their hands

that, together with America, they could prevent major wars.

It was an idea that was, so to speak, in the air. Theodore Roosevelt

at one time had envisaged the creation of a cartel of perhaps five

Great Powers to keep the world at peace. Ideas for a league of nations

also surfaced from time to time in Great Britain's Liberal administra�

tion.

Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who had become one of the

world's wealthiest men, had pursued a project not unlike House's a

few years earlier. Aiming at an alliance of "Teutonic nations,"

Carnegie asked rhetorically, "Why should these Teutonic nations

ever quarrel?" He imagined that he had lined up the support of the

British government, notably of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and

Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, for his plan. For it to come into

existence, Carnegie believed all that was required was that Kaiser

Wlhelm II should take the lead.

"It lies today in the power of one man to found this league of

peace," Carnegie explained in 1907. "It is in the hands of the German

A N A M E R I C A N T R I E S T O S T O P I T 1 0 7

emperor alone of all men, that the power to abolish war seems to

rest." For reasons not entirely clear, Carnegie thought his plans were

ruined by the death of England's King Edward VII in 1 9 1 0 .

Like Carnegie, House believed that he had the support of the

British government for his scheme and that the key to its viability was

to gain the support of the Kaiser. In the spring of 1 9 1 4 , immediately

upon disembarking in Europe, House therefore made his way to

Germany. Aboard ship and on arriving in Germany, House sounded

out opinion among well-placed and well-informed Germans and

what he heard boded ill for the cause of peace. From Berlin he wrote

to the President on May 29 that what he had learned thus far "tended

to confirm the opinion as to the nearly impossible chance of better�

ing conditions." Indeed, he wrote, "the situation is extraordinary. It is

jingoism run stark mad." House predicted "an awful cataclysm"

unless he or Wilson took a hand in events because "No one in

Europe can do it. There is too much hatred, too many jealousies."

In Russia there was a violent press campaign against Austria. In

Austria there was a violent press campaign against Russia. The Pan-

German League, a well-connected pressure group in Germany,

announced (April 1 9 , 1 9 1 4 ) that "France and Russia are preparing for

the decisive struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary and they

intend to strike at the first opportunity." A newspaper headline

(March 1 1 , 1 9 1 4 ) warned Germans that "a war, the like of which his�

tory has never seen, is approaching."

In House's analysis Russia and France would "close in" on Germany

and its ally Austria-Hungary if Britain gave the word. But Britain

hesitated to do so: if Germany were crushed, who would be left to

restrain Russia? Still, if Germany continued to threaten English

naval supremacy, London would have no choice but to meet Berlin's

challenge.

Hence, House's peace plan: an agreement between Britain and

Germany to limit the size of their respective navies, the agreement to

be brokered by the United States. This could bring about the essen�

tially peaceful world that America desired, but—always the realist—

House cautioned that there might be "some disadvantage to us" in

Britain and Germany getting together.

Tirpitz pointed to a different flaw in House's plan. "He disclaimed

any desire for conquest, and insisted that it was peace that Germany

i o 8 D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

wanted, but the way to maintain it was to put fear into the hearts of

her enemies." House wanted Germany to stop expanding its navy,

but Tirpitz desired instead "to increase its expansion."

House's main goal was to set up a meeting with Germany's ruler,

and he achieved it. On June i, in the course of a day-long festival that

included religious ceremonies, parades, and the awarding of medals,

House was accorded a private personal meeting with the Kaiser that

lasted a half hour.

House's diary entry indicates that the two men discussed "the

European situation as it affected the Anglo-Saxon race." In the

Kaiser's expressed view, England, Germany, and the United States

represented Christian civilization. Latins and Slavs were semi-

barbarous, he believed, and also unreliable, so England was wrong to

ally with France and Russia. On the other hand, the Teutonic core—

Germany, Britain, America—should ally with all the other Euro�

peans in defense of Western civilization "as against the Oriental

races."

House tried to persuade the Kaiser that Germany should abandon

its challenge to British naval power. Britain then would no longer

have to ally itself with Russia. It was only the threat posed by Ger�

many that drove Britain into Russia's arms. Russia was, if anything,

Britain's natural enemy. In other words, it was within the Kaiser's

power to accomplish what he claimed to want: England to detach

itself from the alliance with Russia and France, and instead to ally

itself with Germany.

House "spoke of the community of interests between England,

Germany and the United States and thought that if they stood

together the peace of the world could be maintained.... However, in

my opinion, there could be no understanding between Germany and

England so long as he continued to increase his navy." The Kaiser

responded that he needed a strong navy, but that when his current

enlargement program terminated he would stop.

House said that his idea was that an American—he or the Presi�

dent—might be in a better position than a European to bring the

European powers together. The Kaiser agreed. House said he had

wanted to see the Kaiser first, and now would go directly to London

to try to secure Britain's agreement, too, to an initiative by the

United States along these lines.

House left Germany hopefully. From Paris he reported on June 3

A N A M E R I C A N T R I E S T O S T O P I T 1 0 9

to the President that he had spoken with almost every German of

consequence at his meetings and that "I am glad to tell you that I

have been as successful as anticipated and have ample material to

open negotiations in London." The German emperor had "seemed

pleased that I had undertaken to start the work" and "concurred also

in my suggestion that whatever program America, England, and

Germany agreed to would be successful."

The heart of the matter, as House saw it, was that "both England

and Germany have one feeling in common and that is fear of one

another." His task, he believed, was to dispel these fears by bringing

together the leaders of the two countries and encouraging them to

get to know and to trust one another. House believed in face-to-face

resolution of problems at the top. He considered it "essential that

principals should get together" to iron out misunderstandings. He

felt that he was "in a fair way to a beginning of the great task that I

have undertaken."

House traveled to London on June 9. He noted in his diary that

Walter Hines Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, "was kind

enough to say that he considered my work in Germany the most

important done in this generation." Page arranged for House to meet

with Sir Edward Grey. It was not easy. House explained to Wilson: "I

find here everything cluttered up with social affairs and it is impossi�

ble to work quickly. Here they have thoughts on Ascot, garden par�

ties, etc., etc."

On June 27 the meeting with Grey finally took place over lunch.

Although others were present, House and Grey did almost all the

talking. They had a wide-ranging discussion of the troubled Euro�

pean political situation. They agreed that France's leaders had given

up all thought of recovering the territories in Alsace and Lorraine, or

of taking revenge on Germany. The French people still harbored

such a dream, but statesmen in France recognized that the continu�

ing growth of the German population vis-a-vis France made that

goal an ever more remote possibility.

As to Russia and Britain, Grey remarked that the two came into

contact with each other at so many points around the world that it

was important to keep on the best of terms. Grey claimed to under�

stand Germany's felt need to build a large fleet. It was House who

warned Grey—and not Grey who warned House—"of the militant

war spirit in Germany and of the high tension of the people. . . . I

I I o D R I F T I N G T O W A R D W A R

thought Germany would strike quickly when she moved. That there

would be no parley or discussion. That when she felt that a difficulty

could not be overcome by peaceful negotiations, she would take no

chances, but would strike. I thought the Kaiser himself and most of

his immediate advisors did not want war because they wished Ger�

many to expand commercially and grow in wealth, but the army was

military and aggressive and ready for war at any time."

Yet the two men agreed—less than twenty-four hours before Arch�

duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated—that "Neither England,

Germany, Russia, nor France desire war." Looking presciently to a

less visible but more long-term threat to global stability, House

urged the four European powers to enter into an agreement with the

United States whereby, acting together, they could provide credit at

lower interest notes to "the undeveloped countries of the earth."

As the month of June drew to a close House continued to meet with

European leaders in pursuit of his American dream for the world.

A decade later, Grey wrote: "House had just come from Berlin,

and he had spoken with grave feeling of the impression he had

received there; howthe air seemed full of the clash of arms, of readi�

ness to strike. This might have been discounted as the impression

which would naturally have been produced on an American seeing at

close quarters a continental military system for the first time. It was

alien to our temperament as to his, but it was familiar to us. We had

lived beside it for years; we had known and watched its growth ever

since 1870. But House was a man of exceptional knowledge and cool

judgment. What if this militarism had now taken control of policy?"

In the spring of 1 9 1 4 , as House pursued his mission, the chiefs of

staff of Germany and Austria, Moltke and Conrad, took the baths

together at Carlsbad in Bohemia. They discussed war plans. Moltke

also held talks that spring with Gottlieb von Jagow, Germany's for�

eign minister. Jagow noted that Moltke told him that in two or three

years the "military superiority of our enemies would . . . be so great

that he did not know how he could overcome them. Today we would

still be a match for them. In his opinion there was no alternative to

making preventive war in order to defeat the enemy while there was

still a chance of victory. The Chief of the General Staff therefore

proposed that I should conduct a policy with the aim of provoking a

war in the near future."

P A R T F O U R

M U R D E R !

C H A P T E R 1 8 : T H E L A S T W A L T Z

A lthough Franz Ferdinand von Osterreich-Este, nephew of

the elderly emperor Franz Joseph and heir apparent to the

Hapsburg thrones of Austria and Hungary, was neither con�

sistent nor coherent in his vision of his empire's future, the pieces of

his thinking did to some extent fall into place. They took on the hue

of a historical mission of restoration, for, if all his political preferences

and desires were gratified, it would have amounted to that. Deeply

Roman Catholic and anti-Italian, he wanted to undo the unification

of Italy that had been achieved under secular auspices a half century

earlier; he would have broken up the Italian state and restored papal

and Austrian rule. He would have liked the Hapsburg Empire to

return to its position in the front row and rank at least equally with

Germany in the European power equation. He would revoke Hun�

gary's equal partnership in the Dual Monarchy, and instead would

have returned to a central power structure in which all the other

nationalities (or at least the numerous Slavs) exercised an equal lim�

ited autonomy Finally, he would have repaired the breach with Rus-

i i 3

1 1 4 M U R D E R !

sia that dated from the last half of the nineteenth century and would

once again combine with the Czar and the King of Prussia to pro�

mote the cause of monarchism and traditional values in European and

world affairs, as they had, for example, in 1 8 1 5 as the Holy Alliance.

In the spring of 1 9 1 4 the heir apparent was fifty years old. He

appeared to have recovered from the illnesses that had plagued him

in earlier years. He was of medium height and on the heavy side. His

fierce black upturned handlebar mustache was thicker than that of

the Kaiser, but it turned up a few degrees less sharply.

Franz Ferdinand maintained his own para-governmental military

chancellery, with the consent of the emperor: Franz Joseph had

extended official recognition to it in 1908. With the aid of this per�

sonal staff, Franz Ferdinand, in the words of a recent historian,

"came to enjoy influence, even power, and to have a say if not a veto

over the posts of war minister or chief of the general staff."

The Archduke took a lively interest in his country's armed forces,

but his tendency, in the many international crises that erupted in his

lifetime, was to draw back and avoid warfare. In this (though not in

much else) he would have been the true political heir of Franz

Joseph, who had seen his empire lose crucial wars and whose prefer�

ence, in the international crises of the early twentieth century,

seemed to be for peace.

Franz Joseph, as 1 9 1 4 began, was eighty-four years old. He had

ascended the throne in 1848. Most of his subjects could remember

no other ruler. In his old age his image was that of a kindly older gen�

tleman: a grandfather figure. He symbolized continuity with the past

and with its values and virtues. While the night still was dark, he

arose to perform his duties. He started work each day at 5:00 a.m.

and put in twelve or more hours on the job.

W t h the dutifulness and devotion came a certain stiffness: an

unwillingness or inability to give; a lack of flexibility that seemed to

characterize the arthritic Hapsburg regime as a whole. Its literature

suggests that frustration and repression lay behind the excessive for�

mality of Viennese life; and that the city's most famous psychiatrist,

Sigmund Freud, may not have been entirely wrong in suggesting that

unacknowledged lusts, illnesses of which people were ashamed, and

practices then regarded as perverse were widespread beneath the sur�

face. Franz Joseph, the virtuous emperor, himself infected his beauti�

ful wife with a venereal disease, and spent his life with the actress

T H E L A S T W A L T Z

Katharina Schratt, a mistress—if that is the accurate word—whom,

scrupulously, he never touched except on her shoulder. His only son,

his then heir, the Crown Prince Rudolf, died together with a young

ballerina of gunshot wounds that it was hard to believe were suffered

(as the official version would have it) in a hunting accident. Mayer-

ling, a motion picture of the 1930s starring Charles Boyer, told a

story that sounded more plausible: a suicide pact between doomed

lovers whose society would never permit them to marry one another.

Franz Ferdinand, a cousin who succeeded Rudolf as heir to the

throne, was another royal figure who was penalized for marrying the

woman he loved.

Tall, dark, poor but proud, Countess Sophie Chotek von Chot-

kova und Wognin was employed as a lady-in-waiting in an archducal

household that Franz Ferdinand visited often. It was assumed that he

was courting one of the daughters of the house. Their mother was

aghast to discover that this was not so—that it was a mere "blind"—

and fired Sophie, the true object of his pursuit. Franz Ferdinand pro�

posed to marry Sophie. The Emperor objected.

Sophie was indeed of the ancient nobility, but her impoverished

family had lacked the money to perfect their claim to be included in

the list, prepared by the European powers in 1 8 1 5 (after the Con�

gress of Vienna) of those eligible to marry and transmit royalty.

Insisting on marrying Sophie anyway, Franz Ferdinand took her as

his spouse in 1900. He was thirty-seven, she thirty-two. Franz Ferdi�

nand was forced to settle for a morganatic marriage, forswearing for�

ever the right of his children to succeed to the throne, and excluding

Countess Chotek (later Duchess of Hohenberg) from a position by

his side at formal functions (she was banished to a relatively lowly sta�

tus). Prince Alfred Montenupvo, the Imperial Lord Chamberlain,

was the official in charge of court etiquette, and as such seemed to

make himself her particular enemy.

Emperor Franz Joseph apparently feared that once Franz Ferdi�

nand became emperor in his turn, he would go back on his word, per�

haps obtaining a papal dispensation to do so, and would make Sophie

his rightful empress, upgrading the rank of their three children as

well as putting them in line of succession to the throne. In the light of

that probably justified fear, it seems all the odder that the court offi�

cials dared carry on their petty persecutions of Sophie, administering

protocol in such a way as to repeatedly humiliate her in public. One

i i 6 M U R D E R

day she might well have been able to pay them back; indeed, Franz

Ferdinand might have enjoyed doing so himself.

The heir apparent was not likable. Few of his contemporaries had

a kind word to say for him. The one thing about him that was (and

remains) attractive was his love for his wife and children. When he

was asked in 1 9 1 3 to inspect the armed forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina

in maneuvers scheduled for late June 1914—an unappealing request

in some respects—one of the reasons he may have accepted was that,

because of the special status of Bosnia-Herzegovina—it was in a sort

of limbo while Austria and Hungary contested its ownership—

Sophie would be allowed to take her place next to him during official

proceedings. Ceremonies were planned in the provincial capital of

Sarajevo on June 28, their wedding anniversary.

It also should have been not merely noted but underlined by

the Hapsburg officials responsible for the planning of events that

June 28—at least according to the modern Western calendar—was

the anniversary of the First Battle of Kosovo (1389), at which

medieval Serbia supposedly lost its independence to the Turks. The

Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, restive in any event because of having

been annexed by Austria, might well have been expected to take

exception to a display of Austrian government on that particular date.

Austrian officialdom had a reputation for efficiency belied by its

record in arranging this particular trip. The electricity failed as the

Archduke boarded the railroad car. Footmen hastened to light can�

dles. Normally ill-tempered, Franz Ferdinand instead made a joke of

it; it looked, he said, as though he were entering "a tomb."

The Archduke and his consort departed in the rain early the

morning of Wednesday, June 24. They traveled from Vienna sepa�

rately, by different routes, and rain followed them. Sophie arrived

first at their destination: the spa of Bad Ilidze, outside the Bosnian

capital of Sarajevo. Franz Ferdinand came late the afternoon of

Thursday, June 25. They stayed at the Hotel Bosna, which had been

taken over for the duration of their stay by the authorities. Towns�

people had loaned furniture and furnishings to the hotel so that it

would look its best for the visitors.

That evening, on the spur of the moment, the visiting couple

decided to go into town, shopping. In Sarajevo they browsed along a

market street where artisans made and sold their handicrafts and

T H E L A S T W A L T Z I I 7

merchants plied their wares. They spent time in a rug shop. The

crowds that followed them seemed friendly and welcoming.

The following two days Sophie visited schools, orphanages, and

churches, and Franz Ferdinand, as inspector general, supervised war

games in which one army simulated fighting another through the

unending rain. As the Archduke reported to the Emperor in writing,

all performed excellently. Afterwards, Franz Ferdinand invited Haps�

burg army and civilian officials and local dignitaries to a formal ban�

quet at his hotel the night of Saturday, June 271a dinner dance. It was

a night to remember.

The hotel served Franz Ferdinand and his guests a cream soup,

then souffles of some sort, and then trout from the local river that

had been jellied. Main courses were beef, lamb, and (accounts differ)

either chicken or goose, followed by asparagus, salad and sherbet,

and then cheeses, desserts, ice creams, and candies. A great range of

wines and spirits were served, including champagne, white wines

from the Rhine, red wines from Bordeaux, Madeira, Hungarian

Tokay, and, penultimately, a vin du pays: a full, rich white Zilavka

from nearby Mostar, drunk just before the cognac.

It was a summer night, and the windows of the Bosna's dining

room were open. On the grass below the Sarajevo garrison band was

playing a concert of light music. Through the open windows diners

could hear the strains of Strauss's The Blue Danube, perhaps the most

familiar of Viennese waltzes.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie had met in Prague, all those years

ago, at a dance. Now it was at a dance that they were spending their

last night together.

C H A P T E R 1 9 : I N T H E L A N D O F

T H E A S S A S S I N S

F ranz Ferdinand, as remarked earlier, was a reactionary: he

would have liked to turn back the calendar by a century. The

Slavs who plotted against him were more reactionary still; they

looked back more than five centuries, as remarked earlier, to the First

Battle of Kosovo, at which, they believed, the greatness of Serbia had

been lost. On June 2 8 , 1 9 1 4 , the conspirators proposed to redeem the

defeat of 1389 at the cost of their own lives. Of course it was not

really the 1389 battle that had doomed the Christian Balkans; it was

the Second Battle of Kosovo—in 1448—that had done so. But the

apprentice terrorists who dreamed these terrible dreams may not

have known that. There were no scholars among them.

Denizens of the revolutionary underground tend to be thought of

as belonging to the political left. But terrorists often occupy a time

warp of their own: sometimes they look not forward but backward.

They seek to restore kingdoms long since crumbled into dust. They

rally to the banners of forgotten causes. They hearken to prophets

who preached to the people of a bygone age.

1 1 8

I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S I I 9

Hence religious fanatics in the caves of Tora Bora in the opening

years of the twenty-first century seeking to revive a religion as it was

taught in the seventh century. Hence schoolboys in the primitive vil�

lages of the Balkans a century ago, hoping to become assassins like

the legendary figures of whom they had heard tell in patriotic poetry.

These groups in the terrorist underworld were much the same in

format, if not in message. They swore terrible oaths of fidelity, were

subject to frightening tests, underwent initiation ceremonies at

which blood was drunk from skulls, had a pistol put to their head and

obeyed an order to pull the trigger, used code names, and were

organized into cells in which only the leader knew members of the

other cells. Though their aims differed, they sometimes assisted one

another and often borrowed ceremonies, practices, and procedures

from one another.

What distinguished terrorists from ordinary assassins was that

they did not necessarily desire the immediate consequences of their

violence. They killed people that often even they regarded as inno�

cent. Their unique strategy—the strategy of terrorism—was to

frighten society into doing something that the terrorists wanted soci�

ety to do. An ordinary assassin shoots John Doe because he wants

John Doe dead. A terrorist assassin shoots John Doe, whose life or

death may be a matter of indifference to him, because he wants the

authorities to react in a certain way to the killing.

At a time when the rulers of Eurasia repressed free political

expression, many young idealists were driven underground. Beneath

the empires of old Europe and eating away at their foundations

throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were net�

works of secret societies. Their members were visionaries, national�

ists, army officers, romantics, patriots, idealists, fanatics, or madmen.

The societies were illegal and the life they offered was dangerous, but

for young people that often was an attraction rather than a drawback:

life underground sounded glamorous and looked romantic. Some of

the youthful terrorists believed in bombing and assassination, while

others believed that individual violence was less effective than mass

organization; but a belief they held in common was that society as it

existed had to be blown up and blown away before construction of a

better world could begin.

Undoing the consequences of the Industrial Revolution was a goal

that many of them sought, though they would have put it differently,

I 2 O M U R D E R !

and to that end they fomented strikes and undertook sabotage. Oth�

ers were intoxicated by the heady brew of nationalism: overthrowing

alien rule. As Z. A. B. Zeman has pointed out, population pressures

lent an intensity and an urgency to nationalists' demands. The Haps�

burg and other multinational empires were a breeding ground for

young political criminals and deranged radicals of right and left.

Kings, presidents, prime ministers, and other leaders of govern�

ment and society were murdered promiscuously, without exciting as

much surprise as such events would cause today. That was particu�

larly true in the backward, semi-tribal southeast of Europe, where

peasants lived with their animals, blood feuds were common, and

vengeance killings were the norm.

Through the imaginative fiction of a Joseph Conrad or a Dosto-

evsky, one can try to picture this secret-society world of long ago in

the far-distant Balkans. It was the world from which Gavrilo Princip,

a Bosnian Serb, emerged: an untalented, but serious-minded

teenager whose career choice was to be a martyr. He was an adherent

of the Young Bosnia movement, a loose grouping of youthful nation�

alists. Villagers, products of a feudal society, the Young Bosnians,

who belonged to the first literate generation in their province, read

and discussed relatively up-to-date and sometimes subversive litera�

ture: Walt Whitman, Alexander Herzen, Oscar Wilde, Maxim

Gorky, and Henrik Ibsen were among the authors whose works they

read. It is difficult to imagine what these schoolchildren, with their

emotional roots in Serbian fourteenth-century martyrdom and their

economic roots in the Middle Ages, made of Victorian and Edwar�

dian modernism. They were acquainted with the writings, theories,

and actions of the Russian revolutionary underground, and of the

Nihilists of a half century before, but found it difficult to relate the

various socialisms that animated the Russians to the peasant world of

the Balkans. However, Princip himself owned a small library of anar�

chist literature that included the works of Michall Bakunin and Peter

Kropotkin. The verses of Nietzsche often were on his lips. A solitary

figure, he lived among books rather than people.

Princip was born July 1 3 , 1894, in the hamlet of Gornji Obljaj in

the high woodlands of the Grahovo valley. It was in what Zeman has

called "the poorest part of a poor province"; it was the Krajina, in

western Bosnia, near Dalmatia. The Princip family had lived there

for centuries, during which time frontiers and states had come and

I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S 1 2 1

gone. They were Serbs of Bosnia, closely attached to their land, their

church, their communal organizations, and their clan. Gavrilo left

the valley when he was thirteen years old to attend school in Sara�

jevo, the capital of Bosnia.

A slight, dark, curly-haired boy, on the frail side, an ascetic who

neither smoked nor drank, he grew a mustache that made him look

older but also made him look a bit like an organ grinder. He rejected

religion, fought with his teachers, and attended schools only fitfully.

He wanted to be a poet, feeling the sorrows of others. It bothered

him that he was physically unprepossessing. When he volunteered

for Serbian military service in the Balkan wars of 1 9 1 2 - 1 3 , he was

turned down by a recruiting officer who said, "you are too small and

weak." The remark stung him. He never forgave that officer.

During the twenty years of Princip's life, assassination had been a

frequent and characteristic manifestation of the split between society

and its underworld. Among those killed had been the President of

France (1894), the Shah of Persia (1896), the President of Uruguay

(1896), the Prime Minister of Spain (1897), the President of

Guatemala (1898), the Empress of Austria (1898), the President of

the Dominican Republic (1899), the King of Italy (1900), the Presi�

dent of the United States (1901), the King and Queen of Serbia

(1903), the Prime Minister of Greece (1905), the Prime Minister of

Bulgaria (1907), the Prime Minister of Persia (1907), the King of

Portugal (1908), the Prime Minister of Egypt (1910), the Prime Min�

ister of Russia ( 1 9 1 1 ) , the Prime Minister of Spain ( 1 9 1 2 ) , the Presi�

dent of Mexico ( 1 9 1 3 ) , and the King of the Hellenes ( 1 9 1 3 ) . On

average, one head of state or head of government was murdered

every year.

When the nineteen-year-old Princip read or heard in March 1 9 1 4

or thereabouts that the heir to the Hapsburg Empire was to visit

Bosnia in June, he hit upon the project (he claimed) of organizing an

assassination. To the end of his life he insisted that it was his own

idea. Be that as it may, other restless nationalists had plotted to kill

Franz Ferdinand without success on many occasions, most recently

in January 1 9 1 4 . There are those who believe that it was not so much

that the Archduke was hated by the Young Bosnians—indeed they

were badly informed and, in a number of respects, quite mistaken

about his views—but that he was an outstanding symbol of the exist�

ing order that the students wanted to frighten and to overthrow.

1 2 2 M U R D E R !

According to another set of informants, it was the belief of the

conspirators that Franz Ferdinand advocated "trialism"; he intended

to make the Slavs full partners in government along with Austro-

Germans and Hungarians. This policy might defuse Serb national�

ism and deprive Young Bosnia and the others of their issue.

A contrary theory is that the Serbian nationalists had received false

information that Austria-Hungary was on the point of attacking Ser�

bia. The maneuvers in Sarajevo (they told one another) were a mere

dress rehearsal. After the Balkan wars, everybody knew that Serbia

was exhausted and would require several years to recuperate. Franz

Ferdinand (they whispered) planned to take advantage of this help�

lessness by launching an invasion. They wrongly claimed that in

Vienna, in the inner circle of government, the Archduke was the

leader of the war party. In fact, he was the leading advocate of peace.

Princip asked friends to join in the plot. The friends agreed. He

requested lessons in the use of firearms; again, friends agreed. One

friend—a certain Milan Ciganovic—knew "a gentleman"—no name

supplied—who could and did supply weaponry: bombs, revolvers,

and poison with which to commit suicide after killing their targets.

The same "gentleman" ranked high in a secret organization that

promised to smuggle them across the frontier from Serbia into Aus�

trian-occupied Bosnia in time for Franz Ferdinand's visit.

The revolvers were four Belgian automatic weapons, the latest

issue. The six bombs were of a special Serbian manufacture, tiny,

lightweight, and easy both to conceal and to use. The poison was

cyanide.

Why did the "gentleman"—Major Voja Tankosic, right-hand man

of the head of the Black Hand, a secret society within the Serbian

army of which more will be said presently—choose to facilitate the

assassination? Is it possible that his organization, through him,

recruited Princip and his friends rather than vice versa? Or, if the plot

really did originate with Princip, did Tankosic back it because he seri�

ously meant what he said years later: that he did it "to make trouble

for Pasic," the Prime Minister of Serbia?

Another of the many versions of the story of the Sarajevo murders

supposedly was told by the Black Hand leader Apis to a friend in

1 9 1 5 . The friend published it in 1924. In this account, Tankosic

I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S I 2 3

complained to Apis one day: "Dragutin, there are several Bosnian

youths who are pestering me. These kids want at any cost to perform

some 'great deed.' They have heard that Franz Ferdinand will come

to Bosnia for maneuvers and have begged me to let them go there.

What do you say? . . . I have told them they cannot go but they give

me no peace." To this, Apis responded something like: why not give

them a chance? But then, sometime later, reflecting upon it, Apis

began to think that it was important to kill Franz Ferdinand, and that

the schoolboys lacked the requisite skills. So he sent a message to

Princip to abort the mission, intending to send someone more sea�

soned instead. But Princip insisted on going ahead.

There have been three trials in which magistrates have sat in judg�

ment on the Sarajevo affair: Austrian (1914), Serbian ( 1 91 7 ) , and

Yugoslav (1953). All three were politically motivated, and of their

findings, none compels credence. Even the exhaustive research and

interviews undertaken by and for the great Italian historian Luigi

Albertini in the interwar years resolved nothing. Witnesses saw a

chance to settle a score or to advance a cause. Some forgot or con�

fused things. Serbian nationalists have remained proud of the mur�

ders; many have wanted to take credit for them, or others perhaps

wanted to make themselves seem important by knowing how they

really happened. Apis, in asserting that he was personally responsible

for the killing, may have believed that he was absolving his country

from blame. Or he may have believed that, for one reason or another,

he would not be condemned by the Serbian tribunal that tried him in

1 9 1 7 if the judges realized that he was the patriot who killed Franz

Ferdinand. Or the tribunal may have ordered Apis's execution in

order to keep him from telling . . . we do not know what.

In the end, all that we know with certainty is that Princip fired the

gun.

The sinister group that aided Princip was called Ujedinjenje Hi Smrt

("Union or Death"). Later it became known as "the Black Hand." It

was founded March 3, 1 9 1 1 , by seven nationalists who continued to

protest the results of the Bosnian crisis of 1908-09. When the Ser�

bian government accepted, albeit reluctantly, the Austro-Hungarian

annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, so did the existing government-

1 2 4 M U R D E R !

sponsored nationalist organization, the Narodna Odbrana (National

Defense). From being a military-oriented anti-Austrian grouping it

converted itself into a largely cultural society.

Dissenters from the decision to accept the annexation later

formed the ultra-secret Black Hand in order to carry on the strug�

gle. One of its founding members was a student of the history of

European secret societies in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere.

A self-conscious traditionalism (some might call it imitation) is evi�

dent in the constitution (in thirty-seven articles) and bylaws (in

twenty-eight articles) of the elite secret society that formally came

into existence in May 1 9 1 1 . It modeled itself largely on the Freema�

son lodges and on Mazzini's Young Italy movement in the nine�

teenth century.

The Black Hand infiltrated Narodna Odbrana and perhaps other

organizations, but it was not widely known itself outside of govern�

ment circles. Its existence, however, was known to a number of for�

eign countries. It constituted a leading faction within the military,

and was represented within the government. The organization con�

sisted of extremist army officers and extreme nationalist politicians.

Its dominating figure (though perhaps never its formal leader) was an

army officer, now the powerful chief of military intelligence, named

Dragutin Dimitrijevic, a bull-like man code-named "Apis." In 1903,

Apis had led a murder party that slaughtered the King and Queen of

Serbia in their palace, then threw their mutilated corpses out of the

window. During the reign of the murdered king, Serbia had been a

satellite of Austria. Under the dynasty that Apis and his colleagues

restored to the throne, successive administrations pursued anti-

Austrian policies, but not sufficiently so for Apis. Consenting to the

Bosnian annexation in 1908-09 was, in his view, "treason."

The Black Hand pursued ultimate goals that were different from

Princip's. Apis and his colleagues wanted Serbia to rule all the lands

in which Serbs lived. Princip dreamed of creating a federation in

which Croatia, Slovenia, and other southern Slavic peoples were

united. These differences were not necessarily relevant in the spring

of 1 9 1 4 ; they were long-range goals.

Whether he knew it or not, however, in the short term, Princip

was walking into a political crossfire. The Serbian government and

even the Serbian army were split in two. Apis was in the grip of a

fierce conflict with the sixty-eight-year-old Prime Minister, Nicola

I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S I 2 5

Pasic, a veteran politician who, like Apis, was a Serb nationalist but,

unlike Apis, was cautious. Each led a faction in a fight that was cli�

maxing as Princip initiated his project. In May 1 9 1 4 , Apis persuaded

the reigning monarch, King Peter, that Pasic ought to be dismissed.

Then Russia intervened. As Serbia's sponsor among the Great Pow�

ers, Russia could, to some extent, lay down the law. Nicolai Hartwig,

the Russian minister in Belgrade, intervened to retain Pasic as Prime

Minister. Hartwig recognized that Serbia needed years of rest in

which to recover from the Balkan wars and to consolidate its gains. It

was no time for reckless adventurism.

On May 26, Gavrilo Princip set out from Belgrade, and headed

toward a prearranged rendezvous with his fellow conspirators in

Sarajevo. He traveled for nearly ten days through wild, forbidding

country, difficult to traverse. His greatest challenge would be to cross

the unfriendly frontier between independent Serbia and Hapsburg-

ruled Bosnia. But it all was made easy for him. Agents were waiting to

help him at every point along the way. It was a "tunnel" route devel�

oped and controlled by Narodna Odbrana and borrowed for the

occasion by the Black Hand. On June 4, Princip arrived in Sarajevo

to meet fellow conspirators, to prepare, and to rehearse.

The historian Albertini believed that Ciganovic, who had put

Princip in touch with Tankosic of the Black Hand, was a police

informer. If so, the Prime Minister from afar followed Princip's

progress step-by-step. According to one version, the Prime Minister

gave orders to border guards to stop Princip at the Serbian frontier—

orders that were disobeyed by Serbian officials loyal to Apis. Instead,

they let the conspirators pass, and then told Pasic that they had not

received his orders until it was too late. In a variation of that version,

those same officials then confessed to Pasic what they had done. One

way or another, the Prime Minister (it is widely believed) learned that

terrorists—Princip and a companion—carrying pistols and bombs

had crossed the Drina River into Bosnia, and he either knew or

guessed that the Archduke must be the target. But Pasic always

denied that he had specific knowledge of what was about to occur.

For Pasic, a wily survivor of some of the world's most treacherous

politics, the choices—to the extent that he did know of the plot—

were not easy. His country was exhausted after the Balkan wars, and

in no position to defy a Great Power. An attack on Franz Ferdinand

I 2 6 M U R D E R !

was bound to trigger some kind of nasty international situation with

which Serbia would find it difficult to deal. Of course he could do

nothing, in the hope that the inexperienced schoolboys would flunk

their test, but whatever they did might at least supply hard-liners in

Vienna with a pretext for taking action. If, on the other hand, Pasic

warned the Austrians, news of what he had done leaked out, the Black

Hand might order him assassinated too, or else might use news of

what the Prime Minister had done to label him a traitor. Whatever

warning he sent also might be used by Vienna to prove that his gov�

ernment was involved in the plot against the Archduke; was he not

admitting it by his very warning that Serbian officials were planning

an attack?

In the end, despite his later denials, Pasic may have sent a cable to

his legation in Vienna sometime in the first half of June instructing

his minister there to inform the Austrian government that "owing to

a leakage of information," Serbia "had grounds to suspect that a plot

was being hatched against the life of the Archduke on the occasion of

his journey to Bosnia. Since this visit might give rise to regrettable

incidents on the part of some fanatic, it would be useful to suggest to

the Austro-Hungarian government the advisability of postponing the

Archduke's visit."

Whether or not Pasic sent such a cable, his envoy did seek such an

interview. Minister Ljuba Jovanovic, who may have received the

cable, had at least two reasons for not following his Prime Minister's

instructions. He was on bad terms with the Hapsburg foreign minis�

ter, Count Leopold von Berchtold, the official whom he was sup�

posed to alert, and preferred not to have to meet with him. He chose

instead to seek an interview with Finance Minister Leon von Bilinski,

under whose administration (at least temporarily) fell the newly

annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the Archduke

was scheduled to visit. Security issues, however, were the responsibil�

ity of General Oskar Potiorek, governor of the provinces, nominally

subordinate to Bilinski but actually feuding with him. Potiorek had

deliberately ignored Bilinski in making arrangements for the Arch�

duke's mission to Bosnia.

Jovanovic met with Bilinski on June 21 at noon. He apparently

decided to cut out the very heart of the message he supposedly had

been told to deliver—that Belgrade had actual information of a plot

to kill the Archduke. Instead, he spoke in general terms of the dan-

I N T H E L A N D O F T H E A S S A S S I N S I 2 7

gers inherent in the visit to Sarajevo and of the possibility that some

disaffected Serb might attack Franz Ferdinand. Jovanovic had reason

not to tell of the plot to kill Franz Ferdinand; he had been Apis's

nominee for foreign minister in the May coup d'etat that Hartwig

had prevented. Now there were rumors that Apis was scheduling a

new coup, perhaps for August, and once again proposed to promote

Jovanovic. This was no time for Jovanovic to side with Pasic against

Apis.

In turn, Bilinski had reason to dismiss the vague warning he

received. He had been ignored in security planning. Responsibility

had been assumed by his subordinate, General Potiorek, on the

express orders of Franz Ferdinand. If things went wrong on the trip

to Bosnia, Potiorek, not Bilinski, would be blamed. Besides, it was

difficult to worry much about what might happen to the Archduke:

Bilinski had no cause to love him.

In the Serbian capital the Prime Minister tried to find out exactly

what was going on, in order to stop it. Apis stonewalled; and Pasic

loyalists in the army, the war department, and the interior ministry

were unable to shadow Princip's conspirators, who by now were in

Bosnia, beyond Serbia's official reach.

Leaders of Narodna Odbrana, the Serb nationalist society, held

positions in Pasic's government, and therefore also learned of the

assassination plot. They instructed their contact man in Bosnia to

stop it from going forward. He failed.

On June 2 the Central Executive Committee of the Black Hand

convened. Or maybe it was just an informal meeting of all members

who could be brought together on short notice. At the meeting, the

members heard of the assistance that Major Tankosic had extended

to the Princip group on behalf of their organization. For whatever

reasons, they ordered the mission aborted immediately. Apparently

the decision was unanimous—except, it seems, for Apis and Tankosic.

Apis dispatched Tankosic's go-between with the Princip group to

Bosnia, where he met with Danilo Ilic, who served as technical coor�

dinator for the assassination team. Ilic relayed the order to Princip:

call it off! Princip refused.

As of June 20 or 2 1 , Apis may have believed the assassination plan

had been cancelled, while Pasic may still have felt otherwise. Ilic

repeatedly tried to persuade Princip to obey orders to cancel the

attack. But a clash of views in middle June between Apis and Pasic—

1 2 8 M U R D E R !

whether about the death plot or something else—drove a Black Hand

agent to send a new message to Princip revoking Apis's order to can�

cel and reinstating the operation. The man who brought the message

later was accused by Serbia of being an Austrian spy, but the accusa�

tion was never proved; in fact, he served as Apis's chief spymaster

within Austria-Hungary.

In any event, the conspiracy no longer may have been much of a

secret; we are told that the cafes of the Balkans were abuzz with spec�

ulations about a plot to kill Franz Ferdinand, and that the cafes were

alive with Austrian spies. A century later, we still do not know with

certainty who knew what, and when they knew it.

C H A P T E R 2 0 : T H E R U S S I A N

C O N N E C T I O N

W as Russia somehow involved in the plot against Austria's

future leader? In government circles, people asked that

question at the time, and in scholarly circles, academics

have asked that question ever since.

Russian involvement would have made little sense. Franz Ferdi�

nand was the leading pro-Russian in his government; therefore

removing him from the scene would have run counter to Russia's

interests. Of course his political views were misunderstood else�

where, so perhaps they were in St. Petersburg as well. Perhaps the

extent of his friendship was not fully understood. But as a champion

of monarchism throughout Europe, surely, on fiercely held principle,

the Czar would have opposed such a murder.

Russia's Balkan policy, run in the field by Nicolai Hartwig as minister

to Serbia (1909-14), was, as noted earlier, susceptible to being viewed

as in the nature of a rogue operation. A militant pan-Slav, with long

service in and knowledge of the Balkans and the Middle East,

1 2 9

1 3 0 M U R D E R !

Hartwig "used the Serb cause as a weapon in his struggle against his

own government," according to the well-informed French minister

in Belgrade. "With the support of conservative and orthodox circles

at St. Petersburg" he battled Sazonov, the foreign minister, and "he

dragged Russian diplomacy toward the Balkan evolution of the last

two years which he had the merit of conceiving and carrying out."

It was Hartwig who had brought the Balkan states together for a

time against both Turkey and Austria, and it was generally believed

that he dictated policy in Belgrade. But he was unlikely to have

approved the Black Hand plot; he had just rescued the Pasic govern�

ment from Apis, approving the more cautious nonprovocative faction

against the hotheads.

It apparently is true that the Russian military attache in Belgrade,

Colonel Viktor Artamanov, worked closely with Apis. The two may

have run spy networks together. According to some allegations, at

one time Artamanov provided Apis with funds for operations. It is

not inconceivable that in some fashion Artamanov became aware that

Apis was helping the Bosnian schoolboys. There is a story that Arta�

manov may also have assured Apis that he had it on good authority

that if Austria attacked, Russia would come to Serbia's aid. There is

no evidence, however, that anyone in a position to give such a guar�

antee on behalf of the Czar's government did so.

George Malcolm Thomson, a popular historian, writes in The

Twelve Days (1964) that Artamanov "was, from an early stage, a party

to the Black Hand conspiracy to murder the Archduke." Thomson

bases his claim on the research of Albertini, research that does not

support such an unqualified allegation. Artamanov denied everything

in an interview with Albertini. Albertini did not believe Artamanov's

story, but could not disprove it.

A document dated June 1 2 , 1 9 1 4 , found in recently opened Rus�

sian Ministry of Defense files, relates that in 1 9 1 0 Russia extended a

subsidy of 4 million francs to the Serbian army's officer corps and

that the money had been misused and disappeared long since. The

document, which originated from the Russian military agent in Ser�

bia hinted that some of the money might have been improperly

siphoned off to the Black Hand; and it appears to confirm that the

Russian government, based upon this past experience, would not

consider providing any more funds to the Serbian officer corps. The

assumption is that Russia would not want to help the Black Hand.

T H E R U S S I A N C O N N E C T I O N I 3 I

Was there a Russian connection in the Sarajevo affair? If there was,

no evidence of it has yet been uncovered.

A few days before the assassination, Prime Minister Pasic received an

anonymous letter. Its author speculated that the Austrian govern�

ment might arrange to have "that foolish Ferdinand" killed during

the Bosnian maneuvers, and then blame it on Pasic's government as

an excuse to start a war against Serbia. It is not what happened, but it

could have been.

C H A P T E R 2 1 : T H E T E R R O R I S T S

S T R I K E

S unday, June 28, 1 9 1 4 . Early in the morning, Archduke Franz

Ferdinand and his consort, Sophie, prayed at mass in a chapel

set up for them at their hotel. Leaving the suburban spa of

Ilidze, they then boarded a train to Sarajevo, a trip of less than half an

hour. At the railroad terminal on the outskirts of town, they trans�

ferred to automobiles, in which they rode the rest of the way. The

display of motor vehicles was striking; only recently had the automo�

bile come into common use.

The procession of chauffeur-driven cars entered Sarajevo some�

where between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m., heading for the town hall. The

mayor and the chief of police led the way in the first auto. The Arch�

duke and the Duchess followed in the second, a convertible touring

car that had been borrowed for their use. With them was the military

governor, General Potiorek. The owner of the borrowed car, Count

Franz von Harrach, sat in front next to the driver. The rest of the

procession—between two and four other vehicles, depending upon

whose account one accepts—followed.

1 3 2

T H E T E R R O R I S T S S T R I K E I 3 3

The rains had finally stopped. The morning mists disappeared. A

dazzling sunshine beamed down upon the anniversary couple: he,

brilliantly attired in his many-colored uniform; she, radiant in white.

At last side by side at a formal official celebration, they took in the

sights and sounds along the route, and the enthusiasm of the cheer�

ing crowds and the booming of the twenty-four-cannon salutes.

Later, historians were puzzled by the lack of security precautions.

Soldiers ought to have lined the route but did not. Some 22,000

Hapsburg troops were in the vicinity, but General Potiorek detailed

only an honor guard of 120 to escort and protect Franz Ferdinand

and his party. It was explained later that the general wanted to prove

that under his iron-fisted rule, order was so firmly established that

policing was unnecessary. If so, what Potiorek proved was the reverse

of what he had intended.

Turbulent Bosnia was a borderland. It and its neighbors formed

the arena where East met West, where rival clans, nationalities, reli�

gions, and empires collided. Bosnia's capital city of Sarajevo, an

ancient settlement with roots in the distant past, consisted of a clus�

ter of buildings stretched along both sides of the Miljacka River. It

was laced together into a town by bridges. A torrent during the win�

ter, the Miljacka slowed during the summer so that in June the

riverbed was beginning to dry up. A British visitor in the late 1930s

claimed that the waters of the Miljacka ran red, but that may well

have been an optical illusion produced by a reading of history. The

road that the motorcade followed into town was the Appel Embank�

ment, which ran parallel to the river. It was bordered on the Miljacka

side by a low embankment and on the other side by houses. It was the

town's only considerable thoroughfare.

Centuries of rule by the Muslim Ottoman Empire had left their

mark on the inhabitants: their dress, habits, and behavior. The

appearance of the streets, especially as one turned away from the

river into the narrow, winding streets of the interior, was distinctly

Oriental.

The skyline of Sarajevo, punctuated by minarets, aglow in the daz�

zling summer sunshine, served as a reminder that the city often had

changed hands. There were a hundred mosques in Sarajevo, and

almost as many churches. The synagogues, though less conspicuous,

attested to a Jewish presence. A polyglot, multinational, religiously

diverse population had learned to live, not only with one another, but

1 3 4 M U R D E R !

also under whatever flag flew. Dominations and powers were tempo�

rary at best, and, as it happened, were about to change once again, as

a result of the events in Sarajevo that June 28.

That morning, Princip had stationed his fellow conspirators along

the Appel Embankment at three places where it was intersected by

bridges. The motorcade driving along the quay therefore would be

running a gauntlet. Princip's older friend Danilo Ilic was to serve as

coordinator with no fixed place of his own, to move his gunmen

when and where needed. Ilic, it will be remembered, had tried with

no success to persuade Princip to follow orders to abort the mission.

At the first of the bridges, the Archduke's procession entered a

danger zone: three conspirators formed a line along the river side of

the quay, and two on the land side. The first attempt on the Arch�

duke's life came from the river side, from Nedeljiko Cabrinovic, who

asked a policeman to point out which was Franz Ferdinand's car.

Then he knocked the cap off his bomb on a lamppost to detonate it.

He threw the bomb wildly at the Archduke's car, hitting the folded-

back hood of the convertible, from which it rolled off to explode

against a wheel of the car following it.

The Countess felt a graze on her neck from the detonator, flying

wide, while an occupant of the car behind, Colonel Erich von Mer-

izzi, an aide to General Potiorek, was wounded on the wrist by flying

shrapnel. The noise of the explosion was alarming, another officer

and a number of bystanders were lightly injured, and the procession

stopped to inquire.

Cabrinovic, the perpetrator, ran from the scene. He jumped from

the embankment and tried to escape in the waters of the shallow

riverbed. Captured by police who pursued him, he swallowed his poi�

son pill, which turned out to be too old to work; its only effect was to

make him throw up.

Princip, who had heard the explosion and shouts from a crowd,

hurried to the spot, where it looked as though all was over. The gen�

darmes had Cabrinovic firmly in custody, and were bustling him off

to the police station. None of the other conspirators was to be found.

What happened to the others is most concisely recounted by A. J. P.

Taylor. "Of the other conspirators, one was so jammed in the crowd

that he could not pull the bomb out of his pocket. A second saw a

policeman standing near him and decided that any movement was too

T H E T E R R O R I S T S S T R I K E I 3 5

risky. A third felt sorry for the Archduke's wife and did nothing. A

fourth lost his nerve and slipped off home."

Alone, Princip wandered back to what had been his appointed station

on the river side of the Appel Embankment at what was called the

Latin Bridge. He then crossed the street. Accounts differ as to where

he then stood or sat down.

Franz Ferdinand decided to cancel existing plans, which called for

his motorcade to maneuver through winding alleys on the way to the

museum; but neither did he return the way he had come. After a stop

at the town hall for a reception and speeches, he insisted on driving

to the hospital to visit Colonel Merizzi, lightly wounded in the

Cabrinovic attack. The driver of the lead car either was not told or

did not understand this; he followed original plans and turned off the

Appel Embankment into a side street to drive toward the museum,

and the Archduke's driver simply followed. "Turn back!" General

Potiorek shouted. The driver stopped. He considered how best to

back out. His car's rear may have been blocked by the rest of

the motorcade. He would have had to maneuver slowly in the

narrow side street, perhaps putting his vehicle into reverse or trying a

U-turn. Meanwhile the vehicle stood motionless. All this happened

about five feet from Princip. He was surrounded by onlookers. He

must have been astonished, but he thought quickly and seized his

chance. He reached for a bomb in his pocket, and became aware that

he was too hemmed in by the crowd to swing his arm for a free toss at

his target. So he pulled out his pistol and fired two shots at point-

blank range, hitting the Archduke's jugular with one and the

abdomen of the Duchess with the other. At that distance it was

almost impossible to miss.

Princip then turned the revolver on himself, but was prevented

from firing it by a bystander who hurled himself on the assassin's arm.

It was not clear what had happened. To some the two shots that had

rung out unexpectedly sounded like the backfires to which automo�

biles were prone in those early days. Confusion erupted as the crowd

and nearby police battled one another to get at the boyish assassin.

Princip swallowed his suicide capsule, then vomited when it did not

work. The mob began to beat him and may well have been dragging

him off to lynch him. Struggling, Princip used the handle of his

1 3 6 M U R D E R !

weapon to hit back. Eventually the police wrestled him away from

the crowd. Thereupon he dropped his bomb. Onlookers shouted out

warnings as police reinforcements arrived and cleared the scene.

Meanwhile the limousine with the dying royal couple fled to seek

help. "Sophie dear! Sophie dear! Don't die! Stay alive for our chil�

dren!" Franz Ferdinand called out; and then, more weakly, but

repeatedly, "It is nothing," as aides anxiously asked how he felt. The

fatally wounded couple were rushed to the governor's residence, only

minutes away. They had been shot at about 10:30 a.m.; Sophie died at

roughly 10:45 a.m.; Franz Ferdinand, at around 1 1 : 0 0 a.m. It was not

"nothing."

C H A P T E R 2 2 : E U R O P E Y A W N S

H ad the crime in Sarajevo been committed even a century

earlier, it would have taken weeks or months for word of it

to reach faraway places. In the nature of the case, therefore,

its consequences might have been far different. But technology had

changed things. In the age of the steamship and, above all, the tele�

graph, news traveled fast. The foreign offices of the world knew of

the shootings at once, and within hours condolences began to pour in

from places as far away as the White House in Washington, D.C.

While details of the murders remain disputed to this day, some of

the main outlines came through accurately at the time. Thus, though

the British consul in Sarajevo, muddled by the two assaults, reported

that it was the bomb attack that had killed Franz Ferdinand and

Sophie, the British ambassador in Vienna had the details right.

In the streets of Vienna, a typewritten account of what had hap�

pened was distributed by the Austrian Official Telegraphic Agency

almost immediately.

Rumors traveled fast too. A persistent one was that the Freema-

i 3 7

i 3

8 M U R D E R

sons were responsible. A decade later the novelist Thomas Mann

continued to attribute the summer of 1 9 1 4 crisis, at least in part, to

them. The "international illuminati," he wrote, "the world lodge of

freemasons," played a role in unleashing the war.

German intelligence was suspected; the Hungarian Prime Minis�

ter was blamed. Twenty-five years later Rebecca West, the British

journalist whose account of Balkan affairs is considered classic, still

was echoing the belief that it was someone in the Austro-Hungarian

government itself who had arranged it all; how else explain the other�

wise puzzling lack of security precautions?

Moreover, the Emperor, though horrified by the crime itself, was

not unhappy that Franz Ferdinand was out of the way. He had not

wanted to have the Archduke succeed him on the throne. "For me, it

is a great worry less," he told his daughter in speaking of the Arch�

duke's death. To a close aide he confided: "God will not be mocked. A

higher power had put back the order I couldn't maintain."

Even Berchtold noted in his diary that during the first cabinet

meeting after the assassination there was "yes, consternation and

indignation, but also a certain easing of mood."

President Poincare of France was at the Longchamps racetrack when

news of the Sarajevo killings was brought to him. He remained to see

the end of the races. He then went about his usual routine. Paris was

unaffected.

Kiel, Germany. The Kaiser was racing in a regatta aboard his yacht

Meteor. On shore the chief of his Naval Cabinet, Admiral von Miiller,

received a coded cable from the German consul general in Sarajevo

relaying the news. Miiller immediately set out in the launch Hulda,

overtook the Meteor, and shouted out what had happened.

Deliberations were held aboard. Wlhelm decided to return to

Berlin to "take the situation in hand and preserve the peace of

Europe."

It must have been a terrible blow to Kaiser Wilhelm. He would

have been horrified by the assassination of any royal figure, but in

addition he had worked for years to cement his special relationship

with Franz Ferdinand. To that end he had been, and showed every

sign of continuing to be, a champion of Sophie. Once the elderly

Franz Joseph passed away—and that could not be in more than a few

E U R O P E Y A W N S I 3 9

years—the two friends and emperors, Wilhelm and Franz Ferdinand,

could (in what seemed to be the Kaiser's vision) work together as

partners to lead the continent of Europe. Now that dream was

smashed. For Germany, it was conjectured, the Hapsburg Empire

after Franz Joseph left the scene might be not as close and reliable an

ally as it would have been under Franz Ferdinand's leadership.

From Kiel, the London Times correspondent cabled to his editor

that "German interest in the Austrian problem will be even more

intense" than it had been before.

According to a leading contemporary newspaper editor in Vienna,

long afterwards, "the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand . . . came

as a relief in wide political circles even to the highest official circles."

Biilow, the former German Chancellor, reported that he was told by

a Hungarian diplomat that the outrage "was a dispensation of Provi�

dence" because the anti-Hungarian Franz Ferdinand might have

broken up Austria-Hungary in a civil war.

Monday, June 2 9 . England. The "Outrage," as the assassinations

were called, dominated the foreign reporting published in the morn�

ing's London Times. According to the newspaper's Sarajevo corre�

spondent, the terrible events in the Bosnian capital were "evidently

the fruit of a carefully laid plot."

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, having "narrowly escaped death"

from a bomb thrown at them at 1 0 : 1 5 a

- m

- by one assailant, were

struck down soon afterwards by another, "a high school student" who

fired a Browning automatic pistol. The fact that one of the attackers

was from Bosnia and the other from Herzegovina pointed to a plot

that was widespread. However, no information as to the race or creed

of the assassin was available. Both criminals had been "with difficulty

saved from being lynched," reported the Times correspondent.

The news account was supplemented by background pieces. A

sympathetic note about eighty-four-year-old Austrian Emperor

Franz Joseph, who had been dealt another blow in the sixty-sixth year

of his reign, reminded readers of the violent deaths of his wife, his

brother, and his son, concluding, "few can have had to suffer a suc�

cession of calamities so grievous as the stricken old man who sits

upon the proudest throne on the Continent."

Yet the Emperor showed no sign in public of being stricken. Nor

1 4 0 M U R D E R !

was the Austrian public upset by the news; "there is little trace of

public excitement," reported a correspondent in Vienna.

According to the British consul in Sarajevo, "Local paper speaks of

Anarchist crime, but act was more likely that of Servian [sic] irreden�

tists, preconcerted long ago."

A concise biography of Franz Ferdinand explained that since in his

early years he was not expected ever to mount the throne—his cousin

Rudolf then was the heir, and presumably would have been suc�

ceeded by his future children—there seemed to be no reason to train

him in statecraft. His tutors therefore were guided by the principle

that his "intellectual faculties . . . should not be overtaxed." By his

mid-twenties he was "a good horseman, a crack shot, and a painstak�

ing officer, [but] his knowledge of political and constitutional ques�

tions was limited." These latter were matters that he began studying

only in 1889 when, on the death of Rudolf, he became heir to the

throne. Rudolf had been the Emperor's son; Franz Ferdinand was

only a nephew.

In the City of London, securities markets were weak at the open�

ing, but recovered once it became evident that the Vienna exchange

and other continental bourses were holding firm.

Sir Mark Sykes, a Tory backbencher who was by no means

parochial in outlook—he had traveled widely in the Middle East, an

area on which he was one of his party's few experts—spoke for many

when he told the House of Commons that it was no time to focus on

foreign developments, no matter how gripping; it was "difficult to

discuss foreign affairs freely when our home affairs were in such a

particularly evil plight."

Tuesday, June 30. Sykes's sentiments were echoed in a Times leader

(an editorial) that agreed that what happened in Sarajevo "fills the

first place in the public mind" and would "occupy the attention of all

students of European politics" but that domestic politics must not be

ignored: "our own affairs must be addressed." The Times presumably

referred to the threat that in a few weeks the United Kingdom might

dissolve in a civil war to determine the fate of Ireland—and much

else.

The permanent head of the Foreign Office, in a communication to

his ambassador in Russia, expressed his wish that the fallout be lim�

ited. "The tragedy which has recently occurred at Sarajevo will, I

E U R O P E Y A W N S I 4 I

hope, not lead to further complications; though it is already fairly

evident that the Austrians are attributing the terrible events to Ser�

bian intrigues and machinations" some good might come of it all: "it

is possible that the new heir will be more popular than the late Arch�

duke."

In France, at the first cabinet meeting since the assassinations, the

killings (according to President Poincare's biographer) were "hardly

mentioned."

The British ambassador to Italy reported to London: "It has been

curious to study here the effect of the abominable assassination at

Sarajevo. While ostensibly the authorities and the press have been

loud in their denunciations of the crime . . . it is obvious that people

have generally regarded the elimination of the late Archduke as

almost providential."

Paris could take no notice. It was completely caught up in a scandal,

a wonderful scandal. The scandal had everything: sex, violence, inter�

national intrigue, love and passion and jealousy and wrongdoing in

high places. It was the notorious Caillaux affair.

Joseph Caillaux, who had become Prime Minister of France in

1 9 1 1 , was a left-wing politician who had been forced out of office in

1 9 1 2 for being, allegedly, too accommodating to Germany. In 1 9 1 3

he again became a cabinet minister, but was under frequent attack

from the right. He was indeed a leading advocate of friendship with

Germany—and he was a something of a pacifist.

Caillaux was an old friend of President Poincare's. In their bache�

lor days they had been companions in pleasure-seeking. One differ�

ence between the two was that Poincare was discreet while Caillaux

was a showoff. When the two men spent a vacation in Italy together,

along with their mistresses, the contrast was striking: in the words of

Caillaux, "mine I displayed, his he kept hidden."

When, at the age of forty-three Poincare married, in a civil cere�

mony, the wedding was so private that few knew of it. Caillaux, how�

ever, when he married, proceeded to carry on a clandestine love affair

with another mistress, who eventually became his second wife.

Despite the personal friendship between the two men, they had

become political adversaries by 1 9 1 3 - 1 4 . Having just been elected

1

4 2 M U R D E R !

President of France, Poincare, on March 4, 1 9 1 3 , supported pro�

posed legislation to increase the length of military duty in the French

army from two to three years. It seemed to be the only way for

France to offset Germany's population lead: 70 million to 40 million.

Caillaux opposed the measure. The bill was adopted on August 7.

Caillaux, who was elected chairman of the Radical party, continued

to attack the legislation. So did the somewhat pacifist Jean Jaures,

who had unified the country's Socialists.

The political campaign against Caillaux in 1 9 1 4 was spearheaded

by the most powerful journalist in France, Gaston Calmette, editor

of the leading journal of the right, Le Figaro. Calmette claimed he

would make public certain documents that would show that Caillaux,

when he was minister of finance in 1 9 1 1 , had obstructed justice in a

financial scandal in which he personally had perhaps been involved.

Calmette also threatened to publish the love letters of Caillaux and

his second wife, written at a time when Caillaux was still married to

his first wife.

More was to come: German cables to Caillaux, dating from the

Agadir crisis of 1 9 1 1 , that supposedly showed Caillaux to be sympa�

thetic to Germany had been intercepted by the French foreign office.

Calmette supposedly was going to publish these, too, whereupon the

German government protested against the interception of its corre�

spondence.

Caillaux now went to his old friend President Poincare, asking him

to prevent Calmette from revealing his dossier, and warned that

unless the President did so, he (Caillaux) would disclose what he

knew about Poincare's secret negotiations with the Vatican. These

were evidenced by intercepted Italian cables. If known, these would

compromise the President with his secularist anticlerical supporters.

Thereupon the French government officially denied the existence

of the intercepted German cables, and Caillaux, in return, refrained

from revealing the existence of the Italian cables in his possession. All

that now threatened Caillaux was Calmette's proposed publication of

the love letters.

On March 16, 1 9 1 4 , the second Mme Caillaux went to Calmette's

office, asked to see him, waited, and when she saw him, fired six shots

from an automatic pistol and killed him.

Her murder trial was scheduled for July 20. In July, therefore, the

attention of Paris was riveted on the trial. Leftists and rightists

E U R O P E Y A W N S 1 4 3

fought in the streets. There was no time and no attention left for the

Archduke and his consort.

Poincare jested that the affair had put new ideas in his head: he

might send out his wife to shoot down his own opponents.

If there were any country in Europe in which the killings in Sarajevo

should have been felt keenly, it would have been the Archduke's own

Austria. People should have been crying in the streets. Yet Z. A. B.

Zeman writes that in Vienna "the event almost failed to make any

impression whatever. On Sunday and Monday, the crowds in Vienna

listened to music and drank wine . . . as if nothing had happened."

The author Stefan Zweig was seated on a park bench in Vienna the

afternoon of June 28. He was aroused from the book he was reading

by a sudden silence: the distant sound of a band no longer could be

heard; the music had stopped. People were gathering around the

bandstand, listening to some announcement. Zweig joined them.

The crowd was receiving news of the assassinations in Sarajevo.

These were Austrians, hearing of the death of their leader-to-be. Yet,

Zweig wrote later, "there was no particular shock or dismay to be

seen on their faces, for the heir-apparent was not at all well-liked. . . .

He was never seen to smile, and no photographs showed him relaxed.

He had no sense for music, and no sense of humor, and his wife was

equally unfriendly. They both were surrounded by an icy air; one

knew that they had no friends. My almost mystic premonition that

some misfortune would come from this man with his bulldog neck

and his cold, staring eyes, was by no means a personal one but was

shared by the entire nation; and so the news of his murder aroused no

profound sympathy."

Indeed, in all the capitals of Europe, the reaction to the assassina�

tion of the heir to the Hapsburg throne was calm to the point of

indifference.

C H A P T E R 2 3 : D I S P O S I N G O F

T H E B O D I E S

P rince Montenuovo, chief controller of the Hapsburg Imperial

Household and chief persecutor of Sophie while she was still

alive, was in charge of arrangements for the two bodies. He

had them shipped to Vienna so as to arrive late at night: 10 p.m. on

July 2. Montenuovo expected nobody to meet them so that, unob�

served, he could separate the two corpses. The Archduke could be

sent to the Hapsburg family Hofburg Chapel, while Sophie could go

to Artstetten, a castle where Franz Ferdinand had built a chapel for

his wife and himself.

Montenuovo's plan was derailed when the bodies were met at the

Vienna train station by the Archduke Charles, Franz Ferdinand's

nephew who had succeeded to the position of heir apparent. Charles

was accompanied, Albertini tells us, by "the whole officer corps of

the Vienna garrison." So both bodies went to Hofburg Chapel for

memorial services.

Even so, the Archduke's coffin was higher and larger, and bore "his

i 4 4

D I S P O S I N G O F T H E B O D I E S M 5

full insignia" as the second-highest-ranking prince of the empire,

while hers bore a pair of white gloves and a black fan—the insignia of

her service as a lady-in-waiting.

The children of the couple were forbidden to attend the memorial

services for their parents. They did send flowers, one of the only two

bouquets allowed.

Foreign royal personages were asked by Vienna not to attend and

therefore did not do so. The ceremony occurred on July 3. After�

wards the chapel was closed. In the night the coffins were transferred

back to the railroad station but were intercepted; thereafter they

were accompanied by a large body of nobles led by Sophie's

brother—a group that refused to be excluded.

At Artstetten the bodies of the Archduke and his morganatic wife

reached their burial ground, harassed and humiliated in death as they

had been in life by the Hapsburg court. It was shabby behavior by the

court grandees. It also was shortsighted: it undermined its claim to

have been injured by the crime that Gavrilo Princip had perpetrated.

C H A P T E R 2 4 : R O U N D I N G U P

T H E S U S P E C T S

B attered, bleeding, and vomiting, Princip was brought into the

police station. Cabrinovic, the bomb thrower, had arrived only

a short time before. Following continental legal procedures,

an examining magistrate, Leo Pfeffer—a local functionary—had

been appointed to investigate Cabrinovic's crime. When the police

brought in Princip, the scope of Pfeffer's inquiry was widened. Two

such attempts within minutes of one another suggested something

larger than a murder; it pointed to a conspiracy.

At first, wrote Judge Pfeffer, Princip, "exhausted by his beating,

was unable to utter a word. He was undersized, emaciated, sallow,

sharp featured. It was difficult to imagine that so fragile looking an

individual could have committed so serious a deed."

Later, under interrogation, Princip regained his voice, and

asserted that he had no accomplices and had acted on his own initia�

tive. He denied all knowledge of Cabrinovic. Of himself, he said:

"people took me for a weakling.... And I pretended that I was a

weak person even though I was not."

1 4 6

R O U N D I N G U P T H E S U S P E C T S 1 4 7

In turn, Cabrinovic, though he admitted knowing Princip, denied

any knowledge of what his friend had done. If Princip, too, had made

an attempt on the Archduke's life, it must have been (according to

Cabrinovic) because he harbored similar feelings and had arrived at

the same conclusions as to what had to be done.

The correspondent of the London Times reported on June 29 that

Princip and Cabrinovic "are said to have assumed a most cynical atti�

tude during their examination" and to have persisted in claiming that

nobody else was involved.

Their story—that two friends by coincidence had tried to assassi�

nate the same public figure, independently of one another, on the

same day in the same place, at roughly the same time—was inherently

absurd. The reason they had no more plausible account to provide

was that they had made no effort to devise one: theirs was a suicide

mission; they had swallowed their cyanide; they should have been

dead, and therefore in no need of a cover story for the authorities.

As the questionings continued, the police threw out a dragnet. Not

merely Cabrinovic's family and the Ilic family with whom Princip

lived, but more than two hundred leading Bosnian Serbs were

arrested in Sarajevo alone. Princip felt guilty about this; it was wrong,

he felt, to stand by and let innocent people be punished for what he

had done. In any event (though accounts differ) Cabrinovic had con�

fessed some elements of the conspiracy to Judge Pfeffer. Princip

wanted to reveal only the names of fellow conspirators—after all,

they had volunteered for a suicide mission.

Ilic, caught up with many others in the police dragnet, volunteered

to reveal everything if his life were spared. Unlike Princip, he was

over twenty-one and subject to the death penalty. He told the Austri�

ans what he knew.

By July 2, all conspirators had been identified; by July 3, all were in

custody, except for a minor figure who escaped to Montenegro and

was never apprehended. The prisoners attempted to avoid supplying

information that could link them with Serbia. They did not entirely

succeed; on July 5, General Potiorek was able to cable his civilian

superior, Finance Minister Bilinski, that the conspirators had been

supplied with weapons by Serbian Major Tankosic, who also had

trained Princip in marksmanship.

Austria's military attache in Serbia uncovered vital evidence that, if

properly followed up, might have tied Princip's conspirators to

1 4 8 M U R D E R !

Apis—and therefore to the Serbian government. He reported this to

his superiors in the war ministry, who failed to forward or communi�

cate it, but merely filed it away.

This evidence of a link to Serbia was suggestive, but by no means

conclusive. The Hapsburg government was convinced that Serbia

somehow was implicated in the crime, but it had no proof of it. An

official from Vienna who traveled to Sarajevo to see for himself

cabled home: "There is nothing to indicate that the Serbian Govern�

ment knew about the plot." Moreover, Vienna was—and remained—

mistaken as to the secret society that had backed Princip; it was not

the essentially cultural society Narodna Odbrana, but the Black

Hand, which Austrians did not mention by name because they did

not know of its existence.

The German minister in Belgrade reported to Chancellor Beth-

mann Hollweg on June 30 that Serbs were worried that they would

be held responsible for the murders and that they were "very

depressed" but that "Serbia's moral complicity in the crime . . . can�

not be denied." He quoted the Russian minister as hoping that who�

ever did it was not Serbian: "Esperons que ce ne sera pas un Serbe."

("He must have known it!" commented the skeptical Kaiser.)

In his report two days later he told the Chancellor that the Aus�

trian charge d'affaires in Belgrade, on July 1, on his own initiative,

had asked the Serbian foreign office what inquiry was being made

into the crime. "Nothing had been done!" was the reply. When he

expressed his astonishment, the foreign office contacted the minister

of the interior. Searches and arrests then were made in the quarter

where some of the conspirators had lived.

That same day Pasic, the Serbian Prime Minister and foreign min�

ister, circularized his ministers abroad to the effect that "Austrian and

Hungarian press are blaming Serbia more and more for the Sarajevo

outrage." Calling this "absurd" he claimed that in all circles of Ser�

bian society the act "had been most severely condemned." It had not

been within Serbia's power to prevent the crime because "both assas�

sins are Austrian subjects." He implored his representatives to use all

channels available to them "to put an end as soon as possible to the

anti-Serbian campaign in the European press."

Germany's civilian leaders, the Chancellor, the foreign minister,

and the ambassador to the Dual Monarchy, instinctively moved to

R O U N D I N G U P T H E S U S P E C T S 1 4 9

caution Vienna to react with restraint. Not so the Kaiser, who was

devastated and enraged. No longer did he, like his friend Franz Fer�

dinand, minimize the Serbian problem, for he was among those who

assumed—without waiting for proof—that the trail of guilt led to

Belgrade. "Now or never," he commented. "The Serbs must be dis�

posed of and that right soon!" His words resounded throughout the

twentieth century. They have been quoted repeatedly to show that

his knee-jerk reaction was what led to the outbreak of world war.

From an agent in the old Serbian fortress town of Nish, the Dual

Monarchy Foreign Minister Count von Berchtold heard: "There was

practically no sign of consternation or indignation; the predominant

mood was one of satisfaction and even joy, and this was often quite

open. . . . This is especially the case with the so-called leading cir�

cles—the intellectuals, such as professional politicians, those occu�

pied in education, officials, officers, and the students."

As of the first days of July, neither of the quarreling parties seemed

to be aware of how matters looked to the outside world. Belgrade,

unable to hide the joy of the people of Serbia, did not appear to real�

ize how much more it had to do to persuade others that it was inno�

cent. Vienna did not understand how much more it had to do to

persuade others that the Serbian government—not merely rogues in

its officialdom—was guilty.

Nikolai Schebeko, Russia's minister in Vienna, initiated an investi�

gation of his own. He dispatched Prince M. A. Gagarin to Sarajevo.

Gagarin was struck by the almost total lack of security on the part of

local Hapsburg officials. He suspected that they were trying to cover

up their own incompetence by accusing the Serbs. The assassins,

after all, were not Serbs; they were Hapsburg subjects from Austro-

Hungarian Bosnia. It seemed to Gagarin that if Serbs had set out to

kill the Archduke, they would have made a much better job of it.

Gagarin's skepticism might have been dispelled had the Austrians

been open in revealing the evidence they had uncovered. But the offi�

cial investigation continued to be conducted in secrecy. Had it been

otherwise, had Austria convinced Russia that Serbia was a staging

zone for terrorists dedicated to killing royalty, the Czar might have

closed ranks with Austria-Hungary and Germany against the regi�

cides. And there would have been no war in 1 9 1 4 , though there may

well have been a war in some other year.

A

P A R T F I V E

T E L L I N G L I E S

C H A P T E R 2 5 : G E R M A N Y S I G N S

A B L A N K C H E C K

T he truth of the matter was that, with the possible exception

of Berchtold, few in Austria-Hungary were sorry that Franz

Ferdinand had been removed from the scene. True, the lead�

ers of the Dual Monarchy deplored the killing of royalty, but if some�

one of the blood had to be sacrificed, the Archduke was everybody's

choice to be the one.

Of course the heir apparent was, next only to the Emperor, the

most important figure in the Hapsburg Empire. In murdering him,

upstart Serbian terrorists threw down a public challenge to the very

existence of the empire. If Vienna failed to respond, it would lose by

default: such an argument could be and was plausibly made at the

time and by many historians since.

It was not, however, the reason that the Dual Monarchy sought to

destroy Serbia. It could not have been the reason, for, Franz Ferdi�

nand apart, the Hapsburg leaders wanted to destroy Serbia before the

assassination. They would have launched their campaign not in 1 9 1 4 ,

but in 1 9 1 2 or 1 9 1 3 , had they not been blocked. The opinion of

1 5 3

1

5 4 T E L L I N G L I E S

Europe had stood in their way, as did the fear of Russia and as did the

lack of German support.

What the killings gave Vienna was not a reason, but an excuse, for

taking action. They provided the Austrians with grounds for destroy�

ing Serbia—a pretext that Europe would accept and believe, and with

which Europe might well even sympathize. It was a justification that

might bring Germany to support them and prevent Russia from

opposing them. In the past two men, Franz Ferdinand and Wil�

helm II, had stood in the way of mounting a crusade against Serbia,

and the assassinations had, though in different ways, removed them

both: the Archduke killed, and the Kaiser carried away by a desire for

revenge and caught up in unthinking rage.

In the course of the Balkan wars of 1 9 1 2 - 1 3 , Austria had devel�

oped a fear of Serbia that bordered on the hysterical. The Kaiser had

discounted such fears, to Vienna's intense chagrin. Now, at last, the

volatile Wilhelm had been turned around by the events in Sarajevo.

In this respect, and from Vienna's point of view, Gavrilo Princip

had committed the perfect crime.

Just after the murders, when Germany's ambassador in Vienna ven�

tured to offer advice to his hosts to go slowly and be cautious the

Kaiser was enraged: "Who authorized him to act that way? That is

very stupid! It is none of his business, as it is solely the affair of Aus�

tria what she plans to do in this case." Wilhelm himself now believed

that the Balkan situation could be righted only by force.

How would the Hapsburg government respond to events? The offi�

cial in charge of foreign policy was Leopold von Berchtold. It was to

him that the Dual Monarchy—and Europe—looked for the answer.

Aged fifty-one in 1 9 1 4 , the minister was ill-fitted for leadership.

Berchtold had accepted office only with the greatest reluctance.

Appointed when Aehrenthal died in 1 9 1 2 , he had retained Aehren-

thal's fervent young staff members and tended to let them have their

way. Indecisive and intellectually shallow, but a person of charm and

manners, he was best suited to a playboy life. Born wealthy, he had

become one of the richest men in the empire through marriage. He

had lands and stables. He was a diplomat by nature but an amateur

foreign minister.

In the past Berchtold had equivocated on the Serbia issue. Franz

G E R M A N Y S I G N S A B L A N K C H E C K 1 5 5

Ferdinand, after the Konopischt meetings in mid-June, believed that

the foreign minister agreed with him that the Dual Monarchy should

leave the Serbs alone. But the memorandum that Berchtold had

commissioned from his ministry—from Franz von Matscheko in col�

laboration with Ludwig von Flotow and Johann Forgach, officials in

the expansionist tradition of Aehrenthal—advocated a forward pol�

icy: a close and active German-Austrian alliance that would take the

offensive in Europe against a supposed Russian threat. The memo�

randum envisaged, among other things, the diplomatic encirclement

of Serbia.

Immediately after the assassinations, Berchtold gave orders to

revise the memorandum in the light of what had just happened. The

new memorandum retained its call for strong measures. Goals stayed

the same, but new opportunities might now be available. The word

"war" still was not mentioned. But on June 30, Berchtold spoke of

the need for a "final and fundamental reckoning" with Serbia.

This was something that had to be discussed with Germany.

Austria-Hungary's government was not strong enough to take a stand

on its own. In requesting European royalty not to attend the funeral

services for Franz Ferdinand, the Vienna authorities made an excep�

tion for Wilhelm II; the Kaiser was invited in his capacity as a per�

sonal friend of the deceased, yet would be available for policy

discussions and decisions. However, German officials feared another

attack; out of a concern for the Kaiser's safety, his aides persuaded

him to decline the invitation.

How could the Hapsburg government enlist the Kaiser's help in

carrying out whichever policy it adopted? The solicitation of Ger�

man support had to be embodied in a plan and it had to be in writing:

such was the advice of Germany's ambassador in Vienna, Count

Heinrich von Tschirschky.

Berchtold, as recounted earlier, already had something in writing:

his foreign office memorandum, urging that Serbia be encircled, iso�

lated, and crushed, which with some modifications could become the

requisite written proposal. The Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph,

agreed to supply a cover letter to Wilhelm. The letter was written,

emperor to emperor, man to man. Count Alexander Hoyos, a fire�

brand in his mid-thirties who served as Berchtold's chief of staff, vol�

unteered to act as courier.

Hoyos had reason to believe that his mission was promising. Only

i 5 6 T E L L I N G L I E S

days before, on July i, he had conversed at length with Victor Nau-

mann, a German journalist with close ties to Berlin officialdom and

especially to the foreign office. Naumann told him that if ever Vienna

was going to ask Berlin for support, this was the time: the Kaiser was

shocked by the assassinations. Moreover, throughout the government

there was less opposition to initiating a preventive war against Russia

than there had been ever before. (This is interesting because it sug�

gests that on balance Berlin still was opposed to launching such a war.)

This was the time "to annihilate Serbia," Naumann said. In his

view, "if at the present moment, when Kaiser Wilhelm is horrified at

the Sarajevo murder, he is spoken to in the right way, he will give

[Austria] all assurances and this time go to the length of war because

he perceives the dangers for the monarchical principle."

Naumann may have been speaking not just for himself, but for a

group within the German government. Whether he was or not, he

was believed to be both shrewd and well informed. In fact, just before

journeying to Vienna, he had come from a meeting with Wlhelm

von Stumm, a hard-liner in the German foreign office.

In Germany at the,time there were those who saw what had hap�

pened in Sarajevo as an opportunity for taking action: action by Ger�

many or action by Austria. The Saxon ambassador in Berlin reported

to his home government on July 2 that the German military was

pressing for an immediate war while Russia and France were

unready. These views were widespread, reported Austria's ambassa�

dor in Berlin.

Moltke, Germany's chief of staff, vacationing on July 5, saw

another alternative if it were Austria that took the field. "Austria

must beat the Serbs and then make peace quickly, demanding an

Austro-Serbian alliance as the sole condition. Just as Prussia did with

Austria in 1866."

Berchtold cabled the German embassy in Vienna that his envoy

Hoyos, a personal friend of the nephew of Germany's Chancellor,

was en route to Berlin in hopes of seeing the Kaiser and the Chancel�

lor, and would arrive the following morning. It would be a tight

schedule; Wilhelm was to leave on July 6 for his annual North Sea

cruise.

Berlin, July 5. In the morning Hoyos briefed Austria's veteran

ambassador to Germany, Ladislaus Szogyeni-Marich, who then left

G E R M A N Y S I G N S A B L A N K C H E C K 1 5 7

for Potsdam and lunched with the Kaiser. Meanwhile Hoyos had

lunch with Arthur Zimmermann, under-secretary of the German

foreign office. It was at the lower-ranking lunch meeting that the

Austrian envoy was most open about his country's real goals. Hoyos

spoke openly of war, of wiping Serbia off the map and of partitioning

Serbia among neighboring states afterwards. He met with a sympa�

thetic reception.

Meanwhile, at Potsdam, Szogyeni gave Kaiser Wilhelm the two

documents that Hoyos had brought with him. The foreign office

memorandum concluded by saying that it had been written before

the murder of the Archduke and had been confirmed in its analysis by

that event. The covering letter was in a more personal and moving

vein. Both documents focused largely on Romania, warning of its

increasing closeness to Serbia and to Russia. Neither called for spe�

cific action, although a stated objective was to be the elimination of

Serbia as "a factor of political power in the Balkans."

Wilhelm began the discussion by saying that he would have to

consult the Chancellor. After lunch, however, pressed to say more, he

did so. He pledged Germany's unconditional support for Austria-

Hungary in whatever it chose to do in its conflict with Serbia. He

gave what historians have called a "carte blanche," or a "blank

check." He said he would back the Dual Monarchy even if Russia

intervened. He warned his guest, however, that Austria must strike

quickly. He then met with the Chancellor and with such of his mili�

tary advisers as could be found at short notice in summertime, and

did so again the following morning. A consensus emerged in support

of Wilhelm's decision. Even the Chancellor was in agreement.

According to the latest scholarship, it was mainly Chancellor

Bethmann Hollweg who worked out the terms of the German

response. A career civil servant, fifty-seven years old, he had spent a

career trying to restrain powerful forces and intemperate personali�

ties.

As Chancellor for five years, he had felt the pressure of army offi�

cers who believed war with Russia to be inevitable, and who advo�

cated a preemptive strike before the Russians were ready. He was

exposed also to the countervailing pressure from Tirpitz to delay

going to war until the distant point when the German fleet could

deter Britain. Bethmann was aware that the Kaiser, no matter what

he said, in the end usually opted for peace.

i S

8 T E L L I N G L I E S

Now there was the July 4 written inquiry from Vienna as to

whether Germany would protect Austria-Hungary against Russia if

Austria-Hungary tried to crush Serbia. What the Austrians wanted to

do was not spelled out in writing. It was not clear that they had the

nerve to do anything at all. But both sides—Berlin and Vienna—were

worried, as it turned out, about what might happen if the requested

guarantee were not given.

Each side was conscious of its international isolation. Each was

afraid of losing its only real ally. In German government circles one

concern was that, after Franz Joseph died, the Hapsburg Empire

could disintegrate. Another concern was that, as in the Moroccan cri�

sis of 1 9 1 1 , the Dual Monarchy would not back Germany in its quar�

rels; it would fight only in its own. In Austria-Hungary, on the other

hand, some worried that Germany would walk away from an ally that

proved useless because it lacked the courage to fight at all.

The essence of the consensus that developed among the Germans

on July 5-6 was that circumstances now were favorable to a bold

design: that Austria-Hungary could deal with its Serbian problem

without risking a larger war, provided that Vienna struck swiftly. The

German response to the Hoyos mission, according to Berghahn's

authoritative work, bore the stamp of Bethmann, who apparently

devised it. It was Berlin's plan (though the world was to be kept from

knowing this) that Vienna undertook to follow. The plan was for

Austria to strike rapidly, crush Serbia, and present Europe with a fait

accompli.

On July 6, Bethmann confirmed to the Austrians the Kaiser's

secret commitment to support Austria in case of war.

Most historians have condemned the German pledge as reckless.

Samuel Williamson, a leading scholar of Austria-Hungary's role in

the origins of World War I, writes: "Germany, by its pledges, had

surrendered the direction and the pace of the July crisis" to Austria.

Yet the check may not have been entirely blank. The Germans

may have believed that it was their own plan—a quick strike—that

Austria would carry into effect, so they were not really turning over

decision-making to Vienna. Then, too, there were qualifications to

Germany's pledge—or at least Kaiser Wilhelm may have believed

that they were implicit. The guarantee was issued in the context of

several years of warfare in the Balkans during which Austria already

had asked at least three times for the statement of support that Hoyos

G E R M A N Y S I G N S A B L A N K C H E C K 1 5 9

had received, eliciting one yes and two noes. The Kaiser had certain

preconditions in mind for pledging full support to Austria-Hungary

in its continuing conflicts with Serbia, preconditions that become

clearer if viewed within the context of 1 9 1 2 - 1 4 rather than of 1 9 1 4

alone.

• Austria-Hungary had to be seen—at least by the German people,

and preferably by all of Europe—as the provoked party. That, in

Wilhelm's view, had not been the case in the early autumn of 1 9 1 2

or the late spring of 1 9 1 4 but had been true in the late autumn of

1912—and now was true again because of the Sarajevo killings.

• Austria-Hungary had to act by itself and with lightning speed.

• The Kaiser clearly believed that Austria intended to punish Serbia

for the killings. He either was not told or did not understand that

the Dual Monarchy proposed to destroy Serbia—a goal that Wil�

helm had blocked in the past when it was openly avowed.

• Circumstances had to be such that Russia, France, and England

were unlikely to intervene. That is what the Kaiser and much of

his entourage believed to be the case in July 1 9 1 4 . Bethmann, who

was designated to watch over the operation against Serbia on

behalf of Germany, understood that there was a risk of igniting a

conflagration, but believed it to be only a slight risk. Wilhelm

believed that for all practical purposes there was no risk at all.

• The Kaiser's conviction was that the crisis would pass quickly:

"that the situation would be cleared up within a week, because of

Serbia's backing down."

• Alternatively, Wilhelm explained to one of his naval officers, "the

Austrian government will demand the most far-reaching satisfac�

tion from Serbia and will, as soon as this is not given, move its

troops into Serbia." As he saw it, there would be a quick Hapsburg

military occupation of Belgrade, the Serb capital, which was con�

veniently located on the river that formed the Austro-Hungarian

frontier, followed by an imposed peace treaty forcing Serbia to

become an Austrian ally.

On July 5-6 neither the Kaiser nor his advisers believed that they

were risking much by extending their guarantee. Erich von Falken-

hayn, Prussian minister of war, was not convinced that Vienna "was

really in earnest" or "had taken any firm resolution." Germany risked

i 6 o T E L L I N G L I E S

nothing because in all likelihood it would never be called upon to

make good on its guarantee. The consensus was that "the Russians—

though friends of Serbia—will not join in after all." The Kaiser said

to Szogyeni that Russia "was not by any means prepared for war,"

and he told his military advisers that France would "scarcely let it

come to a war" because it still lacked heavy artillery. Moreover, he

did not believe that the Czar would enter a war on the side of regi�

cides. Falkenhayn asked if additional preparations should be made

for a war involving the Great Powers, and Wilhelm said no.

Germany's military leaders had made it clear that, in any case, they

were prepared for all eventualities. The Kaiser and his generals may

have supported the blank check decision for opposite reasons. He

was in favor of it because he believed that war would not result from

it, while some of them may have been in favor of it because it raised

the possibility that a war would result from it.

So it was that, three weeks after refusing to pledge unconditional

support to the living Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Wilhelm avowed such

support to the cause of the dead Franz Ferdinand. What had changed

was the death of the Archduke. Wlhelm was not alone in this; the

leaders of other countries felt the same way. Europe's sympathies

now would be against Serbia and with the Austrians—if they struck

back immediately, and if they acted alone rather than in collusion

with Germany.

But the lies—or at least misleading statements—told by the Austrian

and German governments threatened to catch up with them.

Austria-Hungary lied when it claimed to be striking back for the

murder of the Archduke. In fact, the killings at Sarajevo had rela�

tively little to do with the Hapsburg desire to crush Serbia. What

gave away Austria's lie in the first instance was that it did not attack

immediately, which is what one does when one strikes out in anger or

in self-defense. Alternatively, one would pursue a full judicial inquiry

to its conclusion, and then publish its results to the world, which

Vienna lacked the patience to do.

The fact—known now, though not then—that the memo submit�

ted to the Kaiser in support of the plan to go to war was the same

memo that had been prepared before the murders in Sarajevo shows

that it did not arise from that event.

G E R M A N Y S I G N S A B L A N K C H E C K I 6 I

Austria did not play its part very well. Its behavior in the weeks

that followed did nothing to persuade Europe that it was primarily

motivated by a desire to avenge the slain Archduke. Disbelief crept

over Europe. Vienna's claims appeared less and less credible in the

ensuing weeks.

To Germany, the Austrian representatives apparently gave the

impression that they would do what the Kaiser insisted upon: act

with lightning speed, finishing the matter in a week or two or three.

The Germans counted on it, but the Hapsburg Empire was inca�

pable of fulfilling this expectation. It was another misstatement that

was apt to catch up with the Austrians, though perhaps they them�

selves did not realize they could not perform as promised.

Then there were the Germans, not perhaps lying, but showing a

want of candor. The Kaiser and many of his men were certain that

none of the other Great Powers of Europe would intervene to halt

the expected Austrian strike. They committed to ward off France and

Russia in the firm belief that they never would be called upon to do

so. They were signing a check that they believed would never be

cashed.

C H A P T E R 2 6 : T H E G R E A T D E C E P T I O N

I n collusion with one another, each of the two parties now played

out their assigned roles. Austria decided—apparently acting by

itself and spontaneously—to claim to be bringing the murderers

and their Serbian sponsors to justice. Striking out in a show of right�

eous wrath, the Hapsburg armies would be punishing the guilty and

also exercising a right of self-defense against further attacks staged

from Serbia. Europe, even if it did not applaud, would at least admit

that the Austrians had every right to be doing what they were doing.

It was vital that the world should not know of Germany's role or

the Kaiser's guarantee. Certainly the two allies acted as though they

believed secrecy to be essential. They lied repeatedly in the weeks to

come, breaching the trust that was the hallmark of European diplo�

macy in an earlier age.

Had Germany's participation been discovered in time, Europe

would have recognized that Austria was not pursuing the objectives it

claimed. It was not avenging a murder victim; it was using the mur�

der as a cloak under which to set back Russia in the Balkans. Europe

1 6 2

T H E G R E A T D E C E P T I O N 1 6 3

would have seen what Austria intended was not to punish Serbia but

to destroy it; not to defeat Serbia, but to wipe it off the map.

And the world would have realized that Germany was not, like

France or Italy, an innocent bystander, but a full participant in Aus�

tria's project. The German-speaking combine was not seeking justice

for the slain Archduke; instead it was engaging in a power play

intended to alter the balance of power in the Balkans in their favor.

So Austria had to attack and subjugate Serbia before anybody fully

realized that anything was afoot. Europe had to be lulled into believ�

ing that Austria was going to do nothing at all until weeks of judicial

inquiry had concluded with the fixing of responsibility on the guilty

parties. Unaware of what was planned, Europe would take no precau�

tions. To dupe Europe, the leaders of Germany and Austria would

have to become play actors.

It long had been the custom of Europe's leaders to take summer

holidays. In early July, Berchtold had the notion (as did Bethmann) of

lulling the European world into a sense of illusory security by pre�

tending to follow their normal July schedules. Berchtold told his war

minister and his army chief of staff to go away on vacations "to pre�

vent any disquiet." Emperor Franz Joseph resumed his holiday.

Chancellor Bethmann attempted the same ruse and made a show of

being at his country estate. Tirpitz was vacationing in the Black For�

est. Moltke was at the famous spa of Carlsbad, taking the waters. The

foreign minister was on his honeymoon. Moltke's and Tirpitz's

deputies were on holiday. So was the minister of war.

The Germans, once installed in their vacation retreats, seem to

have done their best to remain there and to look innocent. On the

advice of the Prime Minister, Kaiser Wilhelm reluctantly went off on

his scheduled cruise, though he found the whole exercise in decep�

tion "childish!" It seems not to have occurred to him at the time that

his Chancellor was dispatching him on his voyage in order to get him

out of the way.

The special oddity of July 1 9 1 4 therefore was that those fateful

activities that were going on were not visible. It was like a play in

which everything of importance happens offstage.

Early in the morning of Monday, July 6, before embarking, the

Kaiser sent for several officers to deliver messages for him. Admiral

Eduard von Capelle, Tirpitz's deputy, received a phone call between

1 6 4 T E L L I N G L I E S

7:00 and 8:00 a.m. summoning him. He found Wilhelm in the gar�

den of his palace. Capelle recalled: "The Emperor walked up and

down with me for a short while and told me briefly of the occur�

rences of the day before"—the blank check to Austria, an account of

which Capelle apparently was to give to Tirpitz. The Kaiser "did not

believe in serious warlike developments. According to his view, the

Czar would not in this case place himself on the side of regicides.

Besides that, Russia and France were not prepared for war. (The

Emperor did not mention England.) On the advice of the Imperial

Chancellor, he was going to start on the journey to Northland, in

order not to create any uneasiness."

A similar message was sent by the hand of a naval officer, Captain

Zenker, to his superiors. "His Majesty had promised" to protect Aus�

tria if Russia interfered "but did not believe that Russia would enter

the lists for Serbia, which had stained itself by an assassination.

France, too, would scarcely let it come to war, as it lacked the heavy

artillery for the field armies. Yet though a war against Russia-France

was not probable, nevertheless the possibility of such a war must be

borne in mind from a military point of view."

Wilhelm was aware that he had a reputation for backing down in a

crisis. "This time I shall not give in," he told the armaments manu�

facturer Krupp.

Aboard ship, the Kaiser did his best to avoid looking like someone

awaiting important news. Yet on July 6 he allowed two of his naval

officers to understand that in nine days Austria's response to what the

Serbs had done would be known. At other times the Kaiser told his

officers the situation would be resolved in one week or within three

weeks. He told the acting armed forces chiefs: "He did not anticipate

major military complications. In his opinion the Tsar in this case

would not take the part of the regicides. Moreover, Russia and France

were not prepared for war.... On the Chancellor's advice he was

going on his . . . cruise in order not to give cause for disquietude."

Wilhelm told much the same to the chief of his Military Cabinet

and to the Prussian minister of war: "the sooner the Austrians make

their move against Serbia, the better, and . . . the Russians—though

friends of Serbia—will not join in."

On July 7, the day after Germany signed its blank check, Berchtold

convened the cabinet of the Dual Monarchy to seek its authorization

T H E G R E A T D E C E P T I O N l 6 5

to move forward. The cabinet was comprised of the Austrian Premier

and his ministers, the Hungarian Premier and his ministers, and the

handful, such as Berchtold, who were ministers of the Austro-

Hungarian union.

The cabinet deliberated and debated for hours. The Hungarian

Prime Minister, Count Istvan Tisza, expressed strong opposition to

Berchtold's plans. He was alone in doing so, but he kept the others

from taking action. Tisza warned that an invasion of Serbia by the

Dual Monarchy "would, as far as can humanly be foreseen, lead to an

intervention by Russia and hence to a world war." His alternative

plan was for Vienna to draw up a list of demands and "issue an ulti�

matum only if Serbia did not fulfill them. The demands must be stiff

but not impossible to meet." Above all, he argued, the Hapsburg

Empire should not allow itself to be drawn into a war.

Instead, the cabinet proposed to present an ultimatum to Serbia—

a waste of time, as Berchtold should have realized—that Serbia could

not possibly accept, and to follow it up by launching an invasion.

Tisza, who was entitled to a veto, held out for making demands that

Serbia could accept. His preference was for a peaceful solution.

All the ministers were convinced that some Serbian officials

were connected in some way with the crime in Sarajevo, though they

had no conclusive proof of it, and the Sarajevo trial might not take

place for weeks or months. That was too long for Berchtold to wait.

He needed to act in a matter of days or perhaps a week or two at

most.

For a week, July 7 - 1 4 , Count Tisza stonewalled. Then his foreign

policy adviser persuaded him that Hungary, in its quarrel with Roma�

nia, would benefit from the crusade against Serbia. Moreover, Berch�

told employed two other powerful arguments. There were those in

the German government who would be so disappointed in the Dual

Monarchy if it failed to act in a manly fashion that they would see no

value in remaining an ally: the German alliance, on which all

depended, would be lost. Moreover, Berchtold held out hope to the

Hungarian Prime Minister; it was not impossible that Serbia would

accept Austrian terms, in which case there would be no war after all.

(That was not really true, for Berchtold was determined to force a

war on Serbia no matter what Serbia said or did.)

Tisza abandoned his opposition, but it had cost Berchtold a week.

i 6 6 T E L L I N G L I E S

And the Kaiser, it will be remembered, expected matters to be

resolved in a week or two, or three at the most.

From London on July 9, the German ambassador reported that he

had discussed the Sarajevo aftermath and Austria's possible response

with Sir Edward Grey. He stated that Grey "was in a thoroughly con�

fident mood, and declared in cheerful tones that he saw no reason for

taking a pessimistic view of the situation."

July 1 1 . A question for the German foreign office from the Kaiser's

yacht: should the customary telegram of congratulations be sent to

the King of Serbia on his birthday, July 1 2 ? Answer: "As Vienna has

so far inaugurated no action of any sort against Belgrade, the omis�

sion of the customary telegram would be too noticeable and might be

the cause of premature uneasiness.... [TJt should be sent."

July 14. Vienna to Berlin. The ultimatum to be sent to Serbia "is

being composed so that the possibility of its acceptance is practically

excluded." But it has not yet been put in final form and would not be

before July 1 9 . ("Too bad," notes the Kaiser.)

By mid-July, complaints of Austrian indecisiveness seemed to be

justified. It was possible to speculate, as Bavarian officials did, that at

the conference of July 5-6, Austria-Hungary would have preferred to

have the Kaiser refuse the blank check—not offer full support—so as

to have an excuse for doing nothing.

As had so many European diplomats, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen,

Austria's minister in Belgrade, had been away on vacation. On July 10

he returned. The Russian representative, Hartwig, promptly called

upon him that evening to present formal condolences for the assassi�

nations in Sarajevo. Hartwig denied a rumor that he had failed to

mark the occasion by flying the legation flag at half-mast.

Hartwig, who was obese, suffered not only from asthma but also

from angina pectoris. It was of the heart pains that he now com�

plained. Official duties would keep him at his post for two days more.

Then he could vacation at a spa.

Hartwig inquired what Austria planned to do in response to the

events in Sarajevo. Giesl assured him that he need have no fears on

Serbia's behalf. Hartwig looked relieved. Then, noiselessly, the Rus-

T H E G R E A T D E C E P T I O N 1 6 7

sian diplomat slipped to the floor. A doctor, called immediately, pro�

nounced him dead of a heart attack.

The Giesls sent for Hartwig's daughter Ludmilla. She brushed

aside all attempts to comfort her, bitterly calling them "Austrian

words." She searched the room; she asked whether her father had

been served food or drink (he had not); and she carefully carried away

his cigarette butts, presumably to be tested for poison.

The cigarettes had not been tampered with. What had been poi�

soned in Balkan Europe in July 1 9 1 4 was the air. It had become a

world of lies, plots, and deceit.

C H A P T E R 2 7 : B E R C H T O L D R U N S

O U T O F T I M E

July 14. Even though Tisza no longer stood in the way, Berchtold

still could not go ahead to attack Serbia. Conrad, the chief of staff,

discovered that a leave of absence that had been given to the troops

for harvesting of crops would not expire until July 25. An emergency

recall would have signaled Vienna's warlike intentions; it could not be

done.

To strike before then would be imprudent, the Austrians decided,

for another reason. The President and the Prime Minister of France

were about to pay a state call on Russia. Therefore the leaders of the

two allies would be together, able to concert their response to what�

ever moves Austria might make. Not wishing to allow this to happen,

Berchtold decided to wait until the two Frenchmen had left St.

Petersburg and were aboard ship, thus safely out of touch. That

meant ascertaining the date that French President Raymond Poin�

care and Prime Minister Rene Viviani planned to leave. He asked his

embassy in St. Petersburg to supply him with this information. Hav-

1 6 8

B E R C H T O L D R U N S O U T O F T I M E 1 6 9

ing done so, Berchtold planned to present an ultimatum to Serbia on

July 23 that would expire July 25.

For use in his proposed note to Serbia, Berchtold wanted informa�

tion on the latest incriminating evidence uncovered in Sarajevo. One

of his officials went to Sarajevo, sifted the evidence, and reported on

July 1 3 : It was not what Berchtold would have wished to hear. Much

of it was inconclusive. The Austrian investigators had found that

"There is nothing to prove or even to suppose that the Serbian gov�

ernment is accessory to the inducement for the crime, its prepara�

tion, or the furnishing of weapons. On the contrary, there are reasons

to believe that this is altogether out of the question." All that could

be found was that the assassins had been aided by persons with ties to

government.

To wait for conclusive evidence of Serb guilt to surface was no

longer an option. Berchtold would have to go forward with the draft�

ing of his ultimatum without the evidence to back him up.

Yet another delay threatened. Conrad advised that the armed forces

would not be ready to invade Serbia until August 1 2 . That would be

seven weeks after the assassinations—far too long for launching an

attack on Serbia that Europe would excuse as an unthinking reaction.

What was Berchtold to do? What was he to tell Berlin? He had

run out of time.

What was happening? Berlin inquired. Vienna did not answer

because Berchtold had no reply to give.

C H A P T E R 2 8 : T H E S E C R E T I S K E P T

B erchtold kept the Germans in the dark, in effect maintaining

radio silence. He had a plausible excuse: To achieve surprise in

his planned assault on Serbia, he had to keep anyone outside

the existing circle from knowing what was going on. As communica�

tions could be intercepted and deciphered it was best to communi�

cate as little as possible with anyone.

Keeping the secret proved difficult. The German foreign office

passed on to its ambassador in Italy a general sense of Austria's think�

ing. The ambassador mentioned it casually to Foreign Minister

Antonio di San Giuliano. Italians rarely were entrusted with secrets

by the Great Powers because of their reputation for indiscretion.

Indeed, a historian of the country's foreign policy at the time writes:

"Italian diplomats could not even arrange appointments with major

European statesmen." Alerted by the German ambassador, San Giu�

liano passed on whatever he knew to his embassies in Russia, Austria,

and Serbia. The Austrians, having broken the Italian code, knew

what San Giuliano was telling his diplomats. Historian Samuel

1 7 0

T H E S E C R E T I S K E P T i 7 i

Williamson, who relates this story, conjectures that the Russians,

with their sophistication in cryptology, might have broken the Italian

code too, and might have alerted Serbia.

The Russians had cracked the Austrian code, had read Berchtold's

inquiry as to when the French President and Prime Minister would

leave Russia—and could have drawn inferences from this request.

Such leaks were only to be expected as time went on, and as delay

led to further delay. A retired Austrian diplomat dropped a hint that

was picked up by a British ambassador, who passed on the rumor to a

French colleague.

On July 16 the British ambassador to Russia alerted his govern�

ment to the gathering storm: "Austro-Hungarian government are in

no mood to parley with Servia [sic], but will insist on immediate

unconditional compliance, failing which force will be used. Germany

is said to be in complete agreement with this procedure."

The same day, and in the same city, St. Petersburg, the Italian

ambassador told a Russian diplomat "that Austria was capable of tak�

ing an irrevocable step with regard to Serbia based on the belief that,

although Russia would make a verbal protest, she would not adopt

forcible measures for the protection of Serbia against any Austrian

attempts."

A number of European diplomats heard disquieting rumors, but only

a handful had hard knowledge. Even in Vienna few actually knew, and

in Berlin even fewer.

In a broader sense, moreover, the secret was kept: the public knew

nothing of it. As Volker Berghahn writes of Germany: "only a very

small circle of men was involved in the crucial decisions which ended

in war," and "when it came to making this decision no more than a

dozen people were consulted." The same was true of Austria-

Hungary. The plotters went on with their work, silently and hidden

from view, while, totally unaware, Europe basked in the sunshine of a

lazy summer holiday.

P A R T S I X

C R I S I S !

C H A P T E R 2 9 : T H E FAIT I S

N O T ACCOMPLI

O n July 16 the Russian ambassador in Vienna cabled his gov�

ernment: "Information reaches me that the Austro-

Hungarian Government at the conclusion of the inquiry

intends to make certain demands on Belgrade.... It would seem to

me desirable that at the present moment, before a final decision on

the matter, the Vienna Cabinet should be informed how Russia

would react to the fact of Austria's presenting demands to Serbia such

as would be unacceptable to the dignity of that state."

This, and similar intimations of Austrian designs, disturbed Rus�

sia's foreign minister. But Vienna's ambassador hastened to reassure.

He told the Russian foreign minister that Austria-Hungary wanted

peace. So Russia did nothing.

On July 1 8 , Pasic, the Prime Minister of Serbia, cabled Serbian

missions abroad (other than in Vienna) that he was determined not to

accept any demands by Austria-Hungary that would infringe on Ser�

bian sovereignty.

The hidden plot that the Austrian and German leaders were in the

i 7 5

1 7 6 C R I S I S !

process of executing was outlined clearly—but in confidence—for

the government of Bavaria at the time. The kingdom of Bavaria was

the largest and most populous state in the Prussian-led German

Empire. In joining Germany, it had "reserved a larger measure of

sovereign independence than any of the other constituent states"

including a separate diplomatic service, military administration, and

postal, telegraph, and railway services.

On July 18, Hans Schoen, a Bavarian diplomat who had been

briefed by officials in Berlin, explained at length to his Prime Minis�

ter, Count Georg Herding, the Dual Monarchy's pretense "of being

peacefully inclined" and why an Austrian ultimatum could not be

delivered to Belgrade until mid-July. Summarizing the demands that

would be made in the ultimatum, Schoen observed: "It is perfectly

plain that Serbia can not accept any such demands, which are incom�

patible with her dignity as a sovereign state. Thus the result would be

war." That is, there would be war if Vienna actually went through

with the plan. Jagow and Zimmermann, respectively number one and

two ranking officials at the German foreign office, had their doubts.

They "made the statement that Austria-Hungary, thanks to her inde�

cision and her desultoriness, had really become the Sick Man of

Europe as Turkey had once been."

"A powerful and successful move against Serbia," Zimmermann

had continued, would bring the Dual Monarchy back from the brink.

Schoen reported that German leaders "are of the opinion . . . that

Austria is face to face with an hour of fate." That, they told Schoen,

was why on July 5-6 they had given the Austrians a "blank power of

full authority" "even at the risk of war with Russia." In their view the

Austrians were surprised by such unconditional support, and might

have felt more comfortable if they had been told instead to restrain

themselves.

Germany, Schoen made clear, wished that Vienna had not waited

so long before doing anything. The Germans were awaiting presen�

tation of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. Berlin then would

embark upon a diplomatic effort to localize the conflict. All powers

should stay out of it, the Germans were going to say, leaving Austria-

Hungary and Serbia to work things out for themselves. The Ger�

mans were going to claim they knew as little as everyone else of the

ultimatum the Austrians would present; they would say it came as a

complete surprise—while the Kaiser and others were on vacation.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his family

T h e scene of the first assassination attempt

T h e royal couple leaves the city hall.

T h e arrest of

Gavrilo Princip

Emperor Franz Joseph I

Serbian Prime Minister Nicola Pasic

L E F T : Count von Berch�

told, Austrian minister of

foreign affairs

B E L O W : British Prime

Minister Herbert Asquith

A B O V E : Czar Nicholas II and French President

Raymond Poincare

B E L O W : In Paris, King George V and President Poincare

A B O V E : Joseph Caillaux,

Prime Minister of France

B E L O W : Mme Caillaux

L E F T : Chancellor of Germany

( 1 9 0 9 - 1 7 ) Theobald von

Bethmann Hollweg

B E L O W : German General

Erich von Falkenhayn

T H E FAIT I S N O T ACCOMPLI 1 7 7

Schoen concluded: "The attitude of Russia will, above all else,

determine the question whether the attempt to localize the war will

succeed." German official opinion, as reported by him, was to the

effect that war would not be "acceptable" to either France or England.

The Germans, in other words, still believed that Vienna and Berlin

could carry through their plot successfully without causing a European

war. They thought that they were going to get away with it. This was

confirmed by the Berlin representative of Saxony, another of the Ger�

man states: "one expects a localization of the conflict since England is

absolutely peaceable and France as well as Russia likewise do not feel

inclined towards war."

As the great web of deception was being woven to its conclusion, in

Vienna and Berlin, the Dual Monarchy's ultimatum was being

drafted behind closed doors. The Austro-Hungarian foreign min�

istry began work on the document on July 10. The Germans were

kept informed of its progress. The note was ready to be circulated

internally on July 1 9 .

Since Tisza's change of heart on July 14, there had been no doubt

as to the purpose which the note to Serbia was meant to serve. It was

being drafted in such a way as to be rejected. The German ambassa�

dor in Vienna reported to his government that "the note is being

composed so that the possibility of its being accepted is practically

excluded."

Another official of the German embassy followed up with the

report of a conversation with the Austro-Hungarian foreign minis�

ter: "Count Berchtold appeared to hope that Serbia would not agree

to the Austro-Hungarian demands, as a mere diplomatic victory

would put the country here again in a stagnant mood." Hoyos at the

Dual Monarchy's foreign office told a German colleague "that the

demands were really of such a nature that no nation that still pos�

sessed self-respect and dignity could possibly accept them."

The ultimatum in its final form was submitted to the Council of

Ministers—the cabinet—on Sunday afternoon, July 1 9. In the words

of the historian Frederic Morton, the ministers arrived at Berchtold's

palatial private residence for their meeting in "taxis and private auto�

mobiles. . . . The cars arrived at intervals, avoiding a dramatic con�

vergence. .. . The scene seemed to point to some weekend social

gathering. A passer-by, had he cared to notice, would not have spot-

i 7 8 C R I S I S !

ted a single official limousine." It was no accident: participants had

been ordered to arrive in unmarked cars.

At the meeting, the council ratified the ultimatum to Serbia. The

following day a courier brought it to the elderly emperor, Franz

Joseph, in his country palace. Franz Joseph read and approved it. At

the same time, the text was cabled to the Hapsburg envoy in Belgrade

who was scheduled to present it to the Serbian government on the

prearranged date.

On a motion from Berchtold, the council had unanimously agreed

"that the note should be presented to the Royal Serbian Government

on 23 July at five in the afternoon" so that, by its forty-eight-hour

terms, the ultimatum would expire July 25 at 5 p.m. In turn, Austro-

Hungarian mobilization of the armed forces could be decreed and

published overnight Saturday/Sunday, July 25-26.

Berchtold had told his colleagues that he was opposed to any fur�

ther delays. For one thing, news of Austria's intentions had leaked in

Rome, endangering the element of surprise. Moreover, "Berlin was

beginning to get nervous."

"Nervousness" perhaps understated the case. For Germany's civilian

leaders, Bethmann and Jagow, Austria was proving to be a disap�

pointment and indeed was depriving them of a brilliant victory. The

Hapsburg Empire was supposed to have crushed Serbia by now,

before the rest of Europe had time to react or respond. The assault

was supposed to have taken place. The fait was supposed to have been

accompli.

Yet none of that had been done or even was about to be done. As of

July 19, the Austrians were starting—for the first time—to draw up a

set of demands to be sent to Serbia. The document then had to be

delivered and Serbia's response awaited.

So it was too late now to launch the surprise invasion Bethmann

had envisaged. As soon as the countries of Europe saw the sort of

ultimatum Berchtold proposed to deliver, they would be alerted.

They would know that Serbia was likely to refuse, Austria was likely

to go to war, and Germany might well back Austria. The element of

surprise would be lost.

One phase in the Austro-German plan to punish Serbia was over:

the invasion plan formulated July 6 and never tried. Until July 19 it

had meant that Austria would be allowed to crush Serbia with no

T H E FAIT I S N O T ACCOMPLI 1

7 9

interference from the European powers because it would have been

accomplished before the powers had time to react. Now—after July

19—it had to be changed because it was too late to carry it out as

originally planned. In the original scheme, Austria's invasion was to

have been completed before the rest of Europe could do anything but

send complaining notes after the fact. In the new conception, Europe

would have time to react and respond, but would be persuaded to

hold off until it was too late. "Localization" was the key word the

Germans would continue to use; it meant that the Great Powers,

though fully conscious of what was about to transpire, would choose

not to intervene on the grounds that it was none of their business.

Germany undertook to persuade them that they should let Austria

and Serbia resolve their differences by themselves. Clearly speed was

required of the Austrians here too, because the longer they took in

crushing their smaller neighbor, the more likely it was that one of

Serbia's patrons—Russia or France in particular—might begin to

think in terms of stopping the unequal conflict.

July 19. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was put into its final

form. The phase of Austrian and German thinking in which all was

going to be decided by a swift attack was over. From July 19 on the

German-speaking allies would move forward in full view. Germany

shifted into phase two: localization, in its new sense. In this phase

Germany would let the other European powers know in advance that

there would be a war.

The ultimatum having been formulated, the German government

moved immediately to warn the other Great Powers to stay out of the

fight that was about to begin while, unconvincingly, disclaiming

knowledge of why a fight was about to occur or why the Great Pow�

ers might be tempted to intervene in it. Jagow placed a note on July

19 in a quasi-official publication, the North German Gazette, advising

the others "that the settlement of differences which may arise

between Austria-Hungary and Serbia should remain localized." This

was the start of a diplomatic campaign launched by the German gov�

ernment on behalf of its new tactical goal, conscious localization.

When the French ambassador in Berlin asked Jagow "as to the

contents of the Austrian Note," Jagow assured him "that he knew

nothing about it." Understandably, the ambassador was "astonished."

How could Jagow not know? But of course he did.

1 8 0 C R I S I S !

Fuller statements of the German case for localization were sent on

July 21 to Russia, Britain, and France. Vienna, for its part, gave its

ambassadors to major countries full statements of the Austro-

Hungarian position.

Germany's continued insistence that it knew nothing of what

Austria-Hungary planned to do or to demand met with widespread

disbelief in Europe's capital cities. Analyzing Jagow's pleas for local�

ization, a British official told Sir Edward Grey: "We do not know the

facts. The German government clearly do know. They know what the

Austrian government is going to demand . . . and I think we may say

with some assurance that they have expressed approval of those

demands and promised support should dangerous complications

ensue." But the official was confident that "the German government

do not believe that there is any real danger of war." According to one

source, the official was Sir Horace Rumbold at the Berlin embassy;

according to another, Sir Eyre Crowe at the Foreign Office.

The Austrian ambassador in Berlin brought a copy of the ultima�

tum in final form to Jagow, who later lied and denied having seen it

before it went out.* Jagow rechecked calculations and discovered that

the Austrians planned to present the ultimatum an hour too soon—

while the French leaders were still in Russia. A panicked effort by

Hapsburg officialdom, alerted by Jagow, resulted in moving that ulti�

matum time to an hour later.

Obeying orders, Germany's military leaders remained ostentatiously

on vacation, leaving everything to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg,

and to the chief officials of the foreign office, Jagow and Zimmer-

mann, who outwardly affected, as best they could, an air of uncon�

cern.

But they awaited events with different hopes, fears, and expecta�

tions. Only a month or so before, Moltke, the gloomy and pessimistic

chief of the general staff, had asked Jagow to provoke a world war

soon, while Germany still could win it. In two or three years, accord�

ing to Moltke, it would be too late.

"However, in an interview on September 1 7 , 1916, with American journalist William Bullitt, he

admitted that he had seen the ultimatum before it was sent. And Zimmermann, Jagow's number

two, told a colleague (August 1 1 , 1917) that "it is true that we received the Serbian ultimatum

about twelve hours before it was presented." Zimmermann wrote that it was pointless to keep on

lying about it, since it "cannot be kept secret forever."

T H E FAIT I S N O T ACCOMPLI

Now Moltke seemingly was prepared to accept the limited but

brilliant victory that an Austrian attack would bring—if indeed

Vienna would summon up the nerve to proceed with Bethmann's

plan and could pull it off. If, however, the German leaders—military

and civilian alike—were wrong in their estimate that the war could be

localized, and that Russia would stay out, then, unlike the Kaiser and

the civilians, Moltke would be happy—maybe even happier—with

that result too.

Bethmann, whose role was to preside over affairs while the Austri�

ans carried his strategy into execution, was worried from the start.

"An action against Serbia can lead to a world war," he told his confi�

dant Kurt Riezler on July 7. He feared that "whatever the outcome"

such a war would turn "everything that exists upside down." The risk

of bringing about a global conflict with unforeseeable consequences

was "a leap in the dark."

Yet Bethmann felt that Germany had no choice. The portrait that

he painted of his country's international position showed a dark and

even paranoid vision, with dangers exaggerated. In his own words, it

was "a shattering picture." As he saw it, Germany was "completely

paralyzed," and its rivals, the allied powers of Russia, France, and

Britain, knew it. "The future belongs to Russia which is growing and

growing and is becoming an ever-increasing nightmare to us." Even

the Dual Monarchy would ally with Russia in order to go with the

winner. Germany would be alone and helpless in the world of inter�

national politics.

The Chancellor was unnerved by intelligence reports that had

reached him about secret naval talks between Britain and Russia.

According to German sources, these might have envisaged an

amphibious operation in which British forces brought by sea would

land in northeastern Germany.

In the memoirs of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (by

then Viscount Grey of Fallodon), written a bit more than a decade

later, the talks were inconsequential. They were undertaken at the

request of the French in order to reassure the Russians. So talks were

held. No joint operations were planned; no commitments made.

What did occur, it would seem, was an exchange of information.

Russia was aware that Britain and France had held naval conversa�

tions, in the course of which each had disclosed to the other the dis�

positions they intended to make of their fleets in the event of war.

I 8 2 C R I S I S !

Each was free to change those planned dispositions. The Russians

now wanted to be treated on a par with the other two countries: to be

full allies. When Britain held talks with France, Russia wanted to

hold such talks too. The Russians told the French of their desire.

On May 1 3 , Asquith's cabinet had authorized holding such con�

versations. The ranking serving officer of the British fleet, Admiral

Prince Louis of Battenberg, came over to Paris to meet with the Rus�

sians some weeks later. Further talks were contemplated, but were

obviated by the outbreak of war.

The news leaked out. Questions were asked in Parliament. In

reply, Sir Edward Grey reiterated an earlier statement by the Prime

Minister that "if war arose between European Powers, there were no

unpublished agreements which would restrict or hamper the free�

dom of the Government, or of Parliament, to decide whether or not

Great Britain should participate in a war."

As Grey writes in his memoirs, "The answer given is absolutely

true. The criticism to which it is open is, that it did not answer the

question put to me. That is undeniable." But, argues Grey, govern�

ment officials do not habitually make full public disclosure of confi�

dential documents regarding their armed forces.

According to Grey, the Russians overstated the importance of the

conversations Britain held with the French. His information was that

three secret letters from Russian sources were obtained by the Ger�

man authorities. These letters suggested that Grey had withheld

material information. Given Grey's character and his reputation for

truthfulness, if these intercepted letters had been accurate, his lack of

candor as seen through skeptical German eyes must have been a

source of genuine alarm. For whatever reason, the Germans worried

greatly about those talks.

For all of its dangers, the strategy of striking Serbia so quickly as to

produce a fait accompli, in the view of Bethmann, its author, was the

only plausible road out of a situation in which the other Great Pow�

ers might turn against Germany and Austria. And this strategy had

not been employed. The Austrians had not even tried it.

The Chancellor (according to his confidant) brooded. He reflected

on the mistakes Germany had made in foreign policy since the dis�

missal of Bismarck. Germany had alienated Russia, France, and

Britain, making enemies of all of them without weakening any of them.

T H E FAIT I S N O T ACCOMPLI 1 8 3

In England, the foreign secretary professed optimism about the

Austro-Serbian dispute. Sir Edward Grey was perhaps the only

member of the cabinet who had reason to realize early on that the

Balkan situation was serious. He had been alerted by the strongly

pro-British German ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky. As

early as July 6, Lichnowsky warned Grey that Austria would take a

hard line on the Sarajevo matter, and would have Germany's blessing

and backing in doing so.

Grey considered working with Germany to restrain Austria. Later,

he urged Austria and Russia to hold talks to resolve their differences.

Grey did not display any great concern; the Foreign Office showed

less. As reported by the German ambassador in London, Grey

"believed that a peaceful solution would be reached." He urged mod�

eration, and stressed the importance of Austria proving that the accu�

sations made against Serbia were true.

Britain, too, was in the grip of passions at home, occasioned by the

question of what to do with Ireland. The British remained oblivious

to danger from abroad. External threats seemed to be evaporating.

"The spring and summer of 1 9 1 4 were marked in Europe by an

exceptional tranquility," Winston Churchill, England's civilian chief

of the navy department, later remembered. The thirty-nine-year-old

boy wonder of English politics was an activist—even an adventur�

ous—First Lord of the Admiralty, yet he looked ahead to calm waters.

Churchill was not then the imposing figure whom the later twen�

tieth century revered. He had risen far and fast in politics, but was

regarded as something of an upstart by his cabinet colleagues, almost

all of whom were a decade or more older. He seemed always to be in

the headlines and in the limelight. His energy was boundless—

enough to exhaust those around him, and even in the cabinet he

would never stop talking. He was enthusiastic to the point of childish�

ness. Yet his gifts were undeniable. Even then, it could be seen that he

had talent; only decades later would it be seen that he also had genius.

In 1 9 1 4 he was applying his abilities to the seemingly hopeless

question of Ireland. As he later wrote: "The strange calm of the

European situation contrasted with the rising fury of party conflict at

home." As it became clear that Home Rule for Ireland would finally

be enacted, Liberals and Conservatives became caught up in the

blood feud of their respective clients, the Catholics of the south of

C R I S I S !

Ireland and the Protestants of the north: the Ulstermen. Both sides

recruited and trained paramilitary formations. Ulster purchased arms

in quantity from Germany, and war equipment for rival militias was

reported to be illegally imported from abroad.

Overwhelmed by events, London ordered troop reinforcements

and naval support. Understandably, "the military commanders, see�

ing themselves confronted with what might be the opening move�

ments in a civil war, began to study plans of a much more serious

character." The complication was that the officer corps in the British

army was disproportionately drawn from Protestant Ulster, and it

could be speculated that the army, at least in part, might back North�

ern Ireland and the Unionist party against Asquith's Liberal govern�

ment. "These shocking events caused an explosion of unparalleled

fury in Parliament and shook the State to its foundations," writes

Churchill. "We cannot read the debates that continued at intervals

through April, May, and June, without wondering that our Parlia�

mentary institutions were strong enough to survive the passions by

which they were convulsed. Was it astonishing that German agents

reported and German statesmen believed, that England was paralysed

by faction and drifting into civil war, and need not be taken into

account as a factor in the European situation?"

On July 20, King George V convened an all-party conference to

assemble at Buckingham Palace the following day. On the twenty-

first he opened the meeting with a brief statement. He pointed to the

dangers that had led him to convene the conference. "The trend,"

King George said, "has been surely and steadily toward an appeal to

force, and today the cry of Civil War is on the lips of the most

responsible and sober-minded of my people." He appealed to the

party leaders to arrive at some peaceful compromise.

The conference did indeed show the differences to be narrow, but

they remained intractable nonetheless. The conference broke down,

and the conferees disbanded Friday morning, July 24. According to

the Prime Minister, King George "came in, rather emotionne, and said

in two sentences .. . farewell, I am sorry, and I thank you."

That afternoon, cabinet members assembled and went back to

work on a proposed definition of the border between Home Rule

Ireland and British Northern Ireland. When they had finished their

deliberations, Sir Edward Grey turned their attention to the Serbian

crisis.

C H A P T E R 3 0 : P R E S E N T I N G

A N U L T I M A T U M

T here had been an ominous semi-break in communication

between Austria and Serbia since the Outrage; for all practi�

cal purposes they were not talking to one another, or at least

not very much. The Austrian investigation of the murders was being

conducted in secret, and while all but one of Princip's band were

swiftly taken into custody, the proceedings against them moved for�

ward in weeks, or indeed months, rather than days.

Meanwhile (since the common assumption was that Serbia was in

some part to blame) Serbia awaited with dread whatever punishment

was being prepared or proposed. From sources in London the Ser�

bian government heard on July 17 that "a kind of indictment is being

prepared" for "alleged complicity in the conspiracy which led to the

assassination of the Archduke." From Vienna came the rumor on July

20 that Austria was preparing to go to war.

The Serbian population was the reverse of helpful to its govern�

ment in this respect. They showed no remorse, while the opposition

press gave every sign of being pleased by the killings.

1 8 5

i 8 6 C R I S I S !

To outsiders, the Serbian government seemed unwise in not mak�

ing at least a show of energetically pursuing those who had aided the

killers. True, the two main criminals were Austrian subjects; true,

they were being tried in an Austrian judicial proceeding which had

not yet concluded. However, the real reason for Serbian inaction may

have been that the government had much to conceal. If it became

known, for example, that Pasic had learned of the death plot in time

to have averted it—if indeed that was the case—the Prime Minister

would have been condemned by the Black Hand for warning Vienna,

however feebly, and by Austria for not having warned effectively

enough. Indeed, if Pasic had let the truth come out in any investiga�

tion commissioned or sanctioned by him, the Black Hand might well

have killed him.

Moreover, Serbian elections were scheduled for August 1 4 . Pasic

had to campaign as a fiery nationalist. The country was in no position

to stand up to the Hapsburg Empire, but if Pasic let the electorate

know that he was willing to make concessions or compromises in

order to avert a conflict, he was likely to lose votes. He somehow had

to perform the impossible feat of moving in two opposite directions

at once.

Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, Austro-Hungarian minister to Serbia,

telephoned the Serbian foreign ministry on Thursday morning, July

23, out of courtesy. He wished to alert the Serbian government that

between four and five he would be delivering an important message

to the Prime Minister.

Giesl then received a cable from his own government concerning

the mistake that Jagow had caught: the French leaders would not yet

have left St. Petersburg. He was ordered to postpone his delivery

time to 6:00 p.m.

When Giesl finally arrived, it was to find that the Serbian Prime

Minister was not in Belgrade; he was out of town, campaigning for

votes in the election—or at least so he said. Pacu, Serbian minister of

finance, was delegated to act in the Prime Minister's absence. But

Pacu did not speak French, the language of diplomacy. It therefore

would not be possible for Giesl to communicate with him.

The secretary general of the foreign office, Slavko Grvic, stepped

in to translate. But Pacu, faced with the document being served upon

P R E S E N T I N G A N U L T I M A T U M l 8 7

him, refused to accept it. Giesl placed it on the table and told Pacu to

do what he wanted with it, and then left.

When Giesl departed, Pacu and his colleagues tried to get in touch

with Pasic. It took about two hours. Over the telephone his associates

then summarized for the Prime Minister the harsh terms of the doc�

ument that Giesl had served upon them. (See Appendix i,pp. 3 0 7 - 1 2 ,

for the Austrian note in full.) Pasic decided to return by train

promptly, and called a meeting of the cabinet in Belgrade the next

morning at 5:00 a.m. Nicolai Hartwig, the Russian envoy upon

whose advice the Serbians generally relied, had died two weeks

before and had not yet been replaced; the Serbs were on their own.

The cabinet ministers met all day, through the night, and then all

through the following day. Urgency was imposed upon them, for the

Dual Monarchy's note demanded a reply within forty-eight hours.

Pasic turned to other governments for counsel and help, but there

the time was even shorter: Hapsburg couriers had delivered copies of

the note to the powers only the morning of July 24.

And without even waiting for a reply, on July 2 3 the Hapsburg

army had opened its war book: its outline of administrative measures

and its designation of responsibilities that would come into effect on

commencement of hostilities.

The news arrived in London in time for the cabinet meeting that had

been devoted to trying to pick up the pieces of the failed Buckingham

Palace conference on Ireland. The differences between the two sides,

according to Winston Churchill, had been reduced to a question of

the boundaries of two Irish counties, Fermanagh and Tyrone. But on

this question there was a hopeless deadlock, and a civil war threat�

ened.

In the oft-quoted lines of Churchill:

T h e discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was

about to separate, when the quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice

were heard reading a document which had just been brought to him

from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. He had

been reading or speaking for several minutes before I could disengage

my mind from the tedious and bewildering debate which had just

c l o s e d . . . . This note was clearly an ultimatum; but it was an ultimatum

i 8 8 C R I S I S !

such as had never been penned in modern times. As the reading pro�

ceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world could

accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the

aggressor. T h e parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the

mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began . . . to fall upon

the map of Europe.

It was the first time that month that the cabinet had heard mention

of foreign policy. Churchill was one of only two in the cabinet other

than the Prime Minister alerted by Grey in advance of the meeting.

During the meeting, as was his custom, Prime Minister Asquith

wrote a letter to his confidante, Venetia Stanley. He told her that the

European situation "is just about as bad as it can possibly be. Austria

has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot

possibly comply with it, and demanded an answer within forty-eight

hours—failing which she will march. This means, almost inevitably,

that Russia will come on the scene in defence of Serbia and in defi�

ance of Austria; and if so, it is difficult both for Germany and France

to refrain from lending a hand to one side or the other. So that we are

in measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon."

But he closed on a reassuring note: "Happily, there seems to be no

reason why we should be anything more than spectators."

At the conclusion of the meeting, Churchill, in turn, wrote to his

wife that "Europe is trembling on the verge of a general war. The

Austrian ultimatum to Serbia being the most insolent document of

its kind ever devised." But he too foresaw no role for Britain to play

in the coming conflict, and wrote mainly to say that he would join his

family at the beach over the weekend.

Meanwhile Grey focused first on the forty-eight-hour deadline. "I

had never before seen one State address to another independent

State a document of so formidable a character," he told the Austrian

government; and whatever the merits of the dispute, the first thing to

be done was to postpone or eliminate the deadline.

At Grey's request, the German ambassador, Lichnowsky, came by

to see him. Lichnowsky reported that Grey was "greatly affected by

the Austrian note, which, according to his view, exceeded anything he

had ever seen of this sort before." He believed that "Any nation that

accepted conditions like that would really cease to count as an inde�

pendent nation." ("That would be very desirable. It is not a nation in

P R E S E N T I N G A N U L T I M A T U M

the European sense, but a band of robbers!" commented Kaiser Wil�

helm, reading Lichnowsky's report.)

The private comments of the three statesmen, if read as though

they were a conversation, reveal the widening gap in their opinions:

L I C H N O W S K Y : "One could not measure the Balkan peoples by the same

standard as the civilized nations of E u r o p e . . . . "

K A I S E R : "Right, for they aren't!"

L I C H N O W S K Y : "Therefore one had to use another kind of language with

them."

G R E Y : "Even if able to share this opinion [it would not] be accepted in

Russia."

K A I S E R : "Then the Russians are not any better themselves."

Grey asked German support for a prolongation of the deadline,

and suggested that England, France, Germany, and Italy should

mediate the conflict. "Superfluous," commented the Kaiser. "Grey

has nothing else to propose." But, the German ruler noted in the

margin of Lichnowsky's report, he himself would mediate the con�

flict if, but only if, Austria asked him to do so.

From St. Petersburg, Foreign Minister Sazonov sent a circular cable

to the concerned countries asking them to act together in obtaining a

postponement of the deadline. Sazonov also asked Austria for the

results of the official inquiry into the Sarajevo murders, in line with

Vienna's early promise to make the report available to the other pow�

ers.

In Vienna, on July 24, Berchtold met with the Russian charge d'af�

faires, Count Kudashev, and delivered a soothing message: "nothing

was further from our thoughts than the wish to humiliate Serbia";

and the Dual Monarchy "did not aim at a territorial gain but merely

at the preservation of the status quo."

Literally, Berchtold was telling the truth: Vienna did not intend to

annex Serbia; it ruled too many Slavs already. But he was deliberately

misleading: Austria-Hungary, according to Berchtold's chief aide at

the foreign office, intended to partition Serbia but to take no part of

Serbia for itself.

Kudashev asked what would happen if Serbia's reply was not

acceptable to Berchtold's government. Berchtold's answer: Austria's

1 9 0 C R I S I S !

minister in Belgrade would close his legation and depart with staff.

"Then it is war," exclaimed Kudashev.

The following morning Kudashev returned to ask for an extension

of the deadline Austria had set. The Austrian government refused.

Kudashev then cabled Berchtold, who was en route to a meeting with

his emperor, repeating his request for an extension. Berchtold

refused.

As Vienna and Berlin had calculated, Paris was unable to react mean�

ingfully to the Austrian note. President Poincare, Prime Minister

and Foreign Minister Rene Viviani, and Bruno Jacquin de Margerie,

senior official at the foreign office, were still at sea. Jean-Baptiste

Bienvenue-Martin, minister of justice, and caretaker head of govern�

ment, seemed unable, or unwilling, to take a strong line, or indeed

any line at all, despite the assistance of Philippe Berthelot, number

two official at the foreign office.

Because the French voice was not heard, German and Austrian

envoys apparently felt encouraged to believe that France might stand

aside in the days to follow. Instead, what was happening was that

Bienvenue-Martin was forwarding at least some dispatches to the

traveling President to deal with, and Poincare decided upon an

immediate return to Paris.

When news of the Austrian ultimatum reached him in St. Peters�

burg, Sazonov burst out: "C'est la guerre europeenne" (It's the Euro�

pean war). Meeting with the Austrian ambassador, he put it in blunt

terms. "I know what it is. You mean to make war on Serbia. . . . You

are setting fire to Europe. . . . Why was Serbia given no chance to

speak and why the form of an ultimatum? . . . The fact is you mean

war and you have burnt your bridges. . . . One sees how peace-loving

you are."

The Russian Council of Ministers met and decided to try to per�

suade Austria to extend the July 25 deadline. It decided also to advise

Serbia to offer the least possible resistance to any Austrian agree�

ment. Finally, it decided to ask the Czar to agree, at least in principle,

to partial mobilization of the armed forces. Wthout going into

details (although historians have been doing so ever since), "partial

mobilization" consisted of a number of measures, some feasible and

others not, none of which would have significantly helped to defend

P R E S E N T I N G A N U L T I M A T U M I 9 I

Russia and most of which put Russia in a less advantageous position

than before. It was an essentially political concept, muddled and

unclear, intended to convey the message that Russia was resolved to

act if necessary, but did not wish to alarm or provoke Germany or

Austria as a full mobilization—a real mobilization—would have

done.

Russia, as so often had been the case, was a mystery to the European

world in 1 9 1 4 . Its immense size and seemingly Oriental foreignness

were frightening. It was the largest of countries, and the size of its

population—170 million—was intimidating. Yet its ministers saw

Russia in July 1 9 1 4 as vulnerable.

The pace of its industrialization and its growing railroad network

and its modern rearmament program, in large part financed by

France, started with Russia so far behind as to make progress seem

far greater than it was. In Western Europe, and in Germany in par�

ticular, the future Russian threat loomed large. In the spring of 1 9 1 4 ,

the British ambassador to Russia advised London that "Russia is rap�

idly becoming so powerful that we must retain her friendship at

almost any cost."

But as the historian D. W. Spring reminds us, "this was not how

the Russian government and public saw their position in the world in

1 9 1 3 - 1 4 . " They saw their country as surrounded by "ten states with

half the world's population," of which "three or four were directly

hostile." Its government was largely ineffective. For the most part,

the country remained backward: a peasant economy a century or so

behind the times. Such industrialization as had taken place did so to

the accompaniment of social strife; in St. Petersburg in July 1 9 1 4 ,

"180,000 industrial workers out of a total of 242,000 were on strike."

Although the masses played no role in foreign policy decision�

making, there was a sort of public opinion, however weak, that found

expression in the Council of Ministers meeting of July 24.

It was one of those rare moments of concord. The press, govern�

ment ministers, and the public all seemed to be of one mind. Russia

wanted Serbia to make whatever concessions were necessary. Rus�

sians wanted peace and knew that they were not prepared for war. On

the other hand, there was a consensus that in the past Russia had

made concessions to the German-speaking powers in the interests of

peace, but had found that such concessions only encouraged Berlin

1 9 2 C R I S I S !

and Vienna to ask for more. The summer of 1 9 1 4 seemed to Russia

to be a good time to experiment with the opposite approach. This

time, in a nonprovocative way, the Russian ministers intended to

stand firm.

One unstable element, however, was introduced into decision�

making by the indecisiveness of Czar Nicholas II. The Russian

monarch was a weak character inadequately prepared to assume the

crown, of whose costly errors—notably the disastrous war against

Japan—he was all too well aware. He had inherited autocratic powers

but had been compelled to proclaim his position to be that of a semi-

constitutional emperor.

The emotional focus of Nicholas's life was his home: the wife and

daughters he adored, and the son Alexei, not quite ten years old in

July 1 9 1 4 , whose hemophilia hung like a sword over the monarchy.

Nicholas, whatever his feelings for Serbs as fellow Slavs, was

bound to feel strongly about regicides. His grandfather Alexander II,

who had freed the serfs, was subject to more than a half dozen assas�

sination attempts before the fatal one.

Moreover, Nicholas had begun his reign somewhat under the sway

of Kaiser Wilhelm. Nicholas was crowned in 1895 a t

^ e a

S e

°f

twenty-six. Wilhelm, nine years older, had occupied the German

throne six years longer. "Willy" influenced "Nicky" for a decade, giv�

ing him dangerously bad advice, turning his mind to conquests in the

Far East that led to the disastrous war with Japan (1904-05) that

brought about Russia's near-collapse as a Great Power. It culminated

in the revolution of 1905.

At the end of 1905 and of Wilhelm's influence, the Czar fell under

the spell of another dangerous figure, the peasant religious healer

Gregory Rasputin, who offered hope of curing the hemophiliac heir

apparent. The trusting and vulnerable imperial couple, Nicholas and

his wife, Alexandra, who cared more for the life of their son than for

anything else, seemed to be placing the Czarevich's fate in the hands

of Rasputin, he of the deep voice, hypnotic eyes, and soothing touch.

Physically powerful, Rasputin was driven by almost insatiable lusts;

scandalmongers were kept busy adding women's names to the list of

his conquests, which was said to include the Empress Alexandra and

one of her daughters, which the monk's wife, left at home in Siberia

with their four children, took pride in: "He has enough for all," she

boasted.

P R E S E N T I N G A N U L T I M A T U M I 9 3

The hold exercised by this fraudulent and wicked magician over

the royal family brought the monarchy itself into disrepute as the

July crisis of 1 9 1 4 approached. It was predictable that at least some

section of the public would blame Rasputin's influence for the tragic

turn in Russia's destiny in and after 1 9 1 4 .

In fact, Rasputin consistently advocated peace. In the Balkan war

crisis of 1908 he had said: "The Balkans are not worth fighting for."

In 1 9 1 4 , recovering in his peasant village from an assassination

attempt, he angered the Czar by cabling him, after hostilities already

had begun: "Let Papa not plan war, for with the war will come the

end of Russia and yourselves and you will lose to the last man."

In London on July 24 the Russian ambassador told the German

ambassador "in strict confidence" that it was "scarcely possible" for

Russia "to advise the Serbian Government to accept" the ultimatum

"unless she was to sink to the level of a vassal of Austria." He said:

"Public opinion in Russia would not tolerate that." Vienna's inten�

tions now were clear. "Only a government that wanted war could

possibly write such a note."

Rumors reached Berlin that the ultimatum was being attributed to

Germany. From its foreign office streamed denials. To German

envoys in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg it cabled instructions to

deny the charge. "We exercised no influence of any kind with regard

to the contents of the note." Nonetheless Berlin was "unable to

counsel Vienna to retract" because retraction would cause Austria-

Hungary to lose prestige.

From its ambassador in Vienna, Germany learned that Berchtold

had called in a Russian envoy for a soothing talk, at which the Aus�

trian foreign minister had denied having any desire to upset the bal�

ance of power or to disturb Russia. He appealed for a united front of

Europe's monarchs against the common danger arising from a "Ser�

bian policy conducted with revolver and with bomb."

Reading an account of this conversation, Kaiser Wilhelm noted

his disapproval. Of Berchtold's profession of good intentions toward

Russia, he commented "absolutely superfluous! Will give the impres�

sion of weakness and the impression of an apology." Calling Berch�

told an "Ass!" the Kaiser noted: "Austria must become preponderant

in the Balkans as compared with the little ones, and at Russia's

expense; otherwise there will be no peace."

i 9

4 C R I S I S !

France's foreign policy leaders knew little of what was happening. By

Austria's design, they were aboard ship when the crisis erupted. The

President, the Prime Minister who also served as foreign minister,

and their chief foreign policy aide were aware that the messages were

not getting through. They were not aware that they were being

jammed by the Germans.

The French leaders had come from conversations with the Czar

and the Russian government. Little is known of what was said. But

Poincare's policy from the outset had been to restrain Russia from

doing anything that could provoke Germany The President was

keenly aware that France was in no military position to fight a war.

There is no reason to believe that he said anything different during

his stay in Russia.

However, once the French leaders departed, their country's

remaining spokesman in St. Petersburg played the part of a sort of

rogue ambassador. Maurice Paleologue, who had presented his cre�

dentials only five months earlier, was a personality in his own right,

whose tendency was to pursue his own foreign policy. He left Russia's

government witxrthe impression that France would back it uncondi�

tionally. A recent study of French prewar diplomacy by M. B. Hayne

tells us that, unlike others, Paleologue believed that the French and

Russian armies were at their peak. Assuming that Germany intended

to force a European war, he advocated fighting it as soon as possible.

In that respect, he was a sort of Moltke. It is not evident how much he

influenced the decisions the Russian leaders made, for they distrusted

him.

An inquiry from Vienna to Berlin dated July 22 did not arrive until

the twenty-fourth. The Hapsburg Empire was about to break all

relations with Serbia. No Austrian officials would be left behind.

How, then, would the Dual Monarchy declare war on Serbia? Who

would actually deliver the declaration? Would Germany do it on

Austria's behalf?

From the foreign office, Jagow replied that it would not be a good

idea:" Our standpoint has to be that the quarrel with Serbia is an Austro-

Hungarian internal affair." Yet Berlin and Vienna were discussing

modalities of declaring war even before the Austrian ultimatum was

delivered, let alone answered, let alone answered unsatisfactorily.

C H A P T E R 3 1 : S E R B I A M O R E O R

L E S S A C C E P T S

A "pretty strong note," the Kaiser, aboard ship, remarked to the

chief of his Naval Cabinet, Admiral von Miiller. The

emperor had learned about the Austrian ultimatum. But "it

means war," responded the admiral. No, said Wilhelm, Serbia would

never risk it.

The Regent of Serbia, Prince Alexander, visited the Russian legation

in Belgrade the night of July 23-24 "to express his despair over the

Austrian ultimatum, compliance with which he regards as an absolute

impossibility for a state which had the slightest regard for its dignity."

His hopes lay with the Czar, he said, "whose powerful word could

alone save Serbia." Pasic, the Prime Minister, also stopped in at the

Russian legation, later, en route to the 5 a.m. meeting of available

cabinet ministers.

But Russia offered nothing more than moral support. From St.

Petersburg, Sazonov, speaking only for himself, said that his country

1

95

C R I S I S !

would offer help, but did not specify what form that help would take.

In the end the Czar's government suggested that Serbia—if resis�

tance were hopeless—should retreat rather than resist, and rely on

the sense of justice of Europe to rectify matters. Neither Russia nor

its ally France was ready to fight, especially for Serbia.

At first the Serbian government was inclined to be defiant. As the

ministers thrashed things out they fell into a more realistic mood.

It was common ground among the Serbian leaders that their coun�

try would be crushed in a war against the Dual Monarchy. Only Rus�

sia, or a combination of the neutral powers, could save them. Such

support would be difficult to obtain in any event, and all the more so

because there was so little time: the Serbian response was due at

6 p.m., July 25. Pasic and his colleagues were at work continuously,

veering between total acceptance of the ultimatum and the tempta�

tion to add conditions or qualifications that would allow them later to

slip out from under Vienna's rigid requirements.

As language was added, changed, and crossed out, the text became

less and less legible. Yet it had to be readable enough so that the

translator could do his job. Revised and retyped many times, it still

remained messy as the deadline approached. The typist was inexperi�

enced; the typewriter broke down. With less than two hours to go, an

attempt was made to start again in longhand.

The final document looked more like a first draft, with words

crossed out, inkblots, and the like. As nobody else volunteered to

carry it, Pasic did so himself, hurrying to the Austrian legation to

hand Serbia's reply to Giesl before the 6 p.m. deadline. He may have

been slightly late. Giesl read it quickly, standing up. He already had

destroyed his papers and packed his bags. An automobile was poised

to drive him to the railroad station. He went through the brief forms

of breaking off diplomatic relations, and then left to catch his train.

The response to the ultimatum, it was believed outside of Austria-

Hungary, accepted all conditions but one. In fact, it contained a

number of reservations. (See Appendix 2, pp. 3 1 3 - 1 6 . ) It hardly mat�

tered, for the Dual Monarchy was just going through the formalities.

The shipowner Albert Ballin later remembered the "disappoint�

ment" in the German foreign office when the news arrived that Ser�

bia had accepted—followed by "tremendous joy" when a correction

was received: Serbia had not fully accepted. Should the Kaiser be

recalled? No, said Ballin's foreign office source: "on the contrary

S E R B I A M O R E O R L E S S A C C E P T S 1 9 7

everything must be done to ensure that he does not interfere in

things with his pacifist ideas."

Berchtold took the position that his note to Serbia was not an ultima�

tum because a declaration of war did not automatically follow when

the time limit expired. As late as July 25, Berchtold was telling the

Russians that the Austrian break in relations with Serbia would not

necessarily lead to a war: "our demands could bring about a peaceful

solution."

But then a cable arrived from his ambassador in Berlin, reminding

him that Germany expected Austria to commence hostilities. "Here

every delay in the beginning of war operations is regarded as signify�

ing the danger that the foreign powers might interfere. We are

urgently advised to proceed without delay."

Might convening a conference of the neutral powers prevent the out�

break of war? Sir Edward Grey sounded out opinion on the question.

The conference that Grey had convoked in London in 1 9 1 3 had

brought peace, however temporarily, to the Balkans; perhaps it might

do so again. But was it the right time to put forward such a proposal?

For the moment, the quarrel concerned only Austria and Serbia; it

was not yet between Austria and Russia.

To Grey's surprise, the Russian ambassador guessed that his gov�

ernment would not agree to a conference. If Germany, Italy, France,

and Britain were to mediate between Austria and Russia, it would

look, he said, as though France and Britain had split from their Rus�

sian ally. When the question was put to St. Petersburg, however,

Sazonov made no such difficulty.

Grey sent notes to his ambassador in St. Petersburg on July 2 5

outlining his position. He wrote: "I do not consider that public opin�

ion here would or ought to sanction our going to a war over a Serbian

quarrel. If, however, war does take place, the development of other

issues may draw us into it, and I am therefore anxious to prevent it."

In view of Austria's actions, he wrote, Austria and Russia almost

inevitably would mobilize against one another; and that is when a

four-power mediation might be opportune.

It was a Saturday. Grey felt the threat of war was not immediate

enough to keep him from the countryside. He placed matters in the

hands of his assistant and left town.

1 9 8 C R I S I S !

A cable from Germany's envoy in Belgrade described the confusion

and dismay of the Serbian government in dealing with the Austrian

ultimatum. Kaiser Wilhelm was delighted. "Bravo! One would not

have believed it of the Viennese! . . . How hollow the whole Serbian

power is proving itself to be; thus it is seen to be with all the Slav

nations! Just tread hard in the heels of that rabble!"

July 25. St. Petersburg. Evening. The Russian General Staff inau�

gurated the "Period Preparatory to War," the first step on the road

that, if further steps were taken, could lead to mobilization.

Paris. The acting government of France took its first military pre�

paredness steps. Secretly, it recalled its generals to duty on July 25; it

canceled leaves of officers and troops July 26; and it ordered the bulk

of its army of occupation in Morocco to return to France on July 27.

Berlin. The foreign minister, Jagow, told German journalist

Theodor Wolff that "neither London, nor Paris nor St. Petersburg

wants war."

P A R T S E V E N

C O U N T D O W N

C H A P T E R 3 2 : S H O W D O W N I N B E R L I N

ermany's leading military figures had been ostentatiously on

leave in July. So had the Kaiser, the Chancellor, and the for-

eign secretary. In fact, they returned to Berlin from time to

time, often secretly. And their aides kept the military officers well

informed.

After the Austrians had set a fixed date for their ultimatum, Berlin

quietly signaled its leaders to return. They did so from July 23

onward, returning singly but then seeking each other out.

In a sort of movable secret conference, about which we know from

the reports of the Saxon and Bavarian military attaches, Germany's

military leaders on the one hand, and the civilian leaders, the Chan�

cellor and his foreign office officials on the other, debated what to do

next. Their best information was that Austria now claimed it would

be at least two more weeks—perhaps August 12—before it could

attack Serbia. The Germans, military and civilian alike, were dis�

gusted by Austria's indolence.

The Chancellor and his civilian colleagues conducted a holding

2 0 1

2 0 2 C O U N T D O W N

operation. They asked for more time for their plans—and Vienna's—

to work. They held out for a reprieve of at least a few days before

changing plans.

The generals in large part were led by Moltke and by Erich von

Falkenhayn, the war minister, who played a main role in arguing that

Germany take military action against Russia and its allies.

Moltke played a curious role, often changing his mind, at times

holding back, yet arguing forcefully that this was the time to go to

war because circumstances were more favorable than they ever would

be again. In Berlin, the structure of the eventful and decisive week, in

broad terms, seems to have been that the country's leaders, returning

from weeks in the countryside, spent from Sunday afternoon to

Monday night (July 26-27) bringing themselves up to date and

exchanging views, from Tuesday through Thursday (July 28-30)

thrashing matters out among themselves, and from Friday through

Monday Quly 3 i-August 3) swinging into action. These were show�

down days in which.Germany's leaders fought among themselves,

changed their minds, and risked strokes or heart attacks in the vio�

lence of their fears and rages.

Germany's overlapping army leaders—Chief of Staff von Moltke,

War Minister von Falkenhayn, and Military Cabinet Chief von

Lyncker—were among the several key officials debating the issues of

war and peace after the return from vacation. For Moltke the argu�

ments were particularly frustrating, in part because the civilian lead�

ers shared neither his point of view nor his objectives, and in part

because he knew things they did not—things he could not tell them.

In 1997, Holger Herwig wrote that "the almost complete destruction

of Moltke's papers 'precludes formal connection between Moltke's

mind-set and the push for war in 1 9 1 4 . ' " That would seem to be no

longer true. The recent publication of Annika Mombauer's biogra�

phy, based, as noted earlier, in part on previously unused documents,

makes it possible to interpret Moltke's thoughts, words, and actions.

A Saxon officer who spoke with Moltke's deputy on July 3 reported

that he received the impression that the Great General Staff "would

be pleased if war were to come about now." In Mombauer's words,

the July crisis "seemed to present an opportunity rather than a

threat." That might explain why for a time in late July, Moltke held

back, to the surprise of belligerent colleagues. He did not fear Rus-

S H O W D O W N I N B E R L I N 2 0 3

sian mobilization; he devoutly desired it. If it meant delaying his own

plans for a few days, it would be well worth it; it could mean the dif�

ference between winning and losing. Moreover, Moltke received

information that Russia's mobilization preparations were on a

smaller scale than had been thought.

Yet Moltke was almost uniquely aware that time was running out

for his country. Germany was committed to follow Moltke's own

grand strategy, of which few people were aware. The Kaiser and

(until July 3 1 ) the Chancellor, Bethmann, were among those in the

dark, as was Falkenhayn. None of them knew what Moltke really had

planned for his opening moves in the war.

With remarkable consistency, and for a long time, Moltke had

believed that Germany ought to launch a preventive war against Rus�

sia and its ally France immediately. But he had also continued to

think that such a preventive war could be waged successfully only if

the German people could be persuaded that Russia had started it:

that Russia was attacking Germany.

So at times he argued that Germany should hold back and wait for

Russia to make the first move—which is to say, to mobilize. But as

the week went on, he swung around to the opposite view: strike

immediately.

Moltke was a pessimist. He feared that Germans, especially Prussian

Germans, would eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer number of

Slavs unless action was taken promptly. He often had urged starting a

war against Russia, before the Czar modernized and rearmed his

empire. Yet Moltke also foresaw that in the modern age a war among

Great Powers would destroy Europe.

Until April 1 9 1 3 , Germany had an alternative war plan to wage

war against Russia only. No longer was that true. Moltke had his gen�

eral staff prepare a current war plan in 1 9 1 3 - 1 4 to deal with one

eventuality only: a two-front war against France and Russia. He had

good reason to keep details of the plan a closely held secret.

It will be remembered that in the first phase of the Moltke plan,

which followed some (but not all) of the main lines of Schlieffen's

1906 memorandum, Germany was to employ a large force in invad�

ing France through Belgium while a smaller but still significant force

blocked the path along which the Russians could be expected to

attack. Now, in 1 9 1 4 , Russians were able to move much more quickly

2 O 4 C O U N T D O W N

and in greater force than had been the case when Schlieffen had com�

posed his memorandum and when Moltke had taken office. That

made it all the more imperative that the entire Austrian army should

be deployed along the Russian front to help shield Germany when

war began.

Clearly that was a reason Moltke always had been a leading advo�

cate of the Austrian alliance, and why he developed a warm personal

relationship with his opposite number in Austria-Hungary, Conrad.

It was also why he assured the Austrians of Germany's support if Rus�

sia attacked. But he did not reveal what would be required of Austria-

Hungary.

Moltke kept his secrets, and Conrad kept his. As Conrad saw it—

or at least so he claimed later—Austria would crush Serbia while

Germany deterred Russia from interfering. His enemy—Austria's

enemy—was Serbia; he had no desire to fight Russia. What Moltke

did not tell Conrad was that if war came, Austria would have to sub�

ordinate its conflict with Serbia in order to devote itself entirely to

the combat on the Russian front.

Moltke had another secret. It was one he could not share even with

the Kaiser, the war minister, or the chief of the Kaiser's Army Cabi�

net. It had been devised for him, in large part, by his former assistant,

Erich Ludendorff. It was the plan to seize the fortress of Liege (in

Belgium) by surprise the moment that war was declared. Unless that

were done, the invasion of France and Belgium probably would fail—

and with it, the war. Had France or Belgium somehow forestalled

Germany's move, it therefore would have been a catastrophe.

As the military historian John Keegan tells us, the fortresses of

Liege and Namur, interdicting passage of the Meuse River, were "the

most modern in Europe." They were "constructed to resist attack by

the heaviest gun then existing.... Each consisted of a circle, twenty-

five miles in circumference, of independent forts, arranged . . . to

lend each other the protection of their own guns." He tells us that at

Liege there were four hundred guns, arrayed in twelve forts, "all pro�

tected by reinforced concrete and armour plate" and garrisoned by

forty thousand troops.

The sooner Germany started the war, the better for the Liege

operation. Every day it was postponed was a day in which France or

Belgium might divine or anticipate Germany's move. On the other

hand, Moltke had always argued that Germany had to postpone

S H O W D O W N I N B E R L I N 2 0 5

declaring war against Russia until Russia could be made to appear the

aggressor.

Which was it to be: sooner or later? In the last week of July 1 9 1 4

Moltke changed his mind from hour to hour and day to day, visibly

agonizing.

C H A P T E R 3 3 : J U L Y 2 6

T he Foreign Office building, situated at the corner of Down�

ing Street and rebuilt in the 1860s as an Italianate palace to

suit the Regency tastes of Lord Palmerston, did not house

the sort of demanding institution that required long hours of its

employees. They could sleep late; we are told by Zara Steiner, a his�

torian of the Foreign Office, that on weekdays "official hours were

from twelve to six."

On weekends one left for the country. On the weekend in question

the Prime Minister and the foreign secretary—and practically every�

body they knew—were in the countryside as usual. Asquith was play�

ing golf, and Grey was fishing for trout. Winston Churchill was with

his wife and children on the beach, building sand castles. So it was

remarkable that the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Arthur Nicolson,

in London, should have gone to his office to work on July 26, a Sun�

day.

The telegraphed dispatches that awaited him contained grim

news. Serbia had ordered mobilization the day before, even before

2 0 6

J U L Y 2 6 2 0 7

replying to the Austrian ultimatum; and from Vienna came reports

that Austria had broken relations with Serbia. "War is thought immi�

nent. Wildest enthusiasm prevails in Vienna," cabled the British

ambassador from the Hapsburg capital.

From St. Petersburg: "Russia cannot allow Austria to crush Serbia

and become predominant Power in the Balkans." According to the

cable, Serbia had ordered mobilization and Russia had ordered pre�

liminary preparations for mobilization. Historians in the years to

come were going to become experts on mobilizations, endlessly dis�

puting the nuances of difference among various forms of readiness

for war: of preparatory stages, of mobilizations less than full, and of

other postures short of marching on or firing upon a neighboring

country.

Nicolson swung into action. He had two expedients in mind, but

they were mutually exclusive: if he pushed one, he blocked the other.

So he had to choose. The one he did not adopt was to campaign for

direct talks between Austria and Russia, the two Great Powers that

were directly concerned. Instead, he proposed convening a confer�

ence in London of the ambassadors of the uninvolved Great Pow�

ers—Germany, Italy, and France, meeting with Britain—at which the

quarrel between Austria-Hungary and Serbia could be resolved

peacefully. This was the process that had brought a halt to the Balkan

wars of the year before. From his country house, Grey sent his go-

ahead to Nicolson, who cabled the suggestion to the relevant foreign

capitals.

Asquith told Venetia Stanley that he was concerned that "Russia is

trying to drag us in." He wrote to her: "The news this morning is that

Serbia had capitulated on the main points, but it is very doubtful if

any reservations will be accepted by Austria, who is resolved upon a

complete and final humiliation. The curious thing is that on many, if

not most of the points, Austria has a good and Serbia a very bad case.

But the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe (as the

Italians are the most perfidious) and there is a brutality about their

mode of procedure which will make most people think that it is a case

of a big Power wantonly bullying a little one. Anyhow, it is the most

dangerous situation of the last 40 years."

That was not necessarily the view of Asquith's cabinet. That night,

Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George was reported to

have told a friend otherwise: "He said that Austria had made

2 o 8 C O U N T D O W N

demands which no self-respecting nation could comply with . . . he

said the situation was serious, but that he thought there would be

peace—in fact, he thought so very strongly."

In Britain and the Origins of the First World War (1977), Zara Steiner,

looking at the weeks following the assassinations of June 28, 1 9 1 4 ,

suggests: "Only a calendar of events would catch the sense of rising

tension and illustrate the interaction between all the capitals which

ended in the breakdown of the European state system."

There is a strong element of truth in that insofar as Berlin and

Vienna were concerned. But there was no rising of tension day by day

in, for example, Paris or Rome or London. Austria and Germany suc�

cessfully kept the secret of their plot from the other Great Powers for

almost four weeks. From the killings the morning of June 28 until the

morning of July 24, there was no significant rise in the level of tension.

Then, suddenly, on the midsummer weekend of July 24, a full�

blown war crisis was sprung on Europe's leaders. It caught them

unawares. Until July 23, the British cabinet had spent no time at all

on foreign affairs; On July 26 the Chancellor of the Exchequer still

believed that peace would be preserved.

In Russia, two weekending statesmen ran into each other that Sun�

day: the German ambassador found himself about to board the same

train as Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister. It happened because

their summer houses were near to one another. The ambassador took

advantage of the situation to persuade Sazonov to reject Britain's pro�

posals to convene a conference of the powers: "a European forum." It

would be "unwieldy," argued the ambassador; the machinery would

work too slowly. Instead, Russia should negotiate directly with Aus�

tria. (London, it will be remembered, had decided not to launch a

campaign for direct negotiations because it would block the more

promising proposal for a conference.) According to Germany's ambas�

sador, Austria "does not think of swallowing Serbia, but only wants to

give her a well-merited lesson." Sazonov, reported the ambassador,

promised to follow the advice: no conference; direct negotiations.

Sazonov took a conciliatory line. He expressed willingness to see

almost all of Austria's demands granted. In fact, he proceeded to

postpone acting on the British conference proposal while he

explored the possibility of direct negotiations with the Dual Monar-

J U L Y 2 6 2 0 9

chy. But Austria refused to make any concessions. Sazonov had been

persuaded to waste a vital couple of days.

Britain. Members of the naval reserve left for home immediately

after their exercises. The fleets themselves were scheduled to dis�

perse Monday morning. Sunday, First Sea Lord Prince Louis of Bat-

tenberg spoke twice by telephone with First Lord of the Admiralty

Winston Churchill, who was at the seashore. Prince Louis gave him

news of Austria's rejection of the Serbian reply.

Either Churchill or Prince Louis then ordered the fleets not to

disperse but to remain as they were. Churchill came to London,

arriving at 10 p.m. He went to see Foreign Secretary Grey to ask

whether it would be helpful if he made a public announcement of the

order that had been given. Grey said yes. Churchill did so. It was a

shot across the bow, aimed at attracting Germany's attention.

Contrary to the views of his closest associates at the Foreign Office,

who were skeptical of German intentions, Grey tended to give Berlin

the benefit of the doubt. His strategy in 1 9 1 4 , as in 1 9 1 3 , was to move

toward a joint Anglo-German approach on the theory that otherwise

the Germans would see Britain as forming a bloc with France and

Russia. In other words, precisely because of the informal alliance

among Britain, France, and Russia, Britain had to move in the first

instance toward Germany so as not to appear to be taking sides.

Nonetheless, Berlin rebuffed Grey's conference proposal, claim�

ing that it would be an arbitration, a laying down of the law to Aus�

tria. Grey denied it, but Jagow refused to accept the denial.

Meanwhile a statement was published in Germany's quasi-official

publication, the North German Gazette, backing Austria fully

Nicolson, the British foreign office head, told Grey that "Berlin is

playing with us." Though Nicolson did not say so, Grey's strategy

would prove futile if Germany, instead of being a neutral like En�

gland, was a hidden belligerent—in fact, Austria's secret backer. And

that, indeed, was the case.

Paris. The political director of the French foreign ministry told the

German ambassador that "to any simple mind Germany's attitude

was inexplicable if it did not aim at war." The ambassador denied it,

but he knew nothing; Berlin had left him in the dark.

2 I O C O U N T D O W N

Vienna. Berchtold was urged by Jagow in Berlin to declare war

immediately, before the other powers stepped in to impose a peace

settlement. In turn, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister

attempted to put pressure on his army chief, Conrad, who had been a

persistent advocate of going to war in the past. Conrad claimed not

to be ready. In Conrad's account:

B E R C H T O L D : We should like to deliver the declaration of war on Serbia

as soon as possible so as to put an end to diverse influences. When do

you want the declaration of war?

i: Only when we have progressed far enough for operations to begin

immediately—on approximately August 1 2 .

B E R C H T O L D : T h e diplomatic situation will not hold as long as that.

Conrad replied that Austria had to hold back. Looking just at the

Russian situation—what did Russia intend?—it was necessary to wait

until at least August.4 or 5. "That will not do!" Berchtold exclaimed.

Germany's ambassador to Russia reported that he had held a long

conference with Sazonov. The Russian foreign minister had been

"conciliatory." He had stressed that he was ready to exhaust every

means necessary to prevent a war. He "urgently entreated" Germany,

too, to do whatever was needed to accomplish that goal. Though the

Serbs were fellow Slavs, Russian policy was not guided solely by its

"sympathies." It was guided by the need to uphold the balance of

power and to protect those interests that were vital.

The German ambassador reported: "I particularly pointed

o u t . . . that if Austria was really seeking a pretext for falling on Ser�

bia . . . we should already have heard of the commencement of some

action on the part of Austria."

It was an ingenious way of taking advantage of Austria's madden�

ing slowness to move. Vienna's civilian government was trying to get

its army to act, and Germany, too, was pushing the Austrians to take

up arms.

Berlin. Moltke, the chief of staff, was back at work with his chief

deputy from the morning of July 26. Moltke then went to the

Auswartiges Amt, the German foreign office, to review matters with

Jagow. During the course of the meeting, Moltke supplied Jagow

J U L Y 2 6 2 1 1

with a draft ultimatum to Belgium to be used if and when war began.

This envisaged a conflict with France, not with Serbia: a major war

rather than a local one.

Finally, Moltke met with the Chancellor, who had been on the

telephone almost continuously ever since returning the day before.

According to his wife, Moltke was "very dissatisfied" with the situ�

ation he found on his return. So were the other officers who returned

that weekend and who had been holding meetings and exchanging

views. In the three weeks that they deliberately had stayed away, Aus�

tria was supposed to have crushed Serbia, but instead had not even

made the first move. Russia, which was to have been kept out of

things, was taking preliminary military measures. Bethmann's plans

were falling apart. The presentation of a fait accompli—his original

plan—had not occurred. Localization of the conflict—his improvised

second plan—was not occurring either: Britain was considering

diplomatic initiatives, and Russia was thinking of taking action.

C H A P T E R 3 4 : J U L Y 2 7

K aiser Wilhelm II insisted on returning from his cruise in

northern waters. He cut short his voyage when it became

evident that his government was not keeping him fully

informed. Bethmann, trembling figuratively if not literally, met him

on his arrival to proffer his resignation. Wilhelm would not let him

off so easily. According to Biilow, Bethmann's predecessor, the Kaiser

said something like: "You have cooked the broth and now you will eat

it." Later, settled in his palace at Potsdam, Wilhelm brought himself

up to date on the diplomatic cables, and met with the leaders of his

government and of his armed forces.

According to the plan formulated largely by Bethmann on July

5- 6, Wilhelm should have returned to find the Hapsburg army in

occupation of Belgrade, supervising the carrying out of terms of sur�

render that had been agreed to by a crushed Serbia. It all would have

happened too quickly for outside powers to prevent it. It would have

been too late for them to do anything about it. Russia and its allies

would have bowed before the inevitable.

J U L Y 2 7 2 I 3

But that was not what had happened. What Wilhelm found was

that Austria-Hungary had passed up a chance to humble Serbia

peacefully. Now Serbia was readying to take a stand, the British fleet

was mobilized, and Russia had taken the first step toward preparation

for war. Britain was pushing for a diplomatic conference that might

settle the dispute on a basis less favorable than the terms Austria

already had rejected on July 25.

As they returned from their staged holidays, the leaders of the

German-speaking powers had to decide upon their next move. This

was to prove a decisive week. What key members of the German and

Austrian governments identified as their immediate danger was that

Grey might succeed in his four-power mediation proposal, thus pre�

venting the outbreak of war. In the foreign offices of Vienna and

Berlin, July 27 saw the beginning of a peace scare.

For itself, Germany had rejected Grey's conference notion. The

German government, agreed to forward the proposal to Austria-

Hungary, however, while it secretly sabotaged Grey's efforts to get

Vienna to agree.

Bethmann explained to one of his officials why he felt obliged even

to forward the proposal. "As we have already rejected one British

proposal for a conference, it is not possible for us to refuse" to pass

on the latest idea. "If we rejected every attempt at mediation the

whole world would hold us responsible for the conflagration and rep�

resent us as the real warmongers. That would also make our position

impossible here in Germany, where we have got to appear as though

the war had been forced upon us." Bethmann, who heretofore had

been speaking of Austria going to war, suddenly was speaking of Ger�

many going to war.

The German government forwarded Britain's peace plans while

privately advising the Austrians to pay no attention to them. The

Austrian ambassador in Berlin cabled Berchtold in Vienna with a

message "in strictest privacy" from Jagow, who said that Germany

would soon forward to Vienna mediation proposals from Grey. "The

German government assures in the most decided way that it does not

identify itself with the propositions, that on the contrary it advises to

disregard them, but that it must pass them on, to satisfy the English

government." Berlin hoped to keep Britain from siding with France

and Russia: "If Germany candidly told Sir E. Grey that it refused to

2 I 4 C O U N T D O W N

communicate England's peace plan, that objective might not be

achieved."

Jagow reported that Grey had asked him to forward a plea for

modification of Austria's ultimatum. He explained to his colleagues

that he had sent the message to his ambassador in Vienna without

instructing him to deliver it to the Austrians. Thus, Jagow concluded,

he could truthfully tell Grey that he had forwarded the British note

"to Vienna."

Bethmann continued to take the line he had the week before: the

other powers should stay out of the conflict between Austria and Ser�

bia. Britain should use its influence, therefore, to persuade Russia to

accept "localization." Grey pointed out that Serbia, in its reply to

Austria's demands, had conceded practically everything; and Grey

ascribed this to the pressure Russia had brought to bear upon Serbia.

At Britain's request, Russia had restrained Serbia; now Britain was

asking Germany to use its influence to restrain Austria.

But Germany rejected Grey's proposal. Jagow claimed that Russia

and Austria were about to enter into negotiations, and that their out�

come should be awaited before any other move was taken. As before,

he was using a negotiations proposal to block the conference pro�

posal.

London. At a cabinet meeting that morning Grey told his col�

leagues that the moment had come to make up their minds whether

they were prepared to stand by France and Russia if it came to a war.

This was the first cabinet conclave devoted entirely to the war crisis

in Europe. The governing Liberal party tended to be pacifist in out�

look. No treaty bound Britain to come to France's aid, and the cabi�

net overwhelmingly was opposed to intervening in a European war.

Grey was still focused on preventing the outbreak of war, but

believed that if he could not prevent it, Britain would have to partic�

ipate in it. Prime Minister Asquith was strongly disposed to support

his foreign secretary, but his chief concern was to keep his Liberal

party united behind whatever policy was adopted.

After the cabinet meeting, Winston Churchill set about formulat�

ing plans for ensuring the readiness of the naval service. He was in his

element. He had battlefield experience in India and the Sudan, and as

a civilian his remarkable deeds in the Boer War had helped launch his

J U L Y 2 7 2 I 5

political career. Though not a warmonger, he gloried in the clash of

arms.

That afternoon he set about placing guards at vulnerable points,

and taking precautions against surprise attacks. His Admiralty joined

with the War Office in convening a small group to consider how best

to ask the press for self-censorship; there was to be no disclosure of

information useful to an enemy.

The press lord George Riddell, who was among those present,

later recorded in his diary that a government spokesman "apprised us

that the continental situation was becoming very serious. He said

that it might be necessary to move troops and ships . . . secretly" and

asked how to keep the news from becoming public. Riddell drafted a

letter to the newspapers which was promulgated "and was the first

official intimation to the Press of the impending war. The result was

remarkable. No information was divulged, and the Germans were

unacquainted with what was being done."

That night Churchill put his forces on informal alert. To the far-

flung fleets of the Royal Navy around the world he cabled: "Secret.

European political situation makes war between Triple Alliance and

Triple Entente Powers by no means impossible. This is not the

Warning Telegram, but be prepared to shadow possible hostile men-

of-war. . . . Measure is purely precautionary."

Paris. The German and Austrian ambassadors in Paris were kept in

the dark about their own government's plans and thinking. This

added an extra measure of confusion to events as seen in that effec�

tively leaderless capital, whose heads of government still were at sea.

Apparently, the Austrian ambassador was amazed that his own

government had rejected Serbia's note of near-surrender. He told his

superiors in Vienna: "The far-reaching compliance of Serbia, which

was not regarded as possible here, has made a strong impression. Our

attitude gives rise to the opinion that we want war at any price."

London. Lichnowsky, Germany's ambassador in London, as an

Anglophile, was not always taken into Berlin's confidence. By July 27

he was strongly questioning the judgment of his superiors. How

could he advocate localization of the conflict, as the foreign office

told him to do, when the feud between Serbia and Austria could not

2 I 6 C O U N T D O W N

be localized—and when Britain knew that? Austria-Hungary had

picked its quarrel in such a way as to force Russia to intervene. The

small war might be leading to a big one. "Our entire future relations

with England depend on the success" of Grey's move for a confer�

ence. If Berlin were to sacrifice everything else to its Austrian

alliance, then "it would never again be possible to restore those ties

which have of late bound [Britain and Germany] . . . together."

Grey's tendency in a crisis had been to reach out for a partnership

with Germany in dealing with it. Lichnowsky's point to his home

government was that, if Berlin kept on course, in the future Grey

would no longer do so. Senior officials at the British Foreign Office

already were critical of Grey in this regard. So were some foreign

leaders.

At dinner that evening, a Russian diplomat told a British statesman

that "war is inevitable and by the fault of England; that if England

had at once declared her solidarity with Russia and France and her

intention to fight if necessary, Germany and Austria would have hes�

itated."

Berlin. At least since the war council of December 1 9 1 2 , Ger�

many's military leaders had focused on blaming Russia for the Euro�

pean conflict they foresaw and regarded as inevitable. This had been,

and remained, Moltke's line. It was echoed on July 2 7 by Admiral von

Miiller: Germany should, he told his diary, "remain calm to allow

Russia to put herself in the wrong, but then not to shrink from war if

it were inevitable." Bethmann agreed with the military on this: "In all

events Russia must ruthlessly be put in the wrong," he told Wilhelm.

Vienna. The British ambassador, after conversations with other

ambassadors, cabled Grey that "the Austro-Hungarian note was so

drawn up as to make war inevitable; that the Austro-Hungarian gov�

ernment are fully resolved to have war with Serbia; that they consider

their position as a Great Power to be at stake" and that "this country

has gone wild with joy at the prospect of war with Serbia."

A

C H A P T E R 3 5 : J U L Y 2 8

Vienna. Pursuant to a decision reached July 25, Austria-Hungary

ordered partial mobilization on July 28. Half of the Hapsburg armies

eventually were ordered to take up positions along the Serbian fron�

tier. This was done in conformity with the Austrian General Staff's

plan for war against Serbia only. It was a gamble on localization.

Conrad requested Berchtold to ask Germany to prevent Russia from

intervening.

Germany's leaders continued the discussions that had begun over the

weekend. By July 28, it was clear that despite differences among

them, they were in the mood to take action. They were disposed to

give up on waiting for Austria to do something. For themselves, they

were resolved to move. According to the war minister, "It has now

been decided to fight the matter through, regardless of the cost."

They were not talking about fighting Serbia. They were talking

about fighting Russia and France.

2 1 7

2 I 8 C O U N T D O W N

The most extreme position was taken at times by Moltke. As he

had in the past, he argued for a preventive war. His position was that

war was inevitable, that time was running against Germany, and that

within two years or so the odds would shift: in 1 9 1 4 , Russia and

France could be beaten, but in 1 9 1 6 or 1 9 1 7 , Germany might lose.

Germany, therefore, should strike now.

The July crisis, as Moltke saw it, had evolved, happily for Ger�

many, in such a way as to place it in a "singularly favorable situation."

Harvests were in, the annual training of recruits had finished, and

Russia and France would not be really ready for two years. Austria

had put itself in a position such that it could not help fighting at Ger�

many's side, and that was absolutely vital. As Moltke summed it up:

"we shall never hit it again so well as we do now."

On the morning of July 28, Kaiser Wilhelm, who had returned from

his cruise the day before, read—for the first time—the Serbian reply

to Austria's note. It persuaded him, he wrote in longhand to Jagow at

the foreign office, that Austria had gotten almost everything it

wanted. In his view it was "a capitulation of the most humiliating

kind," and as a result, every cause for war falls to the ground." A few sen�

tences later he repeated himself: "every cause for war has vanished."

There no longer was any need to start a war. In fact, according to

Wilhelm, unlike Berchtold "J would never have ordered a mobiliza�

tion on that basis.

"Nevertheless, the piece of paper, like its contents, can be consid�

ered as of little value so long as it is not translated into deeds. The

Serbs are Orientals, therefore liars, tricksters, and masters of eva�

sion." So it should be agreed that the Austrian army would temporar�

ily occupy a part of Serbia including Belgrade, as a hostage, until

Serbia kept its word. On that basis, wrote the Kaiser, "I am ready to

mediate for peace." This resolution of matters would give the Haps�

burg armies, once in possession of Belgrade, the satisfaction of

appearing to have scored a success. In mediating for peace, wrote

Wilhelm, he would be careful to safeguard Austria-Hungary's honor

and self-esteem.

The Kaiser ordered Jagow to inform Vienna that he was prepared to

mediate the Austria-Serbia conflict on the basis he described. The Aus�

trians were to be told that there no longer was any reason to go to war.

The Kaiser also notified Moltke, in writing, of the same conclusion.

J U L Y 2 8 2 I 9

As Christopher Clark, one of the Kaiser's recent biographers,

writes: "Perhaps the most striking thing about this letter to Jagow of

28 July is that it was not acted upon. . . . His instructions to Jagow

had no influence on Berlin's representations to Vienna. Bethmann

did cable Vienna, repeating some of Wilhelm's views, but omitting

the most important one: that Austria should stop, not go to war, and

let the Kaiser mediate the quarrel with Serbia instead."

A Bavarian general noted in his diary that there was "unfortu�

nately . . . peaceful news. The Kaiser absolutely wants peace.... He

even wants to influence Austria and to stop her continuing further."

According to War Minister von Falkenhayn, the Kaiser "made

confused speeches which give the clear impression that he no longer

wants war and is determined to [avoid it], even if it means leaving

Austria-Hungary in the lurch." But Falkenhayn reminded the Kaiser

that he "no longer had control of the affair in his own hands." In

other circumstances this would have seemed shockingly insubordi�

nate. But ever since the Daily Telegraph affair of 1908,* the emperor's

position had been precarious. In May 1 9 1 4 , only two months before

Falkenhayn's reminder, Edward House, President Wlson's envoy,

had reported from Berlin that the "military oligarchy" were supreme,

were "determined on war," and were prepared to "dethrone the

Kaiser the moment he showed indications of taking a course that

would lead to peace." Of course Wilhelm, whose grip on reality was

fragile at best, may not have been fully alive to the perils of his posi�

tion. Alternatively, House may have exaggerated.

But there can be little doubt that much was going on of which the

emperor was unaware. Indeed, among the things that Wilhelm did

not know was that, the day before, Jagow had cabled Vienna urg�

ing—indeed, practically ordering—the Austrian government to

declare war on Serbia immediately Jagow warned that the English

proposal for a conference to keep the peace could not be resisted

much longer. The German foreign minister neither consulted the

Kaiser before sending this warning nor informed him afterwards that

it had been sent.

In Austria, too, a reluctant monarch was gotten around. Emperor

Franz Joseph was hesitant about declaring war, and his ministers

were obliged to obtain his assent in order to do so. Berchtold

*See p. 73.

2 2 O C O U N T D O W N

obtained that assent by reporting—falsely—that Serbian troops had

opened fire on Austrian forces. Actually—and it was only one iso�

lated incident—it was Austrian troops who fired on Serbs.

Vienna. It was WAR. The decision had been reached the day

before. Responding to the pressure from the German foreign office,

Austria at long last declared war on Serbia. According to the German

ambassador, it was done "chiefly to frustrate any attempt at interven�

tion."

As with so many things, the Austrians did it awkwardly. Sending

the declaration of war by an envoy under a flag of truce was not feasi�

ble because, until the declaration was received, the countries were

not yet at war, so a white flag was inappropriate. Having no represen�

tative in Belgrade anymore, the Hapsburg government sent its decla�

ration to the Serbian government by cable. There was no assurance

that it would be received—or would be received by the right party. In

the event, the Serbian government, once it received the curious

telegram, cabled to the major European capitals to inquire whether it

was a hoax. The declaration of war made reference to the alleged

attack by Serbian troops on Austrian forces.

Conrad, Austria's chief of staff, had opposed issuing the declara�

tion. He wanted to wait two weeks or so until his armies were ready

to march. But, overtaken by international diplomacy, Austria-

Hungary had run out of time.

That night the Austrian artillery, briefly and ineffectively, bom�

barded Belgrade across the narrow Danube River frontier.

Paris. France knew nothing of the war crisis; the news of which

everyone spoke was that Mme Caillaux had been acquitted!

St. Petersburg. Russia initiated mobilization in four military dis�

tricts that previously had been alerted in "preparation for war steps."

Unaware that it was his own foreign office that was undoing his

efforts to restrain the Austrians, Wilhelm sent a message to the Czar.

In it he reminded his cousin that "we both, you and I, have a common

interest, as well as all Sovereigns" in punishing the Serbs for killing

members of a ruling family. "In this, politics play no part at all." But,

the Kaiser continued, "On the other hand, I fully understand how

J U L Y 2 8 2 2 1

difficult it is for you and your government to face the drift of public

opinion." Russian nationalism, incalculable, but a force nonetheless,

was a fact of political life for Nicholas. (Whether or not Wilhelm

knew it, pressure to mobilize also was being exerted by Russia's Gen�

eral Staff.) The Kaiser told the Czar of his "hearty and tender friend�

ship" and assured him, "I am exerting my utmost influence to induce

the Austrians to deal straightly."

This message—the first in the Wily/Nicky correspondence that

took place after Austria declared war on Serbia—crossed with one

from the Czar: "Am glad you are back . . . I appeal to you to help me.

An ignoble war has been declared on a weak country. . . . [S]oon I

shall be overwhelmed by pressure brought upon me . . . to take

extreme measures which will lead to war. To try and avoid such a

calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friend�

ship to do what you can to stop your allies from going too far."

London. Grey swung back to the view that direct negotiations

between Russia and Austria afforded the best possibility of keeping

the peace.

Berlin. Bethmann turned his attention to putting Germany in a

position to fight a major war. Domestic discord was the chief obsta�

cle, so now the government entered into talks with the Socialist

Democratic party (S.RD.) aimed at securing agreement from

working-class representatives to remain loyal in the event of war.

This was a genuine concern. The Executive Committee of the

S.P.D., denouncing "the frivolous provocation of the Austro-

Hungarian government," had called out its supporters into the

streets. Its newspaper predicted that war would bring revolution in

its wake. Demonstrations in Berlin on July 28, which the police

attempted to break up, brought violence to the capital itself and

looked to be merely a foretaste of more disturbances to come.

However, Bethmann scored a success in negotiating an agreement

with the S.RD. leadership to fall in line behind the government in

this moment of national danger.

Meanwhile, the Kaiser, still unaware that his decision for peace

had been sabotaged by his subordinates, confusedly wondered

whether he had acted too late. He remarked that "the ball is rolling"

and "can no longer be stopped."

2 2 2 C O U N T D O W N

London. Churchill reported to King George V the various mea�

sures taken by the Admiralty to place the navy "upon a preparatory

precautionary basis." After detailing many of the steps taken, he

assured his monarch: "It is needless to emphasize that these measures

in no way prejudice an intervention or take for granted that the peace

of the great powers will not be preserved."

At midnight Churchill wrote to his wife: "My darling one and

beautiful, everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse."

Britain was not, he continued, "in any serious degree responsible for

the wave of madness which has swept the mind of Christendom."

Prime Minister Asquith wrote to his confidante, Venetia Stanley,

that he had just been told that the French government was ordering

heavy sales of securities on the London Exchange in order to raise

cash: "It looks ominous." The English house of Rothschild, with

whom the order was placed, refused to execute it. Then Asquith

received a cable reporting "that Austria had ordered war!" Venetia

Stanley sometimes told the Prime Minister that there were days

when she would like to trade places with him; this, he suggested,

probably would not be such a day.

C H A P T E R 3 6 : J U L Y 2 9

Potsdam. Willy cabled Nicky that Russia really could stay out of

the conflict. "I think a direct understanding between your govern�

ment and Vienna possible and desirable" and—the Kaiser did not

know that this was untrue—"my government is continuing its exer�

tions to promote it." Wlhelm cautioned, however, that if Russia

were to take military measures that threatened Austria, such mea�

sures would bring war rather than peace.

Nicky replied, indicating what puzzled him was that what he was

hearing from the Kaiser was not what he was hearing from the

Kaiser's ambassador. "Please clear up this difference," he wrote.

Nicholas urged that the Austro-Serbian conflict be referred to The

Hague* for adjudication. "I trust to your wisdom and friendship."

Questions arose in the minds of Austrian generals now that it was

recognized in Vienna that Russia really might intervene if Serbia

*His reference would have been to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, established at The

Hague by the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes (1899).

2 2 3

2 2 4 C O U N T D O W N

were threatened with destruction. These questions were directed to

German Foreign Minister Jagow. A couple of days before, he had

given official assurances to the Russian government that Berlin had

no objection to a Russian partial mobilization so long as it was not

directed against Germany.

The Austrians now pointed out to their German colleagues that a

partial Russian mobilization had been ordered that was directed

against Austria. Were it to remain in effect would that not mean that

when Austria sent its armies against Serbia, the Dual Monarchy

would be left defenseless against a Russian attack from behind? Con�

rad still hoped that Germany would deter Russia, and rashly made his

dispositions on the assumption that Germany would succeed in

doing so.

In conversation with a Russian envoy, Jagow therefore reversed his

position. In view of Russia's partial mobilization, "Germany was like�

wise obliged to mobilize; there was therefore nothing left to be done

and the diplomatists must now leave the talking to the cannon." If

this was intended to persuade the Russians to roll back their partial

mobilization, it failed of its purpose.

Moltke delivered to his government a memo he had written on the

current situation. He had expected, as had his military colleagues,

that Austria would not commence hostilities for another couple of

weeks. Like the Kaiser, he had not known that Jagow had been pres�

suring Vienna to act at once. Therefore Moltke had been taken by

surprise by the Austrian declaration of war. In his memo, he analyzed

the consequences of Austria's move. When Austria moved, it was

bound to initiate a series of events that would bring Germany into a

war against Russia. According to Moltke, "the civilized states of

Europe will begin to tear one another to pieces." It now would take a

miracle to prevent the outbreak of a "war which will annihilate the

civilization of almost the whole of Europe for decades to come."

Yet it was a price he was prepared to pay. His question to his gov�

ernment essentially was, did it still believe that it could localize the

conflict and thus avert the dire consequences he foresaw?

The Kaiser summoned Germany's military leaders to Potsdam to dis�

cuss his conversations with Bethmann. The Kaiser said that his

Chancellor, in the words of Tirpitz, who was there, "had collapsed

J U L Y 2 0 2 2 5

completely" and Wilhelm had "expressed himself without reserve

regarding Bethmann's incompetence."

Bethmann, in fact, had set two chief goals for himself. One of them

had been to secure acceptance of the war policy by labor and the

Left—which he had done. The other was to get Britain's pledge of

neutrality—which he had not done. Keeping Britain out of the war

was important to Bethmann though not at all important to Ger�

many's military leaders.

According to Tirpitz, at the Potsdam conference, "The Kaiser

informed the company that the Chancellor had proposed that, in

order to keep England neutral, we should sacrifice the German fleet

for an agreement with England, which he, the Kaiser, had refused."

It was decided at the conference to do nothing until Vienna

responded to the Kaiser's proposal to halt in Belgrade and then stop

the war. Bethmann had finally sent the proposal, while sabotaging it.

He had forwarded it with instructions to his ambassador to make sure

the Austrians understood that Germany did not wish to "restrain"

them; he wanted to underline for Vienna that the proposal was only

for propaganda purposes.

But after the Kaiser had upbraided Bethmann at Potsdam and the

Chancellor had collapsed emotionally, Bethmann tried desperately to

reverse himself. He threw himself into an effort to get Vienna to do

precisely what he had let Vienna understand only the day before that

it should not do. At 10:18 p.m. he sent an open cable to Austria-

Hungary asking if his halt-in-Belgrade message of the day before had

been received. Twelve minutes later he impatiently cabled again.

By now the Chancellor was aware that, independently of one

another, both Britain and Italy had proposed plans to keep the peace

that were quite similar to the Kaiser's halt-in-Belgrade plan. It now

looked as though, if only Bethmann and Jagow had loyally carried

out Wilhelm's instructions the day before and brought Germany's

full weight to bear upon its ally, the war crisis would have been

resolved.

Instead, on the evening of the twenty-ninth, Bethmann, if he were

to escape the Kaiser's wrath, had to hope that Austria-Hungary, too,

would be willing to change course.

To his ambassador in Austria, Bethmann now cabled: "We are, of

course, prepared to do our duty as allies, but must decline to let our-

2 2 6 C O U N T D O W N

selves be dragged by Vienna, irresponsibly and without regard to our

advice, into a world conflagration." He told his ambassador to per�

suade Berchtold that Austria should at least make a show: "In order

to prevent general catastrophe, or at any rate put Russia in the

wrong, we must urgently advise that Vienna should initiate and pur�

sue conversations."

But at the same time Moltke was cabling Conrad to urge a full

Austrian mobilization. Perhaps this showed Moltke's justified con�

cern that Austria might mobilize against Serbia rather than Russia.

Yet Berchtold was right to ask, as he did when he saw the Chancel�

lor's message: "Who rules in Berlin—Moltke or Bethmann?" One

cabled war while the other cabled peace. In any event, Bethmann was

too late. His cable arrived hours after Vienna, responding to Moltke,

ordered full mobilization.

Earlier that day, in London, Grey had asked the German ambassador

to come by to see him. The foreign secretary and Lichnowsky con�

versed as old friends, but in contemplating the outbreak of a Euro�

pean war, Grey "did not wish him to be misled by the friendly tone of

our conversation—which I hoped would continue—into thinking

that we should stand aside" and that "I did not wish to be open to any

reproach from him that the friendly tone of all our conversations had

misled him or his Government into supposing that we should not

take action."

In diplomatic language, this threatened war. But Grey knew that,

at least for the moment, his government was not behind him on this.

It was in the course of this conversation with Lichnowsky that

Grey made his own halt-in-Belgrade proposal, which was so similar

to Kaiser Wilhelm's. When Lichnowsky reported this to him, the

Kaiser commented: "We have been trying to accomplish this for

days, in vain." He did not know that Bethmann and Jagow had

undercut him in Vienna on July 27 and 28, and that the proposal had

been urged seriously only for hours, not days.

Lichnowsky reported that London was firmly convinced that

"unless Austria is willing to enter upon a discussion of the Serbian

question a world war is inevitable." In Grey's view, " If war breaks out

it will be the greatest catastrophe that the world has ever seen." The

Kaiser's comment on this was that it would be England's fault; all

Britain had to do was give the word, he said, and France and Russia

J U L Y 2 9

would quiet down and there would be no war." "England alone" he

wrote, "bears the responsibility for peace and war."

"It is one of the ironies of the case," wrote Asquith to his friend Vene�

tia Stanley, "that we being the only Power who has made so much as

a constructive suggestion on the direction of peace, are blamed by

both Germany and Russia for causing the outbreak of war. Germany

says: 'if you say you will be neutral, France and Russia wouldn't dare

to fight,' and Russia says: 'if you boldly declare that you will side with

us, Germany and Austria will at once draw in their horns.' Neither of

course is true."

That day the cabinet approved issuing a general alert, which was

sent to British bases around the world. Various and extensive precau�

tions were taken. In technical terms, the "War Book" was opened by

the secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence. Yet most cabi�

net members intended to keep Britain out of the conflict.

Winston Churchill feared that opinion in the cabinet and in the

governing Liberal party was still inclined to neutrality. Secretly he

sent word to his closest Conservative friend, F. E. Smith, asking him

to sound out his party's leadership on the possibility of forming a

coalition government supported by pro-intervention Liberals—in all

likelihood a minority within their own party—and all Conservatives.

Smith undertook to speak to the other party leaders when he was

scheduled to see them two days later for a country weekend.

Churchill had more pressing concerns. As First Lord of the Admi�

ralty, he worried that the navy was vulnerable to surprise attack. He

wanted to move the fleets to their wartime stations in the well-

protected north. But, he later recalled, he did not want to ask cabinet

approval for such a move, which might be construed as provocative.

Instead, he went to see the Prime Minister with his proposal, and

decided to construe a sort of grunt from Asquith as approval.

The move was made in secrecy, and the crucial part of the journey

to safety took place at night—in Churchill's account, "as darkness

fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute

blackness through the narrow straits, bearing with them into the

broad waters of the North the safeguard" of Britain's forces.

Paris. Jean Jaures, pacifist idol of the French Left, was assassinated

by a nationalist fanatic. For more than a week, Jaures had been prais-

2 2 8 C O U N T D O W N

ing the efforts of the Poincare-Viviani government to keep the peace.

Unexpectedly his death unified the country behind its government.

Berlin. At a late hour—indeed, close to midnight—Bethmann

summoned the British ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, to his resi�

dence. The Chancellor asked Goschen to transmit an offer to Lon�

don: if Britain agreed to remain neutral in the war that might soon

commence, Germany would respect the independence and integrity

of Holland, and would not seek to acquire French territories—a

pledge from which the French colonies were excluded. Goschen did

convey the message to the Foreign Office, where it was received the

following morning and angered Grey when he read it.

C H A P T E R 3 7 : J U L Y 3 0

F rance's Ambassador Paleologue in St. Petersburg has been

blamed for years by historians—wrongly, we now believe—for

having failed during the night of July 29-30 to notify his gov�

ernment that Russia was mobilizing. Research by Jean Stengers has

shown that the Russians—distrusting Paleologue—did not tell him.

When France did learn of the impending move, it was too late to stop

the Russians.

Thursday, July 30, was a day that many historians later were to regard

as fateful, and it began badly. The night before, the German govern�

ment, belatedly falling in with the Kaiser, had sent a message to

Vienna telling Austria-Hungary to accept the halt-in-Belgrade for�

mula for pulling back from war—either that or lose Germany's sup�

port. But Berchtold claimed to be unable to give a reply for the time

being. It was especially frustrating because, as Wilhelm noted, Ger�

many, Britain, and Russia all seemed to agree on the halt-in-Belgrade

proposal.

2 2 9

2 3 ° C O U N T D O W N

Wilhelm felt discouraged. News reached him that Austria-

Hungary was willing to hold talks with Russia; "all too late, I fear"

was his comment. "Begin! Now!" he exclaimed. Interpreting such

remarks, in his own fashion, Bethmann urged Berchtold to at least go

through the motions of seeking a peaceful settlement, for other�

wise—if Vienna said no—Bethmann argued, "It will hardly be possi�

ble any longer to place the guilt of the outbreak of a European war on

Russia's shoulders." The Kaiser was attempting to mediate an end to

the crisis only because "he could not refuse to do so without creating

the incontrovertible suspicion that we wanted war." He added that if

"Vienna declines everything, Vienna will be giving documentary evi�

dence that it absolutely wants a war . . . while Russia remains free of

responsibility. That would place us, in the eyes of our own people, in

an untenable position."

Meanwhile the Kaiser was enraged by the response his mediation

efforts were receiving in St. Petersburg because he misunderstood

what was happening. At dawn he awakened to find a message from

Nicholas informing him that Russia had ordered the partial mobi�

lization decided upon on July 25: the mobilization in four districts

facing Austria-Hungary. According to the Czar, "the military mea�

sures which have now come into force were decided five days ago."

They were, in other words, the measures Russia's Council of Minis�

ters had envisaged but not immediately adopted when informed that

Vienna had rejected Serbia's partial acceptance of the Austrian ulti�

matum. Russia had stood still ever since, giving negotiations a

chance. These were not new measures or additional measures; they

were the only measures Russia had taken—and they had just been

taken. Mobilization was only about to begin.

Wilhelm misunderstood. He believed the Czar was informing him

that Russia had been mobilizing for five days, and therefore was

ahead of Germany, which was still hanging back. "So that is almost a

week ahead of us," protested the Kaiser. "And these are supposed to

be of defense against Austria, who is not attacking him!!! I cannot

commit myself to mediation any more, since the Czar, who appealed

for it, has at the same time been secretly mobilizing behind my back."

To Nicholas's plea, "We need your strong pressure on Austria," Wil�

helm scribbled, "No, there is no thought of anything of that sort!!!"

The Czar, according to Wilhelm, "has simply been acting a part

J U L Y 3 0 2 3 I

and leading us up the garden path!"—leading the Kaiser to conclude:

"That means I have got to mobilize as well!"

But the Kaiser later replied in a civil tone to the Czar. Wilhelm

said: "I have gone to the utmost limits of the possible in my efforts to

save peace. . . . Even now, you can still save the peace of Europe by

stopping your military measures."

The German ambassador in St. Petersburg warned the Czar that

mobilization by Russia would bring about German mobilization. In

this, the German government was overreacting. Russian mobiliza�

tion did not pose the deadly danger that German mobilization

would. For Germany, mobilization meant war; for Russia, as its gov�

ernment explained to the Germans, it did not. "Russia's armies," as

an academic authority recently has pointed out, could "remain

mobile behind their frontier almost indefinitely." And the German

government really knew that.

St. Petersburg. Sazonov telephoned the Czar to ask for an immedi�

ate appointment. He then traveled to Tsarskoe Selo, the Czar's

palace, where he solemnly advised his monarch that war had become

unavoidable and that general mobilization was required. Reluctantly,

the Czar agreed and Sazonov gave the necessary orders.

The German military plenipotentiary at the St. Petersburg

embassy reported: "I have the impression that they [the Russians]

have mobilized here from a dread of coming events without any

aggressive intentions and are now frightened at what they have

brought about." To Kaiser Wilhelm, that apparently had the ring of

truth. "Right, that is it" was his comment.

The Czar, reacting to the Kaiser's messages, rescinded full mobiliza�

tion. He ordered his generals to swing back to partial mobilization.

What next? The Russian Council of Ministers did not meet, but indi�

vidual leaders offered their views to their sovereign. There were per�

suasive voices on all sides. Sazonov joined with the generals to urge a

general mobilization, which the indecisive and unhappy Czar, chang�

ing his mind again, finally ordered. The Russian army's chief of staff

famously said, "I w i l l . . . smash my telephone" so that he could not

"be found to give any contrary orders for a new postponement of

general mobilization."

2 3 2 C O U N T D O W N

Bethmann understood that Russia's move was no cause for alarm.

He told the Prussian State Ministers that "although the Russian

mobilization had been declared, her mobilization measures cannot

be compared with those of the West European states . . . Moreover

Russia does not intend to wage war, but has only been forced to take

these measures because of Austria."

The German and Austrian chiefs of staff were in touch with one

another, and Moltke cautioned the impatient Conrad: "War must not

be declared on Russia." Instead the two German-speaking empires

should "wait for Russia to attack."

Meanwhile Bethmann was arguing for postponement while

Moltke, who had tended toward postponement half of the time that

week, reversed himself. Now Moltke suddenly was in favor of going

ahead. "His changes of mood are hardly explicable or not at all,"

noted a disgusted Falkenhayn.

By the evening, the Kaiser had learned of Grey's warning to the

German ambassador in London the evening before. Grey, speaking

only for himself, gave his opinion that if France were endangered,

Britain would intervene. Since it was widely known in government

circles that Germany, in the event of war against Russia, planned to

attack and crush France first before turning around and invading

Russia, Grey was saying that England would support its fellow

Entente powers, Russia and France, against the Triple Alliance pow�

ers, Germany and Austria. Once again the Kaiser exploded in rage.

"Irresponsibility and weakness are to plunge the world into the most

terrible war, aimed in the last resort at ruining Germany," he

claimed. "For no doubt remains in my mind: England, Russia and

France . . . are in league to wage a war of annihilation against us, tak�

ing the Austro-Serbian conflict as a pretext... the stupidity and

clumsiness of our ally has been turned into a noose for our ne cks....

And we have fallen into the snare."

London. The keenly awaited debate on Ireland, scheduled to be

held in the House of Commons in the afternoon, was expected to

lead to a civil war in Britain. But earlier in the day the Opposition's

leaders met with Asquith and reached agreement to show a united

front in view of European dangers. This was a turnabout too fast for

the rank and file to grasp. Violet Asquith, the Prime Minister's

daughter, along with her stepmother, Margot, attended the Ladies'

J U L Y 3 0 2

3 3

Gallery of the House, and found it "packed with expectant and

excited women" who gave "a gasp of astonishment" when the Prime

Minister rose to speak of postponing the Irish debate. "These words

produced bewilderment in the Ladies' Gallery," noted Violet. "Many

of its occupants had been busily engaged in preparations for the

impending civil war—attending Red Cross classes, rolling bandages

and making splints and slings, etc. One Ulster matron Lady M.

(whose figure was particularly well adapted for the purpose) was

reputed to have smuggled rifles galore into Belfast under her petti�

coats." They were aghast at the news of postponement and uncom�

prehending.

Paris. Back from their long voyage, and not yet caught up on all the

news of what had happened during their absence, France's leaders

attempted to apply the brakes to fast-moving events. With President

Poincare's approval, Prime Minister Viviani cabled to the Russian

government cautionary advice: "in the precautionary measures and

defensive measures to which Russia believes herself obliged to resort,

she should not immediately proceed to any measure which might

offer Germany a pretext for a total or partial mobilization of her

forces." France itself pulled back its armed forces six miles from the

Franco-German frontier.

London. "The European situation is at least one degree worse than

it was yesterday," noted the Prime Minister, "and has not been

improved by a rather shameless attempt on the part of Germany to

buy our neutrality during the war by promises that she will not annex

French territory (except colonies) or Holland & Belgium. There is

something very crude & almost childlike about German diplomacy.

Meanwhile the French are beginning to press in the opposite sense,

as the Russians have been doing for some time. The City, wh. is in a

terrible state of depression and paralysis, is for the time being all

against English intervention. I think the prospect very black today."

C H A P T E R 3 8 : J U L Y 3 1

J ules Cambon, France's veteran ambassador in Berlin, cabled his

government that Germany was about to start a war without

waiting for Russia to mobilize first.

News of the Russian general mobilization reached Vienna but failed

of its effect; it did not deter the Hapsburg Empire from proceeding,

however slowly, with its intended invasion of Serbia. The combined

cabinets of the Dual Monarchy—its Common Ministerial Council—

met, considered the news, and determined to go ahead as planned

despite the likelihood that in doing so it would provoke Russia to

intervene.

In apparent disregard of the Russian threat, Hapsburg armies con�

tinued to march south toward Serbia. Conrad had planned, if the

Czar ordered mobilization, to shift troops to the Russian front; unac�

countably, he did not do so. This placed the whole burden of defend�

ing Austria against Russia on Germany's shoulders, which may have

been the point. Samuel Williamson suggests Conrad aimed at attack-

2 3 4

J U L Y 3 1 2

3 5

ing Serbia as soon as possible to make sure that fighting started

before diplomats could intervene.

At noon the news reached Berlin that Russia was mobilizing against

Germany as well as against Austria. The Kaiser had just finished

cabling the Czar that "the peace of Europe may still be maintained by

you, if Russia will agree to stop the military measures which must

threaten Germany and Austro-Hungary." He offered to continue his

mediation efforts.

The Czar replied: "I thank you heartily for your mediation which

begins to give one hope that all may yet end peacefully. It is techni�

cally impossible to stop our military preparations which were obliga�

tory owing to Austria's mobilization. We are far from wishing for

war. As long as the negotiations with Austria on Serbia's account are

taking place my troops shall not make any provocative action. I give

you my solemn word for this."

Meanwhile, Franz Joseph cabled the Kaiser his thanks for his

mediation offer but said it came too late: Russia had already mobi�

lized and Austrian troops already were marching on Serbia.

Paris. That evening the German ambassador to France presented

an ultimatum to Rene Viviani in his capacity as foreign minister.

France's ally Russia must rescind its proclaimed mobilization, warned

the German, or accept the responsibility of bringing on a conflict.

Viviani, along with President Poincare, had been at sea, and knew

nothing of the Russian mobilizations. He called St. Petersburg for

information.

St. Petersburg. Near midnight, the German ambassador to Russia

delivered an ultimatum: stop the mobilization within twelve hours,

or Germany would mobilize too—and, unlike Russia's, Germany's

mobilization would bring the countries "extraordinarily near to war."

London. "There is still hope," Winston Churchill wrote to his wife,

"although the clouds are blacker and blacker. Germany is realizing I

think how great are the forces against her and is trying tardily to

restrain her idiot ally. We are working to soothe Russia."

Asquith had lunch at Churchill's, along with Lord Kitchener,

Britain's most famous general, who was spending a few weeks in En-

2 3 6 C O U N T D O W N

gland before returning to Egypt, where he served as proconsul.

Kitchener told the civilians that Britain had to back up France. But

that was not the general view. Asquith confided that "general opinion

at present—particularly strong in the City—is to keep out at almost

all costs."

Lloyd George, leader of the radical wing of the governing party,

was perhaps the only member of the cabinet with a following strong

enough to challenge the Prime Minister, and he told a political inti�

mate that "I am fighting hard for peace. All the bankers and commer�

cial people are begging us not to intervene. The governor of the

Bank of England said to me with tears in his eyes 'Keep us out of it.

We shall all be ruined if we are dragged in.' "

Winston Churchill was made aware by at least one well-placed

Liberal member of Parliament, Arthur Ponsonby, that there was

"very strong" and "very widespread" sentiment within the party

against intervention. At the same time, however, he received from

F. E. Smith of the Conservatives, an indication that the Opposition

party would support the government if it took up arms against a Ger�

man invasion of France through Belgium. In his reply, Churchill told

Smith: "I cannot think war will be averted now. Germany must march

through Belgium, and I believe that the bulk of both parties will

stand firm against that."

Paris. France's army commander, General Joseph Joffre, asked per�

mission from the government to order general mobilization. The

cabinet refused its permission.

C H A P T E R 3 9 : A U G U S T i

Paris. Joffre once again asked his government for permission to

order an immediate general mobilization. Instead, the cabinet

authorized him to do so the following day.

London. At the morning cabinet meeting, Winston Churchill

asked if he could order full mobilization of the fleet. But the cabinet,

deeply divided, refused its permission. Of those whose instincts were

against war, Lloyd George was the key figure; if he were won over, he

could bring others with him.

According to the Prime Minister, "the bulk of the party" were

opposed to intervening militarily in any circumstances, but that "LI.

George—all for peace—is more sensible & statesmanlike for keeping

the position still open." Churchill had been a follower of Lloyd George

for years, and during the meeting they passed notes to one another. In

one of them, the radical leader held out hope: "If patience prevails &

you do not press us too hard . . . we might come together." "Please

2

3 7

C O U N T D O W N

God," replied Churchill. "It is our whole future—comrades—or

opponents."

"I am most profoundly anxious that our long cooperation may not

be severed," Churchill wrote at another point. " . . . I implore you to

come and bring your mighty aid to the discharge of our duty." And

again: "All the rest of our lives we shall be opposed. I am deeply

attached to you & have followed your instinct and guidance for

nearly 10 years."

Meanwhile Churchill directed a torrent of rhetoric at the rest of

the cabinet. He was notorious for not letting anyone else get a word

in edgewise. "It is no exaggeration to say," Asquith told a confidante,

"that Winston occupied at least half of the time" of the meeting.

Berlin. The Chancellor addressed the Bundesrat, the assembly of

the German states, and presented his government's case. He ex�

plained that Russia, rather than continue negotiations with Austria,

had mobilized its military forces. In reply, Germany had delivered an

ultimatum to the Russian government: either agree by noon to

demobilize or else Germany would mobilize. Germany also had sent

an ultimatum to France to remain neutral—and to give adequate

assurances of remaining so—or else Germany would declare war on

it, too. This ultimatum to France was scheduled to expire at i p.m.

The Bundesrat gave Bethmann its unanimous support.

Noon came and went, and there was no Russian reply. Nearly an

hour later Germany cabled its declaration of war to its ambassador to

Russia, for delivery in St. Petersburg, worded in the alternative, so

that he could claim either that the Czar's government had rejected

the ultimatum or had failed to reply to it.

Tsarskoe Selo. It was midday in Russia, and Czar Nicholas received

news of Germany's mobilization. Quickly he cabled his cousin Wil�

helm: "I understand that you are compelled to mobilize but I should

like to have the same guarantee from you that I gave you myself—

that these measures do not mean war."

But, of course, the Czar was wrong. In the world of 1 9 1 4 , not even

generals and cabinet ministers understood the difference between

the various types of military precautionary messages that had been

adopted by the various countries. One, however, in its unmistakable

A U G U S T I 2 3 9

clarity stood out from the others: for Germany, mobilization meant

war—within twenty-four hours if not before.

Berlin. By four in the afternoon there still was no reply from Russia.

Falkenhayn and Bethmann drove to see the Kaiser. They had decided

the night before that war had to be declared even if Russia proposed to

negotiate. But they found the Kaiser reluctant to do so. There was a

time when that would have proved a fatal obstacle to their plans, but no

longer was that true. During the last week in July, Wilhelm's instruc�

tions had been disregarded by his own Chancellor and foreign minis�

ter, his military leaders, and the Austrian Emperor and his government.

Wilhelm's orders still counted for something, but not for everything.

The Kaiser agreed to sign the mobilization orders, which took

effect the following day. Moltke had drafted for Wilhelm a speech to

the German people. Bethmann, who arrived late, was angry at

Moltke for having usurped the prerogative of the civilian authorities.

Moltke, visibly nervous, told an aide: "This war will turn into a world

war in which England will also intervene. Few can have any idea of

the extent, the duration, and the end of this war. Nobody today can

have a notion of how it will end."