The Making of the First World War

by Ian F W Beckett

  Realisation of the dangers threatening the empire fuelled the desire for a separate peace. In July 1916 Franz Joseph remarked to Margutti, ‘Things are going badly with us, perhaps worse than we suspect. The starving people can't stand much more. It remains to be seen whether and how we shall get through the winter. I mean to end the war next spring whatever happens. I can't let my Empire go to hopeless ruin.’17 It might be suggested, given Karl's subsequent failure to free himself of Germany's all-encompassing war aims, that Franz Joseph would not have succeeded either. However, as yet, Britain and France were not ill disposed towards a future for Austria-Hungary in Europe whatever Italian expectations of the potential spoils of participation in the war. Franz Joseph still had significant symbolic influence and the German leadership would have been less able to cower him into submission.

  Moreover, there were occasions when the emperor still clearly asserted himself. It was his absolute refusal, for example, to contemplate making concessions to Italy as a means of preventing the Italians coming into the war against Austria-Hungary that precipitated Berchtold's resignation in January 1915, and the subsequent Italian declaration of war in May 1915. War against Italy was one that all the diverse nationalities within the empire could happily support. Nonetheless, it is possible that Franz Joseph may have succeeded in forging peace with Russia, notwithstanding what would have been considerable German opposition. Equally, when the Viennese authorities suggested that Jewish refugees in the city should be moved to camps in Moravia, Franz Joseph quashed the idea by saying that he would instead open up Schönbrunn for them.

  It was not just a matter of unrest among subject nationalities, for the empire as a whole failed the wider challenges of war. In Austria, the Reichsrat had been prorogued in March 1914 due to obstructionist tactics by Czech deputies, though the Hungarian Parliament sat throughout the war. Neither government managed to grasp the situation. Although much of the civil jurisdiction was handed to a new Kriegsüberwachungsamt (War Supervisory Office), there was little initial attempt to establish effective control over the economy, with a series of ninety-one ad-hoc agencies, or Zentralen, established with general oversight of production. There was only limited industrial capacity in 1914 and Austria-Hungary confronted shortages of raw materials of all kinds. Recourse was had to such expedients as reopening abandoned mines, and melting down church bells, pots and pans. Such measures, and drawing emergency supplies from Germany, could never alleviate the shortages. Lack of manpower planning had denuded the industrial labour force and closed factories. Austria-Hungary was also chronically short of rail transport with which to carry war production or, indeed, anything else. The situation was exacerbated by coal shortages, which further reduced not only production of engines and rolling stock, but also the ability to keep the rail system running.

  The empire appeared largely self-sufficient in food and, therefore, no preparations were made in advance of the war. Supply depended, however, upon Hungarian-grown agricultural produce, exchanged in peacetime for Austrian manufactured goods under protective tariffs excluding foreign competitors. Unfortunately, the 1914 and 1915 harvests were poor and, with the best Austrian agricultural areas now in Russian-occupied Galicia, prices rose sharply. Hungary effectively closed its frontiers with Austria, no longer regarding food supplies as common to the empire, so that Austrian imports of flour and cereals were by 1917 only 2.5 per cent of what they had been in peacetime. Bread rationing was introduced in Austria in April 1915, followed by rationing of coffee, fats, milk and sugar. By 1916, even potatoes were in short supply. Food shortages created increasing unrest, food riots occuring in Vienna as early as May 1915, and there were then the serious riots caused by rising prices in both May and September 1916. Women, who had entered industry in large numbers in Austria-Hungary as elsewhere, were less inhibited by the likely application of military discipline than men, and they were prominent in the riots and strikes. Prices rose over 1,000 per cent between 1914 and 1918.

  In the face of the growing unrest, the authorities proved ultimately powerless. The Common Council of Ministers met only about forty times during the war and, for all practical purposes, the Austrian and Hungarian administrations operated entirely separately. Parliamentary opposition to Tisza in Hungary coalesced around the issue of the extension of the suffrage, which he opposed. Ultimately, it was the suffrage issue that cost Tisza his office when Karl forced his resignation in May 1917. Tisza retained a parliamentary majority, and his resistance continued to frustrate his successors. Consequently, only a limited franchise reform was passed in July 1918, which increased the size of the electorate to just 13 per cent of adult males.

  In Austria, the Reichsrat remained prorogued until 1917. Stürgkh attempted to rule by decree for fear that parliamentary recall would open a can of worms. In part, Stürgkh's assassination in October 1916 reflected wider disaffection with the failure of the state to maintain food supplies, though the murder was primarily intended as a protest against wartime absolutism. Citizen was set against citizen and neighbour against neighbour in terms of the struggle for survival, as evidenced by the so-called ‘pillory decree’ of January 1917, by which the names of profiteers were published, and also by the routine denunciations received by the police. The state and the emperor as the symbolic head of the national family were becoming thoroughly discredited. Over 54,000 letters and petitions had been sent to the emperor since the outbreak of the war, but the pretence of imperial paternalism could no longer alleviate widespread suffering and discontent.

  As Franz Joseph grew weaker, he was more easily exhausted by his insistence on maintaining his heavy daily schedule. His bronchitis returned in October 1916 and developed into a fever. He refused to stop smoking cigars, and continued his usual regime of work. On 17 November, however, Conrad noted that the emperor seemed much weaker and dozed off during his report, though he rose to take leave of the chief of staff. In the early evening of 21 November 1916 Franz Joseph was compelled to take to his bed, instructing his valet to waken him at 4.30 a.m. Instead, he died at 9.05 p.m. that same evening, his reported last words being ‘I am behind with my work.’ Large crowds turned out for the funeral on 30 November on a wet and foggy day, but their reaction was muted, the liberal Bohemian politician Josef Redlich recording in Vienna only ‘a deep tiredness, akin to apathy’, for the emperor had been little seen outside Schönbrunn since the outbreak of war.18

  The amiable Karl, though inexperienced, was highly realistic about the need for reform. He subscribed to aspects of Franz Ferdinand's political programme but lacked the support of his late uncle's political constituency. It was all too late for the dynasty, the death of the old emperor having severed any lingering loyalties that might have overridden the manifest failings of the state to meet the challenges of war. Indeed, Karl's attempt to cultivate the goodwill of the Magyars through dismissing Stürgkh's conservative German successor, Ernest von Körber, was a serious error, for the new minister-president, Heinrich Clam-Martinic, a Bohemian noble, was far less able. Karl attempted an approach to the British and French through his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, a French national serving in the Belgian army, in the hope of ending the war. He was prepared to evacuate Serbia but it would have required concessions to Italy, at which even Karl balked. The revelation of Karl's role by the French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, in April 1918 resulted in the emperor's abject apology to the Germans and capitulation at Spa on 13 May 1918 to a binding political, military and economic alliance that committed Vienna to do Germany's bidding. It is unlikely that a separate peace would have saved the empire. Czernin, indeed, believed any pursuit of a separate peace apart from Germany would represent ‘suicide for fear of death’ in triggering an instant German response.19

  Karl was also constrained from responding adequately to the demands for far more autonomy from the subject nationalities when Poles, Czechs and Slavs were all confronted with a potential dilemma as to whether it would be better to remain loyal to the
empire or to hope for an Entente victory. Karl's announcement of a federal system in the Austrian half of the empire on 16 October 1918 came far too late to satisfy national aspirations. Though the British and French came round only belatedly to allowing self-determination to prevail so far as the empire was concerned, the collapse of Russia simplified matters and Britain edged towards recognition of the Polish National Committee on 15 October 1917, and of the Czech National Committee on 2 August 1918. The war ended before the Yugoslav Committee could receive British recognition, by which time British approval was largely academic as the empire was already falling apart.

  In October 1918 Karl appealed to the American president, Woodrow Wilson, for peace on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points as outlined in his speech of 8 January 1918, but Wilson replied only through Berlin. In response to Karl's introduction of a federal structure into Austria, the German-speaking deputies constituted a Provisional National Assembly on 21 October and proclaimed an Austrian state. In Hungary, a National Council was established on 25 October under Count Mihály Károlyi, this being recognised as the government on 31 October. That same day, Tisza was murdered by soldiers who blamed him for the war. An independent Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in Prague on 21 October, and Austrian Galicia announced it would join a Polish state, though this was not formally proclaimed until 16 November. On 22 October the Zagreb diet proclaimed the cessation of constitutional ties between the South Slav lands and Vienna. On 30 October the port of Fiume declared its independence and its wish to be united with Italy. Much of the Austro-Hungarian army was now affected by mutiny and, on 27 October Austria-Hungary requested an armistice. It was signed at Villa Giusti near Padua on 3 November and did not come into effect until 4 November. Karl abdicated political power on 12 November, though not formally renouncing the throne. Karl had feared that he might not be able to leave Vienna, but unexpectedly the new Socialist chancellor, Dr Karl Renner, arrived at the Schönbrunn to announce allegedly, ‘Herr Habsburg, the taxi is waiting.’20 Karl and his family were driven to Ackartsau Castle and from there took a train to Switzerland. His post-war attempts to regain the Hungarian throne thwarted, Karl died of pneumonia in April 1922 at only thirty-four years of age.

  The events in Austria were not a social revolution but one in power and authority. By contrast, subsequent events in Hungary were assuredly a revolution, albeit one soon extinguished. The new Hungarian authorities initially declined to accept that the armistice applied to Hungary, but they signed one officially at Belgrade on 15 November 1918. Hungary was proclaimed a republic on 16 November in a bloodless process controlled largely by a middle-class alliance of social democrats and radicals. Károlyi, however, proved a disappointment to the poorer peasants in not pressing for land redistribution. Still faced with the Entente blockade, the government also found itself incapable of curbing the soldiers’ and workers’ councils that had emerged at the end of the war. Amid a series of damaging strikes and the demands by the Entente that Hungary surrender territory to Romania, the social democrats were compelled to accept a coalition with the Hungarian Communist Party in March 1919. A so-called Revolutionary Governing Council of what was now the Hungarian Soviet Republic emerged on 23 March. In April, Czech, Yugoslav and Romanian forces all intervened in Hungary to seize the territory they claimed. The Romanians broke the ‘Hungarian Red Army’ and occupied Budapest from August until November 1919.

  Of the various peace treaties negotiated at Paris, the Treaty of St Germain concluded the war with Austria on 10 September 1919 and, delayed by the Hungarian revolution, the Treaty of Trianon concluded the war with Hungary on 4 June 1920. The break-up of Austria-Hungary was established fact before the Paris conference convened and the situation created thereby was irreversible as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were all already in practical existence. In many respects, Hungary was the greatest loser from the treaties, being dispossessed of 60 per cent of its former population and two-thirds of its former territory. Indeed, it could be suggested that 6.2 million Austrians and 7.6 million Hungarians bore disproportionate blame for the perceived sins of the 52 million inhabitants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since clauses from the Treaty of Versailles were incorporated wholesale into the Treaty of St Germain, land-locked Austria found itself prohibited from possessing submarines.

  Austria-Hungary after 1867 was a fragile construct of a common monarchy, an economic union, and two separate states. In many respects Germans and Hungarians went their own ways, but few within the empire could imagine life without the Habsburgs, and few had actually desired their end. Indeed, it was the perceived external threat from Serbia rather than any real internal threat that propelled Austria-Hungary into a war waged upon such a scale that the Habsburgs seemed increasingly irrelevant to its survival. In more normal times, the death of such a long-reigning monarch as Franz Joseph would have seemed significant enough. In the midst of such a war, however, his passing was a far more symbolic evocation of a rapidly disappearing past. Only a single regiment was available in Vienna to line the funeral route and, rather than the full assembly of the crowned heads of Europe, the last ceremonial rites at the Kapuzinerkirche were attended only by the kings of Bulgaria, Bavaria and Saxony. Like the Habsburgs, their rule, too, had only two more years to run. As A. J. P. Taylor memorably wrote, ‘a pebble was removed and an avalanche started’.21

  CHAPTER 7

  THE UNGENTLEMANLY WEAPON

  The German Declaration of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 1 February 1917

  ON 3 OCTOBER 1914 the Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News reported the ‘thrilling experience’ of an Aylesbury man, Alfred Brown, from the armoured cruiser, HMS Aboukir. On 22 September, in company with HMS Cressy and HMS Hogue, the Aboukir had been cruising the ‘Broad Fourteens’ off the Dutch coast. At about 0615 hours ‘there was an explosion like a terrific clap of thunder, accompanied with a flash like lightning’ as the Aboukir was hit by a torpedo on the port beam and quickly began to list.1 Only one of the larger lifeboats could be lowered as the explosion had affected the main steam derrick, while heavy seas a few days previously had smashed the smaller boats. Brown began to swim towards the Hogue and was being hauled aboard by rope when this, too, was hit by a torpedo. Almost sucked under, Brown made for the Cressy, which was also standing by. No sooner had he reached the Cressy than it was torpedoed also. A keen athlete, having ‘learned to swim in the canal at Aylesbury’, Brown was eventually rescued by a Lowestoft fishing smack.

  The loss of all three vessels of the 7th Cruiser Squadron together with 1,459 lives to a single German submarine, Otto Weddigen's U-9, within just 47 minutes was a striking demonstration of the weapon's potential. In Germany, the date would be known as ‘Weddigen Day’ well into the Nazi era. Ironically, the old cruisers had been nicknamed the ‘live bait squadron’ for their supposed vulnerability to surface attack. Such was the scale of the resulting ‘periscopeitis’ that Admiral Sir John Jellicoe commanding the British Grand Fleet moved it from the main fleet base of Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to Lough Swilly off Ireland until the defences of Scapa could be improved. Earlier the same month, U-21 had become the first submarine to destroy a ship at sea, when sinking HMS Pathfinder in the Firth of Forth on 5 September. The only previous successful attack had been by a primitive Confederate craft, the Hunley, using a ‘spar torpedo’ in Charleston harbour in 1864 during the American Civil War.

  Neither side had envisaged war at sea in anything other than conventional terms, as a decisive clash of capital fleets, although it was recognised that mines and torpedoes rendered capital ships vulnerable in more confined waters. As First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, Admiral Sir John ('Jackie') Fisher certainly envisaged submarines playing a prominent role in a blockade of the German coast, and ‘flotilla defence’ in the North Sea. Though he was a torpedo officer by background, the architect of the new German Imperial Navy, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, had declared submarines a waste of money in 1901, and a luxury to be left to ‘wealthier states like
France and England’.2 For Tirpitz, it was simply an article of faith that the Royal Navy must offer battle. In 1914, Germany had only 21 U-boats capable of operating in the North Sea, of which only 9 were diesel-powered craft capable of reaching the Atlantic. The Royal Navy had 73 submarines but, as in the German case, the majority were coastal craft of limited range and the intention was to integrate them into surface operations. Little thought had been given to anti-submarine warfare.

  As for using submarines for attacking merchant shipping, Churchill had proclaimed in January 1914 that it would never be done by ‘any civilised power’, though he certainly saw the potential for submarines in naval warfare in the future. Jellicoe said much the same thing. Fisher's successor, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, had likewise suggested submarines were ‘underhand, unfair and damned un-English’.3 Similarly, a fictional story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Strand Magazine, ‘Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius’, in early 1914, suggesting submarines would be used successfully against merchantmen, was met by general incredulity among the naval experts contacted by the magazine for comment.

  There were also international legal implications to consider in deploying submarines against merchant ships. With a decisive naval engagement proving elusive, German frustration led to a decision to wage unrestricted submarine warfare – the sinking of merchant vessels without warning by submerged submarines. Its first manifestation in 1915 was abandoned for fears of American reaction. In January 1916 the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, suggested its revival would equate to a second decision for war.4 The subsequent resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917 certainly had global implications, not only for the United States, but also for other neutrals through the tightening of the allied economic blockade on the Central Powers. It also marked the strengthening influence of the Chief of the German General Staff, Paul von Hindenburg, and his First Quartermaster General, Erich Ludendorff, over the reins of power in Germany, the adoption of ever-widening German war aims, and the rejection of a negotiated peace.