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. "Einstein'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, sociology, or the natural sciences were well advised to enter German universities. 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.*
*For House, see p. 104.
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.
PART THREE
DRIFTING TOWARD WAR
CHAPTER 10: MACEDONIA –
OUT OF CONTROL
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
It 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 Istanbul. Dominating the straits that separate Europe from Asia, it occupies 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.
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 predict 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 disruptive forces were unloosed. Macedonia was frontier country, lawless 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 territory.
For Bulgaria, too, which regarded Macedonia as its southern half, the fighting was an experience that gave rise to clandestine and murderous ultra-nationalist military societies. Much later—in the 1920s and 1930s—they would ally with Italian fascism and leave a bloodstained 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 warfare. 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 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 surfaced 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 implemented, 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 powers to protest against the proposal. Amidst great confusion, the Sultan sent officials to arrest various C.U.P. 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 1913 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 interests 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.
CHAPTER 11: AUSTRIA –
FIRST OFF THE MARK
As of 1908 the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary administered 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 balance of power among themselves.
At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the powers had split the ownership 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, set
tle 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 independence. The provinces were coveted by many; indeed each of the partners in the Dual Monarchy, Austria and Hungary, wanted them for itself, so a decision had to be postponed indefinitely in order to preserve the Dual Monarchy's domestic balance of power. A decision as to who eventually would replace the Ottoman Sultan as legal ruler had to be similarly postponed to preserve the even more fragile balance 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 reputation 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 provide 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 revolution of 1905 as to be practically hors de combat.
On October 6, 1908, the Dual Monarchy announced its annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. To distract attention from the proclamation, 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 erosion 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 war. Narodna Odbrana, a Serbian nationalist paramilitary organization, sprang up to champion the Serbian cause.
Even the Kaiser was appalled, terming the annexation "fearful stupidity" 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 Aehrenthal's secrecy; to which Germany's Chancellor responded: "Our problem could be stated as follows: 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-Wächter, on Bülow's behalf used menacing language—that of ultimatums—in communicating with Izvolsky: "we expect a definite answer: yes or no; any evasive, 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 balance of power in the Balkans. Izvolsky, whether to hit back at Aehrenthal or for some other reason, sent Nicolai Hartwig as minister to Serbia (1909–14). Hartwig was a pan-Slav militant with a following 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 anything seemed hopeless at times—but, as Hartwig showed, it was not impossible.
Hartwig began by forging an alliance between Serbia and Bulgaria, and then joining that alliance to an accord with Russia. Arrangements with Greece and Montenegro followed.
Chancellor von Bülow 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.
Bülow 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, Bülow had been obliged to recognize that Germany 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, Bülow 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 nothing 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 Bülow, who had failed to adequately vet the indiscreet remarks of his monarch, now failed to defend him. To save himself he lied and did not admit that he had cleared the interview. In 1909, Bülow 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 questioned 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 Wilhelm, 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 difficulties." But he added that the Kaiser probably would not have the nerve to adopt this solution.
Moltke, chief of the Great General Staff, be
lieved 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 circumstances."
Having completed the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Aehrenthal 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 expansionism, requiring defensive measures of its own.
The treaty of 1879 between Germany and Austria had been a defensive 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 counterpart, what Germany would do if Austria invaded Serbia and thereby provoked Russia into intervening. Moltke replied that Germany would protect Austria anyway, even though Austria would have started it. Moreover, Germany would go to war not only against Russia, but also against France, since France was Russia's ally.
In his history of Germany, Gordon Craig notes that Austria thereafter 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 adventurers in Vienna." It should be added that Moltke's pledge was backed by the Chancellor.
Europe's Last Summer Page 7
