Europe's Last Summer

by David Fromkin

  It was Austria-Hungary itself, having annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, that had provoked Russia and Serbia to seek revenge. It was possible that Serbia, which had doubled in size, and its allies Russia and the forces of pan-Slavism would continue their advance. Aehrenthal had upset the Balkan balance of power in 1908 in Austria'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?

  CHAPTER 14: THE SLAVIC TIDE

  Times had changed. In the nineteenth century, when foreign policy alignments and readjustments tended to focus on ideology, Russia and the Germanic states of Austria and Prussia had been the closest of allies. In 1912 they still shared the same outlook, the same reactionary politics, and the same values. But their solidarity, based on common beliefs, gave way to a life-or-death conflict 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 challenges 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 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 unobjectionable 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 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 people."

  He restated his position often: he would "under no circumstances be prepared to march against Paris and Moscow on account of Albania." In a memorandum to the foreign office he called it absurd to risk an "existential struggle with three Great Powers, in which Germany may possibly perish" simply because "Austria doesn't want to have the Serbs in Albania."

  Among many other messages, Wilhelm cabled his foreign secretary on November 9, 1912: "have spoken in detail to the Reich Chancellor 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 Müller, 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 people." (But if public opinion would be furious if Austria were abandoned, 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 Ferdinand, 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, 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 leaders 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 secretary 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 consequences 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, 1912. On short notice, the Kaiser convened 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 11 a.m. to consider the import of the telegram from London. In addition to Wilhelm the participants included Admiral Müller, chief of the Kaiser's Naval Cabinet; Admiral von Tirpitz, the naval leader; General von Moltke, the army chief of staff; Vice Admiral 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 1914. The interpretatio
n of the 1912 conference remains an open question, although most leading historians today tend not to accept Fischer's views without at least some qualification. John Röhl, perhaps the closest in his views to Fischer, makes the persuasive point that we now have additional documentation in unusual abundance to help us understand the notes by Admiral Müller 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 England and Germany—it would have been safe to infer that Grey was supplying medicine that, despite its apparent bitterness, was prescribed 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 England's vital interests. Implied in the cable was the message that London 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 Müller'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 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 sentiment but without arriving at an agreed decision. A target date had been mentioned but had not been firmly set. A disappointed Admiral von Müller noted in his diary: "The result" of the conference "amounted to almost o." Müller wrote to the Chancellor that afternoon, reporting what had been said and decided at what became known as the "war council." Müller 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, historians 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 council 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 1911 into an awareness that Germany would face real challenges in a war against a European coalition.

  But the First Balkan War, ending in December 1912 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 Austria-Hungary, in a paralysis of policy and power, was doing nothing to stop them. German party leaders spoke openly of the possibility 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 1912 was large, but that of 1913 was the largest in German history. The German peacetime military machine was running at fall capacity; the increases could not be fully digested until 1916.

  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 unprogressive. Germany could not afford to continue its military expansion for much longer. The only thing that could justify military expenditures at their 1913 level was to go to war in the immediate future. But German public opinion was not ready for it. Moltke wrote to Conrad, chief of the Austrian General Staff, in February 1913 that it would be hard to find a rallying cry that would persuade the German public to go to war—yet.

  CHAPTER 15: EUROPE GOES

  TO THE BRINK

  Between 1908 and 1913 the Young Turk revolt had been followed 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, Montenegro, 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 1913 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.

  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 balance 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 b
e 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 fundamentally 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 creating a buffer that might solve the problem of Austro-Russian rivalry, while allowing Christians to unite in expanding eastward against Islam.

  On October 23, 1913, 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.

  Of all the shifts in inclination and perception that took place in European international politics during the years before the war, perhaps the one most at odds with our perceptions today was the belief, widely held in Berlin, that Germany was growing weaker. In retrospect, what strikes us is that, to the contrary, Germany was surging ahead industrially and militarily; it was growing stronger. The industrial 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-à-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, Germany needed one, in Moltke's view, no later than tomorrow.