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 confessed 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 Austrians 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 attaché in Serbia uncovered vital evidence that, if properly followed up, might have tied Princip's conspirators to Apis—and therefore to the Serbian government. He reported this to his superiors in the war ministry, who failed to forward or communicate 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 Government 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 . . . cannot be denied." He quoted the Russian minister as hoping that whoever 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 Austrian 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 minister, 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 Serbian society the act "had been most severely condemned." It had not been within Serbia's power to prevent the crime because "both assassins 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 caution Vienna to react with restraint. Not so the Kaiser, who was devastated and enraged. No longer did he, like his friend Franz Ferdinand, 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 disposed 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 circles—the intellectuals, such as professional politicians, those occupied 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 realize how much more it had to do to persuade others that it was innocent. 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 investigation 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 official 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 regicides. And there would have been no war in 1914, though there may well have been a war in some other year.
PART FIVE
TELLING LIES
CHAPTER 25: GERMANY SIGNS
A BLANK CHECK
The 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 leaders of the Dual Monarchy deplored the killing of royalty, but if someone 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 Ferdinand apart, the Hapsburg leaders wanted to destroy Serbia before the assassination. They would have launched their campaign not in 1914, but in 1912 or 1913, had they not been blocked. The opinion of 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 destroying 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 Wilhelm 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 1912–13, Austria had developed 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 ventured 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 Austria 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 official 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 1914, the minister was ill-fitted for leadership. Berchtold had accepted office only with the greatest reluctance. Appointed when Aehrenthal died in 1912, he had retained Aehrenthal'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 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 collaboration with Ludwig von Flotow and Johann Forgach, officials in the expansionist tradition of Aehrenthal—advocated a forward policy: a close and active German-Austrian alliance that would take the offensive in Europe against a supposed Russian threat. The memorandum 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 exception for Wilhelm II; the Kaiser was invited in his capacity as a personal 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 German 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, isolated, 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 firebrand in his mid-thirties who served as Berchtold's chief of staff, volunteered to act as courier.
Hoyos had reason to believe that his mission was promising. Only days before, on July 1, he had conversed at length with Victor Naumann, 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 suggests 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 Wilhelm von Stumm, a hard-liner in the German foreign office.
In Germany at the time there were those who saw what had happened in Sarajevo as an opportunity for taking action: action by Germany 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 ambassador 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 Chancellor, 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 Szögyéni-Marich, who then left 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 sympathetic reception.
Meanwhile, at Potsdam, Szögyéni 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 specific 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 military 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 personalities.
As Chancellor for five years, he had felt the pressure of army officers who believed war with Russia to be inevitable, and who advocated 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.
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 Vienn
a—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 crisis of 1911, the Dual Monarchy would not back Germany in its quarrels; 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 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 1912–14 rather than of 1914 alone.
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