On the afternoon of July 4, 1914, twelve hours after Franz Ferdinand's burial, a courier was about to carry Franz Joseph's letter to Berlin. Suddenly Alexander Hoyos volunteered to take it himself. Why? Because, Hoyos claimed, His Majesty's words (and their nuances) would be amplified by the fact that they traveled to Germany with a senior official of the Austrian Foreign Minister's office.
Such reasoning made sense to the Foreign Minister. He thought he was finessing General Conrad through his Emperor's letter to the Kaiser. Actually he was being finessed by General Conrad through Count Hoyos.
Hoyos arrived in Berlin on July 5, just after the German Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow had left for his honeymoon in Lucerne. The timing, while accidental, served Hoyos well. As mere chef du cabinet he would have had no easy access to von Jagow, a personage of full ministerial rank in Berlin. But the German Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs who acted for the Minister in his absence was a different matter.
While the "Wrinkled Gypsy" (the Kaiser's name for Szogyeny-Marich, Austria's aged ambassador to Germany) was at Potsdam Palace, presenting Franz Joseph's letter to the Kaiser, Hoyos sat in the Under Secretary's office "interpreting the letter's unofficial essence." He explained that Franz Jo seph's phrase "neutralizing Serbia as a political power factor" meant nothing less than the detoxification of Serbia by full force. Hoyos also "interpreted" an implication that, he said, Franz Joseph was too diplomatic to spell out, namely, that the time had come for Germany to prove herself a full-blooded and reliable ally at long last, and that furthermore, only Germany's outspoken willingness to place its unique might behind Austria's action would prevent reprisals by other powers. Berlin's courage would do more than buttress the brotherEmpire; it would ensure the peace of Europe.
The German Under Secretary listened and took fire. He telephoned the Kaiser's Chancellery at Potsdam Palace to ask, urgently, for an audience.
Next morning the Kaiser strolled the Palace gardens with his Chancellor and the Under Secretary. Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the German Chancellor, "Lanky Theo" (in the Kaiser's badinage), was eager to return to his country estate, wary of Balkan complications yet also too weary to interrogate the Under Secretary who was aflame with Hoyos's "oral elaboration" of the letter from Vienna. The Chancellor let the Under Secretary spout.
And the Kaiser lent his ear. His stroll became a strut. He heard that between the lines Franz Joseph was appealing to his, Wilhelm's, valor as Germany's first soldier, to Wilhelm's chivalry as a Prussian knight who would not fail his venerable fellow-sovereign in Vienna. Then and there Wilhelm swore not to fail him. And since, by not failing him, Wilhelm at the same time was ensuring the peace of Europe, he could take off safely for his Scandinavian cruise.
On July 6, at 9:15 A.M., Wilhelm's train steamed for the port of Kiel where his yacht Hohenzollern rode anchor. "This time," he told the industrialist Gustav von Krupp at an on-board dinner that night, "this time I haven't chickened out."
Austria-Hungary saw proof of that the following day. Berchtold in Vienna and Tisza in Budapest received telegrams from Berlin. They were identical and both were signed by the Wrinkled Gypsy, the Habsburg ambassador to Germany. However, both had been drafted by the victorious Hoyos. "His [German] Majesty," the cable read, "authorized me to convey to our august sovereign… that we may count on the full support of the German Reich. He quite understands that His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty [Franz Joseph], with his well-known love for peace, would find it hard to march into Serbia, but if we [Austrians] really recognize the necessity of military measures against Serbia, he [Kaiser Wilhelm] would deplore our not taking advantage of the present moment which is so favorable to us."
This, of course, was drastically different from previous German advice on the subject. It almost mandated the occupation of Serbia. An astonished Berchtold began to telephone long distance. He discovered the turn of events in Berlin. In vain he reported to the Vienna cabinet that Hoyos had overstepped his authority. That Hoyos had not been empowered to meet substantively with the German Under Secretary. That Hoyos had expressed his personal opinions, not those of the Emperor or the Austrian government. That Hoyos's distorted account of the Habsburg position had distorted the Kaiser's response.
All in vain. All too late. Hoyos had maneuvered irrevocably well. The Kaiser himself had been recruited in General Conrad's cause. Who dared unrecruit the Kaiser-especially a Kaiser away on his Norse cruise? Who dared resist Conrad's imperative to crush the Serb skull, now that Prussia's spiked helmets were massing behind the General?
No one in Vienna. Wafflers in the cabinet, like Finance Minister Bilinski, came around to General Conrad's side. After a while even Tisza relented. And Berchtold? Berchtold caved in quickly, easily, even lithely. No deep convictions encumbered the Count. The wind had veered and he veered with it, making the movement into ballet.
The new Berchtold proposed that Serbia should be invaded, yes; but only after it had rejected Austrian demands that were diplomatically impeccable as well as absolutely unacceptable.
The cabinet nodded. General Conrad agreed, too. A diplomatic showdown would condition the populace for a call to arms. And it would give him time to mobilize fully for the crushing of the Serb skull for the total extirpation of Serb power.
Now the cabinet's collective sense must receive All-Highest approval. On the night of July 8, Berchtold entrained for Bad Ischl where Franz Joseph had returned after the Archduke's funeral. It is a measure of Berchtold's spinelessness that he invited Hoyos along, to brief His Majesty on the strength of the new German support. It was as though Hoyos had never tricked Berchtold in Berlin.
Berchtold smoothly submitted the cabinet's position. The early. morning sun shone on this crucial encounter. Outside the windows of the Imperial villa, thrushes and larks were in sweet voice. Franz Joseph pondered. Yes, the restoration of order, the redemption of Austria as a major power that couldn't limply suffer the gunning-down of its Crown Princeyes, that did require a settling of accounts with Serbia. But a settling so dangerous? Causing what repercussions? Interna tional war was a supreme disorder Franz Joseph had no wish to face at his age. Berchtold, however, spoke only of a police action deftly justified, well prepared in advance, and executed fast enough to render pointless any aid Serbia's friends might want to extend.
How decide on such a sun-dappled day? Frau Schratt was waiting to be taken for a stroll through lilies in full flower. As a lover, Franz Joseph was an ascetic, but an ascetic with style. As a Foreign Minister, Count von Berchtold lacked policy, consistency, vision. But he wore his lacks with style. Nothing but style underpinned the Empire-style and an army with the world's smartest uniforms. That's why the Emperor held on to his stylish Berchtold. Perhaps Berchtold's proposal carried some risks. But it was not raw. It was steeped in style. The Emperor nodded at the Count. The Count bowed from the waist. An hour later he and Hoyos boarded his salon car at Ischl station and rode back to Vienna. The ultimatum was on its way.
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On july 9, then, the decision fell to crush the Serb skull. General Conrad's agenda would be honored. But it would be implemented a la Count von Berchtold. It would be much more civilized than the murder it avenged. It would be sophisticated theater of the sort only Vienna could devise.
This skull-crushing would come as a fine third-act surprise. Until then the secret would be nursed backstage, refined and rehearsed behind shuttered blinds in Count von Berchtold's offices at the Ballhausplatz. Like a cunning playwright, Berchtold planned his plot. He would mislead his audienceSerbia's patrons like Russia, France, and France's ally, Britain. He would lull them all into mid-summer drowsiness. For the next few weeks he would play down diminuendo the Austrian hue and cry over Sarajevo. He would encourage the holiday mood of the season. At the same time, unbeknownst to all, the Ballhausplatz would craft its diplomatic time bomb; the Ministry of War would hone its mobilization plans. Then, out of nowhere, Berchtold would spring the ultimatum. But, as in a drama of hidden
identities, it would go by another name; only a "note" would be thrust at Serbia, yet a note charged with conditions much tougher, with a deadline much shorter, than most ultimatums. This nonultimatum super-ultimatum would be abruptly posed, inevitably refused-and followed instantly by the lethal pounce of Conrad's troops. Before the audience could catch its breath, before Europe's torpid chancelleries could stir, it would be over. The curtain would fall on Serbia conquered. Austria would take bows, having performed as a still vital and puissant great power.
All in all, an excellent Habsburg libretto. Act I called for marshalling, discreetly, the evidence to be used later against Serbia. Here the best source was testimony from the conspirators, now in police custody.
Princip and Cabrinovic had been quickly apprehended. Within four days of the deed, police sweeps of possible suspects happened to net Ilk and Graben. Arrests continued and spread all over Serbia. Many hundreds with no connection at all to the crime were jailed and grilled. Princip knew that because he was allowed to read newspapers. Therefore he became more responsive at interrogations. He talked (as he put it) "to prevent more innocent people from coming to harm." He also talked for propaganda reasons "to educate the new generation with our martyrdom." But he talked selec tively; he named only Graben and Ilia as well as the band's "auxiliaries," who, already on the list of the potentially seditious, would have been rounded up in any case. He did not breathe a syllable about Colonel Apis or the Black Hand. Graben and Ilia talked a bit more. Ilk was most anxious to save his life; therefore he talked the most, but even he did not give away the Apis group.
On July 10, Berchtold dispatched an aide to Sarajevo to evaluate the information. On July 13, an analysis arrived by top-secret cable from the Bosnian capital:
Statements by accused show practically beyond doubt that accused decided to perpetrate the outrage while in Belgrade, and that outrage was prepared… with help of Serb officials… who also procured bombs, Brownings, ammunition and cyanide. Bombs definitely proven to be from Serb Army stores, but nothing to show they had been taken out for this express purpose… Hardly any room for doubt that Princip, Graben, Cabrinovic smuggled across frontier with help from Serb customs… However, no evidence of complicity of Serb government ministers in directly ordering assassination or in supplying weapons..
All this fell a bit short of Berchtold's hope. It failed to implicate Belgrade's highest authorities. However, it did taint them for condoning, if not encouraging, a terrorist climate and the willingness on the part of lesser officials to cooperate in the outrage. And that was enough to activate Berchtold's scenario. It started to go forward on tip-toe, while Europe dozed.
***
The groundwork for deceiving the continent had already been laid on July 8, in a conference between the Foreign Minister and the Chief of Staff. "I recommend," Count von Berchtold had said to General Conrad, "that you and the Minister of War leave Vienna for your vacation so as to keep an appearance that nothing is going on."
On July 14, the Army announced that General Conrad had started his holiday at Innichen, a remote hamlet in the Dolomites, 3,500 feet high. War Minister Krobatin, the official Wiener Zeitung said a day earlier, had gone to take the waters at Bad Gastein. All along Franz Joseph remained in Bad Ischl, apparently with little on his mind save sniffing blossoms with Frau Schratt.
As for Berlin, it played along. Chancellor von BethmannHollweg was charmed by Berchtold's dramaturgy; Berchtold's denouement would prove that Austria was not a baroque carcass but suprisingly alive, doughty, adept, decisive-a worthy confederate of Germany.
And so the Germans acted on Habsburg's cue. On the yacht Hohenzollern the Kaiser sported innocent through the North Sea. The German Chancellor holed up in his country place where he communed with Beethoven on the grand piano and read Plato in the original Greek. The German Foreign Minister continued to honeymoon at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. The German Minister of the Navy, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, promenaded with wife and children through the greenery at Bad Tarasp in the Engadine. The Chief of the German Admiralty also went on holiday, and so did the German Minister of War. General von Moltke took the cure at Carlsbad, again.
The sun shone. The days passed. The jolt of Sarajevo subsided. The world discovered that Austria, instead of rounding on the Serbs, rusticated placidly along with its German ally. Belgrade relaxed. So did St. Petersburg, Paris, London. The feeling grew that Habsburg's response to the assassination would be as reasonable as it was tardy.
And since so many leaders jaunted away from Vienna and Berlin, why should their counterparts elsewhere stick to their desks? One by one the dramatis personae of the opposing camp began to play their parts in Count von Berchtold's script.
Together with his daughter, the Chief of Staff of the Serbian Army went on vacation-in Austria, of all countries, at Bad Gleichenberg. On July 15, Raymond Poincare, President of France, that is, of Serbia's closest Western ally, embarked on a cruise as cheery as the Kaiser's. With his Prime Minister he sailed on a summit junket to Norway and Russia. Tsar Nicholas II, Serbia's eastern protector, awaited his French guests at Tsarskoe Selo, a pleasure dome of multi-hued marble overlooking the Gulf of Finland that served as his summer castle. "Every day," he noted in his diary, "we play tennis or swim in the fjords."
In England, the Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, a childless widower and lover of leafy solitude, indulged himself in leafy solitude. Near Winchester, by the banks of the river Itchen stood his cottage, brushed by willows and embraced by ivy. During much of that July, Sir Edward could be found here. He spent the days leaning against the rail of a footbridge, lowering his rod down to the stippled trout.
The First Lord of the British Admiralty pursued a more ebullient pastime at Overstrand on the Norfolk coast: There Mr. Winston Churchill had his holiday house. On its beachfront he worked away with spade and bucket, assisted by his children. The Churchill family was building sand castles that featured deep moats to trap the tide.
At almost the same time the British Prime Minister Sir Herbert Asquith sent his daughter off to Holland "so that the girl can have some fun." Sir Herbert himself did not stray too far from No. 10 Downing Street. After all, he had to tend to something of a crisis. More fuss was afoot about the Irish Home Rule Bill.
The sunny, stable high over Europe was of double benefit to Vienna. Politically, it painted just the right trompe l'oeil backdrop for Count von Berchtold's stage. But the fine summer also met the personal needs of the Viennese. Perhaps more than other cities, theirs had been an incubator of the treacheries of the human soul. Perhaps more than others, it cultivated the therapy of the meadow.
After many rainless weeks, a nocturnal downpour on July 9 washed away the dust. At dawn the west wind scented the streets with the pine of Alpine pastures. (It was the day Berchtold's team began to draft in secret the nonultimatum super-ultimatum.) By noon the sun had re-burnished the foliage of the Vienna Woods. And since only a few streetcar stops separated the Viennese from their Woods, the weather drew them outdoors in unprecedented numbers. They might stoop the work day away in dank factories or behind cramped desks. But on Sunday the lagoons of the Danube splashed with swimmers. At night, the vineyard inns sounded with more song than ever. "Wien… Wien…" they sang, turned toward the heart of the city, namely its past. They still sang about its dreamy courtyards, its gothic alleys, its Biedermeier gardens-all dear and cozy and going, going, gone. Who would suspect that, hidden away at the Ballhausplatz, Count von Berchtold was preparing a giant grenade? In July 1914, Vienna presented itself as a spectacle of nature and nostalgia-the very opposite of imminence and war.
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Nature and nostalgia. Their twin lure was felt by many during just those weeks. On July 12, Sigmund and Martha Freud left Vienna for Carlsbad. They arrived there at almost the same time as the Chief of the German General Staff, General von Moltke. The Freuds, though, lived just outside the spa. They took rooms at the Villa Fasolt on the Schlossberg, a hummock among wooded knoll
s. This landscape resembled the environs of Fribor, a small Moravian town where Freud had lived during his first four years. In Fribor, by the foothills of the Carpathians, he had been"… the happy child who received his first indelible impressions from this air… from this soil." Even as an adult". I never felt really comfortable in the city. I believe now that I was never free from a longing for the beautiful woods near our home."
During this summer Freud began to develop thoughts for a paper (never published) called "Philogenetic Fantasy," about mankind's infancy-a pre-Ice Age, pre-Angst, pre-Jung Eden with food and space aplenty, succeeded by much rawer and more crowded times in which paranoia became a survival instinct.
In contrast to Freud, Leon Trotsky could not afford an expensive resort. He spent July of 1914 in his sparse apartment near the flowering edge of the Vienna Woods. Longingly, no doubt. His autobiography shows that for all his sophistication, Trotsky retained the yearnings of a country boy born in the Southern Ukraine". a kingdom of wheat and sheep… The village would flare up in my consciousness and draw me on like a lost paradise. In my years as commander of the Red Army… I was greatly pleased to see each new [rural] fence constructed of freshly cut pine boards. Lenin, who knew this passion of mine, often twitted me about it."
Yet this same summer saw Lenin sharing this same passion. His headquarters at Cracow near the Austro-Russian border had been chosen for reasons beyond revolutionary expediency. "Illyich likes Cracow so much," his wife would write, "because it reminded him of Russia." But Lenin, born in a Volga backwater many miles from the nearest railroad, liked better yet a nook in his Habsburg exile that was smaller and greener than Cracow.
Thunder At Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 Page 24
