In all of the bluster, the claims and counterclaims that were lodged once war began, focus was placed on the Austrian Note as if it were the cause of war itself. Austria, however, had been on the receiving end of Serbia’s troublemaking and broken promises for years. The Serbian government had participated in the criminal activities of various societies in Serbia and their outrageous anti-Austrian invective. In the days and weeks before the Note was delivered to Belgrade, Austria had amassed considerable evidence on the assassins and their controllers.41 What they were demanding was the minimum required for a normalisation of relationships. No vague promises, no procrastination. The basis for a positive resolution to what had proved an intractable problem was laid on the table. It was non-negotiable but fair. How else could they have begun to build a lasting, constructive and meaningful future? The Note comprised the minimum conditions that would guarantee Austrian safety from the Serbian menace.42
At 3 p.m. on 25 July – that is, three hours before the end of Austria’s forty-eight-hour deadline – Serbia formally mobilised its armed forces. Frantic military preparations got under way. State archives, the treasury and the civil service decamped from Belgrade to the interior city of Nish. Before they handed over their Reply, and in the knowledge that it failed to meet the Austrian demands, the Serbians declared their intent. Serbia was getting ready for war. Not that they were the only ones in a hurry. Pasic personally delivered the formal Reply a few minutes before 6 p.m. on 25 July, and the Austrian ambassador and his entire legation were on their way home on the 6.30 p.m. express from Belgrade.
The Serbian Reply was carefully crafted and moderate in character.43 It not only won the approval and sympathy of the entente powers but also of neutrals everywhere. It even commanded the admiration of Berchtold, who described the Reply as ‘the most brilliant example of diplomatic skill which I have ever known’, but he added that though it appeared to be reasonable, it was ‘wholly worthless in content’.44 The diplomatic language certainly had all the hallmarks of a professional tactician. Pasic had previously relied on Hartwig, the Russian ambassador, whose untimely death ought to have left him bereft of ideas. Yet, out of nowhere, this comparative nonentity apparently produced a masterstroke of international diplomacy. Pasic was reputedly a lost, floundering soul without his Russian mentor, so who was behind the Serbian Reply?
Belgrade had immediately appealed to Sazonov, Paléologue and the czar for help.45 Behind the scenes, the telegraph lines between London, Belgrade, St Petersburg and Paris nearly went into meltdown. Sir Edward Grey telegraphed Belgrade on Friday evening (24 July) at 9.30 p.m. to advise the Serbs on how they should respond. He specifically suggested that they ‘give a favourable reply on as many points as possible within the limit of time, and not to meet Austria with a blank negative’. He wanted them to apologise, express regret for the conduct of their officials and reply in a manner that represented the best interests of Serbia. Grey refused to give any further advice without liaising directly with Russia and France.46 His time-serving words sufficed to cover the fact that Britain, France and Russia had already agreed their joint position.
The greatest input to the Serbian Reply came from Paris in the person of Philippe Berthelot, assistant director for political affairs at the French Foreign Office. He was one of the most senior diplomats in Europe and highly regarded by Poincaré and the Secret Elite. Berthelot first admitted that he had outlined the extremely astute Reply for Serbia and later boasted that he actually drafted its very wording.47 He reaffirmed Grey’s advice that Serbia should offer immediate satisfaction on all points except the one that affected her sovereignty. In St Petersburg, Sazonov had likewise counselled the Serbs on extreme moderation.48
The Secret Elite primed the Serbians with a staged strategy. Step one had been Pasic’s telegram of the 19th, a honey-dripped appeal for support based on a plea for dignity, respect and independence. Step two was to get Pasic out of Belgrade. They knew that the Austrians intended to present their demands on 23 July, so ensured that Pasic was out of the Serbian capital on an election campaign, an arrangement that was released in advance to the press of Europe.49 (This was a ploy to force the Austrians to extend the time permitted for an official response. It didn’t work.) Finally, they had ensured that there were no significant chargés d’affaires or ambassadorial representatives from any of the entente powers in Belgrade that weekend, so that, whatever transpired, no one from France, Russia or Britain could be associated with the official response.50
The input from London, Paris and St Petersburg represented a massive public-relations offensive on behalf of Serbia. The Reply was couched in very conciliatory language, with feigned humility and apparent openness and sincerity. European opinion still sided with Austria rather than Serbia, and that would have been reinforced had the Serbs presented an arrogant or insulting Reply. Serbia had to be reinvented as a brave and helpless little nation that had gone beyond the boundary of national dignity in surrendering to Austria’s harsh demands. Of all the diplomatic ruses before the war began, there was no cleverer ‘subterfuge than the planning of the Serbian response to Austria’.51
To the unwitting, it appeared as though all points bar two had been accepted and that ‘poor little Serbia’ had yielded to the immense and unfair pressure from her neighbour. Kaiser Wilhelm, for example, returned from his three-week cruise and hailed the Serbian Reply as ‘a triumph of diplomacy’ when he first read it.52 Wilhelm jotted on it: ‘a brilliant performance for a time-limit of only 48 hours. This is more than one could have expected!’53 He was convinced that the Austrians would be satisfied and that the few reservations Serbia had made on particular points could be cleared up by negotiation. Kaiser Wilhelm’s immediate and spontaneous response clearly indicated his belief, indeed his joy, that all risk of war had been removed. ‘With it [the Serbian response] every reason for war falls to the ground.’54
Wilhelm’s analysis was sadly naive. He accepted the Serbian concessions at face value, but the Austrians did not. The Reply included carefully constructed conditions and reservations that were not immediately apparent.55 First impressions can often be misleading. While the Serbian response appeared to consent to virtually every Austrian demand, it was so hedged with qualifications that the Austrians were bound to take umbrage. Only two of Austria’s demands (numbers 8 and 10) were accepted in their entirety, while the answers to the others were evasive.56 Reservations and lies had been carefully disguised by skilful dissembling. For example, where the Note insisted on the arrest of Tankosić and Ciganovic, the Reply stated that Ciganovic had fled and it had not been possible to arrest him. The implication that the Serbians were actually trying to arrest him was a lie. Ciganovic was a personal friend of Pasic, and the prime minister knew that his friend had been secretly re-accommodated with the full knowledge and assistance of the Serbian chief of police.
The most important Austrian demand was rejected outright. Berchtold insisted that judicial proceedings be taken against everyone associated with the assassination plot and that Austro-Hungarian police officers be directly involved in the investigations. Serbia baulked at this, claiming that such an intrusion would be a violation of her constitution. That was not the case. The Austrians had demanded that their police be allowed to assist in the investigation of the crime, not that its officials be allowed to participate in internal Serbian court procedures. There were numerous precedents for such cross-border police involvement.57 But the Serbs nailed their colours to this spurious assertion and claimed that the Austrian Note was an infringement of their sovereignty. How strange. The Belgian ambassador had warned three weeks earlier that Serbian sovereignty would become the central issue.
The Secret Elite knew that Austria would not accept the Reply. It was specifically designed to be rejected. No amount of cosmetic wordplay could cover the fact that it did not accede to the Austrian stipulations. The lie that Austria-Hungary deliberately made the Note so tough that Serbia would have no choice but to refuse it has, unfor
tunately, been set in concrete by some historians. The argument put forward generally claims that:
War was to be provoked, and the murder of the Archduke provided a perfect occasion. The Austrians were told that they should use it to attack Serbia, Russia’s client, and the means chosen was an ultimatum, containing demands that could not be accepted without the loss of Serbian independence.58
This was the myth that the Secret Elite wanted to promulgate, namely that Austria was ‘told’ by Germany to attack Serbia. The best lie is the big lie. If Austria was hell-bent on war with Serbia, why did she entertain the gruelling three-week diplomatic route? Freed from extraneous interference, the Austrian army was entirely capable of defeating Serbia. Hawks in the Austrian military had demanded an immediate attack, but the diplomats insisted on the long-delayed Note that unwittingly gave Britain, France and Russia time to lay their trap.59 The Serbian Reply, and Austria’s consequent reaction, sprang that trap.
On 25 July, Sir George Buchanan in St Petersburg penned a strictly confidential telegram to Sir Edward Grey. It arrived in the Foreign Office at 10.30 p.m. The message could not have been clearer: ‘Russia cannot allow Austria to crush Serbia and become the predominant Power in the Balkans, and, secure of support of France, she will face all the risks of war.’60
The Russian Bear waits as the Austrian Eagle swoops down on the Serbian bait.
(Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk)
From whose imagination did the notion of Serbia being crushed by Austria spring? No such aim had ever been put forward by Berchtold. The allegation that Austria wanted to crush Serbia was yet another piece of propaganda manufactured to justify the entente over-reaction. But worse still was the French connection: the blank cheque. ‘Secure of support of France’, Russia was prepared to ‘face all the risks of war’. Buchanan spelled out the absolute reassurances that Poincaré had given to Sazonov. These were in fact more than reassurances; this was an incitement to war. Poincaré was inviting Sazonov to lead the line, promising that both countries would march behind the same banner. It was precisely what the Secret Elite had planned.
It was not the Austrian Note that made war inevitable, it was the Serbian Reply designed to provoke the reaction for which Russia, France and Britain were prepared.
SUMMARY: CHAPTER 22 – JULY 1914 – LEADING EUROPE TOWARDS THE BRINK
St Petersburg became the centre of critical decision making.
The Secret Elite agents, Poincaré and Isvolsky, aided by Paléologue and Buchanan, were there to ensure that the czar and Sazonov took a firm stance against Austria.
Poincaré went to St Petersburg, as he had done in 1912, to promise that France would go to war on the side of Russia if Germany took arms on the part of Austria. This was the real ‘blank cheque’ for war.
Sir George Buchanan ensured that Grey was fully conversant with the progress towards war and was regularly at Sazonov’s side to reassure him.
Russia, and Russian policy towards her own people, was anathema to most cultured and knowledgeable Britons. They would never have accepted a military alliance with Russia.
In Parliament and in the Cabinet, details were withheld about the deterioration in international relations until 24 July.
Germany was deceived into thinking that her relations with Britain had substantially improved through parliamentary, press and diplomatic discussion, while Secret Elite agents in the Foreign Office were plotting her destruction.
Austrian foreign minister, Berchtold, was repeatedly assured that other nations understood the need for a sharp Austrian retaliation, while, unknown to him, Britain, France and Russia prepared a collective and entirely negative response to the demands contained in the Austrian Note.
The demands made by Austria were neither unexpected nor unfair. The responses from the entente group were disproportionately over-excited. Berchtold’s delay gifted them a three-week window in which to manufacture their considered reaction.
The Serbian Reply was a diplomatic triumph designed by the Secret Elite to appear conciliatory but trigger the Austrian military threat and all that would ensue.
Germany had become concerned at the slow pace of the Austrian demands on Serbia, and the kaiser for one was delighted that the Serbian Reply seemed to remove any likelihood of war.
The Serbian Reply sprang the trap that had been laid for Berchtold.
The Secret Elite’s race to war was gathering momentum. Sir Edward Grey knew by 25 July that Russia was prepared to face all risks of war.
CHAPTER 23
July 1914 – The First Mobilisations
WITHIN HOURS OF POINCARÉ’S DEPARTURE from St Petersburg on 23 July, the success of his mission became clear. Russia began mobilising her vast armies and took an irrevocable step towards war in Europe. The Secret Elite’s agent had completed his prime objective.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the general mobilisation of the armed forces of a major power signalled its intent on war. Plans for bringing together regular army units, conscripts and reserves, equipping these troops and transporting them to border assembly points had been worked out with great precision. Modern railway systems were the key. The entire process had to be conducted by rail and the general staffs had worked for years to perfect their timetables. From the moment the command to mobilise was given, everything had to move at fixed times, in precise order, down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.1 Each action in the mobilisation process led logically to the next, in lockstep precision, combining in a practically irreversible escalation to war. In terms of strategic planning, the assumption was that the advantage lay always with the offence, and that speed was of the essence. European leaders believed that a one-to-three-day lead in mobilisation was militarily significant for the course of the war, leaving vulnerable anyone who delayed.2
The Franco-Russian military convention was very specific in declaring that the first to mobilise must be held the aggressor, and that general mobilisation ‘is war’.3 All responsible military and political authorities in France, Russia and Britain subsequently acted on that supposition. The chief of Russian general staff for mobilisation in 1892 clarified the convention that mobilisation by one of the major powers was a decisive act of war because beyond that point ‘no further diplomatic hesitation is possible’. All effective diplomatic manoeuvring, deals and agreements had to be concluded before a mobilisation. Once begun, there was no turning back.4
The Franco-Russian Alliance was clearly based on the assertion that mobilisation equated to war.5 Both Russian and French general staffs not only viewed mobilisation as an outright act of war but also insisted that all normal operational decisions be based on that assumption.6 It is important to clarify that the Russian and French governments understood precisely what mobilisation meant when the decisions were taken in July 1914.7 Once the order was given and the machinery for mobilisation set in motion, there was little possibility of stopping it.
The kaiser and his military advisors observed the same rule that general mobilisation was the first decisive step towards war. They knew they had no choice but to respond in kind if a general Russian mobilisation was ordered. In such a scenario, the moment Germany mobilised in self-defence, the Franco-Russian Alliance would be triggered. The French would mobilise to support Russia, and Germany would be faced with war on two fronts. This was no secret. Both alliances knew precisely how the other would react in the event of war.
Germany was to be compelled to fight war on two fronts and would be greatly outnumbered by the combined forces of Russia, France and Britain. The czar’s army alone was much larger than that of the kaiser, though neither better trained nor equipped. With her more modern road and rail networks, Germany’s advantage lay in the rapidity of her mobilisation. In comparison, Russia’s military machine was slow, cumbersome and burdened by inefficiency. A mobilisation across the vast lands of the Russian empire, with inadequate infrastructure, less-devel
oped railroad systems near the German frontiers and inefficient local military authorities was necessarily slow. Russia’s strategic aim was to reduce this natural German advantage by keeping her mobilisation secret for as long as possible.
In 1912, in the midst of the Balkan troubles, Russia claimed to have annulled the order that the proclamation of general mobilisation was equivalent to the declaration of war, but their secret military protocols clearly contradicted this:
It will be advantageous to complete concentration [mobilisation] without beginning hostilities, in order not to deprive the enemy irrevocably of the hope that war can still be avoided. Our measures for this must be masked by clever diplomatic negotiations, in order to lull to sleep as much as possible the enemy’s fears … If by such measures we can gain a few days they absolutely must be taken.8
Poincaré departed St Petersburg late on 23 July. Several hours later, on the morning of the 24th, General Nicolai Ianushkevich, chief of the Russian general staff, called General Dobrorolsky, the chief of mobilisation, to his office and asked if he had everything ready for the proclamation of mobilisation of the army. He had, but was aghast when Ianushkevich added ‘against Austria-Hungary only’. Dobrorolsky knew that partial mobilisation against Austria was a dangerous, impossible folly. It had to be a general mobilisation aimed at Germany.9
Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War. Page 37
