Willy.
In Tsarskoe Selo, Sazonov and the Russian generals spent hours trying to persuade Nicholas to allow the Russian army to proceed to a general mobilization. If he did it, they told him, he would reconnect with his people; if he failed, the state would be damaged abroad and at home. He would look weak, and the Russian people would never forgive him. Nicholas seemed on the verge of tears. Eventually he gave in. He sent Wilhelm another telegram:
It is technically35 impossible to stop our military preparations which were obligatory owing to Austria’s mobilisation. We are far from wishing war. As long as the negotiations with Austria on Servia’s [sic] account are taking place my troops shall not make any provocative action. I give you my solemn word for this. I put all my trust in Gods mercy and hope in your successful mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our countries and for the peace of Europe.
Your affectionate, Nicky.
Wilhelm fell into a furious tantrum and shouted that Nicholas had shown himself to be a partisan of bandits and regicides. The truth was, however, that Russian mobilization was not the same as German mobilization—as the Russians explained and as everyone knew. The Russians, like the Austrians, took weeks to get ready to fight; mobilization was a posture, a warning. They could march up and down behind their border almost indefinitely, whereas for the German army, trained and organized down to the minute, mobilization meant imminent war. The Russian mobilization was a gift to the German government. “In my endeavours36 to maintain the peace of the world I have gone to the utmost limit possible,” Wilhelm told Nicholas. “The responsibility for the disaster which is now threatening the whole civilized world will not be laid at my door. In this moment it still lies in your power to avert it.” Bethmann-Hollweg was able to argue that Russia had made the first move. The argument brought the German press on board and even the German Left.*
In the evening Wilhelm was finally shown Lichnowsky’s telegram about Grey’s warning that if France became involved Britain wouldn’t be able to stand by, two days after it had arrived. He exploded with rage, accusing George of reneging on his “promise” of neutrality. On both sides of the document Wilhelm denounced the English as “a mean crew37 of shopkeepers revealed in their ‘true colours’ … Grey proves the King a liar, and his words to Lichnowsky are the outcome of a guilty conscience, because he feels that he has deceived us. At that, it is a matter of fact a threat combined with a bluff, in order to separate us from Austria and to prevent us from mobilising, and to shift the responsibility for the war.” Now there was someone else to blame if the war widened: Grey. If he “were to say one38 single, serious sharp and warning word at Paris and St. Petersburg, and were to warn them to remain neutral, that [sic] both would become quiet at once. But he takes care not to speak the word, and threatens us instead! Common cur! England alone bears the responsibility for peace and war, not we any longer!”
The notion that the British could have stopped the Russians from going to war was a fantasy, and also a characteristic exaggeration of Britain’s influence in Europe. The Russians were determined that their very future was in the balance if they let Austria beat the Serbs; British neutrality wasn’t going to stop them. It was true, however, that for eight years Grey had made Britain the fulcrum in Europe, hinting at crucial moments that if it came to war, Britain would side with the victim of aggression. But he had always shied away from committing himself entirely, to avoid the risk that the promise of British support might actually encourage France or Russia to start a conflict. His position encouraged both sides to ask for commitments, one for help, the other for neutrality. It has sometimes been suggested that if Grey had announced on 28 or 29 July that Britain would definitely fight with France and Russia if it came to a war, Germany might have been sufficiently chastened to withdraw. He himself, after all, believed that Britain had built up an obligation to defend France if it were attacked. The problem was he couldn’t make the announcement because the majority of the British cabinet were against the idea of fighting. Moreover, like the rest of the cabinet, he had no desire to support Russia on its own. It’s also worth noting that though Bethmann-Hollweg and Wilhelm worried about British involvement, the German military no longer seemed to care one way or the other. They knew the war would be a land war, they calculated that British ships would be irrelevant, and the British army numbered barely 70,000 men.
For Wilhelm, Grey’s warning, together with Russian mobilization, brought back all the old anxieties. He saw Europe, led by England, ganging up on him, and the hand of his dead uncle:
So the celebrated39 encirclement of Germany has finally become an established fact, and the purely anti-German policy which England has been pursuing all over the world has won the most spectacular victory. England stands derisive, brilliantly successful; her long-mediated purely anti-German policy, stirring to admiration even him who it will utterly destroy! The dead Edward is stronger than I who am still alive … Our agents and all such must inflame the whole Mahommedan world to frantic rebellion against this detestable, treacherous, conscienceless nation of shopkeepers; for if we are to bleed to death, England shall at all costs lose India.
In Britain most people, including the cabinet and George, still believed that Britain wouldn’t come into any war. The Liberal Party was still vigorously against it, the Conservatives were still undecided.
Even now, however, Wilhelm hesitated. It was Bethmann-Hollweg who insisted that war must be declared even if Russia agreed to negotiations. It was Falkenhayn, the war minister, who pressed the kaiser to authorize Kriegsgefahr and order that a German ultimatum be delivered to Russia to halt her mobilization within twelve hours or Germany would declare war. When Pourtalès, the German ambassador, came to deliver the ultimatum, the head of the tsar’s court chancellery, Mossolov, told him it would be impossible. “You can’t stop40 a car that is going at 60 miles an hour. It would inevitably capsize.”
The next day, 1 August, Nicholas sent a last telegram pleading with Wilhelm to continue negotiating: “Understand you are41 obliged to mobilize but wish to have the same guarantee from you as I gave you, that these measures do not mean war … Our long proved friendship must succeed, with God’s help, in avoiding bloodshed. Anxiously, full of confidence await your answer.” German mobilization, however, was different. Their war mobilization led to immediate action—so this was not a guarantee the kaiser could give. But he did draft a telegram suggesting that talks might take place if Russia halted its mobilization. It was not, however, sent until late in the evening, well after Pourtalès had tearfully delivered the German declaration of war to Sazonov.
Nicholas was “praying with all the fervour of his nature that God would avert the war which he felt was imminent.” His son’s tutor, Pierre Gilliard, was struck by “the air of weary exhaustion he wore … The pouches which always appeared under his eyes when he was tired seemed to be markedly larger.” After he got the news from Sazonov, “The Czar appeared, looking very pale, and told them that war was declared, in a voice which betrayed his agitation, notwithstanding all his efforts.”42 When she heard, Alix began to weep, and all the daughters seeing her cry began to cry too. Wilhelm’s delayed telegram arrived late that night. Nicholas saw it as proof of his duplicity, though it was more a sign of his powerlessness: “He was never sincere;43 not a moment,” he said bitterly.
In the end he was hopelessly entangled in the net of his perfidy and lies … it was half past one in the morning of August 2 … There was no doubt that the object of this strange and farcical telegram was to shake my resolution, disconcert me and inspire me to some absurd and dishonourable act. It produced the opposite effect. As I left the Empress’s room, I felt that all was over forever between me and William. I slept extremely well.
In the early hours of 1 August the British Foreign Office made a last attempt to close down the war. They received a telegram from Berlin, informing them that despite Wilhelm’s readiness to mediate, Russia had mobilized against Austria: “We are unable to re
main44 inactive … We have therefore informed Russia that, unless she were prepared to suspend within twelve hours the warlike measures against Germany and Austria, we should be obliged to mobilise, and this would mean war.” Asquith and Grey decided to use George to get to the tsar. “The poor King45 was hauled out of his bed,” Asquith wrote, “and one of my strangest experiences … was sitting with him—he in a brown dressing gown over his nightshirt with copious signs of having been aroused from his first ‘beauty sleep’—while I read the message and the ‘proposed’ answer.” George described the telegram as “a last resort46 to try to prevent war.” George’s contribution, according to Asquith, was to add “my dear Nicky,”47 and sign it.
George’s message forwarded the German telegram and added:
I cannot help48 thinking that some misunderstanding has produced this deadlock. I am most anxious not to miss any possibility of avoiding the terrible calamity which at present threatens the whole world. I therefore make a personal appeal to you, my dear Nicky, to remove the misapprehension which I feel must have occurred, and to leave still open grounds for negotiation and possible peace. If you think I can in any way contribute to that all-important purpose, I will do everything in my power to assist in reopening the interrupted conversations between the Powers concerned.
The message was entrusted to Buchanan and a shorter telegram was sent to Tsarskoe Selo asking the tsar to see the British ambassador as soon as possible. But the tsar was a hard man to get at. By the time Buchanan managed to see him, it was late in the evening and Germany had already declared war on Russia. “Whether we shall49 be dragged into it God only knows,” George wrote, “but we shall not send an Expeditionary Force of the Army now. France is begging us to come to their assistance. At this moment public opinion here is dead against our joining in the War but I think it will be impossible to keep out of it as we cannot allow France to be smashed.”
Nicholas’s reply to George’s telegram arrived the next day. “I would gladly50 have accepted your proposals, had not the German Ambassador this afternoon presented a Note to my Government declaring war,” he wrote. He had done “all in my power to avert war,” while Germany and Austria had rejected “every proposal.” He had moved to general mobilization only, “owing to quickness with which Germany can mobilise in comparison with Russia … That I was justified in doing so is proved by Germany’s sudden declaration of war, which was quite unexpected by me as I had given most categorical assurances to the Emperor William that my troops would not move so long as mediation negotiations continued.” He hoped, he added, that Britain would support them.
The Russian government’s justification for going to war was that the people demanded it—an extraordinary claim from an autocratic state that barely ten years before hadn’t even recognized the existence of public opinion. At some level Nicholas believed it, but of course “public opinion” was not the hundreds of thousands of strikers or the people on the barricades in Moscow. It was true, however, that with only one exception—the tiny pro-German court faction—the entire government, bureaucracy, the educated classes, the buyers of papers, demanded intervention in Austria’s war with Serbia, which gave Germany an excuse to attack. If there had been no Nicholas, Russia would still have gone to war. Though he had his doubts, Nicholas was not strong enough to counter such feeling. On the other hand, in his twenty years in power, Nicholas had done so much to weaken and stunt the emergence of a properly functioning modern government, so much to ensure that it was about as chaotic as it could be, that it is possible to speculate that a more professional government might have managed to hold on to the obvious fact that war was a threat to its very existence, and that this reality ought to trump everything else.
Nicholas felt he had been forced to do it, and he blamed Germany. “The German Emperor51 knew perfectly well that Russia wanted peace,” he told Buchanan bitterly, “and that her mobilisation could not be completed for another fortnight at least but he had declared war with such haste as to render all further discussion impossible.”
Even at this late stage, Wilhelm, Bethmann-Hollweg and Lichnowsky, the ambassador in London, still hoped that Britain would stay out, and the war wouldn’t need to spread beyond the East.
On 1 August Ambassador Lichnowsky reported excitedly that Grey had asked whether, if France remained neutral, Germany would leave it alone. Lichnowsky answered yes, deciding that this was an offer to stay out if Germany stayed out of France. Wilhelm received the message just after he’d reluctantly handed Moltke the signed order for general mobilization—which meant armies would soon be pouring into France. The kaiser and the chancellor jumped at the offer. Wilhelm sent a telegram to George telling him he had just received “the communication from52 your Government, offering French neutrality under the guarantee of Great Britain.” He assured George that he would not attack France if it offered neutrality and if that was guaranteed by the British army and fleet. “I hope that France will not become nervous, the troops on my frontiers are in the act of being stopped by telegraph and telephone from crossing into France.” The kaiser told Moltke that the soldiers could all be sent off to Russia. Moltke practically burst into tears. He insisted mobilization couldn’t be halted, that it would be mad to leave Germany exposed to France. Wilhelm replied sullenly, “Your uncle would have53 given me a different answer.” He had the order to stop at the Luxembourg border phoned through to the troops. “I felt as if my heart was going to break,” Moltke the warmonger sniffed as he set off miserably for general headquarters, devastated that the kaiser “still hoped for peace.”54*
George’s reply, when it came, was not what Wilhelm had hoped. “I think there must56 be some misunderstanding of a suggestion that passed in friendly conversation between Prince Lichnowsky and Sir Edward Grey this afternoon, when they were discussing how actual fighting between German and British armies might be avoided.” The French had refused to be neutral. Wearing a military greatcoat over his nightshirt, Wilhelm recalled Moltke. “Now you can57 do what you like,” he growled. At 7 p.m., the German army were in Luxembourg. France was in the war by the next afternoon. The French ambassador in Berlin, Paul Cambon, told Edward Goschen that there were three people in Berlin who regretted the war had started. “You, me and58 Kaiser Wilhelm.”
The next day Lichnowsky came to see Prime Minister Asquith in tears. The kaiser was no longer answering his telegrams. The Germans were now threatening to enter Belgium. The Belgian king had appealed to the British government, through George, to safeguard his country’s neutrality. The German occupation created an extraordinary volte-face in British public opinion. It also provided the cabinet, which had gradually come round to Grey’s argument that Britain was not only obligated to defend France, but that strategically it couldn’t allow France to be invaded by Germany, with a justification for action: the defence of “plucky little Belgium.” The decision to go to war was extraordinarily united. Only two cabinet members resigned, and only one MP, the Labour member Ramsay MacDonald, spoke against Grey, who told Parliament that Britain must go to war to defend Belgium out of “honour.” MacDonald observed that “There has been59 no crime committed by statesmen of this character without those statesmen appealing to their nation’s honour”—both the Crimean and Boer Wars had been justified for the sake of “honour.”
On 2 August George wrote in his diary: “At 10:30 a crowd of about 6,000 people collected outside the Palace, cheering and singing. May and I went out onto the balcony, they gave us a great ovation.”
The next day he added almost enthusiastically: “Public opinion since Grey made his statement in the House today that we should not allow Germany to pass through the English Channel or into the North Sea to attack France and that we should not allow her troops to pass through Belgium, has entirely changed … and now everyone is for war and our helping our friends.” On 4 August he continued: “Fairly warm, showers and windy … I held a Council at 10:45 to declare war with Germany, it is a terrible catastrophe but it is not our
fault … Please God it may be soon over.”60 The declaration of war included the empire; with one signature 450 million subjects were bound into the conflict.
Wilhelm would spend the rest of his life apportioning blame for the First World War. He wrote to Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. president, ten days after the outbreak, claiming that George had promised neutrality and then reneged on it. Deeply stung by the accusation that he might have given assurances that weren’t his to give, George always maintained that he had never made any such promise. To his last breath Wilhelm would insist that Nicholas had wanted war all along, that Russia had been secretly preparing for war for months before, that the Entente had been hoarding gold since April 1913.
Neither George, nor Nicholas, nor even Alix believed that Wilhelm was personally responsible for the war. “I don’t believe61 Wilhelm wanted war,” George told the departing Austrian ambassador. Alix told her son’s tutor, Pierre Gilliard, that though she had never liked Wilhelm—“if only because he is not sincere”—she was “sure he has been won over to the war against his will.”62
And it was true. When it came to it, Wilhelm had not wanted war. But he couldn’t stop it. In the week before it broke out he was traduced and ignored repeatedly by his civilian and military staff. Forces beyond his power had begun to dictate the direction the country was going in. But in many respects he had brought the situation on himself. Twenty-six years of haphazard intervention had left a dangerous legacy. He had encouraged a powerful army, conscious of its own strength and convinced of the benefits and inevitability of a European war, and he had kept it beyond government control. He had initiated a shipbuilding programme which had created bitter hostility with Britain where before there had been none, and refused to temper it in any way. His insistence that his government deal only with the Right had made it a hostage to nationalist interest groups and alienated the rest of the country. His embracing and encouragement of a public rhetoric which bristled with violence, racial stereotyping and threats had helped to bolster an image abroad of a nation hungering for conflict. And finally, he had allowed chains of command and decision-making in civilian government to become chaotic and confused because it suited him for them to remain so. Virtually all his positions were the result of weakness and immaturity, the pursuit of appetites and wishes with no thought to the consequences: over-excitement at the idea of the might of the army and his notional control of it; a craving to look powerful and strong, and to identify himself with the aggressive masculine stereotypes of the German army; and above all a desire to be popular.
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