An important aspect of this freedom was the search for a British connection. Holstein’s vision of such a relationship involved accord rather than alliance: specific action in common for common specific ends. Yet even this modest goal remained out of reach.Paul Kennedy has demonstrated that above all Germany’s rapid economic growth created a fundamental antagonism between the two powers that would have been difficult to overcome given the most conciliatory diplomatic behavior on both sides. Gregor Schollgen speaks of “ignorance,” of a young and inexperienced nation pursuing a tragic course in its relations with the older power, ultimately failing to recognize that its goals of Weltpolitik could best be achieved as Britain’s junior partner. Peter Winzen is more critical. He accuses Bülow, who became secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1897, of consistent bad faith, of sabotaging Anglo-German relations for the sake of a grand design that would ally Russia to Germany in the course of an Anglo-Russian war Bülow regarded as inevitable.50
These approaches overlook the basic fact that Britain and Germany had no common enemy, no common concrete danger strong enough to bring them together. The enduring continental alliances, Austria and Germany, France and Russia, were essentially insurance policies against objective threats, geographic possibilities that remained constant whatever treaty relationships might exist. Britain and Germany had no equivalent situation. Without one their relationship was likely to remain at best alignment without alliance, connection without commitment.
Holstein was correct in reasoning that Britain’s interests, like Germany’s, were best served by sustaining the existing order. Where he failed was in overestimating the strength of the British Empire. Britain was not merely sated, but saturated. Appeasement seemed by far the wisest course. This approach is historically congenial to imperial powers in decline. It reflected as well the position of the bourgeois-conservative elites that dominated Britain, and demanded global grandeur with limited liability.51
Toward whom should that appeasement be directed? Keith Wilson exaggerates when he speaks of Germany as “invented” to suit the role Britain needed to play in order to sustain its policies.52 Yet the weakness of the concrete points of friction, even the naval issue, between Britain and Germany does suggest that Britain’s commitment against Germany was a secondary, rather than a primary, fact of twentieth-century international relations. It was a by-product of the French and Russian ententes Britain needed to sustain her position as a world power. As such, it lay farther outside of German control than successive German governments were willing to concede.53
In view of the continued failure of its British policies, German encouragement during the 1890s of Russia’s expansion in central Asia and towards the Pacific appeared almost brilliant in the first years of the new century. Russian advances in Korea and Manchuria generated resistance from Japan and increasing opposition from Britain, Japan’s ally since 1902.54
Bülow, promoted from the foreign office to the chancellorship in 1900, was enthusiastic over a situation he regarded as an inviting opportunity for creative diplomacy. Bülow viewed international relations in a traditional context of alliances, balances of power, and national security. His concept of Weltpolitik was anything but a coherent program of economic or political imperialism. Depending on perspective, it can be described negatively, as the constant search for cheap successes at low risk or, positively, as the flexible exploration of a spectrum of options to solve long-standing general problems of international relations. To date the Franco-Russian alliance had been essentially a free ride for both partners. What might happen if a price tag suddenly appeared on the relationship? In Bülow’s opinion a German initiative, properly couched and timed, could mean re-establishing close relations with Russia at bargain-basement terms. The Russians seemed in no position to be selective. A Russo-German alliance might in turn draw France into its orbit—particularly in view of that country’s recent initiatives in Morocco. Germany’s interests there were significant, but not vital. They could be negotiated, even bartered. The Franco-Prussian War had been history for over three decades; times seemed propitious for dramatic changes in great-power relationships.55
Bülow’s underlying attitude towards Russia had changed little since 1887. She was not a shambling giant with feet of clay—that status Bülow reserved for Austria—but a power whose attitudes and behavior held the keys to Europe’s stability. His policy depended heavily on Russian support to bring France to terms. But far from acting as the sophisticated mediator of interests and attitudes, the Russian government behaved more like a Luftmensch from the empire’s own shtetls. Themselves with nothing to trade, the Russian delegates to the First Moroccan Conference devoted all their energies to persuading Germany into concessions. The foreign ministry officially stated that Russia would stand by France should war over Morocco arise. With the French government firmly refusing to negotiate directly with Germany, with even Austria-Hungary pressing Germany to back down, Bülow faced a choice: fight or quit. Germany chose to quit, accepting one of the twentieth century’s most complete diplomatic defeats rather than risk a war that suddenly very few Germans seemed to want, no matter how belligerent their previous rhetoric might have been. And in April, 1906, Russia collected its payment—a new French loan on unusually favorable terms.56
German restraint in 1905 is frequently described as at best a temporary reflection of current shortcomings in armament and equipment, an anomaly in a political-military strategy essentially offensive in nature. The strategy is in turn most often presented as reflecting both extensive geopolitical aims and an institutional bias in favor of the offensive, which was considered to express most fully the values at the heart of the German military system: courage, decisiveness, initiative, and similar caste-influenced attitudes. Germany’s sudden backdown did owe much to the fact that her policy during the crisis had been no more than a set of diplomatic initiatives. Coordination and consultation between the foreign office and the general staff was minimal. Yet for all of his rhetoric about the desirability of war with France in the context of current Russian weakness, even Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen seemed reluctant to push his arguments to the limit in 1905.57
This caution was not specific to the situation. Germany’s mainstream military theorists had moved a long way from Waldersee’s ebullient advocacy of preventive war. Since the turn of the century they had become increasingly dubious about their country’s prospects. For all of Tirpitz’s elaborate building programs, naval planning against likely combinations of enemies more and more assumed the nature of the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland. The army’s consideration of invading Denmark and Holland, Schlieffen’s eventual decision to attack Belgium, reflected a sense of weakness rather than strength, a fear that these small states would become sally-ports for future enemies, and a corresponding search for compensating advantages however ephemeral and costly these might be in the long run. As late as November, 1909, the general staff asked the navy to evaluate which Dutch harbors would be suitable for a major British landing.58
This pessimism reflected Germany’s increasingly unfavorable diplomatic situation. It responded to the domestic strains engendered by increased military preparation: the social consequences of enlarging the army and the financial burdens of expanding the navy. At the cutting edge, however, it was a function of professional anxiety at two levels. Schlieffen’s growing commitment to an all-out offensive against France represented at least as much a turn away from the east as a focus on the west. In a quarter-century’s alliance between Germany and Austria, the Habsburg army had developed an image and a self-image as a military Avis—not exactly a poor relation, but an attendant lord, suited to start a progress and swell a scene or two but able to do nothing the Germans could not do better. In Schlieffen’s opinion the Austrian army could not even protect its own state from a determined Russian offensive.
His judgment is open to question. Unit for unit, in equipment, efficiency, and command, there was arguably little
to choose between Habsburg and Romanov. Psychic reality, however, was more important than hindsight. In his early years as chief of staff Schlieffen believed that if the main German strength were not deployed in the east Austria might collapse completely. Much to Waldersee’s chagrin, he therefore replaced Moltke’s pincers movement with a side-by-side German-Austrian offensive from Silesia and Galicia into southern Poland.59
This new concept left East Prussia completely exposed to a Russian attack. It meant deploying almost a million men in an area where road and railway networks were poor on both sides of the frontier. Its only advantage was the possibility of providing direct German support for an inefficient ally. And Schlieffen increasingly doubted whether the advantages of this operation justified its risks. A large part of the active Russian army was stationed on the western frontier. To expedite the deployment of the remainder, railroads were being built in European Russia with all possible speed. Russian strategic concepts had correspondingly altered. Revised war plans now incorporated one offensive from the Niemen against the German left, and another against the Austrian right flank in southern Galicia. Each ally would therefore have to secure its own respective flank before any combined operations would be possible. This in turn encouraged a tendency to establish two separate secondary theaters of war, whose geographically diverging objectives were likely to absorb critical numbers of the available troops.60
The possibility of winning even the kind of limited victory Moltke originally projected was substantially reduced. And if the allies could cope with the new strategic situation, what would they have gained? Moltke’s original hypothesis that victory would encourage negotiation in the east depended on at least a stable front in the west. Schlieffen’s ultimate dream may have been a repetition of the victory of Cannae on a European scale. But that dream was the fruit of his nightmare: a series of meaningless victories in the east, drawing German armies even deeper into Russia while a rejuvenated France drove at the Vosges and the Rhine.61
For all its positive qualities, however, the French army was to Germany what the German navy was to Great Britain—a challenge that no one doubted could be matched. This by no means made the French a foe to be despised. But since 1870 the French military had essentially formed itself according to patterns set in Germany. Despite specific advantages in some areas, it continued to sustain the image of a blurred copy of its original.62 Even without the advantage of a larger population, German military planners were convinced that France could be beaten both by sheer numerical superiority and man for man, corps for corps. The growing faith among Europe’s military planners in the tactical and operational superiority of the offensive only strengthened the conviction that an all-out attack on France would remove not only an immediately dangerous enemy, but the one most vulnerable to a Germany herself in no position to sustain a long, drawn-out war.63
Schlieffen’s concern for the eastern theater also provided him with the beginnings of a solution to his greatest practical anxiety: the fundamental imbalance in manpower between Germany on one hand and France and Russia on the other. Even by training every fit man, Germany could not hope to match her enemies numerically. In an age when all armies were trained, armed, and equipped essentially alike, the prospects for securing more than a marginal advantage in quality seemed severely limited.64 These problems posed a corresponding challenge to professional skill. The window of vulnerability must become a door of opportunity. The general staff exercises of the 1890s indicated the possibilities even under modern conditions of a small force defeating a larger one by concentrating against an enemy’s flank, then driving against its lines of retreat. Far from ignoring or denigrating the power of modern weapons, Schlieffen proposed to take advantage of them by reducing the strength of covering and screening forces to what seemed an unacceptable minimum to more conservative colleagues. Instead of playing to its enemies’ strengths by a series of frontal encounter battles, the German army must seek to change the rules, to impose a plan so comprehensive, so cohesive, that the enemy whould be able to do nothing except react.65
Orthodox general staff wisdom held that Germany’s long and exposed eastern frontier could only be defended by a strategic offensive, by thrusts into Russian territory.66 This opinion was unchallenged by Bismarck and shared by his successors, Caprivi and Hohenloe. Schlieffen for his part was willing to test the hypothesis that the east and in particular its most vulnerable area, the province of East Prussia, could be held even against heavy odds by relatively weak forces. East Prussia’s complex network of lakes, swamps, and woods offered excellent possibilities to well-trained, boldly commanded defenders. The geography of the area and the disposition of the Russian railroad network encouraged dividing invading Russian forces into two halves, one advancing westward from the Niemen, the other northwest from the Narew. And this in turn offered excellent prospects for operational ripostes that would overwhelm the invaders in detail.
The general staff exercise of 1891 featured a simultaneous Russian invasion of Posen and East Prussia, with Schlieffen’s summary highlighting the probable moral impact if even one invading column was destroyed. The problem for 1898 saw the East Prussian garrison threatened on three sides, with Schlieffen insisting the optimal response was to engage the nearest enemy force as quickly as possible, decisively defeat it, then turn against the other two adversaries. In 1899 the Germans again countered numerical inferiority by crushing one of the Russian flanks, then moving against their lines of communication.
By the turn of the century it had become a textbook solution: throw the entire German strength at whichever enemy first came within range, then concentrate against the other. Time and again the concept succeeded in war games. On one memorable occasion a general staff lieutenant-colonel charged with leading one of the “Russian” armies found himself so completely surrounded that the rules demanded a surrender. The officer insisted that no force he led would ever lay down its arms. Schlieffen, who was not without a sense of humor, amended the final report to read that the “Russian” commander, recognizing his hopeless situation, sought and found death in the front line!
Such an outcome was, however, considered an optimal result. Schlieffen had a healthy respect for the size of the Russian army, and a high regard for the uncertainties of battle. After 1901 the mobilization plan reduced Germany’s eastern force to an average of three corps, four reserve divisions, and two to four cavalry divisions. Schlieffen did not expect miracles from such a weak instrument. He recognized the possibility that a well-coordinated Russian advance, or a German defeat in the opening rounds, might require drawing troops from the west. But he also warned that once the reinforcements were on the scene, nothing would prevent the Russians from withdrawing until French pressure constrained the Germans to send troops westward, then resuming the advance. This sort of counterpunching, Schlieffen roundly declared, would lead in the long run to the complete annihilation of the German army. Instead, Ostheer should expect to fight with what it had, do as much damage as possible, and wait for the decisive victory over France. If necessary, Schlieffen was prepared to return to the concept of the 1880s, abandoning most of East Prussia and making a stand on the Vistula River. By 1903 the railway section of the general staff felt able to guarantee the transportation of eleven corps eastward as soon as France should be overthrown. And this would be only the vanguard of a German army strong enough not merely to drive Russian invaders out of East Prussia, but to pin them there and destroy them.67
Schlieffen’s strategic conceptions incorporated his reflections on the changing nature of war. Often derided for their shortsightedness in failing to predict a war of attrition, Europe’s generals were if anything even less correct in evaluating the pace of destruction in modern war. Far from being technological illiterates, soldiers were well aware of what modern weapons, the rapid-firing field gun, the machine gun, and the magazine rifle, could do in theory. What they were expecting was not a gentlemen’s war, not a repetition of 1866 or 1870, but an Armageddon
in quick time, with events proceeding at the outer limits of comprehension and control. I. S. Bloch’s La guerre future was not only discounted because of its pessimistic predictions of indecisive mass war. More and more experts agreed that the rates of loss under modern conditions made a war of attrition on the Bloch model impossible.
Military planners prior to 1914 are often described as underestimating the resilience of their war machines and the societies sustaining them. What they actually did was to overestimate the rates at which men would be killed and machines destroyed. They saw vulnerabilities more clearly than durabilities—and it was the latter that gave Europe time to adjust to the initial casualty rates of 1914–15. Given the nature of prewar anticipations, it by no means indicated lack of faith in one’s people to assume that countries facing such a catastrophe were likely to collapse from psychic shock and physical stress. Schlieffen was hardly isolated in his growing belief that the armed forces available to modern nations could be maintained for any length of time only at the expense of the economic, social, and political institutions they were supposed to sustain. And in this context Russia, combining tremendous reserves of human and material resources with a relatively primitive social structure, emerged as the most likely survivor of a protracted war.68
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History) Page 5
