Much ink has been spilled on the actual course of events in August, 1914: the brief moment when French neutrality appeared possible; the kaiser’s enthusiastic suggestion that the German army could now be turned against Russia; Moltke’s emotional collapse at the thought of abandoning the Schlieffen Plan. His argument that the troops would arrive at the eastern railheads as a disorganized and hungry mob was carefully refuted after the war by General von Staabs of the general staff’s railway section.87 Implementing the Grosse Ostaufmarsch would hardly have meant the removal of a generation’s cobwebs. While the practical and emotional difficulties involved in executing such an emergency redeployment must not be underestimated, neither should they be regarded as insurmountable. Technical questions, plans or the absence of plans, were not the key issues. What counted was German professional opinion that an offensive of any scale against Russia was impossible in the context of even a potential French threat.
In March, 1913, the general staff played a war game in which the main force of eighteen army corps was concentrated in the east. By the thirty-fifth day of mobilization the Germans had occupied most of western Russia. They held Kiev in the south, Vilna in the north. But the Russian army was still undefeated, and the French were on the point of breaking through in the west. Ten days later they flanked the Metz fortress complex. The “Germans” were forced to retreat from an operational triumph that had become a strategic disaster.
The outcomes of such exercises have too frequently been adjusted to suit the demands of operational doctrine, state policy, or personal vanity to inspire absolute faith in any set of results. The Germans undertook this particular war game at the request of their Austrian allies, and might at least be suspected of trying to prove a preconception. The “French” commander, Hermann von Kühl, was one of the general staff’s most brilliant young officers—a reputation he was to sustain and enhance in the coming war. But the “German” attack on Russia was entrusted to Karl von Bülow, a general considered good enough to command one of the armies on the Schlieffen Plan’s vital right wing. His chief of staff would become quartermaster-general in 1914. These men too were part of the Imperial army’s first team, and not likely to endanger their images and careers by doing less than their best.88
Adolf Tappen, one of Moltke’s closest collaborators on the general staff, summarized the prevailing viewpoint fifteen years later. The Russians, he declared, always had the option of withdrawing from a decisive encounter until the situation in the west was decided to their advantage.89 The best rider, the elder Moltke once observed, does not set his horse at an impossible obstacle. Pessimism about the prospects of a German strategic offensive into Russia extended to the attack discussed by Moltke and Conrad in 1909. Planners in Berlin and commanders in East Prussia increasingly agreed that given the projected strength of the Russian armies facing Germany, throwing a dozen divisions against the Narew meant feeding them into a meatgrinder for no purpose. The final staff study for the eastern theater, held in the winter of 1913, suggested that the most promising situation involved first stopping the Russian advance from the Niemen, then turning against those advancing from the Narew. It said nothing about an initial German attack in either direction. In its own collective mind the general staff increasingly doubted whether anything could save East Prussia from temporary occupation, even if Ostheer remained on the defensive and executed a fighting withdrawal towards the Vistula.90
The well-documented failure of the Germans to mount any kind of offensive in the east in 1914, combined with the disastrous Austrian defeat at Lemberg, raised prompt cries of betrayal from Conrad. Norman Stone and Oskar Règele are among the distinguished scholars taking pains to substantiate the Austrian chief of staff’s self-image as something of a cat’s-paw, who expected great results from a German attack and believed in it to the last minute. To accept this is to argue that Conrad could not evaluate his own correspondence, which consistently repeated the point that Germany’s commitment to the east was limited to thirteen or fourteen divisions.91 As early as March, 1909, moreover, Moltke had warned that “enemy action” might influence German operations. To call this blunt statement a “clever” escape clause or a mental reservation is surely to insult the intelligence of Moltke and Conrad alike.
Moltke had initially hoped that if he left enough troops in the east to carry out the proposed Narew offensive, the Austrians would in turn attack more vigorously and lessen the pressure on East Prussia. But the possibility of reassigning first-line units grew less each year, particularly since Italy’s increasingly wavering commitment to the Triple Alliance made it likely that her previous promises of support on the western front would be fulfilled slowly, if at all. By late in 1912 the Italians talked openly of limiting their forces in that theater. The German naval attaché reported in November, 1913, that public feeling against Austria was so strong it could erupt in “the most unpleasant fashion” at any time.92 It was not a good portent for future cooperation.
Revised German mobilization plans had made available an increasing number of Ersatz formations, composed primarily of men of military age who had received no peacetime training. Moltke believed that these second-line troops could be usefully employed guarding river crossings and providing garrisons in Pos^n and East Prussia.93 In December, 1913, Germany proposed to cover the left flank of the promised Austrian attack by deploying an improvised force of thirty-two Ersatz and Landwehr battalions in Silesia. These additions to the order of battle were hardly calculated to frighten enemies or impress allies. Conrad was well aware of the difference between the Prussian Guard and an equivalent number of greenhorns and grandfathers. In May, 1914, he made a trip to Carlsbad, where Moltke was taking the waters. He began their conference by repeating his determination to attack in Galicia. He went on to emphasize the urgent need for more German troops in the east. It was “highly probable” that the main Russian attack would be directed against East Prussia. In this case, Conrad said, it would be to Germany’s own advantage to be strong on the eastern front. What would happen if Austria were defeated? What if Germany failed to win an overwhelming victory in the west, and then found herself faced with a Russian invasion that Ostheer was unable to parry? Moltke answered only that the Vistula fortress would have to hold out long enough to enable reinforcements to arrive from France.
Just before Conrad left for Vienna, he asked Moltke how long it would be, in case of a two-front war, before German reinforcements could arrive in the east. Moltke’s reply is significant: “We hope to be ready to turn our main strength against Russia six weeks after the beginning of operations.”94 This was a month later than the deadline he had mentioned in 1909! Yet even this additional thirty-day delay had no effect on Conrad’s strategic visions. If the Austrian army’s spine was broken in the first month of the war, it was not because German plans were even partly calculated to deceive or mislead her ally. The Austrians were victimized by the wishful thinking and overconfidence of their chief of staff, who continued down to the outbreak of hostilities to hear only what he wished to hear.
3
War Finds a Way
The generals were not Germany’s only pessimists. Bethmann Hollweg’s familiar suggestion that it was hardly worthwhile to plant new trees on his estate outside of Berlin since the Russians would be there in a few years anyway was in part a product of his trip to Russia in 1912. He returned deeply disturbed at his first-hand impressions of that empire’s human and material resources. He was conscious, in a way many of his critics were not, of Russia’s potential—a potential whose development lay essentially outside Germany’s control, and which Russia’s current allies seemed unwilling or unable to harness. Rational adjustments of political and economic conflicts between the two empires might be expected to reduce tensions. But could such fine tuning indefinitely avert conflict without significant changes in the international system?1
I
The chancellor’s doubts reflected and reinforced the views of his confidential advisor, Kur
t Riezler. Riezler is an outstanding early example of those terrible simplifiers who continue to stalk the twentieth century’s corridors of power: system makers without any ultimate responsibility for implementation, and counsellors whose schemas can be dangerously refreshing and fatally attractive to superiors grappling with the concrete complexities of decision making. Riezler argued for an essential distinction between developing and stagnating powers. The former had time on their side. The latter were constrained to follow policies of bluff and calculated risk, trying to check and alter an ultimately unfavorable trend by short-term successes. Riezler was convinced that Russian power was increasing steadily and objectively, almost in spite of the failures and blunders of her diplomacy. Austria, on the other hand, was at a level of stagnation that might well prove terminal. He therefore urged Bethmann to support at the first favorable opportunity a decisive Austrian initiative, specifically in the Balkans, one of the few remaining areas still allowing scope for such a move. The growing destructiveness of modern war, Riezler argued, made policies of brinkmanship potentially more effective than ever before. If Germany stood up and asserted herself, her adversaries would back down rather than risk actually going to war. Thus the cause of peace would ultimately be served by aggressiveness.
These theoretical formulations bear enough surface similarities to the events of 1914 to have given Riezler a certain status as the chancellor’s evil genius. The days of think-tank intellectuals were, however, still far in the future. Bethmann was far too cautious to take his cues directly from the political metaphysics of an amanuensis. Instead he took pains in his public statements to deny the inevitability of a clash between the Slavic and Teutonic worlds. He hoped rather that reason would in time temper the strong Panslavic attitudes current in Russian political and diplomatic circles. But reason was most effective when backed by force; words unsupported by guns were an exercise in futility.2
Germany’s perception of the Russian threat was a major motivator of the Army Bill of 1913, the largest in the history of the Second Reich. Like most German military legislation it was a compromise. The general staff had urged the creation of three new army corps—and not entirely for operational reasons. The army’s strength had not been increased significantly since 1893. Rapid population growth in the intervening decades meant that military service was increasingly becoming a lottery, with as many as half the eligible men in a given year performing no active service at all.
To the war ministry the probable negative social results of continuing this process were balanced by other professional and political considerations. Creating new formations would further dilute officer and NCO corps already straining to fill their ranks with suitable men. More than simple social prejudice was involved in the objection. Much of Germany’s militarism was skin deep and no more. A regular officer’s career was by far less attractive to men with the necessary education than a reserve officer’s commission, which provided social cachet at limited cost. The Russian army’s recent expansion had required commissioning large numbers of marginally qualified candidates, with observed negative effects on efficiency. War Minister Josias von Heeringen and his subordinates argued the wisdom of concentrating instead on improving the quality of the existing system: increasing peacetime establishments, purchasing more machine guns and heavy artillery, recognizing the changes wrought by the internal-combustion engine by adding trucks and aircraft to the army’s inventory.
The debate was part of the beginning of that tension between numbers and technology, mass and quality, characteristic of twentieth-century military establishments throughout the world. But the bill ultimately presented to the Reichstag owed much to practical political considerations as well. From the beginning Bethmann feared the financial consequences of the general staff’s demands. Nationalist public opinion overwhelmingly favored the increases—in principle. But Germany’s conservatives were openly hostile to a military budget whose funding would significantly change the nature and increase the amount of taxes they paid. On the other hand the Social Democrats, or at least some of their key leaders, seemed willing to modify their historic position of “not a man and not a penny for this system” if given reasonable justification.
In part this involved moving away from an increasingly sterile oppositionism. But it also reflected a growing concern among personalities as different as Edouard Bernstein and Kurt Eisner that Russia was in fact planning an attack on Germany. Germany’s governments took the opportunity to begin replacing walls with bridges. Bavarian authorities went so far as to share with SPD leaders intelligence information suggesting an imminent outbreak of hostilities. By March, 1913, Bernstein was writing to the editor of The Nation, Britain’s leading radical weekly, that the new arms bill was completely justified in the context of Russian intentions. The legislation that ultimately passed the Reichstag left the army at its current size of twenty-five corps. But it provided for an increase of 120,000 men in the peacetime establishment, giving Germany an active army of 800,000. It also funded significant improvements in administration and armament, notably the addition of a machine-gun company to every infantry regiment.3
The Russian build-up that contributed so much to German defense politics reflected the tensions created by an assertive Balkan policy not underwritten by the force necessary to implement it. It reflected the alteration in election requirements for the Duma, which produced in the 1912 version of that body a nationalist, patriotic majority, frequently willing to make concessions on questions involving foreign and defense policy in order to improve leverage for domestically oriented programs.4 It also reflected an increased level of French support, combined with lingering uncertainty about France’s ultimate intentions. In August, 1913, it was Joffre’s turn to be a guest at the Russian maneuvers. He pressed vigorously for immediate Russian participation in a combined offensive against Germany, promising that a million and a half Frenchmen would smite the Teuton foe no later than the eleventh day of mobilization. Nevertheless, as professionals the Russians were well aware that only in storybooks is the enemy always defeated. As soldiers they were uneasy about the probable behavior of civilian politicians, particularly French republicans.
Their anxiety seemed justified by the final version of the Franco-Russian military alliance, introduced in September, 1913. It prescribed that in case of “any act of war by the German army,” both contracting parties were “free” to mobilize without consultation. Austrian or Italian mobilization, partial or general, made “concert . . . indispensable.” In short, neither government was willing to give its generals anything like a free hand. This in turn indicated to Russian planners that they must prepare for a worst-case contingency, and field an army strong enough at least to check, if not to defeat, Germany and Austria combined.5
Enhanced military strength also seemed a necessary prop for a suddenly unravelling Balkan policy. States scrambling for territorial spoils in the aftermath of Turkey’s collapse appealed to St. Petersburg for redress. Sazonov consistently promised to support everyone’s claims—an approach made easier by the numerous marital connections between Russian and Balkan royalty. At no time did the foreign ministry try to assert systematically either Russia’s interests or Russia’s position. By the summer of 1913 Russia’s credibility in the Balkan capitals was at an all-time low.6 She was unable to prevent the League’s collapse into the Second Balkan War. Six months later the German ambassador to Bulgaria informed Bethmann that Russia’s attempts to establish a new Balkan League and to restore her influence in Bulgaria were still being frustrated by regional rivalries.7
Serbia emerged from the second conflict with her territory almost doubled and her population increased by half. Her prestige among the Dual Monarchy’s Slavs was at a new height. And her propagandists continued to insist that the Bosnian annexation was anything but a settled issue.8 Client-state management, even when that client is surrounded by rivals and enemies, is an exacting craft at best, one at which Imperial Russia had never manifested significant
skill. Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria—all had turned more or less against St. Petersburg, largely as a consequence of Sazonov’s failed balancing acts. From Russia’s perspective in the last months of 1913, the question was whether she could afford to risk alienating Serbia as well by attempting to restrain Serbia’s behavior towards Austria. Then Sazonov received another jolt from an unexpected direction. In November, 1913, Liman von Sanders, head of Germany’s military mission in Turkey, was designated commander of the army corps stationed in Constantinople.
Russia’s interests in that city and the straits it stood on were an explosive mixture of history and sentiment, strategy and economics. Her self-proclaimed status as the Third Rome, legitimate heir of Byzantium, combined with her image as protector of Slavic interests to render ideologically difficult accepting the legitimacy of a Constantinople either in Islamic hands or dominated by a non-Orthodox Christian power. From an economic perspective, between 1909 and 1913 Russian grain exports averaged eleven million metric tons annually—30 percent of the world’s grain trade. By 1913 over a third of Russia’s total exports, including three-fourths of these grain shipments, were going through the straits. And it was grain on which Russia’s international credit largely depended. In direct contrast to the beliefs of optimistic economic determinists like Norman Angell, Russia’s involvement in international economics only enhanced her desire to secure her trade routes.
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History) Page 11
