Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Cornerstones of Military History)

by Dennis Showalter

  By the spring of 1914 the German consul in Warsaw was reporting Polish students throwing rocks and bottles at his windows—a concrete affirmation of Slavic identity at sharp variance with the normal tensions between the nationalistic academicians and the heavy-handed Russian authorities.26 The Duma increased duties on all imported grain: a direct blow at German agricultural interests, carefully described as such by its supporters concerned lest the point be missed. Military budgets passed uncriticized and unprotested save from the far Left. In the public sphere, veteran journalists and diplomats were taken aback by the depth and breadth of newspaper hostility to Germany and Austria alike. Not only nationalist and Panslav sheets, not only the colportage of the Right, but more respectable middle-of-the-road papers took up the patriotic chorus. Everywhere voices described the inevitable clash between Slav and Teuton, a clash in which divine favor would rest with the younger, more vigorous race.

  At the highest levels of government Sazonov was increasingly convinced that Germany’s ultimate goal was to bar Russia’s way to the world’s oceans not only in the south by establishing a de facto protectorate over Turkey, but in the north as well by extending her influence in Scandinavia. His views acquired new importance at the end of January when Kokovtsov was dismissed as premier. He had been less a friend of Germany and an advocate of peace than a pessimistic highlighter of military and economic shortcomings. Nicholas willingly sacrificed him to critics seeing no reason to be reminded of such things in their search for a great Russia.27

  This assertiveness, paradoxically, was accompanied by a growing chorus from everywhere on Russia’s political, social, and cultural/intellectual spectrums affirming that Russia society was in the throes of a profound crisis. The objective validity of this belief was less important for German statesmen than its existence. Russia’s capacity to pursue anything like a coherent foreign policy had long seemed open to question. And if Russia was in fact only half as unstable an amalgam of conflicting forces as her own spokesmen insisted, she was a profoundly dangerous neighbor.

  Unpredictability is the greatest single barrier to effective diplomacy. United with military power it will make even the calmest of neighboring governments uneasy. It can also affect journalists. The Kölnische Zeitung’s well-known “war in sight” article of March 2, 1914, was a think-piece rather than a reaction to specific events. Its assertion that Russia if left undisturbed would be ready for war by 1917 parallelled opinions in German military circles closely enough to support the assumption that the author had drawn some background information from at least the German embassy in St. Petersburg if not the general staff itself. The Russian press, the Times, and French and Scandinavian sources alike insisted that the article was officially inspired. The author was in fact a Pan-German sympathizer with extensive contacts among German officers. He had also been briefed by the German military attaché to Russia. Most of the information in his article was, however, available to a normally competent investigative reporter with a normal spectrum of Russian contacts. Nor did he invent his descriptions of extensive Russian military preparations combined with efflorescent public and official hostility to Germany. Finally, the alleged 1917 deadline for war was a product neither of German reasoning nor German imagination. In 1912 Russian officers had spoken of needing five years to complete their preparations for dealing with their enemies to the west and south. That period had ever since remained a familiar benchmark in informal conversations.28

  Then Sukhomlinov entered the scene. On March 12 the Russian war minister published an article in a major St. Petersburg newspaper, denying the Kölnische Zeitung’s allegations and declaring that Russia wanted only peace, but was perfectly prepared for war, and would wage war offensively if it came.

  In his memoirs Sukhomlinov disingenuously claimed that his only concern had been to pacify his fellow countrymen.29 German reactions were less sanguine. Was there not an essential difference between an article written by a civilian journalist and one from the pen of a senior government official? Sazonov’s transparent effort to deny the essay’s authorship only encouraged a chain reaction. Newspaper after German newspaper picked up the subject, commenting as much on each other’s reports and interpretations as on the original piece. The foreign office, anything but pleased at the prospect of a continued newspaper war, did its best to encourage countervailing materials. Pourtalès denounced the original article as pessimistic and trivial. Projecting Russia’s behavior three or four years in the future was risky, he declared, if one did not have the gift of prophecy apparently possessed by the Kölnische Zeitung’s correspondent. As for Sukhomlinov’s effusions, the ambassador recommended letting Russia off the hook with a sharp warning of the risks of this kind of careless talk.30

  Arguments that the anti-Russian campaign was accepted, or even orchestrated, by either the Imperial German government or a set of variously defined “strategic elites” as a means of creating a war spirit overlook the proven value of international crises in improving circulation figures. When Bethmann attempted to modify the rhetoric of Germany’s journalists, he encountered a press confident of its legal rights, and increasingly reluctant to submit to the manipulations of bureaucrats who made no secret of their intentions. These attempts to intervene arguably kept the issue alive longer than it might have survived on its own merits. No newspaper, Left or Right, was willing to look as though it was backing down in the face of government pressure.31

  Anti-Russian agitation continued to grow, particularly among the nationalist, patriotic organizations. A new weekly, Das grössere Deutschland, began publication with the avowed purpose of preparing Germany for imminent war with a Russia it described as Europe’s greatest threat to peace. Pamphlets compared the military and economic strengths of Russia and Germany, arguing that the time to strike was immediately.32 The foreign office found itself involved in verifying the most ridiculous rumors. Bethmann, for example, was constrained to request the text of a Russian order allegedly giving a regiment red boot-tops in memory of wading in Prussian blood at the Battle of Kunersdorf. The reply was that the regiment in question had indeed waded knee-deep in blood at Kunersdorf—its own blood. The new ornaments were a modern version of the red stockings bestowed on the regiment by Tsarina Elizabeth in recognition of its heroism under Prussian fire.33

  But journalists were not the only pessimists in Germany as spring gave way to summer. Apart from the domestic tensions endemic to German politics, the British connection on which Bethmann-Hollweg had placed such hopes increasingly seemed a vision, a manifestation of hope rather than calculation. French hostility had been a diplomatic constant for fifty years. Austria was a broken reed. In this context the French ambassador’s report to Pourtalès that Sazonov and Sukhomlinov assured him Russia’s increasingly-strong military establishment was no more than a necessary response to her long frontiers, and reflected no aggressive designs, bore the flavor of mockery. Even Pourtalès, generally a voice of phlegmatic common sense regarding Russian intentions, was increasingly concerned at the absence of coherent policies and firm guiding hands in the Russian ministries. If Russia had no leaders who could plan a war successfully, the ambasador declared, neither did she have any who inspired confidence that they could maintain the peace.34

  In April a Berlin insurance company with an eye on the main chance issued a circular aimed at the officer corps. Since war with Russia was inevitable within a few years, officers should consider it a moral duty to prepare for a hero’s death by insuring their lives. The carrot was a guarantee of no increased premiums during a war. The stick was that the policy could not be purchased once mobilization was declared! In the same month the German embassy in Rome reported a conversation with the Bulgarian envoy, a man with extensive Russian contacts. He quoted the current director of the Oriental department of Russia’s foreign ministry to the effect that as soon as Russia’s military reforms were completed, its foreign policy would have a different emphasis than was now the case. The lead time mentioned was thr
ee years—bringing the date to 1917.35

  From a military perspective nothing spoke against that deadline. In February, 1914, Moltke submitted a report on Russia’s readiness for war. The army’s cadres, its noncommissioned officer corps, and its reserve system were alike significantly improved. The mobilization plans were more efficient, the preparations for concentration on the frontiers more systematic. In Moltke’s eyes these were not marginal changes. The Russian military system was reaching unheard-of heights of effectiveness. The next month the general staff submitted its report on the training of Russian troops. Based primarily on an evaluation of the 1913 maneuvers, it emphasized the continued existence of traditional problems: overcontrolling, with corresponding lack of initiative at subordinate levels; slowness in issuing and executing orders; waiting for developments instead of forcing the issue. But the Russian army was correspondingly aware of its own weaknesses, working hard and systematically to develop flexibility and enhance aggressiveness. One military district had gone so far as to order all solutions to tactical problems to incorporate the offensive spirit. Not only was acceptance of defeat and retreat forbidden; umpires were no longer allowed to order withdrawals during exercises.36

  Twentieth-century developments in firepower make these alleged improvements read like a recipe for disaster. To Moltke, to the general staff, and to the German army as a whole, however, they were indicators that Russia was adding state-of-the-art skills to the historic strengths of her military system. And given Russia’s distances, Russia’s resources, and Russia’s masses, even small improvements in efficiency could have exponential results.

  On May 12 Moltke bluntly told Conrad that the central powers could not in future expect to compete with Russia’s masses. A few days later he informed Jagow that once Russia completed her military preparations, in two or three years, the superiority of Germany’s enemies would be such that Moltke did not know how the empire would cope. This meant there was no longer any alternative to a preventive war. Jagow energetically disagreed, stressing Germany’s continuing economic growth as a compensating factor and arguing that Germany had no war aims that would justify the sacrifice. Yet on July 18 he informed the German ambassador in London that “according to all expert opinion,” Russia would in a few years be in a position to crush Germany with her huge army, her modern Baltic fleet, and her new strategic railroads. On June 21 the kaiser had used almost the same phrasing in a conversation with banker Max Warburg, asking whether it might not be better to go to war than await the completion of Russia’s new railways in 1916.37

  Russia’s sudden accretion of strength attracted attention everywhere. British General Sir Henry Wilson, no Teutonophile by any stretch of the imagination, nevertheless understood German anxieties for her future in the face of a Russian military build-up that was altering the entire balance of power in Europe. British diplomats thought Russia in a position to replace Germany as the continent’s leading military power. From St. Petersburg, Buchanan asserted that “the days of German hegemony in Europe will be numbered” unless she drastically increased military spending. Sir Edward Grey believed that however great Germany’s initial victories might be in a war with Russia, Russia’s immense resources would ultimately exhaust Germany even without British aid.38

  British perceptions were shared across the Atlantic. In May 1914, an anxious Woodrow Wilson dispatched his friend and confidant Colonel Edward House on a fact-finding mission to Europe. House was enough of an apostle of the strenuous life to boast of carrying a six-gun whenever he was with the president, and to believe himself a quicker and surer shot than any secret service man. He was not a particular admirer of the Second Reich. Writing from Berlin he described the atmosphere as “surcharged with war and warlike preparations . . . militarism run stark mad.” But Germany’s fears, according to House, were not entirely imaginary. England held her entente partners “like a cocked gun: whenever [she] consents, France and Russia will close in on Germany and Austria.”39

  House’s efforts to defuse the tension, amateurish though they may have been, reflected his belief that Russia was ultimately the greatest menace to European order. Germany was the barrier between Europe and the Slavic hordes, and England did not want Germany crushed because this would leave her alone in Russia’s path. By August 30, Wilson himself was musing to the colonel that eventually the world might be reduced to only two great powers: the United States and Russia.40

  Russia’s policy was not one of deliberate adventurism. Nor was it a consequent, reasoned reaction to a German threat. It reflected instead a growing sense of insecurity and confusion. From the first months of 1914 Sazonov had worked desperately to strengthen Russia’s entente relationships. He argued for a clear, public Anglo-Russian alliance, a political impossibility for liberal England. He remained unreassured by the increasing weight of opinion in the British foreign office that Russia’s rapidly expanding strength made her friendship worth retaining at any price—an attitude clearly manifested during the Anglo-Russian naval negotiations that took place in the summer of 1914.41 Sazonov’s alarm so disturbed French ambassador Maurice Palèologue that he informed his home government that France must retain the three years of active military service domestic critics argued were turning the country into a barracks and crippling the economy, because war could begin at any moment.42

  It was in this tense environment that Sukhomlinov once again took pen in hand. On June 13 he published a long article asserting that “Russia is ready, France must be ready also.” The Russian war minister’s human and professional reputation has recently benefitted from some upward revision. From the warmongering incompetent described by Kokovtsov, Sazonov, and his other foes, Sukhomlinov has become a modernizing moderate, trying to move the Russian army into the twentieth century, rattling no more sabers than necessary to satisfy old-school officers and mistrustful allies, at worst no more than a bureaucrat devoted to the limited interests of his agency. But if Sukhomlinov was, in the words of the German military attaché, “energetic, methodical, and bold,” too often the last of these qualities dominated his public pronouncements. The intended thrust of his latest outburst may have been to convince France to keep her army up to strength by maintaining the Three Years’ Law. But Sukhomlinov reinforced his arguments with glowing, not to say lurid, descriptions of the massive power over which he presided as Russia’s war minister. Two weeks later Russia’s most prestigious daily, Novoye Vremya, urged Germany to abandon its warmongering Austrian ally rather than risk a century’s achievements in an unwinnable war with the Triple Entente. In a still-tense Germany the effect of such pronouncements was of gasoline on a fire.43

  Russia’s ambivalent position was not lost on Serbia’s shrewd premier, Nikola Paši. Convinced for decades that the main threat to Serbia’s independence came from Austria-Hungary, increasingly committed to the vision of a south Slav state unified under Serbian auspices, Paši had journeyed personally to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1914 and obtained a grudging promise of protection in case of an unprovoked Austrian attack.44 It was anything but a guarantee. It did not encourage Paši to return home and begin plans for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But neither did it encourage him to risk his domestic position by proceeding directly and energetically against the south Slav revolutionaries and their contacts and sympathizers in the Serbian government. On June 28, a half-dozen of them assassinated the heir to the Habsburg throne in Sarajevo.

  III

  As the murder escalated into an international crisis, Paši manifested the steadiest nerves of any of the gamblers. Through the month of July he counted on Russia’s ultimate support—and in this context he read the minds of the tsar and his advisors better than they did themselves.

  Or perhaps he read their souls. Certainly Austria’s statesmen shared his perspective. The decline of Russian influence in the Balkans after 1912 had not been matched by a corresponding improvement in the Habsburg Empire’s position. Rumania and Bulgaria were more interested in courting Ber
lin than Vienna, and increasingly concerned with St. Petersburg as well. In February, 1914, Franz Josef expressed fear of Russian military preparations in a conversation with the German ambassador. How, he asked, does Russia propose to use her increased strength? When answered by a homily on the importance of maintaining good relations, the old emperor grumbled, “but nothing more is to be done with the Russians.” A month later, Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold, who had succeed Aehrenthal in 1912, expressed a similar opinion, this time to the German foreign ministry’s representative to Franz Josef. Georg von Treutler suggested that overestimating Russia’s strength and Russia’s desire for war led to unnecessary alarm. No matter how highly the tsar’s empire was rated it almost always failed when put to the test. Berchtold responded by saying that his years as ambassador to St. Petersburg had made him well aware of Russian bluster. But now the situation was different. Russia was making her intentions clear by her military buildup. Even should she not choose to act directly, her new strength would be a formidable prop to any revived alliance of the Balkan states. Conrad too insisted that Russian military preparations were designed to underwrite a major move in the near future, perhaps as early as the coming fall.

  On the other hand, Conrad’s alarmism was a minority position among Austria’s soldiers in the first half of 1914. The general staff as a body put little credence in talk of war with Russia. Alertness was desirable; fear was grist for Russia’s mill. The war minister suggested that Russia’s vast practice mobilizations and similar saber-rattlings were designed to do no more than encourage Austria to waste her limited resources in equivalent efforts. This mind-set may have represented a self-conscious distancing from the current trends in Germany. It persisted, however, well after Franz Ferdinand’s assassination. The German military attaché in Vienna reported as late as July 13 that his Austrian colleagues believed there was a fifty-fifty chance Russia would remain neutral in the face of military initiatives against Serbia.45