by Hew Strachan
Germany’s support for Austria-Hungary has become known as the ‘blank cheque’. Indubitably it was a crucial step in the escalation of the Third Balkan War into a general European war. But the Kaiser’s crown council had formed no view that that was the inevitable outcome of a crisis which it had helped to deepen but which — at least for the moment — it did little to direct or control. Bethmann Hollweg, the key German player in the following weeks, was gripped by a fatalism which seems to have been the product of three factors: the recent death of his wife, the growing power of Russia, and the solidarity of the Triple Entente. In 1892 Russia had allied with France, a seemingly impossible combination of autocracy and republic. German frustration and incomprehension had deepened when Britain came to understandings with both powers, France in 1904 and Russia in 1907. Anglo-French hostility had been one of the givens of European international relations throughout all of the eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth. Anglo-Russian enmity was fuelled by competition in Central Asia and British sensitivities about the security of their hold on India. From Bethmann Hollweg’s perspective the Triple Entente was therefore a brittle and friable compact. If he had a clear policy in July 1914, it seems to have been to disrupt the Entente.
He was, however, playing with the possibility of major war. All hinged on Russia’s response. At their meeting the Kaiser had told Szögyény that ‘Russia ... was in no way ready for war and would certainly ponder very seriously before appealing to arms’.8 The German ambassador in St Petersburg fed such optimism. Russia would stay out of any war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia because it had not yet recovered from the events of 1904 — 5 and it could not risk another revolution. Conservatives in St Petersburg were indeed arguing along these lines. But that thought reckoned without the open sore of the Bosnian crisis and the pressures of liberal nationalists, who saw Russia as the protector of all Slavs. The second line of argument accepted that Russia would indeed support Serbia, but that neither France nor Britain would, and that therefore the solidarity of the Triple Entente would be disrupted. That would be a major diplomatic coup. It would moreover trigger a Russo-German war sooner rather than later — a preventive war fought for reasons similar to those developed by Conrad in relation to Serbia. One of the assumptions of 1914 was that tsarist Russia was a sleeping giant about to awake. Its government had been liberalised in response to the 1905 revolution and its annual growth rate was 3.25 per cent. Between 1908 and 1913 its industrial production increased by 50 per cent, an expansion which was largely fuelled by defence-related output. Russia’s army was already the biggest in Europe. By 1917 it would be three times the size of Germany’s.
The irony of the crown council of 5 July is that Germany’s principal spokesman for preventive war, the chief of the general staff, Helmuth von Moltke the younger, was taking the waters in Baden-Baden. Moltke was the nephew of the military architect of the victories in 1866 and 1870, but, a theosophist, he possessed a more artistic and less decisive temperament than his forebear. Many observers expected him to be replaced in the event of war. One man canvassed as his successor was the senior soldier present at the meeting, the minister of war, Erich von Falkenhayn. Falkenhayn wrote to Moltke to tell him not to hurry back, as he was not convinced ‘that the Vienna government had taken any firm resolution’. What it had in mind seemed not to be war but ‘“energetic” political action such as the conclusion of a treaty with Bulgaria ... Certainly in no circumstances will the coming weeks bring a decision.’ 9 Falkenhayn himself promptly went on leave. Moltke did not return until 25 July and Falkenhayn until 27 July.
Falkenhayn’s judgement and Bethmann Hollweg’s readiness to gamble were fed more by their knowledge of the recent past than by an awareness of Vienna’s fresh resolve. The immediate significance of the ‘blank cheque’ was not in what it said about German assumptions but in the use made of it by Hoyos when he returned to Austria’s capital. He played both sides off against each other. On 7 July, as soon as he arrived, he attended a ministerial council and presented what he had heard in Potsdam as pressure from Germany for action. In 1913 Austria-Hungary had been treated as of no account because it did not enjoy Germany’s backing; it should therefore act while it could. The main doubter was Tisza. The Hungarian leader was opposed to any strike on Serbia, ostensibly for fear of Russian intervention but above all because the defeat of Serbia would jeopardise the existing Austro-Hungarian balance: the pressure for a tripartite solution, which recognised a south Slav entity, would be irresistible. But the south Slav challenge to Magyar supremacy was real enough whether there was war with Serbia or not, and popular feeling over the assassinations was running as high in Budapest as in Vienna. By 14 July his fellow Magyar Stephan Burian had won Tisza round to the idea of an Austrian strike on Serbia.
Vienna still did not act. Much of the army was on leave, its peasant soldiers released to help bring in the harvest. Their labours would, of course, be vital in feeding the army and its horses when it mobilised. As the date for the latter Conrad suggested 12 August, but he was persuaded to accept 23 July. The president of France, Raymond Poincaré, and his prime minister, René Viviani, were due to make a state visit to Russia which would end on that day. The French Third Republic, the outcome of Napoleon III’s defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870, was notorious for the instability of its ministries, and hence for the inconsistencies of its policies. But Poincaré, a Lorrainer, who served as prime minister and foreign secretary before beginning a seven-year term as president, gave direction to France’s foreign policy. He firmly believed that the solidarity of the alliance system in Europe helped create a balance which prevented war. In the diplomatic machinations that had accompanied the First Balkan War in the autumn of 1912, he had more than once affirmed France’s support for Russia’s position in the Balkans. But what he intended as a solidification of the Entente could be interpreted by the Russians as a promise of backing should they find themselves at war with Austria-Hungary over Serbia. Berchtold took the view that it was best not to precipitate a crisis when the leaders of the two states would have the opportunity of direct conversation to concert their plans. When Poincaré heard the news of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia he was already on the way home, aboard the France in the Baltic Sea.
By then any stir caused by the killings in Sarajevo in the rest of Europe had begun to die down. It was the summer, and Falkenhayn and Moltke were not alone in going on holiday. In France and Britain domestic events dominated the newspaper headlines. The trial of Madame Caillaux, wife of the former radical prime minister Joseph Caillaux, began on 20 July. She had shot the editor of Le Figaro, who had published the love letters exchanged between herself and her husband: on 28 July the gallant French jury acquitted her on the grounds that this was a crime passionel. In Britain, the cabinet was preoccupied with the threat, rather than the actuality, of violence: the commitment of the Liberal government to home rule for Ireland promised to drive Ulster loyalists into rebellion. By comparison with the situation at home, that abroad looked more peaceful than for some years. On 18 May 1914, Sir Arthur Nicolson, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, and a former ambassador to St Petersburg, wrote: ‘I do not myself believe there is any likelihood of an open conflict between Russia and Germany.’10 And for those who considered the implications of a possible Austro-Hungarian response to the murder of their heir apparent, the general feeling was that the Serbs were a bloodthirsty and dangerous crew. Even on 31 July the British prime minister, H. H. Asquith, told the Archbishop of Canterbury that the Serbs deserved ‘a thorough thrashing’.
By then Austria-Hungary and Serbia were at war. At 6 p.m. on 23 July, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Serbia delivered an ultimatum, demanding that the Serb government take steps to extirpate terrorist organisations operating from within its frontiers, that it suppress anti-Austrian propaganda, and that it accept Austro-Hungarian representation on its own internal inquiry into the assassinations. The Austro-Hungarian government set a deadline of f
orty-eight hours for Serbia’s reply, but the ambassador had packed his bags before it had expired.
Germany’s role on 24 July was to work to contain the effects of the ultimatum. Given the widespread perception that Austria-Hungary was in the right and Serbia in the wrong, that should not have been too difficult. But it rested on a fundamental miscalculation. Nobody in the Triple Entente was inclined to see Austria-Hungary as an independent actor. Vienna had taken a firm line because it was anxious to capitalise on Germany’s backing while it had it. Those on the opposite side took account of that weakness in Austria-Hungary and rated Austro-German solidarity somewhat higher than Vienna itself was inclined to. If Austria-Hungary wanted Germany to cover its back, it could not so easily escape the imputation that it was Germany’s stalking horse. The conflict with Serbia would not be localised because by July 1914 the experience of earlier crises had conditioned statesmen to put events in the broader context of European international relations.
Serbia, moreover, played its hand with considerable adroitness. It disarmed criticism by professing its readiness to go as far in its compliance with Austria-Hungary’s demands as was compatible with its status as an independent country. It therefore could not accept Austria-Hungary’s participation in any internal inquiry, as this would be in ‘violation of the Constitution and of the law of criminal procedure’. By accepting all the terms save this one, Pašić swung international opinion his way. He needed all the help he could get.
Militarily Serbia had been weakened by the two Balkan wars, which had depleted the army’s munitions stocks and inflicted 91,000 casualties. Although its first-line strength on mobilisation rose to 350,000 men, there were only enough up-to-date rifles (ironically, German Mausers) for the peacetime strength of 180,000, and in some infantry units a third of the men had no rifles at all. On 31 May 1914 the minister of war had embarked on a reconstruction programme phased over ten years, and the Austro-Hungarian military attaché in Belgrade concluded that it would take four years for the Serb army to recover. But Pašić had to act. Weakness on the international stage might have severe domestic consequences, not least on his election campaign. He was clear in his own mind that Austria-Hungary was squaring up for a fight. On the afternoon of 25 July he ordered the army to mobilise.
Serbia had therefore moved to a military response before the diplomatic tools had been exhausted. But it was not the first power in the July crisis to do so. On receipt of the ultimatum, Prince Alexander of Serbia immediately appealed to the Tsar of Russia. The Russian council of ministers met on the following day, 24 July. Sergey Sazonov, Russia’s foreign minister and a career diplomat, ‘a man of simple thought’ and an anglophile,11 said that Germany was using the crisis as a pretext for launching a preventive war. The minister of the interior confounded those in Berlin and Vienna who believed that Russia would be deterred from responding by the fear of revolution: he declared his conviction that war would rally the nation. And the ministers for the army and navy, the recipients of so much funding over the previous five years, could hardly confess the truth: that their services were not yet ready. The council approved orders for four military districts to prepare for mobilisation.
A third of the Serb army had to march to its deployment positions rather than go by train This soldier is sensibly taking some additional supplies as well as his wife But at least he has been issued with a rifle many were not
MOBILISATION
Mobilisation was not, of course, the same as war. It had been used in previous crises as a buttress to diplomacy, a form of brinkmanship rather than a step in an inevitable escalation. But in those earlier confrontations developments had been spread over months. In 1914 the key decisions were taken in the space of one week. The pace of events was such that there was no time to clarify the distinction between warning and intent.
Serbia therefore knew it would not face Austria-Hungary alone. But over the next few days Conrad seemed reluctant to absorb that point. His was not an army capable of fighting Russia as well as Serbia if the former decided to support the latter. In 1909, during the Bosnian crisis, Conrad had sought clarification as to what the German army would do in such an eventuality. Moltke had told him that if Germany faced a two-front war, against Russia and France simultaneously, the bulk of the German army would concentrate against France first. However, he reassured Conrad with regard to the latter’s principal worry: he said that the German 8th Army in East Prussia would draw in the Russians, who would be committed by their alliance with France to attack Germany.
What this reassurance hid was Moltke’s own worries about the security of East Prussia. The German general staff planned to use the shield of the Masurian Lakes to enable it to fight an offensive-defence against the Russians, who would be forced by the lakes to advance in two eccentric directions. The effect would be to use German territory as a battlefield, and if the 8th Army was not quickly reinforced from the west it might have to fall back as far as the line of the River Vistula or even of the Oder. The German army would have abrogated its principal duty: the defence of the fatherland. Moltke therefore sought a quid pro quo for his reassurance of Conrad: he wanted an Austrian attack into Poland from Galicia, directed between the Bug and the Vistula. Moltke added the carrot that the Germans, once they were reinforced from the west, would push into Poland from the north and the River Narew. This idea — of enveloping Russian Poland — appealed to the strategic imaginations of generals educated through the histories of Napoleon’s campaigns and of the wars of German unification. Envelopment on this scale was deemed likely to produce decisive success in short order. To Conrad the theorist, the idea was irresistible. The two armies would link at Siedlitz, east of Warsaw.
The plan was no plan — and whatever rationality it had in 1909 was forfeit by 1914. First, it assumed that the Germans would be sufficiently free from the campaign in France to despatch reinforcements to the east in a matter of weeks. To keep Conrad quiet Moltke suggested three to four weeks would be needed to defeat the French, and ten days to redeploy to the east, although these were not the planning assumptions of the German general staff. Second, no joint operational studies were conducted by the two armies in advance of hostilities. By 1913 and 1914 Moltke was more cautious in his promises to Conrad, but the latter did not hear him: each was reassured by the thought that the other would take the major burden against Russia. And, third, the idea took no account of the transformation effected in the capabilities and intentions of the Russian army in the intervening five years.
Conrad had assumed that it would take Russia thirty days to mobilise, but in February 1914 Moltke warned him (accurately enough) that two-thirds of the Russian army would be mobilised by the eighteenth day. Thus the Austrians and Germans were losing time. They also lost space. Given its need to face Asia as well as Europe, Russia adopted a system of territorial mobilisation: the army’s higher formations — or corps — would be stationed in their recruiting areas and would mobilise by incorporating the reservists from those areas. This was exactly the model adopted in Germany and France. But its effect — given Russia’s geographical configuration in the west — would be to forfeit its defence of Poland. There would be nothing for the Austro-German scheme of envelopment to envelop.
To all intents and purposes Conrad had abandoned the fiction of the Siedlitz manoeuvre by 1914. This did not stop him later using it as a stick with which to beat his German ally when trying to transfer blame for his own failings. His first obligation, as he saw it, was to deal with Serbia. He reckoned that he needed eight divisions to hold the Austro-Serb frontier but twenty divisions to invade and defeat Serbia. This left a minimum of twenty-eight divisions to face the Russians in Galicia. He therefore created a reserve of twelve divisions which could go either to Serbia and be added to the eight already holding the frontier, or to Galicia if Russia supported Serbia and so increase the force there to forty divisions. This reserve, the 2nd Army, would not be mobilised and deployed in Galicia until between the twenty-first and
twenty-fifth days of mobilisation. Given the increasing speed of the Russians’ mobilisation and the growing volume of intelligence suggesting that their first priority would be to attack Germany so as to give direct aid to France, Conrad decided not to try to anticipate the Russian concentration but to hold his Galician force back, refocusing his plans for the Russian front to the north and west, and forcing the Russians to come further before making contact. The effect would be to blunt the Austrian offensive from Galicia. The difficulty inherent in the whole conception was that Austrian railway construction over the previous three decades had been predicated on a deployment to east and south. If the 2nd Army were shifted from Serbia to Galicia, the railway communications would place it on the Austrian right, not on the left.
