by John Keegan
In the event, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on Tuesday 28 July. It was Berchtold rather than Conrad who was now in a hurry. There had already been an exchange of fire between Serbian and Austrian troops—it was one-sided, an Austrian volley at Serbs who had strayed too near the Austrian border—but Berchtold chose to regard it as an act of war. War was now what he wanted on the terms he might have had during the days immediately following the murders, a straightforward offensive against Serbia uncomplicated by a wider conflict. The month’s delay had threatened that simplicity, but he retained hopes that diplomacy would delay the taking of irretrievable decisions by others while he settled the Serbian score.
His urge to act was heightened by the discovery that his own country’s war plans impeded what prospect remained of a speedy resolution.11 Conrad’s tripartite division of forces—the “minimal” concentration on the Balkan frontier, the major concentration against Russia in Poland, the “swing” grouping to reinforce one or the other—precluded, the Field Marshal warned him, an immediate offensive against Serbia unless it could be guaranteed that Russia would not mobilise. Small though Serbia’s army was, only sixteen weak divisions, it outnumbered Austria’s “minimal” group; operational prudence therefore required the commitment of the “swing” grouping if a quick Serbian war were to be brought off. If the “swing” grouping went south, however, the northern frontier with Poland would be left dangerously exposed. All therefore depended on what Russia would do next.
Russia had already done much. On the previous Saturday, when news of her emphatic support for Serbia had encouraged the Belgrade government to change its mind and reject the Austrian note, she had instigated the military measures known as the “Period Preparatory to War.” Entailing in this case only the bringing to operational readiness of the peacetime army in European Russia, the procedure was precautionary and intended not to provoke an escalation to mobilisation by another power. The equivalent in Germany was the “State of Danger of War” (Kriegsgefahrzustand) and in France la couverture, covering operations behind the frontier. The Russian measure could be justified by the fact that Serbia had mobilised and Austria mobilised against her only, a partial mobilisation, on the same day. France was informed of the measure—the Franco-Russian Convention required that Russia consult her ally before mobilisation—and the German military representative at the Russian court informed Berlin that he had “the impression that all preparations are being made for a mobilisation against Austria.”12 In practice, much more had been done. Under cover of the “Period Preparatory to War,” orders had been sent for the mobilisation of the military districts of Kiev, Odessa, Moscow and Kazan—half of European Russia—and were extended on Monday 27 July to the Caucasus, Turkestan, Omsk and Irkutsk.
By the beginning of what was to prove the last week of peace, therefore, half the Russian army—though the half not stationed in the military districts adjoining Germany, those in Poland, White Russia and the Baltic provinces—was coming to a war footing. France had been informed and approved; indeed, Messimy, the Minister of War, and Joffre, the Chief of Staff, were pressing the Russians to achieve the highest possible state of readiness.13 The Russian generals at least needed little urging. Their responsibility as they saw it—all generals in all countries in July 1914 saw their responsibility in such terms—was to prepare for the worst if the worst came. The worst for them would be that, in seeking to deter Austria from making war in Serbia, their preparations provoked Germany into full-scale mobilisation. That would come about if their partial mobilisation, already in progress, prompted a full Austrian mobilisation which, they had good reason to believe, required a full German mobilisation also. On Tuesday 28 July, therefore, the Russian Chief of Staff, Janushkevich, with his quartermaster-general, chief of mobilisation and chief of transportation, agreed that the “Period Preparatory to War” must now be superseded by formal mobilisation announcements.14 Privately they accepted that general war could probably not be avoided: the sequence Russian partial mobilisation against Austria = Austrian general mobilisation = German general mobilisation = war stood stark before them. They decided, however, that publicly they would announce only partial mobilisation, while preparing with the order for it another for general mobilisation, both to be set simultaneously before the Tsar for signature.
Sazonov, who had received word of Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia that Tuesday morning and conferred with Paléologue, the French ambassador, in the afternoon—Albertini, the great historian of the origins of the war, concluded that Paléologue “must now have approved of [the decision for partial mobilisation] and promised full French solidarity”—attempted to palliate the fears the proclamation would certainly arouse by telegraphing Vienna, Paris, London and Rome (though not Berlin) with the news and requesting that the German government be informed, with “stress on the absence of any intention on the part of Russia to attack Germany.”15 Nevertheless, that evening Janushkevich informed all military districts that “30 July will be proclaimed the first day of our general mobilisation” and on the following morning, having seen Sazonov, called on the Tsar and secured his signature to the orders for full as well as partial mobilisation.16 In the afternoon the chief of the mobilisation section got the relevant ministers’ signatures—the minister of the interior, a deeply devout Orthodox believer, signed only after making the sign of the cross—and in the evening the quartermaster-general had the orders typed up at the St. Petersburg central telegraph office and prepared for despatch.
This decision to order general mobilisation “was perhaps the most important … taken in the history of Imperial Russia and it effectively shattered any prospect of averting a great European war.”17 It was also unnecessary. Sazonov’s support for the soldiers seems to have been supplied by his learning of a bombardment of Belgrade by Austrian gunboats on the Danube on the night of 29 July. The attack was a pinprick; Kalimegdan, the Turkish fortress crowning the Belgrade heights at the junction of the Danube and the Sava, is impervious to anything but the heaviest artillery and remains unscarred to this day. On the wider front, Russia’s security was not threatened by the Austrian mobilisation. Indeed, Austria’s war with Serbia precluded its fighting a larger war elsewhere. Small as Serbia’s army was, its size, to say nothing of its proven fighting ability, required, even by Vienna’s calculation, the commitment against it of over half the Austrian force available. The “minimal” and “swing” groupings totalled twenty-eight of Austria’s divisions, and the twenty remaining were too few to launch an offensive into Russian Poland. The Serbian interior, moreover, was difficult campaigning country, mountainous, largely roadless and heavily forested, and therefore likely to impose serious delay on an invader seeking speedy decision: such was to prove exactly the case in 1915 when Germany, Austria and Bulgaria fell on the Serbs from several directions but took two months to conclude the campaign.18
Russia might, therefore, without risk to its security, threat to the general peace or abandonment of the Serbs, have confined itself to partial mobilisation deep within its own frontiers on 29 July. General mobilisation, including that of the military districts bordering Germany, would mean general war. That awful prospect was now taking shape in all the European capitals. Those who most feared the military preparations of others—Janushkevich, Moltke, Conrad, Joffre—were looking to their own lest they be taken at a disadvantage. Those who more feared war itself were scrabbling for stopgaps. Bethmann Hollweg, the German Chancellor, was one of them; he had already instructed the German ambassador in St. Petersburg to warn Sazonov that “Russian mobilisation measures would compel us to mobilise and that then European war could scarcely be prevented.”19 The Kaiser was another. On the afternoon of 29 July, he telegraphed his cousin the Tsar, in English, urging him “to smooth over difficulties that may still arise.” In reply the Tsar pathetically suggested, “It would be right to give over the Austro-Servian problem to the Hague conference,” that weakling brainchild of his not scheduled to meet again unt
il 1915.20 Later that evening a second telegram from the Kaiser reached the Tsar. “It would be quite possible,” he suggested, “for Russia to remain a spectator of the Austro-Servian conflict without involving Europe in the most horrible war she has ever witnessed” and ended by again representing himself as a mediator. Immediately on receipt of this telegram, the Tsar telephoned the War Minister and ordered the cancellation of general mobilisation; the order was to be for partial mobilisation only after all. He intervened only just in time, for at 9:30 in the evening of 29 July the Russian quartermaster-general was actually standing over the typists at the Central Telegraph Office in St. Petersburg as they tapped out the orders on to telegraph forms.21
The cancellation should have brought the pause which the search for peace required. At the opening of the day following, Thursday 30 July, the British—though refusing to reveal whether they would or would not intervene in a general European war—were still seeking to arrange a mediation, France had not taken any substantial precautionary measures, the Austrian troops mobilised were marching against Serbia only and Germany had mobilised no troops at all. The leaders of the German army were nevertheless in a state of acute anxiety. To General von Falkenhayn, the Minister of War, Russia’s partial mobilisation had consequences as threatening as full; it gave the Russians a start that would upset the feather-balance timing of the Schlieffen Plan. He wanted to mobilise at once, Bethmann Hollweg did not. He was still hoping that Berchtold would deal directly with the Russians and succeed in persuading them to accept the offensive against Serbia as a local war. Moltke, the Chief of the Great General Staff, was less bellicose but wanted at least the proclamation of the Kriegsgefahrzustand, which would match Russian preparations. In order to get his way, he wished himself on a meeting Bethmann held at one o’clock with Falkenhayn and Admiral Tirpitz, the naval minister. He failed to get what he wanted; but what he learnt shortly afterwards so alarmed him that he decided he must get general mobilisation at once and by any means. The Austrian liaison officer to the Great General Staff outlined to him his army’s current dispositions which, Moltke instantly grasped, would leave Germany’s eastern frontier desperately exposed if war came. “He needed forty Austro-Hungarian divisions in (Austrian Poland) ready to attack; what he was getting were twenty-five divisions standing on the defensive.”22 He at once expressed his extreme alarm to the Austrian military attaché; later that evening he telegraphed Conrad in Vienna, as one Chief of Staff to another, “Stand firm against Russian mobilisation. Austria-Hungary must be preserved, mobilise at once against Russia. Germany will mobilise.”
Even in militaristic Germany, Moltke thereby vastly exceeded his powers. What made his meddling even more reprehensible was that the Chancellor and the Kaiser were still seeking to persuade Austria to localise the war against Serbia and limit its objectives: “Halt in Belgrade” was the phrase in circulation. Berchtold, when he saw the telegram next morning, Friday 31 July, expressed an understandable surprise. “How odd! Who runs the government: Moltke or Bethmann?” Nevertheless, he took his cue. Telling Conrad, “I had the impression that Germany was beating a retreat; but now I have the most reassuring pronouncement from responsible military quarters,” he arranged for the general mobilisation order to be laid before Emperor Franz Josef later that morning.23 It was returned signed shortly after noon and published immediately.
That announcement in itself would have ensured a reconsideration of the Tsar’s decision to cancel general mobilisation in the evening of 29 July. In fact, it had already been reconsidered. Throughout Thursday 30 July, Sazonov, Sukhomlinov and Janushkevich—Foreign Minister, War Minister, Chief of Staff—had badgered the Tsar with their fears. He was at his summer residence on the Baltic, swimming, playing tennis, worrying about a bleeding attack suffered by his haemophiliac son, clinging to hopes of peace and trusting in the best intentions of his cousin the Kaiser. A good but infuriatingly evasive man, he deflected their arguments during the morning; in the afternoon, Sazonov set out by train to Peterhof to confront him. Sazonov was in a state of high agitation. It was no help that Paléologue, the French ambassador, whom he had seen earlier, did nothing to deter him from heightening the crisis. Paléologue, a strident patriot, appears to have given way already to belief in the inevitability of war and to have wanted only the certainty of Russian involvement when it came.24 Sazonov had never wanted war but his was an excitable and impressionable nature and he was keyed up by the warnings of the generals over losing advantage; moreover, he possessed in an acute form the Russian neurosis over control of the Balkans, with which went fears of a hostile power dominating the Bosphorus, Russia’s Black Sea exit to the Mediterranean and wider world. Between three and four o’clock on the afternoon of Thursday 30 July he rehearsed his anxieties to the Tsar who listened, pale and tense, occasionally showing an uncharacteristic irritation. General Tatistchev, his personal representative to the Kaiser, who was present, at one point observed, “Yes, it is hard to decide.” The Tsar replied in a rough, displeased tone, “I will decide.”25 Shortly he did. Sazonov left the audience chamber and telephoned Janushkevich with the order to proclaim general mobilisation. “Now you can smash your telephone,” he concluded. Janushkevich had earlier threatened that if he got the order for general mobilisation a second time he would smash his telephone and make himself unobtainable until mobilisation was too far advanced for another cancellation to take effect.
The hour had come. That evening the posters announcing mobilisation went up in the streets of St. Petersburg and of all cities in Russia. The reservists would begin reporting to their depots next day, Friday 31 July. For reasons never properly elucidated, what was necessary knowledge for every Russian failed officially to reach London and Paris until late that evening; the British ambassador was dilatory in telegraphing, Paléologue’s telegram was inexplicably delayed. The Germans were not so ill-informed. They knew on Friday morning. At 10:20 a telegram arrived for Pourtalès, their ambassador in St. Petersburg, “First day of mobilisation, 31 July.”26 It was what Moltke wanted to hear. He would now get the permission he needed to take the military precautions he believed essential. It was not what Bethmann Hollweg wanted to hear. He had retained the hopes up to the moment of the telegram’s arrival that Austria could be brought directly to negotiate with Russia and that Russia could be brought to accept the war against Serbia as local and limited. Now he had to accept what seemed inevitable. News of Austria’s general mobilisation arrived half an hour after noon. Germany proclaimed the “State of Danger of War” half an hour after that.
The “State of Danger of War” was an internal measure not entailing mobilisation. Nevertheless, with Austria and Russia mobilising, the Germans concluded that they must mobilise also unless Russian general mobilisation was reversed. An ultimatum to that effect was sent soon after three o’clock on the afternoon of 31 July to St. Petersburg and another to Paris. The relevant sentence in each read: “[German] mobilisation will follow unless Russia suspends all war measures against ourselves and Austria-Hungary.” That to Russia demanded, within twelve hours, “a definite assurance to that effect,” that to France included the warning “Mobilisation inevitably means war” and required a declaration of neutrality “in a Russo-German war … within eighteen (18) hours.”27
The afternoon of 31 July thus brought to a crux the crisis which had begun thirty-four days earlier with the murders at Sarajevo. Its real duration had been much shorter than that. From the murders on 28 June to the conclusion of the Austrian judicial investigation and the confessions of the conspirators on 2 July was five days. It was in the period immediately following that the Austrians might have decided for unilateral action, and taken it without strong likelihood of provoking an intervention by the Serbs’ protectors, the Russians. Instead, Austria had sought a German assurance of support, given on 5 July; elapsed time from the murders, eight days. There had then followed an intermission of nineteen days, while the Austrians waited for the French President to conclude his state v
isit on 23 July. The real inception of the crisis may thus be dated to the delivery of the Austrian “note with a time limit” (of forty-eight hours) on 24 July. It was on its expiry on Saturday 25 July, twenty-eight days from the murders, that the diplomatic confrontation was abruptly transformed into a war crisis. It was not a crisis which the participants had expected. Austria had simply wanted to punish Serbia (though it had lacked the courage to act alone). Germany had wanted a diplomatic success that would leave its Austrian ally stronger in European eyes; it had not wanted war. The Russians had certainly not wanted war but had equally not calculated that support for Serbia would edge the danger of war forward. By 30 July, thirty-three days from the murders, the Austrians were at war with Serbia, yet were doing nothing about it, had declared general mobilisation, but were not concentrating against Russia. Russia had declared partial mobilisation but was concentrating against nobody. The German Kaiser and Chancellor still believed that Austria and Russia could be brought to negotiate their mobilisations away, even if the Chief of the Great General Staff by then wanted a mobilisation of his own. France had not mobilised but was in growing fear that Germany would mobilise against her. Britain, which had awoken to the real danger of the crisis only on Saturday 25 July, still hoped on Thursday 30 July that the Russians would tolerate an Austrian punishment of Serbia but were determined not to leave France in the lurch.
