Kaiser Wilhelm II

by Christopher Clark

  Wilhelm did eventually come around to supporting the annexation as a fait accompli, partly because the reasons for doing so were forcefully set out for him by Bülow, and partly because the state of European opinion and the weakness of Russia’s case gave little reason to suppose that any other power would support the Russians against Austria. After all, the German Foreign Office had known for some time that a deal of some sort between Izvolsky and Aehrenthal was in the offing, so they had no reason to accept Russia’s protests at face value.7 In any case, the Bosnian crisis had hardly hit the news when Wilhelm was engulfed by the Daily Telegraph affair of November (see chapter 5 above). The resulting neutralization of the emperor as a factor in politics meant that as the Bosnian crisis reached its climax in March 1909, the initiative in handling Germany’s relations with Russia remained firmly in the hands of Bülow and the Foreign Office, whose aim, as in Morocco three years before, was to prise open the Entente alliance system by isolating and pressurizing one of its members.

  In other words, the Bosnian crisis of 1908 does not bear out the view that an all-or-nothing commitment on Wilhelm’s part to Austrian Balkan policy posed an ‘existential danger’ to the German empire. Much the same can be said of the next instalment in the series, the Balkan crisis of 1912. The ‘First Balkan War’, as it was later to be known, broke out on 8 October 1912, when four states (Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece), encouraged by the Russians, declared war on Turkey. Following a string of victories against the Turks, the four belligerents laid claim to various stretches of formerly Ottoman territory. The most sensitive of these claims was Serbia’s demand, in addition to other substantial territories already under occupation, for access to the Adriatic coast through formerly Ottoman Albania. Since this demand was supported by the Russians, but strenuously opposed by Austria–Hungary, it created a dangerous deadlock. Should the Serbs, in pressing ahead with their claim, provoke an Austrian military intervention in Albania, there was the danger that Russia might intervene, and thus activate Germany’s obligations under the alliance.

  In his political biography of the Kaiser, Willibald Gutsche has argued that Wilhelm’s responses to the First Balkan War reveal that under ‘the growing pressure of monopolistic and military circles’, he shifted during the summer and autumn of 1912 to a ‘foreign-policy course that knowingly risked a world war’. Gutsche cites two sources in support of this view. The first is a passage from Wilhelm’s marginalia in which he states that the Eastern Question ‘must be solved with blood and iron! But at a time which is right for us. That is now!’ The second is a marginal comment where Wilhelm expresses the view that if Russia were to force Franz Joseph to go to war, ‘then I would see this as grounds for taking action under the full terms of our alliance, with all the consequences that implies’.8

  However, while it is true that Wilhelm expressed the view, in various contexts, that the Balkans problem would be solved only by ‘blood and iron’ (one among many of his naive appropriations of Bismarckian language), there is no suggestion that he believed that German blood or German iron had any role to play. In a report of 2 October 1912 to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, an official in Wilhelm’s entourage reported that the Kaiser believed conflict in the Balkan region was inevitable but was also of the opinion ‘that we should refrain from exerting any influence on the Balkan states and should let things run their course’.9 Two days later, Wilhelm justified this view in a four-point memorandum. Here he noted (point one) that intervening to ‘keep the peace’ would be counter-productive, because it would arouse popular hatreds in the Balkan states against the Great Powers in the region and destabilize the existing structures of authority. He added (point two) that it was in Germany’s interest for this to occur at a time when Russia and France were not yet ready in military terms to exploit them as a pretext for a conflict with Germany, and (point three) that it was natural and legitimate for the Balkan states to test their strength against Turkey’s moribund European dominion. He also recommended (point four) that the Great Powers abstain from intervening in the conflict and instead form a ‘ring’, within which ‘the struggle is played out and [within which it] must remain’. His closing words were: ‘Let these people get on with it. Either they will take some blows or they will deal some out; afterwards there will be time to talk. The Eastern Question must be solved with blood and iron! But at the right time for us! And that is now!’10

  Few passages could better demonstrate the importance of context to an understanding of Wilhelm’s political utterances. Although his views on the legitimacy of conflict in the Balkans reflected a rough-and-ready Social Darwinism that we may find distasteful, there is no trace here of the advocacy of German intervention implied in Gutsche’s account. On the contrary: Wilhelm expressly forbade the Foreign Office on 4 November to participate in any action that would ‘hinder the Bulgars, Serbs and Greeks in their legitimate quest for victory’.11 The Balkan campaign, he argued, was part of a ‘world-historical evolution’ that was rolling back the medieval frontiers of Islamic settlement in Europe. He took the view, moreover, that allowing the Balkan league states to consolidate themselves at Turkey’s expense might in the longer run enable the emergence of a relatively stable coalition of Balkan entities, a ‘United States of the Balkans’ as he put it in a further marginal comment, and thus create an entity capable not only of cushioning the conflict between Austria and Russia in the region, but also of sustaining a strong regional market for German exports.12

  This explains why Wilhelm initially responded so unenthusiastically to Austrian howls of protest over Serbian efforts in the autumn of 1912 to gain access to the Adriatic by acquiring part or all of formerly Ottoman Albania. ‘I see absolutely no danger for Austria’s existence, or prestige, in a Serbian harbour on the Adriatic,’ he wrote to Kiderlen on 7 November. ‘I think it unadvisable needlessly to oppose the Serbian wish.’ Nor did he believe that Germany’s alliance commitments called for or justified any joint action against Serbia:

  Such a far-reaching commitment is not in the spirit of the Triple Alliance, which […] was intended to guarantee the integrity of current territorial possessions. […] To be sure, some of the changes wrought in the Balkans by the war are inconvenient and unwelcome for Vienna, but none [is] so important that we ought on that account to expose ourselves to a military involvement, I could not carry the responsibility for that before my conscience or my people. 1908 was a different situation, which turned on a constituent territory that had long been attached to Austria.13

  Two days later (9 November), Wilhelm reiterated that he would ‘under no circumstances be prepared to march against Paris and Moscow on account of Albania and Durazzo’. The German Foreign Office was ordered to propose to the Austrians that Albania be established as a quasi-independent principality under one of the Serbian princes.14 A further memorandum of 11 November reflected on the absurdity of risking an ‘existential struggle with three Great Powers, in which Germany may possibly perish’, simply because ‘Austria doesn’t want to have the Serbs in Albania or Durazzo’, and added that the Triple Alliance did not entitle the Austrians ‘to unconditional assistance in conflicts concerning the possessions of others!’ Germany would be obliged to come to Austria’s aid if the latter were attacked by Russia, but only on condition that Austria itself had not provoked the Russians to attack. Such a provocation could easily arise over the Serbian question, Wilhelm noted, ‘and Vienna must avoid this under all circumstances’. If Austria showed itself willing to concede ground to the Serbs and the Russians persisted nonetheless in provoking Austria, the suspicion would arise throughout Europe that the Russians were merely using the Serbian question as a pretext for an aggressive anti-Habsburg policy. Only under such conditions would a German mobilization in Austria’s support be well advised.15

  It is thus misleading to suggest that the events of early October inaugurated a ‘reign of Mars in the Kaiser’s thinking’, and that ‘he now grasped […] the initiative in directly orienting hims
elf towards warlike activity’.16 But Wilhelm continued, of course, to accept that Germany had an obligation to support Vienna in the event of Russian aggression against Austria–Hungary. By the end of November 1912, this looked increasingly likely. A telegram of 21 November from Tschirschky, the German ambassador in Vienna, stressed the extreme seriousness of the situation: the Austrian minister of war, General Auffenberg, had told him that the Habsburg monarchy would ‘fall to pieces’ unless Vienna now had ‘a free hand against Serbia’. Wilhelm appended a marginal comment: ‘This could bring a European War and for us a life-or-death struggle with 3 Great Powers; it depends upon our quickly getting a clear picture concerning [the position of ] London and Paris.’17

  A theme was sounded here that anticipated the language and arguments of July 1914. Wilhelm appears towards the end of November 1912 to have become increasingly convinced that the Austrian quest for a decisive reckoning with the Serbs was legitimate. But his willingness to endorse German intervention depended upon two conditions: firstly, that Austria be the party aggressed against, and secondly that there be no danger of intervention by other, non-involved powers. Everything thus depended upon the attitude of the western powers, and especially of Great Britain. In a note to Kiderlen-Wächter of 21 November, Wilhelm observed with satisfaction that ‘the entire European press – especially the English – generally perceives Austria as the provoked party’, and added that he would be willing to countenance German assistance in the event that Russian ‘deployments’ should ‘force Emperor Franz Joseph to commence waging war’. But the commitment remained conditional; an express reference to his earlier instructions of 9 November made it clear that he was still determined not to ‘march against Paris and Moscow on account of Albania and Durazzo’. It was thus essential that the German ambassadors ascertain whether France would stand ‘unconditionally by Russia’ in the event of a conflict, and ‘which side England would take’.18 At a secret meeting with Archduke Franz Ferdinand and other senior Austrian personnel on 22 November, Wilhelm reiterated his readiness to accept war with Russia if necessary, though he also insisted that the present state of Russian armaments made it highly unlikely that an isolated St Petersburg would risk such a conflict.19

  Wilhelm’s position was thus at variance with that of Moltke, chief of the German General Staff, who indulged at this time in loose talk of a ‘parallel offensive action’, in which the first priority would be to defeat France.20 By contrast with Moltke, who seemed actively – if intermittently – to desire a continental war, Wilhelm foresaw a local war that must be prevented from growing. But it would be wrong to conclude, on the basis of his assurances to the Austrians in late November, that he ‘embraced’ the risk of war. For it was virtually inconceivable in the winter of 1912 that the British and the French would go to war in defence of Serbian claims that were widely seen as outrageous, over-blown and untenable.21 Under these conditions it was also extremely unlikely that the Russians, whose support for the Serbian position was in reality highly equivocal, would risk attacking Austria–Hungary on their own. In other words, Wilhelm’s assurances could be offered at a very low cost in risk – indeed the cost in security terms of not offering them when asked to do so may well have been greater.

  As it turned out, Wilhelm’s responses to the crisis were in any case something of a red herring. The order to sound out Paris and London was disregarded and the assurance of support to Franz Ferdinand was cancelled out by official signals from Bethmann and Kiderlen (the ‘cold-water douche’ of 25 November 1912) that German government policy favoured a joint settlement of the crisis in the Balkans by the Powers.22 Wilhelm accepted this policy adjustment. By early December the Serbs had agreed to abide by the rulings of an ambassadors’ conference in London and the Russians were no longer insisting upon a Serbian territorial corridor to the Adriatic. The conflicts arising from the First Balkan War were later (temporarily) resolved in the Peace of London of May 1913.

  War premeditated?

  On 2 December 1912, just as the crisis over Albania was subsiding, Chancellor Bethmann inadvertently raised the political temperature with a speech to the Reichstag in which he warned that if Austria should unexpectedly be attacked by Russia, Germany would fight on the Austrian side, and it would do so with the support of the entire German people. It is not clear why Bethmann chose to adopt this confrontational tone. Whatever the motives, the speech triggered a crisis in Anglo-German relations. On the day following Bethmann’s speech, the British government issued an unexpected warning. Count Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London, was told by Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane that if Germany’s support for Austria–Hungary should entangle it in a war with Russia and France, Britain would fight on the side of France. It was not until some days later that Wilhelm read a despatch conveying this warning from Lichnowsky. It threw him into a mixture of panic and outrage. He immediately ordered that a group of senior military and naval personnel, including Chief of the General Staff Moltke, and the three admirals – Tirpitz, Heeringen and Müller – attend him in the Royal Palace at 11.00 a.m. The significance of the discussion that resulted is still hotly disputed; it remains one of the most controversial episodes of the reign.

  No minutes were kept of the meeting of 8 December, but several accounts survive, including one by a participant, Chief of the Naval Cabinet Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller. According to this, Wilhelm drew out the implications of the Lichnowsky despatch, focusing on four key points: (i) there was now no hope of British neutrality in the event of war on the continent; (ii) in the event of war over Serbia, therefore, Russia would not have to fight alone; (iii) since Britain too would be among Germany’s enemies, the navy must be prepared for conflict with the British navy (Tirpitz must therefore expedite the construction of U-boats); (iv) the Kaiser endorsed Moltke’s observation that ‘war is unavoidable and the sooner the better’, and his proposal that ‘more should be done through the press to prepare the popularity of a war against Russia’.23

  How can we account for this hardening in the Kaiser’s position? Wilhelm had long assumed that Britain would remain neutral in the event of Germany’s becoming involved in a war with France and Russia. This was important, because it appeared to give German diplomacy vis-à-vis the Serbian Question a certain room for flexibility. If the British were unlikely to support France, then the French would be less likely to risk war at Russia’s side over Serbian ambitions in Albania or elsewhere. And this in turn made Russian intervention against Austria in the event of a clash with the Serbs far less likely. German war plans reflected this perceived plurality of military options: in addition to the western-oriented ‘Schlieffen Plan’, which was designed to deal with the eventuality of a war on two fronts, the German General Staff foresaw in 1912 the alternative possibility of an eastward campaign against Russia alone, should Russia attack Austria without triggering French assistance. Even if the French did intervene, it was assumed that it would be possible to keep Britain out of the conflict. It was with this prospect in mind that Wilhelm had approved a naval plan on 3 December 1912 that aimed, in the event of continental war, to limit the activities of the German fleet against France in such a way as to avoid antagonizing Britain.24 If Wilhelm was chronically hypersensitive to unfriendly signals from Britain, this was in part because Britain appeared in his eyes (and not in his alone!) to be the power at the fulcrum of the continental system, whose diplomacy exercised a unique and decisive influence on the balance of power.

  In view of these preoccupations, it is perhaps unsurprising that Wilhelm was so shocked by Haldane’s warning to Lichnowsky. The scenario of a war against Russia alone now appeared illusory, as did that of a war on two fronts excluding Britain. This new prospect was all the more alarming because it directly contradicted the advice Wilhelm had recently been receiving from his senior advisers. So alarmed was he by this sudden narrowing of German perspectives that he felt the British warning amounted to a ‘moral declaration of war’.25 The ‘existential
struggle with three great powers’ which had been Wilhelm’s nightmare now seemed hard at hand. As John Röhl has shown, his remarks over the days following the meeting of 8 December reflected an obsessive bitterness at what he regarded as the incomprehensible perfidy of British policy. Haldane’s admonitions, he told the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, revealed the ‘naked shamelessness’ of Britain’s ‘balance of power policy’ which in reality amounted to ‘playing off the Great Powers against each other to England’s advantage’.26

  Historians disagree about the significance of this ‘War Council’, as it was ironically dubbed by Bethmann, who was not invited. John Röhl, in company with Fritz Fischer, Immanuel Geiss and others, has argued that the War Council of December 1912 not only revealed the continuing centrality of the Kaiser to the decision-making process, but also set the scene for a comprehensive war plan that involved placing the navy, the army, the German economy and German public opinion on a war footing in preparation for the unleashing of a premeditated conflict.27 But others, including Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Dieter Groh and Klaus Hildebrand, have seen the meeting as a reflex response to an international crisis, and have rejected the notion that the German military and political leadership henceforth began the countdown to a pre-planned European war.28 Whereas Röhl is inclined to see the absence of Bethmann and Kiderlen-Wächter as evidence of an ominous primacy of the military over the civilian decision-makers at the apex of the German political system, his opponents view the chancellor’s absence merely as evidence of the meeting’s subordinate status and emphasize that the ‘decisions’ reached there had no significant practical consequences. Erwin Hölzle has even argued that the key figure in the drama of 8 December was not Wilhelm, but Bethmann, who subsequently ‘put the Kaiser in his place’ and ‘nullified’ the decisions taken at the conference.29