To Arms

by Hew Strachan

  This, then, is the real significance of the ‘war council’ meeting—the fact that Moltke advocated a preventive war. Nor was this the first time: he had done so in his exchanges with Conrad during the 1909 Bosnian crisis. For Moltke and the German general staff, war was endemic in international relations. Such a view was not the personal property of the Prussian soldiery: social Darwinism, the belief that states were rising and declining and would fight for position, was a prevailing orthodoxy that was just as capable of being embraced by liberal circles in more democratic states. The soldier’s duty was to prepare for that war, and so fight it on the best possible terms. Preventive war was therefore the acceptance of an inevitable war at the right time. Moltke’s predecessors in office had canvassed the idea—Alfred Graf von Waldersee against Russia in the 1880s,90 and on some interpretations Schlieffen in 190591—and it is to be found incorporated in the popular military literature of the day, most notoriously in Friedrich von Bernhardi’s Deutschland und der nächste Krieg (Germany and the next war) (1912). But none of these advocates of preventive war saw it as Fritz Fischer sees it, as a deliberate step to resolve an impending domestic crisis. Nor did Moltke approach the subject with the same calculation that previous chiefs of the general staff had brought to its consideration. Moltke talked in general terms of a coming struggle between Slav and Teuton: he was both pessimistic and fatalistic. He did not then combine these world views with the more specific military picture. As chief of the general staff he concentrated on operational plans for war against France, but did little to co-ordinate those plans with those of Conrad, and he did not attempt to formulate what we would now call a grand strategy, integrating operations with the overall picture in a specific way. Moltke’s attitude accustomed both Bethmann Hollweg and the Kaiser to the possibility of war, but it did not affect policy in any immediate sense.92

  At its most negative, the December 1912 meeting made clear what Germany did not want—a European war at that juncture. Thus Germany resumed its original policy, that of an alliance leader co-operating with the British in managing the situation. Superficially at any rate, the Concert of Europe was resuscitated. A conference of ambassadors in London rapidly agreed that an independent Albania stretching from Montenegro to Greece should be created. However, it then proceeded to emasculate the new state by allocating large chunks of its interior to Serbia and Montenegro, so depriving it of its original raison d’être, to be an effective barrier against the Serbs. Berchtold, caught between Conrad advocating war with Serbia and a finance minister predicting that war would entail economic collapse, gave in to his German ally and accepted the enlargement of Serbia. In February 1913 Turkey renewed hostilities against the Balkan states, and Conrad again pressed the opportunity for preemptive action. But Bulgaria’s rapid success against the Turks, bringing it to Adrianople, led Russia to fear that Bulgaria would control the Black Sea straits: for the moment Russia tried to restrain the bellicosity of the Balkan states. Thus, when Montenegro seized Scutari, the port which the powers had allocated to Albania, Austria-Hungary’s renewed threat of military action was backed up by an international naval demonstration, and Montenegro withdrew.

  By May 1913 Conrad’s demands for preventive war seemed to have been as ineffectual as those of Moltke. In reality the civilian front against military action was cracking. Aehrenthal’s death removed its cement. Although expansionist in his policies, the former foreign minister rejected war as an option and curbed Conrad. His successors were less resolute in their brinkmanship. Repeated mobilization was expensive: the December 1912 crisis had cost almost 200 million crowns. The common finance minister, Bilinski, argued that war might be cheaper than recurrent mobilizations. Bilinski was a Pole, and for him the fact that the case for war, which had hitherto assumed Russian neutrality, might now embrace Russia enhanced its attractions.93 The competition between the two states for influence in Galicia made Poland and the Ukraine almost as inflammatory elements in their relationship as Serbia. At the same time those civilians who favoured rapprochement with Russia—Magyars, like Tisza and Burian—did not therefore oppose a forward policy. They argued that two large, dynastic, multinational states should not allow themselves to be the puppets of the Balkan powers. For them the corollary of détente in the north was assertiveness in the south-east, building on Bulgaria and forcing Romania to declare its hand.94

  For the time being the new foreign minister, Berchtold, who favoured better relations with Russia, held the line against war, but he was as aware as anyone of the dividends that Austria had reaped by its threat. Furthermore he headed a ministry that drew three further major and interrelated lessons from the events of the preceding six months. First, the Concert system was no longer the external buttress to Austro-Hungarian integrity that it had been in the past. Secondly, unilateral action, not conferences, had achieved Austrian objectives. Thirdly, the Austro-German alliance, although vital to both parties, was nonetheless not supported with consistency by Germany: it paid Austria-Hungary to lead the way.

  Austrian distrust of its northern partner was only confirmed by the events of the summer of 1913. In May the Serbs and Bulgars fell out over the division of Macedonia. On 1 June the Serbs and Greeks formed a defensive alliance, partitioning Macedonia and limiting Bulgaria to the line of the River Vardar. The Bulgarians, seething with indignation since they claimed that they had borne the burden of the fighting, declared war on the Serbs. The Russians were unable to check the Bulgarians, and saw their Balkan policy—and the Balkan League—disintegrate as the Second Balkan War took hold. The Greeks came to Serbia’s support, and the Romanians—fearful of Bulgarian preponderance in the region and covetous of Silistria (which the Bulgarians were willing to let them have) and the southern Dobrudja (which they were not)—entered the war on 10 July. The Turks seized the moment to retake Adrianople. Further Serb victories were unacceptable to Austria-Hungary, and once again the dual monarchy prepared for war in the Balkans, this time to support Bulgaria. But Germany aligned itself with the opposition. Wilhelm backed Romania and Greece, and hence also Serbia. Italy pointed out to the Austrians that any action they might take in the Balkans would be offensive, not defensive, and consequently the Triple Alliance could not be invoked. Therefore Bulgaria stood alone, and on 10 August 1913 signed the Treaty of Bucharest. Greece got southern Macedonia, Serbia northern Macedonia, and Romania southern Dobrudja. Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary had hoped that the great powers would subsequently revise these concessions. But Germany, anxious to curry favour with the victorious Balkan states, blocked any such proposal. Therefore Austria-Hungary’s conclusions from May were reinforced in August—any passivity on its part was exploited; German support was capricious and therefore to be utilized when it was available; and the Concert system had irretrievably broken down. Four minor Balkan nations had flagrantly breached the Treaty of London and had not been called to order. As a result, Serbia had virtually doubled its territory and increased its population from 2.9 million to 4.4 million, to the point where its claim to head a South Slav state outside the empire had gained validity as well as shrillness. Romania, fired by its easy success in the Dobrudja, now fostered irridentism among its fellow-nationals in Hungarian Transylvania. And, even more significantly, Russia had learned that restraint in the Balkans simply resulted in the loss of influence. With Bulgaria a broken reed, Russia transferred its attentions to the waxing power of Serbia.

  Those, like Fischer, who seek to trace a straight line from the December 1912 meeting to the events of July 1914 argue that Gemany’s support for Austria-Hungary never wavered in 1913.95 Furthermore, its desire to restrain the dual monarchy in the Balkans derived not from any rejection of war per se, but from the fear that it might break out prematurely. Part of the problem with the pursuit of such consistency is that its fountainhead must be the Kaiser. In that case the consistency lies in the respect for dynastic loyalties, whether in his support for the Hohenzollerns of Romania and Greece in the summer of 1913, or his affirmation of
the Habsburgs that same autumn.

  Both Germany and Austria-Hungary were sufficiently aware of the fractured state of their relations to make efforts to mend the bridges in October 1913. Serbia, continuing its forward policy, and justifying its actions by the revolts against Serb rule, occupied towns in northern Albania, thus clearly contravening the peace settlement. Austria-Hungary, anxious to use any opportunity to reverse the Treaty of Bucharest and even more anxious to curb Serbia, determined on a hard line. This time Germany stood by its ally: there was little risk in doing so since neither Russia nor France was prepared to condone Serb behaviour. Berchtold dispatched an ultimatum to Serbia, and Serbia gave way. In late October Wilhelm followed up Germany’s affirmation of the alliance by a visit to Franz Ferdinand. The Kaiser charmed the archduke by his courteous treatment of the latter’s wife Sophie, who as a Czech countess was treated as a commoner at the Austrian court. Most importantly, Wilhelm insisted that Serbia should be a client of Austria-Hungary; if Austria-Hungary had to fight to achieve this, then Germany would back the empire.96 The centenary of the battle of Leipzig, when Habsburg and Hohenzollern had combined to overthrow Napoleon, helped bathe the Austro-German alliance—at least for the moment—in a warm light.

  Neither power saw fit to remember that a third dynasty, that of the Romanovs, had also participated in the victory of 1813. In practice the Romanovs’ attention was focused on another anniversary that fell in the same year. The tercentenary of Romanov rule persuaded Tsar Nicholas II that a revival of his autocracy could be rooted in popular sentiment. In due course a stronger foreign policy would emerge as a means for the achievement of that end.97 What marked the winter of 1913–14 and the following spring was an end to the ambivalence which had characterized Russo-German relations for so long (despite their membership of opposing alliances) and its replacement with categorical hostility.

  Antagonistic commercial relations between the two countries meant that the Russian right, many of whom were naturally inclined to favour an alliance with autocratic, monarchical Germany rather than liberal, republican France, found its position increasingly hard to sustain. East Elbian landowners, as a reward for their agreement to Tirpitz’s naval appropriations, had secured a tariff that effectively excluded the import of Russian grain into Germany. The effect was not reciprocal: by 1914 German rye had found its way into Finland and Russian agriculture was threatened with the loss of Scandinavian markets. Russia responded in the summer of 1914 by imposing a heavy tariff on imported grains, and the prospects for the renewal of the Russo-German commercial agreements of 1904—due in 1917—did not look good. Thus, Russian farmers found their views on foreign policy coinciding—albeit for different reasons—with those of industry. For German commercial policy cut two ways. German heavy industry wanted the reverse of German agriculture: it was anxious to lower tariff barriers between the two countries, thus opening the Russian market to German goods. Russian industry for its part needed—in its fledgling, if burgeoning state—the protection of high tariffs. Both agriculture and industry were therefore united in identifying national interests with economic policy, and both sectors saw themselves as exploited by Germany. In 1910–11 sections of the Russian press were advocating rapid industrialization as a foundation for waging war.98

  In these circumstances foreign policy could become the unifying and soothing balm which the fractured state of Russian society so urgently needed. In the wake of the 1905 revolution the Tsar had accepted the establishment of a legislative assembly, the Duma, based on a wide, if indirect, franchise. But Nicholas was unhappy with the concession which he had made. The army, the navy, and the raising of foreign loans were all excluded from the Duma’s competence. Under article 87 of the constitution the government was free to legislate while the Duma was not sitting provided the law was confirmed by the Duma within two months of its next sitting. Thus the Tsar had available the means to re-establish his authority, to assert that Russia’s ministers were his servants and were not answerable to the Duma. In 1906 he dissolved the first Duma, an assembly that contained the flower of the Russian intelligentsia. The leaders of the Kadets—a liberal party representing the professional middle classes—decamped to Viborg in Finland, where they issued a manifesto rejecting the dissolution and called for civil disobedience until the Duma was restored. The Viborg manifesto produced little response: its effect was to divide and weaken the Kadets, since those who signed the appeal were disqualified from re-election to the Duma. The Tsar’s efforts to limit the Duma were carried forward a stage further with the appointment of Stolypin as prime minister. He got the weakened second Duma to accept a revised electoral law, which favoured the countryside in preference to the towns and boosted Russian representation at the expense of the other nationalities. After 1907 the cycle of revolution and terrorism abated. Good harvests aided Stolypin’s efforts to re-establish domestic order. However, the Duma—although more compliant than in 1905—was still a legislative forum where open and uncensored debate was permitted. Nationalism expressed within Russia was potentially almost as domestically divisive as it was within Austria-Hungary. But used externally, cloaked in pan-Slavism and embracing state support for the Orthodox church, it became a means to rally and manage the Duma. Liberal imperialism found powerful advocates among some of the Kadets: P. B. Struve argued that such a policy could reconcile the people and the state, and V. A. Maklakov supported Serb unification at Austria-Hungary’s expense. Within the administration this sort of thinking found expression with the appointment in 1912 of the Slavophil liberal, Prince G. N. Trubetskoy, as head of the foreign ministry department concerned with the Balkans and Turkey. For Trubetskoy, and for many Russians before 1914, Austro-Hungarian policy in the Balkans was only rendered effective by virtue of German support.

  Furthermore, Trubetskoy—like other liberals—derived strength and encouragement from the alliance with France and Britain.99

  Thus anti-Germanism had, by the end of 1913, come to characterize the views of Russian farmers and industrialists, had the support of many of the intelligentsia, and had become a means by which domestic politics seemed capable of regulation and management. The penetration of German influence through the Balkans and into Turkey, the presence of German commercial interests in the Ottoman empire, symbolized most clearly by the Baghdad railway, triggered Russian anxiety with regard to the future control of the Black Sea straits. In 1912 the Turks had briefly to close the straits during the Italian war, and the Russian grain trade had lost 30 million roubles a month, with the adverse effects on the Russian balance of trade causing the state bank to raise its discount rate half a per cent in 1913.100

  In October 1913 all these currents found their focus with the appointment of a German general, Liman von Sanders, to command I Corps of the Ottoman army at Constantinople. A German military mission, designed to train and upgrade the Turkish army, was not in itself a legitimate cause for objection. Liman was not the first German officer to undertake such a task in Turkey, and the British were performing a similar function in relation to the Turkish navy. But the Turks appointed Liman to a command, not to an advisory post. Furthermore, Wilhelm—in his usual bombastic way, and far exceeding the brief favoured by the German foreign ministry—had instructed Liman to Germanize the Turkish army and to make Turkey an instrument of German foreign policy and a counterweight to Russia.101 Given the strength of Russia’s reaction, the diplomats’ more cautious approach prevailed over Wilhelm’s instructions, military objectives were subordinated to political, and Liman von Sanders became inspector-general of the Turkish army instead. But the consequences of the affair stretched beyond its apparent solution. It consolidated Sazonov’s desire that Russia control the straits, and by February 1914 he was clear that this would be a Russian war aim if war came. Even more importantly, it confirmed his fears of German ambitions, and revealed his preference for war rather than to have the Triple Alliance regard Russian interests as of no consequence. A conference convened by Sazonov in the middle
of the crisis, and attended by the ministers for the services as well as by the chief of the general staff, revoked the renunciation of war that had guided Russian policy since 1905. Instead, war was deemed to be ‘fully permissible, and the conference set out a series of escalatory steps designed to get Germany to comply with Russia’s wishes. Sazonov was not so foolhardy as to imagine that Russia was suddenly able to take on Germany and Austria-Hungary unaided. Thus, a necessary corollary of this shift was a much firmer allegiance to the Entente, and a determination to convert it into a fully-fledged alliance. Indeed, Sazonov had overreacted to Liman’s appointment not least to test the Entente.102

  France, through Poincaré, duly expressed to Izvolsky—now the Russian ambassador in France and working tirelessly for the promotion of the Triple Entente—its support for Russia. Such expressions were seen as inadequate by Sazonov, but they were more than sufficient to reveal the limitations of Bethmann’s foreign policy. By emphasizing joint Franco-German interests in the Middle East, Bethmann had in 1913 achieved a measure of détente. Caillaux’s return to office as minister of finance, the acrimony generated by the debate on the three-year service law, and the apparent waning of Poincaré’s influence had all been good omens for Germany. But the Liman affair showed that, when driven to make a choice, the first priority in French foreign policy remained the Franco-Russian alliance. And, to add insult to injury, in 1914 once again French capital won out over German, with Turkey increasing its borrowings so that the level of French investment was three times greater than that of Germany.