by Hew Strachan
On 7 July Hoyos, having returned to Vienna, attended a ministerial council summoned by Berchtold. It was the third time in twenty months that the common council had confronted the issue of war: diplomacy which carried the threat of war came naturally to it. The task which confronted Hoyos was the corollary of that which he had already fulfilled in Potsdam: having displayed Austria’s resolve in order to be sure of German backing, he now had to emphasize Geman determination to forestall any backsliding in Vienna. He presented Germany’s support in unequivocal terms, and as a result the Austrian prime minister, Sturgkh, shuffled off his customary ineffectiveness with a ‘firm intention of concluding the whole affair with war’.139 Sturgkh knew how fickle Germany’s support for Austria-Hungary had been in the last couple of years: it was necessary to seize the moment before Berlin changed direction, rely on Germany to deter Russia, and so shore up the empire by resolving the Balkan question once and for all. Speed was as essential to the calculations of Berchtold as to those of Bethmann Hollweg: any debate should follow a fait accompli, not precede it. He used Germany’s support to shelve any worries about Russia and to narrow the council’s focus on to Serbia alone. Self-deception led to simplification. That same day instructions went out to the Austrian ambassador in Belgrade which were unequivocal: ‘However the Serbs react to the ultimatum, you must break off relations and it must come to war.’140 But from 7 July delay set in, and with delay came loss of control.
Part of the delay was attributable to diplomatic calculation. Poincaré and the French prime minister, Viviani, were due to visit Russia from 20 to 23 July. Given the Austrian desire to limit the crisis, it made sense to postpone delivering the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia until the French leaders had quitted St Petersburg, and so avoid a co-ordinated Franco-Russian response which—on the evidence of 1912—would egg on the Russians. Much attention has been devoted to the other factors explaining Vienna’s slowness in mid-July. But in the event the Austrian ultimatum was delivered as early as this reckoning would allow.
It also made sense to accompany the ultimatum with evidence of Serb complicity in the assassination. Many in Europe saw the Serbs as brigands, and were predisposed, given the 1903 regicides, to accept Austrian accusations on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone. In the event that was as much as they got. The Young Bosnians themselves were at pains to insist that the assassination was all their own work. Furthermore, even if they had Belgrade links, they—like the authors of the earlier assassination attempts—were Habsburg subjects. On 13 July the foreign ministry’s investigator reported that he could find no evidence that the Serbian government had played a direct role, and by October, and the trial of Princip and his associates, the Austrian case against Serbia rested on the argument that the Young Bosnians had been the dupes of Serb propaganda. The Austrian investigation was not helped by its continuing ignorance of Ujedinjenje ili Smrt, and its consequent determination to pin the blame on the relatively innocent Narodna Odbrana.
However, the efforts to establish Serbia’s guilt may not have been entirely fruitless, for Tisza, the Hungarian prime minister, maintained that they convinced him of the need to support the Austrian ultimatum. Franz Ferdinand’s death had left Tisza as the single most important figure in the politics of the empire. He had been the only minister to oppose the strong line advocated at the ministerial meeting of 7 July. Indeed, his position was clear from 30 June. He saw Russia’s entry in the event of an Austrian attack on Serbia as inevitable, and argued that Austria-Hungary should first engage in a diplomatic offensive to restructure a Balkan League embracing Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, which would support the Triple Alliance and leave Serbia isolated. Fundamental to Tisza’s opposition was the issue of Magyar supremacy in Hungary. If Austria-Hungary successfully overran Serbia and then tried to digest it within the empire, the consequences would be a trialist restructuring of the empire, and a reduction in status and size for Hungary. Far more worrying to Tisza than the threat of Serbia was that of Romania. Romania, in the ascendant after its gains in 1913, was fostering irridentism among its fellow-nationals in Hungarian Transylvania. Magyar satisfaction with the Ausgleich as it currently stood combined with awareness of its vulnerability to produce caution. Furthermore, Tisza was well aware of the economic strains which war would impose on the empire, and which the 1912 mobilization had made manifest.
In the event, Tisza’s opposition did no more than put down a marker for some of the dual monarchy’s future problems. By 14 July he had been convinced by his fellow Magyar, Stephan Burian, who was effectively deputy foreign minister, that he should change his position. He was now prepared to accept an ultimatum designed for Serbia to reject. Politically, his earlier stance had become unsustainable. Popular passions against the Serbs had been roused in Budapest as well as in Vienna. The corollary of not crushing Serbia was a recognition of South Slav demands whose ramifications would impinge on Magyar interests in Croatia and southern Hungary no less than on other interests within the empire. In the shorter term Romania clearly intended to remain neutral, but its loss, Burian contended, could be compensated for by the acquisition of Bulgaria as an ally. In the longer term Romanian aspirations in Transylvania might well be influenced by the success of Serb irridentism if the latter was not crushed.141 Finally, Tisza was fearful of forfeiting German support, not so much for the empire as a whole but for the Ausgleich specifically, and therefore for Magyar predominance. Berchtold was able to use the blank cheque to reinforce that fear. Tisza’s earlier objections now found expression, not in opposition to going to war but in the aims of that war: on 19 July, the day on which the empire’s ministers finalized the ultimatum to Serbia, they agreed in deference to Magyar concerns that Austria-Hungary would not annex any part of Serbia, but that chunks would be allocated to Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania, and the rump would be treated as a Habsburg client.
Therefore, it was not Hungary that produced the major domestic hiccough in the dual monarchy’s timetable for war; surprisingly, that was a role reserved for Conrad von Hötzendorff. On previous occasions Conrad had demanded mobilization with an initial urgency that had then given way to calls for delay. In July 1914 he repeated the pattern. Much of the army was on leave to help bring in the harvest. Conrad argued that to cancel the leave would alert other powers to Austrian intentions. Most soldiers were due to return from leave on 21 and 22 July, and therefore 23 July—in addition to being the earliest date compatible with Poincaré’s and Viviani’s departure from Russia—was also the first that would suit the Austro-Hungarian army. Conrad dragged his feet even beyond 23 July. He reckoned that 12 August was the first day by which he could attack Serbia, and so was opposed to any declaration of war before then. Conrad’s fatalism of 1914 was a product not simply of the realities of Austria-Hungary’s position, but also of an inner mood. A shrewd observer, Josef Redlich, commented at the end of August: Conrad ‘lacks greater inner verve. Inwardly, he does not believe in his historical calling as Austrian commander-in-chief.’142 Preoccupied with his long-standing love for Gina von Reininghaus, the wife of an industrialist, his thoughts were of a married life with her rather than of Austria-Hungary.
Conrad’s fantasies were not very different from the reality for many in Europe in mid-July. Llewellyn Woodward, the British historian, heard the news of the archduke’s murder while staying in a hotel in the Black Forest, but considered it ‘nothing more than another political assassination in the Balkans’.143 Some saw its implications, but for the majority in western Europe Bosnia and Serbia were too remote and too primitive to be of direct consequence in their lives. Previous Balkan crises had been surmounted without a general war. It was a hot summer. July was a month of relaxation. The affluent, reflecting the increasingly cosmopolitan atmosphere of the continent’s capitals, were taking their holidays abroad. General Brusilov and his wife were among a group of Russians undergoing cures at Kissingen in Germany. The Serb chief of the general staff, Putnik, was in Budapest (where he was interned, but on
28 July released). Wilhelm Groener, head of the railways section of the German general staff, was in Switzerland. Such international contacts made the danger of war seem particularly inappropriate. Commerce, education, and culture were drawing the nations together, not driving them apart. Five of the seven honorary graduands of Oxford University in June 1914 had been German;144 Tirpitz’s daughters had an English governess and were educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. For those who had stayed at home, domestic crises grabbed the headlines. In Britain, Grey and Lloyd George emphasized the calm of the international scene: the real issue was Irish home rule and the possibility of Ulster loyalist opposition. French readers were engrossed in much more salacious fare. On 20 July the trial began of the wife of Joseph Caillaux. Madame Caillaux had shot the editor of Le Figaro in his office after he had published her love-letters to Caillaux. The affair did have serious diplomatic consequences, since Le Figaro was said to be in possession of deciphered German telegrams, and foreign embassies in Paris therefore changed their codes in July, thus shutting French cryptographers out from a most important intelligence source. But the Caillaux trial’s popular appeal was of course as a crime passionelle.
The silence which Vienna had sought was thus relatively easily won. It was broken at 6 p.m. on 23 July with the delivery of the ultimatum to Serbia. Austria-Hungary cited Serbia’s failure to suppress the terrorism emanating from within its borders as evidence that Serbia had failed to honour its undertaking of 31 March 1909 to sustain good relations with Austria-Hungary. It asked the Serbian government to condemn anti-Austrian propaganda, to dissolve Narodna Odbrana, to take action against those Serbians implicated in the plot, and to include Austro-Hungarian representation in the suppression of anti-Austrian activities within Serbia. Serbia was granted forty-eight hours within which to reply. In the capitals of the great powers German ambassadors had been instructed on 21 July to be ready to give full support to the ultimatum on 24 July and to work to keep the efforts of the Austro-Serb quarrel localized. On the face of it the ultimatum, though severe, was not unreasonable, and the initial reactions received by the Germans were reassuring.
The ultimatum was hardly a surprise to Serbia. Probably alerted to Habsburg machinations by the Rome leak as early as 7 July, Pasic had confirmation of Austro-Hungarian troop movements by 18 July.145 Outwardly Serbia seemed self-confident and cocky. The tensions with the army and the imminence of elections meant that nobody could afford not to be nationalist, especially in a domestic context. Hartwig, Russia’s ambassador to Belgrade, who had died on 10 July had been accorded a state funeral, which Pasic had turned into a paean for pan-Slavism. But militarily there was every reason for caution. The Balkan wars had left the army exhausted. Austria-Hungary’s military attaché in Belgrade was of the opinion that it would take four years to recover (in itself an argument in favour of a quick Austrian strike while the opportunity offered), and the Serb ministry of war was planning a ten-year programme of reconstruction. In June Pasic had rejected a Greek request for an alliance against Turkey on the grounds that the army was not fit for another war. The assimilation of the new territories was far from complete, their populations proving resistant to military service. Revolt had resulted in the army being deployed overwhelmingly in the south, away from the axes of its mobilization in the event of war in the north.146 Moreover, there were few obvious signs of support from Serbia’s possible military allies. Above all, Russia—although it had promised military aid—had counselled restraint on 3 July, and had given no reassurances by 23 July.
On the evening of 23 July Pasic was electioneering in the south of the country. Prince Alexander immediately contacted the Tsar, expressing Serb willingness to go as far in meeting the Austro-Hungarian demands as was ‘in keeping with the position of an independent country’.147 This became the essence of the Serb reply to Vienna. Pasic returned to Belgrade on the following day. Despite his awareness of Serbia’s vulnerability, he could not cave in to the Austrians without forfeiting his political position—in relation to both the electorate and the army. His aim, therefore, was to moderate the reactions of his colleagues, while playing for time in the hope that international responses, and particularly Russia’s position, would become more emphatic. In the circumstances, the Serb reply was brilliant. By accepting most of the terms but not all—Pasic refused to allow Austro-Hungarian representation in Serbia’s internal investigations—Serbia appeared the injured party and won widespread support. The European climate, so apparently favourable to Austria-Hungary up to 23 July, turned distinctly frosty after 25 July.
By then the Serb cabinet had given the order for mobilization. This can be seen as a show of bravado, an indication that Belgrade was confident of Russian support, and a response to the fear that its reply to Vienna would otherwise be seen as too weak by the Serb army. In practice, it was an act of desperation. Although the decision was taken on the afternoon of 25 July, before the Serb note was in Austrian hands, it was not put into effect until midnight. Even then Serbia had received only vague indications as to Russia’s position: at least for the moment Serbia seemed to be on its own. It mobilized because it reckoned that Austria-Hungary would resort to military action the moment the ultimatum expired.
Its judgement was sound. The diplomatic solution, to which Belgrade had at least technically opened the path, was of no interest in Vienna. Within fifteen minutes of receiving the Serb reply the Austrian ambassador in Belgrade announced that it was unsatisfactory and that diplomatic relations between the two states were at an end. On the following day the Austro-Hungarian army began to mobilize against Serbia, and on 28 July Berchtold—still trying to push Conrad into a speedier response—secured Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia.
Sazonov received the news of the Austrian démarche in the morning of 24 July. The Tsar summoned a meeting of the Council of Ministers that afternoon. Bethmann Hollweg and Berchtold rested any hopes they entertained that Russia would stand back on three assumptions: that the Austro-Serb quarrel could be isolated, that the Tsar’s fear that war would lead to revolution would keep Russia out, and that—with Poincaré and Viviani at sea on their return to France—French support for Russia would not be forthcoming. On all three counts they were proved wrong.
Austro-Hungarian action against Serbia could not be localized because nobody in the Triple Entente, and certainly neither Sazonov nor Grey, saw Austria-Hungary as an independent actor. The irony of Vienna’s position was that uncertainty about the strength of German support had prompted a firm line, when to the opposition that very firmness seemed indicative of Austro-German solidarity. Austria-Hungary was therefore saddled with the bellicose image of Germany. By July 1914 Germany, in the light of the 1911 Moroccan crisis and, for Russia in particular, of the Liman von Sanders affair, was judged as moving progressively towards war. Neither crisis was interpreted as a self-contained attempt to use the threat of war as a diplomatic instrument. The German attitude to preventive war, the German fear that by 1917 Russia would be too strong and would be able to mobilize too fast, had been faithfully reported by the Russian military attache in Berlin. ‘Germany’, he opined in 1912, ‘is strenuously preparing for war in the immediate future.’148 Although contact between the Foreign Ministry and the War Ministry was minimal, Sazonov’s immediate reaction on 24 July was to link the Austrian ultimatum to this wider, preconceived view. Germany, he was convinced, was behind Austria-Hungary; he was also sure that Germany wished to use the crisis to launch a preventive war.
Tsar Nicholas was more cautious, not least because—as Bethmann Hollweg rightly judged—he did fear that war would lead to revolution. In February 1914 P. N. Durnovo, the minister of the interior responsible for suppressing the 1905 revolution, had written a memorandum for Nicholas in which he anticipated that a future European war would be long, that it would therefore generate great economic and domestic political strain, and that the efforts to compensate for Russian industrial backwardness would lead to a social crisis and to re
volution.149 Nicholas brought this insight to his deliberations on 24 July: ‘war’, he said, ‘would be disastrous for the world and once it had broken out it would be difficult to stop.’150
In 1910 it might have been possible to argue that Durnovo’s prognostications owed too much to the past, to the memory of 1905; in 1914 they looked more far-seeing. Russia suffered only 222 strikes in 1910, and the police reckoned all but eight of these were prompted by economic rather than political factors. In 1913 2,404 strikes took place, and 1,034 were classified as political; in 1914, of 3,534 strikes fully 2,565 were deemed political. Furthermore, workers’ discontent had reached a peak during the French state visit in July.151 However, a year previously the police, looking back over a decade of domestic strife, had been confident that the position was improving: they reported that the general mood of the population was calm, expressing the view that there was no danger of revolution in the near future, and that they could control such problems as did arise without the aid of the army.152 Since the bulk of the population still worked on the land the police were probably justified in these opinions: urban strikes were not representative of society as a whole; the situation was not revolutionary in the sense that 1905 had been. In July 1914 N. A. Maklakov, the minister of the interior, reflected the police view. War, he thought, would rally the nation, and mobilization specifically would pre-empt industrial disturbance.
