A world undone: the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 (16 page)

Russia’s general mobilization, decided just a little more than forty-eight hours after Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia, added nine hundred thousand active-duty troops to the number that would have been affected by partial mobilization. It also called up the Russian reserves—a staggering total of four million men, enough to frighten any nation on earth. By making German mobilization—and therefore war—a near-certainty, it drastically reduced the possibility that the Willy-Nicky telegrams or any of the other increasingly desperate efforts to defuse the situation (cables were flying among the capital cities around the clock) could produce results before it was too late. It all but ended the hope of negotiations, or of a compromise based on Stop-in-Belgrade.

Tragically, Russia’s mobilization, while dictated by military considerations, was not only militarily unnecessary but counterproductive. Tactically it was a gift to the Austrians (or would have been, if Conrad had taken advantage of it), relieving them of the anguish of not knowing whether they needed to prepare to fight the Russians or were free to focus on Serbia alone. Strategically it was an act of high folly. In no real sense had the security of Russia ever been threatened by the July crisis. Even the destruction of Serbia—something that certainly could have been averted without resorting to war—would have had little impact on Russia’s strategic position. Russia would still have had the biggest army in the world by a huge margin, and it would still have been in the beginning stages of a program aimed at expanding that army by 40 percent within three years.

Tsar Nicholas was shown a telegram that the monk Rasputin had sent to Tsarina Alexandra. Rasputin, who had maneuvered himself into being almost a member of the imperial family, was at his home village deep in the interior of Russia, just beginning to recover from a stab wound that had nearly taken his life. Because of his distance from the capital and the state of his health, he could not possibly have known what was happening in St. Petersburg or Vienna or elsewhere. Thus his telegram, like so many other things about this strange and sinister man, continues to mystify even today. “Let Papa [Rasputin’s name for Nicholas] not plan war,” the telegram said. “With war will come the end of Russia and yourselves, and you will lose to the last man.” The tsar read it and tore it into pieces.

British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey, alarmed by the deepening seriousness of the crisis, finally stopped being so diplomatic as to be nearly incapable of saying anything. Speaking without the knowledge of the British cabinet, he told Germany’s Ambassador Lichnowsky that in his opinion, quite unofficially, “unless Austria is willing to enter upon a discussion of the Serbian question, a world war is inevitable,” and that he would expect such a war to bring Britain in on the side of France and Russia. When the kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg learned of this, they abandoned any lingering hopes that war if it came could be a “local” one involving only Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and they intensified their attempts to restrain the Austrians. If Grey had been this forthright just a few days earlier, Berlin almost certainly would have changed its position more quickly and firmly. Austria might then have deferred its declaration of war, and Russia would have had little reason to mobilize. Now, however, it was all but too late. Also too late, Bethmann awakened to the fact that the Russians were laboring under a misunderstanding about Vienna’s willingness to talk. He cleared this up by having Tschirschky alert Berchtold to the problem, but with things now happening so fast and diplomacy being submerged under the concerns of the generals, there was little chance that talks could be got under way in time to avoid disaster.

Bethmann was peppering Tschirschky with telegrams, each one more urgent and exasperated than the last. In one he instructed the ambassador to make clear to Berchtold that any Austro-Hungarian refusal to negotiate with Russia would be not only a “serious error” but “a direct provocation of Russia’s armed intervention.” “We are, of course, ready to fulfill the obligations of our alliance,” he said in another, “but must decline to be drawn wantonly into a world conflagration by Vienna, without having any regard paid to our counsel.” But here again the remedies were coming too late—all the more so because Berchtold had withdrawn into an almost total silence. He was bent on war and wanted no discussion.

The tension continued to increase. President Poincaré, concerned about jeopardizing France’s alliance with Russia, sent assurances to St. Petersburg through Ambassador Paléologue that Russia could depend on France. Paléologue hurried to tell Sazonov. Not yet knowing that Russia had already mobilized (if Paléologue knew, he did not deign to inform Paris), Poincaré also told his ambassador to urge the Russians to proceed cautiously. This Paléologue had no interest in doing.

Paris and St. Petersburg continued to receive reports of extensive military preparations within Germany, reports that continued to be untrue. France was beginning to prepare, but it was doing so extremely tentatively, to avoid alarming the Germans or, what Poincaré cared about even more at this point, giving the British any cause to see France as an aggressor. No reserves were called up, and no movement of troops by train was permitted. Determined to bring Britain to France’s assistance if war started, and mindful that this would require casting Germany in the role of aggressor, Poincaré ordered that all troops be kept six miles back from the border. When the French commander in chief, General Joseph Joffre, requested permission to mobilize, he was refused. Even limited movements of troops toward the six-mile limit were not permitted—until Joffre, later in the day, threatened to resign.

Poincaré summoned the British ambassador to his office. He asked for a firmer line in London. He said that if Britain would declare its intention to support France, Germany might be deterred and war averted. The ambassador, aware of how divided the government in London remained, was able to say nothing more than “how difficult it would be for His Majesty’s government to make such a statement.”

General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff, checked on the status of Austria’s mobilization. When he learned that Conrad was still deploying unnecessarily large numbers of his mobilized troops to the south—the field marshal continued to be unable to put aside his dream of invading Serbia—Moltke panicked. As things stood, the Austrian troops on the Russian border would, if fighting began, be outnumbered by two to one. Moltke sent a wire to Conrad, urging him to shift his main force to the north—to mobilize against Russia, in effect. Unless Conrad did so, Germany, in beginning a war against France, would be unprotected in its rear. Getting into matters that were not supposed to be the business of generals, Moltke also warned Conrad that Vienna must refuse to be drawn into the Stop-in-Belgrade proposal. That proposal, of course, was exactly what Bethmann Hollweg had been pushing Berchtold to accept. “What a joke!” Berchtold exclaimed when he learned of Moltke’s warning. “Who’s in charge in Berlin?”

At nine
P.M.
Moltke took Erich von Falkenhayn, the war minister, with him to the chancellor’s office. The two generals told Bethmann that German mobilization had become imperative, that a postponement would put the country at risk, and that at a minimum a State of Imminent War (Germany’s equivalent of Russia’s Period Preparatory to War) must be declared. Bethmann, reluctant to commit to military action but equally unwilling to assume responsibility for leaving Germany undefended, promised a decision by noon on Friday. He too was coming to regard war as inevitable, and his focus was shifting from preserving the peace to preparing for hostilities. Knowing that Conrad had declared Stop-in-Belgrade to be infeasible and was supported in this by Berchtold, he, like Moltke, was yielding to a fatalistic acceptance of the notion that if Germany’s enemies were determined to make war, now was better than later.

Friday, July 31

When they learned of Russia’s mobilization—unofficial reports reached Berlin almost immediately—the German generals intensified their demands. Germany continued to be the only European power not to have undertaken any military preparations at all, and the situation was becoming intolerable. Even Britain was on the move, First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill having ordered the Grand Fleet to take up a position in the North Sea from which it could respond quickly to any forays by the German High Seas Fleet and protect France’s Channel ports.

Holes were appearing in Germany’s war plans. No one had foreseen a situation in which Russia mobilized without declaring war, or in which war erupted between Germany and Russia with France waiting on the sidelines. No one was sure what to do. The generals, of course—Chief of Staff Moltke included—were all but howling for action. Germany, they argued, was in a better position to win a two-front war now than it would be after a few more years of French and Russian military buildup, and with every day of delay it was being drawn deeper into a death trap. Kaiser Wilhelm refused mobilization but agreed to declare a State of Impending War, which put in motion a variety of measures (securing borders, railways, and Germany’s postal, telephone, and telegraph systems, and recalling soldiers on leave) in the expectation that mobilization would follow within forty-eight hours. He did so with the same deep reluctance shown by Franz Joseph when asked to declare war on Serbia, and by Tsar Nicholas when begged for mobilization. Like his fellow emperors, he yielded only because the military men, now taking charge in Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna, were insisting that there was no alternative. Bethmann too, desperately worried about keeping Britain out of any war and bringing Italy in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, agreed only when, minutes before noon, the earlier reports of Russia’s mobilization were confirmed.

Berlin continued to ask Vienna to demonstrate some willingness to negotiate on the basis of various proposals being offered by London and St. Petersburg (such proposals had become numerous and complex), but Berchtold maintained his silence. Short-circuiting diplomatic channels, Wilhelm sent a telegram directly to Franz Joseph, requesting his intervention. After conferring with Berchtold and Conrad, the Hapsburg emperor replied that Vienna could not do more than it had already done. He did not explain that Austria-Hungary too was now caught in the snares of its own military planning. Just as Russia had been unable to limit its mobilization to Austria because (as the generals claimed) it had no plan that would permit it to do so, and just as Germany had no way of mobilizing without attacking its neighbors, Austria had no plan that would send its army into Belgrade but no farther. Conrad feared, as the Russian generals had feared before their mobilization and as Germany’s generals would soon be fearing with equally fateful consequences, that attempting to change his arrangements could lead only to disorder. Vienna could not regard this as a tolerable option with Serbia mobilizing and the Russians assembling immense forces along their common border. In important regards, however, Conrad was not in touch with reality. Even as war with Russia became likely, he remained obsessed with punishing Serbia. Just as foolishly, he clung to the delusion that Italy would be entering the war on the side of the Central Powers, providing hundreds of thousands of additional troops.

All options except the military ones were shutting down. Power was moving into the hands of the soldiers and away from the diplomats and politicians. The soldiers were motivated mainly by fear. And as the Austrian ambassador to France had observed on Thursday in a message to Berchtold, “Fear is a bad counselor.”

In a display of German diplomacy at its ham-handed worst, Berlin informed London that if Britain remained neutral, Germany would promise to restore the borders of both France and Belgium (though not any overseas colonies that Germany might seize) at the end of whatever war might ensue. This was ominous—no one had even mentioned Belgium until now. Grey, an English gentleman of the old school whose passions were fly-fishing (he had written a book on the subject) and bird-watching, saw the offer as nothing better than a crude attempt at bribery, an insult to be rejected out of hand. His anger is transparent in his instructions to the British ambassador in Berlin:

“You must inform German Chancellor that his proposal that we should bind ourselves to neutrality on such terms cannot for a moment be entertained. He asks us in effect to engage to stand by while French colonies are taken and France is beaten so long as Germany does not take French territory as distinct from the colonies. From the material point of view such a proposal is unacceptable, for France could be so crushed as to lose her position as a Great Power, and become subordinate to German policy without further territory in Europe being taken from her. But apart from that, for us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France would be a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover.”

To this warning he added assurances that German assistance in averting war would be rewarded. “If the peace of Europe can be preserved and this crisis be safely passed,” he said, “my own effort would be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no hostile or aggressive policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia and ourselves, jointly or separately.” He appeared to be pointing toward fundamental changes in the overall system of European alliances, changes calculated to make this the last crisis of its kind. The implication was that until now Grey had not understood the intensity of Germany’s fear of encirclement, but that his eyes had been opened.

Grey next took a step that would give Bethmann much reason to regret having broached the question of Belgium. With the approval of the cabinet, he asked France and Germany to declare their intention to respect Belgian neutrality in case of war. France was able to agree without difficulty. Its plans for an offensive against Germany were focused far to the south of Belgium in the area of Alsace-Lorraine, and Poincaré understood that British support in case of war would be infinitely more valuable than any possible use of Belgian territory. Germany, trapped by the inflexibility of its mobilization plan, was unable to respond at all. Thus was the first major step taken toward Britain’s entry into the war.