The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World (3 page)

Berchtold visited Franz Joseph at Bad Ischl. He informed the kaiser that Serbian gunboats had fired on Habsburg troops near Temes-Kubin (Kovin). It was a lie, but it served its purpose. “Hollow eyed,” the aged Franz Joseph signed the order for mobilization. His only recorded comment, delivered “in a muffled, choked voice,” was
“Also, doch!”
(“So, after all!”) Was it said in conviction? Or in relief? The next day, mobilization began and civil liberties were suspended. Vienna, in the words of historian Samuel R. Williamson Jr., “clearly initiated the violence in July 1914” and “plunged Europe into war.”
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It had set the tempo, defined the moves, and closed off all other options. In doing so, it was motivated by fear—of Pan-Slavic nationalism, of losing the military advantage to Serbia (and Russia), and of forfeiting Germany’s promised support.

WHY WAR IN
1914? Why had Germany not drawn the sword during crises in 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912, or 1913? What made 1914 different? The answer lies in the seriousness of the Austro-Hungarian request for backing and in the changed mind-set at Berlin. First, a few myths need to be dispelled. Germany did not go to war in 1914 as part of a “grab for world power” as historian Fritz Fischer
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argued in 1961, but rather to defend (and expand) the borders of 1871. Second, the decision for war was made in late July 1914 and not at a much-publicized “war council” at Potsdam on 8 December 1912.
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Third, no one planned for a European war before 1914; the absence of financial or economic blueprints for such an eventuality speaks for itself. And Germany did not go to war with plans for continental hegemony; its infamous shopping list of war aims was not drawn up by Bethmann Hollweg
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until 9 September, when French and German forces had squared off for their titanic encounter at the Marne River.

This having been said, Berlin issued Vienna the famous blank check on 5 July. Why? Neither treaty obligations nor military algebra demanded this offer. But civilian as well as military planners were dominated by a strike-now-better-than-later mentality. Time seemed to be running against them. Russia was launching its Big Program of rearmament, scheduled to be completed by 1917. Could one wait until then? Wilhelm II mused on the eve of the Sarajevo murders.
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The Anglo-French-Russian Entente Cordiale encircled Germany with what it perceived to be an iron ring of enemies. More, there circulated in public and official circles dire prognostications of what Bethmann Hollweg summarized for the Reichstag in April 1913 as the “inevitable struggle” between Slavs and Teutons—what historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen called the classical rhetoric of “inevitable war.”
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On 3 July, when Ambassador Heinrich von Tschirschky cabled Vienna’s decision to avenge the Sarajevo killings, Wilhelm II noted “now or never” on the report.
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Three days later, the kaiser promised Austria-Hungary “Germany’s full support” even if “serious European complications” resulted from this—and advised Vienna not to “delay the action” against Belgrade. Pilloried in the press for having been too “timid” and for having postured like a “valiant chicken” during past crises, Wilhelm on 6 July three times assured his dinner guest, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, that this time he would not “cave in.”

Bethmann Hollweg likewise adopted a belligerent stance.
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Shortly after his meeting with the Austrians on 5 July, the chancellor informed Riezler that Russia “grows and grows and weighs on us like a nightmare.” According to Hoyos, Bethmann Hollweg bluntly stated that “were war unavoidable, the present moment would be more advantageous than a later one.” Two days later, the chancellor assured Vienna that he regarded a coup de main against Serbia to be the “best and most radical solution” to the Dual Monarchy’s Balkan problems. For he had worked out a “calculated risk.” If war came “from the east” and Germany entered it to preserve the Habsburg Empire, “then we have the prospect of winning it.” If Russia remained idle, “then we have the prospect of having outmaneuvered the Entente in this matter.” On 11 July, Bethmann Hollweg summarized his rationale for war: “A quick fait accompli and then friendly [stance] toward the Entente; then we can survive the shock.” Whatever dark fate loomed over the Continent, the “Hamlet” of German politics was resigned to war. To have abandoned Austria-Hungary in July 1914, he wrote in his memoirs, would have been tantamount to “castration” on Germany’s part.
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That left Moltke.
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As early as 1911, he had informed the General Staff, “All are preparing themselves for the great war, which all sooner or later expect.” One year later, he had pressed Wilhelm II for war with Russia, “and the sooner the better.” During his meeting with Conrad von Hötzendorf at Karlsbad on 12 May 1914, Moltke had lectured his counterpart that “to wait any longer meant a diminishing of our chances.” The “atmosphere was charged with a monstrous electrical tension,” Moltke averred, and that “demanded to be discharged.”
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Two months before the Sarajevo tragedy, he had confided to Foreign Secretary von Jagow that “there was no alternative but to fight a preventive war so as to beat the enemy while we could still emerge fairly well from the struggle.” To be sure, Moltke feared what he called a “horrible war,” a “world war,” one in which the “European cultural states” would “mutually tear themselves to pieces,” and one “that will destroy civilization in almost all of Europe for decades to come.”
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But he saw no alternative. On 29 July, he counseled Wilhelm II that the Reich would “never hit it again so well as we do now with France’s and Russia’s expansion of their armies incomplete.”

How was the decision for war reached? The gravity of the moment hit Berlin with full force after Vienna handed Belgrade its ultimatum on 23 July—and Prime Minister Nikola Pašić rejected it two days later. This greatly alarmed leaders in St. Petersburg, who felt that Austria-Hungary with this move was threatening Russia’s standing as a great power and who believed that they needed to show solidarity with the “little Slavic brother,” Serbia, to show resolve. On 29–30 July, Berlin learned first of Russia’s partial mobilization and then of its general mobilization. War Minister von Falkenhayn truncated his holidays on 24 July and rushed back to the capital. Austria-Hungary, he quickly deduced, “simply wants the final reckoning” with Serbia. Moltke returned from Karlsbad two days later. Wilhelm II left the fjords of Norway and was back in Berlin by 27 July. He hastily convened an ad hoc war council. Falkenhayn tersely summed up its result: “It has now been decided to fight the matter through, regardless of the cost.”
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What historian Stig Förster has described as the bureaucratic chaos of the imperial system of government
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was fully in evidence in Berlin as the July Crisis entered its most critical stage. Bethmann Hollweg was in a panic to pass responsibility for the coming “European conflagration” on to Russia, and he drafted several telegrams for “Willy” to fire off to his cousin “Nicky,” calling on Tsar Nicholas II to halt Russian mobilization—to no avail. Moltke and Falkenhayn raced in staff cars between Berlin and Potsdam. At times, they demanded that Wilhelm II and Bethmann Hollweg declare a state of “pre-mobilization;” at other times, they counseled against it. The chancellor conferred with the generals throughout 29 July. Moltke first lined up with the hawk Falkenhayn and pushed for the immediate declaration of a “threatening state of danger of war;” then he sided with Bethmann Hollweg and urged restraint. The chancellor sat on the fence, now supporting Falkenhayn, now Moltke, prevaricating on the issue of mobilization. At one point, he even dashed off a missive to Vienna asking its armies to “halt in Belgrade.”

In fact, Bethmann Hollweg was waiting for the right moment to play his trump card. Shortly before midnight on 29 July, he called Ambassador Sir Edward Goschen to his residence and made him an offer: If Britain remained neutral in the coming war, Germany would offer London a neutrality pact, guarantee the independence of the Netherlands, and promise not to undertake “territorial gains at the expense of France.”
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Goschen was flabbergasted by what he called the chancellor’s “astounding proposals;” a livid Sir Edward Grey, secretary of state for foreign affairs, called them “shameful.” With that, Bethmann Hollweg ruefully informed the Prussian Ministry of State the next day that “the hope for England [was now] zero.”
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Bethmann Hollweg withdrew behind a veil of fatalism. “All governments,” he moaned, had “lost control” over the July Crisis. Europe was rushing headlong down the steep slope to war. “The stone has begun to roll.”
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The night of 30 July, at Moltke’s insistence, the chancellor agreed to institute a state of emergency, the precondition for mobilization.

Around 2
PM
on 31 July, Wilhelm II ordered the government to issue a decree stating that a “threatening state of danger of war” existed. Falkenhayn rushed to the palace through cheering crowds to sign the decree and to record the high drama. “Thereupon the Kaiser shook my hand for a long time; tears stood in both of our eyes.”
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The decision brought relief and joy to official Berlin.
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The strain and stress of the past few days lay behind. At the Chancellery, Bethmann Hollweg, ever the pessimist, worried about what he termed a “leap into the dark,” but concluded that it was his “solemn duty” to undertake it. At the Navy Cabinet, Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller crowed: “The mood is brilliant. The government has managed brilliantly to make us appear the attacked.” At the General Staff, Moltke detected “an atmosphere of happiness.” At the Prussian War Office, Bavarian military plenipotentiary Karl von Wenninger noted “beaming faces, shaking of hands in the corridors; one congratulates one’s self for having taken the hurdle.” Berlin was about “to begin the most serious, bloody business that the world has ever seen.” Wenninger took “malicious delight” while riding in the Grunewald to note that “the army would soon expropriate the superb steeds of the city’s wealthy Jews.”
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Wilhelm II signed the order for general mobilization at 5
PM
on 1 August—in the Star Chamber of the Neues Palais at Potsdam, on the desk made from the planking of Horatio Nelson’s flagship HMS
Victory
, a present from his grandmother Queen-Empress Victoria. Cousins “Nicholas and Georgie,” he informed his inner circle, “have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive, she would never have allowed it.”
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Champagne was served to celebrate the momentous moment.

But all had not gone as smoothly as the mere recitation of events would indicate. Late on the afternoon of 1 August, Moltke headed back to Berlin after the kaiser had signed the mobilization order. He was ordered to return to the Neues Palais at once. An important dispatch had arrived from Karl Prince von Lichnowsky in London: Grey had assured the ambassador that London would “assume the obligation” of keeping Paris out of the war if Germany did not attack France. “Jubilant mood,” the chief of the General Staff noted.
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An ecstatic Wilhelm II redirected Moltke, “Thus we simply assemble our entire army in the east!” Moltke was thunderstruck. The deployment of an army of millions could not simply be “improvised,” he reminded the kaiser. The
Aufmarschplan
represented the labor of many years; radically overturning it at the last minute would result in the “ragged assembly” of a “wild heap of disorderly armed men” along the Russian frontier. In a highly agitated state, Wilhelm II shot back: “Your uncle [Moltke the Elder] would have given me a different answer.”

The evening ended with a desultory debate as to whether 16th Infantry Division (ID), the first-day vanguard of the Schlieffen-Moltke assault in the west, should immediately cross into Luxembourg. Moltke insisted that it should to prevent the French from seizing Luxembourg’s vital rail marshaling points. Bethmann Hollweg demanded that they be held back to give Lichnowsky time to seal the deal with Britain. Wilhelm II ordered the 16th to stand down. “Completely broken” by this open humiliation, Moltke feared that the kaiser was still clinging to hopes for peace. “I console Moltke,” Falkenhayn devilishly wrote in his diary.
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In fact, Moltke arrived home that night a “broken” man. His wife, Eliza, was shocked at his appearance, “blue and red in the face” and “unable to speak.” “I want to conduct war against the French and the Russians,” Moltke muttered, “but not against such a Kaiser.” She believed that he suffered a “light stroke” that night. The tension of the day finally broke forth in a torrent of “tears of despair.”
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When Gerhard Tappen, chief of operations, presented him with the order to keep 16th ID on German soil, Moltke refused to sign the document.

Then another bolt out of the blue: At 11
PM
, Moltke was ordered to return to Potsdam. The kaiser, already in a nightgown, informed him that King-Emperor George V had just cabled that he was unaware of the Lichnowsky-Grey discussion and that the matter rested on a misunderstanding. Wilhelm II dismissed Moltke. “Now you can do what you wish.” Moltke ordered 16th ID to cross into Luxembourg.

It was an inauspicious start. The Younger Moltke had never wanted to measure himself against his great-uncle, the architect of Otto von Bismarck’s wars of unification. The kaiser’s acid comment concerning the Elder Moltke’s possible “different answer” had unnerved him. One can only wonder if, on that 1 August 1914, his mind did not wander back to Königgrätz, where on 3 July 1866, during a critical part of the battle, Bismarck had held out a box of cigars to the Elder Moltke to test his nerves: Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke had passed the test by picking the Iron Chancellor’s best Cuban.