Europe's Last Summer

by David Fromkin

  Austria continued to move slowly but straight ahead, as it had since July 5–6. It served its ultimatum on Serbia July 23, rejected Serbia's reply July 25, and declared war on Serbia July 28. Thereafter it took steps to prepare to engage the enemy.

  It has been widely believed for a long time that the political structure of the European world in 1914—in particular an allegedly overly rigid alliance system—caused the conflict to enlarge and bring in the Great Powers. In retrospect, that seems not to have been true. Italy was bound to Germany and Austria in the Triple Alliance, but nonetheless remained neutral in 1914 and thereafter joined the Allies. Great Britain, on the other hand, had no treaty of alliance with France and Russia but united with them nonetheless. Treaties, therefore, did not determine which countries decided to fight on which side.

  The pacts of alliance did not bring countries into the war. If anything, the alliance system (as Kurt Riezler, Bethmann's secretary, observed) was a restraint on adventurism and conduced to peace, for each country tended to discourage its allies from running risks on issues in which only one of them had serious interests. France usually discouraged Russia in the Balkans, while Russia cautioned France in Morocco. Partners held one another back because neither wanted to fight the quarrels of the other.

  Treaties normally were defensive, the one country promising aid only if the other were attacked. That changed crucially in 1909. Ignoring the language of the 1879 treaty of alliance, Moltke, backed by his government, asserted that Germany was bound to stand with Austria even if it had started the war.

  Was it this German disposition to support an ally, right or wrong, that brought about the overthrow of the European order in 1914? It might have, but it did not: Germany did not blindly back up Austria in its aggressiveness; on the contrary, it led Austria into aggressiveness and ordered it to go further and faster. The Austrian alliance did not pull Germany into war; it was the German alliance that pushed Austria into the war: the war against Russia and its worldwide allies.

  What, then, caused the war? Or who?

  On the afternoon of July 31, as Germany prepared to commence hostilities, Chancellor Bethmann, in an address to his cabinet, concluded by saying that "all the Governments—including that of Russia—and the great majority of the nations are in themselves pacific, but the situation had got out of hand."

  The situation had got out of hand! There was the most persuasive of explanations. It sounded fair and impartial. It absolved from blame statesmen, many of whom indeed were not to blame. And, best of all, it provided a plausible answer to the otherwise baffling question of what had caused the war—and what "cause" means in that context. But, as historian Marc Trachtenberg and others have argued powerfully, it will not do, for the decision-makers did understand the consequences of their actions.

  It is true to say that France, Russia, and Serbia were not fully in control of their situation. All of them wanted to remain at peace, which, however, was not an option available to them. But it was not because of the unintended consequences of mobilization or the exigencies of railroad timetables or the requirements of alliance systems that a war was forced upon them in the summer of 1914. It was because they were attacked. They were attacked by Germany and Austria.

  It often is said that what led to war was Russia's decision to mobilize. That could have been true in other circumstances. It was not true in the circumstances of the summer of 1914. The German government had determined to go to war before Russia mobilized; therefore the German decision could not have been caused by the Russian decision. And, far from fearing Russian mobilization, the German leaders hoped for and waited for it: it was their excuse and enabled them to obtain the essential support of their own people.

  Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister, knew that if Russia mobilized, Germany, blaming Russia, would declare war; and he did not opt for mobilization until he was convinced that if Russia did not mobilize, Germany would do exactly the same thing: blame Russia and declare war. So the mobilization question had to be considered in St. Petersburg solely on the merits as a military measure.

  If, as the evidence now shows, the Austro-Hungarian government deliberately forced a war on Serbia, and began it by launching an unprovoked attack, and if, as the evidence now shows, the German government deliberately forced a war on Russia, France, and Belgium, and began it by launching an unprovoked attack, does it mean that Austria and Germany should have been convicted of war guilt? No—not in the world of 1914.

  Guilt, in this context, was a postwar concept but not a prewar one. War, until the Great War of 1914, was a normal and usual international activity. It was considered, for example by Theodore Roosevelt in passages quoted earlier, as healthy and desirable. We no longer feel that way, but it would be unfair to judge the men of 1914 by our standards rather than by their own.

  Moreover, Moltke and his colleagues, and Berchtold and his, did not think of themselves as starting wars that could be avoided—wars that, but for them, would not have occurred. As they saw it, they were merely precipitating in 1914 wars that in any event would have erupted later. It was only the timing of the conflicts for which they were responsible, not for the conflicts themselves.

  Finally, only the small governing cliques of Germany and Austria-Hungary were responsible for bringing about their respective wars. The people they led had nothing to do with it.

  It used to be said that the rigid requirements of Germany's Schlieffen plan, inexorable as a ticking clock, forced Germany and therefore Europe into a war. That was the theme of much literature on the subject. We now know that, in the relevant sense of the word "plan," there was no Schlieffen plan. What Schlieffen imagined in his memo was a mere scenario. Germany initiated the war pursuant not to Schlieffen's memo, but to Moltke's operational plan of deployment.

  CHAPTER 46: THE KEY TO

  WHAT HAPPENED

  Much happened in that long-ago summer of 1914, a summer which in many ways is still with us. The question is, what happened to bring about a world war?

  There are aspects of the story that always have been puzzling. In a sense this was only to be expected: enormous quantities of vital evidence have been destroyed precisely because they would supply the answers to our questions. But so much of the past has been recovered by the great scholars of the post-Fischer era that we may be able, now, to fill in the blanks in the reasonable certainty that we have got it right.

  We know how the conflict between Austria and Serbia burst out into the open. Austria had resented Serbia ever since 1903, when a coup d'état in Belgrade caused a change of orientation in that Balkan kingdom, transforming it from Austrian satellite to Russian ally. We know that in the Balkan wars that ended in 1913, Austria developed a mortal fear of Serbia. The record is clear that in the middle of June 1914 the Hapsburg foreign ministry, on orders from its chief, was at work on a memorandum that called for the elimination of the Serb threat; a plan that would require German support. Therein lay the problem. For when Germany's emperor was asked to give his full support of Austria in the middle of June 1914, he declined to do so.

  The entirely fortuitous assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, just as the memorandum was drafted, supplied an emotionally powerful argument that led the Kaiser to change his mind. It was pure accident, but as a result of it Wilhelm and his officials extended to Vienna on July 5–6 a carte blanche that the Kaiser had refused to grant only weeks before.

  At the time, the blank check did not appear to be as fateful a commitment as it does in retrospect. All that Germany had undertaken was to keep the other European powers from interfering while Austria-Hungary took action against Serbia. The Kaiser and many of his officials saw no risk in making their pledge; they were absolutely certain—and with good reason—that the other countries would do nothing if Austria-Hungary acted quickly. Other German officials— notably Falkenhayn, the war minister—believed that Germany would not be called upon to do anything because Austria-Hungary would not act.

  Coming out of
the July 5–6 meetings and embarking, as were other key figures on a stage-managed vacation, Kaiser Wilhelm had estimated that it would take between one and three weeks for Austria-Hungary to dispose of Serbia. Returning from their vacations three weeks later, Germany's military leaders found their worst suspicions confirmed: Austria had not finished off Serbia while they were gone. Postponing once again, Conrad, leader of the Hapsburg armies, now estimated that his forces would not be ready to march for weeks; he now set the date at August 12.

  That was the situation to which Germany's generals returned to begin their informal consultations with one another the last week in July.

  That is the story of Austria's mortal duel with Serbia in the early part of the twentieth century: how it began, and how it moved to its fateful conclusion. How did the duel end? What is significant is that the question is asked so rarely. During the last week of July 1914, Europe seems to have lost interest in the Austro-Serbian war. It had played its part. It had prepared the way. Then to some extent it disappeared from view.

  The principal actors in the drama that unfolded in Berlin the last week in July were Germany's military leaders. Falkenhayn had told the Kaiser that matters were now out of his (the Kaiser's) hands, and the Kaiser seems, at least in part, to have accepted that. Yet at other times he acted and spoke as though he remained in charge. There had been no military coup d'état, yet the Kaiser—and the Chancellor—later in the week deferred to the views of the generals.

  What had changed at the end of July was that the military were taking an active hand. The blank check had been the Kaiser's policy, though his officers had made no objection to it; and the advice to Austria as to how it should achieve its goals was formulated by the Chancellor, a civilian. Bethmann's plan had been for Austria to launch an invasion to crush Serbia so quickly that it would be achieved before the other European powers had time to interfere or even object. It was to be done before the powers were aware that it was starting to happen. It had been Bethmann's role to monitor Austria's performance. Austria had not performed. Now the top military leaders were proposing plans of their own.

  Moltke always had believed that a war against Russia was inevitable—that it was a fated encounter between Germans and Slavs, and that time was on Russia's side, so a preventive war should be initiated by Germany as soon as possible. This was his doctrine now, in the July crisis, and seems to have been the doctrine of his fellow officers in general, as well as of the Great General Staff as a whole.

  But the circumstances had to be favorable: Moltke had said this often, as had his colleagues.

  What were the necessary circumstances?

  In the Moroccan crisis of 1911—the Agadir affair—Germany had learned that the Hapsburgs would not support interests that were merely German. However, they would expect Germany to support them in defense of their own interests. It was, in that sense, a one-way alliance.

  Only decades before, Prussia had fulfilled its objective of excluding Austria from the rest of the German world. Now, within the convoluted ambiguities and ambivalences of the relationship between Berlin and Vienna—rivals bound together by mutual need—lay the explanation of unfolding events.

  The Hapsburg alliance was vital to Germany's grand strategy. In the war that Moltke saw coming, he needed Austria-Hungary's armies to help defend against Russia in the initial weeks while Germany was preoccupied with France.

  So chief among Moltke's requirements for the favorable circumstances for war were several that involved the Dual Monarchy. The dispute had to start as Austria's, not Germany's; otherwise Austria would not play. At first Austria had to make the running. Its quarrel had to be one that would provoke Russia. At first Germany would appear in the conflict only as Austria's protector. As a result, Russia would then have to attack Germany—or at least it had to appear to the German public that Russia had attacked.

  Any German general in Berlin at the end of July could see that by sheer luck the stars were in the right position and that the constellations were unlikely to be so favorable ever again. Moltke was only one of those who said so.

  So the generals in Berlin in the last week of July were agitating for war—not Austria's war, one aimed at Serbia, but Germany's war, aimed at Russia.

  What seems to have mystified historians for decades, in attempting to answer all sorts of questions about war origins in 1914, is that there were two wars being proposed that summer, not one.

  Moreover, the two wars were not entirely compatible with one another. It was something about which Moltke and Conrad were not completely candid with one another. Once hostilities commenced, it would become clear that Conrad needed all of his available troops in order to crush Serbia, while Moltke wanted all Conrad's armies to ward off Russia.

  Each hoped that, when the time came, the other would give up his war. Conrad desired that Germany merely deter—not actually fight—Russia, while Conrad was destroying Serbia. Moltke insisted that Austria defer its own goals until Germany accomplished its own.

  The German position became starkly clear on July 31 with mobilization. On that day Wilhelm cabled Franz Joseph a message to which attention rightly has been called by historian Fritz Fellner. Wilhelm told Franz Joseph: "In this hard struggle it is of the greatest importance that Austria directs her chief force against Russia and does not split it up by a simultaneous offensive against Serbia. . . . In this gigantic struggle on which we are embarking shoulder to shoulder, Serbia plays a quite subordinate role." It was not what the Hapsburg leaders wanted to hear, and, as will be seen presently, Conrad obeyed only reluctantly—and slowly. The message was: devote yourself to our war, because it is the important one, and postpone your war, which is unimportant, until we are in a position to turn our attention to minor matters.

  If one underlines the distinction between the two wars, it helps to answer many of the questions that always have been asked about the July crisis. One of them, posed in various guises from the very outset, is why peoples all around the planet were fighting and dying because of something that happened to two people, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, of whom most knew nothing.

  The answer is: that was not why people on the far side of the world were fighting and dying. The local war between Austria and Serbia was connected with Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, but the Great War was not; the world war, which was not really the same conflict, was caused by the struggle for supremacy among the great European powers. The desire to be number one may have been a deplorable reason for starting a war, but it was neither surprising nor puzzling that it was what motivated the powers. Germany deliberately started a European war to keep from being overtaken by Russia.

  There was a certain parallel between the origins of the two wars. The Austro-Serbian war supposedly was triggered by the murders in Sarajevo, even though the Austrian plot against Serbia was hatched two weeks earlier. Similarly, the German government made use of a pretext to start a world war, and that pretext was the possibility that Russia might interfere in the Austro-Serbian war. Thus pretext was piled upon pretext, and dust was thrown in the eyes of posterity. The two wars were intertwined, but—to repeat—they were different and distinct; and in the end, Germany made Austria discard its own war in favor of Germany's.

  The German generals in July 1914 had taken advantage of their weeks of vacation to ponder their plans. They were not entirely isolated from events; they had made arrangements to be kept informed. They returned to Berlin calling for war. It was not for a war against Serbia. It was for the war against Russia for which the Serbian crisis gave them an excuse.

  It should be noted that the Russians had done nothing yet when the German generals came back to Berlin July 23–27. The Russians had not intervened or interfered. They had undertaken only a minimal pre-mobilization (on July 26).

  So what was driving up the temperature to fever pitch in Berlin was the prospect that the government could attack the Franco-Russian alliance in 1914 rather than later. The German generals had decided on war before Russia mob
ilized (July 31), so—as pointed out earlier—it was not (as is claimed so often) Russian mobilization that started the war. So far as one can tell, the question Moltke agonized over, seemingly changing his mind, was whether to seize Liege instantly, as he absolutely needed to do, or whether to wait for Russia to order mobilization and thus provide his government with its excuse for declaring war.

  Once Russia obliged by ordering mobilization, the local and comparatively little Serbian war could be ignored and the world war of the Great Powers could start. Historians would write that the local Serbian war somehow had gotten out of control and had escalated into a global war. But the one did not grow into the other. On the contrary, one had to be put aside in order to start the other.

  Two wars, not one; that is the key.

  Sir Michael Howard, with his usual clarity, has explained what it is that has puzzled scholars of the First World War ever since: there was no logic to the German decision. Agreeing with Clausewitz that military plans have no inherent logic, Sir Michael writes: "There was certainly no logic in the decision by the German General Staff that in order to support the Austrians in a conflict with Russia over Serbia, Germany should attack France, who was not party to the quarrel, and do so by invading Belgium."

  If you delete the italicized words—for we now see that Germany instigated the war against Russia on its own account, not Austria's—the puzzle is solved. And it shows that there was logic in the decisions of the German general staff. It was not to support the Austrians that the German leaders had maneuvered in July. It was just the reverse; it was to secure Austria's support for themselves in their own war. Germany's generals had to perform the trick of first getting Austria involved in a war and then getting it to change its enemy.

  The wars were to some extent incompatible. One can see that, however, only if one first sees that there were two wars, not one.