CHAPTER 47: WHAT WAS IT ABOUT?
When we claim that something or another was what a war was "about," we can mean a number of different things, among them: why decision-makers said they were going to war; why they actually believed they were doing so; and what in the end proved to be the results of the conflict.
In the case of the Austro-Serbian war, Vienna claimed that it was going to war to seek justice for the Sarajevo slayings and to prevent similar crimes from occurring in the future. What the Austrian leaders really believed was somewhat different. They thought they were fighting to preserve the multinational character of their empire—in other words, to keep Austria-Hungary from disintegrating. As they saw it, Serbia, if given a respite of a few years from the Balkan wars, would threaten to take over the leadership of the southern Slavs within the Hapsburg Empire as it was constituted in 1914, as well as those without. So they were fighting for their empire's existence.
The case of Serbia was even simpler. The Serbs fought because they were attacked. If they lost, Austria planned to cut them up into pieces; Serbia would lose its existence as well as its independence.
The Austrians may well have been right in believing that, given a few years to rebuild, Serbia would have mounted a potent challenge to the Hapsburg Empire. Like its German ally, Austria in 1914 there-fore was launching what it conceived of as a preventive war.
In the earlier years of his reign, the Kaiser had championed the claims of the navy. He had supported the program, advocated by Tirpitz, that pictured the rival empire Germany should challenge as Great Britain. If that program had succeeded, Germany—if Tirpitz was correct—would have been transformed from a dominant European power to a dominant world power.
But that was not the goal—or at least not the short-run goal—of the German government in 1914. Russia, not Britain, had become the enemy. The navy had been supplanted by the army; Tirpitz had in large part been eclipsed by Moltke and Falkenhayn. Those who now were dictating Germany's policy—the army generals—aimed at holding on to what Germany had got. They wanted to maintain their country's dominance on the European continent. They wanted to prevent a future challenge to that position by Russia, backed by France, by provoking a war immediately, while their chances of winning would be greater than in the future.
The army officers in Berlin who forced their war policy on the reluctant Kaiser were motivated by a fear of Russia's growing might. Their notion that a showdown between Teutons and Slavs was inevitable is not one that we would credit today. But their fear was real.
The men who led Germany in 1914 pursued what in their eyes was a defensive policy. It was conservative in the sense that they aimed at maintaining Germany's existing military mastery in Europe. The enemy—the challenger they would have to meet one day or another—was Russia. Like Austria, choosing to fight Serbia today rather than tomorrow, Germany—which is to say, Germany's military leaders—decided to fight Russia today rather than tomorrow.
What the war was about, in the view of Berlin's decision-makers at the end of July 1914, was which country would be master of Europe in the years to come: Germany or Russia?
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During the war V I. Lenin, the communist theorist and future Russian dictator, while still in Zurich, wrote that the war was about imperialism. Inspired by a British theorist, J. A. Hobson, Lenin claimed that capitalism had entered its final phase, in which the leading industrial countries could expand their economies only by acquiring colonial empires to use as captive markets. The 1914 war, as he saw it, was a war for empire.
Lenin was wrong. It was a war for control of continental Europe, not for empire in Asia or Africa. But what he wrote was plausible, and was widely believed, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. The evidence seemed to be persuasive.
When the world war was over, it could be seen that one of its results, in 1919, had been the dramatic expansion of the British Empire. England had taken German colonies in Africa. A British army of a million men was in occupation of the Middle East. Some who observed these results drew the conclusion that it had been an imperialist war, a war for imperial expansion all along. That was an illusion. In August 1914, Grey and Asquith, in bringing Britain into the war, harbored no desire to expand and pursued no strategy designed to further imperial expansion; and they did not preside over their country's entrance into the war in hope or expectation of acquiring more territory.
The same was true of Germany, although it expanded its ambitions as early as September 1914, as did other countries on both sides. They began by fighting to keep what they had. But once at war, which opened up all possibilities, they drew up wish lists, and then grew so attached to their desires that they were determined not to make peace without achieving them. The longer they fought, the more extravagant grew their war goals. So it was with Germany, and with France and England too.
As I have written elsewhere, it was not imperialism that caused the war; it was the war that produced a new wave of imperialism. What the belligerents asked at the peace conference bore little resemblance to what drove them to go to war in the first place.
We have seen why Austria and Germany went to war. What drove France and Russia to join in the fray can be covered in a sentence: Germany declared war on them, and they defended themselves. Of the Great Powers that stood together against Germany and Austria in August 1914, only Britain had been allowed the freedom to decide for itself whether to go in or to stay out.
One of the most extraordinary stories of the war's origins is that of how Britons, who were mostly against participating in the war as late as August 1 or 2, changed their minds and came close to becoming unanimous in favor of joining in by August 3. They were persuaded to change their minds by Sir Edward Grey. The issue on which he carried his case was Belgium.
Belgian neutrality had been guaranteed twice by the powers during the nineteenth century. There was no question that, as a guarantor, Britain was entitled to defend Belgium's neutrality if it chose to do so. What was less clear was whether Britain was obligated to intervene if its fellow signatories decided not to do so. There was a real question as to whether the guarantee by the European powers was joint or several.
Yet, for whatever reason, the cause of Belgium excited an emotional response among Britons of all sorts, politics, and persuasions. Some said that Britain's honor required it to keep its promise to protect Belgium. Some said that Germany, by violating a treaty obligation, had to be punished for not keeping its word. Others venerated neutrality and Belgium's dedication to defending it. Still others believed that England should keep big countries from trampling on the rights of small ones. Then there were those who viewed the neutrality of Belgium as a British vital interest, picturing the Channel ports in the hands of a potential enemy as a strategic threat to the British islands.
For large numbers of the British cabinet, Parliament, and the public, one or another of these aspects of the Belgian question—skillfully combined by Grey in his masterly speech to the Commons on August 3—brought about a change of mind. For Grey's audience, the martyrdom of Belgium was not the pretext; it was, in all honesty, the real reason for throwing England and its people into a life-or-death struggle. It was why Britain said it was going to war; and it was also why Britain believed it was going to war.
But Asquith and Grey, who led the country into war, did so not for the sake of a British ideal but for the sake of a British vital interest. There is reason to believe that had Belgian neutrality been violated by France rather than by Germany, Asquith and Grey would have looked the other way. But what Germany was doing threatened Britain. By destroying France as a Power, Germany would destroy the balance of power in Europe, and would threaten to bring Britain's global supremacy to an end. By controlling the length of the French and Belgian Atlantic coast, including the Channel ports, Germany would render the British islands permanently vulnerable to attack, bombardment, or invasion. For Asquith and Grey, the war was about the balance of power and national security.
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At one time it was common for historians to say (as Elie Halévy did, quoted earlier) that the Anglo-German duel in the First World War was about Germany's challenge to Britain's supremacy in the existing European system. England was depicted as fighting a defensive war to preserve the status quo; Germany, as a dynamic aggressor seeking to change the world.
Now that theory requires qualification. Both Germany and Britain were seeking in at least some respects to preserve the existing balance of power, as they perceived it to be. Germany could not afford to lose Austria either as an ally or as a Great Power; Britain could not afford to lose France either as an ally or as a Great Power. Germany fought to save Austria; Britain fought to save France. In the first instance, both sides went to war to retain what they had: their closest ally. In that sense it was—at the outset, though only at the outset—a defensive conflict on both sides.
It also was, in the case of the Prussian Junker caste in Germany, a defensive war in a larger sense. Moltke's officer corps was infused with a sense of pessimism that derived from an inability to see any way in which to preserve much longer its values, way of life, and dominant position—even within Germany.
We owe to Fritz Fischer the discovery that the German government prepared a grandiose program of war goals in September 1914: a grand design. It was expansionist and imperialist. But it was September's program, not July's. It was not what moved Falkenhayn and Moltke to act.
So it was, not only with the belligerents of 1914, but even of those who joined in the fighting later. What caused a country to enter the war was not always the same as what caused it to continue the war. They went to war for one set of reasons, but developed other reasons for battling their enemies as the conflict went on. Their differences with the other side widened, intensified, and shifted to new grounds. British entry into the conflict transformed a European war into a global war. America's entry into the war and into world affairs in 1917 changed balance-of-power equations. America's participation, together with the two Russian revolutions that year, brought ideological dimensions into the conflict that had not been there before, but that were to shape the rest of the twentieth century.
In the beginning, however, it was simply Great Powers fighting to stay where they were and to hold on to what they had.
CHAPTER 48: WHO COULD HAVE
PREVENTED IT?
In the few days allowed to them, experienced and talented European statesmen in July 1914 scrambled to try to prevent war from breaking out. Why did they fail? Were they, as some say, simply not skillful enough? In the ninety years that have elapsed, speculation as to what could have been done has been practically endless. Could anything have been done?
The common assumption today is that everybody wants peace if it can be had on acceptable terms. What Europe did not understand at the time was that, exceptionally, it was not true of two governments in 1914. Vienna did not merely want to get its way with Serbia; it wanted to provoke a war with Serbia. Berlin did not want to get its way with Russia; it wanted to provoke a war with Russia. In each case it was war itself that the government wanted—or, put more precisely, it wanted to crush its adversary to an extent that only a successful war makes possible.
It takes at least two to keep the peace, but it takes only one to start a war. If a government is determined to bring on a war, no appeasement, no matter how extensive or imaginative, will restrain it. Europe, having failed to understand what happened to it in 1914, had to be taught that lesson all over again in the aftermath of Munich in 1938–39. Only countervailing power will stop a government bent on launching an invasion.
In the case of Austria's war, Vienna recognized that it could not get away with attacking Serbia unless Berlin offered protection. Given German cover, it was free to do what it liked. Of course Austria also needed to obtain (and did) the approval and support of Hungary. Thereafter nothing could stop Austria-Hungary's march toward war.
Europe's statesmen were in the dark about Austria's motives, and therefore were disoriented. They assumed that the Hapsburg Empire was what it pretended to be: a country with a grievance that it wanted remedied. In fact, it did not want its grievance remedied; it wanted a pretext. Austria did not seek justice, for that would have deprived it of an excuse for doing what it really wanted to do: go to war. It issued an ultimatum, not in order to bully Serbia into accepting it, but rather to force Serbia into rejecting it.
Of course the cumbersome machinery of the Austro-Hungarian government moved slowly. By early August, the Hapsburg armies had not initiated the hostilities that they should have concluded in July. But, at however snail-like a pace, the Dual Monarchy moved straight ahead toward its goal, never stopping, never deviating, never allowing itself to be distracted or turned aside. It was headed for the battlefield, and it would allow nothing to keep it from going there.
Could Britain or France or even Russia have done anything differently to stop the Austrian war on Serbia? Now we have the satisfaction of knowing that nothing they could have done would have kept Austria from attacking Serbia. Austria wanted war and could have been restrained only by Germany.
Herewith two counterfactuals: two might-have-beens. The first is that the German government might have followed the Kaiser's orders the week of July 27 and withdrawn support of the Dual Monarchy unless it agreed to peace on German terms. The result might have been a dazzling diplomatic triumph for the German-speaking allies. Peace probably would have been secured on terms favorable to Austria and Serbia would have been severely punished.
A second counterfactual: Russia might have taken itself out of the conflict. This might have happened if Russia had been convinced of Serbian guilt in the Sarajevo affair. Russia could have made common cause with Austria against the regicides and terrorists, and given Vienna carte blanche, as Germany had done, to solve the problems as best it could, in its dealings with Serbia.
Had Russia done so, it would have deprived Germany's military leaders of the conditions and pretexts necessary to initiate their proposed war against Russia and France. A world war would at least have been postponed and at best prevented.
In the case of Germany's war, rather more stood in the way of those who wanted to initiate hostilities. The labor movement and the Social Democrats in Germany had to be won over, but that was accomplished by Bethmann during the turbulent last week of July. The complicated requirements of Germany's generals—the things that had to be done before they could start their war—had to do with Austria.
As seen earlier, Vienna had to be persuaded to commit its armies for one purpose, the Serbian venture, but then instead to use them in another venture: Germany's crusade against Russia, which Berlin was presenting at home as Russia's crusade against Germany.
All having been achieved, however, there was nothing to stop the German government from starting a war at the time most favorable to it—which turned out to be August 1, 1914. The strongest power on the Continent, with the most powerful army in the world, was doing what it deemed necessary to maintain its position. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that nothing could have stopped it.
A question asked throughout the twentieth century in one way or another was put this way by historian James Joll: why, since "War had been avoided in the immediately preceding crises—1908, 1911, 1913 "—was it "not avoided in 1914?"
One answer is that in the previous crises none of the Great Powers had wanted to have a war. In 1914 two of them did. And one reason that Germany did not want to go to war in those previous crises was that it could not count on Austria—and Germany's generals were convinced that without Austrian troops holding back the Russians during the opening weeks of the war, they might not win.
CHAPTER 49: WHO STARTED IT?
Briefly and roughly stated, the answer is that the government of Austria-Hungary started its local war with Serbia, while Germany's military leaders started the worldwide war against France and Russia that became known as the First World War or the Great War.
Wars
in the modern world tend to break out for a complex of reasons, and to involve a multitude of participants at various levels in the decision-making process. Impersonal forces can come into play, as can institutional pressures. Cultural predilections and affinities can shape events. The varied interests at work in a modern society often make domestic politics as much a focus of concern as international relations in determining whether and when countries go to war. Even so, accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, the characteristics of individuals, and other random factors continue to explain much of what actually happens.
The peculiarity of the First World War is that, even though it occurred in modern times, somewhat democratic and, to an extent, responsive to the voices of the public, its origins involved so few people: a handful in a handful of countries. It is not just that a tiny number of individuals made the decisions; it is startling that few people even knew that anything was happening or that decisions were there to be made or were being made. It was a crisis that arose and was played out in secret.
Of course, seen in broader perspective, powerful forces were at work over the course of decades and even centuries that created the world in which the Great War broke out: the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, the spread of nationalism, the rise of science, the triumph of imperialism, and the militarism of German society that was a product of how Germany was united in the 1860s and 1870s. But none of these mass movements and happenings explain the immediate outbreak of the war. None reveal why Europe did not put a match to the explosive material in the summer of 1913 but did so in the summer of 1914.
The people who lit the fuse were, of course, the products of their family backgrounds, of their societies, and of the historical circumstances in which they acted. Nor did they—nor could anybody— really speak for themselves alone. When Moltke, for example, spoke, he did so for the 650 members of the Great General Staff and, to some extent, for the officer corps as a whole. He spoke with the weight of his office; he was more than just an individual.
Europe's Last Summer Page 27