Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  Colonel Dimitrijevic was known throughout Serbia by his nickname, Apis (the Bull), a reflection of his physical strength and presence. He had been wounded in the brutal assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga in 1903.15 In dishonourable circumstances, he and his fellow officers stormed the royal palace in Belgrade, shot the royal couple dead and hacked them beyond recognition with bayonets before throwing the mangled corpses from an upper window of the palace.16 While this regicide shocked and revolted most of the crowned heads of Europe, Apis emerged as a national hero, an ardent nationalist and loyal supporter of King Petar, whose succession he had delivered. He possessed considerable personal charm and became the real power and influence inside Serbian military politics.17

  Apis was intimately associated with the ‘Black Hand’, otherwise known as ‘Unification or Death’, the underground secret society dedicated to the destruction of Austria-Hungary. Despite the atrocities, and a past history which left the Serbian monarchy despised in the courts of Europe, Hartwig praised Black Hand as ‘idealistic and patriotic’.18 As the founder and dominating spirit, Apis ‘was the most influential officer in Serbia’.19 Encouraged, financed and protected by the Russian agents Sazonov had placed in Belgrade, Apis was instrumental in promoting ‘a type of Serbian activity which was bound, sooner or later, to bring about an acute Austro-Serbian crisis’.20 In Colonel Apis and his Black Hand, the Secret Elite recognised and cultured the dormant virus that would, in one moment in June 1914, infect the body-politic.

  Hartwig proved himself a worthy disciple of Isvolsky by helping to create an alliance of Balkan states known as the Balkan League. Given that these countries detested one another, Hartwig achieved his aim in the face of overwhelming odds. The Balkans was a quagmire of ethnic bitterness, religious tension and nationalist squabbling that had festered over centuries of Turkish misrule. Whatever the apparent disinterest that the Great Powers feigned, or the protestations made on behalf of one state or another, there was the constant whiff of rampant self-interest in the air when they turned their attention towards that region. The nascent states and aspiring breakaway nations were even more unpredictable. Like jealous hyenas tearing into the carcass of a wounded beast, they all wanted either to grab more for themselves or stop the others feasting on the hapless Ottoman victim. Despite their protestations, no one was innocent. As individuals, they could quickly be at each other’s throats, but if they ran as a pack, these hyenas would be especially dangerous to Austria. This was why the Secret Elite supported the formation of a Balkan League. Together they were virtually equivalent to a separate Great Power.21

  By almost curious coincidence, there was one other figure, this time based in Bulgaria, who emerged as if from the ether to work with Hartwig in creating the Balkan League. Preliminary negotiations were ‘conducted in profound secrecy’ and the promoters of the alliance ‘employed as intermediary Mr J.D. Bourchier, the Times correspondent in the Balkan Peninsula …’22 Who?

  James David Bourchier, of Anglo-Irish stock, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Cambridge University, assistant master at Eton with impeccable credentials, went on holiday to the Balkans in 1892 and within a short time became the Times correspondent. Bourchier settled in Sofia, where he found a role as an unattached diplomat, mixing with heads of state and royalty. At what stage does coincidence begin to smell? This is a story that has all the hallmarks of a Secret Elite placement.

  A telegram to Isvolsky from the Russian ambassador in Bulgaria in November 1912 identified a representative of The Times who claimed that ‘very many people in England are working towards accentuating the complications in Europe [the Balkans]’ to bring about the war that would result in the ‘destruction of the German Fleet and of German trade’.23 Though not named, it had to be Bourchier. He had confided in the Russian ambassador and spelled out precisely the overall Secret Elite agenda, without realising that his conversation would be relayed back to Isvolsky in Paris. The telegram exposed the whole objective in a nutshell. ‘People in England’ were working towards making the Balkans ever more explosive, to bring about war and destroy Germany and German trade. It could not have been put more succinctly.

  Edith Durham, the English writer and traveller who exposed many of the horrendous atrocities during the subsequent Balkan Wars, also confirmed that Bourchier was deeply involved with the Balkan League.24 Like other contemporary commentators, she had no reason to suspect that the real source of power and influence lay behind Alexander Isvolsky in Paris, from which vantage point he began to stir the Balkan pot. As Professor Sidney Fay, the American historian, observed:

  To the Serbians, Isvolsky continued to give secret encouragement, urging them to prepare for a happier future in which they could count on Russian support to achieve their Jugo-Slav ambitions … He encouraged them to regard it [Bosnia-Herzegovina] as a Serbian Alsace-Lorraine.25

  This was a particularly enlightening observation on Isvolsky’s role in the Balkans. In Paris, he openly endorsed the right-wing government led by Poincaré, whose Revanchists held the return of Alsace-Lorraine as the holy grail of French foreign policy. He was the man who traded Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Austrians in 1908 on the empty promise of their support for Russia’s gaining the Straits. He had been quite prepared to surrender the Bosnian province but somehow absolved himself from that responsibility. By 1912, he had changed his tune by advocating that Serbia seize Bosnia-Herzegovina, making it their cause célèbre.

  Consider then the midwives in attendance at the birth of the Balkan League: Isvolsky, who promoted the idea when he was Russian foreign minister, and always the company man; Hartwig, approved by London, sent to Serbia to strengthen control in Belgrade; and Bourchier, a correspondent of The Times, itself an organ of the Secret Elite. The two unlikely bedfellows, Serbia and Bulgaria, were eased into an alliance that would not have been considered ‘natural’. The men who guided them had ulterior motives. They were not fired by nationalist sympathies.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 18 – THE BALKAN PRESSURE COOKER – 912–13

  By 1912, the Secret Elite had failed twice to goad Germany into war.

  The simmering nationalist tensions in the Balkans were stoked by Secret Elite agents to destabilise the region and create a flashpoint.

  They set up a line of command that appeared to lead to St Petersburg but was in fact based in London. It went from the Foreign Office to Isvolsky in Paris, Sazonov in Russia and Hartwig in Belgrade (Serbia).

  The Russian ambassador Hartwig was closely associated with Colonel Apis and his powerful terrorist organisation, the Black Hand.

  The Balkan League was created by Isvolsky, Hartwig and Bouchier, three individuals linked to the Secret Elite.

  The League brought the disparate Balkan nations together in an alliance that threatened both Turkey and Austria-Hungary.

  CHAPTER 19

  From Balmoral to the Balkans

  IN SEPTEMBER 1912, WITH THE Balkan League beginning to assert itself, King George V invited Sazonov to join him and Sir Edward Grey at Balmoral. Sazonov claimed in his memoirs that he spent six days in the Aberdeenshire countryside locked in private talks with the king and Sir Edward Grey, in the company of the Russian ambassador to Britain, Count Benckendorff, and Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative opposition.1 The official memoirs of both Grey and Sazonov suggest that virtually no discussion took place on the Balkans crisis, even although it had reached boiling point and war was just about to break out. How strange. Their differing recollections of the private discussions are at serious odds on one key matter.2 Sazonov, whose correspondence the Secret Elite could not edit in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, telegraphed the czar afterwards to tell him triumphantly:

  An agreement exists between France and Great Britain, under which in the event of war with Germany, Great Britain has accepted the obligation of bringing assistance to France not only on sea but on land, by landing troops on the continent. The King touched on the same question, and expressed himself even more str
ongly than his Minister … He said, ‘We shall sink every single German merchant ship we shall get hold of.’3

  In fact, Poincaré had told Sazonov in confidence about Britain’s secret commitment some weeks earlier, but now he had the confirmation he so desperately needed.

  Balmoral 1912 offers the perfect example of how the Secret Elite managed international politics through their agents and how they controlled the official records of these events. The king was asked to invite Sazonov to his Scottish country estate and charmed him with the elegance of royalty. The foreign secretary, diplomats, the leader of the opposition and others were in attendance. We do not know who else visited or stayed over, who dined with the guests and walked or fished or hunted with them. The details that were made public acted as a smokescreen behind which the real politics took place. Nothing that could incriminate was traceable. It was agreed with nods and handshakes. Verbal consent was sufficient. Matters of real importance were concealed from Parliament and the people by sophistry and carefully prepared official records. Judgements were made. Opinions were shared. Strategy was considered and agreed. Sazonov emerged thrilled with the heady intoxication of regal flattery, clearly understanding that war was coming and that Britain would play its part. His excited telegram to the czar, quoted in part above, is a reliable account of what he believed he heard. The only questions that remained unanswered were: how soon and by what means war against Germany could be induced by way of the Balkans.

  Grey’s dismissive memoirs stated that the main focus at Balmoral was ‘that wearisome subject’ Persia.4 The subsequent memorandum drawn up by the Foreign Office on 4 October 1912 is exactly as Grey claimed: boring, long-winded and focused on Persia, Afghanistan, consular representation, the Trans-Persian Railway and border disputes.5 His silence on the Balkans is deafening. Sazonov spent four consecutive days with the British foreign secretary discussing world affairs6 and two weeks later the First Balkan War broke out, yet he claimed that it didn’t merit inclusion in their discussions. Elsewhere in his writings, Grey talked about the pent-up hatreds of generations that exploded into war in the Balkans, a war he described as ‘just’ on the grounds that it involved the emancipation of Christian subjects of Turkey.7 But we are asked to believe that nothing was said about it at Balmoral. This was, of course, a deliberate deception.

  Sazonov’s account of Balmoral mentions ‘the impetuous outburst’ of the Balkan States, as if he had no prior knowledge of their intentions. He communicated regularly with Isvolsky about the war that he knew was about to break out. They had planned it. Serbia and Bulgaria were, after all, obliged to hold off until Russia gave the go-ahead.8

  Sazonov was not a well man. His health had been an ongoing problem for him. He was in awe of Sir Edward Grey, a politician at the pinnacle of his powers. Sazonov and Isvolsky owed their very positions to the influence that Grey represented. The Secret Elite set the agenda. Sazonov and Grey most certainly discussed the Balkans. In a private letter to the British ambassador to Russia written on 21 October 1912, a matter of one month later, Grey confided: ‘The fact is that he [Sazonov] was, at Balmoral, much concerned at the blaze he had kindled in the Balkans by fomenting an alliance of the Balkan States.’9 So much for the integrity of his memoirs. Sir Edward Grey clearly wanted to keep secret any record of the Balkan discussions, but diplomatic exchanges have since exposed his deception.10

  The Russian press was mightily unimpressed that Sazonov’s visit to Britain had resulted in no visible support for their Balkan ambitions, and the Foreign Office was alerted to the disappointment this caused. British ambassador Sir George Buchanan sent Grey a dispatch quoting an article in Novoe Vremya that questioned the value to Russia of having an entente with England. Written by Stolypin, brother of the recently assassinated Russian prime minister, it captured the very truth that the Secret Elite sought to bury. Buchanan paraphrased Stolypin’s argument: ‘In a war with Germany, England would endeavour to drag Russia and France into the struggle which would be one of existence for her but which could not fail to be prejudicial to Russia’s interests.’11 Stolypin was one of a number of Russians who recognised that there was a fundamental divergence of interests between Britain and the czar’s empire. At every turn, Britain was opposed to Russian designs in Persia, Afghanistan, the Straits and the Balkans, and Stolypin was absolutely correct in his warnings that Britain intended to drag Russia into a war with Germany.

  Every overture to Russia since 1905 was occasioned by its value in an all-out war with Germany. Press rumblings and reported grievances in Russia over British interests in the Balkans and Persia might well have disturbed the Secret Elite’s grand plan. So the royal card was played. The king was asked to write privately and personally to the czar to reassure him that Sazonov’s visit had been entirely satisfactory, that the most friendly and intimate relations between the two countries should be maintained and to express the hope that their cordial and frank links would continue. Sir Arthur Nicolson, Grey’s minder in the Foreign Office, more or less dictated the king’s letter, stating that the czar was ‘the all-important factor’.12 In the autocratic Russian empire, keeping the czar ‘on side’ was absolutely vital to the Secret Elite no matter how the Balkan disturbances ended.

  Isvolsky had known about the plans for war in the Balkans some 18 months before the outbreak.13 He was, after all, the first to encourage the small nations to come together in a formal Balkan League. His fingerprints were all over a treaty that bound Serbia and Bulgaria to declare war against Turkey. Its secret clauses gave Russia the role of arbiter to decide when that war could begin and insisted that the Balkan League accept Russian decisions on any points of disagreement.14 Isvolsky and Sazonov had ownership of this attack on Turkey, but their orders came from London. The final decision always lay in London.

  Myths in history tend to become self-perpetuating. One such myth that grew into accepted popular culture in the early twentieth century was that Russia had a profound and binding right to protect Serbia, as if there was some deep Slavic bond between them. Serbia was not wholly a Slav nation; nor was Russia. There was no long-standing affection between the two. When one could use the other to advantage, they did so. At all other times, ‘each intrigued for or against the other’.15 Isvolsky had proved how little Serbia meant to Russia in 1908 when he agreed that Austria could annex Bosnia-Herzegovina. He never forgave the Austrian ‘betrayal’, as he saw it, and carried a personal grudge to his grave. But it suited Russian self-importance to perpetuate the pretence of being the protector of all Slavic people. There were large numbers of Slavs in Bosnia who considered themselves ‘kin’ to their Serbian ‘cousins’. They constituted a deep reserve of disaffection from which disruption against Austria could be stirred.

  Russia had funded the murder of one Serbian dynasty more inclined to Austria, that of King Alexander and Queen Draga, and replaced it with another that was undeviatingly sympathetic to Russia.16 Russia abused her influence with Serbia to keep constant pressure on Austria-Hungary. The continual and wearing disruptions began to annoy Austria so much that the choice was either endless costly bickering or a sharp decisive war to punish Serbia. As Edith Durham observed:

  Austria, exasperated by the repeated outrage of the Serbs, and aware of the activity of Hartwig at Belgrade, realised that she was marked down as Russia’s next victim on the proscribed list, and that the hour was arriving when she must kill or be killed.17

  Wars do not just happen; small skirmishes do. Wars have to be financed in advance and repaid with interest. When the Paris banks showed a studied lack of interest in Bulgaria’s approach to borrow heavily for the war against Turkey, it was Isvolsky who ensured that they got what they needed. Serious pressure was applied to French bankers in favour of Bulgaria. Their minister of finance, Todorov, met personally with Isvolsky in Paris in June 1912 to thank him and update him on Bulgarian plans.18 But Isvolsky was the procurer, not the source. He had access to other ‘backers’, and they were not to be found in Russia.
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  Two distinct conflicts took place on the south-eastern flank of Europe in 1912 and 1913. The first was a concerted attack on Turkey by the combined nations of the Balkan League. In October 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece, ‘secretly backed by England’, declared war on Turkey and stripped her of most of her European possessions.19

  Turkey was the first target, but the Balkan League was also directed against Austria. Without doubt, the League had a twofold agenda. They believed that the simplest and best solution would be the simultaneous break-up of Turkey and the downfall of Austria-Hungary. Deals were agreed. Serbia would take Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania would have Transylvania, and Bulgaria would be free from Romanian interference.20

  The Balkans 1912–13.

  The First Balkan War was short, not particularly sweet, and humiliating for Turkey. An all-out conflict that might draw in the Great Powers never materialised. Austria did not intervene, and Kaiser Wilhelm made it clear that he would ‘under no circumstances’ be prepared to go to war with Russia or France on account of the Balkan nations.21 This undoubtedly disappointed those who hoped, indeed planned, that it would lead on to a greater European war.

  On 25 November 1912, the German government called for a joint settlement of the crisis, and an ambassadors’ conference was held in London in December. Sir Edward Grey claimed to have taken no part in the discussions as ‘they did not touch British interests and were not our affair’.22 As we have already shown, the exact opposite was the case. Like Pontius Pilate, Grey had a propensity to wash his hands of responsibility for difficult decisions.