The Habsburg ‘cultural mission’ in Bosnia had also turned sour. At the Common Ministerial Council on 7 July 1914, Biliński, the Common Finance Minister responsible for Bosnia, observed that the military chief in the region, General Potiorek, had been arguing for a couple of years that a ‘trial of strength with Serbia’ would be needed to hold Bosnia and Herzegovina.41 There was anxiety about Pan-Serb agitation in the province. Narodna Odbrana, the Serb nationalist society whose abolition was demanded by Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum of July 1914, had an extensive network there. To the despair of Bosnia’s rulers, their own schools also appeared to be fostering Serb nationalism over Habsburg dynasticism. The education system built by the Empire had difficulty in ridding itself of Serb nationalist teachers, who taught their pupils with maps that showed Bosnia tied to Serbia. Students were the most radical part of the population. The ‘Young Bosnia’ milieu, pan-Serb, progressive, literary and romantic, was a breeding ground for violent conspiracy. It produced Gavrilo Princip, the nineteen-year-old terrorist who killed the Habsburg heir on 28 June 1914. He was preceded, however, by Bogdan Žerajić, a would-be assassin, who in 1910 narrowly failed in an attempt to murder the Bosnian Governor-General.42
The chaos in and closure of parliaments, the street fighting between neighbours of different ethnicities, and the attempted or successful assassinations of the Emperor’s ministers and officials all suggested a state in crisis and fuelled talk of disintegration. This greatly concerned the diplomats and soldiers who pushed hardest for war. Their conversations in July 1914 reveal a striking distrust of their own peoples. Berchtold’s response when Conrad had told him on 29 June, the day after the Sarajevo murders, that Austria-Hungary must mobilize, is telling: he immediately objected that this would surely trigger revolution in Bohemia.43 Just three weeks earlier, Berchtold had proposed to both Minister Presidents the establishment of a new inter-ministerial agency to coordinate policy towards all irredentist movements in both parts of the Empire.44 Conrad shared some of his anxieties. Although he dismissed concerns about a Czech revolution, he did fear further acts of terrorism and pleaded unsuccessfully with the Emperor on 5 July for martial law to be declared throughout Austria-Hungary.45 The fact that the assassins were Habsburg subjects is significant. Berchtold and Conrad advocated war in part because they believed that nationalist ideals needed to be violently crushed. Serbia, with a population less than one-tenth of the Habsburg Empire’s 50,800,000, posed little military threat, but its very existence and the activities of some of its officials offered inspiration and support for South Slav irredentists. Both men feared that to leave the heir’s spectacular murder unpunished would start a domino effect, encouraging other irredentists in their efforts to join with nation states on the Empire’s borders. At the meeting of 7 July, Berchtold warned Tisza and the other ministers of the bad example that inaction would give to Transylvanian Romanian nationalists. Conrad’s view was that Austria-Hungary had to wage war if it did not want to ‘open all barriers to the internal fighting which would inevitably result in the disintegration of the polyglot Monarchy’.46
The tragedy is that these assessments, which contributed significantly to the disastrous decision to provoke a war, were almost certainly far too gloomy. Habsburg diplomats and soldiers worried about the Empire’s internal problems because they were conscious of how these problems diminished Austria-Hungary’s international prestige and also because they were anxious about an army whose funding and manpower increases were blocked by obstreperous nationally minded parliamentarians. The group of diplomats around Hoyos and Andrian were, moreover, conditioned to think of foreign policy as a means to resolving domestic discontent. They had been trained under and revered Berchtold’s predecessor, Count Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, who had sought through his foreign policy, albeit peaceably, to bring constitutional reform to the Empire.47 However, neither the Empire’s soldiers nor its diplomats were engaged with its daily governance, and they possessed no real insight into the mood and loyalties of its population. Newspaper headlines which screamed murder or political crisis obscured a strange durability and quiet permanence. Mark Twain, always an astute observer, remarked on this while reporting on the Badeni crisis: ‘Things have happened here recently which would set any country but Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the government to a certainty; but no one feels confident that such results will follow here.’ Indeed, Twain found that the only issue on which all Austrians could agree was that ‘there will be no revolution’.48
One pillar of the Empire’s legitimacy was the centuries-old Habsburg dynasty, which could scarcely have had a better representative than Franz Joseph. Remote but grandfatherly, with six decades of rule behind him, he embodied the ideal of a paternalistic monarch standing above the rough and tumble of nationalist politics. His age, a venerable eighty-three when the war broke out, was an incalculable advantage. It made him a rare point of constancy in a rapidly modernizing world and yet reminded those frustrated with the status quo that a change of ruler, and thus also reform to the state’s creaking Dualist structure, could not be too long in coming.49 The dynastic cult had valuable publicity agents in the Catholic Church and the army. Prayers for the Emperor and parades preserved the sacred mystique and promoted the secular might of the Habsburg dynasty.50 Peacetime military service, for which all healthy men were eligible even if only a portion were actually conscripted, also cultivated imperial allegiances. In 1909, 200,000 ex-soldiers were members of one of the 1,400 local associations within Austria’s veterans’ organization, the Österreichische Militärveteranen-Reichsbund. Some joined just for the mutual insurance that was offered, but for many lower-and lower-middle-class men, participating in the associations and their patriotic activities was an important means of expressing both regional and heartfelt imperial allegiances.51
Less well recognized, both by diplomats and soldiers at the time and, until recently, by most historians, is that the Empire’s governmental system also provided some degree of satisfaction to the peoples. First, it perpetuated and drew some legitimacy from historical entities such as the Lands of St Stephen, the lands of the Bohemian Crown and (more arguably) the Kingdom of Croatia, whose borders it preserved as internal administrative divisions.52 These often still held great emotional significance in 1914: Czech activists, to take one example, thought increasingly in terms of ethnicity by the early twentieth century yet their most potent call remained for historic Bohemian ‘state right’ to be respected by the Emperor.53 Second, although the Dualist structure was widely regarded with dissatisfaction, in the Austrian half of the Empire the large measure of local self-government permitted was some compensation. It gave the energies of nationalist activists an outlet and enabled them to satisfy their ambitions in key areas, such as schooling. It also created a very odd and, for outsiders such as soldiers and diplomats, misleadingly alarming style of politics. In public, parties and deputies courted their disgruntled and nationalist electorates with vociferous language against the government. Behind closed doors, however, the same firebrands affably cut deals, made compromises and haggled over money for their constituencies with state officials.54 Finally, in practice in Austria, although more notionally in Hungary where Magyarization prevailed, constitutional guarantees of equality at the local level in language and religion protected most minorities from too blatant discrimination.55 The broad success of these arrangements accounts for why nationality disputes were so often over relatively petty issues. It also offers the best explanation for why hardly anybody, outside small extremist groups such as Young Bosnia, spoke of leaving the Empire. Reform, not revolution, was what the mass of Habsburg subjects urgently desired, and few before 1914 could imagine a national existence that did not in some way feature the dynasty.56
Habsburg military and diplomatic leaders in July 1914 were, however, not only anxious about the internal condition of their Empire. They were also preoccupied by the growing danger of its international position. The decisive region was the Balkan
s, which had become increasingly unstable as the Ottoman Empire weakened and nationalism surged. The first major blow was the army-led coup and brutal assassination of the pro-Austrian King Alexander of Serbia and his queen in June 1903, and the instalment of Petar Karadjordjević on the throne. Literally overnight, the Serbian state shifted from a Habsburg satellite to an assertive adversary driven by pan-Serb ideology to strive for possession of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Austro-Hungarians’ aggressive attempt to subdue its neighbour by imposing punitive tariffs on its products, the so-called ‘pig war’ of 1906–9, was disastrously counter-productive, sharpening antagonism and prompting the Serbs to search out new markets and new allies.57
The Habsburg position was further threatened by Russian engagement in the Balkans after 1907. Russia had been preoccupied at the start of the twentieth century with furthering its interests in the Far East, but a calamitous defeat at Japanese hands in the 1904–5 war followed by revolution had quashed its ambitions. A second area of Russian imperialist interest, Persia, was also closed off once an entente was reached with Britain in 1907, its main rival in the area. Russian leaders seeking to soothe belligerent nationalist opinion at home and restore damaged prestige were therefore redirected by default to the Balkans.58 The year 1908 brought a major international crisis. Austria-Hungary’s occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina had been limited by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin to thirty years, and so a declaration of formal annexation, long foreseen, was necessary if the provinces were to remain under its control. The Young Turk revolution in the summer of 1908 gave the measure even greater urgency, as rumours circulated that the new Ottoman rulers were planning elections throughout the Empire, including in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which could be used to bring the territories back under their control. The Habsburg Foreign Minister at the time, Count Aehrenthal, was keen to resuscitate a ten-year-old understanding with Russia to preserve the Balkan status quo, and so attempted to make a deal. In return for accepting formal Habsburg sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina, hardly a major blow to any great power as Austria-Hungary had already ruled the region for three decades, it was agreed that the Russians would receive Habsburg support for their long-held aspiration of greater access to the Turkish Straits, which would allow their warships to pass from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. However, when the annexation was declared on 5 October, far from bringing great-power détente in the Balkans, it triggered bitter confrontation. The Austro-Hungarians established their permanent hold over the region, but the Russians were thwarted and embarrassed by what proved to be a lack of international support for their own ambitions in the Straits. The Serbian and Montenegrin governments were livid about the annexation and mobilized. In response, the Habsburg army reinforced its south-eastern frontier, resulting in an armed stand-off which lasted over the winter and into the following spring. Finally, in March 1909, Germany threatened the Russians that it would support Austria-Hungary’s right to use force in the Balkans unless they joined the other European powers in compelling Serbia to accept Bosnia-Herzegovina’s new status, and this ended the dispute. Antagonism continued, however. The Russians had been publicly humiliated and Serb nationalists were irreconcilably bitter. Austria-Hungary’s prestige also suffered, for it had forced through the annexation only with the decisive German intervention, making it appear as a satellite of its more powerful ally.59
The greatest damage to Austria-Hungary’s international position followed with the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. These two conflicts upturned the order in the region, ending over half a millennium of Ottoman rule in south-east Europe. The first war opened in October 1912, when a coalition of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman Empire’s European possessions. Ottoman weakness had been exposed by an Italian invasion of Libya that had started in September 1911, and the Balkan League’s hopes of success were soon stunningly vindicated. The Serb army advanced to the shores of the Adriatic, Greece captured Salonika (Thessaloniki) and the Bulgarians came within thirty kilometres of Constantinople. The fighting was ended by the Treaty of London on 30 May 1913. In the second conflict, which broke out just a month later, the victors, along with Romania and the Ottomans, turned on Bulgaria, the major beneficiary of the first war, and divided most of its gains among themselves at the Peace of Bucharest on 10 August 1913.60 For Austro-Hungarian leaders, the wars not only turned the power constellation in the Balkans against them but also revealed that they were encircled. Russia behaved malevolently. First, it had been instrumental in bringing together Serbia and Bulgaria, the core of the Balkan League, which, even worse, had initially been conceived against Austria-Hungary, albeit as a defensive alliance. Second, Russia, encouraged by France, had implemented highly provocative military measures as the fighting further south had begun. A week and a half before the start of the First Balkan War it had announced a trial mobilization in four of its military districts and then, rather than release conscripts who had completed their peacetime service as usual in October 1912, had retained them until January 1913. As new recruits were still called up, this measure increased the army’s strength by 350,000 men and raised many frontier units almost to their wartime establishment. Its purpose was to intimidate Austria-Hungary into accepting the gains made by the Russians’ client states. At first, there was no Habsburg response but in November and December 1912 reservists were drafted to strengthen the army in Galicia, opposite the Russians, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only in March 1913, after Austro-Hungarian finances had been strained to the limit, was a disengagement agreement reached between the two powers.61
The Austro-Hungarians nearly went to war on four occasions during this tense time, for regardless of the Russian military measures in the north the Balkan League’s gains threatened key Habsburg interests. Most of the friction was over Albania, the Muslim client state that Austria-Hungary wished to set up opposite the entrance to the Adriatic; this was a crucial strategic point, for through it passed all the Empire’s maritime traffic. Serbian and Montenegrin troops had occupied much of northern Albania by mid-November 1912, and in the following month, with tensions peaking, not only the Habsburg military but even briefly Franz Ferdinand, who was usually an advocate of peace, was recommending war. When Scutari (today Shkodra), a major city necessary for a viable, independent Albania, fell to the Montenegrins, the Empire again came close to war, a stance supported by the Germans. However, the Montenegrins yielded to the verdict of Europe’s great powers, who in May 1913 awarded the city to the new Albanian state. Greater difficulty was experienced in forcing the Serbs, who hankered after a port, to withdraw their troops from other territory allocated to Albania. Only after Habsburg requests, demands and then an ultimatum threatening military action did Serbia finally yield in October 1913. Even despite this retreat, it had doubled in size and its population had jumped from 2.9 million to 4.4 million as a result of conquests made during the year’s fighting.62
The Balkan Wars left Habsburg leaders deeply fearful and, in consequence, more belligerent. The spectacle of a coalition of small Balkan countries brought together by Russia eviscerating another venerable but ailing multi-ethnic empire made a powerful impression. So too did the Russians’ attempt to prevent Habsburg military action in the south through a mobilization opposite Galicia. ‘After Turkey comes Austria; that was the catchphrase’, remembered the diplomat Baron von Andrian-Werburg.63 The sound of swords being sharpened in the east was unmistakable. In April 1914 St Petersburg’s most influential newspaper Novoe Vremya, on whose board the Tsarist Finance Minister sat, was agitating openly for the destruction and division of the Habsburg Empire. The following month, another Russian minister informed the French ambassador that if Franz Joseph ever abdicated, ‘we would be obliged to annex Galicia’, a territory that he claimed was ‘basically Russian’.64 While there was in fact no Russian master plan, such statements make entirely comprehensible Berchtold’s warning to the ministers on 7 July 1914 that ‘a decisive conflict with the Monarchy’ was being prepared.65 Within the Habsburg
Foreign Ministry, dark talk circulated of a ‘conspiracy’ directed by Russia ‘against the integrity and autonomy of Austria-Hungary’.66 The Tsar and Tsarina’s visit that June to Romania fuelled these suspicions and raised the fear that Austria-Hungary’s sole ally in the Balkans was about to defect. Austro-Hungarian leaders were convinced that Serbian provocations were already guided from St Petersburg.67 The Habsburg heir’s murder by a hit squad of his own Bosnian Serb subjects, turned assassins by Greater Serbia agitation, was understood as evidence that no moral or political restraints remained. The nightmare scenario envisaged by Berchtold’s advisers was of a concentric attack, launched once Russia’s ‘Great Programme’ of rearmament was completed in 1916. With her forces pinned in the north by Tsarist military action, or even as in 1912–13 just a hostile Russian mobilization, Austria-Hungary would be rendered impotent against invasion and dismemberment by a new Balkan League.68
Rather than wait, as the Hungarian Minister President Tisza put it, for the Entente to forge ‘an iron ring around us’ in the Balkans as a prelude to ‘world war’, Habsburg leaders chose to act.69 An immediate, decisive attack on Serbia ironically appeared in the summer of 1914 to offer the best chance to avoid disaster. If Russia did not intervene while its client-state was crushed, its prestige in the Balkans would be destroyed and the encirclement that it planned broken. At worst, in Habsburg leaders’ eyes, the move against Serbia would simply bring forward an inevitable war with the great eastern enemy, at a time when he was not fully prepared. Russian rearmament plans were still incomplete and Romania remained in the Central Powers’ camp; as the Habsburg Chief of Staff told the ministers, the future military balance could only change ‘to our disadvantage’.70 Moreover, there were warnings from within the Ballhausplatz that the speed with which Yugoslav ideals were spreading could make this ‘the last moment at which the Slavic parts of the Monarchy, especially the Croatians, could be dragged along for the war against Serbia’.71 Now was the time to strike, to prove the Empire’s vitality and to smash its enemies before they coalesced into an invincible coalition. In July 1914 Habsburg leaders were desperate men. They were ruthless because they felt they had nothing to lose.
Ring of Steel Page 4