Ring of Steel

by Alexander Watson

  The German military, so often portrayed as the instigators of the First World War, was thus unequivocally reacting to, rather than leading the armed escalation in the last days of July 1914. In particular, Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff responsible for the Reich’s Field Army, exhibited behaviour that was far more anxious and restrained than either his German civilian colleagues or his Tsarist counterpart. Moltke had been away from Berlin on a rest cure in early July but had been kept abreast of decisions in the Central Powers’ capitals. The War Minister Falkenhayn had advised the Kaiser on 5 July but a few days later had departed for an official trip and then a fortnight’s holiday. Neither man had thought war likely and neither had given much (or in Moltke’s case, any) input into policy. No military precautions were taken up to 16 July, and even then all that was done was to suggest that eastern intelligence posts observe Russian activities with a little greater vigilance.125 The situation changed with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum. Falkenhayn was back at his desk on the morning of 25 July, while Moltke returned to Berlin that evening. Yet late next day when they spoke, the Chief of Staff was still confident that military measures would be ‘premature’.126 Moltke’s opinion was not the product of complacency. Intelligence posts had been at a heightened state of alert since the Habsburgs issued their ultimatum on 23 July, and on 25 July the Chief of German Military Intelligence, Major Walter Nicolai, had been recalled from holiday to Berlin. He had ordered the dispatch of so-called ‘tension travellers’, civilians or military men who undertook short round trips across the border pretending to be tourists or business travellers in order to look out for signs of military preparations. A report from the German military plenipotentiary at the Tsar’s court, supported on 27 July by news from these travellers, quickly alerted the General Staff to the Russian military preparations under the ‘Period Preparatory to War’.127

  On 28 July, as Austria-Hungary at last declared war on Serbia and the Tsar responded by ordering the partial mobilization of the four military districts where preparations had begun, Moltke composed an ‘Assessment of the Political Situation’ for the Chancellor. This has since often been interpreted as an unacceptable encroachment by the military into the civilian government’s prerogatives.128 In fact, it is far better understood as an early indication of a problem that would wrack the German and Austro-Hungarian war efforts throughout 1914–18. Whereas western states like Britain and France had a clear governmental hierarchy in which civilian control was established over the military, in central Europe ruling structures attempted to maintain a strict parity and separation between civilian (or ‘political’) and military spheres. Constitutionally, the Kaiser or Emperor was responsible for their coordination but neither Franz Joseph nor Wilhelm II proved capable of this task. More fundamentally, ‘total war’ by its nature blurred the boundaries between the military and political spheres. The poor coordination and clashes between soldiers and civil servants that characterized the war efforts of both Central Powers stemmed to a great extent from their insistence on a separation that grew ever more fictitious throughout hostilities. Moltke’s intervention was simply an indication that already in July 1914 the military and political situations were tightly intertwined. The tone that he adopted in the memorandum was surprisingly moderate for a man who during the last eighteen months had pushed for a preventative war. The text was both fatalistic about the likelihood of war (avoidable, he thought, only through a ‘miracle’) and peppered with warnings about the horror it would entail. Its purpose was to warn Germany’s civilian leaders, whose primacy in directing policy Moltke implicitly acknowledged in submitting the memorandum to Bethmann Hollweg, that Russian mobilization by stealth threatened to place the Central Powers not only at a military but also a political disadvantage. At this point, he rightly saw the preparations as still aimed principally at Austria-Hungary, but he alerted the Chancellor to the real danger that they threatened to trigger a chain reaction, activating alliance obligations which would spread war across Europe. Worse still, the Russians’ covert military measures had political and diplomatic implications, for they would permit the eastern enemy publicly to shift the blame for escalation onto the Central Powers, whose security depended on a quick armed response to any sign that overwhelming forces were concentrating against them. Moltke needed the Chancellor to establish whether Russia and France, which had also begun preparing for mobilization, were serious about war with Germany. If the Entente did have belligerent intentions, delay could be fatal; already, the Chief of Staff warned grimly, ‘the military situation is becoming from day to day more unfavourable’.129

  What Moltke was emphatically not doing was clamouring for a war which, his memorandum foresaw, ‘will annihilate for decades the civilisation of almost all Europe’.130 His conduct was defensive and reactive, determined not even by alliance obligations to Austria-Hungary but by his assessment of the military threat to Germany. This grew frighteningly over the following days. The Russian Chief of Staff Ianushkevich had no intention of accepting a partial mobilization, which his subordinates agreed was nonsensical and even harmful, for just hours after its announcement, on the night of 28 July, he had wired the commanding officers of the Tsarist Empire’s twelve military districts stating that the first day of the general mobilization would be 30 July.131 Squeezing permission out of the Tsar in fact proved more difficult than he clearly had anticipated. Moltke inadvertently helped him; his call to establish whether Russia was serious about war had spurred Bethmann to instruct Germany’s ambassador in St Petersburg to give notice that unless Russia ceased military preparations, the Reich would mobilize and fight. The Tsar’s Foreign Minister Sazonov may well have interpreted this warning, which was communicated to him on the afternoon of 29 July, as further confirmation that German rather than Habsburg aggression lay behind the crisis, and that mobilizing against Austria-Hungary alone was pointless.132 Together, he and Ianushkevich extracted an order from the Tsar that evening for general mobilization, but it was countermanded almost immediately when a telegram from Wilhelm II arrived promising to urge the Austro-Hungarians to parley with the Russians. Only on the afternoon of 30 July, still before the Germans had taken any significant military measures, did the Tsar authorize general mobilization. An hour later, at 6 p.m. local time, the order went out to Russian units.133

  These days brought a confused turn in attitudes in Berlin. Throughout 29 July, Moltke was restrained. Falkenhayn had been pushing since the day before for the ‘State of Imminent War’, Germany’s much shorter equivalent of Russia’s ‘Period Preparatory to War’, to be declared, and with the Kaiser’s permission had recalled troops on manoeuvre to barracks. To the War Minister’s frustration, however, the Chief of the General Staff asked that morning only for permission to station sentries to protect key transport infrastructure and in the evening offered only tepid support for his unsuccessful pleas to the Chancellor and Kaiser for the ‘State of Imminent War’ to be announced.134 The first major change was rather in Bethmann’s stance, and it came as a result of British, not Russian developments. Although signals from Britain about how she would act in a continental war had been contradictory, the Chancellor’s assumption up to the morning of 29 July, was that she would stay neutral. News from the Kaiser’s brother, which arrived the day before, of a conversation with George V of England in which the King had said Britain would ‘try all we can to keep out of this’ bolstered this belief.135 Nonetheless, Falkenhayn’s frantic urging and the warnings in Moltke’s memorandum of a likely continental war caused Bethmann to conclude that the time had come to confirm and cement it. Late in the night of 29–30 July, in discussion with the British ambassador Sir Edward Goschen, he clumsily tried to do a deal. In return for British neutrality, he offered assurances that the Reich would annex no territory from mainland France and, implicitly betraying the German army’s plan to advance through Belgium, would preserve Belgium’s integrity, providing that she did not join Germany’s enemies.136 Yet no sooner had the me
eting ended than Bethmann received a telegram from his own ambassador in London, Prince Lichnowsky, sent earlier but only now decoded, which revealed how misguided had been not only his proposal but his whole calculated risk. The ambassador reported that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, continued to desire a four-power conference but now warned privately that Britain would not stand aside if France were drawn into the conflict. For Bethmann, this was a disaster: while Germany could beat the continental powers Russia and France, he had little faith in prevailing against the world might of Britain. Within two hours he was telegramming, for the first time sincerely, to Germany’s ambassador in Vienna, Baron Heinrich von Tschirschky, and to the Habsburg Foreign Ministry the urgent need for Austria-Hungary to accept great-power mediation. His readiness to support his ally’s Balkan attack and his hopes of benefiting from it were now abandoned, while his error in surrendering the initiative at the start of July was regretted. The tone of this message, sent too late, was suddenly stern and hypocritical: Germany would do its duty as an ally ‘but must refuse to allow Vienna to draw us into a world conflagration frivolously and without regard to our advice’.137

  Bethmann’s abrupt change of tack found little understanding among Habsburg leaders, who predicted humiliation in any great-power mediation and decided to continue their war with Serbia; to preserve peace was no longer in the German Chancellor’s hands.138 Compounding his problems, on the evening of 30 July Moltke began for the first time in the crisis to press seriously for military measures. Unlike Bethmann, whose eyes were firmly fixed on Britain, the Chief of the General Staff’s gaze was riveted on Germany’s continental opponents. The day had not been a good one. Although Moltke did not yet know that the Russians had just ordered general mobilization, the news was still extremely grim. Military intelligence was warning that the ‘Period Preparatory to War’ measures were ‘far advanced’ in the ‘German-Russian frontier region’. In the west, France remained relatively calm, but Belgium had started to call up reserves and prepare the fortifications around the city and rail hub of Liège for action. Moltke’s plan of campaign for a two-front war, the only plan that the German army possessed, was imperilled by these measures, for no attack on France through Belgium could be undertaken without first subduing this city-fortress and seizing intact its railways to supply Germany’s advancing armies.139 Thus, there was a furious argument when, at the end of the day, he and Falkenhayn met with Bethmann and advocated war. Eventually, the Chancellor, still thinking of British opinion but now above all concerned to ensure that the German people should consider Russia as the aggressor, persuaded the two soldiers to postpone until noon the next day a declaration of the ‘State of Imminent War’.140

  The postponement was not purely a political tactic but also a reflection of Moltke’s tendency, noted with irritation by the hawkish Falkenhayn, still to swing from belligerence to caution. What made the ‘State of Imminent War’ inevitable was the news of Russia’s general mobilization, which began to trickle in overnight from ‘tension travellers’ and border intelligence posts. Moltke, according to his personal adjutant Major Hans von Haeften, spent the night in ‘serious psychological turmoil’. On one hand, he had displayed more insight than most decision-makers into the suffering that would come with what his memorandum to Bethmann had termed ‘the mutual butchery of the civilised nations of Europe’.141 Yet the policy of his own government, which over the longer term he had helped to prepare, Habsburg desperation and Russian belligerence had created a situation of critical danger. As the evidence of the Tsarist army’s general mobilization mounted, he fired off a telegram to Conrad, telling him to concentrate his troops against Russia and promising German mobilization, and sent a message through the Habsburg military attaché in Berlin admonishing that war alone could save Austria-Hungary.142 Yet neither concern for the Habsburgs nor formal alliance obligations pushed Moltke to war; had they been a real cause, then Germany, as the terms of the Central Powers’ agreement demanded, would have had to act already in response to the Russian partial mobilization. Instead, what motivated the general was, as he told his adjutant, the fear that after five days of restraint while Tsarist forces undertook covert and extensive military preparations, delay now would ‘allow our opponents to carry the war into German territory’.143 On the morning of 31 July, the reports from intelligence posts all along the eastern frontier of red Russian mobilization posters, one of which Moltke insisted be taken and read out to him over the telephone, finally settled the matter. With a deep breath, he concluded, ‘It can’t be helped then; we’ll have to mobilise too.’144

  From this moment, as leaders in all the powers could have predicted, the shift to continental war was terrifyingly rapid. At 1 p.m. on 31 July the ‘State of Imminent War’ was proclaimed in Berlin and that afternoon Russia was threatened with a German mobilization unless it ceased hostile action against Austria-Hungary within twelve hours. France was given eighteen hours to affirm its neutrality. The following day, 1 August, first France at 3.45 p.m. and then Germany at 5 p.m. mobilized, and at 7 p.m. the Kaiser, having received no answer to his ultimatum, declared war on Russia. A German declaration of war against France followed exactly forty-eight hours later, justified by false claims of French aircraft bombing railway lines and incursions by French troops onto Reich territory.145 Italy, whose monarch had as recently as February 1914 promised the Germans to send an army to protect Alsace in the event of war, wriggled out of its alliance obligations on the grounds that the Habsburgs had provoked the conflict after Sarajevo. Almost as an afterthought, Austria-Hungary and Russia finally went to war on 6 August.146

  The only real question at the start of August was whether the global superpower Britain too would intervene and turn the conflict into a world war. Division at the top of the British Liberal government had been responsible for the mixed messages on intervention or neutrality coming out of London. Grey’s warning on 29 July to Lichnowsky that Britain could not stand aside if France were drawn into the fighting had been ‘private’ precisely because Grey did not yet have sufficient support for such a policy in the British cabinet. Yet on 1 August, with most ministers opposed to intervention, he told the French ambassador not to reckon on British military support. At the same time, he began to explore whether it might be possible to limit the war to the east. A telegram sent from Lichnowsky with news that Grey planned to parley caused considerable excitement in Berlin when it arrived shortly after 5 p.m., when the Reich’s order to mobilize had just been sent out. From what Lichnowsky could gather, Grey intended to propose that if Germany refrained from attacking westward, Britain would guarantee her own and France’s neutrality. A second telegram from the ambassador suggested that Britain might stay neutral even if France went to war. The Kaiser called for champagne. His civilian and naval advisers were astonished but delighted.147 Only the military was unimpressed. Falkenhayn, ever cool and doubting the veracity of the messages, bided his time and stayed silent. Moltke, by contrast, mounted hysterical resistance. The army’s plan for a campaign solely against Russia had been abandoned in 1913. If the Kaiser tried to lead the troops eastwards he would have, explained the Chief of the General Staff, ‘no combat ready army but a chaotic mass of disorganised armed men without supplies’.148 German vanguard patrols had already invaded Luxembourg in order to secure railways crucial to the campaign, and the 16th Trier Division was not far behind. After heated argument, the leaders settled on continuing the deployment but halting troops before they crossed the border. Moltke returned to the General Staff building to weep tears of despair; ‘I felt as if my heart would break,’ he later remembered. The strain of the experience may have triggered a light stroke. His wife recalled that ‘he was purple in the face, his pulse hardly countable. I had a desperate man in front of me.’149

  Moltke’s reaction, sometimes understood as the quintessential expression of German militarism, merely reflected his realistic appraisal of Germany’s strategic situation. The military technical problems o
f shifting the deployment of millions of men from west to east were overwhelming. More importantly, the British offer lacked credibility: as the general pointed out, France had already mobilized and Britain with the best will in the world could not guarantee French neutrality. Within hours, Grey had anyway withdrawn from the offer, claiming a ‘misunderstanding’. By the evening of 2 August, Britain had already made significant moves towards intervention. The fleet was mobilized and the cabinet, which only three days earlier had decided that alone Britain had no obligation to defend Belgium’s neutrality under the 1839 treaty signed by all great powers, had altered its view to regard a ‘substantial violation’ of Belgian territory as a sufficient trigger for war. In all likelihood, the British would have joined the war on the side of the Entente even without Moltke’s invasion of Germany’s small, neutral neighbour. Grey considered that Britain had a moral obligation to France and both he and the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, were prepared to resign over the issue. Less emotionally committed Liberal colleagues were thus aware that if they did not opt for war, their government would fall, and in all probability be replaced by pro-intervention Conservatives, who themselves would declare hostilities. Strategic calculations too militated for war: neutrality would leave Britain dangerously isolated, regardless of which continental bloc ended victorious. What Moltke’s invasion of Belgium did ensure was that Britain would enter the war earlier rather than later and united in moral fervour. How far this mattered would depend on whether Moltke could win a quick victory in the west.150