by G. J. Meyer
Tsar Nicholas was shown a telegram that the monk Rasputin had sent to Tsarina Alexandra. Rasputin, who had maneuvered himself into being almost a member of the imperial family, was at his home village deep in the interior of Russia, just beginning to recover from a stab wound that had nearly taken his life. Because of his distance from the capital and the state of his health, he could not possibly have known what was happening in St. Petersburg or Vienna or elsewhere. Thus his telegram, like so many other things about this strange and sinister man, continues to mystify even today. “Let Papa [Rasputin’s name for Nicholas] not plan war,” the telegram said. “With war will come the end of Russia and yourselves, and you will lose to the last man.” The tsar read it and tore it into pieces.
British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey, alarmed by the deepening seriousness of the crisis, finally stopped being so diplomatic as to be nearly incapable of saying anything. Speaking without the knowledge of the British cabinet, he told Germany’s Ambassador Lichnowsky that in his opinion, quite unofficially, “unless Austria is willing to enter upon a discussion of the Serbian question, a world war is inevitable,” and that he would expect such a war to bring Britain in on the side of France and Russia. When the kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg learned of this, they abandoned any lingering hopes that war if it came could be a “local” one involving only Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and they intensified their attempts to restrain the Austrians. If Grey had been this forthright just a few days earlier, Berlin almost certainly would have changed its position more quickly and firmly. Austria might then have deferred its declaration of war, and Russia would have had little reason to mobilize. Now, however, it was all but too late. Also too late, Bethmann awakened to the fact that the Russians were laboring under a misunderstanding about Vienna’s willingness to talk. He cleared this up by having Tschirschky alert Berchtold to the problem, but with things now happening so fast and diplomacy being submerged under the concerns of the generals, there was little chance that talks could be got under way in time to avoid disaster.
Bethmann was peppering Tschirschky with telegrams, each one more urgent and exasperated than the last. In one he instructed the ambassador to make clear to Berchtold that any Austro-Hungarian refusal to negotiate with Russia would be not only a “serious error” but “a direct provocation of Russia’s armed intervention.” “We are, of course, ready to fulfill the obligations of our alliance,” he said in another, “but must decline to be drawn wantonly into a world conflagration by Vienna, without having any regard paid to our counsel.” But here again the remedies were coming too late—all the more so because Berchtold had withdrawn into an almost total silence. He was bent on war and wanted no discussion.
The tension continued to increase. President Poincaré, concerned about jeopardizing France’s alliance with Russia, sent assurances to St. Petersburg through Ambassador Paléologue that Russia could depend on France. Paléologue hurried to tell Sazonov. Not yet knowing that Russia had already mobilized (if Paléologue knew, he did not deign to inform Paris), Poincaré also told his ambassador to urge the Russians to proceed cautiously. This Paléologue had no interest in doing.
Paris and St. Petersburg continued to receive reports of extensive military preparations within Germany, reports that continued to be untrue. France was beginning to prepare, but it was doing so extremely tentatively, to avoid alarming the Germans or, what Poincaré cared about even more at this point, giving the British any cause to see France as an aggressor. No reserves were called up, and no movement of troops by train was permitted. Determined to bring Britain to France’s assistance if war started, and mindful that this would require casting Germany in the role of aggressor, Poincaré ordered that all troops be kept six miles back from the border. When the French commander in chief, General Joseph Joffre, requested permission to mobilize, he was refused. Even limited movements of troops toward the six-mile limit were not permitted—until Joffre, later in the day, threatened to resign.
Poincaré summoned the British ambassador to his office. He asked for a firmer line in London. He said that if Britain would declare its intention to support France, Germany might be deterred and war averted. The ambassador, aware of how divided the government in London remained, was able to say nothing more than “how difficult it would be for His Majesty’s government to make such a statement.”
General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff, checked on the status of Austria’s mobilization. When he learned that Conrad was still deploying unnecessarily large numbers of his mobilized troops to the south—the field marshal continued to be unable to put aside his dream of invading Serbia—Moltke panicked. As things stood, the Austrian troops on the Russian border would, if fighting began, be outnumbered by two to one. Moltke sent a wire to Conrad, urging him to shift his main force to the north—to mobilize against Russia, in effect. Unless Conrad did so, Germany, in beginning a war against France, would be unprotected in its rear. Getting into matters that were not supposed to be the business of generals, Moltke also warned Conrad that Vienna must refuse to be drawn into the Stop-in-Belgrade proposal. That proposal, of course, was exactly what Bethmann Hollweg had been pushing Berchtold to accept. “What a joke!” Berchtold exclaimed when he learned of Moltke’s warning. “Who’s in charge in Berlin?”
At nine P.M. Moltke took Erich von Falkenhayn, the war minister, with him to the chancellor’s office. The two generals told Bethmann that German mobilization had become imperative, that a postponement would put the country at risk, and that at a minimum a State of Imminent War (Germany’s equivalent of Russia’s Period Preparatory to War) must be declared. Bethmann, reluctant to commit to military action but equally unwilling to assume responsibility for leaving Germany undefended, promised a decision by noon on Friday. He too was coming to regard war as inevitable, and his focus was shifting from preserving the peace to preparing for hostilities. Knowing that Conrad had declared Stop-in-Belgrade to be infeasible and was supported in this by Berchtold, he, like Moltke, was yielding to a fatalistic acceptance of the notion that if Germany’s enemies were determined to make war, now was better than later.
Friday, July 31
When they learned of Russia’s mobilization—unofficial reports reached Berlin almost immediately—the German generals intensified their demands. Germany continued to be the only European power not to have undertaken any military preparations at all, and the situation was becoming intolerable. Even Britain was on the move, First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill having ordered the Grand Fleet to take up a position in the North Sea from which it could respond quickly to any forays by the German High Seas Fleet and protect France’s Channel ports.
Holes were appearing in Germany’s war plans. No one had foreseen a situation in which Russia mobilized without declaring war, or in which war erupted between Germany and Russia with France waiting on the sidelines. No one was sure what to do. The generals, of course—Chief of Staff Moltke included—were all but howling for action. Germany, they argued, was in a better position to win a two-front war now than it would be after a few more years of French and Russian military buildup, and with every day of delay it was being drawn deeper into a death trap. Kaiser Wilhelm refused mobilization but agreed to declare a State of Impending War, which put in motion a variety of measures (securing borders, railways, and Germany’s postal, telephone, and telegraph systems, and recalling soldiers on leave) in the expectation that mobilization would follow within forty-eight hours. He did so with the same deep reluctance shown by Franz Joseph when asked to declare war on Serbia, and by Tsar Nicholas when begged for mobilization. Like his fellow emperors, he yielded only because the military men, now taking charge in Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna, were insisting that there was no alternative. Bethmann too, desperately worried about keeping Britain out of any war and bringing Italy in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, agreed only when, minutes before noon, the earlier reports of Russia’s mobilization were confirmed.
Berlin
continued to ask Vienna to demonstrate some willingness to negotiate on the basis of various proposals being offered by London and St. Petersburg (such proposals had become numerous and complex), but Berchtold maintained his silence. Short-circuiting diplomatic channels, Wilhelm sent a telegram directly to Franz Joseph, requesting his intervention. After conferring with Berchtold and Conrad, the Hapsburg emperor replied that Vienna could not do more than it had already done. He did not explain that Austria-Hungary too was now caught in the snares of its own military planning. Just as Russia had been unable to limit its mobilization to Austria because (as the generals claimed) it had no plan that would permit it to do so, and just as Germany had no way of mobilizing without attacking its neighbors, Austria had no plan that would send its army into Belgrade but no farther. Conrad feared, as the Russian generals had feared before their mobilization and as Germany’s generals would soon be fearing with equally fateful consequences, that attempting to change his arrangements could lead only to disorder. Vienna could not regard this as a tolerable option with Serbia mobilizing and the Russians assembling immense forces along their common border. In important regards, however, Conrad was not in touch with reality. Even as war with Russia became likely, he remained obsessed with punishing Serbia. Just as foolishly, he clung to the delusion that Italy would be entering the war on the side of the Central Powers, providing hundreds of thousands of additional troops.
All options except the military ones were shutting down. Power was moving into the hands of the soldiers and away from the diplomats and politicians. The soldiers were motivated mainly by fear. And as the Austrian ambassador to France had observed on Thursday in a message to Berchtold, “Fear is a bad counselor.”
In a display of German diplomacy at its ham-handed worst, Berlin informed London that if Britain remained neutral, Germany would promise to restore the borders of both France and Belgium (though not any overseas colonies that Germany might seize) at the end of whatever war might ensue. This was ominous—no one had even mentioned Belgium until now. Grey, an English gentleman of the old school whose passions were fly-fishing (he had written a book on the subject) and bird-watching, saw the offer as nothing better than a crude attempt at bribery, an insult to be rejected out of hand. His anger is transparent in his instructions to the British ambassador in Berlin:
“You must inform German Chancellor that his proposal that we should bind ourselves to neutrality on such terms cannot for a moment be entertained. He asks us in effect to engage to stand by while French colonies are taken and France is beaten so long as Germany does not take French territory as distinct from the colonies. From the material point of view such a proposal is unacceptable, for France could be so crushed as to lose her position as a Great Power, and become subordinate to German policy without further territory in Europe being taken from her. But apart from that, for us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France would be a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover.”
To this warning he added assurances that German assistance in averting war would be rewarded. “If the peace of Europe can be preserved and this crisis be safely passed,” he said, “my own effort would be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no hostile or aggressive policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia and ourselves, jointly or separately.” He appeared to be pointing toward fundamental changes in the overall system of European alliances, changes calculated to make this the last crisis of its kind. The implication was that until now Grey had not understood the intensity of Germany’s fear of encirclement, but that his eyes had been opened.
Grey next took a step that would give Bethmann much reason to regret having broached the question of Belgium. With the approval of the cabinet, he asked France and Germany to declare their intention to respect Belgian neutrality in case of war. France was able to agree without difficulty. Its plans for an offensive against Germany were focused far to the south of Belgium in the area of Alsace-Lorraine, and Poincaré understood that British support in case of war would be infinitely more valuable than any possible use of Belgian territory. Germany, trapped by the inflexibility of its mobilization plan, was unable to respond at all. Thus was the first major step taken toward Britain’s entry into the war.
Germany now sent what would become known as its double ultimatum to France and Russia. This was a message warning that German mobilization “must follow in case Russia does not suspend every war measure against Austria-Hungary and ourselves within twelve hours.” France was asked for a declaration of neutrality. The deadline for responses was Saturday afternoon.
The double ultimatum was in part Berlin’s desperate final effort to escape mobilization and in part an effort to precipitate a breakdown in diplomatic relations to help justify the westward invasion that must follow mobilization. As directed to Russia, it was a straightforward request for cooperation. As directed to France, it was a kind of wild theatrical gesture aimed at making clear to the world that if war with Russia came, Germany and France would be at war also. It was intended to explain, in the court of public opinion, a German attack on France. What it actually looked like was overbearing German bluster. The likelihood that Berlin never expected Paris to accept it is supported by the outrageous additional demand that the German ambassador to France was instructed to make in case of acceptance: France’s temporary surrender of its great fortresses at Verdun and Toul, in return for a promise that they would be returned at the end of Germany’s fight with Russia. Bethmann would intimate as much in his memoirs. “If France had actually declared her neutrality,” he wrote, “we should have had to sit by while the French army, under the protection of a specious neutrality, made all its preparations to attack us while we were busy in the East.”
There came a final flurry of Nicky-Willy telegrams. The kaiser told the tsar that he was continuing to try to mediate in Vienna, and that “the peace of Europe may still be maintained by you, if Russia will agree to stop the military measures which must threaten Germany and Austria-Hungary.”
Once again, messages between the two emperors crossed in midair. Nicholas told Wilhelm that it was “technically impossible” to stop Russia’s mobilization but that Russia did not want war and still did not see war as unavoidable. “So long as the negotiations with Austria on Serbia’s account are taking place, my troops shall not take any provocative action. I give you my solemn word for this. I put all my trust in God’s mercy and hope in your successful mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our countries and for the peace of Europe.”
As soon as the kaiser’s message reached the tsar, Nicholas sent back an answer. He said he understood that Russian mobilization might require Germany to mobilize as well. He said he accepted this, but it need not mean war. He asked Wilhelm for “the same guarantee from you as I gave you, that these measures do not mean war and that we shall continue negotiating for the benefit of our countries and universal peace dear to all our hearts. Our long proved friendship must succeed, with God’s help, in avoiding bloodshed. Anxiously, full of confidence await your answer.”
It was obviously heartfelt and must have seemed the richest of opportunities. But nothing would come of it. Because of all that had already happened, nothing could.
Background: The Ottoman Turks
THE OTTOMAN TURKS
IT IS ONE OF HISTORY’S LITTLE JOKES, SURELY, THAT TURKEY and the Ottoman Empire that it ruled had no part to play in the July crisis that brought on the Great War. For the crisis could never have unfolded as it did if not for the profound impact that the empire of the Turks had had on the development of eastern Europe. And no one would be affected by the war itself more profoundly than the Turks and the many peoples who, century after century, had been their unhappy subjects.
Without the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburgs would not have been in Bosnia at all, and there could have been no Kingdom of Serbia. There would have been no power vacuum i
n the Balkans. Russia and Austria-Hungary could never have been pulled into that vacuum or into such dangerous conflict with each other.
To go back further, without the rise of the Ottomans the whole bitter saga of the Balkans would have been unimaginably different. The Turks had ruled the peninsula for five hundred years, reaching at their height westward into Italy, northward into Austria, Hungary, and Russia, and all the way around the Black Sea. For a time they seemed destined to conquer the whole eastern half of Europe, if not the entire continent. When the Great War began, their empire, while maintaining only a toehold in Europe proper, still extended across the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula.
The empire reached its pinnacle, and its decline began, with the life of a single man, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. (That was what Christian Europe called him—to his own people he was Suleiman the Lawmaker.) He ruled from 1520 to 1566 and led the Ottomans to their zenith both culturally and geographically. He was ten generations removed from the Turkish-Mongol chieftain named Osman who had founded the dynasty three hundred years before and given it his name. In every one of those ten generations, in an unbroken sequence of achievement that no other family has ever approached, the Ottoman Turks were led by yet another dynamic, heroic, conquering figure. Generation after generation, starting where Osman had first emerged from obscurity in what is now eastern Turkey and from there moving outward in all directions, the dynasty took control of more and more of the world around it. The sultans forced their way into Europe for the first time in 1354, and ninety-nine years later they captured Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire. From then on Constantinople was their home. Its mighty basilica of Hagia Sophia, perhaps the greatest architectural achievement of the Roman era, became an Islamic mosque.