July 1914: Countdown to War

by Sean McMeekin

  Still, rumors will out. Despite Russia’s delay in announcing mobilization, panic-selling began on Friday on all Europe’s bourses; those in St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and Brussels all closed. The City of London saw the worst panic-selling, as financial firms exposed to Europe saw their share values plunge. At ten fifteen AM, at the London stock exchange, attendants in “gold-braided silk hats” posted the closure notice on the doors. Soon newsboys were shouting the news through the streets: “The stock exchange is closed!” It was London’s first outright closure since 1773. There was a bank run too, although few banks remained open long enough for depositors to cash out. By early afternoon, there was an enormous line on Thread-needle Street, outside the Bank of England—the last institution in London still open to convert pound notes into gold coins.12

  Sentiment in the City of London and in the House of Commons was almost unanimously against British intervention in the war. As Prime Minister Asquith noted that day, “the general opinion at present . . . is to keep out at almost all costs.”13 Thanks to Churchill, the navy was primed and ready at Scapa Flow. Aside from the bellicose first lord of the Admiralty, however, no one in the cabinet was sure what to do. In theory, Asquith and Grey shared Churchill’s view on the need to defend France against possible German aggression. But they knew that there was no Liberal majority in the cabinet for this position, which is why Sir Edward Grey had tiptoed so carefully all week around anything resembling an actual policy statement. Luckily for the beleaguered foreign secretary, there had been no cabinet meeting on Thursday, which fact he had used as a convenient excuse to demur when the French and German ambassadors asked where he stood.

  On Friday morning, even as the City of London went into war-scare meltdown, Grey continued talking calmly about peace-mediation plans with Germany’s Anglophilic ambassador, both men blissfully unaware that Russian general mobilization had already begun. With improbable timing, shortly after the London bourse shut down owing to war hysteria, Grey told Lichnowsky, “I have today for the first time the impression that the improved relations with Germany of late years and perhaps also some friendly feeling for Germany in the cabinet makes it appear possible that, in case of war, England will probably adopt an attitude of watchful waiting.”14 Grey was dissembling, but he was not wrong about the cabinet, which met Friday afternoon. The French had been demanding all day—all week—that he take a stand. Everyone in the cabinet knew this; in fact, the main subject of debate Friday was what Grey should say to France’s ambassador, Paul Cambon, after the session was over. We have no transcript of the Friday meeting, but there is no doubt that the Little Englanders again won the day. Lord Morley, a leading anti-interventionist in the cabinet, “tapped [Churchill] on the shoulder” to say, “Winston, we have beaten you after all.” As Grey reported to his ambassador in Paris, “nobody here feels that in this dispute, so far as it has gone yet, British treaties or obligations are involved.” Grey could offer France no “definite pledge to intervene in a war.”15

  Grey said as much to the French ambassador on Friday evening, although he added several wrinkles. His encounters with Cambon were always difficult. Grey’s spoken French was as poor as Cambon’s spoken English, so they both conversed slowly in their own tongue rather than in one common language.16 In the current case, this worked to Grey’s advantage, as, lacking authorization to give Cambon the pledge of support he wanted, the Briton’s goal was to obfuscate. And so Grey assured the Frenchman vaguely that “we had not left Germany under the impression that we would stand aside.” In fact, Grey claimed, he had told Lichnowsky on Friday morning that, in case of war, “we should be drawn into it” (this was untrue, although Grey had spoken to Lichnowsky in this sense on Wednesday). When Cambon asked for a commitment, Grey said evasively that he “could not give any pledge at the present time.” The French ambassador “expressed great disappointment” at this reply and tried to pin Grey down as to “whether we would help France if Germany made an attack on her.” Grey’s answer was the same: “as far as things had gone at present, we could not take any engagement.”

  Grey then introduced a stunning bit of news into the conversation. As if to change the subject, Grey informed Cambon that he had just learned that “Russia had ordered a complete mobilization of her fleet and army.”* Russia’s action, Grey informed Cambon in a rare moment of clarity, “would precipitate a crisis, and would make it appear that German mobilization was being forced by Russia.” Returning to his usual manner of obfuscation, Grey dropped the subject and concluded by promising Cambon that “the Cabinet would certainly be summoned as soon as there was some new development, but at the present moment the only answer I could give was that we could not undertake any definite engagement.”17 Russian general mobilization against Austria and Germany, apparently, did not qualify as “some new development.”

  Cambon, infuriated by the foreign secretary’s evasions, went and “unburdened himself” to Sir Arthur Nicolson, the permanent undersecretary of state, with whom he was on much better terms. Nicolson, concerned that Britain was offering France nothing, then sought out the foreign secretary to see what he could do for Cambon. Grey reminded Nicolson that he had sent a telegram to Paris and Berlin, demanding a pledge from each power that she was “prepared to engage to respect neutrality of Belgium so long as no other Power violates it.” If the Germans refused, perhaps Grey could use this in the cabinet to make a case for intervention.18 The idea that Russia’s unprovoked general mobilization against Germany might be used by British policymakers to make a case against intervention did not occur to him.

  Meanwhile Churchill continued preparing the British fleet for war, whatever the sentiments of the cabinet. On Friday he outdid even himself, ordering British naval crews to board and seize the two dreadnoughts, Sultan Osman I and Reshad V, being built for the Ottoman navy. Based on the timing—Sazonov had asked Britain to detain these very warships on Thursday night—one is tempted to conclude that Churchill had an intuition about Russian general mobilization before learning of it. And yet there is no evidence that Churchill, when he carried out this provocative action (for which planning had been underway since Wednesday), knew that Russia had mobilized or that Sazonov had asked him to hold the ships in port. At any rate, detaining them was far from Churchill’s purpose, and the Russo-Ottoman naval rivalry in the Black Sea was far from his thoughts. He was commandeering these state-of-the-art dreadnoughts for the British navy, as added strategic insurance against the German High Seas Fleet.19

  IN PARIS, THINGS WERE MOVING FASTER. France, expecting to bear the brunt of the German assault, could not afford the attitude of “watchful waiting” Sir Edward Grey had adopted. Mobilization Plan XVI had envisioned France completing the concentration of its active army corps by M + 10 or M + 11, which would leave little margin for error, as the Germans were expected to finish concentration by M + 12 and go on the offensive by M + 13. Plan XVII, adopted in May 1913, cut off a full day, which would theoretically allow the French armies to begin their principal offensive two days before the Germans were ready to begin theirs (and with five days to spare regarding France’s obligations to Russia)—so long as Moltke did not beat his counterpart, Joffre, to the punch by mobilizing first.*

  In a sense, the French and German war plans were mirror images of each other. Plan XVII envisioned thrusts into “occupied” Lorraine left and right of the German fortified area at Metz (there was flexibility as to which side would be emphasized, depending on what the Germans did). If the French, as hoped, broke through the weaker left wing of the German armies and wheeled north, they could cut off the German right wing. Moltke hoped to do the same thing by sending his right wing through Belgium, enveloping the French armies from behind in a gigantic flanking maneuver. While the French plan of march was not as detailed as the German one and had greater flexibility, the basic idea was the same. Under the dynamic, offense-minded doctrine prevailing in both general staffs—the French called it offensive à outrance—it was imper
ative to reach the enemy’s flank first. Speed was everything. Every day counted.20

  For this reason France, as we have seen, had begun quietly preparing for war on Tuesday, when troops were ordered back from Algeria and Morocco. With an eye on Britain, France did not want to show her hand too early. Even so, at each stage, Joffre remained a day or two ahead of Moltke, from the heightening of railway security to “the return to garrison of troops on maneuver,” the cancellation of leaves, and the couverture ordered Thursday afternoon—conditioned by the mythical “ten-kilometer withdrawal.”21

  Now, on Friday, Joffre wanted to go further still. Notwithstanding the less than fully informative dispatches that Paléologue and Sazonov had sent to Paris, there is no reason to doubt that Poincaré, Messimy, and Joffre understood the gravity of these cryptic messages. Whether Russia had “decided to proceed” to general mobilization publicly or (as Paléologue had it) secretly, she had evidently proceeded to general mobilization, as would be confirmed for the Quai d’Orsay at 3:30 PM Friday afternoon, by France’s ambassador in Berlin, Jules Cambon, in a wire dispatched at 2:17 PM. (Sazonov and Paléologue having fudged the truth, it was again left to the Germans to report what Russia had done.) Because, as Cambon himself had reported from Berlin the previous weekend, Germany had pledged herself to respond to this by mobilizing against France and Russia, it did not take too great a leap of imagination to divine that European war was about to break out. As Cambon himself concluded, “in these conditions we can expect the almost immediate publication of the German order for general mobilization.”22

  Joseph Joffre, chief of staff of the French army, who reoriented France’s Mobilization Plan XVII in a more offensive direction. While France’s president was at sea, Joffre quietly endorsed Russia’s secret early mobilization and urged that it proceed still faster. Source: Getty Images.

  The gist of this report was soon confirmed by Germany’s own ambassador to Paris, Baron Schoen, who called at the Quai d’Orsay at around six thirty PM, even as the cabinet was meeting at the Elysée Palace to discuss Jules Cambon’s telegram. Viviani, after conferring with Poincaré about what line to take, dismissed the cabinet and hurried over to the Quai d’Orsay to receive the ambassador. Schoen did not mince his words: in response to Russia’s “total mobilization of its land and sea forces,” he informed the French premier, Germany had activated the “Imminent Danger of War” at three PM Friday. The Russian government, he continued, was being asked to demobilize on both her German and her Austrian frontiers, within a twelve-hour time limit, from midnight until noon Saturday. Barring this, Germany would be forced to mobilize, which meant war.*23

  Viviani claimed that he “had no information at all about an alleged total mobilization of the Russian army and navy.” This transparent lie did not impress Schoen. Plowing right ahead, he asked the premier what the “attitude of France” would be “in the case of a war between Germany and Russia.” Viviani was still evasive. Not unlike Grey in his dealings with the French ambassador, France’s premier replied that he could not, as yet, give an answer. When, Schoen asked, might he be able to give one? Viviani said he would reply by Saturday at one PM Paris time (two PM German time, or two hours after Russia’s deadline to demobilize would expire). In one final gambit to tease out French intentions, Schoen asked if he should get his passports ready. Viviani told him to wait.24

  The sequence of events that followed is bewildering. Viviani, returning home for dinner after his meeting with Schoen, ran into Joffre and briefed him on Schoen’s quasi-ultimatum to France. Joffre then urged Messimy, the war minister, “to give orders for our general mobilization without an instant’s delay, for I considered it imperative. Messimy promised me to insist on this step when the Cabinet assembled in the evening.”25 At eight thirty PM, while Viviani was dining at home, a telegram from Paléologue was received at the Quai d’Orsay, announcing that “an order has been issued for the general mobilization of the Russian army.”*26 While this could not have come as news, this laconic, single-line message still had a sobering effect, as it threatened to undermine plausible deniability. When the cabinet reconvened at nine PM, the first item of business was composing a careful message to Paléologue, in which Viviani asked the ambassador “to report to me, as a matter of urgency, as to the reality of the alleged general mobilization of Russia.” Considering that Paléologue had reported Thursday night that Russia “had decided to proceed secretly” to general mobilization, and then wired again Friday morning confirming it was public, this wire, dispatched to Petersburg at nine thirty PM, must have struck Paléologue as a rhetorical question.*27 The only logical explanation is that it was diplomatic camouflage, as France sought to extend plausible deniability a little longer.

  Scarcely had the cabinet put together this cover story denying French knowledge of Russian general mobilization than a bombshell came in from the streets. Jean Jaurès, the great pacifist orator, had just returned to Paris after addressing an antiwar congress of the Socialist International in Brussels, at which he had locked arms with Hugo Haase, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, in a gesture of internationalist solidarity. Addressing journalists at the Chamber of Deputies, Jaurès was seen to “explode” in anger over Russia’s malign influence on French foreign policy: “Are we going to unleash a world war because Izvolsky is still furious over Aehrenthal’s deception in the Bosnian affair [of 1908–1909]?”28 At 9 PM, Jaurès went to dine with friends at the Café Croissant in Montmartre. At 9:40 PM, a young nationalist fanatic out to avenge the murder of Gaston Calmette by Mme Caillaux**—the improbably named Raoul Villain—walked up to the open window and fired two shots into Jaurès’s back. By 9:45 PM Jaurès was dead.29

  Word of Villain’s terrible deed rifled across Paris. The cabinet was informed at 9:50 PM. Whatever their views of the Socialist orator, everyone was stunned by the news, which seemed a terrible omen. Even Poincaré, Jaurès’s bitter opponent over the Three-Year Service Law, took the time to compose a heartfelt message to Jaurès’s widow, expressing “great admiration” for his rival.30 But it was not all hugs and kisses. Public commotion over the Mme Caillaux trial had finally died down; now it threatened to begin all over again. The prefect of police phoned to warn that “there will be a revolution in Paris in three hours.” The Socialists, after all, had vowed, in a series of international congresses, to stage a general strike to sabotage any European war. Jaurès himself was the most famous partisan of the idea, although he had always been careful to avoid direct exhortations to sedition. Suddenly, it seemed imperative to invoke the notorious Carnet B, the long list of antiwar agitators, anarchists, pacifists, and spies the French government planned to arrest on the day of mobilization. Viviani, a former Socialist who knew some of the men on the list, predictably opposed the idea as an outrage. In the end the cabinet, hoping to cool tensions in the wake of the Jaurès murder and to preserve national unity, agreed not to invoke Carnet B against French citizens (although foreigners suspected of spying were still to be arrested). As an added precaution, Joffre agreed to order two cavalry regiments, about to depart for the frontier, to remain in the capital.

  There remained urgent business. Despite Joffre’s impatience, Viviani refused to authorize general mobilization yet, insisting that everyone sleep on the question one more night. In a sense, the point was moot: it was already too late to issue orders to take effect by midnight Friday. To make midnight Saturday, the French had until four PM the next day. Meanwhile, Joffre wired his corps commanders to prepare for war.31

  At ten thirty PM, Britain’s ambassador, Sir Francis Bertie, arrived at the Elysée Palace, demanding an answer to Grey’s query about respecting Belgian neutrality. Viviani demurred, responding with a question of his own: What would Britain do? To give a hint as to where things stood, he then told Bertie that “the German Embassy is packing up” (this was untrue, although it was true that Schoen had asked him whether he should begin packing).32 After conferring with his colleagues in the cabinet, Viviani dispa
tched Bruno de Margerie, his political director, to give Bertie an answer. The message for Grey was emphatic: “French Government are resolved to respect the neutrality of Belgium, and it would only be in the event of some other Power violating that neutrality that France might find herself under the necessity . . . to act otherwise.” Poincaré had promised to repeat this assurance personally to King Albert of Belgium.33

  Equally important was what the French cabinet did not discuss Friday night. Aside from the curious rhetorical “query” about Russian mobilization sent to Paléologue, no message of any kind about avoiding provocative Russian military measures on the German frontier was addressed to Izvolsky or Sazonov—not even as mild a warning as the one Viviani had sent off on Thursday morning. Then, everyone had been awakened at three AM to respond to Sazonov’s cryptic message that, as Russia was “unable to accede to Germany’s desire [to cease mobilizing], it only remains for us to hasten our armaments and regard war as imminent.” Now that the Germans themselves had inaugurated Kriegsgefahrzustand in response to Russian general mobilization, there was no more need for dramatic late-night consultations between Russia and France. France would order mobilization when she (that is, Viviani, the last holdout) was ready—probably at four PM Saturday. In the meantime, Messimy was dispatched to give the Russian ambassador a private assurance, “in solemn, heart-felt tones of the [French] Government’s firm resolve to fight.” In exchange, France’s war minister “begged” Izvolsky “to confirm the hope of the French General Staff that all [Russia’s] efforts will be directed against Germany and that Austria will be regarded as a negligible quantity.”34 It was not quite a guarantee of co-belligerence, but it was close.

  Nor was there any cabinet discussion of mediation in Vienna. The Austrian ambassador to Paris, Count Szécsen, visited the Quai d’Orsay just after ten PM, about the same time the cabinet was reacting to the Jaurès assassination. His brief was to inform the French government that Austria had officially declared to Russia that she did not intend to annex Serbian territory or infringe Serbian sovereignty. Szécsen assured Philippe Berthelot, the director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who met him in Viviani’s stead, “it ought to be possible still to settle the question, [Austrian] mobilization not being war, and leaving a few days still for conversations.” Serbia, he proposed, could ask Austria for terms. Not surprisingly, Berthelot dismissed the proposal, on the grounds that it was “extremely late” and had already been “overtaken by events.” Szécsen did not put up much protest, conceding to Berchtold in his own report of the encounter that, owing to the German Kriegsgefahrzustand ordered in response to Russia’s general mobilization, “the Serbian question fell entirely into the background.”35 Certainly the French cabinet saw things this way, as there was no discussion of Serbia on Friday night. Despite Berchtold having catalyzed the entire crisis a week earlier with the ultimatum to Belgrade, with the decisive events of Friday in Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, Vienna had become almost an afterthought.