July 1914: Countdown to War

by Sean McMeekin

  The French knew it, too. Although the final decision and its timing needed to be massaged carefully for British ears, Poincaré, Joffre, and Messimy knew that Russia had resolved on war long before her general mobilization was confirmed by Paléologue’s thirty-hours-late telegram Friday night. In a fascinating illustration of the importance of chronology, Barbara Tuchman, in her classic The Guns of August, narrates a middle-of-the-night drama that sees President Poincaré awakened in bed by Russian ambassador Izvolsky asking him, “What is France going to do?” Messimy then wakes up Viviani, who exclaims, “Good God! These Russians are even worse insomniacs than they are drinkers.” It is a wonderful set piece, but Tuchman gets the date wrong by two days.

  This scene transpired not on Friday night, 31 July–1 August, after Germany had inaugurated Kriegsgefahrzustand and sent Russia and France her ultimatums, but on Wednesday night, 29–30 July. The catalyst for the late-night drama was not, as Tuchman suggests, pressure from Berlin—on Wednesday and Thursday Germany still had not undertaken serious war preparations of any kind—but Izvolsky’s receipt of Sazonov’s cryptic telegram from St. Petersburg announcing that, owing to Russia’s inability “to accede to Germany’s desire” that she cease mobilizing, “it only remains for us to hasten our armaments and regard war as imminent.” Wednesday was the same night that Sazonov told the German ambassador that Russia’s mobilization measures “could no longer be reversed.” Viviani, for his part, may still have entertained illusions that Russia could stop short of war, which is why he hesitated longer than the others before approving France’s general mobilization on Saturday. But Poincaré and Messimy knew perfectly well what Sazonov meant on Wednesday night, which is why they convened a crisis meeting from four to seven AM to craft a response.

  France’s response, as we have seen, was carefully calibrated to manipulate British opinion. In none of the messages Viviani sent to Paléologue in St. Petersburg on either 30 or 31 July was there any endorsement of Russia’s mobilization, which was referred to only obliquely, but there was no request to halt it, either. Joffre, Messimy, Laguiche, and Paléologue had already endorsed and encouraged the acceleration of Russia’s war preparations. Poincaré and Viviani, because they were at sea from 24–29 July, had plausible deniability of all this—plausible deniability they needed to maintain, even after returning to Paris, to convince London of their innocence. But the dramatic scene of Wednesday night (not Friday night) gives the game away. Whether or not they had known before that Russia was mobilizing, they knew then. And they knew what it meant. It meant France had to mobilize, too. And mobilization meant war.

  France, even more than Russia, insisted publicly that mobilization was not war. The “ten-kilometer withdrawal” to allow the Germans the initiative was a brilliant public relations move then, and it continues to gull historians. Aside from Joffre’s sensible orders to avoid border incidents until concentration of forces was complete (orders nearly identical to those Moltke gave), it was nonsense. Article 2 of the Franco-Russian military convention specified that, once the casus foederis was invoked, “France and Russia . . . without a previous agreement being necessary, shall mobilize all their forces immediately and simultaneously, and shall transport them as near to the frontiers as possible.” As General N. N. Obruchev, Russia’s signatory, explained, “this mobilization of France and Russia would be followed immediately by positive results, by acts of war, in a word would be inseparable from an ‘aggression.’” Or as France’s counterpart to Obruchev, General Raoul de Boisdeffre, put it after signing the accord, “the mobilization is the declaration of war.” Or as Dobrorolskii, architect of Russia’s mobilization in 1914, put it, “once the moment has been chosen, everything is settled; there is no going back; it determines mechanically the beginning of the war.”6 After this moment—midnight on 30–31 July, when Russia’s general mobilization took effect—France and Russia were expected to mount offensives against Germany by M + 15. Just as Dobrorolskii said, mobilization moved like clockwork. The first Great Power battles of 1914 occurred on German territory, in France’s case on exactly Russian M + 15, with her invasion of Alsace on 14 August. Russia, too, won her first engagement on German soil, at Stallupönen/Gumbinnen, on 17–20 August 1914.7

  One can, of course, still argue that the Austrians fired first, at Serbia on 29 July. Austria also declared war first, on 28 July (although only against Belgrade). We must remember, however, that Austria-Hungary, for all her warlust against Serbia, had little desire to fight Russia, to the extent that Moltke had to beg Conrad repeatedly to do it. For all Berchtold’s mischief with the ultimatum and declaration of war, it was clearly his intention, and Conrad’s, to fight a war with Serbia alone. True, they realized that Russia might object, but to the extent they thought about this at all, they expected the Germans to handle Russia. The evidence shows that there was little real coordination between Berlin and Vienna, rather a great gap in understanding of what the other side was up to. The Germans were just as shocked when they learned of Berchtold’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July—which they had just been assured would not come until August 12—as the Austrians were when they learned that Germany planned to invade Belgium rather than concentrate her forces against Russia. None of this absolves anyone in Berlin and Vienna of responsibility for gross errors in policymaking. But it does make ridiculous the charge of cold, joint premeditation.

  Only the Germans, of course, were responsible for the strategic stupidity of invading France by way of Belgium. Although recent research casts doubt on the notion that there was ever an immutable Schlieffen Plan, all this means is that Moltke himself is to blame for the decision—and even more so for the strike on Liège on M + 3.8 Questionable as the German occupation of Luxembourg was, the fact that its railways were, by treaty, under German management mitigates some of its significance, along with the fact that Britain did not see the occupation as a plausible casus belli against Germany. Belgium was what mattered to outside powers, especially Britain; indeed the French understood this so well that Poincaré intervened with Joffre in 1912 to ensure that France’s initial deployment would not violate her territory. Germany’s decision to violate Belgian neutrality—on M + 3, two weeks before the concentration of her armies would be complete—was a political, diplomatic, strategic, and moral blunder of the first magnitude. For this, Moltke was directly to blame, although Bethmann, Jagow, or the kaiser should have called him to account over it.

  Important as the German violation of Belgium was, it did not cause the First World War. It may not even have brought Britain into it. Until the Germans gave him the gift of Liège on 4 August, Grey’s ammunition against noninterventionists in the cabinet came from the informal naval agreement with France he had personally arranged with Cambon in November 1912, about which the Commons (although not the cabinet) remained ignorant. It was over this issue—not Belgium—that Morley and Burns resigned. Morley and Burns, along with some historians, paint Grey in a Machiavellian light, as a master manipulator who brought his own party, against its will, into an agreement with France (by encouraging her to move her fleet to the Mediterranean and leave her Channel coast undefended) and then co-belligerence with her and Russia.9 While there is an element of truth here insofar as the semisecret French naval agreement did encourage French hawks and tie Britain’s hands in the case of war between France and Germany, Grey hardly had the intention of fomenting such a war.

  Sir Edward Grey’s sins during the July crisis were of omission, not commission. By failing to develop a clear policy (owing to the lack of a mandate from the cabinet or Commons, although he could have showed courage and overridden them), Grey missed his chance to put a scare into Berlin that Britain might intervene until it was too late for the Germans to pull Vienna back from the brink. Grey’s misleadingly positive signals, up to and including his bizarre neutrality pledges of 1 August and his ambiguous speech in the Commons on 3 August, left the Germans guessing until he finally sent Berlin an ultimatum on 4 August. By fe
igning neutrality and yet clearly taking the Franco-Russian side, by failing to notice Russia’s secret early mobilization and yet denouncing Austria and Germany for “marching towards war,” Grey encouraged Russian and then French recklessness, as his attitude convinced Sazonov and Poin caré that they had him in their pocket. Still, while he can be faulted for misleading the cabinet and Commons, and even, arguably, for failing to prevent the war by not earlier deciding on a policy, bringing about a Great Power war was the furthest thing from Grey’s intention, and further still from that of some other cabinet ministers (even Churchill, who wanted the navy to be ready and was generally gung-ho, did not really wish for a European war to break out). Britain’s role in unleashing the First World War was one born of blindness and blundering, not malice.

  We can say something similar about Germany’s role, although with allowance for the much greater sin of invading Belgium. For this colossal error in judgment, German leaders richly deserve the opprobrium they have been showered with ever since 1914. Like the blank check, it was a sin of commission, not omission. And yet with Belgium, too, Germany’s sin was not one of intending a world war—British belligerence was the last thing anyone in Berlin wanted—but of botching the diplomacy of the European war’s outbreak. Russia had mobilized fully two days before Germany; she had begun her secret war preparations against Austria and Germany five days earlier still. France had mobilized before Germany, too (although only by minutes). Austria had not mobilized against Russia at all. And yet somehow the prevailing opinion in London on 3–4 August was that Austria and Germany had started the war with France and Russia. The assault on Liège was not the cause of this error in British perception, which owed more to Franco-Russian deception, Sir George Buchanan’s inept reporting, and Grey’s misleading summaries. But Liège did help to confirm British prejudice against Germany. It also gave Entente diplomats, and pro-Entente historians, a ready-made argument for German war guilt—the idea that Germany “caused” or “intended” or “willed” the First World War.

  This argument is not supported by the evidence. As indicated by their earlier mobilizations (especially Russia’s), in 1914 France and Russia were far more eager to fight than was Germany—and far, far more than Austria-Hungary, if in her case we mean fighting Russia, not Serbia. Germany declared war first on France and Russia because of Bethmann’s misguided sense of legal propriety, but she mobilized last, and even then hesitatingly, with her leaders (except for the timetable-obsessed Moltke and Falkenhayn) clutching desperately for exits, as indicated by how eagerly the kaiser, Bethmann, and Jagow jumped on Grey’s last-minute neutrality offers.

  The reason for Germany’s reluctance becomes clear when we examine the order of battle of the armies. With German forces outnumbered and outgunned on both fronts, with Britain primed to intervene against them with an expeditionary force and a naval blockade, French and Russian generals expected that they would win, so long as Russia’s mobilization began early enough. This is abundantly clear from the chatter at the time of the war’s outbreak, which shows a widespread (although not unanimous) mood of optimism in the French and Russian general staffs. As Sukhomlinov wrote in his diary on 9 August 1914, as the assembly of the armies was nearing completion, “it seems that the German wolf will quickly be brought to bay: all are against him.”10

  The Germans, by contrast, went into the war expecting that they would lose, which is why they were so keen to wiggle out of it at the last moment. Moltke’s unrealistic and ultimately suicidal war plan, involving a march across Belgium, reflected German weakness, not German strength. It is not hard to see why Sir Edward Grey was able to convince the Commons (or most of it, anyway) that Germany was the aggressor in 1914: she was indeed the Power that first violated neutral territory in Luxembourg and then in Belgium. She did so, however, out of desperation, out of Moltke’s belief that only a knockout blow against France would give her the slightest chance of winning. So far from “willing the war,” the Germans went into it kicking and screaming as the Austrian noose snapped shut around their necks.

  * Not even in World War II. When France dropped out in 1940, the Soviet Union was allied to Nazi Germany. Not unless we count de Gaulle’s “Free French” as a sovereign co-belligerent could a British-French-Russian wartime coalition be said to have repeated itself.

  ** Asked on his deathbed by a prison psychiatrist whether he had any regrets about his deed, Princip replied, “If I hadn’t done it, the Germans would have found some other excuse.”

  NOTES

  Notes to PrologueSarajevo, Sunday, 28 June 1914

  1. Nikitsch-Boulles, 214.

  2. “Alone and without escort”: Fay, vol. 2, 31n39. “Wifeless toast”: Morton, Thunder at Twilight, 241.

  3. Cited in Albertini, vol. 2, 8.

  4. Nikitsch-Boulles, 212.

  5. Pharos, 7 (Chabrinovitch testimony), and 23 (Princip).

  6. Fay, vol. 2, 88–89.

  7. Ibid., vol. 2, 117.

  8. Pharos, 27–29 (Princip testimony) and 51–52 (Grabezh).

  9. Fay, vol. 2, 121; Pharos, 21 (Chabrinovitch testimony), 63–64, 68 (Ilitch), and 105–106 (Jovanovitch).

  10. Nikitsch-Boulles, 213.

  11. Morton, Thunder at Twilight, 243.

  12. Fay, vol. 2, 121–124, 138–140.

  13. “Red-gold Moorish loggias”: Morton, Thunder at Twilight, 245. “That’s rich . . .”: Würthle, 13.

  14. Potiorek Abschrift, 28 June 1914, in HHSA, P.A.I. Liasse Krieg, Karton 810.

  15. Pharos, 53 (Grabezh testimony).

  16. Ibid., 40 (Princip testimony).

  17. Würthle, 15–16.

  Notes to Chapter 1Vienna: Anger, Not Sympathy

  1. Zweig, The World of Yesterday, 215.

  2. Conrad, vol. 4, 17–18.

  3. “Solve the Serbian question once and for all”: cited in Albertini, vol. 1, 538. Conrad proposed going to war twenty-five times in 1913 alone: see Strachan, First World War, 69. On Conrad’s mistress and her beer merchant husband (see footnote), see Beatty, 5, 199.

  4. Berchtold, “monstrous agitation”: cited in Hantsch, 551. On the atmosphere in Vienna, see also Rauchensteiner, Der Tod des Doppeladlers, 66.

  5. Ritter to Berchtold, 29 June 1914, HHSA Liasse Krieg, Karton 810.

  6. Citation and commentary (on the most likely phrasing of the emperor’s remarks) in Albertini, vol. 2, 116, 116n2.

  7. “Consternation and indignation”: cited in Morton, Thunder at Twilight, 267. “Threads of the conspiracy”: Tschirschky to Bethmann from Vienna, 30 June 1914, PAAA R19865.

  8. “War on everyone’s lips”: cited in Hantsch, 551.

  9. Tisza to Franz Josef I, 1 July 1914, cited in Erenyi, 245–246.

  10. Conrad, vol. 4, 33–34. “War. War. War”: cited in Hantsch, 558.

  11. On the Common Army, language, and nationality issues, see especially Rauchensteiner, Der Tod des Doppeladlers, 45, and Stone, Europe Transformed, 315. Conrad spoke seven languages: Strachan, First World War, 282.

  12. Conrad, vol. 4, 30–31.

  13. Citations in Hantsch, 559–560.

  14. “Mandate of Heaven . . . stiff, Burgundian rituals”: Stone, Europe Transformed, 304–305. “Engine under steam . . . keen desire to spite his nephew”: cited in Beatty, 201.

  15. Tschirschky to Bethmann, 2 July 1914, in PAAA R19865.

  16. Conrad, vol. 4, 34.

  17. Citations in Fay, vol. 2, 191.

  18. Ballplatz insiders: see discussion in ibid., 205–206.

  19. Tuchman, 15.

  20. Details on Ferdinand at funeral: Morton, Thunder at Twilight, 269. On Sophie: Albertini, vol. 2, 117. “Provincial hole”: Zweig, World of Yesterday, 217.

  21. Bethmann to Franz Josef I (via Tschirschky), 2 July 1914, in DD, vol. 1, no. 6b, 9–10.

  Notes to Chapter 2St. Petersburg: No Quarter Given

  1. No condolences offered: Austrian consular reports from Belgrade (29 June 1914) and Sinaia (5 July 1914). Russian embassy in Rome not
flying its flag at half-mast: Ritter from Belgrade, 6 July 1914. Russian Legation in Belgrade refused to lower flag during funeral requiem: Giesl from Belgrade, 13 July 1914. All in HHSA, P.A.I. Liasse Krieg, Karton 810.

  2. Ritter to Berchtold, 29 June 1914, and again 13 July 1914, in HHSA, P.A.I. Liasse Krieg, Karton 810.

  3. On Pašić and Hartwig, see especially Turner, 81.

  4. Albertini, vol. 2, 85.

  5. On Pašić’s knowledge of the plot, see Fay, vol. 2, 152; Albertini, vol. 2, 98 and passim.

  6. Cited in Turner, 38.

  7. On Russia’s Black Sea exports, see British Foreign Office study of the “Russian Financial Situation,” 25 July 1914, in PRO, FO 371/2094.

  8. On missing Russian and French correspondence, see McMeekin, Russian Origins, chapter 2.

  9. “Has [France] no other glory than to serve the rancors of M. Izvolsky?”: cited in Beatty, 238. For Izvolsky’s correspondence, see LN.

  10. Buchanan to Nicolson, 9 July 1914, in BD, vol. 11, no. 49, 39.

  11. Czernin to Berchtold, 3 July 1914, no. 10017 in Oe-U, vol. 8.

  12. Paléologue to Viviani, 6 July 1914, no. 477 in DDF, ser. 3, vol. 10.

  13. Pourtalès to Bethmann from Petersburg, 13 July 1914, reproduced in Pourtalès, 81–83.

  14. Russian General Staff memorandum to Sazonov, 3 July 1914, no. 74 in IBZI, vol. 4. For “telegraphs, telephones and four wireless stations” and the feverish tone of the requests: documents and annotations in Gooch, Recent Revelations, 173, 176.

  15. Conference protocol in Pokrovskii, Drei Konferenzen, 40–42.

  16. Original transcript of 21 February 1914 conference, in AVPRI, fond 138, opis’ 467, del’ 462.