The problem was that the attention that Germany paid to the Ottoman world put too much pressure on Russia’s nerves. Officials in St Petersburg were deeply sensitive about the Straits – and edgy about the prospect of a new player muscling in on what they perceived to be their turf. Talk had turned to occupying Constantinople on numerous occasions around the turn of the century; by the end of 1912, plans began to be developed to have Russian forces take control of the city – in theory only on a temporary basis during a round of warfare in the Balkans.88 Nevertheless, the Russians were antagonised too by the apparent indifference of their allies, the British and the French, to the situation that saw increasing German control of the Ottoman military which included the secondment of a commanding officer of the Ottoman fleet. There was particular anguish about the imminent delivery to the Turks of two British-built dreadnoughts: these state-of-the-art battleships would give the Ottomans a decisive and calamitous advantage over Russian naval forces, wailed the Tsar’s Naval Minister in 1914, and result in a ‘crushing, near six-fold superiority’ over the Russian Black Sea fleet.89
The threat this posed was not just military but economic. More than a third of all Russian exports passed through the Dardanelles before the First World War, including nearly 90 per cent of cereals that were loaded at ports like Odessa and Sevastopol in the Crimea. As such, pleas to London to block, suspend or cancel the delivery of warships became an unhelpful trigger in a game of bluff and double-bluff between the great powers on the eve of war.90 Some were in no doubt about how high the stakes were. ‘Our entire position in the Near East’ is at risk, the Russian ambassador to Constantinople told St Petersburg; ‘the unassailable right which we have acquired through centuries of immeasurable sacrifices and the shedding of Russian blood’ was in serious danger.91
In this context, Italy’s attack on Libya in 1911 and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 that followed simply set off a chain reaction, as the Ottoman Empire’s outlying provinces were picked off by opportunistic local and international rivals at moments of weakness. With the Ottoman regime teetering on the brink of collapse, ambitions and rivalries in Europe sharpened dramatically. For their part, the Germans began to think seriously about expanding into the east and establishing a protectorate to create a ‘German Orient’.92 While this sounded like expansionism, there was an important defensive streak to such thought too which chimed with growing aggressive sentiments that ran deep through the German High Command.93 Germany, like Britain, was coming to expect the worst; and in the Germans’ case, that meant stopping the Russians from taking control of the best parts of an Ottoman Empire that was widely thought to be rotting, while for the Russians it meant realising long-held dreams and securing a long-term future whose significance could not be overstated.
That Britain represented a threat to Germany – and vice versa – was, however, something of a red herring. Although modern historians talk insistently about the desire of the former to contain the latter, the jigsaw of competition across Europe was complex and multi-faceted. Certainly, it was far more complex than the simplistic story of a great rivalry between two nations that only burst into life as the First World War took shape and played out. By 1918, the real causes of the conflict had become obscured, as a distorting emphasis was placed on the naval race that saw expenditure on shipbuilding spiral upwards; on aggressive attitudes behind the scenes demanding war; and on the blind bloodlust of the Kaiser and his generals as they sought to provoke a war in continental Europe.
The reality of the story was very different. Although the days that followed the assassination of Franz Ferdinand saw a series of misunderstandings, discussions, ultimata and permutations that would be all but impossible to recreate, the seeds of war grew out of changes and developments located many thousands of miles away. Russia’s rising ambition and the progress it was making in Persia, Central Asia and the Far East put pressure on Britain’s position overseas, resulting in the fossilisation of alliances in Europe. All that stood in the way of further erosion of the enviable platform that Britain had built over the previous centuries was a series of mutual guarantees designed above all to keep Russia, the master-in-waiting, tied up.
Nevertheless, while storm clouds had been gathering, there seemed little immediate danger in the first months of 1914. ‘I have not seen such calm waters’, wrote Arthur Nicolson in May, ‘since I have been at the Foreign Office.’94 Indeed, it promised to be a vintage year. Employees at the Ford Motor Co. in the United States were celebrating the doubling of their wages in January, the result of rising sales and innovative attempts to encourage an increase in production. Doctors were contemplating the consequences of the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, carried out in Brussels following pioneering work on the use of sodium citrate as an anticoagulant. In St Petersburg, what kept most people worried in the early summer were the forest fires whose thick black smoke made the heavy summer air even more oppressive than usual. In Germany, inhabitants of Fürth in northern Bavaria were in ecstasy after the town’s team won a thrilling match against the mighty VfB Leipzig, defeating the odds by scoring a winning goal in extra time to become national football champions for the first time – making a hero of their coach, the Englishman William Townley. Even nature was being kind, according to the English poet Alice Meynell: the start of the summer of 1914 was idyllic, with a bumper harvest to look forward to; moon after moon was ‘heavenly sweet’ as ‘the silken harvest climbed the down’.95
In Britain, there was no sense of impending doom nor of imminent confrontation with Germany. The academics of Oxford University were preparing to celebrate German culture and intellect. There was already a large portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II hanging in the Examination Schools that had been given as a gift following the German ruler’s award of an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law in 1907.96 But towards the end of June 1914, scarcely a month before the outbreak of hostilities, the leading lights of the city gathered to watch a procession of distinguished German figures receive honorary degrees. Among those applauded as they walked to the Sheldonian Theatre in their colourful gowns were the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the composer Richard Strauss, and Ludwig Mitteis, a rather pedestrian expert on Roman law, while honorary doctorates were conferred on the Duke of Württemberg and Prince Lichnowsky, German ambassador to London.97
Three days later Gavrilo Princip, a young idealist who was not yet twenty, discharged two bullets from a pistol at a passing car on the streets of Sarajevo. The first did not hit its target, instead striking in the stomach and mortally wounding the Archduchess Sophie, who was sitting in the back of the car with her husband. The second did: it killed Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And with that, the world changed.98
Modern historians often focus on the ‘July crisis’ of the weeks that followed and on the missed opportunities for peace, or on the way many had long feared and anticipated the outbreak of hostilities: recent scholarship has emphasised that the atmosphere as the world slipped towards war was one not of gung-ho bravado but of anxiety and misunderstanding. It was a nightmare scenario. As one leading historian has so aptly put it, ‘the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror’ they were about to unleash.99 By the time Sir Edward Grey realised that ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe’, it was already too late.100
In the days after the assassination, it was fear of Russia that led to war. In Germany’s case, it was the widespread apprehension about its neighbour to the east that was crucial. The Kaiser was repeatedly told by his generals that the threat posed by Russia would get stronger as its economy continued to surge forward.101 This was echoed in St Petersburg, where senior officials had formed the view that war was inevitable and that it was better for military confrontation to begin sooner rather than later.102 The French too were anxious, having concluded long before that the best course they could take was to urge constant and consistent moderation in St Peters
burg, as well as in London. They would support Russia come what may.103
In Britain’s case, it was the fear of what would happen if Russia cast its lot elsewhere that drove policy. As it was, by the start of 1914 there was already talk at the Foreign Office of realigning Britain with Germany in order to bring Russia in check.104 With stand-off turning into crisis, diplomats, generals and politicians now tried to work out what would happen next. By the end of July, the diplomat George Clerk was writing anxiously from Constantinople to advise that Britain needed to do whatever was necessary to accommodate Russia. Otherwise, he said, we would be faced with consequences ‘where our very existence as an Empire will be at stake’.105
Although some tried to pour cold water on such alarmist claims, the British ambassador to St Petersburg, who had only recently cautioned that Russia was so powerful ‘that we must retain her friendship at almost any cost’, now sent a telegram that was unequivocal.106 Britain’s position, he said, was ‘a perilous one’, for the moment of truth had arrived: the choice now had to be made between supporting Russia ‘or renouncing her friendship. If we fail her now’, he advised, ‘that friendly co-operation with her in Asia that is of such vital importance to us’ would come to an end.107
There was no middle ground, as the Russian Foreign Minister made clear towards the end of July: while less than two weeks earlier he had been pledging that Russia ‘was free from all aggressive aims and in no way dreaming of any forcible acquisitions’, now he was talking about the consequences if allies failed to stand side by side at the moment of reckoning. If Britain remained neutral now, he warned, it ‘would be tantamount to suicide’.108 This was a thinly veiled threat about British interests in Persia, if not in Asia as a whole.
As the ‘July crisis’ escalated, British officials talked publicly about peace conferences, mediation and the defence of the sovereignty of Belgium. But the die was cast. Britain’s fate – and that of its empire – was pinned on the decisions that were made in Russia. The two were rivals masquerading as allies; while neither was seeking to alienate and antagonise the other, it was obvious that the pendulum of power had swung away from London towards St Petersburg. No one knew this better than the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, a well-connected career politician, who had been having sleepless nights for some time, praying for divine protection. Now, as he sat ‘on the terrace under a starry sky’ ten days after the Sarajevo assassination, as the gears of war slowly locked into place, he turned to his secretary and said: ‘the future belongs to Russia’.109
Just what this future involved was not clear in 1914. Russia’s strength could easily flatter to deceive, for it was still in the early phases of social, economic and political metamorphosis. A scare in 1905 had almost plunged the country into full-scale revolution as demands for reform were largely ignored by a deeply conservative establishment. Then there was the heavy dependence on foreign capital, where outside funding was responsible for almost half of all new capital investments between 1890 and 1914 – money that came in on the assumption of peace and of stable political conditions.110
Large-scale transformation took time, and was rarely painless. Had Russia stayed calm and chosen a less confrontational way to stand by its Serbian ally, its destiny – and with it that of Europe and Asia, if not North America too – would have been very different. As it was, 1914 brought the showdown that Queen Victoria had anticipated decades earlier: everything, she had said, boiled down to ‘a question of Russian or British supremacy in the world’.111 Britain could not afford to let Russia down.
And so, like a nightmarish game of chess where all possible moves are bad ones, the world went to war. As the initial euphoria and jingoism gave way to tragedy and horror on an unimaginable scale, a narrative developed that reshaped the past, and cast the confrontation in terms of a struggle between Germany and the Allies, a debate which has centred on the relative culpability of the former and the heroism of the latter.
The story that became embedded in public consciousness was that of German aggression and of the just war fought by the Allies. Explanations were needed for why a generation of bright young men with their futures ahead of them had been cast aside. Answers were needed to explain the sacrifice of brilliant figures like Patrick Shaw Stewart, a scholar whose superlative achievements at school, at university and in business had astonished his contemporaries as well as his correspondent, Lady Diana Manners, to whom he sent letters rich with erotic quotations in Latin and Greek.112 Or to explain why working-class men who joined up alongside their friends to fight in specially constituted Pals Battalions were mown down in the opening hours of the catastrophic Somme offensive in 1916.113 Or why there were war memorials across the country bearing the names of the men who had given their lives for their country – able to record the names of the fallen but not the silence that descended on villages and towns because of their absence.
It was not surprising, therefore, that a powerful narrative emerged that glorified the soldiers, celebrated their bravery and paid tribute to the sacrifices they had made. Winston Churchill wrote after the war that the British army was the finest force that had ever been assembled. Each man was ‘inspired not only by love of country but by a widespread conviction that human freedom was challenged by military and Imperial tyranny’. The fight had been noble and just. ‘If two lives or ten lives were required by their commanders to kill one German, no word of complaint ever rose from the fighting troops . . . No slaughter however desolating prevented them from returning to the charge,’ declared Churchill. The fallen were ‘martyrs not less than soldiers [and] fulfilled the high purpose of duty with which they were imbued’.114
Many at the time, however, did not see it this way. Some, like Edwin Campion Vaughan, a young lieutenant who had enlisted full of hope, could not understand the scale of suffering or its purpose. After seeing his company wiped out and facing the prospect of writing a casualty report, Campion Vaughan recorded, ‘I sat on the floor and drank whisky after whisky as I gazed into a black and empty future.’115 The stunning corpus of poetry produced during the war likewise paints a very different picture of how the conflict was viewed at the time. And so too do the number of court martials that took place during the war, which hardly suggest a unanimity of resolve: more than 300,000 offences were dealt with by military courts – to say nothing of more minor matters of indiscipline that were dealt with in other ways.116
It was striking too that the locus of the conflict became anchored in the trenches of Flanders and among the horrors of the Somme. War had broken out far away from the networks that linked the empires of Europe with territories across the globe, away from the pressure points that had built up in Persia and in Central Asia and at the gateways to both India and the Far East which were of such great concern to British policymakers and politicians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And yet the impending confrontation had been coming for decades. Britain looked on as Russia strained to show its support for Serbia, just as Grey had predicted. ‘A strong Slav feeling has arisen in Russia,’ he noted only a few years earlier, referring to the increasing call in the Balkans for Russia to play a greater role in the region as a protector of Slavic identity. ‘Bloodshed between Austria and Servia [sic] would certainly raise this to a dangerous height.’117 Here was the tinder that could set the world on fire.
In the circumstances, therefore, as Russia began to prepare to make a statement to the rest of the world, Britain had to stand full square behind its ally and rival – even if many found this confusing. When war broke out, Rupert Brooke – soon to find fame as a war poet – could barely contain his anger. ‘Everything’s just the wrong way round,’ he wrote. ‘I want Germany to smash Russia to fragments, and then France to break Germany . . . Russia means the end of Europe and of any decency.’118 He had no doubts who Britain’s real enemy was.
Conversely, the start of hostilities in turn meant sharpening animosities towards Germany – not only in 1914, but in t
he way that the war unfolded and when peace was settled four gruesome years later. The ‘hoary colleges of Oxford look down / On careless boys at play,’ wrote one war poet, ‘but when the bugles sounded – War! / They put their games away.’ The ‘shaven lawns’ of the university were given up in exchange for ‘a bloody sod’: ‘They gave their merry youth away / For country and for God.’119 The celebration of British ties with Germany and the honorary degrees given to its most famous sons quickly became a bitter memory that was best forgotten.
It was not surprising then that blame for the war should be affixed squarely on Germany, both in principle and in fact. Enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was a clause that was categorical in assigning blame for the war: ‘The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.’120 The aim was to lay the grounds for redress and reparations to be paid; instead, it all but guaranteed a reaction – providing fertile ground to be exploited by a skilled demagogue who could unite national sentiment around the core of a strong Germany rising from the ashes.
The victors were such in name and in hope only. Over the course of four years, Britain went from being the world’s largest creditor to being its largest debtor; France’s economy was left in ruins after funding a war effort that put immense strains on the workforce and the country’s financial and natural resources. In the words of one scholar, Russia meanwhile ‘entered the war to protect the empire [but] concluded with imperial destruction’.121
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