The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  When they envisaged the wars of the future, Europe’s military thought in terms of decisive battles to annihilate the enemy forces and they found comfort in past victories. ‘The officer corps had formed its ideas through the study of the wars of Napoleon and Moltke’, said Groener of his fellow staff officers in the German army, ‘a rapid flowing of the army over enemy territory; the war’s decision in a few, mighty strokes; a peace in which a defenceless enemy is forced to accept the conditions of the victor without demur.’43 In Germany, too, the memories of the great victory at Sedan in 1870 were still fresh and they came to haunt the officer corps just as memories of the victory at the Tsushima Strait cast its shadow over Japanese naval thinking before and during the Second World War. Victories should not be partial ones which led to negotiation; they should be so decisive that the enemy was finished and accepted whatever peace terms were offered. At the level of tactics, the military planners continued to see cavalry in the same critical role that it had played for Napoleon when he threw it into the attack as the enemy infantry lines were wavering. The war in South Africa had underscored another use, as mounted firepower to manoeuvre round the enemy flanks, but the cavalry in European armies themselves resisted being used, as it was said, like American roughriders. ‘It must be accepted as a principle’, said the 1907 British cavalry manual, ‘that the rifle, effective as it is, cannot replace the effect produced by the speed of the horse, the magnetism of the charge, and the terror of cold steel.’44 There was talk too of breeding stronger and faster horses to gallop quicker across the fire zone.

  Attack, battles, a war itself, all were to be fast and, crucially, short. ‘The first great battle’, an officer told the French parliament in 1912, ‘will decide the whole war, and wars will be short. The idea of offense must penetrate the spirit of our nation.’45 Talk such as this was whistling in the dark; European leaders, both civilian and military, knew that future wars could be long. It was now possible to keep their armies in the field for much longer than in the past when the impossibility of bringing up sufficient supplies indefinitely and the ravages of disease when large numbers of men were in camp had set natural limits to the length of campaigns. The European planners of the late nineteenth century feared long wars of attrition and they doubted the abilities of their own societies to endure them.

  Some also suspected that war was escaping from their control and that it was increasingly difficult to bring it to a conclusion. Armies could win clear victories as Prussia and its allies had done at Sedan but the peoples might not accept the verdict. After Sedan the French people had mobilised themselves and fought on. In 1883, the great German military theorist Colmar von der Goltz published his influential work The Nation in Arms in which he analysed the new phenomenon of war between whole peoples and warned that it might take a long time and unacceptably high costs for one side to defeat the other. ‘Only when, after the greatest of exertions on both sides, a crisis supervenes, followed on one side by inevitable exhaustion, [do] events begin to move more rapidly.’46 A few years later, the elder Moltke gave his famous warning in the Reichstag about the age of Cabinet wars being over and the new age of the wars of peoples starting. Conservatives had particular reason to fear the results of war, whether economic bankruptcy, social unrest, or revolution. Shortly before the outbreak of the Great War, a leading Russian conservative, P. N. Durnovo, in a famous memorandum warned that war for Russia would almost certainly lead to its defeat and, inevitably, revolution.

  In Austria-Hungary, two years earlier, Blasius Schemua, who was briefly chief of the general staff, had made similar arguments to his own government: people did not properly understand what war would bring.47 Yet Schemua, unlike Durnovo, did not go on to urge his government to avoid war if at all possible. Rather, like his predecessor (and successor) Conrad, he argued for a more aggressive foreign policy and accepted with a mix of resignation and hope that war might come as a result. Perhaps the people of Austria-Hungary would recognise that crass materialism did not fulfil their spiritual needs; with the right leadership a new, more heroic age could dawn.48 In Germany, many, perhaps a majority, of Germany’s military leaders before 1914 doubted that a short decisive war was possible yet they continued to plan for such a war because they could see no alternative. In a war of stalemate and attrition Germany might well lose and they, as a group, fall from their pedestal within German society.49 The striking absence of serious planning before 1914 for a long war, whether stockpiling materials or drawing up measures to manage the economy, is clear evidence that civilian and military leaders in Europe simply did not want to confront that nightmare of defeat and social upheaval.50 At best they hoped that even a stalemated war of attrition would not last that long; on this the military across Europe agreed with Bloch, that the resources would run out and the war effort collapse. Like losing gamblers who saw no way out except to put everything on a throw of the dice or a spin of the roulette wheel, too many of Europe’s military planners, like the Germans, suppressed their own doubts and put their faith in a short decisive war which would settle things one way or the other. Victory might produce a better, more united society; if they lost, they had been doomed already.51 In 1909 a diplomat from Austria-Hungary fell into conversation with a Russian general at the St Petersburg Yacht Club. The Russian was looking forward to a good war between their two countries. ‘We need prestige’, he told the Austrian, ‘to strengthen tsarism, which deserves a great victory like every regime.’ When the two encountered each other again in the 1920s it was in the newly independent state of Hungary and the Russian was a refugee.52

  If there were few such as Conrad among Europe’s leaders before 1914 who wished for war, the great majority accepted that it was a tool that could be used and hoped it was one that could be controlled. As Europe suffered a series of crises in the decade before 1914 and as the alliances grew tighter, its leaders, and their publics, got used to the idea that war might break out. The members of the Triple Entente – France, Russia, and Great Britain – and Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, came to expect that any conflict between two powers would probably bring in their partners. Within the alliance systems, promises were made, visits were exchanged, and plans were drawn up which created expectations, hard to disappoint in a moment of crisis. A general war, fought at the heart of Europe, was becoming thinkable. The impact of crises helped as much as militarism or nationalism to prepare Europeans psychologically for the Great War.

  For the most part, they believed that they were justifiably defending themselves against forces that would destroy them, whether in Germany against encirclement, Austria-Hungary against Slav nationalism, France against Germany, Russia against its neighbours Germany and Austria-Hungary, or Britain against Germany. The alliance systems and the different alliances within each pledged support only in response to an attack on the partner. And in an age when public opinion and the public’s willingness to support a war mattered, it was the concern of the civilian and military leaders to make sure that their countries were seen as the innocent parties in any outbreak of hostilities.

  Once war came, however, the European powers were prepared to attack in their own defence. Almost every military plan drawn up by European general staffs before 1914 was an offensive one, carrying the war into the enemy’s territory and seeking to achieve a quick and overwhelming victory. That in turn put pressure on the decision-makers during the increasingly frequent international crises to go to war quickly to seize the advantage. Under Germany’s war plan in 1914, it needed to get troops into Luxembourg and Belgium before any declaration of war, and that indeed is what happened.53 And the plans themselves contributed to the international tensions by bringing armed forces closer to war readiness and encouraging an arms race. What may seem like a reasonable way of protecting oneself can look very different from the other side of the border.

  CHAPTER 12

  Making the Plans

  Germany’s war plan, the most controversial to this day,
was locked in an iron safe to which the chief of staff held the key, and only a small circle knew its strategic goals. After the Great War, as its contents gradually became known, the plan was the subject of much debate and has remained so ever since. Does it show that Germany wanted the Great War? That Germany’s leaders were determined to dominate Europe? Is it the evidence needed to support the infamous clause in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 which made Germany take responsibility for the war? Or does the Schlieffen Plan merely demonstrate that Germany, like all the other powers, was making military plans for eventualities that might never arise? That it was a plan made out of weakness and not strength, defensive in its intent against the aggressive encirclement of the Triple Entente? Such questions cannot be fully answered without knowing what the German general staff were thinking before 1914 but that will remain forever a matter of debate and speculation since the military archive in Potsdam was first partially looted by the Russians (some of those records have been returned since the end of the Cold War) and then destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945.

  The answer to the questions about the Schlieffen Plan probably lies somewhere in between the different poles. Germany did feel itself to be outnumbered by its potential enemies, with the odds getting worse as time went by, yet its leaders too often thought in terms of a military solution instead of exploring the alternatives to war. By 1912 the British had effectively won the naval race and there was an opportunity, indeed one which would be explored by both sides, to re-establish relations between Britain and Germany on a more friendly footing. Russia did not want a war if it could avoid one and was taking steps to lower tensions with Austria-Hungary. Hugo Stinnes was right when he said before the Great War that in a few years Germany would be the economic master of Europe. And with that economic dominance would come German cultural and political power. That has happened in the twenty-first century but only after the terrible detours of two world wars.

  12. Fears of each other played a big part in the calculations of the European powers before 1914. Germany, despite its economic success, its strong army and its commanding position in the centre of Europe, felt itself to be surrounded by enemies which were waiting to tear it apart, along with its ally Austria-Hungary. Here the Russian bear advances from the east, while France strikes through Alsace and Lorraine while Britain – Perfidious Albion – steps across the Channel.

  The German war plan was the work of many hands over many years and laid out in detail the mobilisation and movements of German forces in the event of war, and it was updated and revised yearly. To this day, however, it bears the name of General Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff between 1891 and 1905, even though it was much modified by his successor the younger Moltke. The Schlieffen Plan, as we will call it for convenience, has produced polemical arguments worthy of the forum in Rome and hair splitting of an order to delight mediaeval scholars, which continue to engage academics today. Between the two world wars, Schlieffen’s defenders argued that his plan was a work of genius finely tuned like a Swiss clock, which would have worked if Moltke, an inferior version of his famous uncle, had not meddled with the works. Had it been allowed to run as it had been designed in the first instance, it would have brought Germany victory in the first months of the war and so averted both the long-drawn-out agony of the Great War and Germany’s humiliating defeat at its end. Yet, as others have rightly pointed out, the plan was a gamble based on unrealistic assumptions, among them that German forces were sufficient to the tasks it imposed and that the command structure and logistics for huge armies on the move were adequate. And perhaps its greatest flaw was that it did not allow for what the great German theorist of war, Clausewitz, called friction and the Americans call Murphy’s Law; no plans on paper ever work as they are meant to once they encounter real conditions, and what can go wrong, will go wrong.

  The man who tried to take such uncertainty out of war and who left his mark on both Germany’s war plan and its general staff, was, like so many of the country’s senior officers, from the Prussian Junker class. Schlieffen’s parents came from two of its very grandest families, with huge estates and a web of family connections which gave them access to the highest political and military circles in Germany. For all their wealth and power, families such as those of Schlieffen lived surprisingly simple lives on clear, straightforward principles. They believed in hierarchy, hard work, frugality and a firm purpose in life, whether as the mother of children or an army officer. His parents and Schlieffen himself were also part of an early nineteenth-century reawakening of Lutheran Protestantism which wedded deep religious faith to a belief that Christ would save human beings if only they would open themselves to his message. Pietists such as the Schlieffens valued duty, comradeship, and a life of faith and good works. They were also deeply conservative, rejecting the scepticism of the Enlightenment and what they saw as the levelling ideas of the French Revolution.1

  Shy and reserved, Schlieffen was an indifferent student and his early military career was undistinguished, although he gained a reputation for being conscientious and hard-working. Although he was in both the 1866 war between Prussia and Austria and the war with France in 1870–71 he saw little active service. One of his younger brothers died in action in 1870 and in 1872 he suffered a further loss when his wife, a first cousin, died shortly after giving birth to their second daughter. In 1875 his professional fortunes improved significantly when he was put in command of his own regiment. He also caught the attention of the elder Moltke who thought him a promising officer who might one day be his successor at the general staff. Since all appointments at the upper levels of the military were made by the Kaiser, it helped that Schlieffen managed to make a favourable impression on the future Wilhelm II and the members of his entourage.2 In 1884 Schlieffen moved to the general staff and in 1891 Wilhelm, who was now Kaiser, appointed him as its head. Schlieffen was always careful to manage that relationship, ensuring, for example, that Wilhelm’s side always won the annual autumn army manoeuvres and that his sudden interventions did not reduce them to a complete shambles.

  When he received news of his appointment, Schlieffen wrote to his sister: ‘A difficult task has been given to me, yet I am imbued with the firm conviction that the Lord … will not forsake me in a situation into which he has placed me without my effort or desire.’3 Like his close friend Holstein in the Foreign Office, he drove himself and his subordinates hard. An aide once received a military problem to work out on Christmas Eve which had to be returned the next day.4 Schlieffen was often at his desk by six in the morning and, after a ride in the great Berlin park, the Tiergarten, worked through the day until his dinner at seven. He would then continue work until ten or eleven in the evening and round out his day at home with an hour of reading military history to his daughters.5 His staff and colleagues found him unfathomable and difficult. He would sit through presentations and discussions in silence but suddenly lob in a question from an unexpected angle. He gave out little praise but was frequently cutting and critical. He would have slept better, he told a young major who had nervously inquired after his well-being, if he had not read the major’s report just before going to bed.6

  Unlike the two Moltkes who preceded and succeeded him, Schlieffen had few interests outside his work. During a staff ride when one of his aides called his attention to the beautiful sight of a river in the distance, Schlieffen merely said ‘an insignificant obstacle’.7 His reading was largely focussed on military history, which he used as a means of discovering the formulas for victory and the ways to minimise, as much as possible, uncertainty in war. His favourite battle was Cannae, when Hannibal defeated the Romans, and a close second, Sedan, where the German confederation encircled the French and forced their surrender in 1870. From his study of history, he drew the conclusion that smaller forces can defeat larger ones if they outmanoeuvre them. ‘Flank attacks are the essence of military history,’ he laid down as infallible dogma.8 He also concluded that only offensive plans could bri
ng victory. ‘The armament of the army has changed’, he wrote in 1893, ‘but the fundamental laws of combat remain the same, and one of those laws is that one cannot defeat the enemy without attacking.’9

  What haunted him was the possibility of Germany finding itself in a war of attrition which left both sides exhausted and neither the victor. In an article he wrote after his retirement, he painted a grim picture of the country’s economy collapsing, its industries unable to carry on and its banks failing, and its population reeling under privations. Then, he warned, ‘the red ghost that lurks in the background’ would destroy Germany’s existing order. Although, as the years went by, Schlieffen grew increasingly pessimistic about Germany’s chances in the next war, he set himself doggedly to working out a plan that could bring a quick and decisive victory. From his perspective there was no alternative. To rule out war was not only cowardly; the Germany he knew and wanted to protect was already under threat and a prolonged period of peace where its enemies, socialists and liberals, grew in power would destroy it as much as a war of attrition. Schlieffen went forward towards war because he could see no alternative.10

  The problem confronting him was that the alliance between France and Russia which was developing throughout the 1890s presented Germany with the nightmare possibility of a war on two fronts. Germany could not afford to divide its forces to fight all-out wars on both of those fronts so it would have to engage in a holding action on one side while it struck hard on the other to gain a quick victory. ‘Germany must strive, therefore’, he wrote, ‘first, to strike down one of these allies while the other is kept occupied; but then when the one antagonist is conquered, it must, by exploiting its railroads, bring a superiority of numbers to the other theatre of war, which will also destroy the other enemy.’11 While he initially thought of striking first at Russia, Schlieffen had changed his mind by the turn of the century: Russia was strengthening its forts to give it a strong defensive line running north to south through its Polish territories and building railways which would make it easier to bring up reinforcements. Any German attack ran the risk of getting bogged down in sieges and then a long-drawn-out campaign as the Russians retreated into their vast interior. It made sense, therefore, for Germany to stay on the defensive in the east and deal with Russia’s ally France first.