Joffre’s plan, the infamous XVII, was approved by the government at the start of May 1913 and the details were worked out and distributed to the army a year later. He moved still more of the French forces northwards to the Belgian border and positioned them so that they could deal with a German attack coming from eastern Belgium, Luxembourg or northern Lorraine. The plan, he said firmly in his memoirs, was to get the troops into their concentration positions, not a plan for making war. He gave each army commander alternatives for their operations against the Germans but otherwise gave no indication about what he was thinking beyond saying that he intended to attack somewhere in the north-east once all the French forces were in their assigned places. In August 1913, at a meeting with the Russians, he promised that France would start its offensive operations against Germany on the morning of the eleventh day after mobilisation.126 If he ever contemplated a defensive strategy on France’s frontiers, he did not share those thoughts at any point before 1914.
Army manoeuvres in 1912 and 1913 showed significant problems in co-ordination and command. As Joffre said in his postwar memoirs: ‘Many of our generals proved themselves incapable of adapting to the conditions of modern war.’127 The French army also was seriously behind the other European powers, and in particular Germany, in heavy field artillery. This was the consequence of years of poor planning, lack of resources and disagreements among the soldiers themselves over how the big field guns should be used, whether to soften up the enemy before the attack or in support of the waves of attacking soldiers. Perhaps making the best of a bad job, the French army inclined towards the latter. The advocates of the offensive also argued that the battles of the future were going to be so fast moving that heavy artillery, which was cumbersome to move, would not be able to keep up and that therefore it was better to rely on light field artillery, where France was strong, and use the heavier artillery where possible to support the troops as they attacked.128 Joffre allowed nothing to shake his conviction that French forces must attack.
In the last years of the peace, France experienced a surge of confidence and, at least in Paris, a marked display of nationalism. Its army under Joffre had been given a new sense of purpose. Over in the east its great ally Russia appeared to have recovered from its setbacks in the war with Japan and the subsequent near revolution and was modernising fast. ‘Belief in the power’, said Messimy, ‘and above all the wealth of soldiers in the numberless Russian army was well established in 1914 in our opinion, whether the army headquarters or the general public.’129
The war plans of all the major continental powers reflected a deeply rooted faith in the offensive and an unwillingness to contemplate the alternative of a defensive strategy. Joffre’s plan, for all its vagueness, at least had the merit of flexibility. In the case of both Germany and Russia, their plans determined that they would open fronts against two enemies at once and their military had not provided the option of fighting one or the other. Nor had their politicians seen fit either to inform themselves of the contents of their military plans or to insist on providing direction. The war plans of the continental powers by 1914 were dangerously like hair triggers which only a slight disturbance could set off. While the military and their plans did not by themselves cause the Great War, their infatuation with the offensive and their acceptance of war as both necessary and inevitable made them put pressure on those making the decisions in moments of crisis. The military advice almost invariably tended towards war. Moreover, the lack of communication between the different sets of leaders meant that the military drew up plans which turned out to limit, sometimes in dangerous ways, the choices before the decision-makers.
The series of crises which occurred between 1905 and 1913 not only fuelled the arms race and the preparation of military plans and arrangements; they served to tighten the ties that bound each of the two loose alliances together and to deepen the gulf between them. By the summer of 1914, more promises had been made and obligations and expectations were heavier. In the minds of decision-makers and, often, their publics, the memories and apparent lessons left by the crises also became part of their thinking in that fatal summer and their weapons were to hand to deal with those who had wronged them in the past.
CHAPTER 13
The Crises Start: Germany, France and Morocco
In the early spring of 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm was on one of his frequent cruises, this time southwards down the Atlantic coast on a German steamer, the Hamburg. He had contemplated visiting Morocco’s Atlantic port of Tangier before he steamed on into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar so that his guests could get a taste of the Muslim world but had thought better of it. The Hamburg was too big to go into the harbour and, if the seas were rough, it would be difficult to get into smaller boats for the trip to shore. Tangier itself was said to be full of anarchist refugees from Europe. Furthermore, at a time when the status of Morocco was becoming an international issue, he did not want to do anything of a political nature. His government, however, had other ideas. Bülow, the Chancellor, and his close adviser in the Foreign Office, Holstein, felt that the time had come for Germany to show that France could not have Morocco all to itself. The representative of the Foreign Office on board was under strict instructions to get the Kaiser on shore. Bülow sent a flurry of encouraging telegrams from Berlin and planted stories of the planned visit in the German papers to make it difficult for the Kaiser to back down.1
When the Hamburg anchored off Tangier on the morning of 31 March, a stiff wind was blowing from the east. A local German representative clambered aboard in full cavalry uniform, including spurs, as did the commanding officer of the French cruisers which were anchored nearby. The wind dropped slightly and the Kaiser sent the chief of his bodyguard ashore to assess the situation. When he heard that the landing was not too difficult and that there was a huge and excited crowd waiting, Wilhelm finally agreed to make his visit. As he landed he was received by the sultan’s uncle and representatives of the small German colony in Tangier and a white Arabian was led up for his ride through the town’s narrow streets to the German legation. The horse shied at the sight of Wilhelm’s helmet and he had trouble mounting and staying on. As the Kaiser and his party rode between ranks of Moroccan soldiers, hundreds of flags waved in the breeze, women ululated and showered them with flowers from the rooftops while wildly excited tribesmen fired guns in all directions.2
At the German legation the small diplomatic corps and local dignitaries, including, the Germans were later dismayed to learn, the great bandit El Raisuli, waited to greet the Kaiser. Although Bülow had repeatedly advised to him to stick to polite formalities, Wilhelm got carried away in the excitement of the moment. To Kaid Maclean, the former British soldier who was the sultan’s trusted adviser, he said, ‘I do not acknowledge any agreement that has been come to. I come here as one Sovereign [sic] paying a visit to another perfectly independent sovereign. You can tell [the] Sultan this.’3 Bülow had also advised his master not to say anything at all to the French representative in Tangier, but Wilhelm was unable to resist reiterating to the Frenchman that Morocco was an independent country and that, furthermore, he expected France to recognise Germany’s legitimate interests there. ‘When the Minister tried to argue with me’, the Kaiser told Bülow, ‘I said “Good morning” and left him standing.’ Wilhelm did not stay for the lavish banquet which the Moroccans had prepared for him but before he set off on his return ride to the shore, he found time to advise the sultan’s uncle that Morocco should make sure that its reforms were in accordance with the Koran. (The Kaiser, ever since his trip to the Middle East in 1898, had seen himself as the protector of all Muslims.) The Hamburg sailed on to Gibraltar, where one of its escort ships accidentally managed to ram a British cruiser.4
13. The powers appear to be sitting peacefully around a hubble-bubble pipe which represents the conference at Algeciras to settle the first crisis over Morocco in 1905–06. In fact, they have guns to hand and bowls of explosives. The rivals Fra
nce and Germany are beside each other while Britain represented by John Bull looks warily at Germany which it suspected, with reason, of trying to destroy the new British friendship with France. Spain and Italy who both want their own colonies in North Africa are waiting and Uncle Sam looks disapproving.
Back in Berlin, Holstein collapsed under the strain of waiting to see if the visit would go off. A few days later he wrote to a cousin: ‘There will be moments of tension before the business is over.’5 That was an understatement. In the first place the Kaiser’s visit to Tangier represented a German challenge to France’s ambitions in Morocco. At the very least, Germany wanted an Open Door policy in Morocco or, if it could not get equal access there for its businesses, compensation in the form of colonies elsewhere, perhaps in Africa. The Kaiser’s visit was about much more than the fate of Morocco, though: Germany was trying to regain the position it had enjoyed under Bismarck as the power at the centre of Europe’s international affairs. Bülow and Holstein wanted to ensure that no major international agreement, whether a colonial one or one affecting Europe itself, could take place without Germany’s involvement and approval. They saw a chance as well to destroy the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France and perhaps even the alliance between France and Russia and so break out of what they saw as Germany’s encirclement in Europe. The Tangier visit therefore set off a major international crisis with talk of war between Germany and France, joined, quite possibly, by Britain. Public opinion became inflamed in all three countries which in turn limited the leeway of the decision-makers for manoeuvring. Although the Moroccan issue was eventually settled in 1906 by an international conference at Algeciras, it left in its wake a dangerous residue of mistrust and resentment among both the publics of the nations involved as well as their leaders. ‘A generation ago’, reported Britain’s representative in Munich in 1907, ‘the German public took but little interest in general foreign affairs … Things have changed since then.’6
From the point of view of the Germans, the spring of 1905 was as good a time as any to seize the initiative internationally. The Entente between Britain and France was very new – it had only been signed the previous April – and had not yet been tested. Russia had been embroiled in the war with Japan since the start of 1904 and was in no position to come to the aid of its ally France. Moreover, the Dogger Bank incident of the previous October had shown how easily Russia and Britain might find themselves at war. The United States might be friendly and surely would support the same sort of Open Door policy in Morocco as it had proposed in China. The Kaiser had temporarily forgotten about the Yellow Peril and was now envisaging a future German–Japanese– American alliance straddling the world. Roosevelt, however, made it amply clear that China was one thing, Morocco another; he was not prepared to explain to his citizens why an Open Door policy in Morocco, which most of them had never heard of, was an American interest.7 Shortly after the Kaiser’s visit to Tangier he told the German ambassador in Washington: ‘I dislike taking a position on any matter like this unless I fully intend to back it up; and our interests in Morocco are not sufficiently great to make me feel justified in entangling our Government in this matter.’8 This was not the only instance of the German leadership getting things wrong during the first Morocco crisis.
Holstein, who took a harder line than either Bülow or the Kaiser, was convinced that he could use the crisis to put relations between France and Germany on a footing satisfactory to his country. The British had obligingly demonstrated at Fashoda that the French would respond to firmness; France had backed down and later come looking to its old enemy for friendship. He hoped to show the French, however, that they could not count on the British. ‘The French will only come closer to the idea of rapprochement with Germany’, he wrote during the later stages of the Morocco crisis, ‘when they have seen that English friendship … is not enough to gain Germany’s agreement to the French seizure of Morocco, but rather that Germany wishes to be loved on its own account.’9 France could be then made to renounce publicly all hopes of regaining Alsace and Lorraine and recognise that the Treaty of Frankfurt, which had ended the Franco-Prussian War, was permanent. Bringing France to heel would have a salutary effect on Italy as well; it had been showing disturbing signs of friendship with France.10
A test of strength with Britain was also overdue. The year before Germany had given Britain notice that it wanted to negotiate on all outstanding colonial issues but the British would only agree to discuss Egypt where Germany had some rights as one of Egypt’s many international lenders. If the Entente between Britain and France were broken, Holstein believed that an isolated Britain would be more amenable. Moreover, Holstein noted in the summer of 1904, Germany could not afford to appear weak: ‘If we submit to this brusque rejection of our legitimate demands on the part of England, then we can be certain that every demand made by Germany, or at least by the present German government, no matter where or to whom, will be rejected with similar nonchalance in the foreseeable future. The significance of the German–English negotiations goes far beyond the present case.’ He made the same argument over Morocco: ‘Not only for material reasons, but even more to preserve her prestige, Germany must oppose the intended annexation of Morocco.’11
In his more optimistic moments, Holstein dreamed of a complete reshuffling of the key players on the international scene. Those in both France and Britain who thought the Entente Cordiale a mistake would attack it at the first sign of trouble. France, Holstein confidently hoped, would cave in and leave Britain and become Germany’s ally. Russia would then have little alternative but to follow suit; Germany had offered it a treaty, unsuccessfully, in 1904, but the time would come again. In the meantime the Kaiser appeared to have a good relationship with his cousin, the tsar, to whom he was sending helpful letters on how to conduct the war with Japan. In the long run, Europe might see a Triple Alliance of Germany, France and Russia which would isolate Britain much as France had been isolated after the Franco-Prussian War.
The situation in Morocco itself cried out for international involvement. The young sultan still did not have control of large parts of the country and foreign nationals, including Germans, repeatedly called out for reforms to bring law and order. In May 1904 El Raisuli had brazenly kidnapped a rich American businessman, Ion Perdicaris, and his stepson from their luxurious villa just outside Tangier and carried them off on horseback into the interior. Roosevelt promptly dispatched a part of the American navy which happened to be cruising in the South Atlantic to Morocco’s Atlantic coast and demanded the release of the two men, a position he kept to even as evidence emerged that Perdicaris might no longer be an American citizen. The Republican Party convention in Chicago that summer gave Roosevelt a rousing cheer for his message to the sultan: ‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’12 A thinner and sunburned Perdicaris appeared, along with his stepson, after a large ransom had been paid. In December that year the sultan, concerned that international interest was putting his country’s independence in jeopardy, suddenly ordered all foreign military missions to leave. Although the French forced him to cancel the order and agree to receive a French mission in his capital, Fez, the state and future of Morocco were now a matter of international discussion. In any case, as people now recalled, under an agreement signed at Madrid in 1880 by all the major European countries as well as the United States, the powers had equal rights in such areas as trade in Morocco.
The French had not helped their own case by ignoring this in a high-handed manner, especially where Germany was concerned. In June 1904, for example, they had made a loan to Morocco and arranged special preference for themselves on future ones. That autumn France signed an agreement with Spain to divide Morocco into spheres of influence without informing or consulting Germany. Delcassé, the powerful French Foreign Minister, who was worried that part of the motive behind the German naval build-up was to challenge France for power in the Mediterranean and North Africa, was adamant about not negotiating with Germa
ny over Morocco. One adviser, who had urged him in vain to talk to the Germans, complained that Delcassé simply called the Germans ‘swindlers’: ‘But, in heaven’s name, I’m not asking him for an exchange of romantic words or lovers’ rings but for a business discussion!’13 The French ambassador in Berlin sent repeated warnings back to Paris that France was playing with fire in Morocco and that Germany was becoming seriously annoyed. When the French mission arrived in Fez in January 1905 to press the sultan for concessions that would give France much greater power in his country, the Germans encouraged him to resist.14
In order to further what he saw as Germany’s interests, Holstein was prepared to risk war although his preference was to avoid it. (Apart from anything else, at the outbreak of hostilities Wilhelm would assume military command which, said Holstein, ‘since he is entirely incapable militarily, must lead to horrible catastrophes’.15) Again the timing was good from Germany’s point of view: the French army was still badly demoralised after the Dreyfus affair; Russia was at war in the east; and the British army was recovering from the Boer War and in any case small. As for the British navy, as the German joke went, it had no wheels and so could not help in a quick land war.
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