The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  The Bosnian crisis strengthened the Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary. It worsened, however, the relations between Austria-Hungary and Italy, the third partner in the Triple Alliance which had been all too well aware of the Dual Monarchy’s preparations for war against it. In the autumn of 1909 the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, received the tsar and Izvolsky at Racconigi, his royal hunting lodge in the north-eastern corner of Italy. The Russian party ostentatiously took a roundabout route through Germany to avoid setting foot on the soil of Austria-Hungary. Italy also upped its defence spending, setting off a dreadnought race in the Adriatic with Austria-Hungary and strengthening its fortifications and forces along their common land borders. For its part Austria-Hungary, which had other enemies to worry about besides Italy, also increased its spending sharply – by more than 70 per cent between 1907 and 1912 – during and after the crisis.105

  While the crisis also caused strains in the Triple Entente, it did not seriously damage it. Indeed, France, Britain and Russia became further accustomed to consulting each other on international issues. The French Foreign Minister, Stephen Pichon, issued instructions to his ambassadors to work with France’s two partners as a matter of general principle.106 Although Britain continued to insist on its freedom of action, it had shown during this crisis that it would stand by Russia just as it had shown France, and the world, in the Morocco one. Only Italy kept a certain distance from its partners in the Triple Alliance and maintained good relations with the Triple Entente. Increasingly the other powers felt that they had little choice but to stay where they were, whether it was Austria-Hungary and Germany needing each other or Russia and France. And as the earlier crisis over Morocco had led the British to start serious military talks with the French, this one set the Conrad–Moltke discussions in train.

  In the Balkans themselves, the ending of the crisis did not bring either stability or peace. Ottoman Turkey was left, if possible, even more resentful of outside meddling in its affairs. Bulgaria was only temporarily appeased by its independence; it still dreamed of the greater Bulgaria that had been set up briefly in 1878 and looked longingly at the Macedonian territories. And the Sanjak, which Aehrenthal had abandoned in a gesture of goodwill towards the Ottoman Empire, remained a temptation for both Serbia and Montenegro to seize if the Ottomans, as was more than likely, weakened still further. Serbia had been obliged to submit to Austria-Hungary but it had no intention of keeping its promises. It surreptitiously funnelled support to a Greater Serbia movement and set about improving its army. Thanks to generous French loans, it was able to set up its own armaments factories and also buy weapons from France (the British were largely cut out of the market by their entente partner).107 Serbia’s relations with Austria-Hungary continued on their downward path. Both countries were obsessed, dangerously so, with the other.

  Russia, driven in part by its own public opinion and with a desire for revenge on Austria-Hungary, continued to meddle in the Balkans. Its diplomats worked to promote an alliance of Balkan states under Russian tutelage which would act as a barrier against further inroads into the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire by the Dual Alliance and which might in time, so it was hoped, become Russia’s ally there against Austria-Hungary. Russian ties with Serbia, in particular, grew stronger. In 1909 Nicholas Hartwig, an outspoken advocate of an active Russian policy in the Balkans, became Russia’s ambassador in Belgrade. ‘A sedate, bearded Muscovite of deceptive bonhomie’, in Berchtold’s words, he was a passionate Russian nationalist and Panslavist who hated Austria-Hungary passionately (although, curiously, Vienna was his favourite city in the world and he went there at every opportunity). Hartwig, who was still there in 1914, was both forceful and energetic and rapidly won for himself a position of considerable influence in Serbia which he used to encourage Serbian nationalists in their aspirations to a Greater Serbia.108

  A year after the Bosnian crisis blew up, Hardinge, the head of the British Foreign Office, wrote to the British ambassador in Vienna: ‘I entirely share your views as to the absolute necessity of an understanding of some kind between Austria and Russia as to the policy in the Balkans, otherwise it is unlikely that unbroken peace will obtain in those regions for many years … Any other policy would inevitably end in a European war.’109 Unfortunately, such an understanding never came again. Europe was to enjoy a short three years of peace before the next crisis came and then the next. And with each crisis, the two groupings of Europe’s powers became more like full-blown alliances whose partners would support each other through thick and thin.

  CHAPTER 15

  1911: The Year of Discords – Morocco Again

  On 1 July 1911 the Panther, a small German gunboat with, as the Kaiser said dismissively, ‘two or three little pop guns on board’ anchored off the port of Agadir on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.1 Small, dusty and quiet, Agadir, which was closed to foreign traders, had so far escaped the interest of Western imperialists. There were rumours of minerals in the inland Atlas mountains but only a handful of firms, among them Germans, had started to prospect. There was some fishing – the local sardines were said to be delicious – and a few crops here and there where there was sufficient water. The local sheep and goats looked thin and unhealthy, reported a local German representative. ‘It was certainly not an area that would attract or support German farmers. To top it all, the climate was unbearable.’2

  The German government claimed that it had sent the Panther and the rather larger and more imposing light cruiser the Berlin, which arrived a few days later, to Agadir to protect German nationals in the south of Morocco. With a lack of attention to detail and a propensity to put itself in the wrong which was going to mark the whole affair, the German Foreign Ministry only informed the other powers with an interest in Morocco after the fact, which had the effect of making them even more annoyed than they might otherwise have been. The Germans also did not do a good job of explaining why they needed to send ships to Agadir. The Foreign Ministry only got round to getting support for its claim that German interests and German subjects were in danger in the south of Morocco a couple of weeks before the Panther arrived off Agadir, when it asked a dozen German firms to sign a petition (which most of them did not bother to read) requesting German intervention. When the German Chancellor, Bethmann, produced this story in the Reichstag he was met with laughter. Nor were there any German nationals in Agadir itself. The local representative of the Warburg interests who was some seventy miles to the north started southwards on the evening of 1 July. After a hard journey by horse along a rocky track, he arrived at Agadir on 4 July and waved his arms to no effect from the beach to attract the attention of the Panther and the Berlin. The sole representative of the Germans under threat in southern Morocco was finally spotted and picked up the following day.3

  In Germany, especially on the right, reaction to the news of what came to be called the spring of the Panther was one of approval, with relief at an end to ‘humiliation’, and jubilation that Germany was taking action at last. After its setbacks earlier on in Morocco and in the race for colonies in general, with the fears of encirclement in Europe by the Entente powers, Germany was showing that it mattered. ‘The German dreamer awakes after sleeping for twenty years like the sleeping beauty,’ said one newspaper.4 The other powers, France in particular, but also Britain, saw it differently, as yet another colonial conflict to trouble the peace of Europe and yet another threat to the stability of the international order. The crisis also came at a time when Europe’s governments were already grappling with domestic problems. Across the Continent in 1911, economies were sliding into recession. Prices had been going up while wages had been falling behind, something that had hit the poorer classes hard. Working-class militancy was on the increase: in 1910, for example, Great Britain had 531 strikes involving some 385,000 workers; for 1911 there were almost twice as many strikes with 831,000 workers. In Spain and Portugal, rural strikes and violence were bringing large parts of the countryside close to civil war
.5

  Germany’s sudden move was, as everyone recognised at the time, about much more than the fate of one German in southern Morocco or prospective mineral rights. It represented a challenge to France’s dominance in Morocco and to the stability of the Triple Entente. The French government had to decide how much it dared concede to Germany and whether it was in a position to resist, especially militarily. The British and the Russians, on the Entente side, and the Austrian-Hungarians and the Italians in the Triple Alliance, had to weigh their need to support their alliance partners against getting dragged into a far-off colonial struggle in which they had no real interests. And yet again, as there had been with the first crisis over Morocco in 1904–5 and the Bosnian crisis of 1908–9, talk of war ran round Europe’s capitals. William Taft, who had succeeded Roosevelt as President, became so alarmed that he offered the services of the United States as a mediator.

  15. Italy, the least of the Great Powers, shared the general ambition for colonies. When the Ottoman Empire appeared near to collapse in 1911, the Italian government decided to seize the two Ottoman provinces of Tripoli and Cyrenaica on the south shore of the Mediterranean. Although the cartoon shows the Ottoman soldiers defeated and a triumphant Italian officer seizing a green standard, symbolic of the Prophet Mohammad, in reality the Italians had to fight a strong resistance for years to come. The Italian move encouraged the Balkan nations to attack the Ottoman Empire the following year.

  In fact Germany had a very good case against France in Morocco and if it had managed things better could have gained considerable sympathy and even support from the other powers which had signed the Treaty of Algeciras in 1906 setting up the international regime for Morocco. Since that time successive French governments and officials in the Quai d’Orsay had flouted both the treaty’s spirit and its provisions by trying to establish political and economic dominance over the country and its feckless sultan. Germany had initially been willing to accept that France had the equivalent of a protectorate over most of Morocco as long as German businesses had equal rights with French to exploit Morocco economically. In February 1909, at the height of the crisis over Bosnia, Germany and France had indeed signed an agreement to that effect. In Berlin, the French ambassador, Paul Cambon’s younger brother Jules, worked assiduously to promote better economic and political relations between the two countries which, he argued presciently but in the end in vain, was best for both and for Europe.

  That brief promise, sadly for the future, was not to be fulfilled at the time. France and Germany tried, and failed, to get an agreement on the borders between the French Congo, on the north side of the Congo River, and the West African German colony of Cameroon, and proposed joint ventures in the Ottoman Empire never got off the ground. In Morocco the local French officials increasingly threw their weight around. In 1908, when the weak Sultan Abdelaziz was deposed by his brother Abdelhafid, the French moved quickly to tie up the new ruler in knots with loans and agreements. While experienced hands like Jules Cambon warned that this was bound to lead to trouble with Germany, the Quai d’Orsay went blithely ahead. It was increasingly dominated by clever, self-confident young men, many of them products of the new School of Political Science, who were strongly anti-German and ambitious for France to play a more important role in Europe and build an even greater empire than it already had. The Ottoman Empire, they argued, was on its way out just as Austria-Hungary was and France must get in quickly to snap up its share of the remnants. With a new French colony in Morocco added to the existing one in Algeria, France would have its equivalent to British India, its own jewel in the crown. The new men in the Quai d’Orsay were supported by the nationalist press in France, to which they frequently leaked confidential information, and by strong lobbies, in particular the colonial one. A succession of weak and ill-prepared ministers meant that the officials in the Quai d’Orsay went their own way with little interference.6

  In March 1911, in one of the frequent changes of cabinets in the Third Republic, Jean Cruppi, yet another who knew almost nothing about his new responsibilities, took up the office of Foreign Minister for, as it turned out, four months. In that short period he managed, following the advice of his officials, to do considerable damage to Franco-German relations. One of his first acts was to break an agreement with Germany to build railways in Morocco. He then moved on to block economic co-operation in other areas as well as forcing Abdelhafid to sign away his rights as an independent ruler and place himself under French protection (as imperialistic doublespeak put it). Using the pretext of disorder in the country, Cruppi then gave the orders for French troops to occupy the capital, Fez. (The French persuaded the sultan to request their help three weeks after they had arrived.) The Spanish, who had become increasingly concerned about what they correctly saw as French aims to take over the whole country, promptly moved troops into their existing area of influence, along the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. The Moroccans, as much as they could, complained, and so did the other powers. The French promised to withdraw from Fez and the surrounding countryside but discovered one reason after another as to why they should remain.

  In Germany, public opinion, which had been largely indifferent to colonies ten years earlier, now was seized with their importance.7 The German government, which was already under considerable pressure from its own colonial lobby and from those German businesses with interests in Morocco, felt that it had much to gain by taking a firm stand. Germany’s international position had deteriorated with the emergence of the Triple Entente and both its neighbours, France and Russia, were strengthening their armed forces. Although the naval talks with Britain continued, they were as far from producing concrete agreement as they had been when they first started in 1908 after the Bosnian crisis. Inside Germany opposition from both sides of the political spectrum to spending on the Kaiser’s navy was growing and it was becoming even more difficult for governments to find the funds that were needed. Political divisions between the right and the left had deepened and the monarchy itself, as the Daily Telegraph affair had shown all too clearly, was growing in unpopularity. The temptation for Germany’s new Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and his colleagues to have a good international crisis to bring all Germans together in support of their government was considerable.8 According to Bülow, his successor longed for a dramatic success such as the one that Germany and Austria-Hungary enjoyed over the Bosnian annexation. Bülow, who came to resent and despise Bethmann as a weakling, also claimed that Bethmann said rather pathetically during the handover: ‘I shall soon get the hang of foreign policy.’9

  Bethmann’s whole career had been in the Prussian and then the German civil service and he had almost no direct experience of foreign affairs. He had moved steadily upwards, helped by his own intelligence and industry, and by strong family connections including with the Kaiser himself. When Wilhelm was still an insecure eighteen-year-old, he had shot his first deer on the Bethmann Hollweg estate at Hohenfinow just east of Berlin and he visited it frequently thereafter. By 1905 Bethmann was a strikingly young Prussian Minister of the Interior; in 1907 he became Minister of the Interior for Germany as a whole; and then in 1909 Chancellor. Albert Ballin, a leading Hamburg businessman and a friend of the outgoing Chancellor, called him ‘Bülow’s revenge’ and said that he had ‘all the qualities which honour a man but ruin a statesman’.10 It was unkind but not entirely untrue.

  In appearance, Bethmann, who was tall and imposing, looked very much the strong Prussian statesman. Although as a child his own grandmother had exclaimed of him, ‘What will become of Theobald? He is so ugly!’ he made a distinguished adult, with his long face and his grey beard and moustaches.11 Beneath that facade, however, was a more fragile being who had endured dreadful headaches as a child and who always worried about his health. He was deeply pessimistic by nature and tormented by doubts, about himself, and about the future of his class and his country. It is believed that he did not plant trees at Hohenfinow when he inherited it because he expe
cted that Russia would overrun it before they ever grew to maturity. At each promotion, he wondered whether the gods would punish him for reaching beyond his capacity. When he became Prussian Minister of the Interior, he claimed that he was ‘painfully experiencing the disparity between my ability and my duty every day’.12 His tendency, pronounced as a young man, to be melancholy and introspective, shy of intimacy with others, never entirely left him. Although he was a clever and educated man with strong moral standards, he also had difficulty in making up his mind. ‘I have good resolutions’, he wrote while still a student to a close friend, ‘and I intend to put them into practice.’13 Good resolutions were not enough and both friends and enemies commented on his tendency to procrastinate. Bülow’s wife reported that Madame Bethmann confided that she wished Theobald had not taken on the position of Chancellor. ‘He’s always so undecided, so hesitating, so given to worrying over trifles, till, really at times, he doesn’t know what he is doing. Why it’s become quite a family joke.’14