The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  In Austria-Hungary, there was satisfaction that the government had finally taken action against Serbia. As Berchtold wrote to Franz Ferdinand shortly after Serbia bowed to the ultimatum: ‘Europe now recognizes that we, even without tutelage, can act independently if our interests are threatened and that our allies will stand closely behind us.’109 The German ambassador in Vienna had noticed, however, ‘the feeling of disgrace, of restrained anger, the feeling of being mucked about by Russia and its own friends’.110 There was relief that Germany had in the end remained true to the alliance but resentment at Austria-Hungary’s growing dependency. Conrad complained: ‘Now we are nothing more than a satellite of Germany.’111 To the south, the continued existence of an independent Serbia, and one now more powerful than before, remained as a reminder of Austria-Hungary’s failures in the Balkans. Berchtold was widely criticised by the political representatives of Austria and Hungary and in the press for his weakness. When he offered to resign at the end of 1913, Franz Joseph was unsympathetic: ‘There is no reason, nor is it permissible to capitulate before a group of a few delegates and a newspaper. Also, you don’t have a successor.’112

  Like so many of his colleagues, Berchtold remained obsessed with the menace from Serbia and with Austria-Hungary’s great-power status, which he saw as intertwined. In his memoirs he tellingly talks about how the empire had been ‘emasculated’ in the Balkan wars.113 Increasingly, so it seemed, Austria-Hungary faced a stark choice between fighting for its existence or disappearing from the map. Although Tisza initially had floated improbable schemes to work with Russia to persuade Serbia to give up some of its gains, by this point most of the leadership in Austria-Hungary had abandoned hope that Serbia could be won over peacefully; it would only understand the language of force. Conrad, the new War Minister General Alexander Krobatin, and General Oskar Potiorek, the military governor of Bosnia, all were convinced hardliners. The Common Finance Minister, Leon von Biliński, who had tried to keep Austria-Hungary’s finances on an even keel, now supported greatly increased military spending. ‘A war would perhaps be cheaper’, he said, ‘than the present state of affairs. It was useless to say we have no money. We must pay until a change comes about and we no longer have almost all of Europe against us.’114 It was also now widely accepted among the top leadership that a showdown with Serbia and possibly with Russia could not long be postponed, although Conrad continued to believe until the eve of the Great War that Russia might tolerate a limited Austrian-Hungarian attack on Serbia and Montenegro.115 The one man who still hoped to avert war was Franz Ferdinand.

  In the year from the outbreak of the First Balkan War to the autumn of 1913, Russia and Austria-Hungary had come close to war on several occasions, and the shadow of a more general conflict had fallen across Europe as a whole as their allies had waited in the wings. Although the powers had in the end been able to manage the crises, their peoples, leaders and publics alike had become accustomed to the idea of war, and as something that might happen sooner rather than later. When Conrad threatened to resign because he felt he had been snubbed by Franz Ferdinand, Moltke begged him to reconsider: ‘Now, when we are moving towards a conflict, you must remain.’116 Russia and Austria-Hungary had used preparations for war, especially mobilisation, for deterrence but also to put pressure on each other, and, in the case of Austria-Hungary, on Serbia. Threats had worked this time because none of the three countries had been prepared to call the bluffs of the others and because, in the end, the voices for maintaining the peace were stronger than those for war. What was dangerous for the future was that each of Austria-Hungary and Russia was left thinking that such threats might work again. Or, and this was equally dangerous, they decided that next time they would not back down.

  The great powers drew a sort of comfort from the fact that they had muddled through yet again. Over the past eight years, the first and second Moroccan crises, the one over Bosnia, and now the Balkan wars, had all threatened to bring about a general war but diplomacy had always averted it. In these most recent months of tension, the Concert of Europe had more or less survived and Britain and Germany had worked well together to find compromises and to restrain their own alliance partners. When the next Balkan crisis came, in the summer of 1914, Grey at least expected that the same thing would happen again.117

  The peace movement which had watched with apprehension also breathed a sigh of relief. The great emergency congress of the Second International at Basle in the late autumn of 1912 had seemed to mark a new high point in co-operation in the cause of peace across national boundaries. In February 1913, the French and German socialists issued a joint manifesto condemning the armaments race and pledging to work together. Surely, so pacifists thought, the anti-war forces were growing even within capitalism and better relations among the powers were just over the horizon.118 To bring home the horrors of war, a German film maker took footage during the Second Balkan War. His film was just starting to be shown by peace societies across Europe in the summer of 1914.119 The new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which had been generously endowed by the American millionaire Andrew Carnegie, sent a mission made up of Austrian, French, German, British, Russian, and American representatives to investigate the Balkan wars. The Commission’s report noted with dismay the tendency of the warring peoples to portray their enemies as subhuman and the all too-frequent atrocities committed against both enemy soldiers and civilians. ‘In the older civilizations’, the report said, ‘there is a synthesis of moral and social forces embodied in laws and institutions giving stability of character, forming public sentiment, and making for security.’120 The report was issued early in the summer of 1914, just as the rest of Europe was about to learn how fragile its civilisation was.

  CHAPTER 17

  Preparing for War or Peace: Europe’s Last Months of Peace

  In May 1913, in the brief interlude between the first two Balkan wars, the cousins George V of Britain, Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany met in Berlin for the wedding of the Kaiser’s only daughter to the Duke of Brunswick (who was also related to them all). Although the bride’s mother reportedly cried the whole night of the wedding at being parted from her child, the occasion was, so Sir Edward Goschen, the British ambassador, told Grey, a ‘splendid success’. The Germans had been extremely hospitable and the king and queen had enjoyed themselves thoroughly. ‘His Majesty told me that He had never known a Royal visit at which politics had been so freely and thoroughly discussed, and He was glad to be able to inform me that He, the King and the Emperor of Russia had been in thorough agreement on all the points which they had had under review.’ The cousins were in particular agreement that Foxy Ferdinand of Bulgaria – ‘to whom His Majesty applied a strong epithet’ – must be kept under control. ‘My impression’, Goschen concluded, ‘is that the visit has done real good and that its effect will perhaps be more lasting than is usually the case with State visits of foreign Sovereigns.’1

  17. The last years before the Great War brought an intensifying arms race. Although moderates and supporters of the peace movement pointed to the dangers of the increasing preparations for war and complained of the increasing costs, European nations were now so suspicious of each other that they dared not back down. The cartoon shows a prosperous row of houses, bearing different national flags, becoming more and more dilapidated while the caption reads ‘The more the nations try to outdo their neighbours in the arms race, the more their own people suffer …’

  His king was privately less enthusiastic. When he tried to talk alone with Nicholas, he complained, Wilhelm’s ear ‘was glued to the keyhole’. The Kaiser had also harangued George about Britain’s support for France: ‘There you are making alliances with a decadent nation like France and a semi-barbarous nation like Russia and opposing us, the true upholders of progress and liberty …’2 Wilhelm apparently believed that he had made a deep impression and so weakened the Entente between Britain and France.3 It was the last time the cousins were to meet. In
shortly over a year their countries would be at war with each other.

  Europe still had choices in that last period of peace. True there was much troubling its nations in 1913: fear of losing ground, fear of being outnumbered and outgunned by their neighbours, fear of unrest or revolution at home, or fear of the consequences of war itself. Such fears could have played out either way: to make the powers more cautious or to make them ready to gamble on war. Yet while Europe’s leaders did not have to opt for war it was increasingly likely that they would. The naval race between Britain and Germany, rivalry between Austria-Hungary and Russia in the Balkans, the rift between Russia and Germany, France’s anxieties about Germany had driven apart nations who had much to gain from working together. And the previous dozen or so years with their accumulated suspicions and memories weighed heavily in the minds of decision-makers and their publics. Whether defeat and isolation by Germany for France, the Boer War for Britain, the Moroccan crises for Germany, the Russo-Japanese War and Bosnia for Russia or the Balkan wars for Austria-Hungary, each power had its share of bitter experiences, ones it hoped not to repeat. Demonstrating that you are a great power and avoiding humiliation are powerful forces in international relations, whether for the United States or Russia or China today, or for the European powers a century ago. If Germany and Italy wanted their places in the sun, Britain hoped to avoid decline and hang on to its huge empire. Russia and France wanted to regain what they felt to be their rightful stature while Austria-Hungary was struggling for its survival. Military force was an option they all considered using but somehow, for all the tensions, Europe had always managed to pull back in time. In 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912 and 1913, the Concert of Europe, a much weakened one, had held. The dangerous moments were coming closer together, though, and in 1914, in a world which had become dangerously inured to crises, Europe’s leaders were to face the choice, yet again, for war or for peace.

  And yet again they had to deal with the gusts of fear and heightened nationalism that ran through their own publics, and the lobby and special-interest groups grew increasingly skilled in stirring up opinion. In Germany, for example, Major General August Keim, who had been active in the German Navy League, founded a similar organisation at the start of 1912 to agitate for a bigger army. The Wehrverein had 40,000 members by May and 300,000 by the following summer and funding from big industrialists such as Alfred Krupp. Keim supported each military bill that went to the Reichstag but invariably said they were completely inadequate.4 In Britain the mass papers continued to circulate stories of German invasion plans and German waiters who were really serving officers. Sudden press wars between nations flared up. In 1913 the German press made a fuss when French actors appeared in German uniforms in a play called Fritz le Uhlan while in Berlin the following summer the aptly named Valhalla theatre planned to mount a melodrama, The Terror of the Foreign Legion, or the Hell of Sidi-bel-Abbes.5 Early in 1914 a German paper published an article from its St Petersburg correspondent to say that hostility to Germany in official Russian circles was growing. The Russian press responded by accusing the Germans of preparing a preventive war against Russia. Sukhomlinov, the War Minister, gave a belligerent interview to a leading paper to say that Russia was ready.6

  In the early summer of 1914 General Aleksei Brusilov, who was to lead one of Russia’s few successful attacks in the Great War, was taking the waters at the south German resort of Bad Kissingen, where he and his wife were astounded by what they saw at the local festival. ‘The central square, surrounded by banked masses of flowers, was surmounted by a superb set-piece representing the Kremlin at Moscow with its church, ramparts, and towers, and, in the foreground, the Cathedral of St. Basil.’ Guns fired a salute and a magnificent display of fireworks lit up the night and while a band played the Russian and German national anthems followed by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the model of the Kremlin burned to the ground. The German crowd cheered happily while Brusilov, his wife, and a handful of fellow Russians stood by silently chagrined and resentful.7

  Although the ruling classes across Europe often shared the nationalism of their publics they also worried about their reliability. Political parties of the left were growing, and in some countries their leaders were now openly revolutionary. In Italy initial enthusiasm for the war in North Africa had quickly worn off among the socialists and their supporters; the young radical Benito Mussolini organised demonstrations to protest as the troops left for the war and the moderate leaders of the Socialist Party were expelled and replaced by more radical ones. In the German elections of 1912, the Social Democrats gained sixty-seven new seats, something that was viewed with near panic by the right. The leader of the conservative and nationalist Agrarian League published If I Were Kaiser to argue for a good victorious war which would give the government an excuse to get rid of universal suffrage.8 And workers were both better organised and more militant. In the cities, towns and countryside of northern Italy, the army had to be called in to suppress strikes and demonstrations. In Britain the number of workers on strike had risen sharply from 138,000 in 1899 to 1,200,000 in 1912. While the numbers had dropped in 1913, the first seven months of 1914 saw almost a thousand strikes, often about apparently trivial matters. Moreover, like those on the Continent, the British working classes appeared to be increasingly open to revolutionary ideas and ready to use direct action such as strikes and sabotage for political goals. Early in 1914, three of the most militant unions, representing railway and transport workers and miners, joined forces in their own triple alliance. Since the alliance could, if it chose, close down the coal mines, stop the trains and paralyse the docks, it represented a threat to British industry and ultimately to Britain’s power which caused much unease among the ruling classes.

  On the other side of Europe, Russia continued its fitful moves towards the rest of the modern European world. The assassination of Stolypin, though, in the autumn of 1911 had removed a man who might have dragged the tsarist regime, over the objections of Nicholas and his court, into making reforms before it was too late. The tsar, who was increasingly under the influence of reactionaries in his court, did his best to stall Russia’s move towards constitutional government. He appointed compliant and right-wing ministers and ignored the Duma as much as possible. At the start of 1914 he dismayed moderate opinion by suddenly dismissing his Prime Minister, Kokovtsov – ‘like a domestic’ said one of the grand dukes – so removing one of the few remaining competent and reform-minded ministers.9 Kokovtsov’s successor was an elderly favourite of the tsar. Ivan Goremykin was charming, reactionary, and utterly incapable of leading Russia in the troubles already upon it, much less the ones about to come. Sazonov, the Foreign Minister, said of him: ‘An old man who had long ago lost not only his capacity for interesting himself in anything but his own peace and well-being, but also the power of taking into account the activities in progress around him.’10 Goremykin himself had no illusions about his own capacities for his new position. ‘I completely fail to understand why I was needed,’ he told a leading liberal politician. ‘I resemble an old raccoon fur coat which has been packed away in the trunk long ago and sprinkled with camphor.’11

  To make matters still worse, the scandal surrounding Rasputin was becoming increasingly public. Rumours swirled through Russian society that the priest had an unhealthy influence over the imperial family and was far too intimate with the tsarina and her daughters. The tsar’s mother wept as she told Kokovtsov: ‘My poor daughter-in-law does not perceive that she is ruining both the dynasty and herself. She sincerely believes in the holiness of an adventurer, and we are powerless to ward off the misfortune which is sure to come.’12 The 300th anniversary of Romanov rule fell in 1913, and Nicholas and Alexandra travelled across Russia that spring on a rare excursion to show themselves to the people. Although the imperial couple and their courtiers still believed that the ordinary Russians, especially the peasants, loved and revered the Romanovs, Kokovtsov, who accompanied his master, was struck by the small size of t
he crowds and their noticeable lack of enthusiasm. The March winds were cold and the tsar did not always bother to come out at the different stops. In Moscow the crowds were again small and there were murmurs at the pitiful spectacle of the sickly heir to the throne as he was carried along in the arms of his Cossack bodyguard.13

  In the Duma the divisions between the conservatives and the radicals had deepened, producing little but endless debates and recriminations, while the democratic parties of the middle were increasingly squeezed out by the extremes of left and right. The Council of State which was supposed to function as an upper house was dominated by elderly reactionaries who saw their role as blocking any liberal measures which came out of the Duma.14 On the right there was talk of a coup to restore absolutist rule while for much of the left revolution seemed the only way to effect change. In the cities, the workers were falling under the influence of the far left, including the Bolsheviks. In the last two years before the war, strikes increased sharply in number and violence. Out in the countryside the mood among the peasants was increasingly sullen; in 1905 and 1906 in many parts of Russia they had tried to seize farms from the landed classes. They had failed that time but they had not forgotten. Russia’s subject nationalities, whether in the Baltic, Ukraine, or the Caucasus, were stirring and organising, partly in response to government policies of Russification which produced absurd situations such as Polish students being forced to read their own literature in Russian translation and which left deep and growing resentments.