Although Berchtold described himself as walking on eggshells between Bulgaria and Rumania, who hated each other with a vengeance after the Second Balkan War, he also tried draw Bulgaria into the Triple Alliance.114 Although he ran into strong resistance from Wilhelm, who loathed Foxy Ferdinand its king, Berchtold finally persuaded the German government to offer Bulgaria a substantial loan in June 1914. Berchtold’s efforts also served to drive Rumania towards the Entente but in spite of many warning signs, he continued to place his trust in Carol until the eve of the Great War. Conrad, however, ordered his staff at the end of 1913 to prepare war plans against Rumania. He also asked Moltke for more troops to compensate for Rumania’s likely enmity. Moltke, as always, carefully avoided making any promises but it was likely that Germany would have thirteen to fourteen divisions in the east. The worst case, Conrad estimated, was if the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary (which could put forty-eight divisions into the field) had to take on the ninety Russian divisions along with Rumania’s and Serbia’s sixteen and a half apiece, and Montenegro’s five, an overall balance of 128 in favour of the Triple Entente over some 62 for the Dual Alliance. That was what was going to happen.115
In that last period of the peace there were still attempts by the different sides to reach across the divide. In Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, there were those who argued for an alliance of the three conservative monarchies. In February 1914 the conservative Russian and former Minister of the Interior, Peter Durnovo, presented a long memorandum to the tsar in which he urged that Russia should stay out of the quarrels between France and Germany or Britain and Germany. Russia had much to gain by being on good terms with Germany and everything to lose. A European war would shake Russian society even more than the Japanese one had. If Russia lost, he predicted, it would suffer ‘a social revolution in its most extreme manifestation’.116 In Austria-Hungary Baron Stephen von Burián, an old friend of Tisza’s whom the Hungarian Prime Minister had appointed to keep an eye on things in Vienna for him, floated the possibility of an understanding in Europe and over the Straits with Russia. He had made little headway by June 1914 but remained optimistic.117
The most significant of all the attempts at détente and the one with the greatest potential for keeping Europe away from war was that between Germany and Britain. In the summer of 1913, with a breathtaking disregard of their oldest ally, the British offered Germany Portugal’s African colonies in an attempt to satisfy German hunger for an empire. Terms for liquidating the Portuguese Empire were reached but still awaited signature in the summer of 1914. Britain and Germany also reached an agreement over the Berlin–Baghdad railway: Britain would no longer oppose its construction and the Germans agreed to respect British control of the area south of Baghdad including the sea coast. These were encouraging developments but the key to a better relationship was, as always, the naval race.
At the start of 1912, as the Germans readied a fresh naval bill, the British suggested that the two sides talk. From Britain’s perspective the German increases represented an unacceptable threat to British home waters while for the Asquith government the prospect of trying to get more naval spending approved by Parliament was an unpalatable one. Sir Ernest Cassel, a leading British financier with good links in Germany, visited Berlin in late January 1912 with the approval of the Cabinet to sound out the Germans about some form of agreement. He saw his good friend, the shipping magnate Albert Ballin, who also wanted to end the naval race and had meetings with Bethmann and the Kaiser, to whom he presented a brief memorandum. It contained three key points. First and most important, Germany must accept that Britain’s naval superiority was essential to the island empire and the German programme must therefore be frozen or cut back. Secondly and in return, Britain would do what it could to help Germany obtain colonies. Finally, the two countries should promise not to take part in aggressive plans or alliances against each other. Bethmann, reported Cassel, was pleased and Wilhelm was ‘enchanted, almost childishly so’.118 The Germans suggested that the British send a government minister to Berlin for discussions.
On 5 February 1912 the British Cabinet chose Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, to be their emissary. Haldane, a tubby and self-important lawyer, had fallen in love with Germany and German philosophy as a young man and spoke the language impressively well. (This was to be a black mark against him during the Great War.) He was on the hawkish side of the Cabinet and particularly close to Grey, with whom he shared a house. Officially it was given out that Haldane was studying German education, but the real purpose of his trip was to sound out the Germans and suggest that if the two sides could reach an agreement Churchill or Grey himself would be willing to come to Berlin to finalise it. Haldane held two days of talks with Bethmann, the Kaiser and Tirpitz. He judged Tirpitz difficult, the Kaiser friendly – Wilhelm presented him with a bronze bust of himself – and Bethmann sincere in wanting peace.119
It was soon apparent that the two sides were, in fact, far apart. The British wanted an end to the naval race; the Germans wanted a guarantee that Britain would remain neutral in any war on the Continent. This would, of course, have given Germany a free hand to deal with Russia and France. The most that Germany would do was to slow the tempo of its ship-building if it got that guarantee whereas the most the British would promise was to remain neutral if Germany was attacked and was therefore the innocent party. Wilhelm was furious at what he saw as British insolence: ‘I must as Kaiser in the name of the German Empire and as commander-in-chief in the name of my armed forces absolutely reject such a view as incompatible with our honour.’120 Although negotiations continued after Haldane’s return to London, it was clear they were going nowhere.121 On 12 March the Kaiser approved the new naval bill after the empress, who hated the British with a passion, told him to stop being subservient to Britain. Tirpitz, who had strongly opposed the negotiations from the start, kissed her hand and thanked her in the name of the German people.122 Bethmann, who had not been consulted, tried to submit his resignation but Wilhelm angrily accused him of being a coward and refused to accept it. Bethmann loyally remained in office. He later said sadly that he could have achieved a deal with Britain if only Wilhelm had not kept interfering.123
When Churchill presented his naval estimates for 1912–13 to Parliament shortly after the failure of the Haldane mission, he said openly that Britain was building only against Germany and must keep a decisive advantage. As a gesture of goodwill and in an attempt to keep expenditure under control, he also suggested a naval holiday, where the two sides would take a breather in their battleship building. It was an offer he was to repeat in the next two years. He seems to have been motivated by a desire to appease those members of his own party who objected to the great increase in defence spending and the recognition that a naval holiday at that point would freeze the balance of power in Britain’s favour. The proposal was rejected out of hand by Germany’s leaders and attacked by conservatives in Britain. The only country where it received a warm welcome was in the United States: the new President, Woodrow Wilson, was enthusiastic and the House of Representatives called for an international conference to discuss a freeze in naval building. In 1914 Wilson sent his closest confidant, the small enigmatic Colonel Edward House, to the capitals of Europe to see if the United States could help broker a naval disarmament agreement. House reported from Berlin in May: ‘The situation is extraordinary. It is militarism run stark mad. Unless someone acting for you can bring about a different understanding there is some day to be an awful cataclysm.’124
Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, also sent out a letter to other governments suggesting that the third of the Hague international peace conferences, which had started in 1899, take place in the autumn of 1915, and by 1914 a number of countries had started their preparations.125 The international peace movement remained active as well. On 2 August an international peace conference, supported by the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, was due to ta
ke place in the German city of Constance and the Interparliamentary Union planned to meet later that month in Stockholm. While many of the pacifists remained confident that war was becoming increasingly impossible, one veteran was filled with gloom. Bertha von Suttner wrote in her diary: ‘Nothing but mutual suspicions, accusations and agitation. Well, that is an adequate chorus for the increasing cannons, the airplanes which are testing dropping bombs and for war ministries which always demand more.’126 She died a week before Franz Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo.
As that fateful event drew near, Europe was an odd combination of unease and complacency. Jaurès, the great French socialist, put his finger on it: ‘Europe has been afflicted by so many crises for so many years, it has been put dangerously to the test so many times without war breaking out that it has almost ceased to believe in the threat and is watching the further development of the interminable Balkan conflict with decreased attention and reduced disquiet.’127 The statesmen had muddled through before. They had resisted the calls from their own generals to strike first. Why should they not do so again?
CHAPTER 18
Assassination at Sarajevo
The 28th of June 1914 was a Sunday and the weather was warm and sunny. Holidaymakers thronged Europe’s amusements, its parks, and its beaches. Poincaré, the French President, was with his wife at the Longchamp races, just outside Paris. The crowds, he later wrote in his diary, were happy and carefree. The course with its expanse of green lawns looked beautiful and there were many elegant women to admire. For many Europeans the summer vacation had already started. Europe’s cabinets, its foreign ministries and its military headquarters were half empty, their members scattered. Berchtold, the Chancellor of Austria-Hungary, was duck-hunting in Moravia; Kaiser Wilhelm was racing in his yacht Meteor at the annual summer regatta in the Baltic; and Moltke, the chief of his general staff was at a spa. The crisis that was about to come was made worse because so many of the key figures were hard to reach or simply did not take it sufficiently seriously until it was too late.
As Poincaré was enjoying the day with his guests from the diplomatic corps in the special presidential box, he was handed a telegram from the French news agency Havas. The archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife Sophie had just been assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Austria-Hungary’s recently acquired province of Bosnia. Poincaré immediately told the Austrian ambassador, who went white and left at once for his embassy. While the races went on below, the news spread among Poincaré’s guests. Most thought it would make little difference to Europe but the Rumanian ambassador was deeply pessimistic. Austria-Hungary, he thought, would now have the excuse it wanted to wage a war on Serbia.1
18. The confrontation between Austria-Hungary and Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, risked drawing in other powers. Serbia, whose government probably knew about the planned assassination, was emboldened to stand up to Austria-Hungary because it had support from Russia. As the imperial eagle of Austria-Hungary prepares to attack the chicken of Serbia, the Russian bear lurks behind a rock preparing to defend its small Balkan friend.
In the five weeks which followed Europe went from peace to a full-scale war involving all the great powers except, at first, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. The public, which had played its part over the decades in pushing its leaders towards war or peace, now waited on the sidelines as a handful of men in each of Europe’s main capitals juggled with fateful decisions. Products of their backgrounds and times, with deeply engrained beliefs in prestige and honour (and such terms were going to be used frequently in those hectic days), they based their decisions on assumptions which they did not always articulate, even to themselves. They also were at the mercy of their own memories of past triumphs and defeats, and of their hopes and fears for the future.
As the news of the assassinations spread quickly across Europe, it was greeted with the same mixture of indifference and apprehension as in Poincaré’s box. In Vienna, where the archduke had not been much loved, the rides and entertainments in the popular Prater park remained open. Among the upper classes, though, there was despair about the future of a monarchy which repeatedly lost its heirs and renewed animus against the Serbians who, it was widely assumed, were responsible. In the German university town of Freiburg most citizens, according to their diaries, were thinking about their own concerns, whether the state of the summer harvest or their holidays. Perhaps because he was an historian, the eminent scholar Friedrich Meinecke had a different reaction: ‘Immediately it became black in front of my eyes. This means war, I told myself.’2 When the news arrived in Kiel the authorities sent a launch out to find the Kaiser’s yacht. Wilhelm, who had counted Franz Ferdinand as a friend, was shocked. ‘Would it be better to abandon the race?’ he asked. He decided to travel back to Berlin at once to take charge and let it be known that he intended to work for peace, though during the next few days he still managed to find the time for intense discussions over the interior decoration of his new yacht.3 In Kiel itself flags were immediately lowered to half-mast and the remaining social events were cancelled. A British fleet, which had been paying a courtesy call, sailed away on 30 June. The Germans sent the signal ‘Pleasant journey’ and the British replied ‘Friends in past and friends forever.’4 Just over a month later they would be at war.
The act which was going to send Europe on the final leg of its journey towards the Great War was the work of fanatical Slav nationalists, the Young Bosnians, and their shadowy backers in Serbia. The assassins themselves and their immediate circle were mostly young Serb and Croat peasant boys who had left the countryside to study and work in the towns and cities of the Dual Monarchy and Serbia. While they had put on suits in place of their traditional dress and condemned the conservatism of their elders, they nevertheless found much in the modern world bewildering and disturbing. It is hard not to compare them to the extreme groups among Islamic fundamentalists such as Al Qaeda a century later. Like those later fanatics, the Young Bosnians were usually fiercely puritanical, despising such things as alcohol and sexual intercourse. They hated Austria-Hungary in part because they blamed it for corrupting its South Slav subjects. Few of the Young Bosnians had regular jobs. Rather they depended on handouts from their families, with whom they had usually quarrelled. They shared their few possessions, slept on each other’s floors, and spent hours over a single cup of coffee in cheap cafés arguing about life and politics.5 They were idealistic, and passionately committed to liberating Bosnia from foreign rule and to building a new and fairer world. Strongly influenced by the great Russian revolutionaries and anarchists, the Young Bosnians believed that they could only achieve their goals through violence and, if necessary, the sacrifice of their own lives.6
The leader of the assassination plot was a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, the slight, introverted and sensitive son of a hardworking farmer. Princip, who had longings to be a poet, had gone from one school to another without conspicuous success. ‘Wherever I went, people took me for a weakling,’ he told the police after he was arrested on 28 June, ‘and I pretended that I was a weak person, even though I was not.’7 In 1911 he was drawn into the subterranean world of revolutionary politics. He and several of his friends who were to become his co-conspirators dedicated themselves to acts of terror against important targets, whether the old emperor himself, or someone close to him. In the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 the victories of Serbia and the great increase in its territories inspired them afresh to think that the final triumph of the South Slavs was not far off.8
Within Serbia itself there was considerable support for the Young Bosnians and their activities. For a decade or more, parts of the Serbian government had encouraged the activities of quasi-military and conspiratorial organisations on the soil of Serbia’s enemies, whether the Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary. The army provided money and weapons for armed Serbian bands in Macedonia and smuggled weapons into Bosnia much as Iran does today with Hezbollah
in Lebanon. The Serbians also had their own secret societies. In 1903 a group made up largely of officers assassinated the unpopular king Alexander Obrenović and his wife and put King Peter on the throne. Over the next years, the new king found it expedient to tolerate the activities of the conspirators who remained highly influential within Serbia and who promoted Serbian nationalism abroad. The key figure among them was the charming, ruthless, sinister, and immensely strong Dragutin Dimitrijević, nicknamed Apis after the Egyptian god who is always portrayed as a bull. Apis was prepared to sacrifice his own life and those of his family and friends in the cause of a Greater Serbia. In 1911 he and some of his fellow conspirators founded the Black Hand, dedicated to bringing all Serbs together by fair means and foul.9 The Prime Minister, Pašić, who hoped to avoid conflict with Serbia’s neighbours, knew of its existence and tried to bring it under control by pensioning off, for example, some of the more dangerous among the nationalistic army officers. In the early summer of 1914 his confrontation with Apis reached an acute stage. On 2 June he resigned, but returned to office on 11 June and on 24 June, as the archduke was preparing to travel to Bosnia, he announced that parliament was dissolved and that fresh elections would be held later that summer. King Peter also stepped down and made his son Alexander regent. As the Bosnian conspirators were putting the final touches to their plans to assassinate the archduke on 28 June, Pašić, who had no wish to provoke Austria-Hungary, was fighting for his political life and not yet capable of rooting out the Black Hand and bringing Apis down.
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