by Hew Strachan
What made the Anglo-Russian convention possible was less change in Britain than change in Russia. The twin blows of defeat in Manchuria and revolution at home convinced the Tsar’s advisers that war prompted domestic upheaval. The principal objective of P. A. Stolypin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1906 to 1911, was the corollary of this point: peace was necessary to enable domestic consolidation. Thus, both Stolypin and Russia’s foreign minister, A. P. Izvolsky, were anxious not merely to end Russia’s forward policy in the Far East but also to secure its frontiers elsewhere. Settlement with Britain in Central Asia was one element in a package that might also embrace Germany in the Baltic and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. But Russia lacked the strength to shape its own policy. Although in certain senses both Britain and France needed Russia more than Russia needed them, the latter was handicapped by its inability to set and follow its own agenda. As the first Moroccan crisis had shown, it had to choose between the emerging blocs. Although Russia would persist in seeking understandings with Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the last resort it remained wedded to France and Britain, finding on each occasion that it did so that the Entente tightened.29
In Germany, therefore, the overriding consequence of the 1905 Moroccan crisis was an unravelling of Weltpolitik. There can be no greater indictment of German diplomacy than the fact that the deep-seated hostilities of Britain, France and Russia had been resolved so rapidly. The constellation which faced it in 1907 had seemed unimaginable: before 1904 a Franco-British Entente was improbable, then in 1904–5 it had been hoped that the entente cordiale would weaken the Franco-Russian convention, and throughout there had remained the assumption that Britain and Russia were irreconcilable. More specifically, the false assumptions which Tirpitz’s naval policy had made of Britain were now writ large. The calculations of German naval deficiency had not reckoned on Fisher’s redistribution of the British fleet; the gradualism of the naval buildup was no longer tenable with the commissioning of the first Dreadnought; and Britain—despite a hiccough in 1907—declared its determination to continue building to the two-power standard, which meant that Germany could never reach a sufficient level for effective deterrence. To use epithets like ‘paranoid’ and ‘fatalistic’ of Germany after 1905—adjectives more appropriate to individuals than nations—does not seem so misplaced. German expansion, conceived in limited terms and apparently no more ambitious than that allowed to other powers, had triggered the creation of a power bloc which not only seemed to prevent the flexing of Germany’s own industrial and commercial muscle but also to encircle Germany by land to the east and west and by sea to the north.
The vocabulary of personal emotion is of course rendered more appropriate in the context of personal rule. Bülow and Weltpolitik, Tirpitz and the navy— these were the creatures by which the Kaiser had attempted to legitimize his own position; Wilhelm himself had been Germany’s emissary in Tangiers. His principal adviser, and indeed the architect of the means by which the Kaiser’s personal rule might be effected, was Philipp von Eulenburg. In 1908 Eulenburg was arraigned on a charge of homosexuality. The implications for the imperial court as a whole went beyond scandal and loss of prestige; Eulenburg’s departure left the Kaiser’s entourage dominated by the military. Furthermore, in November of the same year Wilhelm gave a typically vainglorious interview to the London Daily Telegraph, which aroused the fury of all parties in the Reichstag and opened a split between the monarch and his foreign office. The accumulation of these blows marks the point at which personal rule can be accounted to have failed. Given the fact that Germany’s constitution was designed to rest on the Kaiser’s command—above all in the areas of war and diplomacy—Wilhelm’s subsequent loss of confidence left a vacuum which was probably even more dangerous to Germany than his earlier assertions of authority.
No comparable self-doubts seem to have assailed Tirpitz. In 1906 he used the mood generated by the Moroccan crisis to pass a supplementary naval bill, increasing the annual spending on the fleet by 35 per cent. However, it was the 1908 bill that accepted the acceleration of the German programme in the light of the Dreadnought, and which institutionalized a naval arms race between the two powers. The life of a capital ship was reduced from twenty-five years to twenty, so that Germany would build not three but four ships a year between 1908 and 1911, and would therefore have a total of fifty-eight capital ships by 1920. Privately, Tirpitz was aiming at a rate of three—not the agreed two— ships a year in the period 1912–17.
The cost of such a programme revealed the fragility of any compromise on which Sammlungspolitik might rest. In the 1907 elections Bülow fought a successful campaign on an appeal to Weltpolitik, convincing the left-liberals, the Progressives, that they should join his bloc so as to balance reactionary influences within it and avoid the threat of a Centre party-socialist coalition; the socialists actually lost thirty-six seats. But Bülow had little with which he could hold the Progressives over the long term. Even more importantly, the financing of the navy would split conservatives and national liberals. The additional cost per ship when built to Dreadnought standards was 7 million marks, and a further 60 million marks were required for improved port facilities.30 The deficit anticipated by the 1908 naval programme was 500 million gold marks. The national debt was almost double that of 1900. To put federal finances on a sound footing Bülow had to diminish the powers of the individual states, which were still largely responsible for their own taxation: he would therefore expose a sore which Weltpolitik had been designed to heal. To meet part of the deficit he planned to increase inheritance tax; thus the navy came home to roost, directly challenging the interests of conservative landowners. The Centre party joined with the Conservatives in calling for a tax on mobile capital: together they crushed the inheritance tax proposal, and passed the burden of taxation on to business and urban interests. The economic consequences of Weltpolitik had divided, not united, the different forms of property-ownership. In June 1909 Bülow, no longer able to manage the Reichstag and held responsible by the Kaiser for the Daily Telegraph affair, resigned the chancellorship.
Bülow had the satisfaction of nominating his successor, Theodor von Bethmann Hollweg, a Prussian bureaucrat and former secretary of state for the interior. Bethmann Hollweg was a cabinet politician, not a popular national leader. Reserved, conscientious, and honest, he never mastered the office of which he was to be the incumbent until 1917. Fritz Fischer has bracketed Bethmann with the military and Prussian influences that were to dominate Germany during the war; by contrast, Sir Edward Grey and other contemporary observers imagined that in him rested Germany’s hopes for liberalism and true parliamentary government. Neither view is wholly correct. Bethmann Hollweg was a conservative and saw the position of government as above—not dependent on—the political parties. But he was also pragmatic enough to recognize that reform, albeit limited, of the Prussian suffrage was required: typically, the measure he proposed in 1910 was sufficient to alienate the right and insufficient to please the left. Thus, even more than was the case with Bülow, his management of the Reichstag constituted a succession of short-lived compromises. Not even the conservatives, who now acted as an agrarian interest group rather than as the supporters of the political status quo, were reliable. In any case, in the 1912 elections all the parties of the right and centre lost ground to the socialists, who won sixty-seven seats to become the largest party in the Reichstag. Bethmann Hollweg’s power, therefore, rested to an increasing degree on external pressure groups and on his relationship— always lukewarm—with the Kaiser himself.31
Bülow had managed the Reichstag by use of Weltpolitik. But when Bethmann Hollweg became chancellor the financial implications of the navy’s expansion ensured that Weltpolitik was deeply divisive in its effects. Bethmann therefore forswore Weltpolitik, at least in its more aggressive forms, for a policy of détente. He did so for reasons not of foreign policy, a field in which he had no previous experience, but of domestic political necessity. Indeed, ev
en had he tried to manipulate the parties by the use of nationalist appeals, he might well not have succeeded. The 1909 budget had still not resolved Germany’s economic problems. Nor was it only among conservatives—with their fears of increased inheritance taxes—that opposition to naval spending was now to be found. Industry itself was divided: between 1904 and 1914 Britain was Germany’s best overseas customer, and Germany was Britain’s second best; twenty-two out of forty international producer cartels were Anglo-German organizations.32 Thus, while some German concerns welcomed the steady orders which the naval arms race generated, others—including not only bankers but also iron and steel exporters—stood to lose by any further deterioration in Germany’s relations with Britain.
An Anglo-German naval agreement was therefore the main means by which Bethmann sought to extricate himself from his problems. By 1908 Bülow had already been thinking along similar lines, but Tirpitz had proved strongly opposed and he had been abetted by the Kaiser. The argument that naval construction might browbeat the British into a German agreement was no longer deemed relevant. This is not to say that Tirpitz now wanted war with Britain. He recognized full well that such a conflict would be futile. The opportunity to exploit the tabula rasa which the Dreadnought revolution had, at least in theory, created had not been seized; Germany’s implementation of it lagged three years behind Britain’s, and its building targets still did not aspire to equivalence. However, Tirpitz did aim to break Britain’s commitment to the two-power standard. He proposed a formula under which ostensibly Germany would build two ships a year for every three built by Britain, but whose effects in practice would produce three and four. Germany would not reduce its programme, and Britain would have to increase its own if it wished to maintain its lead. Furthermore, because Britain had a larger fleet in the first place, more of its new construction would be replacing obsolete ships rather than adding to the total size of the fleet. Thus the gap in the effective size of the two forces would be narrowed. Tirpitz derived some comfort from the fact that radical pressures on Britain’s Liberal government produced a rationale for the fleet that eschewed reference to the two-power standard, but in reality the talks held out little prospect of a successful outcome. Bethmann Hollweg wished to use the specific issue of a naval agreement to secure a much wider objective, that of British neutrality. In April 1910 the Germans actually proposed that Britain commit itself to neutrality before a naval agreement was concluded: to the Foreign Office in London it seemed that Germany was using a naval lever to secure British isolation and German domination of the continent.33
Bethmann Hollweg’s efforts at détente were not limited to Britain. Germany’s rivalry with France and Russia found its focus in Europe and not further afield; the roots of the Triple Entente were to be traced to colonial questions, and thus the chances that long-term imperial tensions between the Entente partners might reappear seemed good. Bilateral arrangements with France and Russia on extra-European questions promised some loosening of the Entente. Furthermore, they accorded well with Bethmann’s increasing personal sense that Germany needed colonies of its own. The détente which France and Germany achieved between 1909 and 1910 was limited, and primarily motivated by economic links (German exports to France increased 38 per cent in 1905–9), which the governments—and particularly Jules Cambon, France’s ambassador in Berlin—endeavoured to clothe with political formulae. In February 1909 the Germans recognized French political interests in Morocco, and France recognized Germany’s economic interests; discussions took place about possible co-operation in the Congo and the Cameroons, and French short-term capital was loaned to Germany for the construction of the Baghdad railway.34 The latter also provided the basis, in November 1910, of an agreement between Germany and Russia: Russia approved of the extension of the Baghdad railway, while Germany undertook to help in the opening of railways in Russia’s sphere of interest in Persia.
By early 1911 France was worried by the implications of Bethmann’s policy for Entente unity, although it does not seem to have conceived of its next step in that light. Indubitably, however, one of the repercussions of the 1911 Moroccan crisis was a reinvigoration of Anglo-French links. The resumption of a forward French policy in Morocco was largely the responsibility of the younger generation of French Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, who dominated a weak and inexperienced foreign minister.35 Their target was as much Germany and an end to the détente which Jules Cambon had fostered as it was an expansion of French influence in North Africa. ‘The solution of the Moroccan crisis’, Charles Maurras wrote in Action française, ‘is not to be found in Fez but among the pines of the Vosges. What is afoot in Morocco makes sense only if we are prepared to fight in the Vosges.’36 The second Moroccan crisis made explicit what had been implicit in the first: colonial questions were not to be dealt with simply on their own terms but were projected back into European rivalries. Indeed, the geographical position of Morocco—affecting as it did the balance of power in the Mediterranean—was bound to make the isolation of problems here from problems in Europe that much more difficult than it was for any disputes over spheres of responsibility in Central Asia or Equatorial Africa.
Using the excuse of riots against the Sultan in Fez, the French ordered troops into Morocco on 17 April 1911. Once in, the soldiers were slow to depart. The French were clearly in contravention of the Algeçiras act. Neither the Spanish nor the British were very pleased, and the Germans gave the French a specific warning. However, the French having reopened the Moroccan question, the Germans, and specifically Kiderlen-Wächter, the foreign minister, saw the opportunity for a diplomatic success in true Weltpolitik style. Joseph Caillaux, France’s prime minister from June, was conscious of the weakness of the French position, and was more conciliatory than his Foreign Office. Through secret negotiations—which bypassed the Foreign Office—he encouraged Kiderlen in the pursuit of German objectives. Kiderlen wished to trade German recognition of the French position in Morocco for concessions in the Congo. On 1 July, on the pretext of protecting German commercial interests, the German warship, Panther, appeared at Agadir.
Such sabre-rattling—although the Germans had no intention of going to war, and indeed were still without a naval plan for operations against Britain— could only provoke. Germany had seen the issue as one between France and Germany only. The employment of sea-power, however limited, immediately raised the hackles of Britain. Paramount was the fear of Germany acquiring an Atlantic port. The inadequacy of British naval and military intelligence only served to reinforce Germanophobe prejudice: the whereabouts of the German fleet was uncertain in July, and in September false indications of German preparations on the Belgian frontier suggested imminent invasion.37 During July Grey’s attitude hardened: the crisis was no longer concerned with the irresponsibility of French imperial policy but with the survival of the Entente. On this occasion the cabinet was involved: evidence of the degree of Britain’s commitment would be calculated to infuriate the radicals and pacifists within the Liberal party, and increase the reliance of a government that lacked an overall parliamentary majority on Conservative support. On 21 July Lloyd George, as chancellor of the exchequer, spoke in the Mansion House: without naming Germany, he clearly stated that Britain would fight rather than let its status as a great power go unacknowledged. The Mansion House speech was designed above all for domestic purposes: by supporting Grey’s foreign policy, Lloyd George—the hero of the left and the author of the Liberals’ package of social reforms—split the radicals and assured the Liberal imperialists of support in the cabinet and in the party. But it also had an international effect. It faced Germany with the threat of war, however veiled, and Kiderlen-Wächter could not command the support either of Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, or of the Kaiser to play for such stakes. In the event Kiderlen got what he had asked for; Caillaux continued to bypass his foreign ministry and on 4 November Germany—in exchange for recognizing a French protectorate over Morocco—was guaranteed respect for its economic i
nterests and received a slice of the French Congo. But popular feeling in Germany was characterized by a sense of humiliation. The iron and steel industries had hoped for concessions to mine the ores of southern Morocco itself. Expectations had been roused and then disappointed. Both the Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg lost credit. The frustration at diplomacy’s failure to gain for Germany the status its power warranted grew apace.
Much of this feeling was directed against Britain, and in Britain too the crisis had the effect of hardening popular sentiment. Britain was the power that had taken the initiative in elevating a colonial dispute into a European crisis: henceforth it was not to be deflected from having Europe, rather than the empire, as the focus of its foreign policy. At the Committee of Imperial Defence on 23 August 1911 strategy followed suit.