Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (54 page)

On the day the royal family rode into Berlin, the city reached “a state of feverish excitement.” The train stations were congested with troops leaving for the front. One witness described it as nothing short of “an armed camp, and the platforms were packed with departing troops, accompanied by their families and relations.” Anti-Russian and anti-British sentiments were running high. When the imperial train transporting Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna back to Russia from England arrived, a frightening scene unfolded as “near chaos broke out.” Mobs of people began shouting insults and obscenities. After Minnie pulled all the blinds down over her compartment windows, the crowds began attacking the train, breaking windows, and tearing parts off the exterior. Only quick thinking on the part of local police prevented the dowager empress from being harmed. Emperor Wilhelm could not detain Minnie in Germany, but he did refuse “to give passage to the Imperial train, ordering it to leave German soil by the shortest route—to be diverted to the Danish frontier.”
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This situation only deepened the Russian imperial family’s antipathy not only for Wilhelm but for all things German.

As scenes played themselves out in Berlin with the Hohenzollerns and the dowager empress, German troops invaded Belgium and Luxembourg in a plan to sweep in and seize Paris as quickly as possible. Great Britain had been a guarantor of Belgian neutrality since 1839. Its invasion forced the British to serve Germany with their own ultimatum. Queen Mary wrote gravely on August 4, “At 12. we sent an ultimatum to Germany & at 7 p.m. she declared war on us. It is too dreadful but we could not act otherwise. We went on to the [palace] balcony at 8 p.m. & again at 11.15. after the news of war having been declared was out.”
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Britain had been slow to involve itself because it considered the conflict a continental war that would have little impact on British imperial interests. Most of the prime minister’s cabinet was against the war because they erroneously believed that a European conflict would be fought mostly on land; there had not been a major naval conflict among the Great Powers since the Crimean War of 1853–56. In 1914, Britain’s standing army numbered only seventy thousand men, compared to Germany’s or Russia’s, which were in the millions. It was only after Belgium’s neutrality was violated that public opinion turned unanimously in favor of war. When George V signed the declaration, he did so on behalf of Britain’s vast empire and its more than four hundred million inhabitants. In the span of only a few days, the British army swelled into the millions also.

Once Britain and Germany were at war, most of the affection Wilhelm felt for his maternal homeland died. Like his grandfather the prince consort, he truly believed in maintaining international diplomacy through personal relationships between royals. With Britain and Russia’s declarations of war against Germany, the emperor took it as a personal knife in the back. “As it turned out,” wrote Wilhelm’s nephew Sigismund, “family relationships—or friendships between the European Monarchs for that matter—proved quite useless. The secret groups who pulled the strings of global politics were so powerful that familial influences were quite incapable of stopping them, however hard they tried.”
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There forever remained a small part of him that held affection for Britain, but he would never idolize it again. Bernhard von Bülow, who served as chancellor of Germany from 1900–09, recalled the emperor exploding in a rant against Nicholas and George: “History showed no greater perfidy.… God would punish them some day!… The Tsar’s ingratitude was revolting: he had always been the Tsar’s close friend. As for ‘Georgie,’ all the emperor had to say was that Queen Victoria, their grandmother, must have turned in her grave at the spectacle of her English grandson flinging down the gauntlet to the German.”
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Nicholas II perceived the depth of Wilhelm’s antipathy when he admitted, “I felt that all was over forever between me and William.”
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Europe’s four imperial dynasties were to find themselves as much the victims of what would become the Great War as any of their subjects. Many have compared this titanic struggle to the opening of Pandora’s box, releasing an evil upon Europe’s crowned heads that could never be repealed. In four years’ time, Augusta Victoria, Alexandra, and Zita would be toppled from their thrones, each with far-reaching consequences for themselves and their families. Only Queen Mary would emerge victorious, but even her imperial luster would begin to dwindle.

Blame for the continent’s first total war in a century was placed upon Germany and the Hohenzollerns. Augusta Victoria’s American physician—Dr. Arthur Davis—recalled that she was profoundly affected by the gravity of what was going on. He believed “that she was bitterly opposed to the war,” but that “if that were indeed the case, she must have masked her feelings very effectually to preserve harmony in the royal household.”
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Once the war began, she was busy with a flurry of activity. Properly understanding her role as
Landsmutter
, she made a public appeal to the women of Germany to step up and assume their rightful positions as contributing members of society during this difficult time.

Obeying the summons of the Emperor our people are preparing for an unprecedented struggle which they did not provoke and which they are carrying on only in self-defense.

Whoever can bear arms will joyfully fly to the colors to defend the Fatherland and his blood.

The struggle will be gigantic and the wounds to be healed innumerable. Therefore, I call upon you women and girls of Germany, and upon all to whom it is not given to fight for our beloved home, for help. Let everyone now do what lies in her power to lighten the struggle for our husbands, sons, and brothers. I know that in all ranks of our people without exception the will exists to discharge this high duty, but may the Lord God strengthen us in our holy work of love, which summons us women to devote all our strength to the Fatherland in its decisive struggle.

The organizations primarily concerned, to whom our support is above all things needful, have already sent out notices as to the mustering of volunteers and the collection of gifts of all kinds.

Auguste Victoria

Berlin
,
August 6, 1914
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The first week of August saw the commencement of the First World War. For Dona, this served as an epic backdrop for the discreet weddings of her two sons. Afterward, those of her sons who were on active duty in the German military departed for the front lines. Berlin was “swept along in a sudden rush of patriotism.” Exhilarated crowds formed throughout the city every day, clogging the streets and blocking traffic. They celebrated and cheered on the troops that marched down Unter den Linden on their way to the front lines while the German national anthem played triumphantly in the background. “Life in the Germany of today,” recorded one witness, “seems to move to the rhythm of this tune. Every day troops pass by my window on their way to the station, and as they march along to this refrain, people rush to the windows and doors of the houses and take up the song so that it rings through the streets, almost like a solemn vow sung by these men on their way to death.”
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The world now faced a perilous road, according to Tsarina Alexandra. “It will be a terrible, monstrous struggle; humanity is about to pass through ghastly sufferings,” she told Pierre Gilliard, her children’s French tutor. When it came to searching for the cause of the war, she looked no further than her cousin Wilhelm and Germany. “I have never liked the Emperor William, if only because he is not sincere,” she said. “He is vain and has always played the comedian. He was always reproaching me with doing nothing for Germany … He will never forgive me this war!”
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The tsar shared his wife’s views that blame for the war rested with the contemptible kaiser. “He could have stopped the war had he wanted to!” he told Prince Nicholas of Greece.
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Not only did the war set nation against nation, it also divided Europe’s extended royal family. It was not hyperbolic to say the First World War was a macrocosmic family feud. The rulers of the continent’s monarchical powers were first cousins, grandchildren of Queen Victoria: King George V; Emperor Wilhelm II; Tsarina Alexandra; Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain; Queen Maud of Norway; Queen Sophie of Greece; Crown Princess Marie of Romania (queen after 1916); and Crown Princess Margaret of Sweden.
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The family hardships imposed by the war went far beyond these reigning (and future) monarchs and consorts. Alexandra was cut off from her sister Irene in Kiel. Her brother the Grand Duke of Hesse was required to side with Germany since he was a member of the Bundesrat. This was very painful for Alexandra, who had always been close to her brother. Her greatest worry was that Wilhelm would send Ernie to fight along the Russian front, against her own forces. A few months later, she learned Ernie refused to serve in the German military. A similar situation played out when Irene’s husband, Wilhelm II’s brother, was made an admiral in the German navy. Alexandra wrote to her sister Victoria shortly after the war began, “One’s heart bleeds, thinking of all the misery everywhere and what will be afterwards!”
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Many of the other Romanovs were affected as well. Almost every living member of the dynasty had a German parent or had married a German spouse.

This schism of Europe’s royal houses was perhaps even more hurtful in England. The queen was cut off from her beloved aunt Augusta who, although a British princess by birth, became a German citizen in 1843 when she married the hereditary prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. King George V’s cousin the Duke of Brunswick—Dona’s son-in-law—held British titles but was declared an enemy combatant when the war started. George’s other cousin Charles Eduard became the Duke of Coburg in 1900. Like the Duke of Brunswick, he had been forced to side with the Germans. As far as the British were concerned, he was dead. There were also a number of royals living in England in 1914 with strong German connections. Almost all of them had been naturalized English citizens since childhood, but that did not immunize them from the anti-German xenophobia that was sweeping Great Britain. Prince Louis of Battenberg, one of George and Mary’s favorite cousins, was deeply wounded by the rising Germanophobia. Not only was he married to Tsarina Alexandra’s sister Victoria, he was also one of the most decorated officers in the Royal Navy. He was made First Sea Lord in 1912 after forty-six years of distinguished service, but in October 1914, he was forced to resign because he was German. His titles were German, he had a home in Germany, he spoke German, and even members of his personal staff were German nationals. His wife, Victoria, blamed George V for not doing more on her husband’s behalf. “The King is a nobody,” she declared angrily.
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The hostility shown toward the Battenbergs at the start of the war was both sadly misguided and ironic, since the family was staunchly pro-British. Louis and Victoria’s son, later styled as Lord Louis Mountbatten, became “the most honored British soldier of World War II.”
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There was even outrage when the king and queen met with some of their Greek cousins that summer. According to the ultraconservatives, Queen Sophie of Greece was Emperor Wilhelm II’s sister and therefore must be pro-German. Ignored was the fact that Sophie had long been at odds with Wilhelm and Dona and that they barely spoke by the outbreak of the First World War. Sophie and her husband, King Constantine, were further condemned for opting to remain neutral during the war, rather than side with the Britain and France. This was just more evidence, the critics claimed, to support the fact that the Greek monarchs were German at heart.