July 1914: Countdown to War (15 page)

There is no precise transcript of what was said at this historic 5 July audience in Potsdam, but several of the participants wrote accounts shortly afterwards, which give a good idea of what was—and was not—decided. First, General Plessen wrote in his diary that night that the gist of the Austrian diplomatic notes, as presented by the kaiser, was that “the Austrians are getting ready for a war with Serbia and want first to be sure of Germany.” Everyone was agreed, Plessen recalled, that “the sooner the Austrians make their move against Serbia the better.” The “prevailing opinion” in the room, he observed, was that “the Russians—though friends with Serbia—will not join in.” There was thus no need for extraordinary military preparations, and the kaiser would proceed with his annual July Baltic cruise as normal.
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Falkenhayn’s recollection of the audience was somewhat different. In his report to Moltke—the chief of staff was still taking his spa cure at Carlsbad—the Prussian war minister said that the kaiser’s somewhat “hurried” presentation made it difficult to figure out exactly what the Austrians were up to. Unlike Plessen, Falkenhayn seems to have taken Berchtold’s two notes literally, noting that neither of them “speaks of the need for war, rather both expound ‘energetic’ action such as the conclusion of a treaty with Bulgaria, for which they would like to be certain of the support of the German Reich.” Overall, he told Moltke, “these documents did not succeed in convincing me that the Vienna government had taken any firm resolution.” Chancellor Bethmann, he added, “appears to have as little faith as I do that the Austrian government is really in earnest, even though its language is undeniably more resolute than in the past.”
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Berchtold, it seemed, had outsmarted himself. By camouflaging his appeal for German support for a war with Serbia inside Tisza’s Balkan peace plan, he had allowed doubt to creep into German minds that Austria really intended to punish Belgrade. His oral instructions to Hoyos, passed on verbally to Szögyény, had been enough to convince the kaiser of the warlike intentions of the Ballplatz. The kaiser had even given oral—though not written—support for this policy. When forced to justify himself before the chancellor and military advisers, however, Wilhelm had apparently hedged. Plessen, who as the kaiser’s adjutant may have understood his sovereign’s manner of speaking better than the others, was able to intuit what the Austrians were about. Falkenhayn and Bethmann were not. So far as they knew, the Austrians were still full of empty talk.

Count Hoyos had been sent to Berlin precisely to dispel any doubts about Austrian intentions. He did his utmost to do so. While Szögyény lunched with the kaiser on Sunday, Hoyos met with Arthur Zimmermann, the undersecretary of state, who, as Jagow’s top assistant, was something like Hoyos’s equivalent
as chief of staff to Berchtold—and a good friend. Zimmermann, like Hoyos, was hawkish, which in the German case meant he was a proponent of “preventive war” against Russia. Seeking to impress his friend, Hoyos laid out a position even more aggressive than Conrad’s, telling Zimmermann that Austria was considering a “surprise attack [on Serbia] without preliminary preparation,” which would lead to a “partition of her territory among Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania.” Zimmermann, Hoyos claimed in his report, merely smiled at this and offered no objections. As the two men parted, Hoyos told his friend, as if in triumph, “you could not have believed that Austria-Hungary would quietly accept the murder of the heir apparent and do nothing about it.” Zimmermann, in his reply, pithily summed up the feelings of the German war party: “No, but we were a little afraid you might.”
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Satisfying as this conversation must have been for Hoyos and Zimmermann, they were, after all, both subordinates in policymaking. The next day, they were summoned to a more serious audience with the chancellor, with Ambassador Szögyény also present. Bethmann, not unlike Berchtold in Vienna and Sazonov in Petersburg, was distrusted by his country’s war party. His policy of rapprochement with England was acceptable to German hawks, so long as it kept the British navy off Germany’s back in case of war. But the very priority Bethmann put on relations with England suggested a certain softness, as did his periodic efforts to derail Tirpitz’s naval building program. Hawks referred to the chancellor and his neurotic sovereign as “the two old women.”
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Foreign Secretary Grey and his English colleagues shared this opinion of Bethmann, seeing him as a voice for peace in Berlin—a view that hardly commended Bethmann to the generals. Moltke could not stand him. The chancellor had been a cipher during the Balkan wars, allowing the kaiser’s naturally feckless instincts to prevail. Wilhelm himself
liked and trusted Bethmann, whom he had known since childhood, but at times Bethmann’s opposition to armaments spending—especially on the navy, a pet cause of the kaiser’s—annoyed even him.

Bethmann Hollweg, Germany’s brooding chancellor. A pessimist at the best of times, he was in an even deeper funk than usual in summer 1914, following the death of his wife, Martha, in May.
Source: Bain News Service, Library of Congress.

A temperamental pessimist at the best of times, Bethmann was in an even deeper depression than usual that July. His beloved wife, Martha, whose natural sociability and good cheer had nicely balanced out the chancellor’s solitary tendencies, had died of internal hemorrhaging on 11 May after a protracted illness. Martha’s death dealt Bethmann a crushing blow. He was having trouble sleeping, was putting on weight, and was generally ill at ease. Bethmann had taken a long leave of absence at Hohenfinow after his wife’s death to recover his morale and
would have preferred to spend the entire summer there if he could. First the press hysteria over the Anglo-Russian naval talks, then the Sarajevo outrage, and now the Hoyos mission had interrupted what might have been a prolonged country convalescence. A new Balkan crisis was the last thing Bethmann wanted.

Arriving at the last minute to the audience with the kaiser on Sunday, Bethmann probably had been too exhausted from his trip to perceive quite how acute the situation was. Recovering his faculties after a good night’s sleep, Bethmann was sharper on Monday afternoon when he received Count Hoyos, Ambassador Szögyény, and Zimmermann. With Szögyény present, Hoyos could not be as blunt as he had been with Zimmermann the previous day, but together the two of them were able to convince Bethmann that Austria was serious. Because Bethmann left no record of the conversation, we have to follow Szögyény’s version of what the chancellor said—which, if accurate, suggested a dramatic shift in German policy. “With regard to our relations toward Serbia,” the ambassador reported to the Ballplatz, “the German government is of the opinion that we must judge for ourselves what is to be done. . . . Whatever we decide, we may reckon with certainty, that Germany will stand by our side as our ally.” As for Bethmann’s own view, Szögyény informed Berchtold that “the chancellor, like the kaiser, believes that immediate action on our part against Serbia offers the best and most decisive solution to our difficulties in the Balkans.” From the “international standpoint”—that is, the prospect of a European war—Bethmann also “considers the present moment as more favorable than some later time.”
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Better now than later: this was what Moltke and Conrad had been saying for years. Now, for the first time, Bethmann was saying it too.

In this way first Kaiser Wilhelm II and then Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg furnished Austria with a blank check for immediate
military action against Serbia. In doing so, they remained unaware that Tisza stood resolutely opposed to Berchtold over this very policy, which might put a serious damper on the “immediate” part. Had they known of Tisza’s opposition, the chancellor, at least, might have been more circumspect in offering such blanket support for an uncertain policy course to be pursued in Vienna, but it is hard to be certain about this. As far as we know, Bethmann’s shift toward support for a dangerously aggressive Austrian line against Serbia was genuine, although tinged as always with his natural pessimism. “Better now than later” did not necessarily mean that things
would
get better—only that, if the Central Powers waited any longer before confronting the Entente with a test of strength, things were sure to get worse.

As the kaiser prepared to leave on Monday morning, he summoned Germany’s top-ranking active-duty army and navy officers. With Moltke and Tirpitz still absent, he spoke instead with Admiral Eduard von Capelle, the acting chief of Naval Staff, and General Hermann von Bertrab from the General Staff. He informed them of Austria’s plans to take action against Serbia. To Bertrab, he emphasized that he did “not think that Russia will intervene, particularly in view of the cause [e.g., a regicide], the Tsar . . . will hardly ever decide to do so. His Majesty therefore regards the affair as in the first instance a purely Balkan concern.” To Capelle, the kaiser said that “Russia and France were not prepared for war.” Significantly, he did not mention England as something about which the German navy should be concerned. No preparatory military measures, the kaiser concluded, needed to be undertaken.
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At nine fifteen
AM
, Wilhelm II left Berlin en route for his Baltic cruise. Monday night, Bethmann returned to Hohenfinow. Both men, satisfied with their declaration of support, were content to let Austrian policy take its course.

TUESDAY, 7 JULY

E
VEN AS
A
USTRIA
’
S AMBASSADOR
was winning over the kaiser in Potsdam on Sunday afternoon, 5 July, Conrad was making the case for war at Schönbrunn Palace. By now, the chief of Army Staff claimed, Emperor Franz Josef had come to agree with him that a war with Serbia was unavoidable. “How, though, will you fight this war,” the emperor asked, “if everyone takes up against us, especially Russia?” Conrad replied with a question of his own: “Do we have Germany’s backing?” Here the emperor hedged, saying he was not sure. He informed the chief of staff about the dispatch of the royal note to Berlin, saying that he expected a reply shortly. Conrad saw his opening. “If the answer is that Germany stands by our side,” he asked his sovereign, “do we then make war on Serbia?” “In that case,” the emperor replied, “yes.”
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Meanwhile, also on Sunday, Oskar Potiorek, the military governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, produced the first real “smoking gun” from the interrogation of Ilitch, confirming the involvement of Serbian army major Tankositch in training the
three principal assassins (Princip, Chabrinovitch, and Grabezh) in Belgrade. This confession would make it harder for Tisza to make his case opposing war with Serbia, especially now that the emperor was—conditionally—on board.
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Monday afternoon, 6 July, Conrad visited the Ballplatz to report on his audience at Schönbrunn. Berchtold thus learned for the first time that Austria’s emperor would support a war against Serbia, if it were backed by Germany. The foreign minister, in turn, informed Conrad that the kaiser had already promised this support on Sunday afternoon, although he was not yet sure about the chancellor, whom Wilhelm II had told Ambassador Szögyény he still needed to consult. Berchtold informed Conrad that he expected an answer from Chancellor Bethmann the next morning. Meanwhile, Berchtold dashed off a quick note to Tisza, informing the Hungarian minister-president that Kaiser Wilhelm II had promised that “Austria could count on the full support of Germany in any eventual action . . . against Serbia.” Germany’s sovereign, Berchtold further told Tisza in a slight exaggeration of what Wilhelm had actually said, had added that Austria “must not let the current favorable moment go unused,” and that “Russia was not ready for war.” Berchtold did not let Tisza know that the German chancellor had not yet been heard from.
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Monday evening, Berchtold received Szögyény’s report of his promising conversation with Bethmann. Tuesday morning, 7 July, Hoyos returned to Vienna on the overnight train and set off for the Ballplatz at once. Having witnessed the German chancellor’s verbal declaration of blanket support on Monday afternoon in person, he was able to confirm the veracity of the ambassador’s report for Berchtold—and for Conrad, who had gone to the Ballplatz as soon as he heard the envoy was back from Berlin. Hoyos also passed on the gist of his Sunday conversation with Zimmermann. Berchtold, buoyed by Hoyos’s
encouraging report, assured Conrad that “Germany will stand by our side unequivocally, even if our operations against Serbia will bring about the great war. Germany advises us to strike at once.”
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This was exactly what Conrad wanted to hear. Without wasting a minute, the chief of staff rushed over to military headquarters. His first telegram went off to Archduke Friedrich, who, following the death of Franz Ferdinand, was slated to take over as Austria-Hungary’s commander in chief in wartime. Conrad told the archduke to cut off his planned trip to Hamburg and await urgent developments. Next, he called in Colonel Josef Metzger of the operational branch of the army to discuss the preliminary measures that would be undertaken in a mobilization against Serbia. With Berchtold and Emperor Franz Josef I fully on board, the signs pointed clearly to war this time, and Conrad wanted the army to be ready.
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