July 1914: Countdown to War (30 page)

Sunday afternoon, Berchtold summoned to the Ballplatz the German ambassador, Tschirschky, along with Chief of Staff Conrad, to discuss Szögyény’s telegram. Tschirschky wholeheartedly endorsed Bethmann’s urging of speed in launching the war against Serbia; indeed he could not have done otherwise, as this was stated German imperial policy. Berchtold, too, agreed. Together, the two diplomats pressed the case with Conrad, fully expecting that the notoriously bellicose chief of staff would give Berlin what it wanted. “When,” Berchtold asked Conrad, “do you want the declaration of war?” Conrad replied that it would be needed “only at the stage when operations can begin at once—say on 12 August.”
¹⁷

The Austrians had done it again. After weeks of prevarication, Vienna had finally put the forty-eight-hour ultimatum plan in motion, had received the expected rejection from Belgrade on schedule, and had even received the unexpected gift of unilateral Serbian mobilization before the ultimatum deadline was up. The casus belli was there. Europe was expecting (even if not necessarily approving) an Austrian attack. What was Conrad waiting for?

He was waiting for Austria’s mobilization to proceed according to its normal schedule. Sensibly, the chief of staff saw
no reason to declare war before Austria was ready to fight. Why, indeed, give Russia and her allies a diplomatic pretext against the Central Powers by declaring war now, when Austrian troops would not be able to invade Serbia for another two weeks? Curiously, Conrad was the one thinking like a diplomat, while Berchtold had taken on the role of army hothead, warning his chief of staff that Austria could not wait two weeks, as “the diplomatic situation will not hold so long.”
¹⁸

Berchtold was almost certainly right that the “diplomatic situation”—that is, the Austro-German desire for localization—would not last until 12 August. Nevertheless, his argument for declaring war immediately made no diplomatic sense, considering that Conrad had told him Austria could not invade Serbia in strength for another two weeks. The Austrian army chief of staff had, in effect, already ruled out a military fait accompli as impossible, which should have invalidated the entire fait-accompli strategy. To admit this, however, would be to disappoint the Germans again. And so Berchtold hedged. Ambassador Tschirschky was informed that Austria was not going to declare war on Serbia yet. Still, Berchtold informed Jagow and Bethmann, she might do so very soon, if Serbia undertook hostile maneuvers on the Bosnian border.
¹⁹

Berchtold might have hesitated further had he known of Szapáry’s promising audience with Sazonov, which took place almost simultaneously with his own meeting with Conrad and Tschirschky. But the Petersburg ambassador’s report, filed just after midnight, would not arrive in Vienna until late Monday afternoon. Sazonov’s own report of the encounter, sent to Shebeko Sunday evening, would arrive sooner than this, but Shebeko would not be able to see Berchtold before Monday at the earliest.
²⁰
Shebeko’s own Sunday dispatch to Sazonov, meanwhile, was just as ominous as Sazonov’s was reassuring. In it Russia’s ambassador reported on Austria’s own Premobilization measures against Serbia, which had already begun. These
measures were broadly similar in outline to Russia’s Period Preparatory to War, involving the immediate promotion of officers, the selective call-up of reserve divisions, the strengthening of border posts, and the onset of a strict military censorship.
²¹
By the time the Ballplatz would learn of Sazonov’s proposal to allow Szapáry to negotiate modifications in the note to Serbia, it would have been made largely moot by events, whether or not Berchtold was interested.

Sazonov may have been sincere in his desire to defuse tensions by negotiating directly with Austria. Whatever the foreign minister’s true intentions, however, his conciliatory stance vis-à-vis Pourtalès and Szapáry Sunday morning and early afternoon was belied by the acceleration of Russia’s mobilization measures during the day. At 1:55
PM
, France’s liaison officer at Russian military headquarters, General Laguiche, had reported to the War Ministry in Paris:

German and Austrian intelligence on Russia’s Period Preparatory to War was necessarily less solid than this inside account from an allied liaison officer. Nevertheless, by nightfall Sunday it was thorough enough that Pourtalès felt the need to
confront Sazonov at Chorister’s Bridge, notwithstanding their friendly morning conversation on the train. At around nine
PM
, the German ambassador put in a formal protest with Russia’s foreign minister about “the news widely reported among the circles of foreign military attachés, according to which several Russian army corps have been sent toward the western border in accordance with a mobilization directive.” Sazonov, Pourtalès reported to Berlin, “replied that he could guarantee that no mobilization order had been given, and that none could be expected until Austria-Hungary undertook hostile measures against Russia.” Nevertheless, in an important caveat that seemed to contradict his first statement, the Russian conceded that “certain military measures . . . had been taken.”
²³

At about the same time Sunday evening, Russia’s war minister summoned Major Eggeling for an urgent audience. Evidently aware of German suspicions, Sukhomlinov sought to defuse them by offering the German military attaché “his word of honor that no mobilization order had yet been issued.” Certain preparatory measures were, he conceded, underway, but Sukhomlinov insisted that “not a horse was being requisitioned, not a reservist called up.” This was a bald-faced lie, although, lacking hard evidence, the German would have been hard-pressed to prove this. Instead, Eggeling confined his own comments to warning Sukhomlinov that even Russian “mobilization against Austria alone must be regarded as very dangerous.” Overall, the military attaché reported to Army Chief of Staff Moltke of his frustrating audience with the Russian war minister: “I got the impression of great nervousness and anxiety. I consider the wish for peace genuine, military statements so far correct, that complete mobilization has probably not been ordered, but preparatory measures are very far-reaching.” The Russians, he concluded, “are evidently striving to gain time for new negotiations and for continuing their armaments.”
²⁴

Time was exactly what the Germans did not have. The clock was already running out on the prospect of an Austrian fait accompli against Serbia. With Russia having begun her own war preparations—as it appeared, against both Austria and Germany—the clock was also beginning to tick on Germany’s own strategy in case of war, which required striking a decisive blow against France before Russia would be ready to invade East Prussia. Earlier Sunday, Moltke, architect of Germany’s latest mobilization plan, had returned to Berlin after a month-long spa holiday at Karlsbad. Tirpitz, naval secretary, was expected back on Monday from Switzerland—against the orders of Bethmann, who wanted to avoid the impression that Germany was taking any steps toward war. Kaiser Wilhelm II, likewise disregarding Bethmann’s request to remain with Germany’s Baltic fleet off the Norwegian coast, had just docked at Kiel, en route for Potsdam on the overnight train. As they awoke Monday, Bethmann and Jagow would have some quick thinking to do. News was flooding in from Belgrade, Vienna, Petersburg, Paris, and London. Almost none of it was what anyone in Berlin wanted to hear.

MONDAY, 27 JULY

C
ONSIDERING THE PROMINENT ROLE
that Germany’s leaders had played in encouraging Austria to pursue her aggressive course in the Balkans, it is remarkable how insouciant they remained as that course grew more and more dangerous later in July. When Army Chief of Staff Moltke, Naval Secretary Tirpitz, and the kaiser returned to Berlin on Monday, 27 July, after long absences, they were expecting the chancellor to bring them rapidly up to speed. And yet Bethmann himself had been at his country estate at Hohenfinow until late Saturday afternoon. Earlier that day it had been Foreign Minister Jagow, not Bethmann, who had urged Vienna, via Austrian ambassador Szögyény, to declare war immediately. True, Bethmann was firmly behind the fait-accompli policy, but this did not mean that he was abreast of all the latest developments. Indeed the chancellor had not seen the text of the Austrian ultimatum before it was sent to Belgrade on Thursday. Nor had he yet seen the text of the Serbian reply—nor even, it appears, requested that he be apprised of it. It was as if the author of Germany’s blank check to Austria was not interested in how the check was filled in, so long as she cashed it. Having helped to unleash the Austrians
in all their blustering incompetence, Bethmann may also have been wary of examining too closely the consequences of his folly.

By the time he returned to Berlin Saturday night, those consequences were beginning to come into focus. Serbia and Austria had mobilized against each other, while Russia had backed Belgrade with some kind of secret military preparations of her own. French and British intentions were murky, but there were no especially positive signs from either of those directions. Localization looked to be hanging by a thread. Not trusting the nerves of his erratic sovereign, Bethmann played down the seriousness of the situation in his first dispatches to the kaiser. While he did inform Wilhelm II on Saturday night that Serbia’s reply had been deemed unsatisfactory and that Austria’s minister, Giesl, had left Belgrade, Bethmann made no mention of Russia’s early steps toward mobilization, nor that Serbia had mobilized against Austria even before the ultimatum deadline expired.
¹

In a Sunday afternoon telegram, the chancellor did pass on General von Chelius’s report from Petersburg that the Saturday military review at Krasnoe Selo had broken off and that regiments were returning to quarters (which report, he knew, the kaiser would have heard about from his military advisers). Still, Bethmann insisted that, Chelius’s report aside, “there was still no authenticated news on the Russian posture.”
²
At around eight
PM
Sunday evening, just before Germany’s Ambassador Pourtalès and Military Attaché Eggeling issued formal protests at Russia’s secret mobilization, Bethmann wired the kaiser that the Russians were “visibly hesitating” (although he gave no source for the claim). There was thus no need to return home, much less dock the fleet at Kiel, as he had heard Wilhelm proposed to do.
³

The kaiser was having none of this. As supreme warlord he had his own sources of information, via the Admiralty and the
army, which allowed him to see through Bethmann’s sugarcoating of the situation. In the kaiser’s marginal notes on these telegrams, we can trace a mounting exasperation with Bethmann that finally broke on Sunday. What angered Wilhelm most was that he had finally learned that day of the text of Austria’s Thursday ultimatum to Belgrade—not from Jagow or Bethmann, but from the Wolff news agency. The kaiser then ordered Germany’s Baltic fleet to return to Kiel, ostensibly taking this precautionary measure—the Admiralty reported to Berlin—in reaction to the “Wolff telegram.” When Bethmann, citing this rumor back to the kaiser, “ventured most humbly to advise that Your Majesty order no premature return of the Fleet,” Wilhelm exploded, writing on the margins of his chancellor’s telegram:

Wilhelm II often adopted exaggerated poses playing All-Highest Warlord, but in this case his chiding of his “civilian” chancellor was not far from the mark. Bethmann, whom everyone knew to be a habitual pessimist, was fooling no one with his pose of affected calm, his reassurances that localization was working. When the chancellor sent a second message urging the kaiser to return to his Norwegian cruise and disperse the fleet—this is the telegram in which he claimed that Russia was
“visibly hesitating”—Wilhelm underlined the word “hesitating” (
schwankend
) twice, asking rhetorically in the margins, “and from where do you infer this? Not from any of the materials laid before me.” Besides, as the supreme warlord informed his civilian chancellor, “There exists a Russian fleet! In the Baltic now on exercises there are five Russian torpedo boat flotillas, all or part of which could in sixteen hours be in a position . . . to cut [German naval] communications.” “My fleet,” the kaiser admonished his chancellor, “has orders to proceed to Kiel, and to Kiel it shall go!”
⁵

With impressive stubbornness, Bethmann responded to this hectoring by sending his sovereign one last, deliberately misleading telegram before he had to greet him Monday afternoon (the kaiser had insisted that the chancellor meet him at Potsdam’s Wildpark Station). In a remarkably optimistic reading of the diplomatic situation, Bethmann reported that “Austria seems not to be able to begin war operations until 12 August,” as Conrad had informed Germany’s Ambassador Tschirschky on Sunday; that Serbia “seems to intend to stand entirely on the defensive,” while also having offered what was reported to be a fairly conciliatory reply to the ultimatum (but which Bethmann had not yet read); that England and France were “desirous of peace”; and, most important, that “Russia on the latest reports seems not yet to be mobilizing and to be willing for negotiations with Vienna.”
⁶
While none of these statements was literally untrue, taken together they were far from the whole truth, as anyone who had read even a few recent dispatches would have known. Small wonder that Bethmann, upon greeting his sovereign at Wildpark Station at one
PM
Monday afternoon, appeared “pale and wretched.” “How did it all happen?” the kaiser asked him. Bethmann, recalled Count August Eulenberg, one of Wilhelm’s confidants, “utterly cowed, admitted that all along he had been deceived and offered the kaiser his
resignation.” His Majesty answered: “
You’ve cooked this broth and now you’re going to eat it
.”
⁷