July 1914: Countdown to War (38 page)

In Bethmann’s defense, he seems to have realized his error almost as soon as he made it. Just minutes after his audience with Goschen concluded, the chancellor was handed a third telegram from Lichnowsky, which showed him just how forlorn his hope of British neutrality had been. After days of confusing feints at mediation, Foreign Minister Grey had finally summoned the courage to issue a real warning to Germany. While still hoping that a four-power conference, including Germany, would mediate between Austria and Serbia, Grey for the first time gave a hint of what England’s policy might look like if this did not happen. If an armed Austro-Russian clash over Serbia drew France and Germany into a European war, Grey told Lichnowsky around six Wednesday evening, “the British Government would be forced into taking rapid decisions. In this case it would not do to stand aside and wait.”
⁴³
So King George’s vague reassurance had been hollow. Britain would not remain neutral after all.

Lichnowsky’s latest telegram dealt Bethmann a crushing blow. But it was also salutary, in that it forced him to abandon the wishful assumption on which he had been basing his policies. Here it must be said that Grey had done almost nothing before 29 July to discourage this assumption. As early as Friday, 24 July, Sir George Buchanan had urged the foreign secretary to make a clear statement at Berlin and Vienna “that if war became general, it would be difficult for England to remain neutral.”
⁴⁴
Had Grey done so over the weekend, or even as late as Monday, 27 July, Bethmann would have been under no illusions about British neutrality. He might then have warned off Austrian foreign minister Berchtold from declaring war on Serbia on Tuesday—or at least passed on, unedited, the kaiser’s more genuine version of the “Halt in Belgrade” proposal, under which Austria would negotiate on the basis of the Serbian reply. Had Grey issued his veiled threat even as late as Wednesday morning (in time for Bethmann to learn of it before his fateful ten thirty
PM
encounter with Goschen), the chancellor would have spared everyone the embarrassment of his sublimely stupid bid for neutrality. Instead, Grey had consistently maintained a phony posture of disinterestedness, even as Churchill (admittedly without Grey’s knowledge) was priming Britain’s navy for war against Germany and as Russia commenced far-reaching preparations for war without a peep of British disapproval. By leaving the Germans in the dark about British intentions for so long, Grey had fed Bethmann’s illusions, which had encouraged him to urge on Austria’s reckless behavior.

Sir Edward Grey, of course, was facing his own painful dilemmas. Churchill’s bold preparatory maneuvers were possible only because he had not run them by the cabinet, on the spurious grounds that moving the fleet around was his prerogative as first lord of the Admiralty and did not necessarily signify a policy. As His Majesty’s foreign secretary, Grey’s every utterance was, in essence, a declaration of policy, which is why he was so careful with them. The cabinet was deeply divided, with a thin stratum of Francophile Liberal imperialists—Asquith, Grey, Churchill—running foreign policy even as the domestic officers were mostly “Little Englanders” suspicious of all foreign entanglements—particularly those with France and Russia. At a cabinet meeting held earlier on Wednesday, Grey had not dared to speak strongly against Germany, knowing
that he and Asquith “faced a clear noninterventionist majority.”
⁴⁵
Churchill himself believed—notwithstanding his own unauthorized maneuvers—that had Grey issued a real ultimatum to Germany, the Liberal cabinet would have “broken up.”
⁴⁶
Conversely, a clear declaration of neutrality that left France in the lurch would have prompted the loud resignations of Liberalimperial interventionists (starting with Churchill). For fear of a cabinet meltdown, it had therefore been Grey’s policy not to have a policy—until he had finally summoned the courage to issue his belated warning to Lichnowsky (even then watering it down enough so as to not stir up cabinet opposition). Sir Edward Grey had, in effect, impaled Bethmann on the horns of the Briton’s own policy dilemma.

Faced with diplomatic and now military encirclement by the burgeoning Triple Entente, Bethmann at last did what he should have done days (if not weeks) earlier: wire Berchtold in Vienna, demanding “urgently and emphatically” that the Vienna cabinet accept four-power mediation with Serbia, without reservation or qualification. If Germany and Austria did not negotiate based on the “honorable terms” Grey had originally offered, they would be “faced with a conflagration in which England will go against us, Italy and Romania to all appearances will not go with us, and we should be two against four Great Powers.”
*
At 2:55
AM
Thursday morning, Bethmann sent off this historic wire to Vienna.
⁴⁷
Five minutes later, he sent Ambassador Tschirschky another, demanding that Austria resume direct talks with Russia, emphasizing that the Germans were “prepared to fulfill our duties as allies, but must decline to let
ourselves be dragged by Vienna, wantonly and without regard to our advice, into a world conflagration. In the Italian question, too, Vienna seems to disregard our advice. Pray speak to Count Berchtold at once with great emphasis and most seriously.”
⁴⁸
In this way Bethmann, on the evening of 29–30 July 1914, at last rescinded the blank check he had foolishly offered Austria three weeks earlier.

It was too late. At midnight, Sazonov called in Ambassador Pourtalès for an urgent audience at Chorister’s Bridge. It was an awkward moment for Russia’s foreign minister. Just three hours earlier, he, Sukhomlinov, and Yanushkevitch had convinced the tsar to order general mobilization—although the tsar had then, to their horror, changed his mind. Plainly, Sazonov could not inform Pourtalès about any of this. He would have to give the Germans something, though, to put them off their guard. Gamely, Sazonov offered all kinds of ideas about how the Germans might mediate in Vienna, while refusing to be drawn into a discussion of Russia’s own military preparations. Pourtalès objected that it was “difficult, if not impossible” for Germany to put pressure on her ally “now that Russia has taken the fateful step toward mobilization.” Sazonov changed the subject back to Serbia, only for Pourtalès to bring it back to the “danger of a general European conflagration.” Realizing that he was getting nowhere over Serbia, Sazonov confronted Pourtalès with the “contradiction” between the telegrams received Wednesday from the chancellor and the kaiser, the former all but threatening war, the latter promising to mediate in Vienna. Pourtalès had his answer ready. Even if all the powers mobilized, he insisted, it was still the kaiser’s prerogative to work for peace. All Bethmann’s telegram had contained was a “friendly warning” about Germany’s alliance obligations: if Russia mobilized against Austria, Germany was treaty-bound to mobilize against Russia on behalf of her ally. Hearing this again, Sazonov lost his
temper. Just before 1:30
AM
Thursday morning, Russia’s foreign minister told Pourtalès point-blank that “
reversing the [Russian] mobilization order was no longer possible
,” and that “Austrian mobilization was to blame.”
⁴⁹

In a remarkable coincidence, over at Peterhof Palace, the tsar was confessing nearly the same thing at almost exactly the same time. The kaiser’s 9:40
PM
telegram, which Nicholas believed to have been dispatched in response to his urgent 8:30
PM
plea for a clarification of German intentions, had so shaken him that he had called off general mobilization. He was still shaken when he composed his reply at 1:20
AM
. Hoping to reassure the kaiser about Russian intentions, Nicky now told Willy—having evidently forgotten his lines under the emotional strain of the night—that “the military measures which have now come into force were decided five days ago.”
⁵⁰
Even as Bethmann was deciding, in the wee hours of Wednesday night, to rein in the Austrians just as Russia had been demanding for days, even as the tsar’s conscience had forced him to call off general mobilization, Russia’s foreign minister and her loose-lipped sovereign were fessing up to Russia’s secret war preparations against Austria and Germany—and that these preparations had been underway since Saturday.

Bethmann could only hope that he would not be within earshot when the kaiser heard this.

 
___________

*
German naval intelligence did intercept two encrypted wireless transmissions from aboard the
France
. This does not prove that the signal was jammed, however; in fact it suggests the opposite, that the Germans were trying to listen in, not to block communications.

*
Moltke had weakened the German right wing in the north and strengthened the left in the south, which faced the French in Alsace-Lorraine. In Schlieffen’s conception, the northernmost German army would have violated not only Belgian but even some Dutch territory, ultimately enveloping the French armies from behind. Moltke, concerned about German access to world markets in the case of a long war, had eliminated the Dutch option, weighted the German deployment further south overall, and allowed for some operational flexibility depending on what the French would do. The German war plan of 1914 was nowhere near as rigid as the Schlieffen plan of legend; “Paris by day 40” was a myth. Still, speed of deployment mattered greatly.

*
Fortunately for the chancellor’s fragile nerves, he had, at this point, not yet received the Warsaw consul’s report that “Russia is already fully in a state of preparation for war. . . . The troops ranged against Germany are assembling between Lomza and Kovno along the Niemen,” which was decoded only on Thursday. Had Bethmann read this on top of everything else Wednesday night, he might have broken down completely.

*
It is not clear whether Bethmann meant Italy or Romania as the fourth “Great Power” joining England, France, and Russia (and Serbia). But the basic point was clear enough: the Central Powers would be outnumbered and outgunned.

THURSDAY, 30 JULY

A
S THE NEWS OF THE NIGHT
trickled into Berlin and Potsdam, it began to dawn on the Germans that they had been had. Bethmann had exposed the secrets of German policy to the British ambassador in a kind of diplomatic burlesque act, shortly before learning from Lichnowsky that British neutrality was hollow after all. The Russian foreign minister’s pretense of desiring direct negotiations with Vienna—or accepting Grey’s four-power conference—was blown to pieces by Sazonov’s own admission that Russia’s mobilization “could no longer be reversed.” France had begun preparing for war only a few days behind Russia, while feigning interest in British mediation efforts. British naval preparations were accelerating, too. It is true that Bethmann himself had come around to favor genuine German mediation in Vienna only on Wednesday night, 29 July, after receiving the shattering news from London. But then he had gone out on a limb not only in his bid for English neutrality and his last-minute withdrawal of blanket support for Austria, but also by restraining the German army from ordering premobilization measures akin to those already underway in Russia and France, over the objections of Falkenhayn and Moltke—and this despite the fact that the German mobilization
plan relied more heavily than any other on the speed of its execution. In diplomatic-strategic terms, the Germans had been caught with their pants down.

No one felt this more keenly than Kaiser Wilhelm II. Having just laid himself bare, as he saw it, by taking up the tsar’s request that he mediate in Vienna, Willy awoke just past six Thursday morning, 30 July, to read Nicky’s confession that “the military measures which have now come into force were decided five days ago.” “So that is almost a week ahead of us,” the kaiser scribbled furiously in the margin; “the tsar has been secretly mobilizing behind my back.”
¹
Lending credence to this view, Wilhelm next read a telegram from Pourtalès, dispatched on Wednesday afternoon, reporting Russia’s “partial mobilization” of the four military districts facing Austria on Tuesday, ostensibly undertaken in response to Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia. The kaiser noted, on this second telegram, that Russia’s mobilization measures had,

What this meant to Willy was simple: “That means I have got to mobilize as well!”
²

Kaiser Wilhelm II has been judged harshly for his impulsive conduct at this and other key moments in July 1914. And
yet on this occasion, his gut reaction was not far from the mark. Just as he wrote, the mobilization measures against Austria
had
been ordered by Russia’s Council of Ministers on 24 July, then signed into law by the tsar on Saturday, 25 July, with the corollary that they would only be made public after Austria attacked (or declared war on) Serbia. The tsar had then personally confirmed on the night of 29–30 July that all this had been “decided five days earlier,” as, indeed, it had been. Also inaugurated “five days earlier” (although the tsar had not mentioned this) was Russia’s Period Preparatory to War, which, judging by the mushrooming reports from German consuls on the ground, was directed at both Germany and Austria. This may have been what the kaiser was hinting at when he scribbled—twice, once on both the “Nicky” and the Pourtalès telegram—that the tsar was “mobilizing behind my back.” He may also have been working merely on a hunch.