The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (74 page)

In appearance, Bethmann, who was tall and imposing, looked very much the strong Prussian statesman. Although as a child his own grandmother had exclaimed of him, ‘What will become of Theobald? He is so ugly!’ he made a distinguished adult, with his long face and his grey beard and moustaches.
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Beneath that facade, however, was a more fragile being who had endured dreadful headaches as a child and who always worried about his health. He was deeply pessimistic by nature and tormented by doubts, about himself, and about the future of his class and his country. It is believed that he did not plant trees at Hohenfinow when he inherited it because he expected that Russia would
overrun it before they ever grew to maturity. At each promotion, he wondered whether the gods would punish him for reaching beyond his capacity. When he became Prussian Minister of the Interior, he claimed that he was ‘painfully experiencing the disparity between my ability and my duty every day’.
¹²
His tendency, pronounced as a young man, to be melancholy and introspective, shy of intimacy with others, never entirely left him. Although he was a clever and educated man with strong moral standards, he also had difficulty in making up his mind. ‘I have good resolutions’, he wrote while still a student to a close friend, ‘and I intend to put them into practice.’
¹³
Good resolutions were not enough and both friends and enemies commented on his tendency to procrastinate. Bülow’s wife reported that Madame Bethmann confided that she wished Theobald had not taken on the position of Chancellor. ‘He’s always so undecided, so hesitating, so given to worrying over trifles, till, really at times, he doesn’t know what he is doing. Why it’s become quite a family joke.’
¹⁴

Even a more decisive man than Bethmann would have had trouble with the position of Chancellor. The problems inherent in the German governmental system were, if anything, worse than before. The Kaiser, his various entourages, and his favoured ministers, were independent actors and frequently worked at counter-purposes to the Chancellor. The Reichstag was increasingly polarised and the Social Democrats were winning more seats almost every time there was an election. The taxation system badly needed reforming to produce the tax revenue the government needed for the armed forces and its social programmes. In the wider German society the old conservative classes fought a determined rearguard action to defend their powers and position while the middle and working classes pushed for a greater share. Bethmann tried to cope with the demands coming at him from all directions, from the Kaiser, his own colleagues and the Reichstag. It did not help that, with the growth of the Social Democratic Party, especially after 1912, he had more trouble than Bülow with the Reichstag and nor did he enjoy a close relationship with his difficult master. He found it harder than his predecessor had to manage the impetuous Kaiser, which led to repeated difficulties and tensions.
¹⁵

Bethmann filled his position, said Bülow maliciously, ‘neither as a thoroughbred nor a jumper, but as a good plow-horse, plodding along
slowly and steadily, because there are no hurdles in sight’.
¹⁶
The remark contained a dig at Bethmann’s background, which was not as noble as that of Germany’s previous Chancellors although he had married well, to the daughter of a neighbouring, old aristocratic family. The Bethmann Hollwegs had started out in the eighteenth century as prosperous Frankfurt bankers and moved, generation by generation, into the landed upper classes. Bethmann’s grandfather was a distinguished jurist and scholar who was ennobled by Wilhelm I, and his own father used his considerable fortune to buy Hohenfinow and so become, by style if not by birth, a Prussian Junker. Under the elder Bethmann’s management, Hohenfinow became a prosperous estate with some 1,500 inhabitants. The future Chancellor grew up in a large seventeenth-century manor house and was educated by private tutors until he was sent off to a boarding school which saw its mission as preparing the children of the nobility for government service either as soldiers or civil servants. Bethmann absorbed many of the prejudices of his class, its distaste for commerce or for Jews, for example. ‘You know that I am not of noble blood,’ he explained to a fellow student, ‘but when all external life functions move in a privileged circle it is imprudent and false to step out of line with even one foot.’
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Although Bethmann, like his father, frequently found the diehard Prussian reactionaries of his own world absurd, he remained firmly conservative in his views. He disliked much about the modern world, such as its materialism, but attempted to find ways of bridging traditional and new values. A teenager when Germany was united, he became then and remained a passionate nationalist. In 1877, when a fanatic tried to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm I, Bethmann wrote to a close friend of his shock: ‘I cannot believe that our beloved German people is incapable of being one
Volk
and one state.’ He regretted the divisions in German politics and deplored ‘despicable socialists and unclear doctrinaire liberals’.
¹⁸
As a civil servant and statesman he worked for unity and social peace, hoping that by making modest reforms and improving the lot of the poorer classes he could win their allegiance to the state.

On foreign policy, Bethmann’s underlying views were straightforward: that peace was preferable to war but that Germany must be prepared to fight, if diplomacy failed, to defend its interests and its honour. Germany, he told the Kaiser, in the summer of 1911 as the
second Morocco crisis worsened, could not afford to back down because ‘our credit in the world will suffer unbearably, not only for the present, but for all future diplomatic actions’.
¹⁹
That winter, before the
Panther
made its spring to Agadir, Harry Kessler had a long conversation with Bethmann at a dinner party in Berlin. The Chancellor was moderately optimistic about the international scene: he felt that Germany’s relations with Russia were improving. There was indeed some evidence for this: Nicholas had visited Wilhelm in Potsdam the previous year and their two countries had come to an agreement over railways in the Ottoman Empire, thus removing a cause of tension, and the Germans had also promised that Germany would not join any more aggressive moves on the part of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
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And, Bethmann told Kessler, Britain might well come round to a more reasonable frame of mind about Germany. Russia still posed a threat to the British in India and elsewhere, and that fact in the long run could only benefit Germany: ‘They
must
feel quite uncomfortable, then they will approach us. That is what I am counting on.’
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Bethmann, unlike many of his compatriots, did not hate Britain (indeed, he sent his son to Oxford) but he saw its entente with France and Russia as a threat to Germany and hoped to break it apart. During the Morocco crisis, Rathenau, the distinguished and thoughtful German businessman, had dinner with Bethmann at his Hohenfinow estate. The Chancellor was sure that Germany had been right to confront France: ‘the Morocco Question welds England and France together and must therefore be “liquidated”’. He was depressed, though, and worried about the prospect of a war. ‘I tell you this confidentially,’ he said to Rathenau as he walked him to his car. ‘It is somewhat
for show
. We cannot yield too much.’
²²

Bethmann had in fact had misgivings about sending the
Panther
on its mission but had allowed himself to be persuaded by the Foreign Office and its forceful secretary, Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter.
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Bethmann usually left foreign affairs to him and Kiderlen was more than happy to take charge. Big, blond, and brutally blunt, his face marked by duelling scares, Kiderlen was afraid of no one, not even the Kaiser, and nothing, including war. He was known equally for his wit, his sarcasm, his indiscretions and his rudeness. When there was talk of sending him to London as ambassador, Grey reportedly exclaimed: ‘More dreadnoughts and the bad manners of Kiderlen – that would be too much!’
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Initially he had been a favourite of the Kaiser, who liked his risqué jokes and stories, but, typically, he had gone too far and his rude comments about his master had got back to him. As punishment Kiderlen had been sent off to languish as Germany’s ambassador in Rumania. The empress, among his other enemies, also disapproved of his way of life; he lived openly for years with a widow who kept house for him. When Bülow raised this with him, Kiderlen replied ungallantly: ‘Excellency, if I were to produce the
corpus delicti
for your inspection I think you would find it rather hard to believe in any illicit relationship between me and a fat old woman like that.’
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The Kaiser had initially resisted Bethmann’s wish to bring Kiderlen back to Berlin as Foreign Secretary but gave way, saying only that his Chancellor would find he had a louse in his fur. Kiderlen showed little gratitude or respect for Bethmann whom he called the Earthworm (
Regenwurm
) and Bethmann for his part discovered he had been dealing with a stubborn and secretive man whom he nicknamed the Mule (
Dickkopf
).
²⁶
Part of the reason German foreign policy frequently appeared to be erratic and incoherent during Kiderlen’s tenure of office was that he refused to communicate with either his ambassadors abroad, his subordinates or his colleagues. At one point, Bethmann told friends, he had to get his Foreign Secretary drunk to find out what he was up to.
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Kiderlen may not have known himself. As a senior general in the War Ministry complained at the height of the Morocco crisis, the dispatch of the
Panther
was all too typical of the incoherent nature of German foreign policy.

There was no understanding whatsoever of what might arise from it and of how all these possibilities were to be dealt with; the order is said to have taken shape in a few hours one afternoon, without precise knowledge of local conditions, the anchorage and the like. It is hardly surprising that we now find ourselves more or less at a loss in the face of the resulting political difficulties.
²⁸

In creating the crisis, Kiderlen seems to have intended to force the French to negotiate in earnest over Morocco and, like Bethmann, he hoped that Britain could be detached from the Triple Entente. Kiderlen did not make clear from the first either to his own colleagues or to the
French what he had in mind as compensation for Germany, either in Morocco or elsewhere, perhaps as a deliberate tactic.
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He assumed, with some reason, that the French were not prepared to fight and so he was prepared to engage in brinkmanship and bluff.
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Jules Cambon, who had worked so hard for a better understanding between his country and Germany, found Kiderlen exceedingly difficult to negotiate with. The two men were talking in Berlin about the Morocco issue in June when Kiderlen suddenly took six weeks off to go to a spa. Cambon visited him there towards the end of the month to suggest that France might be prepared to offer some form of compensation. Kiderlen, who had already dispatched the
Panther
, said only, ‘Bring us something from Paris.’
³¹
His talks with Cambon started up again on 8 July, after the news of the
Panther
’s arrival had become public, with discussion of Germany’s position in Morocco and the possibility of compensation somewhere in Africa. A week later Cambon demanded point blank what exactly Germany wanted; Kiderlen called for a map of Africa and pointed to the whole of French Congo. Cambon, so Kiderlen later claimed, ‘nearly fell over backwards’. The demand, which leaked out, gave rise to much worried speculation in France and Britain, that Germany intended to build a vast empire across Africa, eventually taking in the huge Belgian Congo and the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique.
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In fact neither Kiderlen nor Bethmann had any interest in Africa but they wanted to show that Germany could not be ignored.
³³

What could also not be ignored, and this made it more difficult in the end to settle the crisis, was public opinion in Germany itself. Kiderlen, who encouraged the colonial lobby and the nationalistic Pan-German League to take a hard line in order to scare the French, found that he had stirred up something that was difficult to contain. Jules Cambon observed after the crisis had ended: ‘It is false that in Germany the nation is peaceful and the government is bellicose – the exact opposite is true.’
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Bebel, the leader of the Social Democrats, was so concerned about the heated state of German public opinion that he asked the British consul in Zurich to warn London: ‘A horrible ending seems inevitable.’
³⁵
Across Europe in those last years of peace, from Russia where the Duma was increasingly active in foreign and military affairs, to Britain which had a long tradition of an informed public opinion,
governments were finding that their ability to manoeuvre was increasingly circumscribed by their publics’ emotions and expectations.

In France, where the reaction to the German moves was one of shock and anger, the crisis came at a bad time. At the end of May, an accident at an air show had killed the Minister of War and seriously wounded the Prime Minister. The government had struggled on only to collapse a month later. A new Cabinet was sworn in on 27 June, four days before the news that the
Panther
was at Agadir reached it. The new Foreign Minister had absolutely no experience in foreign affairs. The Prime Minister, Joseph Caillaux, a rich man with a shady reputation and a scandalous marriage to a divorced woman, intended to manage them himself. Caillaux had one great virtue and that was realism. When the crisis broke, he consulted Joffre, who had just become chief of staff, about France’s chances in a war. The odds, Joffre told him, were not good so Caillaux decided that France had no option but to negotiate and instructed Jules Cambon, who had been wanting to settle the Morocco issue for months, to work with Kiderlen.
³⁶
Like the Germans, the French were to find that their own press and public opinion added constraints to their negotiations.
³⁷
The Foreign Ministry officials at the Quai d’Orsay also put up furious objections and did their best to undermine Cambon. ‘They do not know what they want’, he complained to a trusted colleague, ‘they are constantly putting spokes in my wheels, getting the press excited and playing with fire.’
³⁸
Cambon was reduced that summer to using the French military attaché in Berlin to send his reports to Caillaux through the Ministry of War.
³⁹
As a result of such difficulties Caillaux himself undertook secret negotiations through the German embassy in Paris, something which later earned him accusations of treason.
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