The Great War disrupted and destroyed lives on
a scale never known before. More than 60 million
men were mobilised and 8.5 million were killed,
21 million were wounded and in every town and
village in Europe the blinded and maimed victims
served as daily reminders decades after the war
was over. In every town and village war memorials
commemorate the names of those who gave
their lives for their country. The war, which
involved millions and for which millions suffered,
was launched by the decision of just a few men
negotiating and conspiring in secret. They bear a
heavy responsibility. What made these men act
the way they did? Were they aware of what they
were doing, or did they just muddle into war
through confusion and error?
There was a widespread illusion about the
course the war would take. The troops left for the
front believing that they would be home by
Christmas. With the new mass armies it was
thought that the war would be decided by the
devastating battles fought at the outset. No one
expected that this would be just another war, like
those of the mid-nineteenth century, ending with
the victors exacting some territorial and financial
punishment from the vanquished and leading to
a new balance of power. There was, however, no
illusion about what was at stake. Grey’s famous
words about the lights going out all over Europe
expressed a sentiment that would have been
well understood in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St
Petersburg. Bethmann Hollweg gloomily predicted
the toppling of thrones and the victory of
socialism. In Vienna, the future existence of the
Habsburg Monarchy was felt to be at stake: defeat
would lead to its dissolution. Tsarist Russia was
beset by serious internal disturbances and French
society was deeply divided on the eve of the war.
There were no illusions about the devastating
consequences of this war from which a new world
would emerge. There were hesitations on the
brink of war. It was then too late. How had the
powers allowed the crisis caused initially by a terrorist
crime, the assassination of an archduke, the
heir to the Habsburg throne, to escalate until
there was no way out but a devastating European
war? There seems to be no obvious connection
between the murder committed by a young man
in Bosnia and the clash of armies of millions.
The assassination of the archduke Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 was the
work of a handful of Bosnian youths who had
romantically dedicated their lives to Serb nationalism
and had been greatly influenced by the
Russian terrorists in exile. They received their
weapons from the secret Serbian conspiratorial
Black Hand organisation headed by Colonel
Dragutin Dimitrijevic´ who was also in charge of
army secret intelligence. The Bosnian youths,
who had spent some time in Belgrade, had been
helped across the Serb frontier by Serbian agents.
The prime minister of Serbia, Nikola Pasˇic´, and
King Alexander were powerless against the army
officers and the Black Hand. But Pasˇic´ did send
a vague warning to Vienna that the archduke
would be in danger when he visited Sarajevo.
The amateur assassins almost bungled their
task. On the morning of 28 June, the first attempt
failed and the bomb thrown by one of the six conspirators
exploded under the car following the
archduke. Incredibly the archduke, his wife and
the governor of Bosnia drove through the open
streets again the same afternoon. When the
archduke’s chauffeur hesitated which way to go, by
mere chance one of the conspirators, Gavrilo
Princip, found himself opposite the archduke’s
stationary car. He aimed two shots at the archduke
and the governor of Bosnia; they mortally
wounded Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
The government of Serbia did not want war in
1914, for the country had not yet recovered from
the exertions of the Balkan wars. But the government
could not control the army nor prevent
the secret societies from fomenting and aiding
anti-Habsburg movements in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The assassination of the archduke was
unwelcome news to the government, for the king
and his government would now be called to
account for allowing anarchical political conditions
which gave the terrorists their base and
power.
In Vienna, the Dual Monarchy’s foreign minister,
Count Berchtold, before those fateful shots at
Sarajevo had given no serious thought to war. He
did not judge the internal state of the Habsburg
Monarchy as so desperate. Serbia and Russia would
surely be restrained by firm Austro-Hungarian
diplomacy backed by imperial Germany. The
Habsburgs could continue to rely upon the divisions
and mutual antagonisms of their Slav subjects.
The Slovenes were Catholics and loyal to the
Crown. The Croats were Catholics too, and union
with the Greek Orthodox Serbs was opposed by
the majority of them. Nor were the Serbs in favour
of any general union of southern Slavs, ‘Yugoslavia’,
which would place them in the minority of
such a new state. They dreamt of a ‘Greater
Serbia’, but this would have placed the Croats in a
minority. The idea of ‘Yugoslavia’ had won the
adherence of only a minority of students and
intellectuals. The majority of the southern Slavs
had no thought of leaving the Habsburg
Monarchy in 1914.
Every Austro-Hungarian minister since 1909
realised that the threat to the existence of the
Habsburg Empire was due not to the challenge
of any of the small Balkan states such as Serbia,
but to Russia utilising Balkan discontents against
the Dual Monarchy. That is why the misunderstanding
and dispute between Russia and Austria-
Hungary – the so-called Bosnian crisis – was such
a significant milestone on the road to war.
Russia had been forced to back down when
faced with Germany’s determined support of
Austria-Hungary. In this way, the changed status
of two provinces in the Balkans – which made no
real difference to the map of Europe – led to disastrous
consequences out of all proportion to the
issues involved. Henceforth, the good Austro-
Russian understanding, designed to prevent
the two powers from becoming so entangled in
local Balkan conflicts that thereby they could be
dragged into hostility with each other, was
broken by crises that threatened the peace of
Europe. Rivalry, suspicion and intrigue in the
Balkans replaced the cooperation of former years.
The final crisis was occasioned by the assassination
of the archduke.
In Vienna, news of the assassination entirely
changed the attitude of Berchtold and the
majority of the Monarchy’s ministers. A diplomatic
offensive was no longer thought enough.
Habsburg prestige was now so seriously involved
that, unless Serbia was ‘punished’, the empire’s
role as a great power would be at an end. Serbia
could not be allowed to get away with this last
and most serious provocation by sheltering
behind Russia. If the Monarchy could prove that
Russian protection could not save Serbia from its
wrath, the lesson would not be lost on the other
Balkan states and Austria-Hungary’s international
position of power would be reasserted. Berchtold
concluded that Serbia’s hostility must be broken
and that only Serbian submission to the will of
the Monarchy should be allowed to save it from
war and conquest.
There were three obstacles. The Austro-
Hungarian army was not ready for war: it would
need more than a month to prepare. The chief of
staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf, moreover, pointed
out that, if Russia intervened, the Austro-
Hungarian army would need German military
cooperation to cope successfully with a war on two
fronts, the Serbian and Russian. The Monarchy’s
ministers were in any case convinced that the
Monarchy could not risk war with Russia unless
the German ally stood side by side with Austria-
Hungary in war. Would the imperial German government
support the Monarchy now? The third
obstacle to war was internal, the opposition of the
Hungarian prime minister, Count Tisza.
On 4 July 1914, the Council of Ministers,
meeting in Vienna, decided that the first step was
to ascertain the attitude of the kaiser and his ministers.
Count Hoyos was sent to Berlin with a personal
letter from Emperor Franz Josef to the
kaiser, and a set of questions from the Monarchy’s
ministers. They did not beat about the bush,
but wanted to know whether Germany would
come to Austria-Hungary’s help if Russia chose
to intervene on behalf of Serbia. They also
explained what was in store for Serbia. Serbia
would be eliminated ‘as a power factor in the
Balkans’.
From a variety of recorded conversations, in
Berlin, for two years and more there had been
mounting fears about the planned expansion of
Russian military power. The weakness of the
Habsburg Monarchy became increasingly apparent,
and there were serious doubts about its future
after the old emperor’s death, which could not be
long delayed. There were also nagging doubts
about Austria-Hungary’s loyalty to the alliance
with Germany. Would the alliance survive if
Germany once again forced the Monarchy to
desist from doing what it thought imperative for
its survival – to show it was stronger than Serbia
and would not tolerate Serbian hostility? Imperial
Germany felt it needed the support of Austria-
Hungary if the mass Russian Slav armies were to
be checked. A war with Russia arising out of an
Austro-Serb conflict would ensure the Monarchy’s
support. A war starting between Germany and
Russia, or Germany and France, might not find
Austria-Hungary on Germany’s side. Then there
was a calculation of quite a different kind.
Bethmann Hollweg hoped to weaken, perhaps
even to break up, the alignment of Russia, France
and Britain. Bethmann Hollweg’s calculations
were all based on ‘ifs’. If Russia should decide to
back Serbia and then applied to Paris for backing,
and if France then refused to risk war with
Germany so that Russia might threaten Austria-
Hungary with war, Russia would discover that the
French alliance was, in reality, worthless. If all this
happened then Germany would be in a position to
win back Russia’s friendship, perhaps even its
alliance. If, on the other hand, it should come to
war, then better now than later. But the Dual
Monarchy must initiate the war so that at home it
could be presented as being fought in defence of
Germany’s ally against tsarist Russia. Russia would
be cast in the role of aggressor.
The critical discussions between the kaiser,
Bethmann Hollweg and the military took place
immediately after the arrival of Count Hoyos in
Berlin. The decision, when it was reached, was
not the kaiser’s alone. That is a myth. The decision
was to back Austria-Hungary to the hilt, with
German military support if necessary, should
Russia intervene to prevent the Dual Monarchy
from dealing with Serbia. The Habsburg ministers
were given a free hand to settle with Serbia
in any way they thought appropriate. That was
the message to Vienna on 6 July, the kaiser’s
famous ‘blank cheque’. The Habsburg ministers
were also urged to act quickly against Serbia while
the governments of Europe were still shocked by
the assassinations at Sarajevo. In Germany, the
chief of staff, General Moltke, continued his
health cure at the spa of Karlsbad. Admiral Tirpitz
stayed away from Berlin and the kaiser departed
on his yacht to cruise in the North Sea. Everything
was done to avoid an air of crisis, to camouflage
the impending Habsburg action. Why? It
could only have been to allay British, Russian and
French suspicions that Germany secretly stood
behind Austria-Hungary. A diplomatic triumph
for Austria-Hungary and Germany was still
preferable to war. Europe was to be faced with a
sudden fait accompli.
What went wrong? In Vienna the ministers
were not unanimous, even after receiving the
German assurances. Count Tisza, the powerful
Hungarian prime minister, remained opposed to
war at their meeting on 7 July and the following
week gave way only on condition that the Dual
Monarchy first agreed not to annex any Serbian
territory after the expected victory. Tisza, a
Magyar, wanted to see no more Slavs added to the
population of the empire. Then there was further
delay as the army asked for more time. Berchtold
used it to compile a justificatory dossier of Serbia’s
recent wrongdoings for presentation to the chancelleries
of Europe when the time for action eventually
came. Then Berchtold decided to wait until
the French president, Poincaré, and the French
prime minister, René Viviani, had ended their visit
to St Petersburg. Thereby, he hoped that Austria
would act at the very moment when Russia would
find it more difficult to consult its French ally.
More than three weeks had now elapsed since
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo.
The Austrians had worked in greatest secrecy, and
Europe had been lulled into a false sense of calm.
On 23 July the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was
presented in Belgrade and, in just six days,
Europe plunged headlong from peace to certain
war. On 25 July, Serbia mobilised its army and,
in a cleverly worded reply later that day, appeared
to accept many of the Austrian demands,
although not to the point of submitting Serbia
to Austrian supervision. The same evening, the
Austro-Hungarian ambassador left Belgrade
and Austria-Hungary mobilised against Serbia.
Even though the Austro-Hungarian army would
not be ready for another three weeks, Austria-
Hungary declared war on 28 July and, to make
war irrevocable, bombarded Belgrade on 29 July.
Between the break of diplomatic relations and
the actual declaration of war, Sir Edward Grey
attempted mediation and sent proposals to Berlin
in an attempt to preserve the peace of Europe.
Bethmann Hollweg wanted no such interference
and Grey’s efforts came to nothing. When the
kaiser learnt how the Serbians had replied to the
ultimatum, he was personally delighted. So much
for the myth that he was thirsting to go to war.
He immediately wrote a note on the morning of
28 July from his palace in Potsdam, expressing his
evident relief that now there was no longer any
need for war – ‘On the whole the wishes of the
Danube Monarchy have been acceded to, every
cause for war has vanished’ – and he added that
he was ready to mediate. But by then Bethmann
Hollweg and Berchtold had instigated the
Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia
which the kaiser heard about later that day.
Bethmann Hollweg now made every effort to
localise the war. On 30 July, he urged Vienna to
exchange views with St Petersburg. He resisted
calls for mobilisation in Berlin and he initiated the
kaiser’s personal telegrams appealing to the tsar
not to mobilise.
The weak tsar was under pressure from his own
military advisers to mobilise. The French military,
too, were urging mobilisation and the French
ambassador in St Petersburg, Maurice Paléologue,
pressed their views on the foreign minister,
Sazonov. The French general staff was terrified
that war would begin in the west and find the
Russians unprepared. Russia, if it went to war,
could count on French support; the tsar had
known this for certain ever since the visit of
President Poincaré and Prime Minister Viviani to
St Petersburg (20–3 July). But the Russians, in so
vital a question for the empire, would reach their
own decisions just as the Austrians had had to do.
The reaction of the tsar, Sazonov and his ministers
was to seek to ‘localise’ the crisis in a way neither
Germany nor Austria-Hungary had in mind.
When Bethmann Hollweg spoke of ‘localisation’,
he meant that the Dual Monarchy should be
allowed to dictate terms to Serbia. The tsar and
Sazonov, on the other hand, hoped that Germany
and the other powers would stand aside while
Russia supported Serbia to prevent Austria-
Hungary from attacking Serbia. To the Russians,
the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was hurling
down the gauntlet. But could Russia risk war now?
There was much civil disturbance and there were
large-scale strikes; the army would be in a much
stronger position three years later. The news of the
ultimatum reached Sazonov on the morning of 24
July. His first reaction was to advise the Serbians to
surrender to Austrian demands and not to fight.
But later that afternoon, the Russian Council of
Ministers agreed to recommend to the tsar a ‘partial’
mobilisation against Austria-Hungary only.
Russian involvement in the fate of Serbia was also
officially announced. The line was now to put pressure
on Austria-Hungary.
The following day, 25 July, the tsar at an imperial
council confirmed the need for preparatory
military measures in anticipation of partial mobilisation.
By 26 July, these secret preparations were
in full swing. The news of the Austrian declaration
of war on Serbia and bombardment of Belgrade
on 29 July threw St Petersburg into a frenzy. The
tsar agreed to a general mobilisation, but after
receiving the kaiser’s telegram changed this to a
‘partial mobilisation’, against Austria only. In reality,
though, the tsar’s motive was to avoid pushing
Germany into mobilisation – partial or total made
no difference, for the Austro-Hungarian-German
alliance and campaign plans would necessitate
German mobilisation anyway. It was too late in
Berlin to continue playing the game of ‘localising’
the Austro-Serbian war. With the military in
Berlin now also in a frenzy, Moltke insisting on
the need to mobilise, Bethmann Hollweg and the
kaiser could not resist the ‘military imperative’
much longer. On 31 July, the Russian military
persuaded the tsar that a ‘partial mobilisation’ was
technically impossible, and Nicholas II consented
to general mobilisation. But the nature of German
military planning had made war inevitable after
the Russian partial mobilisation on 29 July.
The very concept of the Schlieffen Plan was
responsible for the situation that mobilisation
meant war. Its implications may not have been
grasped fully by the kaiser and Bethmann
Hollweg in July. But in militaristic Wilhelmine
Germany, the generals’ views on military necessity
were conclusive. Until the moment of Russian
mobilisation, Moltke, the chief of staff was
ready to leave control to Chancellor Bethmann
Hollweg. But, when on 30 July it became clear
that the chancellor’s policy of frightening Russia
into acquiescence had failed, there was not a
moment to lose. France had to be defeated before
Russia could complete her mobilisation. The
German onslaught must now start without delay
against Belgium and France. Ultimatums were
sent to Russia and France and war was declared
with unseemly haste on Russia on 1 August 1914,
and on France two days later. The German invasion
of Belgium was followed by a British ultimatum
and declaration of war on 4 August.
It was the same Schlieffen Plan that was
responsible for forcing the pace in St Petersburg
and Paris. That the Germans would at the outset
turn the mass of their armies against France and
not Russia was known. The Russian–French military
plans were constructed accordingly, with the
promise of an early Russian offensive to relieve
pressure on the French. That is why the French
military were so worried about ‘partial mobilisation’
against Austria-Hungary. In the event of war
they wanted Russia’s military effort to be directed
against the main enemy, Germany. No wonder
Paléologue was urging full mobilisation in St
Petersburg. In this way was Bethmann Hollweg’s
diplomatic ‘offensive’ matched by the offensive
strategy of the German general staff with its aim
of destroying the French will to resist by seeking
total victory in the west.
Behind the ‘governments’ – the handful of men
who made the decisions in Berlin, Vienna, Paris
and St Petersburg – stood populations willing to
fight for republic, king and emperor. Only a tiny
minority dissented. For the largest socialist party in
Europe, the German, the war was accepted as
being fought against tsarist Russian aggression.
The different nationalities of the Dual Monarchy
all fought for the Habsburgs, the French socialists
fought as enthusiastically in defence of their fatherland
ruthlessly invaded by the Germans.
The responsibility for starting the conflict in
July and August must rest primarily on the shoulders
of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Russia and
France reacted and chose to fight rather than to
withdraw from the confrontation, which would
have left the diplomatic victory to Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Whether they had wisely interpreted
their national interests is another question.
For Britain it was a preventive war. Not directly
threatened by Germany, Britain was looking to
the future and what that future would hold for it
if Germany were able to gain the mastery of continental
Europe. But Britain’s was a ‘preventive’
war in quite a different sense to Germany’s. The
British government had done everything possible
to prevent war from breaking out, but the Cabinet
decided it could not afford to stand aside.
Yet Britain cannot be absolved from blame.
War broke out in 1914 not only as a consequence
of the shots at Sarajevo. The tensions that had
been building up in Europe and the wider world
for two decades and more had created the frame
of mind that led the European chancelleries along
a fatal path. For Britain, faced with the relative
decline of its power, the problem of defending its
empire loomed ever larger. It negotiated with
France a division of interests of territory –
Morocco and Egypt – that did not exclusively
belong to either. Russia also was appeased for a
time. Inevitably, fears and hostilities in Europe
were raised. British foreign secretaries were well
aware of this and would have preferred it not to
be so. But Britain’s immediate interests were
placed before international harmony. That is the
darker thread that ran through British policy.
During the last decade before the war Britain too
tended to follow Bismarckian Realpolitik. Just as
it wanted to avoid imperial clashes with Russia, so
too Britain feared that the entente with France
might not prove strong enough to prevent
Germany and France reaching a settlement of
their differences. Then Britain would have been
isolated in the world. British policy was too compromised
to allow Grey, in the summer of 1914,
a strong mediating role. But, given German war
plans and the small size of the British army at the
outset, the hope that London might influence
decisively the course of events in Europe during
July 1914 was an illusion anyway.
Nowhere were domestic political considerations
the decisive influence. The war was about
national power, and ambitions, and also fears as to
how national power would in the future be exercised.
Russia was not satisfied with its already huge
empire. France was conscious of its secondary
status in Europe which, if it were left without an
ally, would leave it at Germany’s mercy. Austria-
Hungary wished to annihilate Slav hostility
beyond its frontiers. For imperial Germany, a
future in which its military power was no longer
superior to the combined military forces of its
potential enemies was not to be tolerated. This
had to be averted by diplomacy or so-called ‘preventive’
war. Germany’s own diplomacy had contributed
much to the French and British feelings
of insecurity. It had finally placed Germany in the
unenviable position of being on bad relations with
its neighbours in the East and the West. The
working out of the Schlieffen Plan saddled it with
the guilt of violating a small neutral state and with
the necessity to strike the first blow, for it was
Germany who had to declare war in order to keep
to the timetable of the famous war plan. What the
coming of the war in 1914 reveals is how a loss
of confidence and fears for the future can be as
dangerous to peace as the naked spirit of aggression
that was to be the cause of the Second World
War a quarter of a century later. A handful of
European leaders in 1914 conceived national relationships
crudely in terms of power and conflict,
and the future in terms of a struggle for survival
in competition for the world. For this, millions
had to suffer and die.
World History
