The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (17 page)

In his first speech to the Reichstag, in December 1897, Bülow laid out his vision for Germany’s foreign policy with particular reference to what looked like the coming partition of China. His speech was calculated to appeal to a wide swathe of German opinion. ‘We must demand that the German missionary and the German entrepreneur, German goods, the German flag and German ships in China are just as respected as those of other powers.’ Germany was willing to respect the interests of other powers in Asia as long as its own were respected in turn. ‘In a word: we don’t want to put anyone in the shadow, but we too demand our place in the sun.’ The world must recognise, he went on, that the old order had changed: ‘The times when the German left the earth to one of his neighbours, the sea to the other, and reserved for himself the heavens were pure doctrine reigns – these times are over.’
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(Bülow’s speech was very well received; its phrases, said the Württemburg representative in Berlin, ‘have already become almost proverbial and are on everyone’s lips’.
²⁴
) Two years later, again in a speech to the Reichstag, Bülow used the term
Weltpolitik
for the first time. Although today, curiously enough, it often translates as ‘environmental policy’, in those days it meant a global or world policy, and one, moreover, which many outside Germany looked at with the deepest suspicion. Allied to it was the equally slippery notion of
Weltmachtstellung
, or ‘world power’.

The terms reflected the widespread notion among patriotic Germans that the country’s remarkable economic progress, the rapid spread of German investment and trade around the world, and Germany’s advances in such areas as science ought to be matched by an increase in its standing in the world. Other nations must recognise Germany’s achievements and its changed position. For liberals this meant Germany providing moral leadership. As one of them wrote wistfully from the vantage point of the 1940s: ‘My thoughts always wander back to the time when [we] co-operated in that fine effort: work for Greater Germany, peaceful expansion and cultural activities in the Near East … A peaceful Germany, great, honoured and respected.’
²⁵
For right-wing nationalists, though, and that included the Kaiser and his closest advisers as well as the numerous members of patriotic societies, it meant rather political and military power and, if necessary, a struggle against other powers.

In those years while the new Kaiser and Germany were feeling their strength, an elderly history professor was attracting packed audiences at
his lectures at the University of Berlin. Heinrich von Treitschke was one of the intellectual fathers of the new German nationalism with its longing for a place in the sun. Through his lectures and writings, which included a very popular multi-volume history of Germany, he influenced a whole generation of Germany’s leaders to take pride in the great German past and in the extraordinary achievements of Prussia and the Prussian army in building the German state. For Treitschke patriotism was the highest of all values and war was not only a necessary part of human history but a noble and elevating one. If only Germany seized its opportunities, it would rise, as it deserved, to world dominance.
²⁶
He was, said Bülow, whose favourite writer he was, the ‘prophet of the national idea’.
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When Helmuth von Moltke, the future chief of the German general staff, read Treitschke’s history as a young man he was ‘captivated’ and wrote later to his wife that ‘a spirit of patriotism and love of the German Fatherland drifts through the whole work, without violating historical truth; it is superb’.
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The Kaiser was surprisingly lukewarm; although he liked the general drift of Treitschke’s writings, the historian did not praise the Hohenzollerns highly enough.
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What
Weltpolitik
actually meant in terms of concrete policies was another matter. As Field Marshal Count von Waldersee, who commanded the European forces suppressing the Boxer Rebellion, wrote in his diary when the idea first started to circulate widely: ‘We are supposed to pursue
Weltpolitik
. If I only knew what that is supposed to be; for the time being it is nothing but a slogan.’
³⁰
It did seem, though, to imply that Germany acquire its fair share of colonies. Treitschke certainly argued so. ‘All nations in history’, he said in his lectures, ‘felt the urge to impress the stamp of their authority on barbaric countries while they felt strong enough to do so.’ And Germany was now strong enough; its high birth rate was evidence of German vitality. Yet Germany was cutting a poor figure by comparison with Britain and other empires: ‘It is therefore a vital question for the nation to show colonial drive.’
³¹

Germans such as Treitschke were by no means alone in thinking that colonies were a good thing. An assumption widely held at the time in Europe was that colonies brought tangible wealth and the intangible benefits of prestige to their owners. And the depression in agricultural prices and the cycle of business slumps which lasted from 1873 to 1895 made German political and business leaders, like their counterparts
elsewhere, acutely aware of the need to export and to secure foreign markets. Critics of empire could point, and did, to the awkward fact that colonies often cost much more to manage and defend than they ever brought in or that investment, trade and emigration tended to flow to parts of the world such as the United States, Russia, and Latin American which were not colonies. Caprivi, for one, thought that Germany’s natural markets were in central Europe. Belief, as so often, was not to be shaken by inconvenient evidence. There was something so exciting in looking at a map and seeing all the coloured pieces that belonged to one’s nation. Surely territory and population, no matter how poor or how scattered, added up to power in the world. And, as the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Rosebery, put it in 1893, acquiring new colonies was ‘pegging out claims for the future’.
³²

In Germany the question of colonies was a sensitive one. Here was a powerful country, one of the most powerful in the world, yet it did not have its India or its Algeria. True, Germany had scooped up some odds and ends in Africa and the Pacific, but its empire was insignificant beside those of France and Britain. Even little bourgeois Belgium had the immense Congo. The need to catch up and look like a proper great power increasingly preoccupied Germans. In both the Wilhelmstrasse and the military imperial ambitions found strong support. As the head of the Colonial Division in the Foreign Ministry was noting as early as 1890, ‘No government, no
Reichstag
, would be in the position of giving up colonies without humiliating itself before Germany and Europe. Nowadays a colonial policy has supporters in all parts of the nation …’
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Among the general public, the Pan-German League and the Colonial Society may not have had all that many members but they made up for it with the noise and vehemence of their demands.

There were sceptics too, of course, on both the left and the right, who pointed to the expense of colonies and the limited returns they so frequently produced. The great Bismarck himself had never been much interested in colonies (or in a big navy to protect them). As he said in 1888 to an explorer who was trying to interest him in Africa: ‘“My map of Africa lies here in Europe. Here lies Russia, and” – pointing to the left – “here lies France, and we are right in the middle; this is my map of Africa.”’
³⁴
His successor, Caprivi, took much the same attitude: ‘The less Africa the better for us!’
³⁵

While Bülow had not initially been an enthusiast for colonies, he rapidly came round to include them as part of his vision. In his speech to the Reichstag in December 1899, he threw out a challenge: ‘We cannot permit any foreign power, any foreign Jupiter, to tell us: “What is to be done? The world is already partitioned.”’ He added an ominous prophecy: ‘In the coming century, Germany will either be the hammer or the anvil.’
³⁶
A tricky question was where these colonies were to come from since so much of the world was already divided up among other powers. The decaying Ottoman Empire was one possibility and so Germany started to look into building railways and lending money to the Ottoman government. In 1898 the Kaiser made an extended visit to the Middle East and, carried away by the moment, gave a dramatic speech in Damascus: ‘May the Sultan and his 300 million Muslim subjects scattered across the earth, who venerate him as their Caliph, be assured that the German Kaiser will be their friend for all time.’
³⁷
China, another declining empire, also looked promising and the seizure of the port of Tsingtao (Qingdao) at Kiachow (Jiaozhou) Bay and other concessions in the Shantung peninsula appeared a good first step. There was also a bizarre attempt by German colonial enthusiasts, acting with the approval of Tirpitz, to secretly buy up land in one of the Danish Virgin Islands in the Caribbean until Germans held a majority share. At this point the German government was to step in and buy the whole island from Denmark for a naval base. Wilhelm fortunately opposed the plan, which would have embroiled Germany in a completely unnecessary dispute with the United States and quite probably Britain as well.
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There was enough German activity and German rhetoric, however, to alarm a British government and a British public already inclined to look at Germany with suspicion. Moreover, in Germany, both in government circles and among the general public there was a growing propensity to identify Britain, often openly, as the main obstacle to Germany’s
Weltpolitik
. Student notes taken at Treitschke’s lectures show him attacking Britain repeatedly. Why, he asked in the 1890s, did Germany ‘have to throw itself at Grandma’s head in such an undignified way, since in England even every little baby is determined to deceive us’. (Not surprisingly, a visit Treitschke made to England only served to confirm his views: London, he said, was ‘like the dream of a drunken
devil’.
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) In 1900 the ambassador of Austria-Hungary in Berlin sent a long and perceptive memorandum to Vienna in which he noted that the leading German statesmen were looking ahead to the time, no doubt many years hence, when their country would succeed Britain as the world’s leading power and remarked on the ‘universally dominant anglophobia’ in Germany.
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Wilhelm also expected the future to see the rise of Germany and the decline of Britain. As he said in a speech in Hamburg in 1899, ‘Old empires pass away and new ones are in the process of being formed.’

His attitude to Britain, though, like his relations with the British half of his family, was much more ambivalent than that of many of his subjects. His mother had unwisely held up everything British as a model and he understandably reacted badly. She wanted him to be an English gentleman; he became a Prussian officer. She was liberal; he was conservative. He had come to hate his mother – and indeed treated her badly after his father died – but some of his happiest childhood memories were of visiting Britain with his parents. He had played with his cousins at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and had visited British naval shipyards. He had often climbed aboard Nelson’s flagship the
Victory
and once helped to fire the guns on the
St Vincent
, named after Nelson’s great contemporary. When Queen Victoria made him an honorary admiral of the British navy shortly after his accession, Wilhelm was overjoyed. ‘Fancy wearing the same uniform as St Vincent and Nelson. It is enough to make me quite giddy.’
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He sent his grandmother a portrait of himself in his new uniform which he then wore on all possible occasions, including, it is said, to a performance of
The Flying Dutchman
.
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(He also took his honorary rank as an invitation to give the British much unwanted advice about their navy.)

As an adult he complained repeatedly about ‘the damned family’ in Britain but he nevertheless deeply loved his grandmother Queen Victoria. Indeed, she was one of the few people in the world he would listen to. He resented what he saw as British arrogance and condescension but could still say to Theodore Roosevelt in 1911: ‘I ADORE England.’
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Daisy Cornwallis-West, who had become the Princess of Pless, thought that his love and admiration for Britain were genuine and that his frequent criticisms were like those of a family member who felt he was misunderstood:

That was the real grievance. The Emperor felt that he was never properly understood or appreciated by either Queen Victoria, King Edward, King George or the British people. Feeling his own sincerity and believing in himself, he sought to force his personality on us. As an actor of ability in a favorite part will sometimes endeavor to win by charm or subtlety, so the Emperor too often tried to dominate British public opinion by acts which antagonized us – or worse still – merely bored or amused us.
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That was certainly the case when Wilhelm took up yacht racing at Cowes with his usual enthusiasm. The British were at first inclined to be flattered when the Kaiser became a member of the Royal Yacht Club (proposed by his uncle Edward), bought a yacht and appeared each summer in the early 1890s for the annual regatta. Queen Victoria, who had to put him up with his entourage at Osborne, remarked to no avail that ‘these annual visits are not quite desirable’.
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Wilhelm was unfortunately a poor sport; he complained frequently about the rules and suggested that the handicapping was unfair to his yacht, the
Meteor
. His uncle complained that Wilhelm thought he was the ‘Boss of Cowes’ and apparently said to friends in 1895: ‘The regatta at Cowes was once a pleasant holiday for me, but now that the Kaiser has taken command there, it is nothing but a nuisance.’
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And there were other incidents to spoil the summer days: Salisbury apparently not getting a message to come to Wilhelm’s gold-plated steam yacht, the
Hohenzollern
, for an important discussion, or Wilhelm insisting that he and Prince Edward continue their race even though it made them late for dinner with the queen.