The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (72 page)

The onset of winter in the Balkans made war unlikely until the following March but intense diplomatic activity continued. While Britain, France and Russia still insisted publicly on a conference, Britain was in fact prepared to see bilateral agreements. It took the lead in brokering a settlement between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire where the Ottomans would recognise Bulgaria’s independence in return for compensation to cover such things as railways which had been built with Ottoman funds. Although Tsar Ferdinand (as he now was) had promised to be as meek as a lamb, he refused to pay the amount the Ottomans demanded and threatened war on the Ottoman Empire. The British persuaded the Russians to provide the necessary funds. An agreement was reached in principle in December 1908 but haggling over details went on until the following April.
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By the start of 1909, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had also worked out a settlement whereby the former paid the latter an indemnity in return for recognition of the annexation. Here Britain intervened on the side of the Ottoman Empire, to get a substantial settlement for it. This served to persuade opinion in Austria-Hungary that Britain was its determined enemy, even, so Aehrenthal believed, to the point of using the Balkan troubles to have a general European war so that Britain could deal with the German navy. ‘If England hopes to break us’, he exclaimed to Friedjung, ‘then they will find in me a spirited opponent, who won’t make victory easy for them.’
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In both countries the press joined in enthusiastically to attack the other. What had been a friendship of long standing throughout the nineteenth century between Britain and Austria-Hungary slid into the past as the dividing lines in Europe became more clearly drawn.

The most difficult issue to settle in the aftermath of the annexation was the question of compensation for Serbia, complicated by the fact that Russia was backing Serbia’s demands and Germany was supporting Austria-Hungary. The most Aehrenthal was prepared to offer Serbia was some economic concessions such as access to a port on the Adriatic, but only if Serbia recognised the annexation and agreed to live on peaceful terms with Austria-Hungary. The Serbian government remained intransigent and, as spring melted the snows in the Balkans,
the talk of war mounted again around Europe’s capitals. The German government, mindful of its own defeat in the earlier Morocco crisis, was standing firmly behind its ally. ‘This time’, said Kiderlen, the acting Foreign Secretary, ‘the others are about to cave in.’
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What was not known publicly at the time was that Germany gave Austria-Hungary an assurance that, if a war between it and Serbia led to Russian intervention, the terms of the Dual Alliance would come into force and Germany would come into the war on Austria-Hungary’s side. Germany was to make a similar promise in the crisis of 1914.

In St Petersburg, Stolypin, who remained opposed to war, told the British ambassador at the start of March that Russian public opinion was so firmly in favour of support of Serbia that the government would not be able to resist coming to its defence: ‘Russia would have, in that case, to mobilise, and a general conflagration would then be imminent.’
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In Berlin, where the
Daily Telegraph
affair was creating its own crisis, the war party, which included high-ranking members of the military, saw a war as a chance for Germany to escape from its troubles, both those at home and abroad.
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The Kaiser, who was still recovering from his breakdown over the affair, was not enthusiastic about war but does not seem to have opposed it actively. He was much occupied, said a courtier, ‘with momentous questions as those of new kinds of chin straps, new fastenings for helmet chains, double seams on soldiers’ trousers, and frequent inspections of the Wardrobe.’
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In Vienna Aehrenthal talked matter-of-factly about war. ‘The Serbian scallywag wanted to steal apples from our garden and we have apprehended him and will only let him go if he promises lasting improvement.’
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In the middle of March the Serbian government rejected Austria-Hungary’s offer in a note which the British found unnecessarily provocative. While Aehrenthal was drafting a reply, the German government decided to act. It sent what amounted to an ultimatum to St Petersburg to say that the Russian government must recognise the annexation. If Germany received ‘any evasive, conditional, or unclear response’, it would take that as a refusal on Russia’s part: ‘We would then withdraw and let events take their course.’
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On 23 March the Russian government which had already been told by the War Minister that its military could not hope to fight Austria-Hungary, capitulated.
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Serbia caved in a week later and sent a note to Vienna in which it
promised to give up protesting the annexation, to step down its military preparations and disband the volunteer militias which had sprung up, and to live with Austria-Hungary ‘on terms of friendly and neighbourly relations’.
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In St Petersburg, Berchtold invited Izvolsky and Nicolson, the British ambassador, and their wives to a ‘fin-de-crisis’ dinner.
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The Kaiser sent the tsar an Easter egg with thanks for helping to preserve the peace.
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Some time later he told an audience in Vienna that he himself had kept the peace by standing should to shoulder with Franz Joseph like a knight in shining armour.
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For all Germany’s firm stand, the crisis did cause concerns within the leadership over the country’s preparedness for a war. Bülow, who had initially been a strong supporter of Tirpitz and his naval programme, was already having trouble getting the Reichstag to approve the funds. And, as he said to Holstein shortly before the annexation: ‘We cannot weaken the army, for our destiny will be decided on land.’ During the crisis itself, he sceptically asked Tirpitz point blank whether the navy was capable of withstanding a British attack. The admiral fell back on his standard answer: ‘In a few years our fleet would be so strong that an attack on it even by Britain would mean a great military risk.’
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Before he was eased out of office in the summer of 1909, Bülow started to explore the possibilities of ending the naval race with Great Britain. His successor, Bethmann Hollweg, was very much of the same opinion and he found a receptive audience in Britain, where radicals in the Cabinet and Parliament, led by Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were determined both to cut spending and lower tensions with Germany. Talks started in the autumn of 1909 and continued through to the summer of 1911, when a fresh crisis over Morocco put them on hold. How much chance they had of succeeding then or later is debatable. Tirpitz and the Kaiser, whose word in the end was final, were prepared to offer a slowdown in the rate of German building but only one which would still have left Germany with two big ships to every three of Britain’s, which was too close a margin to be acceptable to the British. And in return for slowing down its naval building, Germany would have expected a political settlement as well, with Britain promising to remain neutral if Germany got into a war with another European power. For the British, where suspicion of Germany was now deeply entrenched in the Foreign Office and in the minds of
key members of the Cabinet, notably Grey himself, such a promise, which would have undermined if not destroyed the Triple Entente, was highly unlikely. What the British really wanted was an arms agreement which would let them cut naval expenditure significantly. Only after that were they prepared to talk about a political settlement. Although talks between the two sides started in the autumn of 1909, the German and British governments remained far apart and little progress had been made when another crisis in 1911, this one over Morocco again, put them on hold.

Like the past Morocco crisis and the one to come, the Bosnian affair left its share of memories, often bitter ones, and seemed as well to offer lessons. Conrad was in despair at seeing the opportunity for a preventive war slip by. He wrote to a friend ‘with this resolution of the Balkan crisis a thousand hopes … are buried for me. I have also lost the joy in my profession, and thus lost that which has sustained me in all circumstances since the age of eleven.’
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He later wrote a long memorandum arguing that it would have been better to have dealt with Serbia militarily during the crisis and not to have postponed the inevitable conflict. In the future Austria-Hungary was going to face the choice of a war on several fronts or make ‘far-reaching concessions’ which might destroy it in any case. Conrad did find encouragement, however, in concluding that mobilisation together with the German ultimatum had worked to make Russia and Serbia back down. Aehrenthal concurred: ‘a text-book example of how success is only certain if the
strength
is there to get one’s own way …’
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Unwisely, he made little attempt to be magnanimous towards Russia, saying of Izvolsky: ‘These controversies with this blackhearted ape bore me and I have decided not to reach out to him.’
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Although Aehrenthal died of leukaemia in 1912, his anti-Serbian and anti-Russian views and his belief that Austria-Hungary must have an active foreign policy and, in particular, assert itself in the Balkans had a strong influence on a younger generation of diplomats, some of whom were going to play a key role in the events of 1914.
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The Russians, for their part, had little desire to mend fences with Austria-Hungary or with Germany. Izvolsky, who was going to be eased out of office after a decent interval and sent to Paris as the Russian ambassador, blamed Aehrenthal for destroying the accord in the Balkans between their two countries and warned the German
ambassador that their rivalry was now bound to end in conflict.
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After he received the German ultimatum, the tsar wrote to his mother: ‘It is quite true that the form and method of Germany’s action – I mean towards us – has simply been brutal and we won’t forget it.’ Germany, he went on, was trying again to separate Russia from its allies, France and Great Britain: ‘Such methods tend to bring about the opposite result.’
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The denouement of the Bosnian crisis was, said one deputy in the Duma, a ‘diplomatic Tsushima’ as bad in its own way as that appalling defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. The Duma promptly approved another increase in defence spending. Among the military there was increasing talk of getting ready for the next round with Austria-Hungary, which was sure to come in the next few years.
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Russians of all classes, wrote Nicolson to Grey, felt bitterly ashamed that they had abandoned their Slavic brothers: ‘Russia has suffered a deep humiliation and has renounced the traditional part which she had hitherto played in South-East Europe, and in the prosecution of which she had made so great sacrifices in the past.’
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Such memories had not faded six years later.
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‘Are we going to unleash a world war’, Jaurès cried out to French journalists on the eve of the Great War, ‘because Izvolsky is still furious over Aehrenthal’s deception on the Bosnian affair?’
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The answer must surely be yes, in part, although there are many other links in the chain of events leading towards 1914.

The Bosnian crisis strengthened the Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary. It worsened, however, the relations between Austria-Hungary and Italy, the third partner in the Triple Alliance which had been all too well aware of the Dual Monarchy’s preparations for war against it. In the autumn of 1909 the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III, received the tsar and Izvolsky at Racconigi, his royal hunting lodge in the north-eastern corner of Italy. The Russian party ostentatiously took a roundabout route through Germany to avoid setting foot on the soil of Austria-Hungary. Italy also upped its defence spending, setting off a dreadnought race in the Adriatic with Austria-Hungary and strengthening its fortifications and forces along their common land borders. For its part Austria-Hungary, which had other enemies to worry about besides Italy, also increased its spending sharply – by more than 70 per cent between 1907 and 1912 – during and after the crisis.
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While the crisis also caused strains in the Triple Entente, it did not seriously damage it. Indeed, France, Britain and Russia became further accustomed to consulting each other on international issues. The French Foreign Minister, Stephen Pichon, issued instructions to his ambassadors to work with France’s two partners as a matter of general principle.
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Although Britain continued to insist on its freedom of action, it had shown during this crisis that it would stand by Russia just as it had shown France, and the world, in the Morocco one. Only Italy kept a certain distance from its partners in the Triple Alliance and maintained good relations with the Triple Entente. Increasingly the other powers felt that they had little choice but to stay where they were, whether it was Austria-Hungary and Germany needing each other or Russia and France. And as the earlier crisis over Morocco had led the British to start serious military talks with the French, this one set the Conrad–Moltke discussions in train.

In the Balkans themselves, the ending of the crisis did not bring either stability or peace. Ottoman Turkey was left, if possible, even more resentful of outside meddling in its affairs. Bulgaria was only temporarily appeased by its independence; it still dreamed of the greater Bulgaria that had been set up briefly in 1878 and looked longingly at the Macedonian territories. And the Sanjak, which Aehrenthal had abandoned in a gesture of goodwill towards the Ottoman Empire, remained a temptation for both Serbia and Montenegro to seize if the Ottomans, as was more than likely, weakened still further. Serbia had been obliged to submit to Austria-Hungary but it had no intention of keeping its promises. It surreptitiously funnelled support to a Greater Serbia movement and set about improving its army. Thanks to generous French loans, it was able to set up its own armaments factories and also buy weapons from France (the British were largely cut out of the market by their entente partner).
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Serbia’s relations with Austria-Hungary continued on their downward path. Both countries were obsessed, dangerously so, with the other.