The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (84 page)

Austria-Hungary, Russia’s adversary in the Balkans, was only in somewhat better shape. Its economy, which had been badly hit by the uncertainty and expense occasioned by the Balkan wars, was starting to revive in early 1914 but increasing industrialisation brought with it a larger and more militant working class. In the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy the Social Democrats’ demands for universal suffrage met the resistance of the Hungarian upper classes who were not prepared to share their power. In the spring of 1912 massive worker demonstrations in Budapest led to pitched battles with government forces. In both halves of the Monarchy, too, nationality problems, like forest fires, smouldered on, breaking out first here and then there into open flames. In the Austrian part, the Ruthenians, who spoke a language closely linked to Ukrainian and belonged to their own churches, were demanding greater political and language rights from their Polish overlords while the Czechs and Germans were locked into a seemingly
unending battle for power. The parliament in Vienna became so unruly that the Austrian government suspended it in the spring of 1914; it did not meet again until 1916. In Hungary, the Rumanian National Party demanded concessions, including greater autonomy for the predominantly Rumanian parts, which the parliament, dominated as it was by Hungarian nationalists, would not accept. Under Tisza’s influence the Hungarians were at least content to stay within the Dual Monarchy but it would almost certainly be different when Franz Ferdinand, who was notoriously anti-Hungarian, succeeded his uncle. In the spring of 1914 when the old emperor fell seriously ill the future of the monarchy looked grim. It was, said the German ambassador Heinrich von Tschirschky, who inclined to the gloomy view, ‘falling apart at the seams’.
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And, given the growth of Serbia’s power, Austria-Hungary was going to have to divert more of its military resources southwards, something that disturbed Germany’s military planners who counted on their ally for help against Russia.

Although Germany was doing well by many indicators, industry and trade for example, and its population continued to grow, its leadership and much of its public were strangely insecure in the last years of the peace. Fears of encirclement, the growth of Russian power, the revitalisation of France, Britain’s refusal to concede in the naval race, the unreliability of its own allies, the marked growth in the votes for the SPD, all produced much pessimism about Germany’s future. War was increasingly accepted as likely if not inevitable; France was deemed the most likely enemy but its entente partners would probably come to its defence (although Bethmann still hoped for better relations with Britain and Russia).
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‘The resentment against Germany’, said the former Chancellor, Bülow, early in 1914, ‘might well be called the soul of French policy.’ When a postcard appeared in France with ‘
merde pour le roi de Prusse
’ written backwards German diplomats found their suspicions confirmed. The French military attaché in Berlin reported a growing warlike mood among the public which might produce ‘an outburst of anger and national pride which could one day force the Kaiser’s hand and lead the masses to war’.
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Even the gentle composer Richard Strauss was carried away by anti-French feeling. He told Kessler in the summer of 1912 that he would go along when war broke out. What did he think he could do, his wife asked. Perhaps, Strauss said uncertainly,
he could be a nurse. ‘Oh,
you
, Richard!’ snapped his wife, ‘You can’t stand the sight of blood!’ Strauss looked embarrassed but insisted: ‘I would do my best. But if the French get a thrashing, I want to be there.’
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Among Germany’s top civilian leadership Bethmann and, usually, the Kaiser still were anxious to avoid a war. (The Kaiser had a new passion for archaeology and spent every spring digging in Corfu, which made Bethmann’s life somewhat easier.) The Foreign Secretary Kiderlen, in spite of his fondness for belligerent talk, was also a force for moderation but he died suddenly at the end of 1912 of a heart attack. His successor Gottlieb von Jagow was too weak to stand up to the generals. ‘That little squirt’, as the Kaiser described him, Jagow was a small, unimpressive man from an aristocratic Prussian family. His main goal seems to have been to defend Germany’s interests in whatever way he could.
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What was dangerous was that the military were increasingly accepting war as inevitable, even desirable. Many of them had not forgiven Wilhelm for backing down in the Morocco crisis of 1911 or more recently during the First Balkan War. ‘They reproach him’, reported the well-connected Baroness Spitzemberg, ‘with too “great a love of peace” and believe that Germany had let pass its chance when it could have overcome France while Russia was occupied in the Balkans.’
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The general staff took for granted that in the future it would have to fight a two-front war on land. Schlieffen died in January 1913, his last words apparently ‘only keep the right wing strong’, but his strategic ideas still shaped Germany’s military planning. His successor as chief, Moltke, true to his pessimistic nature, remained doubtful as to whether Germany could prevail in a war against its enemies, especially if it had to fight alone without allies. Despite his earlier misgivings about conscripting members of the working classes, Moltke was now arguing for increasing the size of the army and he was joined by a rising generation of officers, among them Erich von Ludendorff, one of the ambitious and intelligent middle-class men who were now making their way into the general staff. While one army bill went through the Reichstag in the summer of 1912, the crisis of the First Balkan War in the autumn which showed Austria-Hungary’s weakness as well as the willingness of Russia to mobilise, brought fresh demands, drafted for Moltke by Ludendorff, to the government for rapid increases in numbers of men and materiel and for the formation of special units such as for machine
guns. The language was alarmist and spoke matter-of-factly of the ‘coming world war’.
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On 8 December 1912, as the situation in the Balkans remained tense, there occurred what has since become one of the most controversial incidents on the way to the Great War: the Kaiser’s War Council at his palace in Potsdam. That morning Wilhelm read a dispatch from his ambassador in London, who reported that Grey and the British War Minister, Haldane, had warned that if a general war on the Continent broke out Britain would almost certainly come in to prevent France being destroyed by Germany. While this likelihood cannot have been news to the Kaiser, he flew into a rage at Britain’s impertinence. He also felt a sense of betrayal: in the final coming struggle between Teutons and Slavs the British would be on the wrong side along with the Gauls. He hastily summoned several of his most trusted advisers, all military men including Moltke, Tirpitz, and his naval aide Admiral George von Müller. According to Müller’s diary which is the best record, the Kaiser held forth at considerable length. It was good, he felt, to get a clarification of Britain’s position; from now on Germany would have to fight Britain and France together. ‘The Fleet must naturally prepare itself for war against England.’ Austria-Hungary, he went on, ought to deal with the Serbians, which would almost certainly bring Russia in and Germany would not be able to avoid a war on that front either. Germany therefore ought to gather what allies it could – he had hopes of Rumania and Bulgaria and possibly the Ottoman Empire. Moltke concurred that war was unavoidable (and none of the others disagreed) but said that the German press should be used get the public in the right frame of mind. Tirpitz, who never seems to have wanted his beloved navy to be used in combat, said that he would prefer to see the war postponed for a year and half. Moltke replied sardonically that ‘the Navy will not be ready even then’, and warned that the army’s position would grow weaker over time as its enemies grew stronger. ‘War the sooner the better.’ While too much can be made of a hasty council summoned at a time of crisis, what is chilling is how readily those present accepted that war was coming.
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In a memorandum he wrote for Bethmann shortly after the Council, Moltke also warned that it was important to ensure that German public opinion was persuaded that a war was just and necessary:

If war occurs, there can be no doubt that the main weight of responsibility will be on Germany’s shoulders, which will be gripped on three sides by her opponents. Nonetheless we can,
under the current conditions
, still face even the most difficult tasks with confidence, if we manage to formulate the
casus belli
in such a way that the nation will take up arms unitedly and enthusiastically.
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In the crisis of 1914 all the governments were to do their best to ensure that their nations appeared as the innocent party.

Filled with enthusiasm after his Council, the Kaiser ordered the preparation of new army and navy bills. Bethmann was horrified, partly because he did not know how he was going to pay for them. ‘The Kaiser has held a war council with his paladins from the army and navy, of course behind Kiderlen’s back and mine, and has ordered the preparation of a new army
and navy
increase.’ He managed to persuade Wilhelm to back down on Tirpitz’s demand to build three new battlecruisers a year. In his 1913 New Year’s address to army corps commanders, the Kaiser said proudly: ‘The navy will surrender to the army the major portion of available funds.’
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The army was able to add another 136,000 men to its ranks to give Germany a standing army of 890,000 by 1914. (To the east, though, lay Russia, which already had an army of 1.3 million and, with a population three times greater than Germany’s, a much larger pool of potential soldiers.) According to the Kaiser, Bethmann now accepted the idea of a war, and as Jules Cambon reported to Paris in the autumn of 1913: ‘The Kaiser has come to the point of believing that war with France is inevitable and even necessary one day or another.’
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Germany’s increases in its military of course worried its enemies. Russia was already increasing the size of its army by keeping conscripts for several extra months and was carrying out trial mobilisations along its expanding railway network. In 1913, in response to the German moves and with encouragement and the offer of a major loan from France, the tsar approved a new ten-year ‘Great Programme’ which would raise the strength of the peacetime army by over 200,000 men immediately, with more increases and more formations to come. The final programme was approved on 7 July 1914.
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The French took their own steps to meet the German challenge.
Joffre’s plans depended on having enough troops ready at the start of hostilities both to counter any German attack and to launch his own into Germany. Since Germany would be fielding a larger army by 1914, France would either have to change its plans and fight more defensively, which was contrary to the army’s strategic doctrines, or increase the number of soldiers in its own army.
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For the military and their supporters the second option was the more appealing but it ran up against France’s demographic problem. The army could call up more conscripts every year – and was doing so by this point – but with a population of 39 million France had far fewer potential recruits than Germany with its 68 million people. The Ministry of War therefore brought forward a proposal to increase the size of the army by lengthening the term of service of the conscripts from two to three years. The Three Year Law awakened afresh the divisions in the Republic over the nature and role of the military. While the right wing and the military themselves tended to support a larger army, the socialists and many of the radicals jumped to attack the law as an attempt by the military to create a professional force with reactionary rather than good republican values. Jaurès made passionate speeches in favour of a citizens’ militia. The military and the right pointed to the German menace and noted that the French army was already dangerously short of troops at home in Europe because it had been obliged to send a force to pacify Morocco where the locals were resisting French domination.
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According to Joffre, the law would increase the available French soldiers to 700,000. Germany would still have 870,000 soldiers but enough would be on the Eastern Front facing Russia to tilt the balance in the west in France’s favour.
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A longer term also gave the army the opportunity to improve training, which had long been a concern.
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Although the law was passed in July the debate continued on into 1914 in the French parliament and the press.

France also had one of those complex scandals so typical of the Third Republic rumbling on. What had started out in 1911 as a sordid story of financial corruption involving government ministers had developed into a concerted campaign against Joseph Caillaux, who had always been suspected by nationalists of being too willing to compromise with Germany, perhaps even of being in German pay. Rumour had it that the editor of the conservative
Figaro
had got his hands on damaging documents about Caillaux’s complicated personal life as well as
evidence that he had used his position as Justice Minister to block investigations into the corruption charges.

Nevertheless France, unusually given its recent history, seemed relatively calm and stable in the last two years of peace. The country, so both foreigners and the French themselves thought, was experiencing a revival of nationalist feeling and of confidence. The Morocco crisis of 1911 had persuaded much French opinion, on the left as much as on the right, that Germany was an implacable enemy which would never cease to bully France. (That France had done much to provoke the crisis was simply not considered; French commentators invariably assumed that their country was the innocent party.) In the summer months of 1911, when the crisis was at its height, the War Ministry received hundreds of requests from soldiers asking to be reinstated on the active list. ‘I am told I am too old for a command,’ wrote one general. ‘I simply ask to be sent to the frontier as a cavalryman, to show the young soldiers of France an old division commander,
grand’-croix de la Legion d’Honneur
, knows how to die.’
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Students who, only a decade before, might have been cynical and world-weary, suspicious of pride in the nation and in the French past, now talked about being willing to sacrifice their lives for France. In Latin Quarter 3,000 demonstrated, chanting ‘
Vive l’Alsace! Vive la Lorraine!
’ and in the Parisian theatres patriotic plays were newly popular. From the countryside observers noted a new belligerence among peasant farmers.
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Joan of Arc, who had been beatified in 1909, enjoyed a fresh popularity. This time the enemy was not the British, however. ‘Wilma says that in her circles everyone is mad for war,’ Harry Kessler reported in 1912 of his sister who lived in Paris. ‘All are convinced that they will beat us.’
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When a German Zeppelin had to make a forced landing in a French town in the spring of 1913, local crowds threw stones at the crew. The French government apologised for the ‘lamentable’ behaviour. Wilhelm wrote an angry note: ‘this is really mild! It is simply plebeian and uncivilised, like in a land of barbarians! This is derived from anti-German agitation!’
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The Zabern affair a few months later, when German officers treated the inhabitants of Alsace with contempt, received wide coverage in the French press which saw it as yet another example of Prussian militarism.
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(Moltke found the belligerence in the French press useful as a further justification for increasing the size of the German army.)
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