Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (105 page)

Spears, Edward
Liaison 1914
Stein & Day 1968

Stahl und Steckrüben. Beiträge und Quellen zur Geschichte Niedersachsens im Ersten Weltkrieg (1914–1918)
Vols I, II Hamelin Niemeyer 1993

Steed, Wickham
The Hapsburg Monarchy
Constable 1913

Steffen, Gustaf F.
Krieg und Kultur. Sozialpsychologische Dokumente und Beobachtungen vom Weltkrieg 1914
Jena 1915

Steinberg, Jonathan
Bismarck: A Life
OUP 2011

Stojadinović, Milan
Ni rat ni pakt
Otokar Kerošvani Rijeka 1970

Stone, Norman
The Eastern Front
Hodder & Stoughton 1975

Strachan, Hew
The First World War Vol I: To Arms
OUP 2001

Štrandman, Vasily N (Basil de Strandman)
Balkanske uspomene
[Balkan Memoirs] Knjiga I., Deo 1–2, Žagor Beograd 2009

Strong, Rowland
Diary of an English Resident in France
Eveleigh Nash 1915

Stumpf, Richard
Erinnerungen aus dem deutsch-englischen Seekriege auf S.M.S. Helgoland
, in:
Die Ursachen des Deutschen Zusammenbruches im Jahre 1918
4th Series Vol. X 2 Berlin Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte 1928

Šuklje, Fran
Iz mojih spominov II
Ljubljana 1995

Sulzbach, Herbert
With the German Guns
Warne 1981

Tapert, Annette
Despatches from the Heart
Hamish Hamilton 1984

Terraine, John
Mons
Batsford 1960

Thiel, Jens
Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Weltkrieg
Essen Klartext 2007

Thompson, John A.
Reformers and War
CUP 1987

Thompson, Wayne C.
In the Eye of the Storm
University of Iowa Press 1980

Thomson, George Malcolm
Lord Castlerosse
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1973

Tolstoy, Alexei
Pisma s Puti
[Travel Reports] Russkie Vedomosti 1914

Tomalin, Claire
Thomas Hardy
Penguin 2006

Trushnovich, Aleksandr
Vospominaniya kornilovtsa
[Memoirs of a Kornilov Man]
1914–1934
Moscow and Frankfurt 2004

Tuffrau, Paul
Quatre années sur le front: Carnets d’un combatant
Paris Imago 1998

Turczynowitcz, Laura de G.
When the Prussians Came to Poland
NY 1916

Turner, E.S.
Dear Old Blighty
Michael Joseph 1980

Turner, L.C.F.
Origins of the First World War
Edward Arnold 1970

Überegger, Oswald
Heimatfronten. Dokumente zur Erfahrungsgeschichte der Tiroler Kriegsgesellschaft im Ersten Weltkrieg
Innsbruck UP Wagner 2006

Verhey, Jeffrey
The Spirit of 1914
CUP 2000

Viard, Albert
Lettres à Léa 1914–18
Editions de l’Aube 1998

Waites, Bernard
A Class Society at War: England 1914–18
Berg 1977

Wallace, Stuart
War and the Image of Germany
John Donald 1988

Waterhouse, Michael
Edwardian Requiem: A Life of Sir Edward Grey
Biteback 2013

Wharton, Edith
A Backward Glance
NY Appleton-Century 1934

Williamson, Samuel
Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War
Macmillan 1991

—
The Politics of Grand Strategy
Harvard 1970

Wilson, Keith (ed.)
Decisions for War 1914
UCL Press 1995

Wilson, Trevor
The Myriad Faces of War
Blackwell 1986

Winslow, Carroll Dana
With the French Flying Corps
Charles Scribner’s Sons 1917

Winter, Denis
First of the Few
Penguin 1982

Winter, Jay
Remembering War
Yale 2006

Winter, Jay and Robert, Jean-Louis (eds)
Capital Cities at War
CUP 1997

Wisthaler, Sigrid (ed.)
Karl Außerhofer: Das Kriegstagebuch eines Soldaten im Ersten Weltkrieg
Innsbruck UP 2010

Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Geheime Tagebücher 1914–1916
Vienna Turia & Kant 2nd edn 1991

Wolff, Theodor
Diaries 1914–19
Vol. I Boldt Verlag Boppert/Rhine 1984

Wolmar, Christian
Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways
Atlantic 2010

Wolz, Nicolas
Das lange Warten. Kriegserfahrungen deutscher und britischer Seeoffiziere 1914 bis 1918
Paderborn Schöningh 2008

Yerta, Gabrielle and Marguerite
Six Women and the Invasion
Macmillan 1917 republished as an e-book by Gutenberg

Young, Filson
With the Battlecruisers
Cassell 1921

Zeynek, Theodor Ritter von
Ein Offizier im Generalstabskorps
ed. Broucek, Peter Vienna 2009

Ziemann, Bejamin
War Experiences in Rural Germany 1914–23
OUP 2007

Acknowledgements

I must acknowledge many debts for this book, the first to Clive Harris and Mike Sheil, splendid battlefield guides who in April 2012 conducted me on a tour of the 1914 Western Front from the snowclad ridges of the Vosges to the old floodplains behind the Belgian coast. Christoph Nübel did outstanding work on German and Austrian sources, and will plainly become an important scholar; Pavlina Bobić provided material from Serbia and Slovenia; Serena Sissons trawled French sources; Dr Lyuba Vinogradovna, as for my last four books, produced a mass of Russian accounts. I learned much from the October 2011 conference organised by the German Historical Institute in London under the title ‘New Perspectives on the Fischer Controversy’. Josh Samborn passed on some of his important writings on Russian experiences in 1914. John Röhl generously gave me access to relevant draft passages of his forthcoming book on the Kaiser in the war.

Jack Sheldon shared his unpublished monograph on Le Cateau, and also read and commented upon my draft chapters about the British Expeditionary Force’s experience. Gary Sheffield did likewise for my entire manuscript, which reflected extraordinary generosity with his time. My old newspaper colleague Don Berry cast over the text the eye of a layman who is also a splendid critic. I owe gratitude to those who provided me with copies of unpublished contemporary correspondence, including James Illingworth for the papers of his grandfather Percy, Liberal chief whip in 1914; Anthony Gray for the MS of his grandfather Robert Emmet; John Festing for that of his great-uncle Maurice. As for my earlier books, for this one also Professor Sir Michael Howard OM, CH, MC has been throughout a peerless tutor and critic, though he bears no responsibility for either my judgements or my errors. Professor Nicholas Rodger and Matthew Seligmann read and commented upon the draft of the naval chapter, much to the advantage of the final text. Professor Mark Cornwall
gave some guidance on Serbian sources. It seems prudent to reiterate my usual caution about all large numbers quoted in my text above, and for that matter in any other historical study: they have been extracted from the best available sources, but must be regarded as indicative rather than precise.

I should also acknowledge thanks which are none the less sincere because common to all my books, to the British National Archive, the Imperial War Museum and the London Library for the invaluable assistance of their splendid staffs. Many collections in Europe likewise made possible the studies and translations of my researchers in France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Serbia and Slovenia. Michael Sissons and Peter Matson have been my London and New York agents for more than three decades, and I value their guidance and advice as much as ever. Arabella Pike and Robert Lacey at HarperCollins in London and Andrew Miller at Knopf in New York supported the project from its inception and have much improved my words during its gestation. My secretary Rachel Lawrence has been assisting my labours for most of the past thirty years, and her energy and commitment never cease to earn my gratitude. My wife Penny endured the writing of this book, like so many others before it, with a fortitude and sympathy that would command the respect of a war veteran.

Notes and References

The following abbreviations are employed in the references below: NA – British National Archive at Kew; IWM – Imperial War Museum document collections; ASA – Austrian State Archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv – OeStA/KA); AS – Arhiv Srbije (Serbian National Archive); ASC1938 – the British Army staff college study pack on the Battle of Le Cateau dated 1938, which includes important 1930–33 correspondence with military eyewitnesses; GW – correspondence with veterans preserved in the author’s files from BBC TV’s 1964
Great War
series; SB – Staatsarchiv Bremen; NUK – Slovenian State Archive, Ljubljana; GHAC – German Historical Association October 2011 conference:
New Perspectives on the Fischer Controversy
. I have omitted references for quotations from the principals’ speeches and statements long in the public record or domain.

xv
‘As commandant’ Jeffrey, Keith
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier
OUP 2006 p.80

xv
‘We are readying’ Gide, André
Journals 1914–27
trans. Justin O’Brien Secker & Warburg 1948 p.48

xv
‘You soldiers ought’ Knox, Sir Alfred
With the Russian Army
Hutchinson 1921 Vol. I p.45

Introduction

xvii
‘No part of the Great War’ Spears, Edward
Liaison 1914
p.vii

xix
‘a creative activity’ Brenda Horsfield
The Listener
20.1.72

xx
‘The war of 1914 was’ McMeekin, Sean
The Russian Origins of the First World War
Belknap 2011 p.5

xxi
‘When an ocean liner’ Spears p.9

Prologue

xxix
‘Excellency!’ Morton, Frederic
Thunder at Twilight
NY 1989 p.92

xxx
‘Never have I’ Steed, Wickham
The Hapsburg Monarchy
Constable 1913 p.282

xxxi
‘a menace to democracy’ Đurič, Silvija and Stevanović, Vidosav (eds)
Golgota i vaskrs Srbije, 1914–1915
Beograd 1990 3rd edn p.242 diary of Jovan Žujović

xxxiv
‘My dear Dr Sunarić’ Dedijer, Vladimir
The Road to Sarajevo
MacGibbon & Kee 1967 p.10

xxxvi
‘He received it with’ Dirr, P. (ed.)
Bayerische Dokumente zum Kriegsausbruch und zum Versailler Schuldspruch
, Munich, Berlin 1922 pp.114–15

xxxvi
‘a dreadful act’ Hopman, Albert
Das ereignisreiche Leben eines ‘Wilhelminers’. Tagebücher, Briefe, Aufzeichnungen 1901 bis 1920
ed. Epkenhans, Michael Munich Oldenbourg 2004 p.380

xxxvi
‘a characteristic bit’ Ransome p.166

xxxvii
‘Princip is better-looking’ Mihaly, Jo
… da gibt’s ein Wiedersehn! Kriegstagebuch eines Mädchens 1914–1918
Freiburg F.H. Kerle 1982 p.26 5.8.14

xxxvii
‘there is no sense of grief’ Mitrovic, Andrej
Serbia’s Great War
Hurst 2007 p.13

Chapter 1 – ‘A Feeling that Events are in the Air’

1 CHANGE AND DECAY

1
‘What will happen’
Churchill, Winston
The Great War
George Newnes 1933–34

1
‘The sardonic objectivity’ Pound, Reginald
The Lost Generation
Constable 1964 p.12

3
‘whether civilization is’ Masterman, Charles
The Condition of England
London 1909 p.74

3
‘There is a feeling that’ Lang, Carl von
Die Lage auf dem Balkan
in:
Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung 19
(1914) No 1/2 pp.10–11

4
‘Scarcely anything’ Churchill,
My Early Life
p.67

4
‘we obtain a sum of’ BNA FO371/1374 Russell dispatch

4
‘Early in 1914, the British’ Seligmann
Naval Intelligence
p.535

5
‘Durch Kampf zum Sieg’
Hirschfeld
Kriegserfahrungen. Studien zur Sozial – und Mentalitätsgeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs
Essen Klartext 1997 pp.330–1

5
‘He was an extreme’ Clark, Christopher
The Sleepwalkers
Allen Lane 2012 p.182

6
‘He is vanity itself’ Hopman p.368

6
‘I stood in front of a castle’ ibid. p.378

6
‘Bismarck … left a system’ Steinberg, Jonathan
Bismarck: A Life
OUP 2011 p.458

6
‘He left a nation’ ibid. p.479

7
‘other large European maritime’ Seligmann
Naval Intelligence
p.528

7
‘the two white nations’ ibid. p.545

8
‘rather trying guests’
H.H. Asquith Letters to Venetia Stanley
ed. Michael and Eleanor Brock OUP 1982 14.6.14 p.86

9
‘we will not leave Austria’ Rohl, John C.
The Kaiser and His Court
CUP 1994 p.175

10
‘a system of institutionalised escapism’ Stone, Norman
The Eastern Front
Hodder & Stoughton 1975 p.71

10
‘It was less a legislature than’ Morton p.19

11
‘The combination of stateliness’ Steed p.202

12
‘create for me a new’ Lieven, D.C.B.
Russia and the Origins of the First World War
NY St Martin’s 1983 p.46

12
‘the Straits must become’ ibid. p.128

12
‘Russia was perfectly’ McMeekin p.32

13
‘this vast country’
The Lady
27.8.14

14
‘We shall not let’ Lieven p.65

15
‘Russian youth, unfortunately’ ibid. p.15

15
‘we are a great, powerless’ ibid. p.23

15
‘we have become a’ ibid. p.21

15
‘we saw much martial’ Knox p.37