Europe's Last Summer (39 page)

It also was, in the case of the Prussian Junker caste in Germany, a defensive war in a larger sense. Moltke's officer corps was infused with a sense of pessimism that derived from an inability to see any way in which to preserve much longer its values, way of life, and dominant position—even within Germany.

We owe to Fritz Fischer the discovery that the German government prepared a grandiose program of war goals in September 1914: a grand design. It was expansionist and imperialist. But it was September's program, not July's. It was not what moved Falkenhayn and Moltke to act.

So it was, not only with the belligerents of 1914, but even of those who joined in the fighting later. What caused a country to enter the war was not always the same as what caused it to continue the war. They went to war for one set of reasons, but developed other reasons for battling their enemies as the conflict went on. Their differences with the other side widened, intensified, and shifted to new grounds. British entry into the conflict transformed a European war into a global war. America's entry into the war and into world affairs in 1917 changed balance-of-power equations. America's participation, together with the two Russian revolutions that year, brought ideological dimensions into the conflict that had not been there before, but that were to shape the rest of the twentieth century.

In the beginning, however, it was simply Great Powers fighting to stay where they were and to hold on to what they had.

CHAPTER 48: WHO COULD HAVE
PREVENTED IT?

In the few days allowed to them, experienced and talented European statesmen in July 1914 scrambled to try to prevent war from breaking out. Why did they fail? Were they, as some say, simply not skillful enough? In the ninety years that have elapsed, speculation as to what could have been done has been practically endless.
Could
anything have been done?

The common assumption today is that everybody wants peace if it can be had on acceptable terms. What Europe did not understand at the time was that, exceptionally, it was not true of two governments in 1914. Vienna did not merely want to get its way with Serbia; it wanted to provoke a war with Serbia. Berlin did not want to get its way with Russia; it wanted to provoke a war with Russia. In each case it was war itself that the government wanted—or, put more precisely, it wanted to crush its adversary to an extent that only a successful war makes possible.

It takes at least two to keep the peace, but it takes only one to start a war. If a government is determined to bring on a war, no appeasement, no matter how extensive or imaginative, will restrain it. Europe, having failed to understand what happened to it in 1914, had to be taught that lesson all over again in the aftermath of Munich in 1938–39. Only countervailing power will stop a government bent on launching an invasion.

In the case of Austria's war, Vienna recognized that it could not get away with attacking Serbia unless Berlin offered protection. Given German cover, it was free to do what it liked. Of course Austria also needed to obtain (and did) the approval and support of Hungary. Thereafter nothing could stop Austria-Hungary's march toward war.

Europe's statesmen were in the dark about Austria's motives, and therefore were disoriented. They assumed that the Hapsburg Empire was what it pretended to be: a country with a grievance that it wanted remedied. In fact, it did not want its grievance remedied; it wanted a pretext. Austria did not seek justice, for that would have deprived it of an excuse for doing what it really wanted to do: go to war. It issued an ultimatum, not in order to bully Serbia into accepting it, but rather to force Serbia into rejecting it.

Of course the cumbersome machinery of the Austro-Hungarian government moved slowly. By early August, the Hapsburg armies had not initiated the hostilities that they should have concluded in July. But, at however snail-like a pace, the Dual Monarchy moved straight ahead toward its goal, never stopping, never deviating, never allowing itself to be distracted or turned aside. It was headed for the battlefield, and it would allow nothing to keep it from going there.

Could Britain or France or even Russia have done anything differently to stop the Austrian war on Serbia? Now we have the satisfaction of knowing that nothing they could have done would have kept Austria from attacking Serbia. Austria wanted war and could have been restrained only by Germany.

Herewith two counterfactuals: two might-have-beens. The first is that the German government might have followed the Kaiser's orders the week of July 27 and withdrawn support of the Dual Monarchy unless it agreed to peace on German terms. The result might have been a dazzling diplomatic triumph for the German-speaking allies. Peace probably would have been secured on terms favorable to Austria and Serbia would have been severely punished.

A second counterfactual: Russia might have taken itself out of the conflict. This might have happened if Russia had been convinced of Serbian guilt in the Sarajevo affair. Russia could have made common cause with Austria against the regicides and terrorists, and given Vienna carte blanche, as Germany had done, to solve the problems as best it could, in its dealings with Serbia.

Had Russia done so, it would have deprived Germany's military leaders of the conditions and pretexts necessary to initiate their proposed war against Russia and France. A world war would at least have been postponed and at best prevented.

In the case of Germany's war, rather more stood in the way of those who wanted to initiate hostilities. The labor movement and the Social Democrats in Germany had to be won over, but that was accomplished by Bethmann during the turbulent last week of July. The complicated requirements of Germany's generals—the things that had to be done before they could start their war—had to do with Austria.

As seen earlier, Vienna had to be persuaded to commit its armies for one purpose, the Serbian venture, but then instead to use them in another venture: Germany's crusade against Russia, which Berlin was presenting at home as Russia's crusade against Germany.

All having been achieved, however, there was nothing to stop the German government from starting a war at the time most favorable to it—which turned out to be August 1, 1914. The strongest power on the Continent, with the most powerful army in the world, was doing what it deemed necessary to maintain its position. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that nothing could have stopped it.

A question asked throughout the twentieth century in one way or another was put this way by historian
James Joll: why, since "War had been avoided in the immediately preceding crises—1908, 1911, 1913 "—was it "not avoided in 1914?"

One answer is that in the previous crises none of the Great Powers had wanted to have a war. In 1914 two of them did. And one reason that Germany did not want to go to war in those previous crises was that it could not count on Austria—and Germany's generals were convinced that without Austrian troops holding back the Russians during the opening weeks of the war, they might not win.

CHAPTER 49: WHO STARTED IT?

Briefly and roughly stated, the answer is that the government of Austria-Hungary started its local war with Serbia, while Germany's military leaders started the worldwide war against France and Russia that became known as the First World War or the Great War.

Wars in the modern world tend to break out for a complex of reasons, and to involve a multitude of participants at various levels in the decision-making process. Impersonal forces can come into play, as can institutional pressures. Cultural predilections and affinities can shape events. The varied interests at work in a modern society often make domestic politics as much a focus of concern as international relations in determining whether and when countries go to war. Even so, accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, the characteristics of individuals, and other random factors continue to explain much of what actually happens.

The peculiarity of the First World War is that, even though it occurred in modern times, somewhat democratic and, to an extent, responsive to the voices of the public, its origins involved so few people: a handful in a handful of countries. It is not just that a tiny number of individuals made the decisions; it is startling that few people even knew that anything was happening or that decisions were there to be made or were being made. It was a crisis that arose and was played out in secret.

Of course, seen in broader perspective, powerful forces were at work over the course of decades and even centuries that created the world in which the
Great War broke out: the explosion of the Industrial Revolution, the spread of nationalism, the rise of science, the triumph of imperialism, and the militarism of German society that was a product of how Germany was united in the 1860s and 1870s. But none of these mass movements and happenings explain the
immediate
outbreak of the war. None reveal why Europe did not put a match to the explosive material in the summer of 1913 but did so in the summer of 1914.

The people who lit the fuse were, of course, the products of their family backgrounds, of their societies, and of the historical circumstances in which they acted. Nor did they—nor could anybody— really speak for themselves alone. When Moltke, for example, spoke, he did so for the 650 members of the Great General Staff and, to some extent, for the officer corps as a whole. He spoke with the weight of his office; he was more than just an individual.

In suggesting that one or more individuals started the First World War, I am using words in their most everyday and ordinary sense. I mean that there were men who wanted to start a war, and who deliberately acted in such a way as to start one, and who succeeded, by what they did, in starting a war. So the detective in a murder mystery, summing up the evidence for the houseguests in the library, might point a finger accusingly and say: "There is the person who did it!" In the case of Germany we point to Moltke. He started the world war, and he did so deliberately.

In the case of the Austro-Serbian war, the obvious criminal was Gavrilo Princip. The teenage drifter and failed poet probably (though not certainly) conceived the Sarajevo murder plot, led it, and by his determination and persistence carried it through despite orders to abort, pleas to turn back, and changes of circumstance.

But Princip did not intend to inspire Austria to invade Serbia. Quite the contrary, under questioning by his captors he attempted to keep them from learning of any connection between the Serbs and himself. Moreover, the Austro-Hungarian foreign office was at work planning the
destruction of Serbia even before Princip struck. The troubled and confused adolescent terrorist did indeed open the door to the Austrian invasion by killing the Archduke who had been blocking the way, but Princip did not know that; what he did, in that respect, was inadvertent.

Kaiser Wilhelm, Chancellor Bethmann, Foreign Minister Jagow, and an assortment of their German military and civilian colleagues encouraged the Austrians to launch an attack on Serbia, and so were directly responsible for that war. In the case of the Kaiser, there was mitigation; when it looked as though there were a peaceful solution, he opted for it enthusiastically.

Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Leopold von Berchtold was the man most responsible for bringing about the Serbian war. Sometime during or after the Balkan wars he decided that his country could survive only if Serbia were crushed and altogether eliminated as a factor in politics. He seems to have believed that a merely diplomatic triumph would be insubstantial and might not last. Only victory in war would achieve his goal, and that could be accomplished only if Germany would keep Russia from interfering, while big Austria-Hungary crushed little Serbia.

As soon as Germany's blank check was received, Berchtold put himself to work starting his war. He was, like Princip, persistent and undiscouraged. He refused to be turned aside.

He would not be drawn into conversations or negotiations that might trap him into keeping the peace—even (and this confused other leaders) on favorable terms. The other players in European politics found the July crisis uniquely puzzling because they sensed they were missing something. What they were missing was the knowledge that Vienna did not want peace. They assumed that Berchtold hoped to secure his terms, which might well have been extreme. But he did not desire his terms or any terms; he preferred to fight a war. After the war (as his envoy Count Hoyos made clear in July 1914 in conversations in Berlin) he did not want (as the Kaiser wanted) a subservient Serbia; he wanted there to be no Serbia at all. To the problem posed for his country by Serbia, he wanted, one might say, a final solution.

Berchtold operated under severe handicaps: the machinery of the Austro-Hungarian state moved with maddening slowness. He could not move swiftly enough to achieve the
fait accompli
that the Germans asked. Everything took time—time during which the powers might impose a peace. Since his armies could not move for weeks, he declared war anyway, doing nothing but using the "at war" status to fend off potential peacemakers.

Berchtold was surrounded by his foreign office staff, the firebrands inherited from Aehrenthal. They may have inspired him. The cabinet of Austro-Hungary—even Tisza, after holding out against him for a week—supported him. All shared his
responsibility for the war. It need hardly be said that Conrad was Berchtold's full partner in starting the war.