Europe's Last Summer (6 page)

Reviewing the Schlieffen memoranda some five years later, in 1911, Moltke indicated in his notes that he agreed that France should be invaded through Belgium. The decision exercised a sort of multiplier effect on Germany's quarrels. In the context of Germany's post-1890 foreign policy, it created the very encircling coalition Germans professed to fear. It also automatically transformed a German war into a European war that as a result would become a world war. If Germany attacked Russia, Germany would start by invading Belgium, Luxemburg, and France, thereby bringing them, too, into the war, thus also bringing Great Britain into the war, bringing in, in addition, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and others too, possibly including Britain's Pacific ally, Japan.

All of this rousing up of additional enemies was undertaken in pursuance of a strategy that even in the words of a scholar who believes in the existence of the Schlieffen scheme, "never achieved the final, perfected form that is sometimes imputed to it."

Schlieffen envisaged violating the neutrality of Luxemburg, Belgium, and Holland in invading France. Moltke decided instead to leave Holland alone. In the first place, Dutch armed resistance might tip the scales against the invaders; in the second, if a war of attrition developed, Germany would need a neutral Netherlands as a conduit for supplies. These were both good reasons for respecting Dutch neutrality.

One of the consequences of doing so, however, was to narrow the invasion route through which the German forces were to move. It would be a corridor twelve miles wide. It could be dominated by the Belgian fortifications at Liege. So, relying on total surprise and a sprinter's speed, German forces would have to seize Liege before the enemy even knew that war was upon them. All this would be possible only if there was complete secrecy. Moltke therefore did not allow even Germany's other military leaders—let alone the civilian ones—to share this information.

One other point later—in the summer of 1914—assumed great importance. The increased speed of Russia's mobilization ability, and the strengthening of its armed forces, meant that in the event of war, Germany on its own might not have the ability to ward off Russia's first blow. It would have to call on Austria-Hungary to help. That was to prove a key to understanding the crisis of July 1914.

In the unified German federation that Prussia had organized into a single power in the wars of the 1860s and 1870s, the armed forces played a disproportionately large role and—through it—so did the King of Prussia, who served not only as German emperor but also as military chief. As Chancellor—Germany's civilian leader—Otto von Bismarck wore a military uniform, seeking to identify himself with the military service and thereby indicating where he, who had created the new state and was the author of its constitution, believed that power rested.

Vested in the Kaiser were almost dictatorial powers in the great matters of war and peace: almost, but not quite. His was the power to declare war or to make peace—so long as he could obtain the countersignature of the Chancellor. But as the Chancellor was appointed by the Kaiser and served at his pleasure, this did not provide much of a check on the monarch's power.

In the Imperial German
army, the Kaiser served as supreme warlord. Immediately below him were three distinct bodies that sometimes competed with one another: the Prussian War Ministry, the War Cabinet, and the Great General Staff. Their functions were separate but sometimes overlapping. They, too, were appointed by the Kaiser.

It often was said, after he was made chief of the Great General Staff in 1906, that the younger
Moltke had been chosen because Wilhelm liked him. Moltke's biographer,
Annika Mombauer, in a recently published work based in part on previously unknown primary sources, tells us that he "had been the Kaiser's friend as well as his long-term adjutant," that as a young man he was "a tall dashing military figure," and that "his pleasant manners and varied cultural pursuits made him an appealing candidate."

Born in East Prussia, Moltke came of the right stock. His candidacy cannot have been hurt by the fact that he was a nephew of the great Moltke—Moltke the Elder, as he was known subsequently— the commander of Bismarck's armies who, in defeating Denmark, Austria, and then France, had been the general whose victories created modern Germany. The nephew knew what he owed to his uncle's name. On the occasion of his general staff appointment, he asked
Wilhelm: "Does Your Majesty really believe that you will win the first prize twice in the same lottery?"

Big and heavy, he was fifty-eight years old at the time of his appointment. Although he painted, played the cello, and took an interest in spiritualist matters, he held conventional military and political views.
Goethe's
Faust
is said to have been "his constant companion"; but it would have taken much more than his rather ordinary intellect to suspect that
Faust
might bear some relevance to the bid for total power that Prussia was mounting in his time.

Appreciating that Austria was of vital importance to his plans, Moltke worked with his Austrian counterpart, Franz
Conrad von Hötzendorf, to strengthen the Austro-German alliance. He succeeded in restoring warmth to a relationship that had been strained. Both chiefs of staff, it transpired nonetheless, held back and failed to give their entire confidence to one another. Moltke did not reveal the extent of his need for Austrian assistance in meeting the initial Russian attack that he expected. Conrad, in turn, did not admit that Austria was going to focus on destroying Serbia and would hope Germany—by itself—would assume full responsibility for dealing with the Czar's armies.

Until recently, the common view among scholars, especially in Germany, has been that Moltke was inadequate, weak, and of less than major importance. The appearance of Mombauer's biography should change that view. Moltke was a figure of considerable significance both for what he did and for what he did not do.

As a favorite of the Kaiser's who therefore was in a position to get a hearing for his views, Moltke took the lead in advancing two propositions: first, that the alliance with Austria was absolutely central to Germany and had to be given top priority; and second, that war against the Triple Entente—Britain, France, and Russia, three countries that had pledged mutual friendship—was bound to break out not much later than 1916 or 1917, and that Germany would lose the war unless it launched a preventive attack immediately. Certain that war would come, Moltke wanted it sooner rather than later. He wanted it even though, like many of his colleagues, he feared that it would bring European civilization to an end.

CHAPTER 5: ZARATHUSTRA
PROPHESIES

The greatest arms race the world had known was not only waged among mutually hostile nations, busily planning to destroy one another, but took place in a civilization in which it was widely believed that only
destruction could bring regeneration. The prophet of the age was the powerfully eloquent, though unsystematic philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche preached the values of the irrational. Though he was German, his message struck a chord in many countries. He was a European figure, not a parochial German one. Fittingly, he made his home in Switzerland and Italy.

The French Revolution of 1789 had ushered in a century of revolutions that had failed to achieve the dreams they embodied. Unfulfilled revolutions and revolutions betrayed had left Europe frustrated, and in a mood—following Nietzsche—to smash things. Rejecting Europe's inherited values,
Nietzsche had proclaimed in
Thus Spake Zarathustra
that "God is dead!"

The debut of the Stravinsky-Nijinsky
ballet
Le Sacre du Printemps
on May 29, 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, is often taken as the symbol of the Nietzschean rebellion in all the arts. Crowds hating the ballet—a pagan celebration with deafening dissonances—screamed their protests against what they regarded as savagery exalted in the place of civilization. Hysteria and frenzy seemed to be the order of the day.

It may well be that the European sense of frustration—the sense of stalemate in life, art, and politics—led to a violent sense of abandon, of letting go: a sense that the world ought to be blown up, and let the consequences be what they may. Europe's Nietzschean mood seemed to play some sort of role in making the Great War possible.

As A. J. P. Taylor writes: "Men's minds seem to have been on edge in the last two or three years before the war in a way they had not been before, as though they had become unconsciously weary of peace and security. You can see it in things remote from international politics—in the artistic movement called Futurism, in the militant suffragettes. . . , in the working-class trend toward Syndicalism. Men wanted violence for its own sake; they welcomed war as a relief from materialism. European civilization was, in fact, breaking down even before war destroyed it."

In the opening years of the twentieth century, Europeans glorified violence, and certain groups among them, at least, felt a need for radical change. Across the whole spectrum of existence, change was overcoming Europe at a pace faster than ever before—and far faster than Europe knew how to cope with. A panoramic view of Europe in the years 1900 to 1914 would show prominently that the Continent was racing ahead in a scientific, technological, and industrial revolution, powered by almost limitless energy, that was transforming almost everything; that violence was endemic in the service of social, economic, political, class, ethnic, and national strife; that Europe focused its activities largely on an escalating, dizzying arms race on a scale that the world never had seen before; and that, in the center of the Continent's affairs, powerful, dynamic Germany had made strategic arrangements such that, if it went to war, it would bring almost all Europe and much of the rest of the planet into the war for or against it.

Given these conditions, does not the question "How could war have broken out in such a peaceful world?" rather answer itself? Would it not have been more to the point to ask how statesmen could have continued to avoid war much longer? How had they managed to keep the peace for so long? Which is not to say that war could
not
have been averted, but merely that, by 1914, it might have taken extraordinary skill to keep on averting it.

Today, we take it for granted that governments hope to keep the peace. It is our often unarticulated assumption. Since the development of weapons of mass destruction, everybody would lose, we say, if war were to break out among the Great Powers. The human race, we are told, might not survive such a conflict. Our principal international institution, the
United Nations, is described as a peacekeeping organization because preventing war is the primary reason that the countries of the earth have joined together.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that a century ago world leaders would have shared such a view. Their thinking at the time was well expressed in what has been called "the first great speech" in the political career of
Theodore Roosevelt, newly appointed assistant secretary of the navy in the incoming administration of U.S. President William McKinley. Addressing the Naval War College in 1897, Roosevelt claimed: "No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war." War, he declared, was a fine and healthy thing. "All the great masterful races have been fighting races; and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, then . . . it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best." He argued: "Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." Someday circumstances might be different, he said, but until they were, war would continue to be needed. "As yet no nation can hold its place in the world, or can do any work really worth doing unless it stands ready to guard its rights with an armed hand."

The speech was reprinted in fall in all major American newspapers, and the chorus of approval from the press all around the United States made it clear that Roosevelt was not speaking for himself alone. He lived in a world in which war was considered desirable—even necessary.

Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, chief of staff of the Dual Monarchy's armed forces, was another leader who frequently expressed his opinion that war was "the basic principle behind all the events on this earth." It also, as he saw it, was the key to personal success. He was carrying on a love affair with a married woman, and was of the view that if he could come back from the battlefield as a war hero, his mistress could be persuaded to leave her wealthy husband.

The
pursuit of "honor" was a frequent theme of the times. In Conrad's personal vision, a warrior's nobility wins him the love of women and the acclaim of men. Heads of state and government in the conflicts of 1914 were to argue that their country's honor
compelled
them to join in the fray; U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson used the concept in his address to Congress in 1917 asking for a declaration of war against Germany. Some—Conrad was one, and his octogenarian emperor Franz Joseph was another—at times felt that they had to lead their country into a war because of their code of honor, even if they were likely to lose.

These views—held by warriors and aristocrats on the one hand, and by many artists and intellectuals on the other—were not necessarily shared by the masses, including workers, farmers, and the peace-loving commercial and middle classes. But the public played no role in the war-and-peace decisions: decisions that they did not even know were being made behind closed doors.