Europe's Last Summer (9 page)

As Berghahn writes, a function of the officer corps was "guaranteeing absolute loyalty to the existing order and its supreme military commander, the monarch." Rather than enlarge, the better to combat enemies abroad, the ministry of war chose to remain at current force levels in order to combat enemies at home.

The naval expansion launched by Tirpitz supposedly would enable Germany to compete against the other powers for colonies. It would allow
Germany to extend its reach anywhere in the world and not just in and around Europe. Germany would engage in world politics, not merely in continental politics. By its very nature the program posed a challenge to
Great Britain, against whom, in fact, it was directed. In building a major navy, in attempting to obtain a colonial empire, and in trying to play a role on the global stage, Germany was setting out either to rival England or to take England's place.

In retrospect, this was a self-defeating policy. Germany, along with its Austrian ally, is situated in the center of Europe. It has neighbors on all sides. Geographically it is encircled. The German nightmare has always been that of being encircled by a combination of hostile powers. It was Wilhelmine Germany itself that translated that nightmare into a reality, with its aggressive foreign policy and its unwise alliance decisions.

To the west there was
France, estranged by the loss of Alsace and parts of Lorraine to Germany in the war of 1870–71. Bismarck, in his day, distracted the French by backing their quest for empire; under Wilhelm II, Germany instead deepened the rift by opposing French imperialism, notably during the
Moroccan crises of 1906 and 1911.

To the east was Russia, which Berlin deliberately estranged by letting the Reinsurance Treaty lapse. Germany made the fateful choice to back Austria against Russia. Thus it had enemies on both sides, east and west, conjuring up the very two-front war that haunted its generals.

To the south, Italy had territorial assertions against Austria that made it likely that Rome would rally to the other side. The German-Austrian alliance might well have to fight on a southern front, too.

Now, in the early 1900s, the Tirpitz program estranged Great Britain as well. England, France, and Russia, which were in many ways natural enemies of one another, and had been in conflict for more than a century as rivals for empire in Asia and elsewhere, were given no choice but to band together. So the
hostile encirclement that Germany so much feared was achieved by Germany itself. But the Kaiser and his entourage, including the country's military leaders, chose instead to blame everyone else.

Insofar as he remained steady in support of any policy, the Kaiser consistently backed Tirpitz and his naval policy. This brought the monarch into alignment with a broad segment of the middle class favoring expansion of trade, creation of a fleet to back up the drive for trade, and recognition by foreign powers of Germany's growing greatness. It was a policy that aroused fear in Germany's neighbors. On the other hand, it did not lead Germans to feel more secure.

Given the relative consistency with which he pushed navalism, the Kaiser might well have been convicted of responsibility for the 1914 war if it had come about as a result of the naval challenge that he mounted against Great Britain. But it did not. Germany dropped out of the naval arms race several years before the war began; navalism then lost its relevance as a German world strategy.

It was the other and rival military party, the Prussian-led army, that eventually led Germany along the road it took in 1914. To be seen clearly, German militarism at that time has to be understood not as a single phenomenon with two aspects but as two rival programs: that of the navy and that of the army. Paradoxically—a word that, along with "oddly," has to be used often in discussing Wilhelmine Germany—Tirpitz and Wilhelm, whether they knew it or not, headed the party of peace. This was because the navy, in the Tirpitz grand plan, would take years to be ready for any possible confrontation with England. And the navy did not want to fight until it was ready. So Tirpitz was for peace now and war so much later as to have little relevance to the politics of his time. To the navy, the enemy was the British Empire; to the army, it was Russia.

The army was less than enthusiastic about the Kaiser. His backing of the navy threatened Junker control of the German Empire; among other things, it opened up paths for advancement to new men from the professional and middle classes. Moreover, his tendency to retreat from international confrontation whenever there appeared to be a real risk of war was seen as cowardly through army eyes.

Gloom brought about by the Kaiser's inadequacies fed into a larger
worldview pessimism characteristic of pre-1914 Germany and affecting such leaders as the
younger Moltke. This pervasive gloom was due, Fritz Fischer tells us, to devotion to the ideals of a vanishing pre-capitalist world and its values, which could never be restored.

No portrait of Germany as it was a century ago would be complete without mention of its
cultural and academic preeminence. "Einstein's Germany," as Fritz Stern has called it, was poised to lead the world in learning and in the sciences. It produced great literature and great music. German was the language of scholarship. Those who hoped to pursue a serious career in classical studies, philosophy, sociology, or the natural sciences were well advised to enter German universities. Germans, arguably, were the most accomplished people in the world.

An advanced country inside a backward governmental structure, broadly humanist yet narrowly militarist, Germany was a land
of paradoxes. Outside observers saw it as the coming country, the land of the future, while its own leaders believed that its time was running out. It was dazzlingly successful but profoundly troubled, powerful but fearful to the point of paranoia. It was symbolized by its ruler, who was both physically and emotionally unbalanced. Located in the heart of Europe, Germany was at the heart of Europe's problems.

In retrospect, it seems odd that observers—the observers who were surprised by the outbreak of war in 1914—did not see that many of Germany's leaders were spoiling for a fight, and sooner or later—if they could get around the Kaiser—might well have their way. An American,
Edward House, saw it, but many Europeans did not.*

*For House, see p. 104.

If House were to be believed, everything pointed to a war in which Europe would go up in flames. The difficulty was in predicting when and where the first step would be taken. In retrospect, a strong case can be made for the proposition that the first step was taken in Ottoman Turkey in 1908.

PART THREE
DRIFTING TOWARD WAR

CHAPTER 10: MACEDONIA –
OUT OF CONTROL

The most difficult, complicated, and long-lived problem faced by . . . [the Turkish Sultan] was the Macedonian Question. . . . From the Congress of Berlin until World War I the issue occupied Ottoman and European statesmen alike more than any other single diplomatic problem.

—Shaw and Shaw,
History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey

It looks very much as though the drift toward war began, insofar as any movement in history
has
a beginning, in the old imperial city of
Constantinople: yesterday's Byzantium and today's Istanbul. Dominating the straits that separate Europe from Asia, it occupies a site that has been at the center of world politics since the fabled, and perhaps fabulous, Agamemnon, Ulysses, and Achilles embarked for nearby Troy. For more than a thousand years after the fourth century A.D., Constantinople had served as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. For five hundred years afterwards it was the capital of the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire. It had outlived two civilizations and in the early 1900s seemed poised to outlive a third.

It was, however, at a low point in its fortunes. Its glory was faded, as was its beauty. It had not kept up with the times. Most of its streets remained unpaved; the shoes and boots of its million inhabitants were covered with mud when it rained and with dust when it did not. Electricity had not yet been introduced. The city was known for its powerful winds, blowing sometimes from one direction, sometimes from another. That the winds of change would blow its empire away sometime soon was a view commonly held, but it was less easy to predict from which quarter the winds would blow.

It was in
Macedonia, a Turkish territory in the center of the turbulent Balkans coveted by Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria alike, that the disruptive forces were unloosed. Macedonia was frontier country, lawless and out of control; it resisted efforts to police it. It was a prey to brigandage, guerrilla warfare, blood feuds, terrorism, assassinations, massacres, reprisals, uprisings, and almost every form of violence and bloodshed known to humankind. The Ottoman Third Army, charged with the duty of pacifying it, was infiltrated by members of one of Turkey's many subversive secret societies: the Committee of Union and Progress (C.U.P.), known as the Young Turkey party. The
Young Turks advocated modernization. Their goal was to reform the empire in order to stop Europe from taking any more Ottoman territory.

For Bulgaria, too, which regarded Macedonia as its southern half, the fighting was an experience that gave rise to clandestine and murderous ultra-nationalist military societies. Much later—in the 1920s and 1930s—they would ally with Italian fascism and leave a bloodstained trail through Balkan history.

Macedonia played much the same role for Serbia, another claimant to the province. Serbian officers and other volunteers underwent the same experience of guerrilla fighting and dirty warfare. In Serbia, too, one result of the turmoil was the creation of secret societies by ultra-nationalist army officers. As will be seen later, it was such a group in Serbia, the
Black Hand, that often has been blamed for starting the First World War. Macedonia was the school that shaped the Serbian ultra-nationalists. Emerging from a past that was incendiary, they played a direct role in setting their world on fire. Like the Bulgarians, the Serbs took to assassination to achieve their ends, and, like the Bulgarians, they turned on their own governments and politicians. The Turkish, Bulgarian, and Serbian secret military societies were similar to one another except that each wanted Macedonia for its own. And it was the Young Turks who surfaced first to achieve their aims.

The Young Turks were spurred to act by the news, in June 1908, of a proposal by Russia and Britain to restore order in Macedonia by sending in European officers to serve as a police force. If implemented, which, in retrospect at least, seems to have been highly unlikely, this would have meant that Turkey might well lose one more province.

The Young Turks, surfacing briefly, contacted the European powers to protest against the proposal. Amidst great confusion, the Sultan sent officials to arrest various C.U.P. leaders, but the Young Turks evaded arrest and went on to spark a rebellion. Responding to the mounting disorder, the Sultan, on July 24, 1908, decreed restoration of the constitution, which was the main Young Turk demand. The next year the Sultan abdicated in favor of his brother.

A new phase had opened up in Ottoman politics. It was not clear who would lead or in which direction the leaders would go. Not until 1913 did the Young Turks find themselves securely in control of the Ottoman Empire. But Europeans were on notice that change might finally be in the air.

To
Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal, the foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, it seemed possible that the
Young Turk rebellion might represent a genuine revolution in Ottoman affairs. It might mean that the reform and modernization that the Young Turks advocated might actually be attempted—and might endanger Hapsburg interests in the Balkans.

Viewed in that way, a signal had been sounded. Now, it could be argued, was the moment to act—or never. Time was running out. Either the Young Turks would reinvigorate their empire and put a stop to further annexations by European powers or the Ottoman state would continue to disintegrate. The accession to power of the Young Turkey party seems to have conveyed a message to Vienna: to strike immediately while Turkey was still weak and before some other European power struck first.

CHAPTER 11: AUSTRIA –
FIRST OFF THE MARK

As of 1908 the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary administered the dual Balkan provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, whose nominal ruler continued to be the Ottoman Sultan. Turkey had been in the process of losing the provinces in the 1870s to a native rebellion and then a war with Russia when the other Great Powers of Europe stepped in to settle matters and preserve the balance of power among themselves.

At the
Congress of Berlin in 1878, the powers had split the ownership of the provinces in two: legal title to remain with Turkey, but with the actual right to occupy—provisionally—being awarded to the Dual Monarchy. The settlement did not, in fact, settle matters. The Hapsburg Empire was obliged to send in an army of between 200,000 and 300,000 troops to quell the local fighters for independence. The provinces were coveted by many; indeed each of the partners in the Dual Monarchy, Austria and Hungary, wanted them for itself, so a decision had to be postponed indefinitely in order to preserve the Dual Monarchy's domestic balance of power. A decision as to who eventually would replace the Ottoman Sultan as legal ruler had to be similarly postponed to preserve the even more fragile balance of power among the states of Europe. Meanwhile the largely Slavic inhabitants of the provinces cherished ambitions of their own for national independence, while their fellow Slavs, in neighboring Serbia, across the river, dreamed of annexing them.