July 1914: Countdown to War (26 page)

The Russian then came to the point. He was now firmly convinced, he told Pourtalès, “that Austria-Hungary was looking for a pretext to ‘swallow up’ Serbia.”
*
“In that case, however,”
he told the German ambassador, “then Russia will make war on Austria.”

Pourtalès was shocked. Although Sazonov had talked tough during their Monday audience, this was something else. Never before had he heard the word “war” cross Sazonov’s lips. At first, he did not quite believe it. To give Sazonov room to back down, Pourtalès tried to reassure the Russian that the ultimatum would only lead, even in the “worse-case scenario,” to “a punitive Austrian expedition against Serbia,” and that “Austria was far removed from any contemplation of territorial acquisitions”: there would be no “swallowing up” of Serbia. At this, Pourtalès reported, “Sazonov shook his head incredulously and spoke of far-reaching Austrian plans. First Serbia would be devoured (
verspeist werden
), then it would be Bulgaria’s turn and then ‘we shall have them [i.e., the Austrians] at the Black Sea.’” Pourtalès refused to humor such “fantastic exaggerations,” seeing them as “not worthy of serious discussion.” But he did not forget what the Russian had said. The only explanation for the use of such extreme language, Pourtalès believed, was Sazonov’s “passionate national and especially religious hatred for Austria-Hungary,” which, as a Catholic power, he viewed as fundamentally hostile to Orthodox Serbia.
¹⁵

There are differing accounts of how this confrontation at the Russian Foreign Ministry ended. In a telegram he sent to the Wilhelmstrasse shortly after midnight, Pourtalès reassured Jagow that, despite Sazonov’s strong language, his real goal was likely to “Europeanize” the ultimatum question. “Prompt Russian intervention,” he predicted, “was not to be expected.” Szapáry, passing on to Vienna what Pourtalès told him that night, reported that the audience had been “friendly” and that Sazonov had concluded it by appealing to Pourtalès that “Germany might work together with Russia to preserve peace.” In a longer letter to Jagow sent the next day, Pourtalès likewise reported
that Sazonov’s real goal was to “temporize” and delay, not to force matters to a head. “Despite the agitation reigning in Russian governing circles,” Pourtalès concluded, “such rash steps as this [i.e., Sazonov’s threat to make war on Austria] were not to be expected.”
¹⁶

Other sources, however, suggest that the meeting did not conclude as amicably as this. The Russian Foreign Ministry logbook reports that “those who saw Count Pourtalès as he left the Ministry state that he was very agitated, and did not conceal the fact that S. D. Sazonov’s words, and especially his firm determination to resist the Austrian demands, had made a strong impression on him.”
¹⁷
Lending credence to this report, Pour-talès himself recorded in his diary that night—perhaps not wishing to alarm Jagow or to give cause to the German war party, he did not report this to Berlin—that Sazonov’s remarks “gave him the impression” that the Council of Ministers must have “seriously eyed the eventuality of a break with Germany and Austria-Hungary” and “resolved not to hang back from an armed conflict.”
¹⁸

Scarcely had the German ambassador left Sazonov’s office, at around eight
PM
, than his French counterpart arrived.
*
The Russian foreign minister, Paléologue observed, “was still agitated over the dispute in which he has just been engaged. He has quick, nervous moments and his voice is dry and jerky.” Casting aside the diplomatic assurances he and the German had both just exchanged, Sazonov told France’s ambassador that “Germany wholeheartedly supports the Austrian cause. Not
the slightest suggestion of conciliation. So I told Pourtalès quite bluntly that we should not leave Serbia to settle her differences with Austria alone.” (Sazonov may not have told the Frenchman just how “blunt” he had been, threatening to make war on Austria.) With revealing candor, the Russian told Paléologue of the German’s accusation that he “hated” Austria, claiming that he retorted, “No, of course we don’t like Austria. . . . Why should we like her? She has never done us anything but harm.” Sazonov then “promptly informed [Paléologue] of the decisions come to by the Council of Ministers”—including the partial mobilization against Austria.
¹⁹

It had been quite an evening at Chorister’s Bridge. In less than three hours, Russia’s foreign minister had (1) instructed Serbia’s minister not to comply with Austria’s ultimatum and promised that “Serbia may count on Russian aid” (although it is unclear whether he also spelled out what form this “aid” would take); (2) warned Germany’s ambassador that Russia would go to war with Austria if she “swallowed up” Serbia; and (3) informed France’s ambassador about Russia’s impending mobilization measures. Making the performance still more remarkable, before making these moves Sazonov had not consulted with any of the three statesmen most directly involved with Russian policy. Tsar Nicholas II was sailing his yacht off the Finnish coast while most of this took place (although he had been ordered to return to Tsarskoe Selo in time for the next morning’s Crown Council). President Poincaré was cruising the Baltic aboard the
France
. Serbia’s prime minister, Pašić, had not even returned from the campaign trail to Belgrade. When these men awoke on Saturday, it would be in a different world.

 
___________

*
A number of Spalaiković’s crucial 24 July dispatches to Belgrade have gone missing, but at least one survives, which contains the passages cited here.

*
The French word Sazonov used was
avaler
(“to absorb or swallow”). Pourtalès rendered this in German as
verschlingen
, with roughly the same sense. Szapáry, reporting to Vienna, retranslated this back into French as
dévorer
(“to devour”).

*
Paléologue claims in his memoirs that he saw Pourtalès leaving Sazonov’s office, “his face purple and his eyes flashing.” According to Schilling, however, the French ambassador deliberately avoided Pourtalès by waiting in the anteroom, to which the German, as a “hostile” ambassador, was not allowed access.

SATURDAY, 25 JULY

A
S DAWN BROKE ON
S
ATURDAY
, the streets of St. Petersburg were already beginning to simmer. All through July the heat wave had been building. Now it reached its terrible peak. The train stations were packed with vacationers desperate to escape the swampy heat of the capital. In the working-class districts, the situation had steadied somewhat since Wednesday, when many strikers had been injured in clashes with Cossacks. Still, the heat was doing nothing to improve the mood in the factories and cramped housing quarters. Police feared that a new explosion was imminent.

On the parade ground at Krasnoe Selo, a better-heeled crowd had gathered to observe the annual summer review of imperial troops. The maneuvers were to have been held in the late morning, before the midday sun had ascended over the baking-hot plain. Unfortunately for the overdressed spectators, they would not be this lucky. Although at first no one was told why, the review was postponed until early afternoon.

T
HE REASON
,
IT SOON EMERGED
, was that an emergency session of the Council of Ministers had been convened at nearby Tsarskoe Selo to ratify the decisions made in Petersburg the previous afternoon. While Petersburg high society was gathering for a lazy Saturday at the parade ground, Sazonov had been furiously making the rounds. He had spent the night at Tsarskoe Selo, risen early, and gone to his office at Chorister’s Bridge to pick up the evening’s telegrams before returning for the council. This session, unlike yesterday’s, was presided over by Tsar Nicholas II himself. The historic resolutions went even further than those taken on Friday.

First, Russia’s sovereign approved the previous day’s decision “in principle” to undertake a “partial mobilization” of the four military districts of Kiev, Odessa, Moscow, and Kazan, along with the Black Sea and Baltic fleets. The idea was to telegraph a limited mobilization “against Austria alone,” although even this would not be announced publicly until Austria moved against Serbia. Mobilizing these four districts would prime for war a substantial force of 1.1 million men, not including naval forces.

Second, all troops were to return to standing quarters. As at Tsarskoe Selo, most of the army was at summer quarters instead, engaging in seasonal maneuvers and drills. Standing quarters were the permanent bases where arms and other war matériel were stored—equipment soldiers must have in hand before they could be mobilized. While not tantamount to mobilization itself, this measure would rapidly put troops into motion across the vast reach of the Russian Empire—not just the 1.1 million men who were to be mobilized in the four districts “against Austria,” but the entire army. It was given the highest priority. On Chief of Staff Yanushkevitch’s orders, Dobrorolskii sent out secret cipher telegram no. 1547 at 4:10
PM
:

Third, army cadets were immediately promoted to officers. Russia’s army was notably inferior to the German one in the strength of its subalterns and noncommissioned officers. This measure would go some way toward closing the gap. It not only enlarged the officer corps in absolute terms but also freed for active service many mature officers previously engaged in training recruits.

Four, a “state of war” (that is, martial law) was proclaimed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, all towns in European Russia containing fortresses, and “in the frontier sectors facing Austria and Germany.”
²

Finally, and most important, the council issued top-secret orders to inaugurate the “Period Preparatory to War in all lands of the empire,” beginning at midnight. This was a premobilization directive akin to the Germans’ own
Kriegsgefahrzustand
, which immediately preceded mobilization (which, in the German case, also meant war). The Russian version was no less portentous than the German. As a secret military commission had reported to War Minister Sukhomlinov in November 1912, “it will be advantageous to complete concentration without beginning hostilities, in order not to deprive the enemy irrevocably of the hope that war can still be avoided. Our measures for this
must be masked by clever diplomatic negotiations
, in order to
lull to sleep as much as possible the enemy’s fears
.”
³
According to the final statute signed into law by the tsar on 2 March 1913, the Period Preparatory to War

The gravity of these decisions was felt immediately on the parade ground at Tsarskoe Selo. Scarcely had the review of the imperial guard troops begun than it was cut short. As General Oskar von Chelius, Germany’s aide-de-camp to the tsar, reported to Berlin, “during the afternoon review it was announced . . . that maneuvers would be called off for tonight, and that troops must return [to base].” Showing that the orders applied to the top rank of the army too, General Adlerberg, the military governor of St. Petersburg, next “broke off” a conversation with Chelius, announcing that “
he had to go to attend to the ‘mobilization.’
”
⁵

Sazonov, too, returned to his own base—at Chorister’s Bridge—as soon as the review concluded at Krasnoe Selo. His first item of business was to inform the French and British ambassadors about what had been resolved at Tsarskoe Selo. To enhance the impression that the Entente Powers should work together as a team, he called them both in together. With Britain still on the diplomatic sidelines, Sazonov had to be very careful with Buchanan. So he discussed only the first resolution of the morning: the decision “in principle” to mobilize the four military districts against Austria (and even here, the Russian neglected to mention that the Baltic and Black Sea fleets would be mobilized as well). Sazonov, Buchanan reported to Foreign Secretary Grey, insisted that the imperial
ukase
“ordering mobilization of 1.1 million men” would “only be published when Minister for Foreign Affairs [Sazonov] considers moment come for giving effect to it.” When the Briton “expressed [his] earnest hope that Russia would not precipitate war by mobilizing before you [i.e., Grey] had had time to use your influence in favor of peace,” Sazonov assured him “that Russia had no aggressive intentions, and she would take no action until it was forced on her.” In a seeming contradiction, however, Sazonov also told Buchanan and Paléologue that “necessary preliminary preparations
for mobilization would, however, begin at once”—an allusion to the “Period Preparatory to War,” although the Russian did not spell this out.

Paléologue, speaking for France, endorsed the council’s decisions, Buchanan reported to London, “without the slightest sign of hesitation.” When Sazonov asked Buchanan whether Britain, too, would make a statement backing Russia, the answer was no. At best, the Briton was able to promise to “play the role of mediator at Berlin and Vienna.” Hearing this, Sazonov grew frustrated. Germany’s attitude toward war, he tried to convince Buchanan, depended on her view of what London would do. “If we [Britain] took our stand with France and Russia,” Buchanan said Sazonov argued, “there would be no war.” If, by contrast, “we failed them now, rivers of blood would flow and we would in the end be dragged into war.”