by Stephen Yellin
This is part of a series of daily articles that covers the run-up to the catastrophe of World War I in July 1914. The diplomatic crisis exactly 100 years ago was sparked by the murder of the main force for peace in the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Archduke Franz Ferdinand, together with his wife Sophie – by a Serbian terrorist. Backed by Germany’s offering of unconditional support in using force to retaliate against Serbia – the infamous “blank check” – the Viennese authorities began preparing a list of demands for the Serbian government to accept or face war. The demands were deliberately made to ensure war would occur.
The ultimatum was finally issued on July 23, 1914, over 3 weeks after the Archduke’s murder. The 12 days that followed are the focus of this series.
Feel free to refer to my list of important figures in keeping track of who's who.
Previous days:
Wednesday, July 23rd
Friday, July 24th – “C’est la guerre Europeene”
On Friday morning the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s ambassadors to the capitols of the other “Great Powers” of Europe presented them with the ultimatum they’d given Serbia the evening before. While Vienna’s plan to confront Belgrade had already been leaked, the precise demands and the 48-hour deadline for Serbia to reply made it clear that a major European crisis had begun. That the ultimatum would result in a European-wide war just 12 days later was far from certain; similar crisis with threats of military action had ended without war in 1905, 1908, 1911 and 1913. The days that followed would be decisive in making doomsday a reality.
Vienna
Having submitted its ultimatum to Serbia the Austro-Hungarian government awaits Belgrade’s reply. The hope of Foreign Secretary Berchtold and General Conrad, the chief leaders of the government, is that they have drafted terms so unacceptable to Serbia that the latter will be forced to reject them. They have already committed themselves to an invasion of Serbia in order to preserve Austria-Hungary’s prestige as a Great Power and crush what they view as a continual threat to the empire’s survival. Conrad also hopes a quick victory over Serbia will allow his lover to divorce her husband and marry him.
Leopold Berchtold
The threat of war is so severe that Vienna immediately downplays the threat to foreign emissaries. Berchtold meets with the Russian ambassador and reassures him that Vienna is not seeking to annex any part of Serbia.
In fact his government plans on partitioning Serbia amongst its Balkan neighbors – Bulgaria in particular – in a bid to pull them into Vienna’s orbit. He also lies in telling the Russian charge’ d’affairs [a senior diplomatic post], Count Kudashev, that Serbian refusal to accept all the demands would not mean Austria-Hungary would go to war. Kudashev is not convinced, especially when Berchtold tells him the Austrian ambassador to Serbia will promptly break off diplomatic relations and leave Belgrade should the ultimatum be rejected.
“Then it is war,” he tells Berchtold. It is a reaction fully shared by his superiors in St. Petersburg.
Belgrade
The Serbian government, having already sent an urgent appeal for support to Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian government, begin preparing its response to the ultimatum. Serbia’s army is vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and resistance would quickly be crushed; Belgrade itself is just across the Drina River from the Austro-Hungarian army under General Potiorek (he who bungled the security measures to protect Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo the month before). Without Russian backing they will have no choice but to capitulate on all points, including the violation of its sovereignty as demanded in points 5 and 6.
Prime Minister Pasic, incredibly, is still campaigning for reelection in the provincial town of Nish; he finally heads back to Belgrade that evening. In the meantime his government prepares a response that will accept Vienna’s demands with very few qualifications; additionally they prepare a formal apology for the Archduke’s murder (even though no evidence exists the civilian government had anything to do with Gavrilo Princip’s plot).
St. Petersburg
The morning after the departure of the President and Prime Minister of France from their conference with their Russian allies sees Tsar Nicholas II cruising in the royal yacht off the Baltic Coast. Meanwhile the Tsar’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Serge Sazanov takes charge of the Russian response. His immediate reaction to Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum is “C’est la guerre Europeene!” – French for “That means [a] European war”; i.e. one in which the Great Powers will fight each other. Sazanov tells the British ambassador that “the step taken by Austria meant war” and indicates Russia might have to mobilize in response. He also summons his colleagues in the Council of Ministers to an emergency meeting at 3PM (St. Petersburg time).
Sazanov as Russian Foreign Minister
In the meanwhile Sazonov takes prompt action to address the possibility of Russia going to war. His chief of staff has Finance Minister Peter Bark withdraw all Russian Treasury funds currently held in Berlin, while Sazanov meets with the Russian army’s chief of staff and the Navy minister.
He inquires as to whether Russia can conduct a “partial mobilization” of its army, deploying only the units that would face the Austrian border in the event of war. In 1912 the then-Prime Minister had rejected such a policy as futile: Germany would stand by Austria-Hungary if Russia threatened to attack it, and leaving Russia’s border with Germany undefended would give Berlin a wide-open attack route.
Sazonov appears to have either forgotten this in the heat of the moment, believed his colleague to have been mistaken or thought it worth a try in attempting to restrain Vienna. The Chief of Staff, General Yanushkevitch agrees to draw up a partial mobilization plan.
The Council of Ministers meets at 3PM; the ineffectual Prime Minister, Goremykin leaves the meeting in Sazanov’s hands. Up till now the “Germanophobes” on the Council, led by the influential Agriculture Minister Krivoshein, had doubted Sazanov’s commitment to firm action against Germany and its ally on the Danube. Sazanov proves them wrong when he blames the crisis on Russia backing down in similar crisis in 1908 and 1912-3; Austria-Hungary expected fear of going to war with Germany to once again keep Russia from intervening.
Agreeing with the Foreign Minister’s claim that “Russian prestige in the Balkans would collapse utterly” if they ignored Serbia’s plea for support, the Council unanimously agrees to send a public warning to Vienna that the threat to Serbia “could not leave Russia indifferent.” They similarly agree to the plan to partially mobilize the Russian army and navy in the districts facing the Austrian border.While the Tsar would still need to approve these decisions it was considered a mere formality in light of the unanimous agreement of his ministers. Finally, Sazanov is given the green light to inform Belgrade that, while Russia urged them to accept all conditions short of violating their sovereignty (i.e. points 5 and 6 of the ultimatum), they could count on Russian “help” in the event of war. What “help” meant is left unclear as of Friday evening.
Most historians absolve Russia of principle blame for the outbreak of World War I, rightly so in the author’s opinion. Without Germany’s “blank check” Austria-Hungary would not have dared to risk war with Russia, whose army outnumbered theirs 2:1 and was better prepared for war. It was the primary reason Franz Ferdinand so staunchly opposed war with Serbia prior to his tragic removal from the political scene. The disastrous defeats Austria-Hungary suffered at the hands of the Russians from 1914 through 1916 proved him right; Germany was ultimately forced to take over the entire Eastern Front itself after its ally’s armies crumbled.
Nor was the Russian government was eager for war in 1914. Their rearmament program was not scheduled to be completed until 1917, the military was in the process of expanding the army, and its economic power was expanding with every year thanks to rapid industrialization. In Berlin the German military staff calculated that by 1917 Russia would be so strong militarily that their plan to overcome a 2-front war – quickly defeating France by concentrating its armies against her – would be obsolete due to Russia’s ability to quickly mobilize its much larger armies and march on Berlin. The window for Germany to launch a European war was thus rapidly narrowing in 1914, making the Archduke’s murder an immense tragedy as well as a trigger for war.
Nonetheless it is true that, once Vienna began its march to war, Russia made the commitment to protect a much smaller nation it had no formal obligation to defend. Certain that France would stand by its ally if Germany stood by Austria-Hungary, and determined not to lose face by abandoning its “Slavic brethren” once again, Sazanov and his colleagues escalated the risk of a war it was well aware could end in disaster. As Tsar Nicholas remarked that same day, “Once [war] had broken out it would be difficult to stop”.
Berlin
With the Austrian ultimatum finally issued the German government’s leaders, civilian and military begin returning to Berlin. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and Foreign Secretary Jagow deny they had prior knowledge of the ultimatum; a lie, since Vienna had cabled the document to Jagow’s office back on July 19th and had postponed its delivery due to German intelligence. Bethmann, Kaiser Wilhelm and ministers such as Jagow had issued their unconditional guarantee to Vienna in the expectation they would immediately strike; a fait accompli would, they were sure, result in Russia and the other Great Powers verbally protesting but not go to war over it. Yet the fait had not been accompli; nearly 3 weeks passed between Vienna receiving the green light and the ultimatum’s presentation.
In light of Austrian foot-dragging, and with the Kaiser’s reputation for last-minute decisions to seek a peaceful solution in the back of his mind, Bethmann begins offering a plan for “localization” of the crisis to Britain, Russia and France. Let Vienna and Belgrade settle their dispute, he argues, and the other Great Powers can stand at the ready to resolve its aftermath at a peace conference. There were plenty of precedents for this; the 1878 Congress of Berlin had settled the borders of the Balkans for a full 30 years, while Germany had worked with France and Great Britain to prevent a Russo-Austrian conflict over control of the Balkans in the 1908 and 1912-13 crises.
The most likely reason for the “localization” plan is that Bethmann and Jagow realize that Russia is willing to go to war this time even if it means war with Germany – something the Kaiser and his ministers have assumed to be unlikely in light of their track record of backing down in recent years. With France and Russia clearly on the same page in holding a firm line against Viennese aggression (more on this in a moment) the German public, as well as its leaders, have suddenly awoke to the possibility of war against both its most powerful neighbors. With the Kaiser still cruising the Norwegian coast, Bethmann and Jagow find themselves being forced to reckon with the consequences of issuing a “blank check” they probably hadn’t expected to be cashed (as David Fromkin put it in 2004).
The Kaiser is in denial of the seriousness of the situation. Describing the ultimatum as a “pretty strong note” on board his cruise ship, he rejects the idea that war was inevitable on the basis that Serbia wouldn’t risk destruction by rejecting it.
Paris
With President Poincare and Prime Minister Viviani literally and figuratively at sea on July 24th – their ship was en route from St. Petersburg, and their wireless communication line with Paris had been jammed by the German military – the remaining French government took no public action that Friday. It is likely, though not certain, since no records of his meeting with the Tsar and his ministers survive, that Poincare had firmly committed France to joining Russia in opposing Austrian action against Serbia. Viviani – ignorant of foreign policy, ill, and distracted by the ongoing trial of Madame Caillaux, wife of the French Finance Minister, for murdering a political opponent of her husband’s – had left such decisions to Poincare and France’s ambassador to Russia Maurice Paleologue. Paleologue, possibly acting on his own authority and believing in Russia’s ability to win a war in 1914 (something the Russian military doubted), backed Sazanov up in his warning to Vienna and Berlin.
Maurice Paleologue, French Ambassador to Russia
London
The British government had a much more urgent matter than the aftermath of Sarajevo to consider in July 1914. The crisis over Irish Home Rule, and the likelihood that the Protestant counties of Northern Ireland would start a civil war rather than go along with it, meant that Prime Minister Asquith and his cabinet – including Foreign Secretary Edward Grey and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill – were preoccupied with resolving the situation peacefully. Their efforts up to July 24th had been in vain; even an emergency summit hosted by King George V at Buckingham Palace had failed to reconcile the Ulster Protestants to their Catholic compatriots. It was the Ulster Crisis that convinced the Kaiser and his government that Britain would stay out of a European war in the summer of 1914.
Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Minister in 1914
The summit broke up that Friday, and the British cabinet met to discuss the next steps towards preventing civil war and the possible split in the British army in response to it. The oft-quoted lines written by Churchill many years later are perhaps a tad dramatic but accurate in describing how he and his colleagues’ attention was dramatically shifted from civil war to European war:
The [Home Rule] discussion had reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was about to separate, when the quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey’s voice were heard reading a document which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia…This note was clearly an ultimatum; but it was an ultimatum such had never been penned in modern times. As the reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty
Churchill’s colleagues were equally concerned.
Even as they continued to struggle to avoid civil war in Ireland, Grey began seeking a diplomatic route to prevent war in Europe. In this he had an ally in the unlikely form of Germany’s ambassador to Great Britain, Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky, an ardent Anglophile who dreaded the thought the 2 nations going to war. Yet Lichnowsky did not speak for the powers-that-be back in Berlin, let alone those hell-bent on war in Vienna.
The “July Crisis” had begun in earnest.
(To be continued tomorrow)