The War that Ended Peace Page 2

  The final lurch towards war took just over a month between the assassination of the Austrian archduke at Sarajevo on 28 June and the outbreak of a general European war on 4 August. In the end, the crucial decisions of those weeks which took Europe to war were made by a surprisingly small number of men (and they were all men). To understand how they acted as they did, however, we must go further back, to look at the forces that had shaped them. We need to understand the societies and institutions of which they were the products. We must try to comprehend the values and ideas, emotions and prejudices, which informed them as they looked at the world. We also have to remind ourselves that, with one or two exceptions, they had very little idea of what they were getting their countries and the world into. In that they were very much in tune with their times; most Europeans thought a general war was either impossible, improbable, or bound to end quickly.

  As we try to make sense of the events of the summer of 1914, we must put ourselves in the shoes of those who lived a century ago before we rush to lay blame. We cannot now ask the decision-makers what they were thinking about as they took those steps along that path to destruction, but we can get a pretty good idea from the records of the time and the memoirs written later. One thing that becomes clear is that those who made the choices had very much in mind previous crises and earlier moments when decisions were made or avoided.

  Russia’s leaders, for example, had never forgotten or forgiven Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. Moreover, Russia had failed to back its protégé Serbia when it confronted Austria-Hungary then and again in the Balkan wars in 1912–13. Now Austria-Hungary was threatening to destroy Serbia. What would it mean for Russia and its prestige if it stood by yet again and did nothing? Germany had not fully backed its ally Austria-Hungary in those earlier confrontations; if it did nothing this time, would it lose its only sure ally? The fact that earlier and quite serious crises among the powers, over colonies or in the Balkans, had been settled peacefully added another factor to the calculations of 1914. The threat of war had been used but in the end pressures had been brought to bear by third parties, concessions had been made, and conferences had been summoned, with success, to sort out dangerous issues. Brinkmanship had paid off. Surely this time in 1914 the same processes would start to work. Only this time brinkmanship did not work. This time Austria-Hungary did declare war on Serbia with Germany’s backing; Russia decided to support Serbia and so went to war with Austria-Hungary and Germany; Germany attacked Russia’s ally France; and Britain came in on the side of its allies. And so they went over the edge.

  The outbreak of war in 1914 was a shock but it did not come out of a clear blue sky. The clouds had been gathering in the previous two decades and many Europeans were uneasily aware of that fact. Images of thunderstorms about to break, dams about to burst, avalanches ready to slide, these were quite common in the literature of the time. On the other hand, they had, many of them, leaders and ordinary citizens alike, a confidence that they could deal with the threats of conflict and build better and stronger international institutions to settle disputes peaceably and make war obsolete. Perhaps the last golden years of prewar Europe are largely a construct of later generations, but even at the time the literature also had images of the rays of sunlight spreading across the world and humanity marching towards a more prosperous and happy future.

  Very little in history is inevitable. Europe did not have to go to war in 1914; a general war could have been avoided up to the last moment on 4 August when the British finally decided to come in. Looking back, we can of course see the forces that were making war more likely: the rivalries over colonies, economic competition, ethnic nationalisms which were tearing apart the failing empires of Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans, or the growth of a nationalist public opinion which put new pressures on leaders to stand up for their nation’s perceived rights and interests.

  We can see, as Europeans did at the time, the strains in the international order. The German question, for example. The creation of Germany in 1871 had suddenly presented Europe with a new great power at its heart. Would Germany be the fulcrum around which the rest of Europe would turn or the threat against which it would unite? How were the rising powers outside Europe – Japan and the United States – to be fitted into a world system dominated by Europe? Social Darwinism, that bastard child of evolutionary thinking, and its cousin militarism, fostered the belief that competition among nations was part of nature’s rule and that in the end the fittest would survive. And that probably meant through war. The late nineteenth-century’s admiration of the military as the noblest part of the nation and the spread of military values into civilian societies fed the assumptions that war was a necessary part of the great struggle for survival, that it might indeed be good for societies, tuning them up so to speak.

  Science and technology which had brought so much benefit to humankind in the nineteenth century also brought new and more dreadful weapons. National rivalries fuelled an arms race which in turn deepened insecurities and so added yet more impetus to the race. Nations looked for allies to make up for their own weaknesses and their decisions helped to bring Europe closer to war. France, which was losing the demographic race with Germany, made an alliance with Russia in part for its huge reserves of manpower. In return Russia got French capital and French technology. The Franco-Russian alliance, though, made Germany feel encircled; it tied itself closer to Austria-Hungary and in so doing took on its rivalries with Russia in the Balkans. The naval race which Germany intended as a means of forcing Britain to be friendly instead persuaded the latter not only to outbuild Germany but to abandon its preferred aloofness from Europe and draw closer to France and Russia.

  The military plans that came along with the arms race and the alliances have often been blamed for creating a doomsday machine that once started could not be stopped. In the late nineteenth century every European power except Britain had a conscript army, with a small proportion of their trained men actually in uniform and a far larger number back in civilian society as reserves. When war threatened huge armies could be called into being in days. Mass mobilisation relied on detailed planning so that every man reached his right unit with the right equipment, and units were then brought together in the correct configurations and moved, usually by rail, to their designated posts. The timetables were works of art but too often they were inflexible, not allowing, as in the case of Germany in 1914, partial mobilisation on just one front – and so Germany went to war against both Russia and France rather than Russia alone. And there was a danger in not mobilising soon enough. If the enemy was on your frontiers while your men were still struggling to reach their units or board their trains, you might have lost the war already. Rigid timetables and plans threatened to take the final decisions out of the hands of the civilian leaders.

  Plans are at one end of a spectrum of explanations for the Great War; at the other are the nebulous but nevertheless compelling considerations of honour and prestige. Wilhelm II of Germany modelled himself on his great ancestor Frederick the Great, yet he had been mocked as Guillaume le Timide for backing down in the second of the two crises over Morocco. Did he want to face that again? What was true of individuals was also true of nations. After the humiliation of defeat by Japan in 1904–5, Russia had a pressing need to reassert itself as a great power.

  Fear played a large role too in the attitudes of the powers to each other and in the acceptance by their leaders and publics of war as a tool of policy. Austria-Hungary feared that it was going to disappear as a power unless it did something about South Slav nationalism within its own borders and that meant doing something about the magnet of a South Slav and independent Serbia. France feared its German neighbour, which was stronger economically and militarily. Germany looked apprehensively eastwards. Russia was developing fast and rearming; if Germany did not fight Russia soon it might never be able to. Britain had much to gain from a continuation of the peace but it feared, as it had always done, a
single power dominating the continent. Each power feared others but also its own people. Socialist ideas had spread through Europe and unions and socialist parties were challenging the power of the old ruling classes. Was this a harbinger of violent revolution, as many thought? Ethnic nationalism as well was a disruptive force, for Austria-Hungary but also in Russia and in Britain where the Irish question was more of a concern to the government in the first months of 1914 than foreign affairs. Could war be a way of bridging divisions at home, uniting the public in a great wave of patriotism?

  Finally, and this is true of our own times as well, we should never underestimate the part played in human affairs by mistakes, muddle, or simply poor timing. The complex and inefficient nature of both the German and the Russian governments meant that the civilian leaders were not fully informed about military plans even when these had political implications. Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian archduke who was assassinated in Sarajevo, had long stood out against those who wanted war to solve Austria-Hungary’s problems. His death, ironically, removed the one man who might have been able to prevent his country from declaring war on Serbia and thus setting the whole chain reaction in motion. The assassination came at the start of the summer holiday period. As the crisis mounted, many statesmen, diplomats and military leaders had already left their capitals. The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was bird watching; the French President and Prime Minister were on an extended trip to Russia and the Baltic for the last two weeks of July and frequently out of contact with Paris.

  Yet there is a danger in so concentrating on the factors pushing Europe towards war that we may neglect those pulling the other way, towards peace. The nineteenth century saw a proliferation of societies and associations for the outlawing of war and for the promotion of such alternatives as arbitration for settling disputes between nations. Rich men such as Andrew Carnegie and Alfred Nobel donated fortunes to promote international understanding. The world’s labour movements and socialist parties organised themselves into the Second International, which repeatedly passed motions against war and threatened to call a general strike should one break out.

  The nineteenth century was an extraordinary time of progress, in science, industry, and education, much of it centred on an increasingly prosperous and powerful Europe. Its peoples were linked to each other and to the world through speedier communications, trade, investment, migration, and the spread of official and unofficial empires. The globalisation of the world before 1914 has been matched only by our own times since the end of the Cold War. Surely, it was widely believed, this new interdependent world would build new international institutions and see the growing acceptance of universal standards of behaviour for nations. International relations were no longer seen, as they had been in the eighteenth century, as a game where if someone won someone else had to lose. Instead, all could win when peace was maintained. The increasing use of arbitration to settle disputes among nations, the frequent occasions when the great powers in Europe worked together to deal with, for example, crises in the decaying Ottoman Empire, the establishment of an international court of arbitration, all seemed to show that, step by step, the foundations were being laid for a new and more efficient way of managing the world’s affairs. War, it was hoped, would become obsolete. It was an inefficient way of settling disputes. Moreover, war was becoming too costly, both in terms of the drain on the resources of the combatants and the scale of the damage that new weapons and technology could inflict. Bankers warned that even if a general war were to start, it would grind to a halt after a few weeks simply because there would be no way of financing it.

  Most of the copious literature on the events of 1914 understandably asks why the Great War broke out. Perhaps we need to ask another sort of question: why did the long peace not continue? Why did the forces pushing towards peace – and they were strong ones – not prevail? They had done so before, after all. Why did the system fail this time? One way of getting at an answer is to see how Europe’s options had narrowed down in the decades before 1914.

  Imagine our walkers again. They start out, like Europe, on a broad and sunlit plain but they reach forks where they have to choose one way or another. Though they may not realise the implications at the time, they find themselves passing through a valley which gets narrower and may not lead to where they want to go. It might be possible to try to find a better route, but that would require considerable effort – and it is not clear what lies on the other side of the hills hemming in the valley. Or it is still possible to reverse one’s steps, but that can be expensive, time consuming and possibly humiliating. Could the German government, for example, have admitted to itself and the German people that its naval race with Britain had been not only misguided but a colossal waste of money?

  This book traces Europe’s path to 1914 and picks out those turning points when its options narrowed. France’s decision to seek a defensive alliance with Russia as a counterbalance to Germany was one, Germany’s decision in the late 1890s to start a naval race with Great Britain another. Britain cautiously mended fences with France and then, in time, with Russia. Yet another key moment came in 1905–6, when Germany tried to break up the new Entente Cordiale in the first crisis over Morocco. The attempt backfired and the two new friends drew closer together and started to hold secret military talks which added another strand to the ties linking Britain to France. Europe’s subsequent serious crises – the Bosnian crisis of 1908, the second Morocco one in 1911, and the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 – added to the layers of resentments, suspicions, and memories which shaped the relations among the great powers. That is the context in which decisions were taken in 1914.

  It is possible to break free of the past and start again. Nixon and Mao, after all, decided in the early 1970s that both their countries would benefit from an end to over twenty years of hostility. Friendships can change and alliances can be broken – Italy did so at the start of the Great War when it refused to fight beside its Triple Alliance partners of Austria-Hungary and Germany – but as the years pass and the mutual obligations and the personal links build up it becomes more difficult. One of the compelling arguments that supporters of British intervention used in 1914 was that Britain had led France to expect its help and that it would be dishonourable to back out. Nevertheless there were attempts, some as late as 1913, by the powers to cut across the two alliance systems. Germany and Russia talked from time to time about settling their differences, as did Britain and Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary or France and Germany. Whether through inertia, memories of past clashes or fear of betrayal, whatever the reasons, the attempts came to nothing.

  Still, we come in the end in to those few generals, crowned heads, diplomats or politicians who in the summer of 1914 had the power and authority to say either yes or no. Yes or no to mobilising the armies, yes or no to compromise, yes or no to carrying out the plans already drawn up by their militaries. The context is crucial to understanding why they were as they were and acted as they did. We cannot, however, play down the individual personalities. The German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, had just lost his much-loved wife. Did that add to the fatalism with which he contemplated the outbreak of the war? Nicholas II of Russia was a fundamentally weak character. That surely must have made it more difficult for him to resist his generals who wanted immediate Russian mobilisation. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the chief of staff of the Austrian-Hungarian armies, wanted glory for his country but also for himself so he could marry a divorced woman.

  The war, when it finally came, was so frightful that a search for the guilty started which has continued ever since. Through propaganda and the judicious publication of documents every belligerent country proclaimed its own innocence and pointed its finger at the others. The left blamed capitalism or the arms manufacturers and dealers, the ‘merchants of death’; the right blamed the left or Jews or both. At the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919 the victors talked of bringing the guilty – the Kaiser, some of his genera
ls and diplomats – to trial, but in the end nothing came of it. The question of responsibility had continuing significance because if Germany was responsible, then it was right that it should pay reparations. If not, and this of course was the general view in Germany and increasingly in the English-speaking world, then reparations and the other penalties Germany had suffered were deeply unfair and illegitimate. In the interwar years the prevailing view came to be, as David Lloyd George put it: ‘The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay.’4 The Great War was nobody’s fault or everybody’s. After the Second World War, several bold German historians, led by Fritz Fischer, took a second look at the archives to argue that Germany was indeed culpable and that there was a sinister continuity between the intentions of Germany’s last government before the Great War and Hitler. They have themselves been challenged and so the debate goes on.

  The search will probably never end and I will myself argue that some powers and their leaders were more culpable than others. Austria-Hungary’s mad determination to destroy Serbia in 1914, Germany’s decision to back it to the hilt, Russia’s impatience to mobilise, these all seem to me to bear the greatest responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Neither France nor Britain wanted war, although it might be argued that they could have done more to stop it. In the end, though, I find the more interesting question to be to how Europe reached the point in the summer of 1914 where war became more likely than peace. What did the decision-makers think they were doing? Why didn’t they pull back this time as they had done before? Why, in other words, did the peace fail?

  CHAPTER 1

  Europe in 1900

  On 14 April 1900 Emile Loubet, the President of France, talked approvingly about justice and human kindness as he opened the Paris Universal Exposition. There was little kindness to be found in the press comments at the time. The exhibitions were not ready; the site was a dusty mess of building works; and almost everyone hated the giant statue over the entrance of a woman modelled on the actress Sarah Bernhardt and dressed in a fashionable evening dress. Yet the Exposition went on to be a triumph, with over 50 million visitors.