Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945

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faithful ally, would stand on our side. Russia at the present time was in no way prepared

for war, and would think twice before it appealed to arms . . . If we had really recog

nized the necessity of warlike action against Serbia, he [Kaiser Wilhelm] would regret if

we did not make use of the present moment, which is all in our favour.

The Kaiser spoke without having consulted the chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann

Hollweg, whose approval he simply took for granted. Wilhelm II not only actively

encouraged Austria to take action against Serbia, but even insisted that such action

must not be delayed, and that it would be regrettable if the opportunity were not

seized. He clearly expected Russia to adopt a hostile attitude, but felt that the latter

was currently still ill-prepared for war and might therefore perhaps not take up arms.

The Kaiser urged Austria to “make use of the present moment,” which he considered

to be very favorable.

While most political and military decision makers in Berlin and Vienna did not

actually want a European war, they were certainly willing to risk it. Wilhelm II and

Bethmann Hollweg had been encouraged to do so by Germany’s leading military

advisors, who had advocated war “the sooner the better” on many occasions and had

assured the politicians that Germany stood a good chance of defeating its enemies.

Germany’s military leaders had been conjuring up the image of a Russia that could

be defeated by Germany at this time, but one which would, in the future, be too

strong to defeat.

Armed with such reassurances from Germany, the Austro-Hungarian ministerial

council decided on July 7 to issue an ultimatum to Serbia. This was to be deliberately

unacceptable, so that Serbian non-compliance would lead to the outbreak of war with

the “moral high ground” on Austria’s side. However, much time would pass before

the ultimatum was ﬁnally delivered to Belgrade: ﬁrst the harvest had to be completed,

for which most soldiers of the Dual Monarchy were away on harvest leave. Moreover,

it was decided to wait until the state visit of Raymond Poincaré, the French president,

to Russia was over, so that the two allies would not have a chance to coordinate their

response to Austria’s ultimatum. While all this was being plotted behind the scenes,

both Vienna and Berlin gave the impression of calm to the outside world, even

sending their main decision makers on holiday to keep up this illusion. Because of

this deception the other major powers did not play a signiﬁcant role in the crisis until

July 23, the day when the harsh Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was ﬁnally delivered

to Belgrade.

The Serbian response to the “unacceptable” ultimatum astonished everyone. In

all but one point they agreed to accept it, making Austria’s predetermined decision

to turn down Belgrade’s response look suspicious in the eyes of those European

powers who wanted to try to preserve the peace. Even Kaiser Wilhelm II now decided

that there was no longer any reason to go to war, much to the dismay of his military

advisors. From Britain came the suggestion that the issue could be resolved at the

conference table, but such mediation proposals and attempts to preserve the peace

were not taken up by Vienna or Berlin. Some historians argue that Britain could have

played a more decisive role by declaring its intentions to support France earlier, rather

than trying to be non-committal until the last possible moment. They allege that if

Germany’s decision makers had known earlier and with certainty that Britain would

be involved in a war on the side of the Entente, they would have accepted mediation

the coming of war, 1914 189

proposals and would have counseled peace in Vienna.

It is certainly worth speculat-

ing that Bethmann Hollweg may have urged mediation in Vienna sooner and more

forcefully than in the event he did, if he had known earlier of Sir Edward Grey’s

resolve to come to France’s aid in a European war, although in reality London’s

stance did not really come as a surprise to Berlin. However, some members of the

British cabinet objected to a British involvement in a European war, and no deﬁnite

decision to support France could be made by the responsible decision makers until

Germany’s violation of neutral Belgium gave Sir Edward Grey the reason for inter-

vention that he had needed. The move against Belgium, necessitated by Germany’s

deployment plan which envisaged that, whatever the casus belli, German troops would

initially have to defeat the country’s enemies in the west, also ensured that Germany

appeared to all the world as an aggressor, and that tales of real and invented atrocities

against Belgian and French civilians would haunt Germans for decades to come.

the crucial last days of July, Britain’s decision makers were divided on how to deal

with the threat of war on the continent. Nonetheless, the ambivalence of Sir Edward

Grey’s policy can hardly be seen as a cause of the war. After all, this hesitant attitude

was motivated by the desire to avoid an escalation of the crisis (Grey feared that a

deﬁnite promise of support might lead France or Russia to accept the risk of war

more willingly), while German and Austro-Hungarian decisions were based on the

explicit desire to provoke a conﬂict. As the former German ambassador to London,

Prince Lichnowsky, summed up in January 1915:

On our side nothing, absolutely nothing, was done to preserve peace, and when we at

last decided to do what I had advocated from the ﬁrst [he had favored mediation and

had wanted to avoid a war], it was too late. By then Russia, as a result of our harsh

attitude and that of Count Berchtold [the Austrian prime minister], had lost all conﬁ-

dence and mobilized. The war party gained the upper hand . . . Such a policy is com

prehensible only if war was our aim, not otherwise.

Only at the very last minute, when it was clear that Britain, too, would become

involved if war broke out, did the German chancellor try to restrain the Austrians –

but his mediation proposals arrived far too late and were in any case not forceful

enough to be able to halt events. Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia on July 28,

and its bombardment of Belgrade which ensured that there could not be any last-

minute reconciliation, would set in motion a domino effect of mobilization orders

and declarations of war by Europe’s major powers. Russia, committed to supporting

Serbia in case of war, and allied to France, needed to implement its mobilization in

order to ensure that it would be able to relieve France from the anticipated early

German onslaught in the west. Russia and Germany mobilized in quick succession

(the latter waiting until the last moment so that Russia would appear to have initiated

mobilization), and Germany declared war on Russia and France, before invading

neutral Luxemburg and Belgium. By the time Britain had declared war on Germany

on August 4 the Alliance powers (without Italy, which had decided to stay neutral)

faced the Entente powers in the “great ﬁght” that had been anticipated for such a

long time.

As soon as hostilities began, so too did the battle for the moral high ground over

the question of war guilt. For all European governments it was essential that the

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odium of having started the war was seen to rest ﬁrmly with the enemy. Although it

is generally now understood that most citizens and subjects of Europe were less

enthusiastic in their welcoming of the outbreak of war than has usually been assumed,

most believed their leaders that what followed was a defensive war.

However, the war, which was also commonly held to be “over by Christmas,” did

not go to plan. The longer it lasted, the more victims it took, and the worse it went

for the Central Powers, the more important did it become to construct an apologetic

version of the events that had led to the war’s outbreak, while for those countries

who felt they had been victims of the aggression of the Central Powers, attributing

blame and – eventually – demanding retribution became a prime concern. Not sur-

prisingly, even before the ﬁghting had ended, the debate on the war’s origins had

already begun. In the years since the outbreak of World War I, historians have been

unable to agree fully on the reasons for the coming of war in 1914. The question of

guilt or responsibility for the war is still disputed, and no account of the origins of

the war is complete without consideration of its accompanying historiographical

controversy.

Conclusion: The Debate on the Origins of World War I

Despite both crude and subtle propaganda efforts on the part of the Central Powers

during and after the war, in 1919 the victorious allies were largely in agreement that

Germany and its allies were to blame for the outbreak of war, as they stipulated in

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. However, their initial harsh war guilt allega-

tions were soon softened by a more conciliatory interpretation in the light of new

potential threats to the interwar order, and an apologetic interpretation which allo-

cated responsibility for the outbreak of war to international rivalries became ﬁrmly

established in the 1920s and 1930s.

In Germany, the country that had initially

shouldered the blame for having caused the war, and for whom the slowly emerging

apologetic consensus had been so welcome, the reopening of the debate following

the war guilt allegations of the German historian Fritz Fischer during the so-called

Fischer controversy of the 1960s and 1970s caused consternation among historians

and the general public that is today difﬁcult to fathom. In the decades immediately

following World War II, German history seemed tainted enough without adding guilt

for World War I to the country’s already shameful past. However, at the beginning

of the twenty-ﬁrst century, this passionately fought debate no longer continues to

divide historians along quite such clearly demarcated lines, and it is probably fair to

say that today few, if any, scholars would deny Germany and Austria-Hungary’s larger

share of responsibility for the outbreak of war. Currently, historians are less concerned

with attributing war guilt and more with explaining how war had come about; a

crucial difference if we are to move away from the passionately fought debate of the

interwar years and the 1960s.

Recent trends in the historiography of the outbreak of the war have emphasized

the possibility of détente and the “avoidability” or even improbability of war in and

before 1914. The relative success of détente in resolving crises had, in the interpreta-

tion of some historians, led to a view among contemporaries that war could be

avoided, and eventually even led to incredulity that governments really would unleash

a war. The long peace and the previous success of diplomacy in resolving the many

the coming of war, 1914 191

prewar crises were thus to some extent counterproductive.

At the same time, new

weight has been placed on understanding long-term factors and why international

relations were dominated by an almost phobic fear of the Other, by “mutual suspi-

cion” which “created mutual paranoia.” According to such views, once war had

broken out, all sides fought it not for reasons of imperialist aggression, but for

“national self-defense.”

Such views are far removed from the indignant war guilt allegation arrived at by

the Allies at Versailles. Ultimately, however, something or someone must have acted

to lead the European alliances into war, for whatever the potential for a peaceful

resolution of the crisis of July 1914, clearly that chance for peace was squandered.

One attempt at explaining this focuses on the importance of human agency. As such,

the decisions taken by Conrad von Hötzendorf and Helmuth von Moltke in particu-

lar are crucial for explaining why war broke out. Such attempts at explaining the

outbreak of war dismiss the “big causes” usually given to explain the outbreak of

war, such as the alliance system, nationalism, social Darwinism, imperialism, the inﬂu-

ence of the press, domestic pressures, or the accident theory, in favor of the “strategic

argument”: “the decision makers of the ﬁve major powers sought to save, maintain,

or enhance the power and prestige of the nation.”

In conclusion, while there have been attempts to arrive at a more conciliatory,

even apologetic, interpretation in the recent literature on the origins of the war,

Germany and Austria-Hungary are still most often named as the main culprits. Yet

this does not mean that the Entente powers entirely escape the strictures of historians.

Some shift part of the blame for the prewar tensions onto the Entente, for not allow-

ing Germany to reach its full potential: “France, Russia and particularly England”

were not willing to give Germany its “place in the sun,” it is argued. “Desperately

ﬁxated on their own advantage and security they did not grant Berlin the necessary

room to expand,” and from their unwillingness to do so resulted what they surely

had not wanted: that the Dual Alliance dragged “the world into a terrible war.”

Those who remain convinced of Germany’s responsibility for the war might ask why

it would have been necessary for Germany to expand (was it not doing very well

anyway and set to become the continent’s leading industrial power without expand-

ing?). They might also ask where this expansion would have ended, if the other

powers had allowed it to go ahead. How much scope should the other countries have

given Germany? How much leeway could Austria-Hungary give Serbia?

Throughout the long debate on the origins of World War I, historians’ views have

been shaped by the political context and climate in which they formulated their argu-

ments, and at the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century this still holds true.

Where

previously historians were perhaps quick to judge Austria-Hungary’s reaction to the

assassination as exaggerated and belligerent, they are today more willing to concede

that a sovereign nation that found itself exposed to terrorist attacks may have felt

obligated to defend itself against the threat that emanated from Serbian terrorists

who sought to undermine the Dual Monarchy. As a result, future investigations by

historians will have to focus particularly on decisions made in Serbia, about which

we still know surprisingly little. We also need to know more about the decisions made

in St Petersburg and Paris to accept the challenge that emanated from the Central

Powers, although it is arguable what choice they really had in the matter, given

Vienna and Berlin’s resolve to risk an European conﬂict.

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However, if any agreement has been reached after more than ninety years of

debate, it is that World War I, which has rightly been regarded as the seminal catas-

trophe of the twentieth century, was not an act of fate, need not have happened, and

could – even in July 1914 – have been avoided if all the decision makers in the

European capitals had wanted to do so. But, tragically, some thought they had more

to lose from not ﬁghting a war than from ﬁghting it. Despite the fact that the Treaty

of Versailles has been derided by some as a victors’ peace, it seems that the victorious

Allies were right in their assessment of the war guilt question. War had been no

accident, and it had not resulted from the alliance system, the arms race, imperialism,

or international rivalries, or at least it had not resulted from them alone. Rather, it

was the consequence of decisions taken foremost in Berlin and Vienna, and the result

of attitudes which regarded war not as the ultimate catastrophe, but as a necessary,

even a desirable, evil and as a way of continuing foreign policy by other means.

NOTES

1 For further details on the political history of the prewar years, see Gordon Martel,

The

Origins of the First World War, 3rd edn (London: Longman/Pearson, 2003) and addi-

tional references in the Guide to Further Reading.

2 For a recent biography of Bismarck, see Katharine Lerman,

Bismarck: Proﬁles in Power

(London: Longman/Pearson, 2004). On the Franco-Prussian war, see Dennis Showalter,

The Wars of German Uniﬁcation (London: Arnold, 2004).

3 For details, see Matthew S. Seligmann and Roderick R. McLean,

Germany from Reich to

Republic 1871–1918 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).

4 For more details on the Tirpitz Plan in English, see Paul M. Kennedy, “The Development

of German Naval Operations Plans against England, 1896–1914,” in The War Plans of

the Great Powers, 1880–1914, Paul M. Kennedy, ed. (Boston MA: Allen and Unwin,

1979); Volker Berghahn, Imperial Germany 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture and

Politics (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1994).

5 For details, see R. T. B. Langhorne, “Great Britain and Germany, 1911–1914,” in

British

Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey, F. H. Hinsley, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1997), pp. 288–314; Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of Anglo-German

Antagonism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982).

6 See, for example, Keith M. Wilson,

The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants

of British Foreign Policy 1904–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

7 Cited in Zara S. Steiner and Keith Neilson,

Britain and the Origins of the First World

War, 2nd edn (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003), p. 44.

8 The nature of the Schlieffen Plan has recently been called into question by Terence

Zuber, “The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered,” War in History 6/3 (1999): 262–305,

and his arguments have been advanced in more detail in Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen

Plan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also the lengthy debate in War in

History, with contributions by Terence Zuber, Terence Holmes, and Robert T. Foley.

For recent views on this debate, see also Annika Mombauer, “Of War Plans and

War Guilt: The Debate on the Nature of the Schlieffen Plan,” Journal of Strategic

Studies, 2006.

9 Cited in Gregor Schöllgen, “Germany’s Foreign Policy in the Age of Imperialism: A

Vicious Circle?” In Escape into War? The Foreign Policy of Imperial Germany, Gregor

Schöllgen, ed. (Oxford: Berg, 1990), p. 125.

10 “Young Turks” was the name given to a liberal reform movement in the Ottoman

Empire.

the coming of war, 1914 193

11 For more information, see Samuel R. Williamson, Jr, Austria-Hungary and the Origins

of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1991).

12 On the armaments race, see David Stevenson,

Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe

1904–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

13 On the war council, see John C. G. Röhl,

The Kaiser and his Court (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 162ff.

14 For details on the diplomatic events of the July Crisis, see in particular Imanuel Geiss,

ed., July 1914: The Outbreak of the First World War: Selected Documents (London: B. T.

Batsford, 1967); Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols, I. M. Massey,

trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952–7); James Joll, Origins of the First World

War, 2nd edn (London, 1992). Further details and references can also be found in Annika

Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 4.

15 See Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf,

Aus meiner Dienstzeit 1906–1918, 5 vols (Vienna,

1921–25), vol. 1, p. 165.

16 Geiss,

July 1914, p. 77.

17 See Mombauer,

Helmuth von Moltke, pp. 121ff.

18 For a summary and critique of such arguments, see Steiner and Neilson,

Britain and the

Origins, pp. 258ff.

19 See John Horne and Alan Kramer,

German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New

Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2001).

20 Lichnowsky’s memorandum cited in John C. G. Röhl, ed.,

1914: Delusion or Design? The

Testimony of Two German Diplomats (London: Elek, 1973), pp. 79ff.

21 Recent research has questioned that widespread popular enthusiasm for war existed in

August 1914. See, for example, Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and

Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jean-Jacques

Becker, 1914: Comment les Français sont entrés dans la guerre: Contribution à l’étude de

l’opinion publique, printemps-été 1914 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation, 1977); Joshua

Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A

Reexamination,” Slavic Review 59 (2000): 267–89; L. L. Farrar, “Nationalism in Wartime:

Critiquing the Conventional Wisdom,” in Authority, Identity and the Social History of the

Great War, Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee, eds (Oxford: Berghahn, 1995),

pp. 133–52.

22 For more details on the historiographical debate, see John W. Langdon,

July 1914: The

Long Debate 1918–1990 (New York: Berg, 1991) and Annika Mombauer, The Origins of

the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London: Longman, 2002).

23 For a summary of these views in English, see Holger Afﬂerbach, ed.,

The First World War

– An Improbable War?, 2006.

24 See Hew Strachan, “Wer war schuld? Wie es zum ersten Weltkrieg kam,” in Stephan

Burgdorff and Klaus Wiegrefe, eds, Der 1. Weltkrieg. Die Ur-Katastrophe des 20.

Jahrhunderts (Munich: DVA, 2004), pp. 240–55.

25 Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, eds,

The Origins of World War I (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 41.

26 Sönke Neitzel,

Kriegsausbruch. Deutschlands Weg in die Katastrophe (Munich: Pendo,

2002), pp. 194–5.

27 For details on this, see Mombauer,

Origins, passim.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols, I. M. Massey, trans. (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1952–7). Still one of the most detailed accounts based on a thorough study

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of the available source material and an excellent starting point for studying the origins

of the war.

Volker R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan,

1993). Part of a series examining the role of the major powers in the coming of war, it

provides a useful introduction to the topic.

Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London: Chatto and Windus, 1967).

The English translation of Fischer’s ﬁrst book on the subject, which marked the beginning

of the so-called Fischer controversy.

Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911–1914 (London: Chatto and Windus,

1975). Fischer’s second book detailing his arguments on German war guilt.

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, eds, The Origins of World War I (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2003). A collection of essays which focus on the importance

of decision makers in the coming of the war.

James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1992). An

essential introduction to the subject.

John F. V. Keiger, France and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983).

Part of a series examining the role of the major powers in the coming of war.

John W. Langdon, July 1914: The Long Debate 1918–1990 (New York: Berg, 1991). Provides

an excellent overview of the historiographical controversy.

D. C. B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983).

Part of a series examining the role of the major powers in the coming of war.

Gordon Martel, The Origins of the First World War, 3rd edn (London: Longman/Pearson,

2003). A summary of the debate and the events leading to war, plus useful documents.

Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (London:

Longman/Pearson, 2002). An analysis of the debate on the origins of the war which places

the controversy within a historical context.

Zara S. Steiner and Keith Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London:

Palgrave/Macmillan, 2003). An up-to-date revised edition of the original contribution on

Britain to the Macmillan series.

David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1996). An excellent analysis of the importance of the arms race.

Samuel R. Williamson, Jr, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (London:

Macmillan, 1991). An authoritative account of Austria-Hungary’s role in the events that led

to the outbreak of war. Part of the Macmillan series.

Keith Wilson, ed., Decisions for War, 1914 (London: UCL Press, 1995). An excellent collection

of essays dealing with the decisions of the major combatants to go to war.

Part III

World War I

Chapter Thirteen

August 1914: Public Opinion

and the Crisis

David Welch

War seemed to creep up unexpectedly on the people of Europe in July 1914.

Following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on June 28 a few telltale signs of

a looming crisis can be discerned. Financial and commercial interests, for example,

took fright and the stock exchanges of Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and St Petersburg were

severely depressed. Nevertheless, life in Europe had gone on much as usual. Kaiser

Wilhelm departed for a Norwegian cruise, Helmuth von Moltke, the German chief

of staff, holidayed in Karlsbad, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz in a Swiss spa, and both

the German and Austrian ministers of war were also away on holiday. In central

Europe, thousands of families gravitated to the seaside and mountains, while millions

of peasants toiled the ﬁelds under a blazing July sun, among them young men

released from military duties under special harvest furlough. In Britain, happy holi-

daymakers returned from a Bank Holiday at the seaside to discover that the country

was at war. Scenes of everyday life would change dramatically for ordinary citizens

throughout Europe. The Times on its front page declared: “The die is cast. The great

European struggle which nations have so long struggled to avert has begun.”

Perceptions of War

For the vast majority of ordinary citizens catapulted into war in 1914, the years

leading up to that fateful August brought few certainties. Nevertheless, for victors

and vanquished alike a myth developed in the postwar world that the Great War had

brought to an end an era of tranquility and contentment. Intellectuals looked back

longingly after 1918 to a Golden Age that had been disrupted by the savagery and

duration of total war. However, the experiences of ordinary people were far more

complex – and in many ways more mundane. Fears, hopes, frustrations, and igno-

rance had been as much a part of Edwardian Europe as of many previous periods.

Rather than a Golden Age of innocence, it had been a period of deep divisions and

challenges to the status quo.

In the context of perceptions of war, one of the questions often raised is did bel-

ligerent states intentionally provoke a war in order to conceal internal problems by