The Sleepwalkers (71 page)

Count Benckendorff

Edward Grey had at least expressed a theoretical interest in establishing whether Austria or Serbia was the provocateur, on the grounds that British public opinion would not support a war by the Triple Entente on behalf of a Serbian aggressor. But he had been very vague about how one might go about adjudicating such a quarrel, and his comments in the early days after the assassinations did not suggest that he intended to hold the Russians to very stringent criteria. On 8 July, Count Benckendorff, the Russian ambassador in London, remarked to Edward Grey that he ‘did not see on what a démarche against Servia could be founded'. The foreign secretary's reply was characteristically tentative:

I said that I did not know what was contemplated. I could only suppose that some discovery made during the trial of those implicated in the murder of the Archduke – for instance, that the bombs had been obtained in Belgrade – might, in the eyes of the Austrian Government, be foundation for a charge of negligence against the Servian Government. But this was only imagination and guess on my part.

Count Benckendorff said that he hoped that Germany would restrain Austria. He could not think that Germany would wish a quarrel to be precipitated.
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Grey made (or recorded) no reply to this last point, which was of considerable importance, because it placed the onus upon Germany to restrain its ally and glibly accepted the inevitability of a ‘quarrel' – meaning in this context a war among the great powers – in the event that it should fail to do so. The same argument was conveyed more explicitly in a telegram from Vienna that reached Grey on the following day. It described a conversation between the British ambassador to Vienna and his Russian colleague, in which the Russian announced that he could not believe that Austria would be foolish enough to allow itself to be ‘rushed into war',

for an isolated combat with Servia would be impossible and Russia would be compelled to take up arms in defence of Servia. Of this there could be no question. A Servian war meant a general European war.
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Within ten days, the Russians had established a seamless counter-narrative of the event at Sarajevo. There were contradictions in the picture, to be sure. As one Austrian diplomat pointed out, it made no sense for the Russians to say, on the one hand, that the South Slavs of Bosnia-Herzegovina were united in their loathing of Habsburg tyranny and on the other to complain at the attacks on Serbian property there by crowds of angry Croats. And the Russian assertion that Serbia wished nothing more than to live in peace and harmony with her neighbour sat uncomfortably with Sazonov's earlier assurances to Pašić (via Hartwig) that Serbia would soon inherit the South Slav lands of the crumbling Habsburg Empire. Spalajković's widely reported claim to the press in St Petersburg that the Belgrade government had warned Vienna of the assassination plot in advance raised awkward questions – disregarded by the Russians – about Serbian foreknowledge. Above all, the entire history of Russia's sponsorship of Serbian expansionism and of Balkan instability in general was elided from view. Conspicuously missing from the picture was, finally, any acknowledgement of Russia's own links with the Serbian undergound networks. After the war, Colonel Artamonov, the Russian military attaché in Belgrade, candidly admitted his close pre-war relationship with Apis. He even admitted that he had supplied the head of the Black Hand with funds in support of their espionage operations in Bosnia, though he denied any foreknowledge of the plot to kill the archduke.
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In any case it was already clear that neither London nor Paris intended to challenge the Russian version of events. An unpopular, warmongering martinet had been cut down by citizens of his own country driven to frenzy by years of humiliation and ill-treatment. And now the corrupt, collapsing and yet supposedly rapacious regime he had represented intended to blame his unregretted death on a blameless and peaceful Slav neighbour. Framing the event at Sarajevo in this way was not in itself tantamount to formulating a decision for action. But it removed some of the obstacles to a Russian military intervention in the event of an Austro-Serbian conflict. The Balkan inception scenario had become an imminent possibility.

Even before Alek Hoyos arrived by night train in Berlin on the morning of Sunday 5 July, the view had gained ground there that Austria-Hungary would be justified in mounting a démarche of some kind against Belgrade. A key figure in the change of mood was the Kaiser. When Wilhelm read Tschirschky's dispatch of 30 June reporting that he had been urging calm on the Austrians, Wilhelm appended angry marginal comments:

Who authorised him to do so? This is utterly stupid! It is none of his business, since it is entirely Austria's affair [to determine] what she intends to do. Later on, if things went wrong, it would be said: Germany was not willing! Will Tschirschky be so kind as to stop this nonsense! It was high time a clean sweep was made of the Serbs.
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Someone must have passed this to Tschirschky, because by 3 July, he was assuring Berchtold of Berlin's support for an Austrian action, provided the objectives were clearly defined and the diplomatic situation favourable.
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Hoyos was thus assured of a sympathetic hearing when he arrived in the German capital. His first task was to brief Szögyényi, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, on the two documents he had brought with him, the revised Matscheko memorandum and the personal letter from the Austrian to the German Emperor. Szögyényi then left with copies of both documents for Potsdam, where he lunched with the Kaiser, while Hoyos met with Arthur Zimmermann, under-secretary of the Berlin Foreign Office.

Wilhelm II received the ambassador at the Neues Palais, a vast baroque structure at the western end of the palace park at Potsdam. According to Szögyényi's report, Wilhelm read quickly through both documents and then remarked that he had ‘expected a serious action on our part against Serbia' but that he must also consider that such a course might well bring about ‘a serious European complication'. He would therefore be unable to give a ‘definitive answer before conferring with the Reich Chancellor'. The Emperor then retired for lunch. Szögyényi wrote:

After the meal, when I once again stressed the seriousness of the situation in the most emphatic way, His Majesty empowered me to convey to our Supreme Sovereign [Franz Joseph] that we can count, in this case too, upon the full support of Germany. As he had said, he must hear the opinion of the Reich Chancellor, but he did not doubt in the slightest that Herr von Bethmann Hollweg would completely agree with his view. This was particularly true as regards the action on our part against Serbia. According to his [Kaiser Wilhelm's] view, however, this action should not be delayed. Russia's attitude would be hostile in any event, but he had been prepared for this for years, and if it should come to a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, we should be confident that Germany would stand by our side with the customary loyalty of allies. Russia, incidentally, as things stood today, was not by any means prepared for war and would certainly think long and hard over whether to issue the call to arms. [. . .] But if we had truly recognised the necessity of a military action against Serbia, then he (the Kaiser) would regret it if we failed to exploit the present moment, which is so advantageous to us.
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While the ambassador and the Emperor talked at Potsdam, Hoyos met with Under Secretary Zimmermann at the Foreign Office in Berlin for an informal talk – the secretary of state, Gottlieb von Jagow, was still away on his honeymoon and thus unavailable for an interview. Hoyos and Zimmermann agreed in principle that Germany would support an Austrian action against Serbia. Zimmermann read the two documents through, noted that he was not in a position to offer an official view and then remarked – according to Hoyos's later recollection – that if the Austrians took action against Serbia, there was ‘a 90% likelihood of a European war', before assuring the ambassador nonetheless of German support for Austria's plan.
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The under-secretary's earlier mood of apprehension, expressed in his call of 4 July for circumspection in Vienna, had clearly dissipated.

At five o'clock that evening, a small group met at the Neues Palais to discuss the morning's events and to coordinate views. Present were the Kaiser, his adjutant General Plessen, the chief of his military cabinet, General Lyncker, and War Minister General Falkenhayn. Under-Secretary Zimmermann and the imperial chancellor, who had in the meanwhile returned from his estate, also attended. Plessen recorded the details in his diary. The Kaiser read out the letter from Franz Joseph, from which everyone concluded that the Austrians were ‘getting ready for a war on Serbia' and wanted ‘first to be sure of Germany'. ‘The opinion prevailed among us that the sooner the Austrians make their move against Serbia the better, and that the Russians – though friends of Serbia – will not join in after all.'
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On the following day, 6 July, Bethmann Hollweg received Count Hoyos and Ambassador Szögyényi with Zimmermann in attendance to offer the Austrians a formal reply to their representations (Kaiser Wilhelm had in the meanwhile left Berlin for his annual yacht tour of Scandinavia). Bethmann dwelt first at some length on the general security situation in the Balkans. Bulgaria should be integrated more closely into the Triple Alliance, Bucharest should be asked to scale down its support for Romanian irridentism in Transylvania, and so on. Only then did he turn to the proposed military action:

In the matter of our relationship with Serbia, [Szögyeńyi reported] he said that it was the view of the German government that we must judge what ought to be done to sort out this relationship; whatever our decision turned out to be, we could be confident that Germany as our ally and a friend of the Monarchy would stand behind us. In the further course of the conversation, I gathered that both the Chancellor and his Imperial master view an immediate intervention by us against Serbia as the best and most radical solution of our problems in the Balkans. From an international standpoint he views the present moment as more favourable than a later one.
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Notwithstanding the oddities of this short address – among other things, only nine of the fifty-four lines of the printed text of Szögyényi's summary were actually about the proposed measures against Serbia and there was no mention of a possible Russian response – we have here a clear decision, and one of momentous importance. For once, the German government was speaking with one voice. The Kaiser and the chancellor (who was also the foreign minister) were in agreement, as was the under-secretary of the Foreign Office, standing in for Jagow, the secretary of state for foreign affairs. The minister of war had been informed and had advised the Emperor that the German army was ready for all eventualities. The result was the assurance of German support that has become known as the ‘blank cheque'.

Inasmuch as this otherwise slightly misleading metaphor connotes a promise of support for the alliance partner, it is a fair description of German intentions. The Kaiser and the chancellor believed that the Austrians were justified in taking action against Serbia and deserved to be able to do so without the fear of Russian intimidation. Much more problematic is the claim that the Germans over-interpreted the Austrian messages, made commitments that surpassed Austrian intentions, and thereby pressured them into war.
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While it is true that Franz Joseph's note did not refer directly to ‘war' against Serbia, it left the reader in absolutely no doubt that Vienna was contemplating the most radical possible action. How else should one understand his insistence that ‘a conciliation of the conflict' between the two states was no longer possible and that the problem would be resolved only when Serbia had been ‘eliminated as a power-factor in the Balkans'? In any case Count Hoyos had left no margin of doubt about Vienna's thinking. He asserted personal control over the Austrian representations during his ‘mission' in Berlin; he later revealed to the historian Luigi Albertini that it was he, not the veteran ambassador, who had composed Szögyényi's dispatch summarizing Bethmann's assurances.
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How did the German leadership assess the risk that an Austrian attack on Serbia would bring about a Russian intervention, force Germany to assist its ally, trigger the Franco-Russian alliance and thereby bring about a continental war? Some historians have argued that Wilhelm, Bethmann and their military advisers saw the crisis brewing over Sarajevo as an opportunity to seek conflict with the other great powers on terms favourable to Germany. Over preceding years, elements of the German military had repeatedly made a case for preventive war, on the grounds that since the balance of military striking power was tilting fast away from the Triple Alliance, time was running out for Germany. A war fought now might still be winnable; in five years' time the armaments gap would have widened to the point where the odds in favour of the Entente powers were unbeatable.

Exactly how much weight did such arguments carry in the deliberations of the German leadership? In answering this question, we should note first that the key decision-makers did not believe a Russian intervention to be likely and did not wish to provoke one. On 2 July Salza Lichtenau, the Saxon envoy in Berlin, reported that although certain senior military figures were arguing that it would be desirable to ‘let war come about now', while Russia remained unprepared, he felt it unlikely that the Kaiser would accept this view. A report filed on the following day by the Saxon military plenipotentiary noted that, by contrast with those who looked with favour on the prospect of a war sooner rather than later, ‘the Kaiser is said to have pronounced in favour of maintaining peace'. Those present at the meeting with Wilhelm II in Potsdam on the afternoon of 5 July all took the view that the Russians, though friends of Serbia, ‘would not join in after all'. Thus, when at that meeting War Minister Falkenhayn asked the Kaiser whether he wished that ‘any kind of preparations should be made' for the eventuality of a great power conflict, Wilhelm replied in the negative. The reluctance of the Germans to make military preparations, which remained a feature of the German handling of the crisis into late July, may in part have reflected the army's confidence in the existing state of readiness, but it also reflected the German leadership's wish to confine the conflict to the Balkans, even if this policy risked jeopardizing their readiness, should confinement fail.
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