The Sleepwalkers (73 page)

Intertwined with these concerns about Russia were doubts about the reliability and longevity of the alliance with Austria:

The Chancellor speaks of weighty decisions. The murder of Franz Ferdinand. Official Serbia involved. Austria wants to pull itself together. Letter from Franz Joseph with enquiry regarding the readiness of the alliance to act.

It's our old dilemma with every Austrian action in the Balkans. If we encourage them, they will say we pushed them into it. If we counsel against it, they will say we left them in the lurch. Then they will approach the western powers, whose arms are open, and we lose our last reasonable ally.
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During a conversation with Riezler on the following day, Bethmann remarked that Austria was incapable of ‘entering a war as our ally on behalf of a German cause'.
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By contrast, a war ‘from the east', born of a Balkan conflict and driven in the first instance by Austro-Hungarian interests, would ensure that Vienna's interests were fully engaged: ‘If war comes from the east, so that we enter the field for Austria-Hungary and not Austria-Hungary for us, we have some prospect of success.'
⁵⁴
This argument mirrored exactly one of the core arguments of the French policy-makers, namely that a war of Balkan origin was most likely to engage Russia fully in support of the common enterprise against Germany. Neither the French nor the German policy-makers trusted their respective allies to commit fully to a struggle in which their own country's interests were principally at stake.

A decision of sorts had been made: the Austrians, or at least the group around Berchtold, intended to seek a military resolution of their conflict with Serbia. But on all other issues, the composite policy-mind in Vienna had as yet failed to deliver coherent positions. There was still no agreement at the time Hoyos left for Berlin, for example, on what policy should be pursued vis-à-vis Serbia after an Austrian victory. When Zimmermann enquired after Austria's post-war objectives, Hoyos responded with a bizarre improvisation: Serbia, he declared, would be partitioned between Austria, Bulgaria and Romania. Hoyos had no authority to propose such a course to Zimmermann, nor had a policy of partition been agreed by his Austrian colleagues. Hoyos later recalled that he had invented the partition policy because he feared that the Germans would lose faith in the Austrians if they felt ‘that we could not formulate our Serbian policy precisely and had unclear objectives'; it was irrelevant what aims were identified, what mattered was that an appearance of determination and firmness be conveyed to the ally.
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Tisza was furious when he learned of Hoyos's indiscretion; the Hungarians, even more than the political elite in Vienna, regarded the prospect of yet more angry South Slav Habsburg subjects with unalloyed horror. Vienna subsequently made it clear that no annexation of Serbian territory was intended. But Hoyos's extraordinary gaffe conveys something of the disjointed way in which Austrian policy evolved during the crisis.

Timing was another problem. The Germans had insisted that if there was to be an action against Serbia, it must happen fast, while popular outrage at the murders was still fresh. But promptness was not a prominent feature of the Austrian political culture. It soon became clear that it would be some time before any military action could begin. There were two main reasons for this sluggishness. The first was political. At a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council, held in Vienna on 7 July, the day after Hoyos's return from Berlin, it became clear that there was still disagreement among the principal decision makers about how to proceed. Berchtold opened the proceedings by reminding his colleagues that Bosnia and Herzegovina would be stabilized only if the external threat posed by Belgrade were dealt with. If no action were taken, the monarchy's ability to deal with the Russian-sponsored irredentist movements in its South Slav and Romanian areas would steadily deteriorate. This was an argument calculated to appeal to the Hungarian premier Count Tisza, for whom the stability of Transylvania was a central concern. Tisza was not convinced. In his reply to Berchtold, he conceded that the attitude of the Serbian press and the results of the police investigation in Sarajevo strengthened the case for a military strike. But first, the diplomatic options must be exhausted. Belgrade must be presented with an ultimatum, whose stipulations must be ‘firm, but not unfulfillable'. Sufficient forces must be made available to secure Transylvania against an opportunist attack by Romania. Then Vienna must look to consolidate its position among the Balkan powers: Vienna should seek closer relations with Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, in the hope of creating a Balkan counterweight to Serbia and ‘forcing Romania to return to the Triple Alliance'.
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There was nothing here to surprise anyone around the table – this was the familiar Budapest view, in which Transylvania occupied centre stage. But Tisza faced a solid bloc of colleagues determined to confront Serbia with demands they expected Belgrade to reject. A purely diplomatic success, War Minister Krobatin warned, would have no value at all, since it would be read in Belgrade, Bucharest, St Petersburg and the South Slav areas of the monarchy as a sign of Vienna's weakness and irresolution. Time was running out for Austria-Hungary – with each passing year, the monarchy's security position on the Balkan peninsula became increasingly fragile. The conclusions stated in the minutes, which were kept by none other than Count Hoyos, reflected a curious and not entirely coherent blend of the salient positions. Everyone concurred, firstly, on the need for a swift resolution of the quarrel with Serbia, ‘either by military or by peaceful means'. Secondly, the ministers agreed to accept Count Tisza's suggestion that mobilization against Serbia should occur only after Belgrade had been confronted with an ultimatum. Lastly, it was noted that everyone in the room, with the exception of the Hungarian premier, was of the opinion that a purely diplomatic success, even if it entailed a ‘sensational humiliation' of Serbia, would be worthless and that the ultimatum must therefore be framed in terms harsh enough to ensure a rejection, ‘so that the way is open to a radical solution by means of military intervention'.
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After lunch, Conrad and Karl Kailer, representing the naval chief of staff, joined the meeting and the ministers reviewed the military plans. Questioned by Minister of War Krobatin, Conrad explained that while the war plan against Serbia (named ‘Plan B', for ‘Balkan') would involve deploying large numbers of troops to the southern periphery, an intervention in the conflict by Russia would oblige the Austrians to shift the focus of operations from the south to the north-east. It might take some time to ascertain whether and when this shift would be necessary, but Conrad hoped that he would know by the fifth day after mobilization whether he needed to take Russia into account. This delay might even mean ceding a part of northern Galicia in the first instance to the Russians. It remained unclear how exactly the logistically complex business of changing gear from one war plan to another would be accomplished, and the ministers did not ask.
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This discussion marked a watershed. The chance of a peaceful outcome was slim once the meeting was over.
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Yet there was still no sign of precipitate action. The option of an immediate surprise attack without a declaration of war was rejected. Tisza, whose agreement was constitutionally necessary for a resolution of such importance, continued to insist that Serbia should first be humiliated diplomatically. Only after a further week did he yield to the majority view, mainly because he became convinced that failure to address the Serbian question would have an unsettling effect on Hungarian Transylvania. But there was a more intractable obstacle to swift action. In rural areas of the Habsburg lands, military service in summertime created serious disruption by keeping young men away from their homes and fields at the time when most crops were harvested. In order to alleviate the problem, the Austrian General Staff had devised a system of harvest leaves that allowed men on active service to return to their family farms to help with the crops and then rejoin their units in time for the summer manoeuvres. On 6 July, the day before the meeting, Conrad had ascertained that troops serving in units at Agram (Zagreb), Graz, Pressburg (Bratislava), Craców, Temesvar (Timisoara), Innsbruck and Budapest were currently on harvest leave and would not be returning to service until 25 July.

So Conrad had little choice: he could issue an order to cancel new leaves (and he did), but he could not recall the many thousands of men already on summer leave without seriously disrupting the harvest, disaffecting peasant subjects in many national minority areas, overcrowding the railway system and awakening suspicion across Europe that Austria was planning an imminent military strike. It is odd, to say the least, that Conrad, who was the architect of these leave arrangements, did not foresee this problem when he proposed to Berchtold, on the evening of the day after the murders, that Austria mount an immediate attack on Serbia in the manner of the Japanese assault on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in 1904, which had been launched without a prior declaration of war.
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In the meanwhile, a measure of unanimity was achieved in Vienna over the course of action to be followed. At a further summit meeting in the city on 14 July, it was agreed that a draft of the ultimatum would be checked and approved by the Council of Ministers on Sunday 19 July. But the ultimatum itself would be presented to the Belgrade government only on Thursday 23 July. This was in order to avoid its coinciding with a state visit by President Raymond Poincaré and his new prime minister, René Viviani, to St Petersburg, scheduled for 20–23 July. Berchtold and Tisza were in agreement that ‘the sending of an ultimatum during this meeting in St Petersburg would be viewed as an affront and that personal discussion between the ambitious President of the Republic and His Majesty the Emperor of Russia [. . .] would heighten the likelihood of a military intervention by Russia and France'.
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From this moment onwards, secrecy was of the greatest possible importance, both for strategic and diplomatic reasons. It was essential, Conrad informed Berchtold on 10 July, to avoid any action that might give the Serbs prior notice of Austrian intentions and thereby give them time to steal a march on the Austrian army.
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Recent Austrian appraisals of Serbian military strength suggested that the Serbian army would not be a trivial opponent. (How right they were became clear in the winter of 1914, when the Serbian army succeeded in throwing the Austrians back out of the kingdom.) Secrecy was also essential because it presented Vienna's only hope of conveying its demands to Belgrade before the Entente powers had the opportunity for joint deliberations on how to respond – hence the importance of avoiding the days when Poincaré and Viviani would be in St Petersburg. Berchtold therefore ordered that the press be firmly instructed to avoid the subject of Serbia. This step was apparently effective: there was a remarkable evacuation of Serbian subject matter from the daily papers during the middle weeks of the crisis – a state of affairs that helped to produce a deceptive public sense of calm, just as the crisis was in fact about to enter its most dangerous phase. In its official relations with Russia, Vienna went out of its way to avoid even the slightest friction; Szapáry, the Austrian ambassador in St Petersburg, was particularly assiduous in his efforts to tranquillize the Russian foreign ministry with assurances that all would be well.
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Unfortunately, this policy of stealth was compromised by a leak originating, oddly enough, in Berlin. On 11 July, the German secretary of state Gottlieb von Jagow, informed the German ambassador in Rome of Austria's intentions. Flotow passed this information to the Italian foreign minister, San Giuliano, and the Italian Foreign Office promptly conveyed the information by coded telegram to the Italian legations in St Petersburg, Bucharest and Vienna. The Austrians, who had broken the Italian code and were closely watching diplomatic traffic between Vienna and Rome, learned almost immediately that the Italians had acquired knowledge of Austrian plans from a German source and had passed it to two unfriendly capitals, with the intention that the Russians and the Romanians should be encouraged to prevent the Austrian démarche by adopting a ‘threatening demeanour' in Vienna and Berlin.
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The Austrians also had good reason to suppose that the Russians, whose code-breaking was unequalled anywhere in Europe, had themselves intercepted the Italian telegrams and found out about the forthcoming ultimatum. In fact the Russians had no need of these Italian intercepts, since they also learned of the planned ultimatum via other German
and
Austrian leaks. On 16 July, in conversation with the retired German diplomat Count Lützow, the Russian ambassador in Vienna learned that the Austrians were drawing up a note worded ‘in very harsh terms' and containing, as the ambassador put it, ‘demands unacceptable to any independent state'. Lützow's source, astonishingly enough, was a long and candid conversation in Vienna with Berchtold and Forgách. Shebeko's report on this sensational discovery went straight via the Russian foreign ministry to Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar appended a remarkable comment: ‘In my view, no country can present demands to another, unless it has decided to wage war'.
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Nothing could express more clearly the Russian denial of Austria's right to insist on any kind of satisfaction from Belgrade.

These breaches of Austrian secrecy had two important effects. The first was simply that by around 20 July, the Russians and their great power partners were pretty fully apprised of what the Austrians had in store. The Serbian authorities too, were informed, as we know from a report of 17 July by Crackanthorpe, the British minister in Belgrade.
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In both St Petersburg and in Belgrade, this prior knowledge facilitated the formulation and coordination –
in advance of the presentation of the ultimatum to Belgrade –
of a firmly rejectionist position, eloquently expressed in Pašić's circular of 19 July to the Serbian legations abroad: ‘we cannot accept those demands which no other country that respects its own independence and dignity would accept'.
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What this meant, among other things, was that there had been ample opportunity for views on a possible ultimatum to mature by the time the French head of state and his prime minister arrived in St Petersburg on 20 July. The notion – promulgated by Sazonov and later put about in the literature – that the news of the ultimatum came as a terrible shock to the Russians and the French on 23 July, when the note was presented to the Serbian foreign ministry, is nonsense.