Handout // March 14

Handout // March 14 The Origins of World War I: Part 2 Immediate Causes: The July Crisis

The "July Crisis": June 28-August 4, 1914

Ask three questions of these events:

1) What caused the war? I.e. what conditions, events, or actions made the war inevitable?

2) Who caused the war? What states, or political groups or persons within states?

3) Why did these actors cause the war? What expectations and intentions animated their actions? Were they trying to cause war? Expecting to cause war?

A. The Sarajevo Assassination, June 28. Was the Serbian government responsible? Many think yes, although some say no.

B. The German "Blank Check" to Austria, July 5-6. Germany does more than approve an Austrian war against Serbia: it pushes Austria toward war.

1. German expectations: what were they? Did the German government think that such a war would provoke Russia to intervene? Most evidence (see Geiss) suggests that most Germans thought Russia would sit quietly, from monarchic solidarity, and for window reasons: Germany’s good window was the Russian-French bad window. However, some straws in the wind suggest that some Germans foresaw where the crisis would lead.

Was British intervention in such a war expected? Again this is debated, but most evidence suggests that most Germans thought not.

2. German desires: what were they? Did Germany want war? The elite was split. The Army actively wanted a continental war, the Kaiser and Bethmann didn’t. It appears that the preferred center-of-gravity outcome of the elite was a crisis victory; the next preferred outcome was a continental war; the next was the status quo ante; and the least desired result was a world war. Bethmann and the Kaiser preferred the status quo ante to continental war, but the Army didn’t, and prevailedultimately in a confrontation that occurred off the screen on July 30. C. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, July 23. This had a 2-day deadline, and was designed to be impossible to accept. Austria’s plan was then to smash the Serbian army and "vassalize" Serbia, but not to annex it, because Austria-Hungary’s Hungarian politicians wouldn’t accept more Slavs in the empire.

D. Serbian reply, 6:00 pm, July 25. The Serbs considered accepting all Austria’s demands but in the end rejected Austria’s demand to allow Austrian officials to participate in the Serbian enquiry into the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

On receiving this reply the Austrian government promptly ordered mobilization of its army against Serbia. This order reached the army command at 9:23 p.m. July 25; it posited July 27 as "alarm day" (whatever that means), and July 28 as the first day of mobilization.

E. Russian Preliminary Mobilization, July 25, with orders issued at 4:00 p.m. — even before the Serbian time limit expired at 6:00.

The French also began pre-mobilization on July 25, although this had less effect on the crisis, perhaps because these measures were still substantially undetected by July 28.

Why did the Russians pre-mobilize? With what expectations? Answer: we don’t know. This grave decision, a key to the crisis, has never been fully explained. These points are pertinent:

1) Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said on July 24 "C’est la guerre Europeene!" when he learned of the Austrian ultimatum. In short, the Russians already expected war at this point; they felt the Austro-German move showed that Austria and Germany planned to smash Serbia, and that Russia would have to fight; and since Russia wouldn’t allow this, it would have to fight.

If so, it seems likely that the Russians pre-mobilized to gain the first strike advantage (really first mobilization advantage) in the war with Germany and Austria which was being forced upon them. Since war seemed inevitable, first mobilization made sense.

2) Russian civilians (Sazonov and the Czar) were apparently unaware that mobilization meant war until later in the crisis. We can surmise that their soldiers talked them into these preliminary measures before they realized that mobilization meant war.

F. Germany hangs tough, July 25-30. The British proposed mediation of the crisis under British auspices. But the Germans kept pushing Austria forward, seeking to get the fait accompli finished. The German problem: Austria would not be ready to attack Serbia until August 12. Hence, to foreclose diplomacy, the Germans urged Austria to declare war on Serbia, which Austria did on July 28. This in turn helped spur Russia to declare partial mobilization on July 29, and then full mobilization on July 30.

What, exactly, went on?

1. Bethmann sabotages the Kaiser’s peace effort. The Kaiser wasn’t told of the Serbian reply for several days. When he saw it, he wrote (July 28) that "every cause of war falls to the ground." He then asked Bethmann to ask Austria to offer the "Halt in Belgrade" to Russia.

But Bethmann didn’t do it! He waited half a day, and then late on July 28 he told the Austrians something much milder. He never told them how strongly the Kaiser wanted the crisis ended!

2. Moltke sabotages Bethmann’s peace effort. Then late on July 29 Bethmann reversed course and tried to pull the Austrians back from the brink, in messages sent overnight, asking Austria to accept the "Halt in Belgrade." These messages were sent at 2:55 and at 3:00 a.m. July 30.

Too much can be made of this change. Even on July 30, Bethmann never made a clear threat to Austria, or clearly stated that the crisis should be called off. Still, it was a change.

a. What caused it? Some say it was the latest warning from Britain, received at 9:12 p.m. July 29. Some say it was Russian partial mobilization, which convinced him that Russia wouldn’t cave. It may have been Belgian mobilization too; Germany learned of significant Belgian mobilization measures on July 29 at 4:00 p.m.

b. Moltke sabotaged Bethmann’s efforts at 2:00 p.m. July 30 with a telegram to Austria urging immediate Austrian mobilization, and promising that Germany would follow suit.

It’s possible that Moltke also made more direct efforts to persuade Bethmann to halt his peace effort. Bethmann was inactive during the morning of July 30. If he really meant to avoid war, he should have been telling Russia that he was now willing to pressure Austria, and asking it not to mobilize in the meantime; and he should have been telling Britain the same thing, and asking it to restrain Russia. He didn’t. Could coercion or persuasion by Moltke be the reason?

However, assuming that this happened, we still don’t know why. Two very different interpretations are possible.

1) Moltke had hoped to preserve peace, but was finally persuaded that Germany had to mobilize in order to keep pace with the Russian, French and Belgian mobilizations. He explained this to Bethmann with sadness in his heart.

2) Moltke, having desired an opportunity for preventive war against Russia for months, and seeing in the July crisis a fine opportunity for such a war, was delighted that Russia, France and Belgium gave Germany a pretext to mobilize; was enraged that Bethmann might take this pretext as an opportunity to make peace; and either persuaded or coerced Bethmann to cease his efforts.

Interpretation #1 suggests WWI was an accidental war caused by military factors that made the July crisis exceptionally dangerous; interpretation #2 suggests that WWI was a deliberate war of aggression by Germany, which plotted to provoke, and then exploited, the excuse that Russian mobilization presented in order to wage a war of continental conquest.

Note: the Germans learned of the Russian pre-mobilization measures on July 27, two days after they began. If Germany really sought to prevent a continental war, shouldn’t this news have shocked Germany into backtrackingi.e. forcing the "Halt in Belgrade" compromise on Austria? But Bethmann kept going until late on July 29. This supports the inference that the Germans viewed a continental war with equanimity, and feared only world war. G. British dithering. The British never warned Germany in a crystal-clear manner that they would intervene if Germany launched a continental war, chiefly because the British themselves did not decide what they would do until August 3.

H. Russian mobilization.

1. Partial mobilization, July 29. Russia did this partly to deter Austria from invading Serbia, partly to offset Austrian mobilization against Serbia, partly to forestall Austrian mobilization in Galicia, and perhaps partly because on July 27 German Secretary of State Jagow lullingly assured the Allies that Germany would accept a partial Russian mobilization that was aimed only at Austria-Hungary.

2. Full mobilization, 5:00, July 30. Reasons: the conviction that war was inevitable, spurred by:

a. Reports that the Germans were upset by Russian partial mobilization (i.e. that Jagow’s attitude had changed, now that mobilization was occurring), and that the Austrians still resisted any compromise; and Russian military warnings that mobilization was an all-or-nothing mattera partial South-only mobilization would make more difficult a full mobilization later if that became necessary.

b. False reports that German mobilization had begun.

I. German mobilization. Late on July 30 (but before learning of Russian full mobilization) the German government made a commitment to decide at noon July 31 whether to mobilize. This was, in essence, a provisional decision to mobilize the next day unless something favorable (e.g. a Russian-French cave-in) happened in the interim to defuse the crisis. Germany was probably responding to continuing Russian pre-mobilization, to Belgian pre-mobilization, to the Russian partial mobilization of July 29, and/or to the Kaiser’s misinterpretation of the Czar’s remark that Russian mobilization had begun 5 days earlier, which emerged from the Willy-Nicky correspondence. This decision meant that the war would have broken out absent the Russian full mobilization, with German mobilization on July 31. (thus the outbreak of the war was "overdetermined.")

J. An interpretation of the crisis to consider. Note that German military leaders rightly knew that Germany could not mobilize in secret for any length of time; but Russian and French military leaders thought that Germany could mobilize secretly, with the French believing secret mobilization was possible for a week (see Joffre’s memoirs). Why was this? Perhaps German officers, hoping to bait Russia or France into early mobilizations that would justify a German mobilization and the preventive war that many German officers sought, primed French and Russian intelligence with false information that would scare them into a premature mobilization. Joffre does not indicate that his 7-days-of-secret-mobilization estimate came from secret intelligence on Germany. However, this is exactly what a German general would have wanted the French to believeit is a speculative interpretation, with no evidence against it.