Secrets and Lies


Tuesday July 28th


Wilhelm II was back in his office seated in his saddle chair. (Wanting no doubt to be the perfect Hohenzollen Warrior-King, and proud no doubt of the agonies he had endured in boyhood to become a skillful horseman in spite of his crippled arm, he claimed to be more comfortable in a saddle then in a chair.)

He had an lot of work to catch up on. 1st he read the most recent wire from Lichnowsky in London; Grey stated that an Austrian attack on Serbia would have disastrous consequences, but the Serbian response to Austria appeared to provide a basis for negotiations. He then read Serbia's response, and his reaction was much the same as Grey's. "This was more than one could have expected" he declared. "A great victory for Vienna; but with this every reason for war drops away, and Giesl might have remained quietly in Belgrade."

Seeing an opportunity and eager to seize it, Wilhelm sent a handwritten note to Jagow declaring the Serbia response " a capitulation of the humiliating kind' so that " every cause for war falls to the ground." He instructed the Foreign Ministry to send a message to Vienna in his name, informing them that a basis now existed in resolving the crisis through mediation, and that he was prepared to help. He added that the Serbs where nothing but liars, tricksters, and masters of evasion and that Austria should send its army across the border and occupy Belgrade, but then go no further. In possession of the Serbia capital, the Austrians would be in a position of strength as mediation proceeded.

This would be called the Stop-in-Belgrade. It offered a solution much like the one that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The Germans remained in France until Berlin's terms where met.

Bethmann and Jagow still had not told the Kaiser that Austria declared war and would announce it in just a few hours. They prepared the Kaiser's note, but held it, so it would arrive to late. Even though Bethmann and Jagow had deceived the Kaiser, depriving him of any chance of intervening before Austria declared war, their motives may well have been good. As clumsy as their behavior had been at a crucial juncture where nothing less than brilliance was required, they knew Wilhelm all to well-his childish arrogance, his unpredictability, his history of reversing himself and even breaking down in the midst of a crisis. (Like he had done so in 1908, 1911, and again in early 1914, sinking so low that he had to be talked out of abdicating.) So they felt they had a better grasp of the situation then the Kaiser. Considering they where in Berlin and had been more informed of what was going on, and they only done this so they could keep the Kaiser uninformed. Plus they thought by giving their support to Austria, they had been carrying out the Kaiser's wishes. They also felt that involving the Kaiser this late would only complicate an already confusing situation.

When the Austrians declared war in the middle of the afternoon, it changed everything. It had been one of the two or three blunders committed by any of the great powers during the days leading up to the war. As with the delivery of the not to Serbia 5 days earlier. Since Serbia had moved its government, Berchtold didnt know where to send the note. So he took it upon himself to send a telegram coded in French, informing Prime Minister Pasic, that a state of was now existed between the two countries. Shortly thereafter, in an abundance of caution, he sent a 2nd identical telegram via the Serbian Foreign Ministry.

The 1st telegram enraged Pasic. But when got the 2nd telegram, he thought it was or could be a hoax. He never heard of one nation declaring war on another in such a manner. When they asked the German Ambassador about the declaration of war, he had no idea what they were talking about and he was being truthful; not even the Kaiser, as we have seen, was informed in advance of Austrians declaration of war. But the authenticity of the telegrams were confirmed soon enough. This sparked anti-Serbian demonstrations in Vienna and Berlin, but there was no movement of Austrian troops, only Conrad merely shelling Belgrade from the Bosnian side of the border.

After learning the truth, the Kaiser met with Chancellor Bethmann, who became visibly unhappy man. After his meeting with Kaiser, he sent a telegram to Tschirschky in Vienna, complaining that the Austro-Hungarian government left them in the dark concerning its intentions, despite repeated interrogations, and because of this, they left Germany to be the ones to take the blame for starting the war. He urge Tschirschky to have the Austrians respond positively to what was now Grey's not just the Kaiser's, Stop-in-Belgrade proposal. Berchtold was completely taken aback. For 3 weeks the Germans had been prodding him to act. Now that he was taking action-they suddenly wanted him to stop.

But the day brought one additional misfortune, and a serious one. Russia's Ambassador to Austria, having been kept waiting since Monday, finally got to meet with Berchtold. He wanted to discuss a number of ideas that were being passed around among various capitals; a suggestion by Saznov that he and Vienna's Ambassador to St. Petersburg should review the original Austrian note to see if it might be modified enough for Serbia to accept it, and that the Serbian reply should be used as a starting point for negotiations, rather than a reason to go to war. Everyone was so distracted by the rush of events, that Berchtold and the Ambassador lost track of exactly which idea they were discussing at various points. The results were misunderstood.

Berchtold thought he made it clear that he would not negotiate with Serbia, but he would with Russia. But the Ambassador came away with the impression that Berchtold didn't want to negotiate with anyone, and this was do to that both parties had to much on their minds and were approaching exhaustion, and an important door had been inadvertently closed. So needless to say, Tuesday ended badly. Vienna with its declaration of war, had convinced Sazonov in St. Petersburg that it was mobilizing, not merely to underscore its grievances but to destroy Serbia.

The Russians had accelerated their preparations for war, Sazonov had been told that talks with Vienna where impossible and he took this as further evidence that war had become inevitable. He was also being told by France's Ambassador Paleologue that Paris wanted him to stand firm, by Germany's Ambassador Friedrich von Pourtales that if Russia proceeded with its mitlitary preparations, Germany would have to mobilize as well, by Serbia's Ambassador that the Austrians were bombarding Belgrade, and by Russian's Generals that Germany was preparing for war and they must do the same. In so many important ways, Sazonov was being deceived.

Now the French Prime Minister Rene Viviani, and President Poincare who where on a ship returning from St. Petersburg, sent a telegram urging Paleologue to do everything possible to resolve the crisis without war. But Paleologue was so determined to encourage Russian belligerence that he was in effect creating his own foreign policy, he told Sazonov of the complete readiness of France to fulfill her obligations as an ally.

Paleologue's motivation in all this was clear. He warned everyone that there would be a war by years end, and now that war was coming. He was afraid if France failed to demonstrate a willingness to support Russia, St Petersburg would abandon the Entente and ally itself with Berlin. So in his decision, he saw himself as preventing the collapse of France's entire Foreign policy, and therefore of France's security.