Thursday July 30th


The European public was now fully awake to the possibility of war. Runs on banks were becoming widespread. Austria, Germany, and Russia were all withdrawing their reserves from foreign banks. The financial markets in Berlin and Brussels had to be shut down because of panic selling.

Even the Kaiser and Tsar telegrams were beginning to go wrong. In one of his middle of the night messages, in a maladroit attempt to assure the Kaiser that Russia has no hostile intentions where Germany was concerned, Tsar Nicholas told him that "the military measures which have now come into force were decided on 5 days ago for reasons of defense on account of Austria's preparations." Wilhelm concluded from this that Russia "is almost a week ahead of us," and that "that means I have got to mobilize as well."

In the morning the leaders of the Russian General Staff came back to Sazonov with bad news. They told him there was no acceptable way of executing the kind of partial mobilization that the Tsar approved. Any such mobilization would have to be done off the cuff and would throw Russia's armed forces into a state of confusion that might leave them helpless in case of a German attack. In practical terms only general mobilization was possible, the couldn't wait any longer.

When the Chief of the General Staff telephoned the Tsar and again asked him to approve a general mobilization, Nicholas refused, saying that the question was closed. He had been persuaded grudgingly, to meet with Sazonov at 3 p.m. The meeting was a long one, with foreign minister arguing the generals case. Austria, Sazonov said was preparing to destroy Serbia and refusing to talk. Germany was playing a double game, appearing to restrain the Austrians but really just trying to buy time for its own preparations; Germany was far along with an undeclared mobilization of its own. Russia could not afford not to respond. Russia also could not mobilize in any way short of fully. Sazonov was wrong about almost everything except Austria's determination to attack Serbia. He was not lying, but he was dangerously misinformed.

Nicholas continued to refuse, and Sazonov continued to plead. The Tsar, conscious of the manitude of what he was being asked, agonized aloud. "Think of the responsibility which you are asking me to take!" he declared. "Think of the 1,000's and 1,000's of men who will be sent to their death!" Finally, Nicholas was worn down. He was a stubborn but not a strong man, and even the strongest of men would have found it difficult to resist when being told that war could no longer be avoided regardless of what they did and that nothing less than national survival was at stake. Perhaps Sazonov's most powerful argument-another falsehood that he believed to be true-was that a general mobilization would not necessarily drive Germany to war.

What neither Savonov nor Nicholas understood was that Russia's mobilization would arouse in Germany's generals a panic indistinguishable from the fears driving the Russians, and that those generals would demand a German response. Far worse, neither of them had nay way of knowing how fast the Germans would be able to mobilize, or how inflexible and therefore dangerous the German mobilization plan was. Not even Kaiser Wilhelm or Chancellor Bethmann understood. Clearly at this point Germany was literally incapable of mobilizing without invading its neighbors to the west and igniting the continental war that all of them dreaded. The final tragedy is that the Tsar's decision was based largely on the things that Sazonov told him about Germany's preparations for war, when in fact Germany remained the only one of the continental powers to have taken no military action at all.

Russia's general mobilization, decided just a little more than 48 hours after Austria's declaration of war on Serbia, added 900,000 active duty troops to the number that would have been affected by partial mobilization. It also called up the Russia reserves-a staggering total of 4 million men, enough to frighten any nation on earth. By making German mobilization-therefore war- a near- certainty, it drastically reduced the possibility that the Kaiser-Nicholas's telegrams or any of the other increasingly desperate efforts to defuse the situation(cables were flying among the capital cities around the clock) could produce results before it was too late. It all but ended the hope of negotiations, or of a compromise based on Stop-in-Belgrade.

Tragically, Russia's mobilization, while dictated by military considerations, was not only militarily unnecessary but counter productive. Tactically it was a gift to the Austrians(or would have been, if Conrad had taken advantage of it), relieving them of the anquish of not knowing whether they needed to prepare to fight the Russians or were free to focus on Serbia alone. Strategically it was an act of high folly. In no real sense had the security of Russia ever been threatened by the July crisis. Even the destruction of Serbia-something that certainly could have been averted without resorting to war-would have had little impact on Russia's strategic position. Russia would still have had the biggest army in the world by a huge margin, and it would still have been in the beginning stages of a program aimed at expanding that army by 40% within 3 years.

Tsar Nicholas was shown a telegram that the monk Rasputin had sent to Tsarina Alexandra. Because of Rasputin's distance from the capital, there was no way he could know what was happening in St. Petersburg or know what was happening in St. Petersburg or Vienna or elsewhere. Thus his telegram mystified everyone. It read "Let Papa(Rasputins name for Nicholas)not plan war," "With war will come the end of Russia and yourselves, and you will lose to the last man." The Tsar read it and tore it into pieces.

British foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, alarmed by the deepening seriousness of the crisis, finally stopped being so diplomatic as to be nearly incapable of saying anything. Speaking without the knowledge of the British Cabinet, he told Germany's Ambassador Lichnowsky that in his opinion, quite unofficially, "unless Austria is willing to enter upon a discussion of the Serbian question, a world war in inevitable," and that he would expect such a war to bring Britain in on the side of France and Russia. So when the Kaiser and Bethmann learned of this, they abandoned any lingering hopes that war if it came could be a "local one involving only Austria-Hungary and Serbia, so they intensified their attempts to restrain the Austrians. If Grey would have been this forthright just a few days earlier, Berlin almost certainly would have changed its position more quickly and firmly. Austria might then have deferred its declaration of war, and Russia would have had little reason to mobilize. Now it was all but to late. Also too late, Bethmann awakened to the fact that the Russians were laboring under a misunderstanding about Vienna's  willingness to talk. Bethmann told Tschirschky to alert Bercthold to the problem, but things were happening so fast and diplomacy being submerged under the concerns of the generals, there was little chance that talks could get under way in time to avoid war.

Bethmann was peppering Tschirschky with telegrams, each one more urgent and exasperated than the last. In one he instructed the Ambassador to make clear to Berchtold that any Austro-Hungarian refusal to negotiate with Russia would be no only a 'serious error" but " a direct provocation of Russia's armed intervention." "We are of course, ready to fulfill  the obligations of our alliance," he said in another, "but must decline to be drawn wantonly into a world conflagration by Vienna, without having any regard paid to our counsel.

But here again the remedies were coming too late-all the more so because Berchtold had withdrawn into an almost total silence. He was bent on war and wanted no discussion. The Tension continued to increase. President Poincare, concerned about jeopardizing France's alliance with Russia, sent assurances to St. Petersburg through Ambassador Paleologue hurried to tell Sazonov, not yet knowing that Russia had already mobilized(if Paleologue knew, he did not deign to inform Paris), Poincare also told the Ambassador to urge the Russians to proceed cautiously. Paleologue had no interest in doing this.

Now Paris and St. Petersburg continued to receive reports of extensive military preparations withing Germany, reports that were untrue. France was beginning to prepare, but doing so extremely tentatively, to avoid alarming the Germans or, what Poincare cared about even more at this point, giving the British any cause to see France as an aggressor. No reserves were called up, and no movement of troops by train was permitted. Determined to bring Britain to France's assistance if war started, and mindful that this would require casting Germany in the role of aggressor, Poincare ordered that all troops be kept 6 miles back from the border.

So when the French Commander in Chief, General Joseph Joffre, requested permission to mobilize, he was refused. Even limited movements of troops towards the 6 mile limit were not permitted-until Joffre, later in the day, threatened to resign.

Poincare summoned the British Ambassador to his office. He asked for a firmer line in London. he said that if Britain would declare its intention to support France, Germany might be deterred and war averted. The Ambassador, aware of how divided the government in London remained, was able to say nothing more than "how difficult it would be for His Majesty's government to make such a statement."

General Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the German Staff, checked on the status of Austria's mobilization. When he learned that Conrad was still deploying unnecessarily large numbers of his mobilized troops to the south-the field marshal continued to be unable to put aside his dream of invading Serbia-Moltke panicked. As things stood, the Austria troops on the Russian border would, if fighting began, be outnumbered by 2 to 1. Moltke sent a wire to Conrad, urging him to shift his main force to the north to mobilize against Russia in effect. Unless Conrad did so, Germany, in beginning a war against France, would be unprotected in its rear.

Now getting into matters that were not suppose to be the business of generals, Moltke also warned Conrad that Vienna must refuse to be drawn into the Stop-in-Belgrade proposal. That proposal of course was exactly what Bethmann had been pushing Berchtold to accept. "What a joke!" Berchtold exclaimed when he learned of Moltke's warning. "Who's in charge in Berlin?"

At 9 p.m. Moltke took Erich von Falkenhayn, the War Minister, with him to the Chancellor's office. They told Bethmann that German mobilization had become imperative, that a postponement would put the country at risk, and that at a minimum a State of Imminent War(Germany's version of a Period Preparatory to War) must be declared. Bethmann, reluctant to commit to military action, but equally unwilling to assume responsibility for Germany undefended, promised a decision by noon on Friday. He too was coming to regard was as inevitable, and his focus was shifting from preserving the peace, to preparing for hostilities. Knowing that Conrad had declared Stop-in-Belgrade to be infeasible and was supported in this by Berchtold, he, like Moltke, was yielding to a fatalistic acceptance of the notion that if Germany's enemies were determined to make war, now was better than later.