Leaping into the Dark

Saturday August 1st

Why didn't the Germans seize upon Tsar Nicholas's 11th hour offer? Why didn't they agree to do as the Russians were doing, mobilizing their forces but at the same time pledge not to attack? Why didn't they wait, pressuring Austria-Hungary to be sensible while Russia put pressure on Serbia and some sort of settlement worked out? It was a splendid opportunity, seizing it could have put Germany in a solid bargaining position.

It all came to nothing in part because of the unmanageable difficulties that mobilizing and then waiting would have created for Germany. An open-ended postponet of hostilities after the great powers had mobilized would have destroyed Germany's chances of defeating France before having to fight Russia. This would have given Russia and France an advantage that could only grow as time passed. The high command of the Germany army would, understandably, have called any such postponement an act of madness. When the Kaiser even suggested they do something like that, Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke came close to calling the idea insane.

Ever since Moltke had became Chief of Staff, he had been working on and developing a highly severed plan for fighting a 2-front war. This was called the Schlieffen Plan, after the general who 1st conceived and proposed it, but Motlke was the one who made it Germany's only military option. By 1914 he had spent a decade immersed in it, tinkering and torturing himself about how to make it work. But no matter how many ways he introduced new refinements, the plan always had one unchanging thesis at its center; speed was everything. Anything that slowed the Germans down, anything that might allow Russia to get into a war before France had been taken out, was regarded as likely to be fatal.

So far this reason the Tsar's promise to "take no provocation action" while mobilizing was, from the German perspective, nonsense. General mobilization meant, by definition, that Russia was marshaling its forces for an attack on Germany. Every day they mobilized brought Russia closer to being ready to strike at Germany from the east as soon as Germany was ready to engage France in the West. Berlin viewed the Russian mobilization as a provocative action of the most serious kind. It was inherently threatening to an extent that the Tsar and his advisers could not possibly have understood.

The Russians hoped that by mobilizing it would show the gravity of the situation, and would force the central powers to negotiate, and all it did was work in the opposite direction. The Germans-fearful like all the great powers of appearing weak-were unwilling to give the appearance of having been forced to negotiate by the threat of Russia action.

But Germany's mobilization problems went even deeper. Moltke, over the years, had transformed Schlieffens's idea for a lighting-fast attack on France from an option-into an inevitability in case of war. Any delay after mobilization had gone from being a danger into being an impossibility. Moltke and his staff gradually lost the ability to imagine situations in which delay might become advisable. Their planning became so rigid that it left Germany(today this can seem almost impossible to believe) with no way of mobilizing without invading Luxembourg and Belgium en route to invading France.

This was the self-created trap that the Germans found themselves in on August 1st-a trap that gave the army's high command no choice except to tell the Kaiser that Tsar Nicholas was asking Germany to do the one thing that Germany absolutely could not do. Only Russia could now prevent war, the generals told Wilhelm, and Russia could do so only by agreeing to the terms of the double ultimatum.

At midday on the 5th Saturday since the murder of Franz Ferdinand, the deadline for the double ultimatum arrived without an answer from Russia or France. Kaiser, at the urging of Moltke and Falkenhayn and with the reluctant agreement of Chancellor Bethmann, approved a declaration stating that because of St. Petersburg's continued mobilization a state of war now existed between the 2 empires. Now this declaration was wired to Fredrick von Poutales, Berlin's Ambassador to Russia, with the instructions to deliver it at 6 P.M(it would not reach Pourtales until 5:45pm and he had to decode it before taking it to Sazonov.)

Later that afternoon, when the German Ambassador in Paris called on Viviani and asked for his government's response to the ultimatum, he was told icily that "France will have to regard her own interests."
An hour later the French government declared a mobilization-General Joffre, was warning that every 24 hours of delay would cost 10 or 2 miles of territory when the fighting began-and 15 minutes after that Kaiser agreed to mobilization as well.

Long-bearded old Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, father of the High Seas Fleet, said that neither mobilization nor a war declaration was needed at this point-that all reasonable possibilities of a negotiated settlement should be allowed to play out. Almost everyone except the Kaiser, who appeared to be uncertain, disagreed with Tripitz, but not always in the same way or for the same reasons. The dispute was interrupted by the arrival of Gottlieb von Jagow, the head of foreign office, busting into the room, he announced that a message had just arrived from Ambassador Lichnowsky in London. Tirpitz jumped o this and said this is a good reason to delay the mobilization, at least until they knew what it was all about. Rubbish, said Moltke and Falkenhayn, and they departed.

The message from London proved to be not just important but astonishing. Lichnowsky reported that the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had just telephoned him with a momentous question. Grey wanted to know, "if I thought I could assure him that in case France should remain neutral in a Russo-German War, we would not attack the French." The question had come just in advance of a meeting of the British Cabinet, and Lichnowsky had assured Grey "that I could take responsibility for such a guaranty, and he is to use this assurance at today's cabinet session."

The Kaiser was almost beside himself with joy. So was Bethmann: it seemed almost to good to be true. It placed at Germany's feet an historic diplomatic victory. The Germans were now free to bring Russia to heel virtually without risk and to restore Austria-Hungary's position among the powers. Moltke and Falkenhayn were intercepted and summoned back to the palace. They read the message from London and Kaiser gave new orders to Moltke:

"We shall march the whole army east!" These words where a blow to Moltke. he couldn't believe what the Kaiser was telling him. Stop this enormous army? Smash all the clockwork plans for transporting it and feeding it and making certain that every point it would have what it needed to fight? Turn it around? March it east? Call off the great wheeling movement to the west that was the whole and only point of German mobilization and almost certainly Germany's sole hope of victory?

Moltke collected his wits and began to speak "I assured his majesty that this wasn't possible. The deployment of an army of a million men was not a matter of improvisation. It was the product of a whole year's work-of time tables that once worked out could not be changed. If his majesty insisted on leading the whole army eastwards, he would not have an army ready to strike, he would have a confused mass of disorderly armed men without commissariat." Not only would his army be a confused and disorderly mass of troops, but once facing eastward it would have at its back 62 French army divisions ready for action and equipped with their own carefully developed plans for the conquest of Germany. How could Britain, how could anyone, guarantee that France would not seize such an opportunity?

The Kaiser answered Moltke in the most wounding way possible. "Your Uncle," he said "would have given me a different answer."

"This pained me a good deal," Moltke said, "For I have never pretended to be equal of the Great Field Marshal."

Moltke tried to explain to the Kaiser, that once the mobilization plan had been executed, it would become possible to start moving troops to the east, adding that he could not accept responsibility for the military consequences of halting its execution. Bethmann interrupted in a way that Moltke could not have welcomed, saying that he could not accept political responsibility for a failure to respond positively to Britain's remarkable offer. Finally and with difficulty, a compromise was worked out. Falkenhayn told Moltke that some slowing of the mobilization process had to be possible. The invasion force could be stopped at least briefly at the Luxembourg border, surely. Moltke finally gave in. This could work for awhile-for hours, though not for days.

Before the slowdown could create serious problems, causing troops and trains that were supposed to be advancing to back up on one another and wreck all the time tables, Berlin learned that what is usually true of things that seem too good to be true applied in this case: The message from London was the result of a tangle of misunderstandings. The origins of these misunderstandings remain hard to unravel even today.

It seems that Grey, in raising the question of possible French and British neutrality, had not regarded himself as offering anything like a formal proposal. But like everyone else he was willing to clutch at straws by this point, and apparently he had tossed out an idle thought to see what kind of response it might draw. Perhaps, enmeshed as he was in the struggle going on within the British government and exhausted by long days and nights of searching for a resolution to the continental crisis, he had been less than clear in what he said. It never occurred to him that his idea would be seized by the Germans as an opportunity to delay fighting with France in order to crush Russia first; what he probably had in mind, was an arrangement in which Germany would stand on the defensive on both fronts while the Austro-Russian dispute was worked out.

Perhaps Lichnowsky, who throughout the crisis had displayed exceptional understanding of its dangers and exceptional courage in telling his government truths that it didn't want to hear, had been to eager to believe that Grey was telling him what he most wanted to hear. As early as 1912, even before Lichnowsky took his post in London, he told the Kaiser "that it was understandable that the increase in Serbia power and their expansion towards the sea alarmed the Austrian statesmen; but it would be incomprehensible if we should run even the faintest risk of becoming involved in a war for such a cause." Lichnowsky's feelings on the matter were even stronger in 1914, and he never hesitated to say so.

The German Foreign Ministry cabled Lichnowsky that Britain would be required to guarantee French neutrality, that it had until 7 p.m on Monday to make the necessary arrangements, and that until then Germany would refrain from attacking. Finally, all this came crashing down by another message from London. Lichnowsky reported that Grey, after meeting with the cabinet, had told him that a German violation of Belgian neutrality "would make it difficult for the government here to adopt an attitude of friendly neutrality." Germany's failure to promise that it would not enter Belgium, has caused an unfavorable impression. The question was again raised whether it was possible for France and Germany "to remain facing each other under arms, without attacking each other, in the event of a Russian War," But there was no further suggestion that Britain was promising neutrality in return.

Grey made one last call on the British Foreign Office. He was offering, in a word nothing. Obliquely but clearly enough, he was indicating that Britain would likely join France in case of war-especially a war that took Germany troops into Belgium. The Kaiser after venting his rage about the deceitful English(he had always had envy, and resentment for Britain)put everything back on track. Moltke was told that the mobilization could go forward as originally intended. Later, in making his marginal comments on Lichnowsky's last meeting, the Kaiser gave particular attention to Grey's mention of an "unfavorable impression" having been created in London. "My impression" he wrote, "is that Mr. Grey is a false policy, but who will not come out in the open against us, preferring to let himself be forced by us to do it."

Shortly after 7 p.m. in St Petersburg, Germany's Ambassador Pourtales was admitted to the office of Foreign Minister Sazonov. He had had no sleep for days and was ready to collaspe. Quietly he asked Sazonov if Russia was prepared to answer the double ultimatum. Sazonov, exhausted himself, over wrought, and a volatile personality under the best of circumstances, had just came from a meeting at which he had been trying to assure the British Ambassador that Russia's mobilization didn't necessarily mean war. He answered Pourtales by echoing what the Tsar had earlier told the Kaiser; although it was not possible to stop mobilization, Russia wanted to continue negotiations. Russia remained hopeful of avoiding war.

Pourtales took from his pocket a copy of Germany's ultimatum, read it aloud, and added that the consequences of a negative reply would be grave. Sazonov repeated his first answer. Pourtales too repeated himself; the consequences would be grave. "I have no other reply to give you," said Sazonov. Pourtales took out more papers. "In that case sir, I am instructed by my government to had you this note." In his hands he held 2 messages, both of them declarations of war. One was for use if Russia gave no answer to the ultimatum, the other a reply to a negative answer. In his distress and confusion he pressed both on Sazonov and burst into tears. To which Sazonov burst into tears. But threw the tears they started slinging accusations. "This was a criminal act of yours," Sazonov said.
"The curses of the nations will be upon you," Pourtales said.
"We were defending our honor." said Sazonov.
"You honor was not involved." said Pourtales.

Finally they parted forever, Sazonov helping the distraught Pourtales to the door.