Paris in 1914

The start of the war comes as a far greater shock to Paris than to Berlin, Budapest, St. Petersburg, or Vienna. Until almost the end of the July crisis, the French paid little attention. They and the newspapers they read, were focused instead on a lady named

Henriette Caillaux

Not like the lady and the war are entirely unrelated. Among the what if's of 1914 is the intriguing possibility-remote to be sure, but real nonetheless-that the war might have been averted if not for 6 pistol shots fired by Madame Caillaux 101 days before the assassination of 

Franz Ferdinand

Madame Caillaux was the wife-2nd wife, importantly just as he was her 2nd husband- of

Joseph Caillaux

a former French Premier who in early 1914 was making a serious bid to become once again the head of the government. In a arm's-length partnership with a brilliant and charismatic socialist leader named Jean Jaures, Caillaux was campaigning  to displace the man who, a year earlier, had enacted a controversial measure aimed at improving France's readiness for war. This measure was a requirement, demanded by 

President Poincare

and the leadership of the army, that every military conscript(and France was drafting 80% of its men by that time, as opposed to 56% in Germany) must spend 3 years on active service, rather than 2 as in the recent past. The change had been one expression of a surge of patriotic fever that arose in the wake of a French-German showdown over control of Morocco in 1911 and swept Poincare into the presidency 2 years later. (When the Germans ended that showdown by backing down, in large part because Britain was siding with France, it seemed proof that France's long period of weakness on the international stage had ended at last) Supporters of the extension were convinced that unless France maintained its credibility as a military power, it would lose the confidence of its Russian all and be left to face Germany alone. Jaure's was instant that the European arms race was madness, that a general war would be ruinous for everyone involved no matter who won, that it was ridiculous for the only republic in Europe to tie itself to a regime as antediluvian as tsarist Russia, and that it was not impossible for France and Germany to come to an understanding. Though Caillaux had not pledged himself to repeal the extension, the conservatives convinced themselves that he would do so if given the opportunity. They did everything in their power to turn him into what the writer-politician Maurice Barres said he already was "the most hated man in France."

Now a national election was scheduled for early summer. It would decide the membership of the Chamber of Deputies, which in turn would choose the next Premier.(Now the Premiership, a position analogous to that of British Prime Minister, changed hands more or less annually as shifting coalitions of France's many factions caused governments to rise and fall.( It is not to be confused with the presidency, an elective office with a fixed 6 year term and roughly comparable to Britain's monarch.) The election became a referendum on the 3 year service question and, by implication, on France's place in the European balance of power.

Now Joseph Caillaux, the leading opponent of the Poincare camp, was an interesting figure. Trained in accounting and as an auditor, meticulous as only a dedicated accountant can be, he had followed his father into politics and had risen to cabinet rank on the basis of hard work and his knowledge of the intricacies of budgeting, taxation, and finance, an office to which his unrivaled competency would cause him to be returned repeatedly over the years. And being able to survive the numberless accusations hurled at him over the years, he remained throughout his career the very picture of stuffy, almost comic haut bourgeois respectability.

Paradoxically, by 1914 Caillaux had moved about as far to the left as it was possible for a French politician to move in those days and still be a contender for the highest offices of government. This had happened gradually, as a result of his mastery of finance. He had conducted a study of the tax system and, offended by its inadequacy to the needs of a modern state, had proposed an income tax. The idea horrified the conservatives who predictably had no interest in surrendering their exemption from being taxed. But it won Caillaux so many new friends in the so-called Radical Faction(which in fact was not radical at all but barely left of center)that he became for a time Premier.

Caillaux's tenure as Premier included in the 1911 Moroccan crisis, and he had been firm and effective in negotiating a settlement with the Germans. Even though his enemies accused him, inevitably, of being under German pressure, he had won for France the colony of Morocco at the lowest price Berlin was prepared to accept short of war. It was also during Caillaux's Premiership that 

General Joseph Joffre

was made head of the French General Staff, which meant that in the years just before the war, the army had a commander who insisted on better training, better equipment, and promotion on the basis of ability and performance. Even in his skepticism about the military service extension, Caillaux never challenged the idea that France should be military strong. His questions were about how strength could best be achieved. Keeping many 1,000's of men on active duty for an additional year required heavy spending for barracks and other facilities, but it did little to increase the size of the army upon mobilization. Caillaux wanted to invest in artillery(in which France was seriously deficient)and innovations such as aircraft.

One other thing was paradoxical about Joseph Caillaux, behind his invincible facade of fashionable propriety, behind his cold and eccentric public persona, he was an adventurous womanizer. He never married until he was into middle age. When he finally did marry, his choice was a divorcee older than himself who had been his mistress for some years. Not long after marrying her, he entered into an affair with a married woman, Madame Henriette Claretre. Their liaison wasn't frivolous. With some difficulty the 2 divorced their spouses and married.

All these currents-hatred for Caillaux's taxation proposals, conservative belief that the future of the nation hinged on the service extension, questions about the alliance with Russia, and the support given to Caillaux by

Jean Jaures

and the socialist-came together in the 1914 election. In the words of 

Maurice Barres

Caillaux was a menace because he was the one man who could "bring Jaure's pacifist dream down from the clouds, to make the theories of working-class internationalism and the fraternity of all people both practical and realizable."

The campaign was more than spirited. As a Caillaux's victory boomed, his enemies cast aside what little restraint was customary in the politics of France. The conservative press attacked him relentlessly. Characteristically, Caillaux disdained to reply; he would coolly assert his innocence of whatever the latest charge happened to be but go no further. He was coasting towards a victory that would lead to a reappraisal of national policy and possibly to the resignation of Poincare(who threatened just such a step), but then Caillaux's private life was brought into the political arena, and everything changed.

Caillaux's 1st wife, a woman spurned and vengeful, made available to

Gaston Calmette

The editor of the Conservative Publication Le Figaro, letters that Caillaux had sent her in 1901 when she was still his mistress and married to another man. Calmette, who had been attacking Caillaux viciously, now promised his readers a "comic interlude" that he opened by printing one of the letters. Its content was not scandalous in any sexual sense; Caillaux had boasted of appearing to fight for his income tax proposal while actually assuring that it could not pass. This raised questions about possible duplicity on his part(unless of course he was simply trying to impress his paramour,) but it was hardly a smoking gun. Much was made of the fact that Caillaux signed himself Ton Jo, "Your Joe". The tone was inappropriately intimate when used by a gentlemen in addressing a married lady, but even by the standards of its day it was something less than outrageous.

The 2nd Madame Caillaux, however, was not amused. Despite her affair and divorce and remarriage. Henriette cared greatly about her reputation and place in society. She hated the world of politics and the abuse to which it exposed her husband. Lately, when in public she had found herself hissed and laughed at when people learned that she was the spouse of the traitor to his class, the man who wanted to tax incomes. But she was terrified that the publication of the letter from Caillux's 1st wife, would be followed by love letters that she and Caillaux had exchanged while still married to other people. And there was gossip to the effect that these letters too had been given to Le Figaro.

So on the afternoon of March 16th, Henriette went to the shop of a Paris gun dealer, and purchased a small Browning automatic pistol. After the dealer showed her how to use it, she went to the office of Le Figaro, after announcing who she was, she asked to see Calmette. Unfortunately he was out at the time so she had to sit and wait for hours for him to return. When at last Calmette arrived through a rear entrance, he was told of his visitor and urged not to see her. He gallantly replied that he wouldn't deny a lady. Upon being admitted to his office, Henriette asked Calmette if he knew why she wanted to see him. When he replied that he didn't and offered her a chair, she took out her pistol and squeezed the trigger until its 6 bullets had been discharged. Calmette was hit 4x and killed. Later Henriette testified that, intending only to frighten him, she had closed her eyes before firing and pointed the pistol at the floor. Calmette, unfortunately for both of them, had fallen to the floor as soon as he saw the gun and so put himself in the line of fire. When members of the Figaro staff came running into the office, Henriette surrender her weapon but imperiously maintained her dignity. "Do not touch me," she declared, "I am a lady." When the police were preparing to take her to jail, she refused to enter their wagon. She had her own car that would take her to the station and the police agreed.

This was the most sensational story in years, one that combined murder and sex with wild speculation about what had motivated Henriette and what further scandals might be revealed. It monopolized the attention of the Paris newspapers all that spring and summer. Its 1st effect was to sideline Caillaux politically; he immediately resigned from the cabinet and announced(he would later changed his mind) that his political career was over.

In spite of the scandal, the election turned out to be a disaster for Poincare and the conservatives and a triumph for Caillaux's Radicals and their Socialists allies. Under ordinary circumstances, Caillaux would have become Premier, but now someone else had to be found for the job, and with Caillaux out of the running, no one was holding Poincare to his threat to resign.

For 2 weeks, as the formidable Poincare used his constitutional authority to block a succession of candidates who were opposed to the service extension, France remained without a government. Finally, grudgingly, Poincare agreed to the appointment of 

Rene Viviani

a one time socialist and a rising but inexperienced political star who in 1913 had voted against the extension but now promised to withdraw his opposition. In the weeks ahead Viviani would show himself to be emotionally fragile(his career would end in insanity) and willing to follow Poincare guidance in dealing with the July crisis.

Henriette's trial, from its start early in July, was an early specimen of full-bore media circus, obsessing press and public alike, making the news about yet another crisis in the distant Balkans seem dreary and pointless by comparison, and constantly giving rise to new sensations.(One of the trial judges challenged another to a duel.) Then came the state visit that Poincare paid to St. Petersburg, taking Viviani with him and using the long days at sea to instruct the new Premier in the importance of military readiness and the alliance with Russia.

Even if there had been no trial and no voyage to Russia, French passivity throughout the crisis undoubtedly would have been to Poincare's liking. The president was the closet thing to a true master of French politics to have emerged in decades. He began his career as the youngest lawyer in the country, then became the youngest member of the Chamber of Deputies at 26, was elected Premier in his 40's and in 1913, at age 52 became both the youngest president in the nation's history and the 1st to be elected while serving as premier. In 1914 he was mindful of what General Joffre had told him' that France was now strong enough to win a war with Germany if Serbia tied up a substantial part of the Austro-Hungarian army, Russia took the field against the Germans, and Britain too came in on France's side. The British factor made it essential that France stand aside during the diplomatic crisis. Paris could have changed the outcome of the crisis only by discouraging the Russians from being so quick to mobilize. Caillaux, as Premier, almost certainly would have done this. With the Tsar's reluctance to mobilize makes it at least possible that Caillaux could have succeed.

The magnitude of the international crisis finally came crashing in on Paris on Wednesday, July 29th, when a jury found Madame Caillaux not guilty, and France's newspapers awoke from a trance over this trial to discover that Europe was on the brink of war. Poincare and Viviani returned to Paris, finding the capital burning with war fever. July 29th was also the day on which Tsar Nicholas 1st ordered and canceled mobilization. And thanks to the scheming 

Ambassador Paleologue, 

Paris had limited knowledge of what was happening in St. Petersburg, and the Russians had no reason to think that the French government was not enthusiastic about their mobilization. By Friday full mobilization was under way in Russia, but not a word was printed about it in the Paris newspapers. But they were however carrying excited and unfounded reports that Germany was mobilizing secretly. Joffre was demanding French mobilization.

Now with Caillaux out of the picture and the final slide into war underway, there was in all of France one man of importance who not only thought that war might be prevented but was committed to preventing it if he could. This was

Jean Jaures

who's gifts were so prodigious that it seemed briefly possible that even now, far into the 11th hour, he might make a difference. As a leader, thinker, and human being, Jaures stood out like a giant in the summer of 1914. Like Caillaux he was widely hated, but only for the most honorable of reasons; he had dedicated his life to the achievement of democracy and genuine piece not only in France but across the continent. But he was respected too-respected and loved to an extent remarkable for a man whose socialist convictions had put him permanently outside the boundaries of political respectability. Everyone who knew him and left a record of the experience tells of a sunny, selfless, brilliant personality, bearded and bearlike and utterly careless of his appearance, indifferent to personal success or failure but passionately dedicated to his vision of a better, saner world.

Born in provincial obscurity, he had been sent to Paris on scholarship and excelled at the most elite schools to be found there. He had gone 1st into an academic career and then into politics, earning a doctorate along the way. Drawn by his sense of the injustices of industrial society into the Socialists Party, he soon became its dominant figure and a practical, non dogmatic adapter of Marxist thought. He was opposed to imperialism, colonialism, and militarism, all of which he saw as a waster of resources that could be used for better purposes. But he wasn't opposed to nationalism, envisioning a Europe of autonomous democracies working together for a prosperity in which the poor and the powerless could share. He believed that political liberty was meaningless without economic liberty, that the power of the industrialists, banks, big landowners, and Churches must be curtailed, and that small family businesses and farms must be preserved. An anticlerical he nevertheless opposed the efforts of his associates to bar Catholics from teaching in the universities. Above all he was opposed to the secret alliances of the Great Powers, France included. He foresaw how disastrous a general war would be with clarity that can still astonish anyone who reads the things he wrote and said. He was widely regarded as the greatest orator of his time, and by consistently demonstrating his integrity and indifference to personal advantage, he had unified France's leftist functions and made the Socialist Party a force in national politics. By late July, France appeared to be divided into 2 camps; one that regarded Jaures as a public danger, another that was ready to follow him. In the midst of mounting hysteria he was the one prominent figure calling for restraint, deliberation, and a search for a way out of war-for sangfroid. "The danger is great but not insuperable if we keep our clearness of mind and strength of will," he wrote in his last newspaper column, which appeared on Friday July 31st, "If we show the heroism of action."

France's conservative voices, meanwhile, were anything but calm. "We have no wish to incite anyone to political assassination," the newspaper Action Francaise had declared on July 23rd in what was becoming the characteristic tone of Jaures enemies, "but M.Jean Jaures may well shake in his shoes!" " His words may perhaps give some fanatic desire to settle by the experimental method the question of whether anything would be changed in the invincible order of things if M. Jean Jaures were to suffer the fate of M. Calmette."

Another paper told its readers that "if on the eve of war a General were to detail 1/2 a dozen men and a Corporal to put citizen Jaures against a wall and to pump the lead he needs into his brain at point-blank range-do you think that General would be doing anything but his elementary duty?"

On the evening of July 31st, just back from a hurried trip to Brussels where he had addressed an emergency meeting of Socialist from several countries, including Germany, Jaures and a small group of his associates went to the foreign ministry, where they met with 

Vice Minister Abel Ferry

and demanded every possible effort to keep Russia from mobilizing. By this time the government not only knew of the Russia mobilization but had received, via the German Ambassador, Berlin's warning that it too would mobilize if the Russians didn't reverse course. Viviani, after consultation with Poincare, had given the Germans his promise of an answer by 1 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday.

Now Ferry simply told Jaures that it was too late that "everything is finished, there is nothing left to do."

"To the very end," Jaures answered angrily, "we will continue to struggle against war."

"No," Terry replied. "You won't be able to continue. You will be assassinated on the nearest street corner."

2 Hours later a 29 year old man named

Raoul Villain

well educated but aimless, confused and unemployed was walking along the Rue Montmartre when he saw several men enter the Cafe du Croissant. Among them was Jaures, and Villain recognized him. As he watched, Jaures took a seat with his back to an open window. For 1/2 an hour while Jaures ate his dinner and conferred with editors of his newspaper, L' Humanite, about what should be said in the Saturday edition, Villain paced outside. He was armed; inflamed by the hysteria all around him, he had been planning to travel to Germany and shoot the Kaiser. Here, suddenly, was an opportunity to demonstrate his patriotism and strike a blow for France right at home.

Now inside the restaurant a man rose from another table and approached the Jaures group. He was a friend of one of Jaures companions, and he wanted to show off a photo of his baby daughter.

"May I see?" Jaures asked. He examined the picture, smiled, asked the child's age, and offered congratulations. At that instant Villain, standing just outside the window, fired 2 shots into the back of his head. Jaures was dead before the police arrived and the next day France and Germany mobilized. The Socialist in both countries, now without anyone capable of bringing them together, supported the move to war.

                                                                   

                                                   Roll of the Iron Dice



 Before every commander of the armies that went to war in August 1914, there lay the possibility's of becoming a hero, a giant, a deliver of his people. Likewise there lay before everyone of them the very real possibility of everlasting disgrace.

This was nowhere more true than the case of Helmuth von Moltke, who as the war began was 66 years old, in questionable health, and approaching the 9th anniversary of his appointment as head of the German High Command. His long service as Chief meant that he was responsible not only for winning the war but for the plans-the inconceivably intricate plans, including among much else the timetables of the 11,000 trains that would have to be moved to complete German mobilization-according to which the war was to be prosecuted. All of this was on his shoulders, and Moltke went to war without a trace of Napoleoni zest. Throughout most of the July crisis he had been a voice for restraint. Though Russia's mobilization turned him into a strident advocate of military action, even then he was motivated not by any hunger for conquest or expectation of victory but by fear of a kind that was far from uncommon in the upper reaches of the German Civil and military administration. This fear rose out of the belief, the conviction, that Germany was encircled by enemies who were growing stringer at an alarming rate, and that if the showdown were delayed just a few years more there might be no possibility of victory, even of survival. Far from looking forward to a quick and easy victory, Moltke said that if war came it would be "a long weary struggle with a country that will not acknowledge defeat until the whole strength of its people is broken, a war that even if we should be the victors will push our own people too the limits of exhaustion.

Of course this prognosis was consistent with Moltke inmate pessimism; he was so notorious for his gloomy outlook that the Kaiser had long made jokes of it. Even when Moltke was gonna be promoted to General Staff, he confided to the German Chancellor of the time that he regarded himself as "too reflective, too scrupulous, and, if you like, to conscientious for such a post." He said he did not posses "the capacity for risking all on a single throw," that marked great commanders. About that he appears to have been right; he was less a man of action than an intellectual and aesthete, more cultivated than Prussian Generals were expected to be. Art was the only things Moltke lived for.

But he was also right about what lay ahead. The accuracy of his dark prophecy reflected not only his disposition but his acumen, his grasp of the realities of 20th century warfare. And because of this Moltke committed himself and his nation to a strategy focused exclusively on the achievement of a lightning-fast victory over France. This strategy was embedded in the deeply secret Schlieffen Plan, originally the work of Field Marshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Moltke's predecessor as Chief of the General Staff. He had developed it before his retirement in 1905 in response to the formation of the Franco-Russian Entente and the resulting likelihood that, if war came, Germany was going to find itself fighting on 2 fronts.

He based it on that even with Austria-Hungary on its side Germany couldn't expect to win a protracted war against both France and Russia; that Russia would be unable to mobilize rapidly; and that the immense size of the Russian empire meant that any invader looking for a quick and decisive victory was likely to be as disappointed as Napoleon had been after capturing Moscow in 1812. Out of these assumptions rose the conclusion that Germany had to crush France before Russia became capable of mounting an offensive. It would then be able to shift its forces to the east and crush Russia in its turn.

Now Moltke had adopted the plan upon succeeding Schlieffen and in the years that followed, Moltke would change it substantially. As a result of the changes, and ultimately the failure of the altered plan to deliver Paris into German hands within 40 days that Schlieffen had set as a deadline, Moltke's assigned place in history has generally been among the fools and weaklings. While Shclieffen has been enshrined as a strategist of much brilliance, the creator of a key to glory that Moltke proved incapable of using.

If such judgements are not flagrantly unfair, they are at a minimum arguable. It was absurd to think that Moltke should have regarded the plan he received from Schlieffen  as too sacred to be altered as circumstances changed. Schlieffen  had handed his ideas over to Moltke at a point when Russia was weaker than it had been in generations. It had just lost its war with Japan and was faced with a popular uprisings that had shaken the Romanov regime. Shclieffen had good reason to assume that Russia might be unable to put an effective army into the field at all , never mind speedily.

But by 1914 the situation had changed. For 5 years the Russian government had been spending a 1/3 of its revenues on its army and navy, this was the so called Grand Program, initiated in 1913, provided for the addition of 585,000 men to Tsar's army annually, with every recruit to remain on active duty for at least 3 years. By 1914, 1.4 million Russian troops were in uniform, with several million more reservists available in case of mobilization-enough to form as many as 150 divisions. Russia had also made great strides in industrializing, the French Capital was also financing a radical improvement of the Russian rail system in ways growing both in strength and in confidence. Moltke would have had to be a fool not to fear that the Russians might be capable of fighting their way to Berlin before the Germans reached Paris.

Now Motlke's uncle and namesake, the architect of Germany's victories over Austria and France almost half a century earlier, had seen things very differently from Schlieffen. In his last years he came to believe that in a 2 front war Germany should stand on the defensive in the west, attack in the east just enough to drive the Russians out of Poland, and then allow its enemies to wreck their armies by hurling them against walls of fire and steel. he believed that such a war would end not in victory but in a negotiated peace with exhausted but undefeated foes-and that was all Germany should hope for.

"We should exploit in the West the great advantages which the Rhine and our powerful fortifications offers to the defensive," he had said as early as 1879, " and should apply all the fighting forces which are not absolutely indispensable for an imposing offensive against the east." This remained German doctrine until Schlieffen, became head of the army and gradually set Moltke's thinking aside.

The validly of the new strategy was, however, something less than self-evident, as Shclieffen himself acknowledged. His commentaries, which he continued to produce and share with the General Staff throughout the years after his retirement, make clear that he was far from certain that it could succeed. It bet everything on an overwhelming right wing made up of 7 out of every 8 soldiers available for the fight with France. This massed force was to punch like a fist through 3 neutral countries-Holland, Belgium, and tiny Luxembourg-on its way to France. It would swing counterclockwise in a great wheeling motion, 1st to the west and then southward into France, over running whatever enemy forces confronted it, encircling and cutting off Pairs, and finally swinging back to the east to take whatever remained of the French army in the rear and destroy it.

The plan was majestic in conception and breathtakingly bold but also fraught with problems not all of which were military. From a narrowly military stand point the invasion of the 3 neutral countries was sensible; It would enable the Germans to move across northern Europe's flat and open coastal plain, avoiding the powerful fortresses that the French had constructed in the rough hill county just west of their long border with Germany. But in terms of grand strategy and international politics, however, it was dangerous in the extreme. It gave no weight to the possibility that a violation of the treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium and Holland might provoke Britain to intervene. If Schlieffen had considered the possibility  of British intervention, he obviously regarded it as an acceptable risk. Britain's army was small(Bismarck had joked that if it ever invaded Germany, he would have it arrested) If Germany could wrap up the war in the west on Shclieffen's timetable, the British would have little opportunity to become a factor.

Even the French General Staff was equally alert to the attractions of Belgium as a route into its enemy's heartland. But it didn't have the autonomy that allowed Schlieffen and then younger Moltke to consult with no one; hard experience with 2 Bonapartist empires had made republican France wary of placing to much over str1905) in the hands of the military. As late as 1913 the French Supreme War Council was exploring a possible invasion of Germany through Belgium, but it was obliged to keep the Paris government informed as it do so. By this time the French and British were well along in planning joint operations, and the French government was determined to bring the British in on its side in case of war. There fore Paris checked with London about the War Council's idea and was sternly warned off. Any such move, France's friends on the British General Staff said would destroy even the possibility of support from Britain. So the council stopped all work in that direction.

Now over in Germany no such course correction was, in practical terms, even possible. No German Chancellor since the young Wilhelm's II dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 had ever attempted to question, never mind challenge, the war planning of the General Staff. Bethmann's administration was afraid to interfere with the army's plans even when those plans entailed terrible political risks.
In his splendid isolation Schlieffen assumed that Germany's enemies were intent not just on her defeat but on her destruction, and because of this she was justified in doing things that under less knowing circumstances would not have been thinkable. So the seizure of the Dutch and Belgium roads and railways became not only desirable but imperative. Nothing less could save Germany, and anything else would increase Germany's peril. "If we were to attack along the entire Belfort-Montmeely front(along the line of French fortresses) with blind faith in the sanctity of neutrality," Schlieffen wrote, "we would soon be effectively enveloped on our right flank by a realistic and unscrupulous enemy advancing through southern Belgium and Luxembourg." The "unscrupulous enemy" was, of course France. Schlieffen's guiding principle was that if Germany declined the benefits of violating the neutrality of its neighbors, France would happily seize them.

If Schlieffen had any concerns about the price of invading Belgium and Holland, he had many about whether his plan was militarily feasible. The outer edge of his right wing, in sweeping toward Paris, would have to advance more than 40 days, defeating whatever enemies it encountered along the way. The infantry would have to do this mainly on foot, each soldier carrying 70 or more pounds of equipment every step of the way. If the horse-drawn artillery failed to keep up, if the huge amounts of food and fodder and ammunition and replacements needed by all these 100's of 1000's of men and their scores of 1'000's of horses were not always near at hand, if good order was not maintained, the entire venture would collapse of its own weight under the guns of the enemy.

Schlieffen had it calculated that the German army would need 90 divisions to execute his plan.(It only had 60 in 1905). He concluded that if the right wing did manage to reach Paris, the effort would likely drain it of the strength and mobility needed for a final swing to the east and the climactic battle that was the plan's whole point.

"Before the Germans reach the Somme or the Oise," he wrote when his plan was still in gestation, "they will have realized, like other conquerors before them, that they are too weak for the whole enterprise." Even after Schlieffen's retirement he never stopped tormenting himself with such questions. Part of his legend is that in January 1913, as he lay dying, he became conscious just long enough to say "It must come to a fight. Only keep the right wing strong!"

The younger Moltke, like Schlieffen a bookish and introspective man, inherited not only the plan but his predecessor's obsession with it. By 1911 he decided that it would be unnecessary and unwise to invade Holland; the Germans couldn't take the time to defeat the Dutch army before advancing on France no allow that army to stand undefeated and hostile on the northern edge of the route to Paris. Moltke said, too, that Germany would need neutral Holland as a "windpipe" through which to get access to supplies. In doing so he again exposed his doubts about the plausibility of the entire plan: a campaign that ended in victory after 6 weeks would have no need for a windpipe.

The most challenging aspect of Moltke's change was that it would crowd the armies of the Schlieffen right wing-more than 1/2 a million men with all their artillery and support-into a 12-mile-wide passage south of Holland and north of the Ardennes Forest. This would give them far fewer roads and rail lines to use-no small complication when 100's of 1000's of troops and their supply trains had to be moved great distances as rapidly as possible. It also meant that the Germans would be unable to go around, but would have to attack and destroy, the powerful network of fortresses that the Belgium's had constructed at Liege just inside their border with Germany.

So this meant German mobilization required an immediate invasion of Belgium; Moltke's entire strategy would collapse if the Belgium's were given time to ready their Liege defenses. Moltke also said that Schlieffen's plan "will hardly be possible unless Liege is in our hands. The fortress must therefore be taken at once, the possession of Liege is the sine qua non of our advance."

Moltke came to believe that Germany couldn't afford to concentrate such an overwhelming large part of its forces in the attacking right wing. As the years passed, he altered the distribution of his troops so that the right wing would be only 3x the size of the left, not 7 as Schlieffen had presecribed. In its 1914 iteration the plan entailed positioning 55 divisions north of the fortified city of Metz, which lay directly to the east of Paris, with 23 divisions in a defensive posture farther south. Shclieffen, with fewer divisions to deploy, had assigned 59 to the north and only 9 to the left. This change, though controversial ever since, was certainly rational; after 1910 the French army, like the Russian, had become much more formidable than it had been in Schlieffen's day.

It was bigger, better trained, better equipped, better led, and more professional overall. It was sure to be ready with an offensive of its own, and Moltke and his staff guessed rightly that its attack force would be concentrated somewhere south of Belgium and therefore opposite the relatively weak German left wing. If the French broke threw the German lines, they would be able to swing north, cut the German right wing off from its home base, and achieve their own quick victory.

But in broad terms, and without any apparent enthusiasm or even anything approaching real confidence, Moltke embraced Shclieffen's approach. There is no evidence that he ever seriously considered not keeping it-that he ever thought through, for example, the potentially immense advantages of reverting to his uncle's idea and standing on the defensive in the West at least for a while, forcing the French to attack him if they wanted a war. In 1913 he abandoned an alternative plan that his staff had until then been updating regularly and keeping ready for use-one for directing Germany's offensive capabilities towards Russia. When the crisis came, therefore, he had no alternative.

Perhaps it was because he was unable to think through the ramifications of the strategic situation in Europe(one such being the certain fact that Britain would never have gone to war if France had attacked Germany rather than vice verse). More likely he was in the grip of a fever that infected all the military planners of Europe in the years leading up to 1914, the French especially, but the Germans and others to a more limited extent. This was "the cult of the offensive"-the belief that the only way to succeed in war was to attack your enemy as quickly as possible and then stay on the attack regardless of the consequences. This belief was rooted in what everyone too to be the lessons of the Franco-Prussian War, in which many of the most senior generals of 1914 had taken part at the beginning of their careers. In that war the forces of Napoleon III had allowed the Prussians to seize and keep the initiative, and the results had been disastrous. This probably played some part in Moltke's strategic decisions. It is also possibly true, for all that even Moltke's severest critics really know, that no alternative produced better results.

In the 30 days following the start of the war, mobilization increased the German army from its peace time strength of 761,000 men to slightly more than 2,000,000. This ocean of humanity was organized into 87 infantry divisions averaging some 18,000 men each, plus 11 Calvary divisions. These divisions formed 8 field armies, each commanded by a full general. 7 took up positions along Germany's western border, and the last stood alone in faraway east Prussia with responsibility for holding off whatever Russia threw at it. To the south of east Prussia, separated from it by Russian and Poland, was Austria-Hungary, with an initial mobilized force of 1.3 million men-49 infantry and 11 Calvary divisions under Conrad von Holzendorf. Farther south still was Serbia, with a tough, experienced and almost fanatically dedicated army of some 250,000 troops making up 12 1/2 divisions. Also opposing Germany and Austria was a Russian army whose 3 1/2 million troops were organized into 114 infantry and 36 cavalry divisions and had the potential, given Russia's immense population to grow much larger. This was "the Russian steamroller," the shear size of which made it a chilling threat for the German and Austrian planners. Now to the west, 30 days after mobilization, France had 1.8 million men under arms(all the #'s given here would soon be dwarfed by floods of new volunteers and conscripts) and organized into 90 divisions-80 infantry and 10 Calvary.

And even without possible British and Belgian involvement, therefore, the Germans and Austrians began at an overwhelming manpower disadvantage in the east. In the west the German armies were at best equal in size to those of the French. In their advance on Paris they would be facing the only military organization in the world that was comparable to theirs not only on manpower but in fighting capability as well-a huge modern army whose generals had a secret plan of their own for swift and conclusive victory.

                                            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.

                                                   The Ottoman Turks



 It is one of history's little jokes, surely, that Turkey and the Ottoman Empire that it ruled had no part to play in the July crisis that brought the Great War. For this crisis could never have unfolded as it did if not for the profound impact that the empire of the Turks had had on the development of Eastern Europe. And no one would be affected by the war itself more profoundly than the Turks and the many peoples who, century after century, had been their unhappy subjects.

And with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, was the only reason the Hapsburg where in Bosnia at all, and there could have been no Kingdom of Serbia. There would have been no power vacuum in the Balkans. Russia and Austria-Hungary could never have been pulled into vacuum or into such dangerous conflict with each other.

To go back further, without the rise of the Ottomans the whole bitter saga of the Balkans would have been unimaginably different. The Turks ruled the peninsula for 500 years, reaching at their height westward into Italy, northward into Austria, Hungaryy, and Russia, and all the way around the Black Sea. For a time they seemed destined to conquer the whole Eastern half of Europe, if not the entire continent. When the great war began their empire, while maintaining only a toehold in Europe proper, still extended across the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula.

When the empire reached its pinnacle, its decline began, with the life of a single man, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent(also known as Suleiman the Lawmaker). He ruled from 1520 to 1566 and led the Ottomans to their zenith both culturally and geographically. He was 10 generations removed from the Turkish-Mongol Chieftain named Osman who founded the dynasty 300 years before and give it his name. In everyone of those 10 generations, in a unbroken sequence of achievements that no other family has ever approached, the Ottoman Turks were led by yet another dynamic, heroic, conquering figure. Generation after generation, starting where Osman had 1st emerged from obscurity in what is now Eastern Turkey and from there moving outward in all directions, the dynasty took control of more and more of the world around it. The Sultans forced their way into Europe for the 1st time in 1354, and 99 years later they captured Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire. From the on Constantinople was their home.

The Ottomans continued their expansion for another century after taking Constantinople, conquering among other places all of Eastern Europe, South of the Danube. Suleiman's father, Selin I, doubled the size of the empire by winning a single battle that made him the master of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Algeria. The domain that he passed on to Suleiman included among its major cities, Alexandria, Algiers, Athens, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Smyrna. The Ottomans had become not only the political and military masters of the Islamic world but also-what put their supremacy beyond challenge-the custodians of Mecca and Medina and the other holy places associated with the Prophet Muhammad.

As its power increased, the dynasty evolved into something that was not a family in any ordinary sense of the term, but a chain of fathers and sons who never married. Instead of taking wives, the Sultans kept scores and even 100's of women who were property rather than spouses. These women lived as prisoners in a harem. They were allowed no contact with men except for the rulers who owned them and an army of custodians, many of them black Africans whose sexual organs had been removed surgically.

Suleiman, a contemporary of Henry VIII of England, took this strange heritage to a peak of vitality. Like his forebears, he was a warrior, personally leading his army in 13 campaigns. He pushed deeper into Europe, capturing Belgrade and Budapest and completing the conquest of the Balkans. He besieged Vienna, the keystone of Central Europe, and would have captured it too if torrents of rain had not made it impossible for him to bring his heavy guns north.

Suleiman had some 300 concubines, as well as a promising young son and heir named Mustafa, when he was given a red-haired Russian girl named Ghowren, who came to be known as Roxelana. She came into his harem as part of his share of the booty from a slave gathering raid into what is now Poland, and she must have been a remarkable creature.(Not surprisingly, in light of the power she aquired in Constantinople, she eventually won a 2nd new name "the witch".) Almost from the day of her arrival, Suleiman never slept with another woman. Eventually and amazingly, he did something that no Sultan had done in centuries; he married. Their love story would have been one of the great ones if it hadn't eneded up taking the dynasty and the empire in such a sordid direction.

Mustafa gave every indication of developing into yet another mighty branch on the family tree. At an early age he showed himself a bold military leader adored by his troops, a capable provincial governor, and a popular hero. But he stood in the way of the son whom Roxelana had bourne to(presumably) Suleiman, and so he was doomed. Working her wiles, Roxelana persuaded Suleiman that Mustafa was plotting against him. (Even though he wasn't) With his father looking on, Mustafa was overpowered and strangled by 5 professional executioners who's tongues had been slit and eardrums broken so that they would hear no secrets and could never speak of what they saw. And when Suleiman died some years later, master of an empire of almost increduble size and power, he was succeeded by Roxelana's son, Selin II. Nothing was ever the same again.

Selin the Sot was short and fat and a drunk. He never saw a battlefield and died after 8 years on the throne by falling down and fracturing his skull in his marble bath. His son, Murad III, was also a drunk and an opium addict as well; during a reign of 20 years he sired 103 children and apparently did little else. His heir, Mahomet III, begin his reign by ordering all fo his many brothers, the youngest of them mere children, put to death, thereby introducing that custom into Ottoman royal culture. Having done so he followed his father in devoting the rest of his life to capulation. And so it went. Every Sultan from Roxelana's son forward was a monster of degeneracy or a repulsive weakling or both.

The abruptness and premanence of the change, the sharpness of the contrast between the murdered Mustafa and his half brother Selin II, has give rise to speculation that perhap's Roxelana's son was not Suleiman's son at all.

In the post-Suleiman empire, a new breed of craven Sultans came to live in terror of being overthrown by rivals from within the dynasty. Appalling new traditions emerged, to be observed whenever one of them died. All the women of the deceased Sultan would be moved to a distant place and kept in even deeper solitude for the rest of their miserable lives. Any one happened to be pregnant would be murdered and the younger brothers and half-brothers of the new monarch were murdered as well.

The rulers erected a windowless building called the Cage in which thier heirs were confined from early childhood until they died or were put to death or, having been taught nothing about anything, were released to take their turns on the throne. The result was as inevitable as it was monstrous; an empire ruled year after year and finally century after century by utterly ignorant, utterly incompetent, sometimes half-imbecilic, half-mad men, some of whom spent decades in the Cage before their release and all of whom, after their release, were free to do absolutely anything they wanted, no matter how vicious, for as long as they remained alive. They commonly indulged their freedom to kill or maim for any reason-for playing the wrong music or for smoking, for example- or for no reason at all.

Throughout the 3 1/2 centuries from the death of Suleiman until the Great War, only one Sultan displayed some of the fire and strength of the men who built the empire. This was Murad III, who reigned from 1623 to 1640. He became Sultan when he was only 10 years old- to young to have been incapacitated by the cage-and he grew into a man of immense courage and physical power. He was the 1st Sultan since Suleiman to be a soldier, leading his army into Persia, where he savagely put down an uprising. He was also even more insanely cruel than most Sultans. In just 1 year of his reign, 1637, some 25,000 of the empire's subjects were executed, many of them by Murad's own hand. He claimed the right to kill 10 innocent people per day, and occasionally he would sit on the wall of his palace shooting randomly at passersby. At night he would make incognito visits to the taverns of Constantinople, where anyone found smoking would be executed on the spot.

Almost uniquely among the Ottomans, Murad produced no children, and on his deathbed he ordered the death of his brother and heir, Ibrahim, who had been living in the Cage from the age of 2. This order was not obeyed, Ibrahim being the last living member of the dynasty, but from that point there were few further signs of vitality in the Ottoman line. Ibrahim devoted himself to building up a harem of 280 young women. The acting on a dubious report that one of these women had become romantically involved with a eunich, so Murad had all of them drowned.

So it was not surprising that the empire rotted from within under this kind of leadership. And became an inviting target. Young General Napoleon Bonaparte 1st showed Europe just how impotent the Ottomans had become when in 1798 he invaded and almost effortlessley conquered Egypt. But he was driven out of Egypt by the British, with no help from the Turks. From this point on, the survival of the Sultans and their decaying empire depended less on themselves than on the jealousies and rivalries of the European powers.

The Ottomans hung on through the 19th century and that was only because Britain and France kept Russia from finishing them off. Even so, the 100 years leading up to 1914 brought uninterrupted losing wars; with the empire's own Turkish satraps as they tried for autonomy in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere; with Arab Chieftans seeking independence; with Persia; with the Christian peoples of the Balkans; and-four times between 1806 and 1878 with Russia hungering for Constantinople.

In 1830 the French seized control of Algeria in North Africa. At about the same time the British began building a power base in Arabi and the Persian Gulf. In 1853 Russia, tempted by what appeared to be easy pickings, invaded the Ottoman provinces nsouth of the Danube. The Ottoman presence in Europe might have come to an end then if not for the Crimean War, in which Britain and France intervened to stop the Russians.

Now Britain, fearful that its postion in the eastern Mediteranean and control of India might be lost if Russia broke through to the south, saved the Ottomans from destruction yet again in 1878. But by that time several European coutries, Britain included, were feasting on the Turkish empire's extremites. Austria-Hungary took possession of Bosnia and Herzehovina, literally preparing the ground for the Sarajevo assassination. France, with British support took Tunisia and Morocco in North Africa. Britain took Egypt and Cypus, and finally even Italy reached across the Mediteranean to grab Tripoli(today's Libya), along with islands in the Aregean and Mediterranean. Germany meanwhile, having arrived too late to share in the plunder, focused on building ties with the Turks. They began work on a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway and Kaiser Wilhelm II paid a state visit to Constantinople and Jerusalem.

In 1908, the year when Autria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, a group of would be reformers called the Young Turks(Their leader and army officer named Enver Pasha) seized control of the government in Constaninople and introduced a constitution. In 1912 the 1st Balkan War drove the Turks almost entirely out of the Balkans. This, and the failure of the Constantinople regime to deliver the reforms expected of it or to stop the disintegration of the empire, gravely damaged the prestige of the ruling faction, which was replaced by nationalist extremist(once again led by Enver). Some of it was regained the following year, however, when the 2nd Balkan War led to Turkey's recovery of the city of Adrianople on the European mainland. The Sultan was at least as ridiculous a figure as the sorriest of his predeceddors. No one even pretended that he matter.

In January 1914, Evner Pasha left the army to become minister of war, and in July he took his empire into a secret defensive alliance with Germany. Astonishingly in light of all the humiliations it had experienced, the Ottoman Empire of July 1914 was still bigger geographically than France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary combined. It still ruled Arabia, which soon would emerge as the world's greatest source of oil; If war did erupt no one knew if the empire would enter it or, if so, on which side. It would be a coveted ally- or a rich, probably easy conquest.

                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill 

Born November 30, 1874 was a British politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th Century. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British Prime Minister to have received the Noble Prize in Literature, and was the 1st person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the Spencer family. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, The Sudan, and the 2nd Boa War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.

At the forefront of politics for 50 years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the 1st World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of the Asquith Liberal Government. During the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He then briefly resumed active army service on the Western front as Commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliars. He returned to government as Minister of Manitions, Secretary of State for War, and Secretary of State for Air. After the war, Churchill served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative Government of 1924-1929, controversially returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure on the U.K. economy. Also controversial was his opposition to increased home rule for India and his resistance to the 1936 abdication of Edward VIII.

Out of office and politically "in the wilderness" during the 1930's, Churchill took the lead in warning about Nazi Germany and in campaigning for rearonament. On the outbreak of the 2nd World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chambalain on May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister. His steadfast refusal to consider defeat, surrender, or compromise peace helped British resistance, especially during the difficult early days of the War when Britain stood alone among European countries in its active opposition to Adolf Hitler. Churchill was particularly noted for his speeches and radio broadcasts, which helped inspire the British people. He led Britain as Prime Minister until victory over Nazi Germany had been secured.

After the Conservative Party lost the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the Labour Government. After winning the 1951 election, he again became Prime Minister, before retiring in 1955. Upon his death on January 24th, 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honor of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of world statesman in history. Named the Greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll, Churchill is widely regarded as being among the influential people in British history, consistently ranking well in opinion polls of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           General Helmuth von Moltke 

Born May 23rd 1848, was also known as Moltke the Younger, he was a nephew of Field Marshal Count Moltke and served as the Chief of the German General Staff from 1906-1914. The Moltke's are often differentiated as Moltke the Elder and Moltke the Younger. Moltke the Younger's role in the developments of German war plans and the instigation of the 1st World War is extremely controversial.

Helmuth von Moltke was born in Mechlenburg-Scheverin and named after his uncle, Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke, future Field Marshal and hero of the wars of Unification. During the Franco-Prussian War, Moltke served with the 7th Gredadia Regiment, and was cited for bravery. He attended the war academy between 1875 and 1878 and joined the General Staff in 1880. In 1882 he became personal adjutant to his uncle, then Chief of the General Staff. In 1891, on the death of his uncle, Moltke became aide-de-camp to Wilhelm II, thus becoming part of the Emperor's inner circle. In the late 1890's he commanded first a brigade and then a division, finely being promoted to Lieutenant General in 1902. In 1904 Moltke was made Quartermaster General; in effect, Deputy Chief on Schbieffen's retirement. His appointed was controversial then and remains so today. The other likely candidates for the position were Hans Hartwig von Beseler, Karl von Bulow, and Colman Freiherr von der Goltz. Critics charge that Moltke gained the position on the strength of his name and friendship with the Kaiser. Certainly Moltke was far closer to the Kaiser than the other candidates. Historians argue, however, that Beseler was too close to Schbieffen to have succeeded him, while Bulow and Goltz were too independent for Wilhelm to have accepted them. Indeed, Motlke's friendship with the Kaiser permitted him latitude that others could not have enjoyed. Goltz, at least, saw nothing wrong with Moltke's performance as Chief.

But do to the stress of World War I, Moltke's health took a bad decline, so on October 25th, 1914, he was succeeded by Erich von Falkenhayn.

After being succeeded by Falkenhayn, Moltke was entrusted in Berlin with the office of Chief of the Home Substitute for the General Staff. Which had the task of organizing and forwarding the reserves and controlling the territorial army corps, corresponding to those at the front. Moltke's health continued to deteriorate and he died in Berlin on June 28th, 1916. He left a pamphlet entitled Die Schuld am Kriege(The Blame for the War), which his widow Eliza intended to publish in 1919. She was dissuaded from doing so because of the problems this might cause. The pamphlet was designed to show the "chaotic" nature of events leading up to the war, in order to counter allied accusations of deliberate warmongering in Germany. However, army Chiefs and the German Foreign Ministry were disturbed by its contents. General Wilhelm von Dommes was sent to advise Eliza von Moltke against publication. Having read the pamphlet he confided to his dairy that it "contains nasty stuff". Instead Eliza published the blander Erinnerwngen, Briefe, Dokumente, a collection of her husband's letters and documents. Other material was archived. Some was later destroyed in World War II, and the original pamphlet has not been since accessible. 

                                                         Friday July 31


When they learned of Russia's mobilization-unofficial reports reached Berlin almost immediately-the German generals intensified their demands. Because Germany continued to be the only European power not to have undertaken any military preparations at all, and the situation was becoming intolerable. Even Britain was on the move, First Lord of the Admiralty Chruchill having ordered the Grand Fleet to take up a position in the North Sea from which it could respond quickly to any forays by the German High Seas Fleet and protect France's channel ports.

So many holes were appearing in Germany's war plans. No one has foreseen a situation in which Russia mobilized without declaring war, or in which war erupted between Germany and Russia with France waiting on the sidelines. No one had a clue as what to do. The generals, of course-Chief of Staff Moltke included-were all but howling for action. The generals argued that Germany was in a better position to win a 2-front war now, than it would be after a few more years of French and Russia military buildup, and with every passing day of delay it was being drawn deeper into a death trap. The Kaiser refused mobilization, but agreed to declare a State of Impending War, which put in motion a variety of measures(securing borders, railways, and Germany's postal, telephone, and telegraph systems, and recalling soldiers on leave) in the expectation that mobilization would follow within 48 hours. He did this with the same deep reluctance shown by Franz Joseph when asked to declare war on Serbia, and by Tsar Nicholas when begged for mobilization. Like his fellow emperors, he yielded only because the military men, now taking charge in Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna, were insisting that there was no alternative.

Bethmann too, desperately worried about keeping Britain out of any war and bringing Italy in on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, agreed only when, minutes before noon, the earlier reports of Russia's mobilization were confirmed.

Berlin continued to ask Vienna to demonstrate some willingness to negotiate on the basis of various proposals being offered by London and St. Petersburg(such proposals had become numerous and complex), but Berchtold maintained his silence. Short-circuiting diplomatic channels, Kaiser sent a telegram directly to Franz Joseph, requesting his intervention. After conferring with Berchtold and Conrad, the Hapsburg Emperor replied that Vienna could not do more than it had already done. He didn't bother to explain that Austria-Hungary too was now caught in the snares of its own military planning. Just as Russia had been unable to limit its mobilization to Austria because(as the generals claimed) it had no plan that would permit it to do so, and just as Germany had no way of mobilizing without attacking its neighbors, Austria had no plan that would send its army into Belgrade but no farther.

But Conrad feared, as the Russian generals had feared before their mobilization and as Germany's generals would soon be fearing with equally fateful consequences, that attempting to change his arrangements could lead only to disorder. Vienna couldn't regard this as a tolerable option with Serbia mobilizing and the Russians assembling immense forces along their common border.

But Conrad was not in touch with reality. Even as war with Russia became likely, he remained obsessed with punishing Serbia. Just as foolishly, he clung to the delusion that Italy would be entering the war on the side of the Central Powers, providing hundreds of 1,000's of additional troops.

All options except the military ones were shutting down. Power was moving into the hands of the soldiers and away from the diplomats and politicians. The soldiers were motivated mainly by fear. And as the Austrian Ambassador to France had observed on Thursday in a message to Berchtold, "Fear is a bad counselor."

In a display of German diplomacy at it ham-handed worst, Berlin informed London that if Britain remained neutral, Germany would promise to restore the borders of both France and Belgium(though not any overseas colonies that Germany might seize at the end of whatever war might ensue), this was ominous-no one had even mentioned Belgium until now.

Grey saw the offer as nothing better than a crude attempt at bribery, an insult to be rejected out of hand. his anger is transparent in his instructions to the British Ambassador in Berlin. "You must inform the German Chancellor that his proposal that we should bind ourselves to neutrality on such terms can not for a moment be entertained. He asks us in effect to engage to stand by while French colonies are taken and France is beaten so long as Germany does not take French territory as distinct from the colonies. From the material point of view such a proposal is unacceptable, for France could be crushed as to lose her position as a Great Power, and become subordinate to Germany policy without further territory in Europe being taken from her. But apart from that, for us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France would be a disgrace from which the good name of this country would never recover."

To this warning he added assurances that German assistance in averting war would be rewarded. "If the peace of Europe can be preserved and this crisis be safely passed," he said "my own effort would be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no hostile or aggressive policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately."

He appeared to be pointing toward fundamental changes in the overall system of European alliances, changes calculated to make this the last crisis of its kind. The implication was that until now Grey hadn't understood the intensity of Germany's fear of encirclement, but that his eyes had been opened.

Grey than took the next step that would give Bethmann much reason to regret having broached the question of Belgium. With the approval of the cabinet, he asked France and Germany to declare their intention to respect Belgian's neutrality in case of war. France was able to agree without difficulty. France's plan for an offensive against Germany were focused far to the south of Belgium in the area of Alsace-Lorriane, and Poincare understood that British support in case of war would be infinitely more valuable than any possible use of Belgium territory.

Germany, trapped by the inflexibility of its mobilization plan, was unable to respond at all. Thus was the 1st major step taken toward Britain's entry into the war. Germany now sent what would become known as its double ultimatum to France and Russia. This message warning that German mobilization "must follow in case Russia does not suspend every war measure against Austria-Hungary and ourselves withing 12 hours." France was asked for a declaration of neutrality. The deadline for responses was Saturday afternoon.

The double ultimatum was in part Berlin's desperate final effort to escape mobilization and in part effort to precipitate a breakdown in diplomatic relations to help justify the westward invasion that must follow mobilization. As directed to Russia, it was a straightforward request for cooperation. As directed to France, it was a kind of wild theatrical gesture aimed at making clear to the world that if war with Russia came, Germany and France would be at war also. It was intended to explain, in the court of public opinion, a German attack on France.

But what it really looked like was overbearing German bluster. The likelihood that Berlin never expected Paris to accept it is supported by the outrageous additional demand that the German Ambassador to France was instructed to make in case of acceptance; France's temporary surrender of its great fortress at Verdun and Toul, in return for a promise that they would be returned at the end of Germany's fight with Russia.

Now came the final flurry of Nicholas's-Kaiser's telegrams. The Kaiser told the Tsar that he was continuing to try to mediate in Vienna, and that "the peace of Europe may still be maintained by you, if Russia will agree to stop the military measures which must threaten Germany and Austria-Hungary."

Once again, messages between the two emperors crossed in Midair. Nicholas told Kaiser that it was "technically impossible" to stop Russia's mobilization but that Russia did not want war and still did not see war as unavoidable. "So long as the negotiations with Austria on Serbia's account are taking place, my troops shall not take any provocative action. I give you my solemn word for this. I put all my trust in God's mercy and hope in your successful mediation in Vienna for the welfare of our countries and for the peace of Europe."

As soon as the Kaiser's message reached the Tsar, Nicholas sent back an answer. He said he understood that Russian mobilization might require Germany to mobilize as well. He said he accepted this, but it need not mean war. He asked the Kaiser for "the same guarantee from you as I gave you, that these measures do not mean war and that we shall continue negotiating for the benefit of our countries and universal peace dear to all our hearts. Our long proved friendship must succeed, with God's help, in avoiding bloodshed. Anxiously, full confidence await you answer."

It was obviously heartfelt and must have seemed the richest of opportunities. But nothing would come of it. Because of all that had already happened, nothing could.

                                                  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.