I

ORIGINS OF MODERN WARS

General editor: Harry Hearder

Titles already published:

THE ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

James Joll

THE ORIGINS OF
THE FIRST WORLD WAR

THE ORIGINS OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI WARS

Ritchie Ovendale
THE ORIGINS OF THE RUSS--JAPANESE WAR
Ian Nish

James Joll

/?yy

pop
"MMr
LONGMAN
London and New York

'3

Longman Group Limited

Longman House, Burnt Mill. Harlow
Essex CM20 2JE, England
Associated companies throughout the world

CONTENTS

Published in the United States of America

by Longman Inc., New York
James Joll 1984

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying; recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the Publishers.
Firstpublished1984
Fifth impression 1985
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Joll, James
The origins of the First World War.
- (Origins of modern wars)
1. World War, 1914-1918- Causes
I. Title
II. Series
940.3'11
D511
ISBN 0-582-49016-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Joll, James.
The origins of the First World War.
(Origins of modern wars)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1.World War, 1914-1918-Causes. 1.Title.
II. Series.
D511.J735 1984
940.3' 1
83-17589
ISBN 0-582-49016-2(p.b.k.)

List of maps
Editor'sforeword
Preface

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Introduction
The July crisis, 1914
The alliance system and the old diplomacy
Militarism, armaments and strategy
The primacy of domestic politics
The international economy
Imperial rivalries
The mood of 1914
Conclusion

Furtherreading

Maps
Index

vi
vii
X

1
9
34
58
92
123
148
171
201
208
215
219

Printed in Great Britain by

Robert Hartnoll (1985) Limited,
Bodmin, Cornwall.
,

l _

.. i

!_

i ' The
7.

See e. . Pierre Renouvin, Les Origineimmediatesde la Gi

1927); rnadotte E. Schmitt, The Comi of the War 1914,
York 1928 Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of e World War, 2
York 1928) ; fred von Wegerer, Der Ausbrtxt des Weltkri
t r1rm
1 .\- Alhrtni I erictni Tn
II IaIIIDurg
Lg.Ul
lUtilll,
L
tIUs
.cu
,
...
vols (Milan 1942 3).
For example Roha Butler, The Roots of National cialism (London
1941).
der Weltmacht (Diisseldorf 1961), Eng. tr.
Fritz Fischer, Griff n
Germany's Aims in theXirst World War (London 1972),Krieg der
1974).
Illusionen (Diisseldorf 1969 Eng. tr. War of Illusions (Londs
For the controversy over Fi ,her's views, see e.g. John Mos e The
Politics of Illusion: The Fischerh ontroversy in German Historiog hy
r
ondon 1975); H. W. Koch (ed. The Origins of the First World
(L don 1972); Wolfgang Schiede (ed.) Erster Weltkrieg: Ursachen,
Entslhung und Kriegsziele (Cologne 1 9).
See thewo volumes of essays celebratin ischer's sixty-fifth and seventieth birth ays: Imanuel Geiss and Bernd irgen Wendt (eds) Deutschland in der eltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrh derts (Disseldorf 1973);
Dirk Stegmah and Peter-Christian Witt (eds) ndustrielle Gesellschaft
und politisches stem (Bonn 1978), and especialy the works of HansUlrich Wehler, e.. Bismarck und der mperialis s (Cologne 1969);
Das deutsche Kaiseiich 1871-1918 (G6ttingen 197
Arno J. Mayer, 'Integ al crises and war since 1870' inCharles L. Bertrand (ed) Revolutiona Situations in Europe (Montrea 1977) p. 231.
's view that the war was a last atempt by the
For a development of
old European aristocracy toreserve its position, see his The ersistence
of the Old Regime: Europe to e Great War (New York 1981).
Luigi Albertini, The Origins of e War of 1914, Vol. III (Eng. f . 1957)
p. 78.
1954) p yondon_
Isaiah Berlin, HistoricalInevitabi
)

8.
9.

10.

11.

12.
13.

0'9
-01

ns of the First World War

u3,

Chapter 2

THE JULY CRISIS 1914

''

On 28 June 1914 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of

Austria-Hungary, was assassinated by a member of a group of Serb
and Croat nationalists. He was on a visit to Sarajevo, the capital of the
formerly Turkish province of Bosnia which had been administered by
Austria-Hungary since 1878 and annexed to the Monarchy in 1908.
The murder of prominent people - kings, presidents, leading
politicians - had been for some three decades a familiar technique used
by groups and individuals anxious to draw attention to what they
believed to be national or social injustices, but no previous assassination within living memory had provoked a major international crisis, as
the killing of the Archduke was to do. To understand why this was so,
we must look at the development of the July crisis and at the crucial
decisions which led from an isolated act of terrorism to the outbreak of
a world war. In this chapter we will try to give a narrative of the
decisions in terms of the way in which the participants themselves
described and discussed them. Later in this book we shall examine
some of the explanations at a deeper level which have attempted to go
beyond the evidence in the diplomatic and political documents on
which this account is based, but for the moment we will look at what
the responsible political leaders said they were trying to achieve in
their handling of the crisis and the reasons they themselves gave at the
time to justify these decisions.
The governments directly involved at first were those of AustriaHungary and Serbia, since it was immediately assumed by the Austrian
authorities that the assassins had been operating from inside the
kingdom of Serbia and with the connivance of the Serbian government
and officials. Ever since 1903, when a new ruling dynasty had seized
power in Serbia with the support of a group of intensely nationalist
officers determined to expand Serbia's frontiers so as to include those
Serbs still living under foreign rule, the Emperor Franz Joseph and his
advisers had become increasingly worried by the attraction which
Serbia could exercise over the Southern Slavs - Croats as well as Serbs
- within the Monarchy.
9

"

The origins of the First World War

The July crisis, 1914

letter from Franz Joseph to the Kaiser which was delivered on 5 July.
After lunch in the royal palace at Potsdam, the Kaiser assured the
Austrian envoy that Austria could count on full German support even
if Russia were to be involved. On 7 July the Austro-Hungarian council
of ministers met to consider the reply from Berlin and to decide on the
next step. It was now that some of the reservations of Count Stephen
Tisza, the Hungarian Premier, were expressed: but the decision of the
meeting was to go ahead with some sort of measures against Serbia.
Berchtold then set out to report to the Emperor, who was spending the
summer as usual at the resort of Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut. Over
the next week there were further discussions, and Tisza's hesitations
were finally overcome, so that on 14 July the Austro-Hungarian
government were able to agree on a draft ultimatum to be sent to
Serbia, the text of which was finally approved on 19 July. The note
demanded that Serbia should agree to a number of Austrian conditions
including the suppression of anti-Austrian propaganda in Serbia, the
dissolution of the Serbian nationalist association Narodna Odbrana,
the purging of officers and officials who were guilty of propaganda
against Austria, the arrest of named officers suspected of aiding and
abetting the conspirators who murdered the Archduke and the tightening up of controls on the Serbian-Austro-Hungarian border. It also
demanded that representatives of the Austro-Hungarian government
should participate in the enquiry which the Serbs were to carry out into
the origins of the assassination plot, as well as in the suppression of
subversive activities directed against the Austro-Hungarian state. This
stiff list of demands was to be handed to the Serbian government on 23
July and they were to be obliged to reply within forty-eight hours.
Throughout these days the German leaders repeated on several
occasions their support for Austria-Hungary and pressed on the
Austrians the advantages of rapid action. The Austrian ambassador in
Berlin reported that government circles there believed that the
moment was a favourable one even in the event of Russian intervention, since Russia was not yet fully prepared militarily and not
nearly as strong as she was likely to be in a few years. At the same time
Jagow, the German State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, while realizing
Austria's internal weakness, thought that Germany must support her
ally at all costs if Austria was to survive as a Great Power and an
effective partner in the alliance. Jagow also hoped, as the Austrian
leaders did, that vigorous action would make the Russians less rather
than more likely to intervene. While the discussions about the precise
terms of the ultimatum were going on in Vienna, the allies in Berlin
were therefore repeatedly urging the need for action and leaving their
own willingness to risk war in no doubt, and they even showed some
anxiety at the delay in despatching the ultimatum.
So far, during the three weeks or so since the Archduke's murder,
there was little popular awareness of any impending international

The survival of the Habsburg Monarchy was believed to depend, if

not on solving the problem of the subject nationalities which may well
have been impossible, at least in keeping them in what one Austrian
statesman had called 'a balanced state of mutual dissatisfaction'.' Any
move by the Serbians to encourage separatist national feelings among
the Southern Slavs inside the Monarchy was therefore seen as a direct
threat to the existence of the Austro-Hungarian state. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand seemed to provide an excellent excuse for
taking some sort of action against Serbia in order to remove this threat.
During the days immediately after the murder, the Austro-Hungarian
government was discussing what form this action should take. There
was an additional argument for vigorous action against Serbia in that
the Austro-Hungarians had been unable to prevent the Serbs from
winning substantial territorial gains in the two Balkan wars of 1912-13,
so that Serbia was by 1914 considerably larger than it had been two
years before.
The solution proposed by the Chief of Staff, Franz Baron Conrad
von H6tzendorf, was to call for immediate mobilization against Serbia
so as to force the Serbian government to exercise more control over the
terrorist groups and to recognize that any subversive action against
Austria must be abandoned. There were two arguments against this
course. One, soon abandoned, was that the threat of military action
against Serbia might provoke other subject nationalities in the
Monarchy, especially the Czechs, into attempting a revolution. The
other, advanced by Stephen Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, was
that there were quite enough Serbs in Austria-Hungary already (and
especially in the Hungarian half of the Monarchy), so that in no
circumstances must action against Serbia involve the annexation of
Serb territory and increase the number of Serbs directly under AustroHungarian rule.
The success of any action against Serbia with the intention of reducing her to the position of a satellite state depended on this being
managed in such a way as to avoid provoking a major international
crisis in which Russia might intervene in support of Serbia. From the
start the Austro-Hungarian government was aware of this danger, but
they hoped that Russian intervention could be prevented if Austria
had a firm promise of German support - and in 1908 at the moment of
the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia, Russia had given way
when Germany made it clear that she was backing Austria - or else
believed that the risk of war with Russia was one which had to be run
even though it was a risk to meet which no effective military plans had
been made.
Immediately after the Archduke's funeral, therefore, the AustroHungarian Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, and Conrad, the Chief
of the General Staff, had decided to ask for German support, and the
head of Berchtold's private office was sent to Berlin with a personal
10

11

II

pI

I;"

The origins of the First World War

crisis, and those Europeans who could afford it set off on their summer
holidays as usual. Moreover, the Austro-Hungarian government and
their German allies had two good reasons for delaying the despatch of
the ultimatum to Serbia. First, this would give more time for the
completion of the harvest before the disruption to agriculture which
mobilization was bound to cause. Secondly, the despatch of the ultimatum on 23 July would ensure that it did not arrive in Belgrade during
the visit to St Petersburg of the President of the French Republic,
Raymond Poincar6, and his Prime Minister, Ren6 Viviani, which had
been arranged some time before as part of a regular series of meetings
between the French and their Russian allies and which was planned to
take place between 2() and 23 July, since, as Berchtold put it to the
German ambassador in Vienna 'under the influence of champagne
. a fraternal relationship might be celebrated which would
influence and possibly determine the attitude of both countries. It
would be good if the toasts were over before the transmission of the
ultimatum.'2
Sazonov, the Russian Foreign Minister, had gone to his country
estate from 14 to 20 July for a short holiday before receiving the French
visitors. But already before the arrival of Poincar6 and Viviani on 20
July, the Russian government was beginning to suspect that the Austrians were preparing some sort of decisive action against Serbia and
Sazonov was already thinking that Russia might have to take some
precautionary military measures. They had broken the cipher used by
the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry and were presumably aware
of the contents of the telegrams between Vienna and the embassy in St
Petersburg. In any case, by 16 July the Italian ambassador to Russia
was warning a senior official in the Russian Foreign Office that
'Austria was capable of taking an irrevocable step with regard to
Serbia based on the belief that, although Russia would make a verbal
protest, she would not adopt forcible measures for the protection of
Serbia. . .'.3 And on the same day the Russian ambassador in Vienna
was reporting much the same thing. It was therefore in an atmosphere
of some apprehension and uncertainty that Poincar6 arrived in Russia
on the afternoon of 20 July.
We know surprisingly little of the conversations between the leaders
of the French and Russian governments. The French representatives
had been briefed on a number of points by their foreign office, and
especially on some questions affecting French business enterprises in
Russia. The German ambassador reported that, although Poincare
was treated with great ceremony, there was little popular enthusiasm
when he appeared in public, while a printers' strike reduced press
comment on the visit. But both the Germans and the Austrians were
worried that the nationalist and anti-German figures in St Petersburg,
such as the Grand Duke Nicholas, whose Montenegrin wife had passionate pro-Serb feelings, reinforced by the French ambassador,
12

1u_

The July crisis. 1914

Maurice Paleologue, might be effectively influencing the decisions
taken; and even if nothing concrete was in fact decided, the visit gave
the impression of close and cordial co-operation between the two
governments. Poincar6, Viviani and their party left by sea late in the
evening of 23 July. Earlier that afternoon the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum had been presented in Belgrade to those Serbian ministers who
were available at short notice to receive it.
Although rumours of a dramatic move by Austria-Hungary had
been circulating for some days and had been repeated in St Petersburg
during the French visit, and although by 22 July some action was
generally believed to be imminent, the publication of the term..s of the
Austrian ultimatum and the shortness of its forty-eight-hour time limit
came as a great shock. 'C'estla guerre europeenne', Sazonov exclaimed
when he heard the news on the morning of 24 July,4 and Sir Edward
Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, described the Austro-Hungarian
note as 'the most formidable document I had ever seen addressed by
one State to another that was independent'.' The reaction of the Serb
government was, not surprisingly, one of confusion and dismay. They
were in the midst of a domestic political crisis (see Ch. 4) and were
about to hold general elections. Their military position had not yet
recovered from the efforts of the two Balkan wars. At the moment
when the ultimatum was delivered, the Prime Minister, Nicholas
PasiC, was away on an election campaign and indeed planning to take a
few days holiday. It was only with some difficulty that he was contacted, and he arrived back in Belgrade early in the morning of 25 July.
In the meantime, the instinct of the Serbian cabinet was to play for
time and to place their hopes in the possibility of mediation, perhaps
by the King of Italy, an uncle of the Prince Regent Alexander. But
because of the rigidity of the Austrian time limit, their immediate
problem was to decide whether they had any choice other than to
accept the ultimatum in its entirety. There is some evidence to suggest
that they considered doing this: but, in the event, the reply they sent,
while extremely conciliatory in tone, raised objections to the participation of Austro-Hungarian officials in the Serbian enquiry into the
plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. This was enough; for the AustroHungarian minister in Belgrade had been given precise instructions
that any Serbian reply other than unconditional acceptance of the
terms of the ultimatum would lead to the breaking off of diplomatic
relations. The Serbian reply was delivered to the Austrian representative, Baron Giesl, just before the expiry of the time limit at 6 p.m. on
25 July. Giesl at once declared it unsatisfactory and left by the 6.30
train for Vienna.
There has been much speculation about Serbian policy in these
crucial forty-eight hours and the topic is still one of controversy among
Yugoslav politicians and scholars. Some people have argued that it was
Pasi's fear that Austrian participation in the enquiry would reveal the
13

The originsof the First World War

extent of the Serbian government's complicity or connivance in the
assassination plot which made him insist on the unacceptability of that
part of the ultimatum. Others have suggested that it was an offer of
Russian support which changed the mood of the Serbian ministers
from one of resigned acceptance of the whole ultimatum to its
acceptance with reservations. Certainly, on 24 July the Regent of
Serbia addressed a personal appeal to the Tsar in which he complained
that the Austrian terms were unnecessarily humiliating and the time
limit too short. 'We cannot defend ourselves. Therefore we pray Your
Majesty to lend help as soon as possible. Your Majesty has given so
many proofs of your previous good will and we confidently hope that
this appeal will find an echo in your generous Slav heart. '" Even before
this message was received at St Petersburg, it was clear what the
Russian response would be. As soon as Sazonov heard the terms of the
ultimatum to Serbia from the Austrian ambassador, he accused the
Austro-Hungarian government of deliberately provoking war: 'Volus
7
mettez le feu d l'Europe!'
He at once consulted the Chief of Staff,
General Yanushkevich, with the result that on the next day, 25 July, the
Tsar authorized preparations for partial mobilization, though the
actual orders for mobilization were not yet issued. These measures
were reported enthusiastically by the Serbian minister in St Petersburg
to his government in Belgrade.'
It was on 24 July - nearly four weeks after the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand - that the scale and implications of the crisis began to be
realized outside Berlin and Vienna. Throughout the crisis the German
and Austrian governments had accepted the risk that the Austrian
demands on Serbia might well lead to the intervention of Russia which
in turn might lead to a European war. However, they had believed that
the more decisive Austrian action was and the firmer Germany's
backing of her ally, the less likely the Russians would be to intervene.
Yet the risk had to be run: by the Austro-Hungarians because, as Tisza
put it to the German ambassador, 'The Monarchy must take an energetic decision to show its power of survival and to put an end to
intolerable conditions in the south-east',' and by the Germans because
many of the responsible leaders shared the view summed up by the
Bavarian representative in Berlin after talks with the Under-Secretary
and other senior officials in the Foreign Ministry that 'people are of the
opinion that it is a moment of destiny for Austria and for this reason we
have unhesitatingly agreed to any measures which might be decided on
there, even at the risk of danger of a war with Russia'. ' Over the next
few days after the presentation of the Austrian note in Belgrade on 23
July, it became increasingly clear that those people in Berlin and
Vienna who thought that vigorous action by Austria and a clear
declaration of support by Germany would deter Russia were deeply
mistaken.
By 24 July the British government began to be seriously worried

14

The Jluly crisis, 1914

about the situation. On the previous day, Count Mensdorff, the
Austro-Hungarian ambassador in London, had given Grey privately
some idea of the Austrian demands and in particular of the time limit
which was to be set for Serbia's acceptance of them. For a moment
Grey had a frightening picture of the implications:
The possible consequences of the present situation were terrible. If as many
as four great Powers of Europe - let us say Austria, France. Russia and
Germany - were engaged in war, it seemed to me that it must involve the
expenditure of so vast a sum of money and such an interference with trade,
that a war would be accompanied or followed by a complete collapse of
European credit and industry. In these days, in great industrial states, this
would mean a state of things worse than that of 1848, and, irrespective of
who were victors in the war, many things would be completely swept away."
The result was that on the next day Grey began to explore the
possibility that England, Germany, France and Italy 'who had not
direct interests in Serbia should act together for the sake of peace,
simultaneously in Vienna and St Petersburg'.'' By the time he had
spoken to the French and German ambassadors, Grey was already
beginning to assume that a war between Austria and Serbia could not
be localized, and he spent most of the next day trying to arrange some
sort of joint mediation before setting off for his usual weekend's fishing
in Hampshire. On 26 July in the afternoon he authorized, from his
cottage at Itchen Abbas, the issue of a formal invitation to the governments of Italy, Germany and France to instruct their ambassadors in
London to join him in a conference 'in order to endeavour to find an
issue to prevent complications'. '
By the time Grey's invitation was despatched two of the countries
directly concerned in the crisis were already planning military action,
even though no irrevocable step had yet been taken. On 25 July, the
German government was pressing for immediate Austrian military
operations against Serbia because 'any delay in commencing military
operations is regarded . . . as a great danger because of the interference of other powers'. 4 On the next day, however, General
Conrad, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, had to point
out that his mobilization plans did not allow for an attack on Serbia
before 12 August: and this raised the question of whether there was
any point in a declaration of war if it were not accompanied by
immediate action. By 27 July the views of Berchtold prevailed and it
was decided that a formal declaration of war on Serbia should be made
on 28 July; and Berchtold at least seems to have hoped that it might
frighten the Serbs into total submission without the need of actual
military measures. The declaration of war referred not only to the
unsatisfactory Serbian reply to the Austrian note of 23 July, but also
alleged that the Serbs had already attacked a detachment of the
Austro-Hungarian army on the Bosnian border, an accusation based
on an unconfirmed report subsequently shown to be false, although
15

The July crisis, 1914

The origins of the First World War

the Serbian army had been mobilized immediately on receipt of the
news of the ultimatum. On 26 July the Tsar agreed to authorize partial
mobilization in the military districts of Kiev, Odessa, Moscow and
Kazan. However, although preliminary steps could now be taken, the
actual mobilization orders were still delayed.
But even if the Austrian and Russian delays in mobilization or
military operations left some room for the diplomatic negotiations
suggested by Grey, the reply he received from the German government on the evening of 27 July, after the French and Italians had
agreed to his proposal for a conference, put an end to the hopes that
this particular attempt at avoiding war might be successful, since
Jagow had maintained that the question was one which concerned
Russia and Austria alone and should be settled by direct negotiation
between them. As there did at that moment seem to be a chance of
conversations between Russia and Austria beginning (on 26 July
Sazonov had a calm and constructive talk with the Austrian ambassador in St Petersburg) and as Jagow did not rule out completely some
sort of mediation later on, Grey was obliged to accept for the moment
the failure of his proposal. On 27 July, even before receiving news of
the German refusal of his conference proposal, Grey raised with the
Cabinet, for the first time and still in a very hypothetical way, the
question of Britain's entry into a war if France were to be attacked by
Germany. The realization was growing that no armed conflict was
likely to be localized. Although there was considerable opposition in
the Cabinet to the idea that Britain might enter the war, it nevertheless
approved the decision taken by the First Sea Lord that the British fleet
which had been conducting manceuvres should not be dispersed to its
peacetime bases and the crews should not be sent on the leave which
they would normally have expected after the manoeuvres.
French reactions to the crisis had been somewhat confused by the
fact that the President and Prime Minister were at sea on their journey
back to France from St Petersburg during these days in which tension
was growing. Wireless telegraphy was still very imperfect, and
Poincari subsequently recorded his frustration at the incomplete and
garbled radio messages which he and Viviani on board the Francewere
receiving from the Eiffel Tower, so that it was only when they arrived
in Stockholm on 25 July that they beganrr to realize the seriousness of
the situation, an impression confirmed by such messages as did get
through to the ship as it crossed the Baltic towards Copenhagen. As a
result, the French cancelled their state visits to Denmark and Norway
and returned as fast as possible to France, landing at Dunkirk on the
morning of 29 July. During the critical days immediately after the
publication of the Austrian ultimatum, the leaders of the French
government were therefore unable to exercise much control over
events. In their absence, the Acting Foreign Minister, Jean-Baptiste
Bienvenu-Martin, the Minister of Justice, was indecisive and hesitant
16

['.

g
l

and far slower than the Paris press in realizing the gravity of the
situation, so that both the German and Austrian ambassadors formed
the impression that France would not support Russia's position very
firmly. The absence of the President and Prime Minister also meant
that Maurice Pal!ologue, the French ambassador in St Petersburg, a
man wholly committed to the Russian alliance, felt free to strengthen
the resolve of Sazonov, whose changes of mood contributed to the
complexity of the situation, by assuring him of France's readiness to
fulfil her obligations as an ally. Moreover, he does not seem to have
bothered to keep the Foreign Ministry in Paris fully informed of the
many detailed developments in St Petersburg between the evening of
23 July when Poincare and Viviani left and their arrival in France six
days later.
In fact, the French had already taken some precautionary measures.
Soldiers on leave were being inconspicuously recalled to their regiments; some units were being moved back from Morocco; the prefects
were exhorting the editors of provincial newspapers to be patriotic and
discreet. And on 27 July, General Joffre, the Chief of the Staff, and
Adolphe Messimy, the War Minister, were expressing through the
military attache in St Petersburg their hope that should war break out
the Russian high command would immediately take the offensive in
East Prussia. The French military authorities were presumably
worried by reports that the Russians were for the moment only preparing to mobilize against Austria. By the time the French cabinet met
under the chairmanship of the President of the Republic on the evening of 29 July, they were confronted with further evidence of the
deterioration of the situation Not only had the Austrians declared war
on Serbia on the previous day and had on 29th bombarded Belgrade
from ships of their Danube flotilla, but the German government was
now directly threatening France: the German ambassador had told
Viviani as soon as he was back in Paris that the military precautions
which France had begun to take would justify Germany proclaiming
the Kriegsgefahrzustand, the 'state of imminent danger of war' which
was the preparatory stage before mobilization.
By the evening of 29 July, the military actions of all the states
concerned were becoming of major importance: Austria-Hungary and
Serbia were already at war even though it would be some days before
the Austrian army could commence operations, and general mobilization - mobilization against Russia - had not yet been ordered; the
French had started taking precautionary measures; the British had
kept their fleet concentrated. Most serious of all, the Tsar had that
morning signed two alternative decrees, one for partial mobilization
and one for general mobilization. That evening the German ambassador called on Sazonov and showed him a telegram from Bethmann
Hollweg, the German Chancellor: 'Kindly impress on M. Sazonov
very seriously that further progress of Russian mobilization measures
17

The July crisis, 1914

~The origins of the First World War

would compel us to mobilize and that European war could scarcely be
prevented." 5 The result of this was the opposite of what the Germans
presumably intended, for the Foreign Minister, the War Minister and
the Chief of Staff agreed to order general mobilization at once. Yet the
Tsar still hesitated: he had just received a telegram from the Kaiser (in
English) which ended: 'I am exerting my utmost influence to induce
the Austrians to deal straightly to arrive to a satisfactory understanding with you. I confidently hope you will help me in my efforts to
smoothe over difficulties that may still arise. Your very sincere and
devoted friend and cousin Willy.''
Indeed, thc Kaiser and the Imperial Chancellor, Theobald von
Bethmann Hollweg, had by now begun to have some misgivings. On 27
July Bethmann had received a telegram from Prince Lichnowsky, the
German ambassador in London, which passed on a message from
Grey asking the Germans to persuade the Austrian government to
accept the Serbian reply to their ultimatum, as Grey believed this met
the Austrian demands 'to an extent he would never have considered
possible'. 7 Grey, whom Lichnowsky found depressed for the first time
since the beginning of the crisis, had said that the whole future of
Anglo-German relations depended on joint action to avoid war, that
he had done what he could to urge moderation on the Russians and
that the Germans must now do the same in Vienna. Bethmann at once
passed the telegram to the Kaiser. On the afternoon of the next day the
Kaiser replied that the Serbian answer had removed grounds for war
but that, as 'the Serbs are orientals and so mendacious, false and
masters of obstruction', the Austrians should occupy Belgrade as a
pledge for the Serbs' fulfilment of their promises until these were
satisfactorily carried out. '" This proposal was passed on to Vienna later
in the day; and as the Austrian government had already declared that
they had no intention of annexing permanently any Serb territory, it
looked like a possible basis for negotiation. But in spite of several
reminders, Berchtold delayed replying, and when he finally did send
an answer it was an evasive one. No doubt this was because the
Austro-Hungarian government was getting contradictory advice from
Berlin. Just when Berchtold was considering Bethmann's proposal for
a 'halt in Belgrade', General Conrad was being urged by Field Marshal
von Moltke, the Chief of the German General Staff, that any further
delay in ordering Austria's mobilization would be disastrous. It is not
surprising that at this point Berchtold is said to have flung up his hands
?
and exclaimed: 'Who actually rules in Berlin, Bethmann or Moltke "'
Between 28 and 31 July, events were moving too fast for the diplomats
because the decisions were now more and more being taken by the
soldiers.
Sir Edward Grey, though discouraged, had not given up hope of
mediation and he welcomed the possibility of a 'halt in Belgrade' which
would give time for further negotiation between Austria and Russia.

i
i

IL

But these hopes vanished as it became clear that the Austrians would
not make any concessions to Serbia: late on the afternoon of 29 July,
the British ambassador reported that the German Chancellor had
passed on to the Austrians Grey's view that the Serbian reply was
sufficiently conciliatory to serve as a basis for discussion, but he had
been told 'that it was too late to act upon your suggestion as events had
marched too rapidly'. The result of the failure of Grey's initiative and
the fact that Britain's room for diplomatic manceuvre was vanishing
changed the nature of the problems confronting the British government. The British were now under increasing pressure from France
and Russia to declare their support for them; and at the same time the
Germans were insistently asking for a promise of British neutrality. As
early as 25 July, Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador in St
Petersburg, had been told by Sazonov, 'If we the British] took our
stand firmly with France and Russia there would be no war. If we failed
them now rivers of blood would flow and we would in the end be
dragged in.'2 ' This was to remain the constant theme of the French and
Russian leaders over the next few days. On the evening of 30 July,
President Poincar6 put the same point to Sir Francis Bertie, the British
ambassador in Paris, who telegraphed to London: 'He is convinced
that preservation of peace between Powers is in the hands of England,
for if His Majesty's Government announce that, in the event of conflict
between Germany and France resulting from present differences
between Austria and Serbia, England would come to the aid of France,
there would be no war for Germany would at once modify her
attitude.'' Grey's response was consistently to avoid commitment. As
he had put it to Paul Cambon on 29 July:
If Germany became involved and France became involved, we had not
made up our minds what we should do . . . we were taking all precautions
with regard to our fleet, and I was about to warn Prince Lichnowsky not to
count on our standing aside, but it would not be fair that I should let M.
Cambon be misled into supposing that this meant that we had decided what
to do in a contingency that I still hoped might not arise."
Nor was the language he used to the Germans much different. On
the previous evening Bethmann had made a bid for British neutrality,
promising that if Britain remained neutral, Germany would not make
any territorial acquisitions at the expense of France - though such a
promise would not include the French colonies. Sir Eyre Crowe, the
Assistant Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office minuted: 'the only
comment that needs to be made on these astounding proposals is that
they reflect discredit on the statesman who makes them'. ' Yet even
then Grey still hesitated. While refusing to bargain about terms for
British neutrality, he was still saying much the same as he was saying to
the French: 'We must preserve our full freedom to act as circumstances
may seem to require in any development of the present crisis .. . ' In
19

18

-----------

"~

The origins of the First World War

the early stages Grey's reluctance to commit Britain to support France
and Russia was based on a fear that any such support might make the
Russian government more intransigent and reduce the chances of
successful mediation. As one of the members of the government
opposed to British involvement put it, 'If both sides do not know what
we shall do, both will be less willing to run risks.'26 By 28 July,
however, Grey's hesitations were due to the realization that he could
not carry his colleagues in the Cabinet with him in a positive policy. On
29 July the Cabinet agreed 'after much discussion' that 'at this stage we
were unable to pledge ourselves in advance either under all circumstances to stand aside or on any condition to go in."': And as late as I
August the government decided 'that we could not propose to Parliament at this moment to send an expeditionary military force to the
continent',2 ' a reply which dismayed Paul Cambon. British hesitations
were only finally resolved on 2 August. By that time Germany and
Russia were already at war.
On 29 July the Tsar had still hesitated to order general mobilization,
and on the same day Bethmann, supported by Moltke, resisted the
proposal of General Falkenhayn, the War Minister, that Germany
should at once proclaim the stage preparatory to formal mobilization,
the Kriegsgefahrzutstand. But by the next day, when it was clear that
any further attempts at persuading the Austrians to suspend their
action against Serbia were bound to fail, the military preparations
were carried a stage further, with each side trying to put the blame for
the escalation on the other. On the afternoon of 30 July, the Tsar's
hesitations were finally and not without difficulty overcome and at 5
p.m. he issued the orders for the proclamation of general mobilization
on the next day. As tension grew in Europe, so rumours spread: that
same afternoon a report appeared in a Berlin paper that the Kaiser had
ordered general mobilization, though there is no serious evidence to
support the view that this influenced the Russian decision.
In fact, the paper's information was not totally wrong in so far as it
reflected a new mood of resolution among the German military and
civilian leaders. Once the Russians had ordered general mobilization
the German government had no longer any need to delay their own
military preparations. Bethmann and Moltke had succeeded in their
aim that, if there were to be war, the Russians should make the first
move. Late on the evening of 30 July Bethmann and Jagow accepted
the advice of the Chief of the General Staff and the War Minister and
agreed to issue next day the proclamation of the 'state of imminent
danger of war'. The orders were accordingly issued on 31 July; and
they were followed by a very strong German warning to Russia:
In spite of negotiations for mediation which are still in the balance, and
although we ourselves up to now have taken no measures of mobilization,
Russia has mobilized its whole army and fleet, that means against us. These
Russian measures have forced us for the security of the Empire to proclaim

,~

At:

_____

20

It
I
i

f
I

The July crisis, 1914

the 'imminent danger of war' which does not yet mean mobilization. But
mobilization must follow if Russia does not suspend all warlike measures
against us and Austria-Hungary within twelve hours ... 2"
On 30 July, before the final decision to start the mobilization process
in Germany had been taken, Bethmann Hollweg had told a meeting of
the Prussian cabinet* both of his hopes that Russia could be made to
appear the guilty party and of his disappointment ver England:
'Hopes of England are precisely nil.' But he ended with a remarkable
expression of fatalistic irresponsibility: 'The great majority of the
peoples are in themselves peaceful, but things are out of control (es sei
die Direktion verloren) and the stone has started to roll . . . ""' This
feeling of helplessness was the sign that the crisis had reached a new
intensity. The Austrians had believed that vigorous action against
Serbia and a promise of German support would deter Russia: the
Russians had believed that a show of strength against Austria would
both check the Austrians and deter Germany. In both cases the bluff
had been called, and the three countries were faced with the military
consequences of their actions.
With the Russian mobilization and the possibility of the imminent
outbreak of war between Germany and Russia, the Germans were
anxious for the Austrians to play their part on the Galician front and
were not particularly interested any longer in the Austrian punitive
expedition against Serbia. Conrad, on the other hand, who had long
advocated just such action against Serbia, was determined to complete
it; and he hoped that the German mobilization might distract the
Russians from action against Austria. The divergence of the military
aims of the allies was apparent even before the war actually started,
and it was only rather reluctantly and under German pressure that the
Austro-Hungarian ministers recommended the Emperor Franz
Joseph finally to sign the order for general mobilization on 31 July,
though mobilization was not actually to start until 4 August. In the
event therefore Germany declared war on Russia before
Austria-Hungary, whose formal declaration was delayed till 6 August.
Although some of the civilians appeared to think that mobilization
would not inevitably lead to war it soon became clear that at least for
Germany it was not feasible to keep the armies poised on the brink
without taking action. This was particularly the case with Germany
because the plan for a two-front war devised by General Schlieffen
some years before (see Ch. 4) was based on any war with Russia being
accompanied by a war with Russia's ally France. The campaign was to
open with an all-out attack in the west which would involve the passage
of German troops through Belgium. German general mobilization was
*InGermany there was no imperial cabinet as such; the Chancellor was also the Prussian
Prime Minister, while in some cases - notably that of the War Ministry - the Prussian
minister concerned acted for the whole Empire.

21

I
The origins of the First World War
therefore as much a threat to France as to Russia and meant that the
war which now seemed imminent would inevitably be a European war;
and indeed under the terms of her alliance with Russia, France was
bound to mobilize if Germany did. But the illusion that something
might still be done to avert the consequences of the military decisions
already taken persisted a little longer. However, on I Aigust even the
Kaiser himself, the Allerhochster Kriegsherr, found that he could not
reverse the plans set in motion by his generals.
On that day Grey, still unable to achieve agreement in the British
Cabinet on the necessity for British intervention on the side of France
and Russia and still believing that there might be a last-minute diplomatic solution through a resumption of direct negotiations between
Russia and Austria, was looking for some formula that might avert a
German attack on France and so avoid England having to make a
choice which the British government was very reluctant to make. This
seems to have led to a genuine misunderstanding between him and
Lichnowsky. On the morning of 1 August, Grey's private secretary, Sir
William Tyrrell, told the ambassador that Grey hoped to be able to
make a suggestion to him that afternoon after the meeting of the
Cabinet and that he hoped this might avert the catastrophe. Lichnowsky formed the impression that Grey was going to propose that
England would remain neutral and would guarantee France's neutrality provided that Germany did not attack the French. Lichnowsky at
once telegraphed to Berlin and followed it three hours later with a
second telegram saying that Tyrrell had later added that Grey would
make proposals for English neutrality even in the case of a war
between Germany and both France and Russia. The news was
received with jubilation in Berlin. The Kaiser called for champagne,
sent an enthusiastic personal message to King George V and summoned the Chief of the General Staff and the War Minister. But when
he demanded that the troop concentration in the west should be
stopped and the entire force of the German army used against Russia,
he was obliged to learn the limits of his power. Moltke told him this was
impossible and that, '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.' In
any case, it soon became clear that the Kaiser's enthusiasm was premature: Grey had clearly no more thought out the implications of the
proposal than the Kaiser had; he had not consulted the French; and
when at midnight the British ambassador in Paris received Grey's
telegram saying, 'I suppose French Government would not object to
our engaging to be neutral as long as German army remained on
frontier on the defensive'," he was clearly amazed: 'I cannot imagine
that in the event of Russia being at war with Austria and being attacked
by Germany it would be consistent with French obligations towards
Russia for French to remain quiescent . . . Am I to enquire precisely

22

The July crisis, 1914

what are the obligations of the French under Franco-Russian
alliance?' 3 In any case, at 3.40 p.m. that afternoon the French had
proclaimed general mobilization, and the War Minister told the British
military attache, 'We rely on ourselves first and on you',' 3 so that - as
so often in this crisis - events had moved faster than the imagination of
the politicians. By the next morning, 2 August, Grey had dropped his
proposal and instructed Bertie to take no further action. While there is
still some uncertainty where the misunderstanding about the scope and
exact nature of Grey's proposal arose - whether through what Grey
himself said or through Tyrrell's original message or Lichnowsky's
interpretation of it - the importance of the episode is perhaps only as
an illustration of both Grey and the Kaiser's refusal to give up hope
and to accept the limitations imposed on their actions by strategic
necessity.
In fact at the first of two meetings of the British Cabinet on August
Grey had introduced a new factor into the discussion and one which
was to be important in finally bringing the Liberal Party round to
accepting the necessity for war - the question of Belgian neutrality.
The German plans for an attack on France were based on the movement of a German army through Belgium. Belgian neutrality had been
guaranteed in 1839 by England, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia;
and respect for Belgian neutrality had been reaffirmed at the time of
the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 by both Prussia and France, while
Britain had repeated that she accepted her responsibilities as a
guarantor. In the years immediately before 1914 the Belgian government had kept outside the European alliance system and had
repeatedly stressed its adherence to the strictest neutrality, so much so
that in July 1914 the Belgians themselves appear to have been the last
people to be worried about any threat to their neutrality and refused to
the last to ask for support from any other state. However, on 28 July
the Belgian government told the British minister in Brussels that they
were 'determined to offer resistance to the utmost of their power
should the integrity or neutrality of Belgium be assailed from any
quarter'. On 29 July a special courier brought the German minister in
Brussels a sealed packet which he was not to open until instructed; the
instructions were given on 2 August and he was told to demand from
the Belgians the right of German troops to cross Belgian territory; at
the same time the German government promised to respect Belgian
sovereignty and territorial integrity. In the meantime, before the
delivery of the German note to Belgium, the news of German military
preparations had given Grey the occasion on the afternoon of 31 July
to ask both the French and German governments whether they were
prepared to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as no other power
violated it. The French replied affirmatively that same night: the
Germnans were non-committal and postponed giving a definite answer.
At the same time Grey informed the Belgians what he had done, but
23

The July crisis, 1914

The origins of the First World War

do'. " ' At the same time Cambon gave Grey the latest information
about German troop movements on the French frontier and pointed
out that German military preparations were further advanced than
those of France.
i is meeting was tollowed y continuing indecision on the part or
the British government and an increasing anxiety on Cambon's part
about their intentions. Grey was under great strain: he knew how far
the Cabinet were from agreement: he was aware of the courteous
reproaches implied in every encounter with the French ambassador:
though himself convinced that England was morally committed to
France, he yet refused to accept thc inevitability of war or to give up
hope that there might still be some diplomatic way out. He was under
pressure from his senior officials, notably Sir Arthur Nicolson, the
Permanent Under-Secretary and Sir Eyre Crowe, the Assistant
Under-Secretary, to accept the necessity of war, but he knew how
reluctant to do so his political colleagues were. Like so many of the
leading participants in the crisis, including Bethmann Hollweg, he
gave the impression to those who saw him in these days of a man near
the end of his nervous resources. The French government on the other
hand, once the Russian decision to mobilize had been taken without
any objection from France, had fewer choices open to it than the
British. By the time the French cabinet met on the afternoon of 30
July, they seem to have been united in expecting war to break out.
Military preparations had already started but, mainly in order to
impress the British with France's peaceful intentions, the covering
troops on the German border were instructed to remain 10 kilometres
away from the actual frontier.
Within forty-eight hours, the French freedom of action was further
limited by the German declaration of war on Russia. In St Petersburg
the German ambassador had been working hard to persuade the
Russians to revoke their mobilization measures: the Germans had
invoked the principle of monarchical solidarity - a line they had
consistently been taking to justify Austrian policy ever since the
murder of Franz Ferdinand: they made much of the fact that the
Austrians had undertaken not to annex any Serbian territory and
suggested that this left room for further negotiations; but it was clear
by 1 August that neither Austria nor Russia was prepared to give way.
On that afternoon the German government formally declared war on
Russia on the grounds that the Russians were not prepared to suspend
their military measures directed against Germany and Austria. For
France the German declaration of war meant that the provisions of her
alliance with Russia obliged her to enter the war; and the government
had a fairly clear idea that this would produce an immediate attack by
Germany. The French government were above all concerned that the

the Minister of Foreign Affairs assured him that the relations between
Belgium and the neighbouring powers were excellent and that there
was no need to suspect their intentions.
The German refusal to give a direct answer led Grey to issue what
was in fact the clearest warning to Germany he had yet given: he
repeated that Britain could not give a promise to remain neutral but
that 'our attitude would be determined by public opinion here, and
that the neutrality of Belgium would appeal very strongly to public
opinion here'. 3 ', The Cabinet had in fact agreed earlier in the day that
this should be formally conveyed to the German government with an
expression of their very great regret that the Germans had not yet
given an assurance that they would respect Belgian neutrality. Yet the
question of Belgian neutrality, important as it was to be in reconciling
liberal opinion in Britain to the war, was not the immediate reason for
the decision of the British to support France. The discussions in the
Cabinet and the analysis of the situation by the Foreign Office occasionally revealed a concern with more general questions about
Britain's position in the world and the nature of the balance of power.
The view of Sir Eyre Crowe that 'the theory that England cannot
7
engage in a big war means her abdication as an independent state"
was shared by those members of the Cabinet who had become convinced of the necessity of British intervention; and it was reinforced by
a message from the Conservative opposition on 2 August: 'Any hesitation in now supporting France and Russia will be fatal to the honour
and future security of the United Kingdom.'" Yet the issue did not
often present itself in so generalized a form and the discussions in the
Cabinet revolved round the nature of British commitments to France
and the implications of a possible violation of Belgium, so that it was in
these terms that the discussions were finally presented rather than in
any more general categories.
From the moment of the return of Poincar6 and Viviani from
Russia, the French government had been very anxious to get the
English to commit themselves to active support of Russia and France.
They themselves had repeatedly asserted their loyalty to the FrancoRussian alliance and had made little attempt to moderate Russian
policy or to delay Russian mobilization; both the French ambassador
in St Petersburg, Paleologue, and the Russian ambassador in France,
the former Foreign Minister, Isvolsky, were working hard to maintain
that solidarity and to speed up French action. However, on 30 July
Viviani did urge caution on the Russians and pressed them - too late 'not to proceed to any measure which might offer Germany a pretext
for total or partial mobilization'." When this evidence of France's
efforts for peace was passed to London, it was accompanied by a
reminder of the exchange of letters between Grey and the French
ambassador in 1912 (see Ch. 3) 'in which we agreed that, if the peace of
Europe were threatened, we would discuss what we were prepared to
.0J

war which nnw seempc invlPtahlp

hnlId find them in a fuvnIurahlP a

situation as possible. This entailed first working for British support and
25

24

IL
N.
0J_~,~,~~,-_srr-_

_---------------

I-

---------

-O-anrc-sn-l--i

The origins of the First World War

second making the Germans appear clearly as the aggressors: and
indeed the two aims were very closely linked.
The French government repeatedly reminded the British by all the
means at their disposal that they regarded them as morally committed
to France, while at the same time stressing - though how convinced
they were themselves by the argument it is hard to say - that the only
means of averting war was a clear declaration of British support. Late
on the evening of 31 July, for instance, a special emissary arrived in
London with a personal letter from President Poincar6 to King George
V which was delivered to the King at noon the next day, and which
stated with studied moderation: 'It is, I believe, on the language and
attitude of the English Government that the last possibilities of a
peaceful solution now depend . . . I am deeply convinced that the
more England, France and Russia at the present moment give a strong
impression of unity in their diplomatic action, the more it will be
4
legitimate to count on peace being preserved.' ' But George V's reply
was even more non-committal than the communications which
Cambon had been receiving from the British government. By I
August, indeed, Cambon was desperately hoping not only for diplomatic action but also for positive naval and military support. He was
using all his personal influence in the circles in London in which he had
been a familiar figure since his appointment as ambassador there in
1898. He was to be heard in the clubs asking if the word 'honour' was to
be erased from the English dictionary: he complained in despair on I
August to his old friend Sir Arthur Nicolson, at the moment when
Grey was still apparently discussing with Lichnowsky conditions for
42
British neutrality: 'lls vont nous laicher.' In a conversation that evening after the cabinet meeting, Cambon pointed out that France, had,
for the sake of public opinion in England, kept her forces 10 kilometres
from the frontier. But she had also (as agreed in 1912) concentrated
her fleet in the Mediterranean and left her northern coasts exposed.
And Grey yet again replied that Britain was under no obligation and
3
that there were 'very grave considerations' involved."
By the next day the air had cleared a little as far as Anglo-French
relations were concerned. Grey had given up his approaches to the
Germans about terms of neutrality. The Germans had invaded
Luxemburg on the grounds that they needed to protect railway communications through the Grand Duchy against possible French attack.
There were reports of German violations of the French frontier. It was
on that afternoon that the British Cabinet finally reached a decision
that 'if the German fleet came into the Channel or through the North
Sea to undertake hostile operations against French coasts or shipping,
the British fleet will give all the protection in its power'." This was the
action implicit in the exchange of letters of 1912, but even so it was still
expressed in guarded terms, referring to the necessity of parliamentary
approval and remaining non-committal about the despatch of a British

r I

26

The Julv crisis, 1914

Expeditionary Force to the Continent. Thus even this Cabinet meeting, which one participant looking back later described as 'the Cabinet
which decided that war with Germany was inevitable', still had not
come to an unequivocal decision. However, they had accepted some
responsibility towards France and they had also accepted that a substantial violation of the neutrality of Belgium would constitute grounds
for war. These decisions had not been taken unanimously and four
members of the Cabinet (Morley, Burns, Simon and Beauchamp)
announced their resignation, though two of them (Simon and
Beauchamp) subsequently withdrew it.
During the two days of 2 and 3 August rumours were spreading
about the actual state of military operations in the west. Both the
French and German governments were denouncing each other. There
were certainly cases in which patrols from both sides had crossed the
border. Reports of other episodes, such as that French aeroplanes had
bombarded Nuremberg, were published without verification and were
later proved false, though some of them were used by the Germans as
an excuse for their final declaration of war on France. The Germans
had already drafted the declaration on I August, on the grounds that
France was not prepared to remain neutral in a German-Russian war,
but they had then instructed their ambassador in Paris not to deliver it.
There was considerable disagreement in Berlin about the way to
handle the outbreak of war with France. Moltke and Tirpitz, State
Secretary for the Navy, saw no need for a declaration of war at all and
believed that the French would be the first to take formal action. At
the same time they believed that delay in the actual declaration of war
would give longer time for the carrying out of German mobilization.
ordered on 1 August. Bethmann on the other hand was anxious to
observe the principles of international law as reaffirmed as recently as
the Hague Conference of 1907, by which the opening of hostilities had
to be preceded by a formal declaration of war. The French and
German orders for general mobilization were issued within a few hours
of each other on I August, but whereas the French could afford to
wait, the Germans had to act in order to make their attack on France
through Belgium. Accordingly, as we have seen, the ultimatum to
Belgium was presented on the evening of 2 August and expired at 8
a.m. on the 3rd. It was firmly and unanimously rejected by the Belgian
government and king, and at the same time they denied German
allegations that there was any threat to Belgium from the French.
Orders were at once given for the advance of German troops into
Belgium. On that same afternoon the German ambassador in Paris
was instructed to issue the declaration of war on France. One of the
effects of the tension and the speed and number of diplomatic exchanges in these days was that the telegraphic services were becoming
overstrained: there were often delays between despatch and delivery:
ciphers were garbled in transmission so that the German ambassador
27

The Julv crisis, 1914

The origins of the First World War

to France later wrote that he had to reconstruct the text of the final
declaration of war himself and suspected that the original cable had
been tampered with by the French. In fact, however, by now it was to
the advantage of the French that they should be the passive recipients
of a declaration of war by Germany, which had already put itself in the
wrong by the threat to Belgium. What was now important for both
Germany and France was to present their policies in such a way as to
justify the war to their own public and to the neutral countries they
were hoping to draw in. The Germans had been able, by stressing that
the Russians had been the first to mobilize, to put some of the blame on
the Russians even though it had been the Germans who had been the
first to declare war. However, the attack on France weakened their
position; and the declaration of war on France together with the
invasion of Belgium made any further German appeal to England
ineffective.
On the morning of 2 August, the British Cabinet had, as we have
seen, accepted the necessity of protecting the northern coasts of
France. By the evening, at the second Cabinet meeting of the day, they
had, faced with the news from the Continent, agreed that a 'substantial' violation of Belgian neutrality would justify war. At their meeting
on the morning of 3 August they were still not openly committed to any
precise action, but they found that the logic of their decisions on 2
August and the pace of events left them with very little choice. By noon
the news of the German ultimatum to Belgium and of Belgium's
determination to resist reached London; and at 2 o'clock that afternoon Grey telegraphed to the ambassador in Berlin repeating his
request for an assurance from Germany that they would respect
Belgian neutrality and asking for a reply by midnight: 'If not, you are
instructed to ask for your passports and to say that His Majesty's
Government feel bound to take all steps in their power to uphold the
neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a Treaty to which
Germany is as much a party as ourselves.' This ultimatum expired at
midnight on 4 August - though even then hesitations continued and it
was not until 6 August that the Cabinet finally agreed to the sending of
the British Expeditionary Force to France.
From the start of the crisis, Italy, the ally of Germany and AustriaHungary, had made it clear that she did not regard the circumstances
as requiring her to support Germany and Austria under the terms of
her alliance with them. They had not given the Italian government any
prior notice of the Austrian ultimatum; and the Italians regarded
Austrian action as aggression against Serbia. At the same time, they
were already letting it be known to the Austrians that they might be
willing to enter the war if Italy were to obtain 'an advantage commensurate with the risk and of a nature to overcome the opposition of
public opinion to a war fought in the interests of Austria'.4 7 What they
had in mind was the Trentino, the Italian-speaking southern part of the

tC

Austrian province of Tyrol, though for the moment they only hinted at
this; and in any case at the start of a war fought to restore the image of
Austria-Hungary as a Great Power, the Austrians were naturally
reluctant to begin by handing over part of their territory to an ally. On
2 August, the Italian government formally declared that Italy would
remain neutral: so did Germany's other ally Rumania on 3 August.
The diplomacy of the first months of the war was to be devoted to
efforts by both sides to win the support of these countries, as well as of
Greece and Bulgaria which were still uncommitted.
In the succession of declarations of war from I to 4 August, the
Austrians were almost overlooked: the final breach with R ussia only
occurred on 6 August (though the Austrian declaration had been
drafted three days before); and it gave as its reasons both the threatening attitude adopted by Russia in the conflict between AustriaHungary and Serbia and the erroneous assertion that Russia had
opened hostilities against Germany. France and Britain declared war
on Austria-Hungary on 12 August, rather reluctantly and with expressions of personal esteem and regret from both Grey and the Austrian
ambassador. The terms and timing of the actual declarations of war
had been largely determined by the efforts of all the governments
concerned to present themselves in the best light so as to justify their
actions to their citizens; and for the moment they had little difficulty in
doing so. Almost everywhere war was accepted not only with resignation but in many cases with enthusiasm. Very few people foresaw
what the nature, duration and consequences were likely to be.
It is because the consequences of the July crisis of 1914 were so
profound and so prolonged that we tend to be dissatisfied with an
explanation of the outbreak of war in terms of the immediate decisions
and pronouncements of the politicians and diplomats directly involved. An account such as that just attempted may explain the
chronology of events and expound the official actions and statements
of members of governments, ambassadors and soldiers, but it cannot
explain how they reached a situation in which the decisions they took
seemed rational and inevitable, and it certainly does not explain how
the public came to accept or even welcome the decision for war. A
summary account of the crisis is bound to leave out a great deal (Luigi
Albertini in his excellent detailed study The Originsof the War of 1914
devotes some 1,400 pages to the period between 28 June and 12
August), and cannot convey the complexity and confusion in which the
participants were involved, the effects of the strain of those long hot
summer days on men often reluctantly summoned back from their
country houses or the spas where they were spending their holidays.
Then there are a number of dramatic episodes which complicate the
picture without in themselves really having any effect. For example, on
the evening of 10 July, Baron Hartwig, the Russian minister to Serbia
called on his Austrian colleague in order to deny rumours that he had
29

28

WLE-

---------

The origins of the First World War

spent the evening of the Archduke's assassination playing bridge and
that he had not flown the Russian flag at half-mast on the day of the
funeral. He thereupon dropped down dead of a heart attack on the
floor of the Austrian legation. Hartwig was given a magnificent funeral
by the Serbs; a street was named after him and he immediately became
a symbol of anti-Austrian feeling in Serbia and of Russian friendship
for the Southern Slav cause. The sudden death of a man who was well
known to be one of the inspirers of Serbian policy and the embodiment
of Russian sympathies for the Serb cause was bound to cause rumours:
and it was symbolic of the state of Austro-Russian relations even
before the crisis became acute that Hartwig's daughter at once suggested that her father had been murdered by the Austrians even
though it was well known that he had suffered from a serious heart
ailment for a long time.
In a crisis such as that of July 1914 individual actions and encounters
took on a significance which their actual importance hardly justified.
For example, on 26 July the Kaiser's brother, Prince Henry of Prussia,
had breakfast with King George V and returned to Berlin apparently
convinced that he had been given an assurance of British neutrality,
whereas it seems certain that the King had been just as cautious and
non-committal as his Foreign Secretary. The only effect of this misunderstanding was to increase the Kaiser's annoyance with the British
government. As well as the attempts of the sovereigns to influence the
course of the crisis by using their personal and family ties, private
individuals, too, sought to avert the catastrophe. On I August the old
Lord Rothschild sent a personal appeal to the Kaiser, who described
him as 'an old and much respected acquaintance of mine. Some 75-80
years old'," but the Kaiser's telegram of acknowledgement was never
sent as by then the wires were closed. Albert Ballin, the head of the
Hamburg-Amerika steamship line, maintained close links with British
businessmen and politicians, and, in his hopes of finding a way out of
the crisis, may have suggested to members of the British government
that there were more differences of opinion within German government circles than there in fact were. Men are reluctant to give up hope;
and the optimistic belief that all problems have solutions - the great
heritage of the European Enlightenment - had not yet been abandoned.
We who know what happened later can perhaps see which were the
crucial decisions in the crisis of July 1914 that determined that any
optimism was unfounded. Each of these decisions limited or seemed to
limit the freedom of action of the other governments and closed
options, not only for those taking the decisions but also for those who
were reacting to them. And if we are trying to understand the reasons
why the war broke out, we must start at least by looking for the reasons
which were given at the time for the choices actually made. Leaving
aside the decisions taken before 28 June - for example the decision of
, O
Ara

The July crisis, 1914

the students of the Young Bosnia movement to assassinate the Archduke, the decision of the Austro-Hungarian authorities to allow the
At.lluuKle to visit araJevo, In spite o warnings and his own torebodings. on a day on which the Serbs solemnly commemorated a great
national disaster, their defeat by the Turks in 1389 - we can in the days
after the assassination recognize which were the decisions of particular
importance and consequence. Each of these - the Austrian decision to
take vigorous action against Serbia, the German decision to support
Austria-Hungary, the Serbian decision to reject part of the Austrian
terms, the Russian decision to back Serbia, the British decision to
intervene and. perhaps the most important of all, the decisions to
mobilize by Russia and Germany - all depended on a whole series of
previous decisions, plans, inherited attitudes and assumptions which
we must try to analyse if we are to understand what happened in July
1914. But even if we succeed in doing this, we shall also need to see
what the men of 1914 expected to follow from their decisions, for very
few of them expected the kind of war they actually started and fewer
still realized what the consequences would be. As the Russian
representative in Belgrade warned his Austrian colleague on 22 July,
'We know when and why a war starts but never where it stops. ' 9
General Conrad, the Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff, admitted as
much when on 6 July he discussed the question of a war against Serbia
with Count Berchtold, the Foreign Minister, and Berchtold expressed
some anxiety that their German allies might want to know what would
happen after such a war: 'Then you must say', Conrad replied, 'that we
ourselves didn't know.'5 " Again, many of the responsible leaders
during the crisis, and especially the German Chancellor, Bethmann
Hollweg expressed the feeling that they were the victims of forces
stronger than themselves: 'I see a doom greater than human power
hanging over Europe and our own people.' 5 ' And Sazonov, the
Russian Foreign Minister told the Italian ambassador on 25 July that
he feared 'd'&tre deborde dans cette affaire'.52 Sir Edward Grey expressed the same sense of helplessness when he made his celebrated
remark as he looked out of the Foreign Office windows at dusk on 3
August: 'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see
them lit again in our lifetime.'53
This sense that men were carried away by the tide of history tempts
us to look for historical forces which will explain the decisions of
individuals as part of a broader and inevitable historical process, or at
least as part of a wider landscape than that provided by the view from
the chancelleries of Europe. The problem of relating these broader
explanations to the individual decisions taken in July 1914 remains a
major historiographical and philosophical problem which may indeed
be insoluble. However, in the following chapters we will try to look at
some of the explanations which have been suggested for the outbreak
of the First World War and to see how far these can be directly related

30

31
_

---

--

I-L
,

I _
7

The July Crisis, /914

The origins of the First World War

Asquith to King George V, quoted in Ekstein and Steiner. op. cit., p.

404.
BD XI, No. 426, p. 253.
DD 111, No. 490. p. 9 .
DD II, No. 456, pp. 177-8.
Helmut von Moltke. Erinnerungen, Dokiumente, Briefe 1877-1916
(Stuttgart 1922) pp. 19-21.
BD XI, No. 419, p. 2 50 .
BD XI, No. 453, p. 263.
BD XI, No. 425, p. 252.
BD XI. No. 243. p. 160.
BD XI, No. 448, p. 261.
BD Xi, No. 369, p. 228.
Quoted in Ekstein and Steiner. op. cit., p. 40)5.
Documents diplomatiquesfran(ais1871-1914, III serie, Vol. XI (Paris
1936) No. 305, p. 263. (Hereinafter referred to as DDF.)
BD XI. No. 319, p. 2 01 .
Raymond Poincard, All Service de la France: Netf Annees de Souvenirs,
Vol. IV (Paris 1927) pp. 438-40.
Harold Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson. Bart. First Lord Carnock: A
Study in the Old Diplomacy (London 1930) p. 419.
BD XI, No. 447, p. 260.
BD XI, No. 487, p. 274.
Walter Runciman, quoted in Cameron Hazlehurst, Politiciansand War
(London 1971) p. 9 3 .
BD XI, No. 594, p. 314.
Quoted in Albertini, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 316.
DD III, No. 580, p. 77.
OeD, Vol. VIII, No. 10688.
Conrad, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 40.
Kurt Riezler, Tageblcher Aufsatze, Dokumente (G6ttingen 1972) p.
192.
OeD \11V, No. 10688.
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-five Years 189.2-1916 (London
1925) Vol. II, p. 20.

27.
to the decisions taken in the immediate crisis which we have been
28.
29.
30.
31.

discussing.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1.
2.
3.

4.
5.

The phrase was used by Count Taaffe. See e.g. Oscar Jaszi. The

Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago 1961) p. 115.

Karl Kautsky, Graf Max Montgelas and Prof. Walter Schiicking (eds)
Die deutschen Dokumente zum Kriegausbruch. Vol. (Charlottenhurg
1919) No. 50, p. 78. (Hereinafter referred to as DD.)
0. Hoetsch (ed.) Die internazionalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des
Imperialismus. Dokumente aus den Archiven der Zaristischen und der
Provisorischen Regierung, 5 vols (Berlin 1931-34) Ist series, Vol. IV,
No. 245. (Hereinafter referred to as int. Bez.) See L. Albertini, The
Origins of the War of 1914, Vol. II (London 1953) p. 184.
Baron Schilling, How the War began in 1914 (London 1925) pp. 28-9.

See also Albertini, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 290.

G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (eds) British Documents on the

Origin of War 1898-1914, Vol. XI (London 1926) No. 91, p. 73. (Herein-

after referred to as BD.)

6.
7.

8.

See Gale Stokes, 'The Serbian documents from 1914: a preview',

9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.

DD I, No. 49, p. 74.

DD IV, Appendix IV, No. 2, p. 127.
BD XI, No. 86, p. 70.
BD XI, No. 98, p. 77 .
BD XI, No. 140, p. 101.
OeD VIII, No. 10648.
DD II, No. 342, p. 59.
DD II, No. 335, p. 51.
DD I, No. 258, p. 250.
DD II, No. 293, p. 18.
Feldmarschall Franz Conrad von H6tzendorf. Auts reiner Dienstzeit
1906-1918, Vol. IV (Vienna 1923) p. 153.
BD XI, No. 264, p. 171.
BD XI, No. 125, p. 94.
BD XI, No. 318, p. 200.
BD XI, No. 283, p. 180.
BD XI, No. 293, p. 186.
BD XI, No. 303, p. 193.
Herbert Samuel, quoted in Michael G. Ekstein and Zara Steiner, 'The
Sarajevo crisis' in F. H. Hinsley (ed.) British Foreign Policy ulnder Sir
Edward Grey (Cambridge 1977) p. 401.

20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

( , k'-)
.I-7

Int. Bez. Ist series, V, No. 37; Albertini, op. cit., Vol. 11, p. 350.
Oesterreich-UngarnsAtussenpolitik von der Bosnischen Krise 1908 bis
zlum Kriegsausbruch 1914, Vol. VIII (Vienna 1930) No. 10616, p. 646.
(Hereinafter referred to as OeD.)
Supplement to the Journal of Modern History, 48, No. 3. Sept. 1976.

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.

33

32

.r

- --_.._______

1---I"-------

--. --

_ II