August 3, 1914—World War I, the conflict that all the major nations of Europe planned for but that none actually believed would ever occur, assumed irresistible momentum, as Germany declared war on France and rebuffed attempts to assure the neutrality of Belgium.
Late on that long day’s journey into war, watching the street lamps below his Whitehall office being illuminated on what would otherwise have been a serene banker's holiday, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (in the image accompanying this post) made a remark that would forever sum up an entire era coming to an end: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
The June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was typical of the unexpected nature of the war to come, including the ironies cascading upon ironies. In school, the man who killed him, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip, had been ridiculed as a horrible shot.
Had Princip attempted the killing on the archduke’s own estate, he might have found himself prey rather than predator: The Archduke, a handy man with a gun, had, by his own estimate, bagged more than 5,000 animals, many of which now were hanging stuffed on the walls of his house. More important, when unexpected intruders ventured onto his estate, Franz Ferdinand was not reluctant to fire shots in their direction.
On the day Franz Ferdinand was murdered, Princip and two co-conspirators had already missed one opportunity—the grenade they throw at the archduke’s slow-moving car bounced off and hit the one behind it—when a second chance practically fell into Princip’s lap.
The archduke’s entourage had just left City Hall in Sarajevo, but his driver didn’t learn about the change away from the city center. As the driver maneuvered the royal vehicle, Princip, incredibly enough, had a second appointment with destiny. This time he didn’t miss.
The world exploded by the shots that killed the archduke and his wife was not merely one filled with monarchs, but one in which these royals were cousins who could remonstrate with each other in a cajoling, familial fashion, addressing each other as “Nicky” (Czar Nicholas II of Russia) and “Willy” (Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany).
In the end, these two monarchs helped precipitate a war in which they lost their thrones—and wrecked the lives of millions of their countrymen, both in the conflict itself and in the totalitarian regimes that succeeded the royals.
“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem “Gerontion.” What the poet probably had in mind were the secret alliances that put the entire continent on the brink of war after the assassination—even though most of the countries had no strategic interest in the quarrel between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia.
When Woodrow Wilson proposed his “Fourteen Points” for concluding “the Great War,” its first diplomatic reform called for “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at…diplomacy shall proceed along frankly and in the public view.” The President hoped to eliminate the system of alliances that split the continent in two opposing camps for two generations following the Franco-Russian War that ended in 1870. France and Russia stood on one side; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy on the other. (In the end, Italy found an escape clause in its treaty obligations that enabled it not to join in the conflict in August 1914; it would not become involved in the war--and then would do so on the side of France, Russia and Great Britain--until a year later.)
The diplomats of Europe had such a tightly interlocking defensive machine that, once set in motion, nobody seemed able to halt it. Dwight D. Eisenhower could have applied the phrase “domino theory” more properly to the precarious state of affairs in Europe in early summer 1914 than he did to Southeast Asia in 1954.
The prewar crisis began within a week after Sarajevo, behind closed doors, only to burst out on a surprised continent nearly a month later. The key move belonged to Germany, which replied affirmatively to an inquiry from its junior partner in the Triple Alliance, Austria-Hungary, if the Kaiser would support eliminating Serbia “as a political factor in the Balkans.”
The Kaiser’s assurance emboldened the Hapsburg monarchy to present an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 that amounted to total cession of the smaller country’s sovereignty. News of the crisis found numerous heads of state and diplomats off on holiday, scrambling to get up to speed (and often unable to do so) on events getting out of control:
* July 25—Austria-Hungary severs relations with Serbia after the republic accepts all its demands but two: a) the empire would be empowered to interfere with the assassination investigation, and b) it could interfere with Serbian affairs.
Late on that long day’s journey into war, watching the street lamps below his Whitehall office being illuminated on what would otherwise have been a serene banker's holiday, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (in the image accompanying this post) made a remark that would forever sum up an entire era coming to an end: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
The June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was typical of the unexpected nature of the war to come, including the ironies cascading upon ironies. In school, the man who killed him, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip, had been ridiculed as a horrible shot.
Had Princip attempted the killing on the archduke’s own estate, he might have found himself prey rather than predator: The Archduke, a handy man with a gun, had, by his own estimate, bagged more than 5,000 animals, many of which now were hanging stuffed on the walls of his house. More important, when unexpected intruders ventured onto his estate, Franz Ferdinand was not reluctant to fire shots in their direction.
On the day Franz Ferdinand was murdered, Princip and two co-conspirators had already missed one opportunity—the grenade they throw at the archduke’s slow-moving car bounced off and hit the one behind it—when a second chance practically fell into Princip’s lap.
The archduke’s entourage had just left City Hall in Sarajevo, but his driver didn’t learn about the change away from the city center. As the driver maneuvered the royal vehicle, Princip, incredibly enough, had a second appointment with destiny. This time he didn’t miss.
The world exploded by the shots that killed the archduke and his wife was not merely one filled with monarchs, but one in which these royals were cousins who could remonstrate with each other in a cajoling, familial fashion, addressing each other as “Nicky” (Czar Nicholas II of Russia) and “Willy” (Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany).
In the end, these two monarchs helped precipitate a war in which they lost their thrones—and wrecked the lives of millions of their countrymen, both in the conflict itself and in the totalitarian regimes that succeeded the royals.
“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem “Gerontion.” What the poet probably had in mind were the secret alliances that put the entire continent on the brink of war after the assassination—even though most of the countries had no strategic interest in the quarrel between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia.
When Woodrow Wilson proposed his “Fourteen Points” for concluding “the Great War,” its first diplomatic reform called for “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at…diplomacy shall proceed along frankly and in the public view.” The President hoped to eliminate the system of alliances that split the continent in two opposing camps for two generations following the Franco-Russian War that ended in 1870. France and Russia stood on one side; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy on the other. (In the end, Italy found an escape clause in its treaty obligations that enabled it not to join in the conflict in August 1914; it would not become involved in the war--and then would do so on the side of France, Russia and Great Britain--until a year later.)
The diplomats of Europe had such a tightly interlocking defensive machine that, once set in motion, nobody seemed able to halt it. Dwight D. Eisenhower could have applied the phrase “domino theory” more properly to the precarious state of affairs in Europe in early summer 1914 than he did to Southeast Asia in 1954.
The prewar crisis began within a week after Sarajevo, behind closed doors, only to burst out on a surprised continent nearly a month later. The key move belonged to Germany, which replied affirmatively to an inquiry from its junior partner in the Triple Alliance, Austria-Hungary, if the Kaiser would support eliminating Serbia “as a political factor in the Balkans.”
The Kaiser’s assurance emboldened the Hapsburg monarchy to present an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23 that amounted to total cession of the smaller country’s sovereignty. News of the crisis found numerous heads of state and diplomats off on holiday, scrambling to get up to speed (and often unable to do so) on events getting out of control:
* July 25—Austria-Hungary severs relations with Serbia after the republic accepts all its demands but two: a) the empire would be empowered to interfere with the assassination investigation, and b) it could interfere with Serbian affairs.
* Jul 26-28: Great Britain proposes conference to settle the Serbian crisis; Germany refuses, and Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.
* July 29—Russia tries to induce Germany to curb Austria-Hungary’s demands on Serbia, and orders partial mobilization.
* July 30-31—Germany warns Russia to stop mobilization; instead, Russian proceeds to general mobilization.
* August 1—With Germany refusing to offer a non-invasion pledge about crossing Belgium’s border on its way to France, Belgium mobilizes; Germany declares war on Russia; with Russia threatened, its ally France orders general mobilization.
* August 2—Germany not only demands the right to pass through Belgium unimpeded, and actually does invade Luxembourg.
This chronology only hints at one of the aspects of the war that distinguished it from earlier ones: the fear that a nation not only had to act, but act now, before a rival could fully mobilize and transport troops to the front by train.
Forty years ago, historian A.J.P. Taylor argued in War by Timetable that railroad schedules played a crucial role in hastening the pace of events. In his view, putting an entire nation on battle alert in the modern era was so hideously complicated that it took months to be ready.
One event in particular illustrates his thesis pretty well. Early on August 1, his communications with “Cousin Nicky” had evidently caused the normally impulsive Kaiser Wilhelm to have cold feet about invading Russia. He asked his generals about simply halting. They said no—10,000 trains were already on the move.
Britain now had the choice about joining the larger conflict. Grey indicated to the House of Commons that day that the nation had no vital interest at play in the Balkans, nor was it obligated by secret codicils to any treaties.
However, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's government was following with special interest what was happening in Belgium. National opinion, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet concluded, would not support intervening solely on the side of France.
The violation of Belgian neutrality, on the other hand, portended a decisive change in the balance of power on the Continent toward Germany. Even in this instance, six Cabinet officials agreed on August 2 that it would require a wholesale invasion of Belgium to precipitate a British intervention.
That is what Germany ended up doing. When the British ambassador told the German Chancellor, Bethman-Hellweg, about his government's decision to honor Belgian neutrality, the German minister--who'd been on the nerve of a nervous breakdown for the past few days over the escalating tensions--sputtered that he couldn't believe Britain would risk war over "a scrap of paper."
That phrase, along with another--"the Rape of Belgium"--provided British propagandists handy recruiting tools in the early days of the conflict.
The next day, Britain declared war on Germany.
An entire generation—the best men of the major countries on the continent—would lose their lives in the war to come.
An entire generation—the best men of the major countries on the continent—would lose their lives in the war to come.
Dear Patricia,
ReplyDeleteMany thanks. I hope I can continue to keep you as a reader!
Mike