July 1914: Countdown to War Read Online Free PDF Page A

Berchtold’s motivation, however, is instructive: he wanted to cut off further outside mediation efforts. War cancelled diplomacy. Here was another sin of commission. Still, aside from its adverse strategic consequences, especially for Germany, Berchtold’s move proves little more than that Austrian leaders wanted a war with Serbia, a fact we knew already.
    Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia has usually been seen as the point of no return in the outbreak of the First World War, the moment when the July crisis escalated into actual conflict. This, too, has a surface plausibility. And yet again, we need to be careful with chronology. While it is true that Berchtold’s rash action gave Russia a pretext to escalate her war preparations, these had been underway for nearly three days when Austria declared war on Serbia. By keeping quiet about the Period Preparatory to War and then delaying the announcements of both partial and general mobilization, Sazonov was able to convince Sir Edward Grey, along with generations of historians, that Russia had begun mobilizing only after Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia. This is untrue: Austrian, German, French, and most of all Russian sources confirm that Russia’s mobilization measures against both Austria and Germany were well advanced by 28 July, and even more so by 29 July. All Berchtold’s telegram did was give Russia a public casus belli for war preparations she was undertaking anyway. The long-running argument about Russia’s partial versus general mobilization rests, ultimately, on a fiction. As Kokovtsov had pointed out in November 1912, and Dobrorolskii pointed out in July 1914, a partial mobilization targeting Austria alone, without using the Warsaw railway hub and blanketing Poland, was technically impossible. Nor was it ever fully implemented. “Partial mobilization” was a diplomatic conjuring act designed to show France—and more so, Britain—that Russia was not giving Germany a pretext for war.
    The decision for European war was made by Russia on the night of 29 July 1914, when Tsar Nicholas II, advised unanimously by his advisers, signed the order for general mobilization. General mobilization—as he knew, as Sazonov knew, as Schilling knew; as Krivoshein, Rodzianko, and Duma leaders knew; as Sukhomlinov, Yanushkevitch, and Dobrorolskii knew—meant war. So clearly did the tsar know this that, on being moved by a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm II, he changed his mind . “I will not be responsible for a monstrous slaughter” is the key line of the entire July crisis, for it shows that the tsar, for all his simplicity—or expressly because of his guileless, unaffected simplicity—knew exactly what he was doing when he did it. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did it again, sixteen hours later, after agonizing all day about it. Sazonov knew it, which is why he told Yanushkevitch to “smash his telephone” so that the tsar could not change his mind again.
    The French knew it, too. Although the final decision and its timing needed to be massaged carefully for British ears, Poincaré, Joffre, and Messimy knew that Russia had resolved on war long before her general mobilization was confirmed by Paléologue’s thirty-hours-late telegram Friday night. In a fascinating illustration of the importance of chronology, Barbara Tuchman, in her classic The Guns of August , narrates a middle-of-the-night drama that sees President Poincaré awakened in bed by Russian ambassador Izvolsky asking him, “What is France going to do?” Messimy then wakes up Viviani, who exclaims, “Good God! These Russians are even worse insomniacs than they are drinkers.” It is a wonderful set piece, but Tuchman gets the date wrong by two days.
    This scene transpired not on Friday night, 31 July–1 August, after Germany had inaugurated Kriegsgefahrzustand and sent Russia and France her ultimatums, but on Wednesday night, 29–30 July. The catalyst for the late-night drama was