July 1914: Countdown to War Read Online Free PDF

not, as Tuchmansuggests, pressure from Berlin—on Wednesday and Thursday Germany still had not undertaken serious war preparations of any kind—but Izvolsky’s receipt of Sazonov’s cryptic telegram from St. Petersburg announcing that, owing to Russia’s inability “to accede to Germany’s desire” that she cease mobilizing, “it only remains for us to hasten our armaments and regard war as imminent.” Wednesday was the same night that Sazonov told the German ambassador that Russia’s mobilization measures “could no longer be reversed.” Viviani, for his part, may still have entertained illusions that Russia could stop short of war, which is why he hesitated longer than the others before approving France’s general mobilization on Saturday. But Poincaré and Messimy knew perfectly well what Sazonov meant on Wednesday night, which is why they convened a crisis meeting from four to seven AM to craft a response.
    France’s response, as we have seen, was carefully calibrated to manipulate British opinion. In none of the messages Viviani sent to Paléologue in St. Petersburg on either 30 or 31 July was there any endorsement of Russia’s mobilization, which was referred to only obliquely, but there was no request to halt it, either. Joffre, Messimy, Laguiche, and Paléologue had already endorsed and encouraged the acceleration of Russia’s war preparations. Poincaré and Viviani, because they were at sea from 24–29 July, had plausible deniability of all this—plausible deniability they needed to maintain, even after returning to Paris, to convince London of their innocence. But the dramatic scene of Wednesday night (not Friday night) gives the game away. Whether or not they had known before that Russia was mobilizing, they knew then. And they knew what it meant. It meant France had to mobilize, too. And mobilization meant war.
    France, even more than Russia, insisted publicly that mobilization was not war. The “ten-kilometer withdrawal” to allow the Germans the initiative was a brilliant public relations movethen, and it continues to gull historians. Aside from Joffre’s sensible orders to avoid border incidents until concentration of forces was complete (orders nearly identical to those Moltke gave), it was nonsense. Article 2 of the Franco-Russian military convention specified that, once the casus foederis was invoked, “France and Russia . . . without a previous agreement being necessary, shall mobilize all their forces immediately and simultaneously, and shall transport them as near to the frontiers as possible.” As General N. N. Obruchev, Russia’s signatory, explained, “this mobilization of France and Russia would be followed immediately by positive results, by acts of war, in a word would be inseparable from an ‘aggression.’” Or as France’s counterpart to Obruchev, General Raoul de Boisdeffre, put it after signing the accord, “the mobilization is the declaration of war.” Or as Dobrorolskii, architect of Russia’s mobilization in 1914, put it, “once the moment has been chosen, everything is settled; there is no going back; it determines mechanically the beginning of the war.” 6 After this moment—midnight on 30–31 July, when Russia’s general mobilization took effect—France and Russia were expected to mount offensives against Germany by M + 15. Just as Dobrorolskii said, mobilization moved like clockwork. The first Great Power battles of 1914 occurred on German territory, in France’s case on exactly Russian M + 15, with her invasion of Alsace on 14 August. Russia, too, won her first engagement on German soil, at Stallupönen/Gumbinnen, on 17–20 August 1914. 7
    One can, of course, still argue that the Austrians fired first, at Serbia on 29 July. Austria also declared war first, on 28 July (although only against Belgrade). We must remember, however, that Austria-Hungary, for all her warlust against Serbia, had little desire to fight Russia, to the extent that Moltke had