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

to beg Conrad repeatedly to do it. For all Berchtold’s mischief with the ultimatum and declaration of war, it was clearly his intention,and Conrad’s, to fight a war with Serbia alone. True, they realized that Russia might object, but to the extent they thought about this at all, they expected the Germans to handle Russia. The evidence shows that there was little real coordination between Berlin and Vienna, rather a great gap in understanding of what the other side was up to. The Germans were just as shocked when they learned of Berchtold’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July—which they had just been assured would not come until August 12—as the Austrians were when they learned that Germany planned to invade Belgium rather than concentrate her forces against Russia. None of this absolves anyone in Berlin and Vienna of responsibility for gross errors in policymaking. But it does make ridiculous the charge of cold, joint premeditation.
    Only the Germans, of course, were responsible for the strategic stupidity of invading France by way of Belgium. Although recent research casts doubt on the notion that there was ever an immutable Schlieffen Plan, all this means is that Moltke himself is to blame for the decision—and even more so for the strike on Liège on M + 3. 8 Questionable as the German occupation of Luxembourg was, the fact that its railways were, by treaty, under German management mitigates some of its significance, along with the fact that Britain did not see the occupation as a plausible casus belli against Germany. Belgium was what mattered to outside powers, especially Britain; indeed the French understood this so well that Poincaré intervened with Joffre in 1912 to ensure that France’s initial deployment would not violate her territory. Germany’s decision to violate Belgian neutrality—on M + 3, two weeks before the concentration of her armies would be complete—was a political, diplomatic, strategic, and moral blunder of the first magnitude. For this, Moltke was directly to blame, although Bethmann, Jagow, or the kaiser should have called him to account over it.
    Important as the German violation of Belgium was, it did not cause the First World War. It may not even have brought Britain into it. Until the Germans gave him the gift of Liège on 4 August, Grey’s ammunition against noninterventionists in the cabinet came from the informal naval agreement with France he had personally arranged with Cambon in November 1912, about which the Commons (although not the cabinet) remained ignorant. It was over this issue—not Belgium—that Morley and Burns resigned. Morley and Burns, along with some historians, paint Grey in a Machiavellian light, as a master manipulator who brought his own party, against its will, into an agreement with France (by encouraging her to move her fleet to the Mediterranean and leave her Channel coast undefended) and then co-belligerence with her and Russia. 9 While there is an element of truth here insofar as the semisecret French naval agreement did encourage French hawks and tie Britain’s hands in the case of war between France and Germany, Grey hardly had the intention of fomenting such a war.
    Sir Edward Grey’s sins during the July crisis were of omission, not commission. By failing to develop a clear policy (owing to the lack of a mandate from the cabinet or Commons, although he could have showed courage and overridden them), Grey missed his chance to put a scare into Berlin that Britain might intervene until it was too late for the Germans to pull Vienna back from the brink. Grey’s misleadingly positive signals, up to and including his bizarre neutrality pledges of 1 August and his ambiguous speech in the Commons on 3 August, left the Germans guessing until he finally sent Berlin an ultimatum on 4 August. By feigning neutrality and yet clearly taking the Franco-Russian side, by failing to notice Russia’s secret early mobilization and yet denouncing Austria and