The Imperial German army was confident in its particular blend of human and material elements. It expected to defeat its enemies quickly and decisively. But in the first years of the new century military technology had not yet progressed so far that combat strength could not legitimately be reckoned in the traditional material form of sabers, bayonets, and guns. Nor had recent wars demonstrated beyond doubt just which intangible military virtues were most useful. Russian stolidity and endurance, German dash and initiative, might well cancel each other. Nor could German planners afford to forget a major lesson of the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese, foreign observers generally agreed, were far superior man for man to their adversaries in enthusiasm, dash, tactical skill—all the qualities on which the German army prided itself. Yet the Japanese army bled itself white against the Russian colossus at Port Arthur, LiaoYang, and Mukden. By war’s end it was virtually crippled by its positive qualities.
The failure of Russia’s military reforms are clearer by far from a half-century’s hindsight than they appeared in 1912. Internal criticisms of the army’s shortcomings can be taken as positive: the Russian military establishment was anything but complacent in the years between 1905 and 1914. British observers, with less of an axe to grind than their French counterparts, continued to be impressed with Russia’s recovery after 1905.76 Germany’s generals, moreover, were not academic structuralists. Everything in their experience since the Wars of Liberation suggested that social organization, military efficiency, and victory in battle did not follow one another in anything resembling logical progression. On the contrary, armies had the potential to introduce significant reforms within existing institutional frameworks. Armies had the ability to make good the failings of the systems that committed them to battle. German soldiers were aware that the French and Austrians had come closer to altering the destiny of Nineteenth-century Europe on the battlefield than was generally realized. And even marginal improvements in Russia’s military performance meant an exponential increase in the threat she posed. A skillful middleweight boxer’s chances against a clumsy, untutored heavyweight diminish significantly once his opponent assimilates a few pointers on footwork and timing.
As for Russia’s economic position, its weaknesses were hardly unfamiliar in a Germany whose businessmen and financiers were so heavily involved in her development. But no one of consequence anywhere in Europe expected any future war to last long enough for anything but the resources on hand to influence the outcome. The exponentially greater output of German farms and factories meant nothing if the tsar’s armies delivered a knockout punch in the first round. Positive discrepancies between a state’s armed force and the economic infrastructure sustaining it should generate anxiety among that state’s neighbors. Fighting men can seize wealth easier than wealth can buy fighting men. The notion that economically limited states would spend themselves into bankruptcy competing with their neighbors proved an expensive delusion in the 1930s as Germany, Italy, and Japan demonstrated the military potential of unbalanced economies.
IV
The crisis of 1912 wound down, like so many of its predecessors, in a flurry of relieved correspondence. On December 17, the first session of the great powers’ conference on the Balkans opened in London—a conference characterized by increasing cooperation between Britain and Germany. The mood in Moscow, according to the German consul, was by no means warlike. Everyone had expected things to go wrong with the mobilization, and they did. The Warsaw military district began discharging its time-expired men in March, 1913. The only overt sign of hostilities came from the frontier district of Taurowitz, where local officials reported suspicious lights and noises that could only come from a Russian airship. The Landrat responded by ordering the gendarmerie to try and force down the alien flying machine when next it appeared.77
As for the mobilization that triggered the anxiety, Sukhomlinov was at pains to tell the German military attaché that everything was Sazonov’s fault. The war ministry, he declared, had informed the foreign office as early as May, 1912, of its plans to hold a practice mobilization and assumed the German government had been appropriately notified. His surprise at discovering the contrary appeared genuine enough to convince the attaché. The Russian ambassador to Berlin took meticulous pains to report to the German foreign office the dates of projected call-ups of reservists in the Kiev and Warsaw districts during 1913. By October of that year, the Warsaw consulate quoted General Alexei Brusilov, the military district’s deputy commander, to the familiar effect that many senior Russian officers would welcome better relations with Germany. Only decrepit Austria would not be welcome in a new alliance.78
Rhetorical good will did not obscure objective military developments. In October, 1912, Germany’s admiralty staff credited Russia with the capacity to transport, without special measures, a division-sized force from the Baltic ports of Riga and Libau to a Pomeranian coast German mobilization plans left stripped of all but token forces. Though Russia was not likely to run such a risk unless the Royal Navy first destroyed the German battle fleet, the potential nevertheless existed. It loomed even larger in the light of Russian proposals to build a modern Baltic fleet around new squadrons of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers.79
As for the Russian army, its very shortcomings were a paradoxical advantage. A less-prepared force could learn more from its mistakes than one at the peak of efficiency. The recent issuing of a set of regulations for the period before mobilization was strongly suggestive. Its measures and procedures could be an important guide to Russia’s behavior in any future crises. Just as important, it indicated a commitment to overcoming Russia’s most obvious weakness, her cumbersome mobilization.80 In November, 1913, Moltke submitted a lengthy report to the foreign office insisting that practice mobilizations of the kind Russia regularly staged were extremely difficult to tell from the real thing. Should the diplomatic situation be at all tense, even if the call-up of reservists and the retention of time-expired men were routine exercises, Germany might be constrained to implement its own mobilization, with corresponding consequences.81