Adolf Tappen, one of Moltke’s closest collaborators on the general staff, summarized the prevailing viewpoint fifteen years later. The Russians, he declared, always had the option of withdrawing from a decisive encounter until the situation in the west was decided to their advantage.89 The best rider, the elder Moltke once observed, does not set his horse at an impossible obstacle. Pessimism about the prospects of a German strategic offensive into Russia extended to the attack discussed by Moltke and Conrad in 1909. Planners in Berlin and commanders in East Prussia increasingly agreed that given the projected strength of the Russian armies facing Germany, throwing a dozen divisions against the Narew meant feeding them into a meatgrinder for no purpose. The final staff study for the eastern theater, held in the winter of 1913, suggested that the most promising situation involved first stopping the Russian advance from the Niemen, then turning against those advancing from the Narew. It said nothing about an initial German attack in either direction. In its own collective mind the general staff increasingly doubted whether anything could save East Prussia from temporary occupation, even if Ostheer remained on the defensive and executed a fighting withdrawal towards the Vistula.90
The well-documented failure of the Germans to mount any kind of offensive in the east in 1914, combined with the disastrous Austrian defeat at Lemberg, raised prompt cries of betrayal from Conrad. Norman Stone and Oskar Règele are among the distinguished scholars taking pains to substantiate the Austrian chief of staff’s self-image as something of a cat’s-paw, who expected great results from a German attack and believed in it to the last minute. To accept this is to argue that Conrad could not evaluate his own correspondence, which consistently repeated the point that Germany’s commitment to the east was limited to thirteen or fourteen divisions.91 As early as March, 1909, moreover, Moltke had warned that “enemy action” might influence German operations. To call this blunt statement a “clever” escape clause or a mental reservation is surely to insult the intelligence of Moltke and Conrad alike.
Moltke had initially hoped that if he left enough troops in the east to carry out the proposed Narew offensive, the Austrians would in turn attack more vigorously and lessen the pressure on East Prussia. But the possibility of reassigning first-line units grew less each year, particularly since Italy’s increasingly wavering commitment to the Triple Alliance made it likely that her previous promises of support on the western front would be fulfilled slowly, if at all. By late in 1912 the Italians talked openly of limiting their forces in that theater. The German naval attaché reported in November, 1913, that public feeling against Austria was so strong it could erupt in “the most unpleasant fashion” at any time.92 It was not a good portent for future cooperation.
Revised German mobilization plans had made available an increasing number of Ersatz formations, composed primarily of men of military age who had received no peacetime training. Moltke believed that these second-line troops could be usefully employed guarding river crossings and providing garrisons in Pos^n and East Prussia.93 In December, 1913, Germany proposed to cover the left flank of the promised Austrian attack by deploying an improvised force of thirty-two Ersatz and Landwehr battalions in Silesia. These additions to the order of battle were hardly calculated to frighten enemies or impress allies. Conrad was well aware of the difference between the Prussian Guard and an equivalent number of greenhorns and grandfathers. In May, 1914, he made a trip to Carlsbad, where Moltke was taking the waters. He began their conference by repeating his determination to attack in Galicia. He went on to emphasize the urgent need for more German troops in the east. It was “highly probable” that the main Russian attack would be directed against East Prussia. In this case, Conrad said, it would be to Germany’s own advantage to be strong on the eastern front. What would happen if Austria were defeated? What if Germany failed to win an overwhelming victory in the west, and then found herself faced with a Russian invasion that Ostheer was unable to parry? Moltke answered only that the Vistula fortress would have to hold out long enough to enable reinforcements to arrive from France.
Just before Conrad left for Vienna, he asked Moltke how long it would be, in case of a two-front war, before German reinforcements could arrive in the east. Moltke’s reply is significant: “We hope to be ready to turn our main strength against Russia six weeks after the beginning of operations.”94 This was a month later than the deadline he had mentioned in 1909! Yet even this additional thirty-day delay had no effect on Conrad’s strategic visions. If the Austrian army’s spine was broken in the first month of the war, it was not because German plans were even partly calculated to deceive or mislead her ally. The Austrians were victimized by the wishful thinking and overconfidence of their chief of staff, who continued down to the outbreak of hostilities to hear only what he wished to hear.
3
War Finds a Way
The generals were not Germany’s only pessimists. Bethmann Hollweg’s familiar suggestion that it was hardly worthwhile to plant new trees on his estate outside of Berlin since the Russians would be there in a few years anyway was in part a product of his trip to Russia in 1912. He returned deeply disturbed at his first-hand impressions of that empire’s human and material resources. He was conscious, in a way many of his critics were not, of Russia’s potential—a potential whose development lay essentially outside Germany’s control, and which Russia’s current allies seemed unwilling or unable to harness. Rational adjustments of political and economic conflicts between the two empires might be expected to reduce tensions. But could such fine tuning indefinitely avert conflict without significant changes in the international system?1
I
The chancellor’s doubts reflected and reinforced the views of his confidential advisor, Kurt Riezler. Riezler is an outstanding early example of those terrible simplifiers who continue to stalk the twentieth century’s corridors of power: system makers without any ultimate responsibility for implementation, and counsellors whose schemas can be dangerously refreshing and fatally attractive to superiors grappling with the concrete complexities of decision making. Riezler argued for an essential distinction between developing and stagnating powers. The former had time on their side. The latter were constrained to follow policies of bluff and calculated risk, trying to check and alter an ultimately unfavorable trend by short-term successes. Riezler was convinced that Russian power was increasing steadily and objectively, almost in spite of the failures and blunders of her diplomacy. Austria, on the other hand, was at a level of stagnation that might well prove terminal. He therefore urged Bethmann to support at the first favorable opportunity a decisive Austrian initiative, specifically in the Balkans, one of the few remaining areas still allowing scope for such a move. The growing destructiveness of modern war, Riezler argued, made policies of brinkmanship potentially more effective than ever before. If Germany stood up and asserted herself, her adversaries would back down rather than risk actually going to war. Thus the cause of peace would ultimately be served by aggressiveness.
These theoretical formulations bear enough surface similarities to the events of 1914 to have given Riezler a certain status as the chancellor’s evil genius. The days of think-tank intellectuals were, however, still far in the future. Bethmann was far too cautious to take his cues directly from the political metaphysics of an amanuensis. Instead he took pains in his public statements to deny the inevitability of a clash between the Slavic and Teutonic worlds. He hoped rather that reason would in time temper the strong Panslavic attitudes current in Russian political and diplomatic circles. But reason was most effective when backed by force; words unsupported by guns were an exercise in futility.2