Germany’s support and encouragement of Austria’s stand on Serbia was thus ultimately a warning directed at St. Petersburg—a warning the Russian government, at least in German eyes, seemed deliberately to ignore. Austria’s actions against Serbia, up to and including the declaration of war and the subsequent bombardment of Belgrade, had one major point in their favor. They were not directly taken against a great power. The fact is simple enough to be easily overlooked. The Concert of Europe may have been little more than a convenient fable even in its salad days. Yet at least since the Crimea, no major state had gone to war with another in the interests of a lesser power, even an avowed client. Nor had any great power defined its vital interests in the context of a lesser state’s policies. The one arguable exception had been Russia’s support of Rumania and Bulgaria in 1877. And if Austria had now replaced the Ottoman Empire in Russian policy making, this substitution was hardly reassuring in Berlin.
Bethmann’s reiterated argument that Russia was betraying the monarchical principle, supporting revolutionaries and regicides in the company of liberal and republican allies, was more than a simple assertion of conservative principles of social order, and more than a crude effort to split the entente. It was also a reminder that Russia was risking the very basis of international relations for the sake of goals and principles she was either unable to define even to herself, or was camouflaging beneath rhetoric of self-determination for small states—a rhetoric that had never ultimately defined the behavior of great powers.
In 1772, during the course of another significant readjustment of Eastern European boundaries, a cynical Frederick the Great allegedly said of Maria Theresa’s avowed reluctance to participate in the partition of Poland, “She weeps, but she eats.” In 1914, Russia’s tears seemed similarly crocodilian. As early as July 23 Bethmann declared privately that if Russia mobilized, Germany would go to war.72
He was expressing a mood of resignation rather than aggression. Appeasement, for all its negative connotations, remains the most basic measure of diplomacy in the sense of discovering and meeting each others’ desires through negotiation. But if those desires are badly articulated, if they are expressed in vague or contradictory terms, then appeasement, like restraint, becomes an exercise in futility. Far from “unleashing” Austria-Hungary, far from using the Sarajevo incident as an excuse for initiating a long-prepared war of conquest, Germany was reacting to her eastern neighbors in a most un-Bismarckian way. The Second Empire did not slide into war in 1914 by accident or miscalculation. Instead it deliberately resigned the initiative to the game’s other players. This was in sharp contrast to her by now traditional behavior in crisis situations. From San Stefano to Agadir, from Samoa to the Balkans, Germany had held center stage for a quarter-century, pointing with pride or viewing with alarm, demanding, threatening, or blustering—and always ultimately backing down. Suddenly her diplomats were taking a calm, almost fatalistic attitude. Her ambassadors were talking in terms of “if-then” in a way that bewildered their opposite numbers and continues to confuse historians, but made far too much sense to Bethmann-Hollweg.
Bethmann saw Germany as on the low side of a seesaw. Instead of being the fulcrum of European diplomacy, she found herself in a situation where the balance was in danger of being permanently upset in the wrong direction. Writing in later years in the contexts of stalemate and defeat, men with the vastly different political positions of Karl Lichnoswky and Philipp Eulenberg argued for the stupidity of their country’s policy in the summer of 1914. The erstwhile ambassador to England and the one-time imperial favorite agreed that no vital interest justified Germany’s anti-Serbian position, that Russia had made plain her support for Serbia’s integrity, and that it was nonsense to risk a war that offered even the possibility of global involvement.73 Bethmann interpreted the situation differently. The Serbian issue was a litmus test. If Russia and her allies took it to the brink successfully, this would be only the beginning. There would be another crisis, and another, in a pattern later generations would describe as salami slicing. In Bethmann’s opinion, if Russia meant to have a war, let it begin now.
By this time Bethmann had little confidence in England’s restraint. He considered the Anglo-Russian naval negotiations, successful or not, as a particular sign that Britain regarded war with Germany as not much more than a question of time and place. Nevertheless, throughout July he continued to urge the island empire to remain neutral. Without her support, he argued, Russia would back down from a position morally untenable and dangerous to Europe’s stability. Should Russia fail to see reason, why should Britain underwrite her folly?
These efforts to limit the conflict did not exclude considerations of how Germany might profit from the victory she expected to win. If Bethmann’s exact goals were relatively vague, his concepts of colonial compensation and enhanced political and economic influence in Europe and the Near East were clear enough.74 Wars, however, are not necessarily fought for their causes; war aims are not a logical indicator of prewar goals. No state in history had fought a war to restore the exact status quo ante helium, if for no better reason than that was the situation generating war in the first place. If the result of present events was a Europe under German hegemony, then that would be a by-product of a series of incorrect decisions—all of them ultimately made outside Berlin.
Nor was Bethmann under massive internal pressure to begin a war. For men so often described as trembling with eagerness for battle, Germany’s senior officers reacted to Franz Ferdinand’s assassination with remarkable insouciance. Moltke, taking a cure at Karlsbad, was told by the chancellor to stay there and saw no reason to challenge his instructions. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm Groener, head of the all-important railway section of the general staff, was visiting Bad Kissingen for his health. In the aftermath of his warning to the Saxon plenipotentiary, Waldersee had been given compassionate leave because of a death in his family. On July 8 Bethmann’s office advised him to spend some additional time on his father-in-law’s estate in Mecklenburg, restoring health shaken by recent surgery. Waldersee would not return to Berlin until July 23, and did little during his holiday to keep himself abreast of the deepening crisis.
Was the absence of so many key officers part of an elaborate plan to lure the rest of Europe into a false security regarding Germany’s intentions? Waldersee’s comment on July 8 that he was “ready to jump” and that the general staff was so well prepared “there is nothing for us to do” deserves interpreting with a grain of salt.75 Given the military’s concern with maintaining its place in Germany’s power structure, a rhetoric of confidence in the presence of civilians was predictable. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine warmongers so confident that they completely ignore intelligence, if only to ensure that the prospective target remains safely in the dark. But not until July 16 were the intelligence officers of the eastern corps informally instructed to pay more than routine attention to developments in Russia. Not until July 23 were these men officially informed that Berlin had a special interest in keeping abreast of events in the tsar’s empire. And not until July 25 did the head of military intelligence explain to his subordinates that a war was likely, and that their agency was expected to concentrate on finding out whether military preparations were in fact taking place in France and Russia.
To the men on the spot in eastern Germany, Berlin was merely seeking confirmation of what everyone already knew. Since early July, every train passing through Danzig or Königsberg into Russia seemed to bear its quota of officers and their ladies returning ahead of schedule from the watering places of Western Europe. Every contact, personal or official, with Russians of any social standing seemed to be accompanied by a recommendation to stock up on caviar, or a suggestion not to put too much hope in the coming autumn’s hunting season. The men’s handshakes were firmer than usual; the women’s tears more public.