p383
ウィンストン・チャーチルが書いたように、第一次世界大戦の勃発が「決して超えられないドラマ」だったとしたら、その最初の 1 か月はまったくドラマチックではなかった。1

リエージュでの最初の惨事の後、ドイツ軍は再編成し、ベルギーを通ってフランス北部に激しく衝突し、パリに到達する寸前までいったが、9月初旬のマルヌの戦いでフランス軍（イギリス軍の支援もあった）によって反撃された。

東部戦線では、オーストリアのガリシアと東プロイセンの両方に対するロシアの予想より早い攻撃により、モルトケは最終的にコンラッドを説得して、セルビア戦役の重要な段階でプランBを放棄し、オーストリア第2軍を北のガリツィアへ経路変更することができた。

ロシアは8月下旬、東プロイセンのタンネンベルクでサムソノフ第2軍の大部分がドイツ軍に包囲され壊滅させられた際に反撃を受けた。紛争の最初の1か月での戦争の推移によってその可能性が開かれたにもかかわらず、交戦中の2つの連合はどちらも決定的な優位性を達成することができなかった。西側では、数で勝るドイツ軍が高台を陣取り、要塞陣地の背後に塹壕を掘った。東側では、ロシアはオーストリアには勝てるがドイツには勝てないことが証明された。

p384
　双方とも勝てると考えていたため、定期的な和平交渉は無駄に終わった。好戦的な連合は非常に互角だったので、中央同盟国にトルコとブルガリアという同盟国を加えることができた。イタリア、ルーマニア、ギリシャは協商側に加わったが、膠着状態はほとんど崩れなかった。

米国が参戦し、ロシアが脱落した1917年になって初めて、どちらかの側に勝利の見通しが立った。そしてそのときでさえ、2つの出来事がほぼキャンセルになったため、大虐殺はさらに1年続いた。

1918年までに、戦争は900万人近くの死者と同数の負傷者を出し、何世紀にもわたって続いた諸帝国に悲惨な終焉をもたらした。ロシア革命と内戦、オスマン帝国とハプスブルク帝国の崩壊を巡る流血事件、そしてもちろん、第一次世界大戦を再度戦うというヒトラーの野望から生まれた第二次世界大戦でも、さらに何百万人もの人々が命を落とした。

　なぜこのようなことが起こったのか? 標準的な教科書からわかるように、多くの長期的な構造的要因が 1914 年の大惨事を可とした。紛争に期限がなくなり、工業化と殺人兵器の改良に加えて大量の徴兵軍隊の台頭が必要となり、その結果、「重量と機動性」の間に奇妙なギャップが生じ、軍隊が近代的な火力を活用するのに十分な速さで機動することが困難になり、それが塹壕を固めた守備陣に決定的な優位性をもたらした。

外交においては、20世紀初頭までに、ドイツの愚かな海軍増強に対する英国の対処によって、ほぼ等しい２つの同盟ブロックの誕生を導いた因果関係を解き明かすためには、クリミア戦争におけるオーストリアとロシアの断絶まで遡ることができよう。

　しかし、このような構造的背景はどれも、1914 年に何が起こったのかを説明するのに十分ではない。大量徴兵と軍拡競争は、1908 ～ 1909 年の最初のボスニア危機や 1912 ～ 1913 年のバルカン戦争でも同様に進んでいた。フランスとロシアは、1894 年に遡る軍事同盟のそれまでのすべての年と同様に、1914 年に開戦するかどうかを自由に決定することができた。

オーストリアは、1914年と同様に1912年と1913年にもセルビアを縮小することに強い関心を持っていたが、この数年間、ドイツはバルカン半島に特別な関心を持っていなかった。

ロシアは、リマン・フォン・サンダース危機の最中の1908年、1909年、1912年から1913年、あるいは1913年から1914年の冬に、セルビア、あるいは海峡をめぐって戦争をする大義を見つけたかもしれない。

英国は 1914 年までにドイツとの海軍競争に決定的に勝利しており、これまでのすべての海戦でそうであったように、このバルカン半島の複雑な状況に参加しないことも簡単にできたであろう。

　サラエボ事件がなくとも、1914 年のある時点で大国戦争が勃発していた可能性があるが、しかし、そうではなかったと考える十分な理由がある。

p385
サラエボで生じた外交危機がなければ、フランスは 1914 年 7 月のカイヨー事件に巻き込まれたままだったであろう。カイヨーの妻が無罪となり、勝利を収めたカイヨー＝ジョレス内閣への道が開かれたであろう。カイヨーとジョレスは、大統領を骨抜きにするために、ポアンカレの選挙運動に対するロシアからの秘密補助金を暴露した可能性がある。彼らがドイツとの緊張緩和を目指して仏露同盟を放棄することに成功したかどうかにかかわらず、（カイヨーとポアンカレ）大統領との対立は政界を明るくしただろう。 1915 年のフランスの政治的状況は、1914 年 7 月から 8 月のそれとは大きく異なっていたかもしれない。

　このことはイギリスでも同様であった。サラエボで引き起こされた7月の危機以前、イギリス外交の傾向はドイツとの接近と、ペルシャを巡るロシアとの緊張の増大に向かっていた。 サラエボ事件がなければ、この傾向は続いていただろう。

さらに重要なことは、アイルランドをめぐる自治の危機が 1914 年夏のクライマックスに向けて高まっていたことである。それがどのように終わったであろうかはわからない。カトリックのアイルランドがプロテスタントのアルスターマンに対して武器をとったかもしれないし、その逆もあったかもしれない。

アイルランド内戦の脅威は、Curragh incidentの後にとにかく起こりそうになったように、イギリス軍を敵対的な派閥に分裂させたかもしれない。あるいはチャーチルは、今度は怒りに駆られて（3月には内密に「ベルファストに十分な量の銃弾と砲弾を注ぎ込んで廃墟と化す」と誓っていた）、自治規則を施行するために再び海軍を派遣したかもしれない。いずれにせよ、サラエボとそれが引き起こした戦争がなければ、イギリスの政治家たちはアイルランド問題に何年も気をとられていただろう。

　1914年に王位継承者が殺害されなければ、オーストリア＝ハンガリー帝国は依然として民族対立が渦巻いていただろう。しかし、オーストリアはセルビアと戦争はしなかったでしあろう。その理由は非常に単純である。フランツ・フェルディナンドは、コンラッドが戦争をするよう主張するたびに（コンラッドは、フランツ・フェルディナンドが生きていた1913年だけで何と25回もそれを言っていた！）、それを阻止していたからである。

大公は他人の意見をほとんど受け入れず、頑固でなくはなかった。彼の車がフランツ・ヨーゼフ通りへの間違った方向に曲がっておらず、サラエボでの暗殺が未遂であったなら、彼が怒ったことは想像できるだろう。

p386
陰謀の背後に誰がいるのかを知ったら、彼はほぼ確実にセルビアとセルビア人を疑ったことだろう。当時、彼はすでにセルビア人を憎んでいたが、それにもかかわらず、セルビアとの戦争という考えに対してほとんど宗教的な嫌悪感を抱くようになった。

むしろ、殺人が未遂に終わって生き延びたのであれば、ハンガリーが人種的少数派の迫害により、二重君主制を悩ませている悪の責任を負っていたという彼の確信を強めたであろう。大公は念願だったオーストリアとルーマニアの和解を実現し、バルカン半島の緊張を静めたかもしれない。あるいは、ティサとの口論で、二重君主制をハンガリーとオーストリア間の危機に陥らせた可能性もある。また、それら2 つの組み合わせも考えられる。オーストリアがセルビアと戦争をすることはなかっただろう。 2

　ドイツ人に対しては、サラエボ事件がなかったならば、ロシアの大計画が1917年に実現する前に、モルトケは、ロシアとの予防戦争を主張し続けていたのではないかという疑惑が依然として残っている。

しかし、彼と参謀本部とヴィルヘルム通りの他のタカ派は、 1914 年以前にも同様の戦争を推進していたが、成功していなかった。モルトケはドイツの主権者ではなかった。彼は首相でもなかった。ベートマンも皇帝ヴィルヘルム二世も（ドイツのタカ派は彼らを「二人の老婦人」と呼んでいたが）、サラエボ事件の前も、その後も、予防戦争を支持したという証拠はない。

　1914 年のベルリンの戦略的位置が戦争にとって極めて有利だったという考えはばかげている。 1912年までにドイツはイギリスとの海軍競争に決定的に敗北していた。 1911年の時点では、フランスとロシアに対するドイツの立場はそれなりに強かったが、フランスの三年法と、フランスの圧力を受けてロシアが最近動員スケジュールを加速させたことにより、大計画が発効する前でさえ、ドイツがより迅速な配備によって得られるかもしれない利点はすでに帳消しになっていた。

1914年当時、オーストリアとドイツの戦略的立場は、軍事史家のテレンス・ズーバーの言葉を借りれば、「『考えられる最悪の』シナリオに近づいていた」。

p387
実際、ドイツの計画立案者たちは、両戦線で決定的に劣勢であることを認識しており、1915年までに平時軍に6個軍団を追加することを期待していた（国会がその費用を負担してくれれば）。フランスはすでに募集枠いっぱいで、利用可能な人員の90パーセント近くを徴兵していたので、これで平等が回復したかもしれなかった。軍の拡大により、ドイツ軍は西部戦線で決定的な優位性を得ることができ、東部にはロシアの攻撃を阻止するのに十分な援護兵力があった可能性がある。3

このことは、ロシア同盟の戦略的要点においてポアンカレさえも不快にさせただろう。あるいは、パリでのカイヨーとジョレスの間の関係が改善されれば、仏独間の軍拡競争は完全に終結したかもしれない（訳注；カイヨーとジョレスは、1914年7月に戦争への傾斜を止めようとしていた反軍国主義者仲間だった。しかし、カイヨーは殺人罪で妻が裁判を受けたことで、政治的にも精神的にも麻痺してしまった。妻の裁判が終われば(7月28日)、カイヨーとジョレスは、ポアンカレ大統領とロシアの秘密協定を暴露できると期待した。それはドイツとの緊張緩和政策につながり、戦争と避けられない大虐殺を防ぐことになっただろう。ロシアはポアンカレの選挙運動に秘密裏に助成金を出していたのだったJean Jaurès - Wikipedia）。

これらのシナリオのいずれか、すべて、またはまったく起こらなかったとしても、モルトケ、あるいは好戦的なプロイセン陸軍大臣ファルケンハインは依然として予防戦争を嘆願して、カイザーの耳を傾けていたかもしれない。

ドイツの将軍の間での予防戦争の話は、アルザス＝ロレーヌでのフランスからの報復のうわさ、オーストリアはセルビアを粉砕しなければならないというコンラッドの懇願、あるいはコンスタンティノープルの征服を計画するロシアの企てと質的に何ら変わらなかった。 予防戦争の話は結局は話題だけであり、実際の戦争ではなかった。

　ロシアについては、1914年に同国を戦争に導く別のシナリオを想像するのは容易である。スルタン・オスマン1世号は7月にボスポラス海峡に到着する予定であり、時は刻々と過ぎていた。トルコが弩級戦艦を一隻浮かべるや否や、、ロシアの「海峡の窓」は、当面、閉鎖されるのだ。

この恐怖は、リマン・フォン・サンダース危機以上であり、オスマン帝国に焦点を当てた1914年2月の戦略計画会議を引き起こし,そこでサゾノフは、サラエボ事件を受けて、コンスタンティノープルへの水陸両用攻撃のスケジュールに関する最新情報を求めta
。（The RUSSION ORIGINS of the First World War p33）。ハプスブルク家の後継者の暗殺がなかったとしても、トルコの弩級戦艦に対するある種の危機が、1914 年の夏にロシアにもたらされていたことだろう。

　だがこれは、ロシアとトルコの間の危機がヨーロッパ全体の大火災につながったであろうと言っているわけではない。 東方問題は以前にも戦争や危機を引き起こしていたが、それらはすべて状況に応じた独自の論理に従っていた。

p388
circumstances. The Russo-Ottoman war of 1877– 1878 might have – but did not – produce a larger war, owing to Russia’s diplomatic isolation and the exhaustion of her troops when they neared Constantinople; this gave both sides cause to start negotiating. The First Bosnian crisis of 1908– 1909 had very nearly produced an Austrian-Russian clash, only for this to be averted when Russia backed down owing to her weakness following her 1905 revolution.

　The two Balkan Wars of 1912– 1913 had threatened the European equilibrium still more seriously. If then– chairman of the Council of Ministers Kokovtsov had not blocked the war party, Russian mobilisation in November 1912 might have led Germany to counter. Still, without the provocation of an Austrian attack on Serbia, as happened following Sarajevo (but not during the Balkan Wars), Petersburg would have been hard-pressed to win French, much less British, support for a war with the Central Powers.

p389
　A crisis over the arrival of Turkey’s first dreadnought in　July 1914 might have spiraled into war. Still, prior to Sarajevo, most of the diplomatic chatter in Europe concerned the possibility of another war between Turkey and Greece, not Russia. The Greeks, pursuing their own naval buildup, might have launched a pre-emptive strike before the Ottoman Empire floated the Sultan Osman I. A Greco-Turkish clash might have led to a Third Balkan War, as Bulgaria would have taken advantage of the crisis to make good her losses in the Second. Still, it need not have spread to Europe. What made July 1914 different was the direct involvement of a Great Power – Austria-Hungary – in the initial clash, which brought in Russia.

　Had Russia herself launched an amphibious strike on Constantinople in summer 1914, a Great Power war might have resulted. Still, advanced as operational planning for such a strike was, it is hard to see what pretext Sazonov would have used to justify it. A Greco-Turkish war might have provided the spark, but if it seemed as if Petersburg was piggybacking on Turkey’s distress to seize the Straits, then　Russia would not have been able to count on support from France, let alone Great Britain. As Sazonov wrote in his memoirs, the general understanding at the February 1914 planning conference was that Russia’s leaders ‘considered an offensive against Constantinople inevitable, should European war break out.’ The European war, that is, had to come first. Such a war might provide Russia with the pretext to conquer Constantinople, but she could not be seen to start it, or she would find herself just as isolated as in 1878 – or, worse still, 1853, when Britain and France had gone against her in the Crimean War. Only the unique sequence of events following Sarajevo – which led Austria to move against Serbia, backed by Germany – produced a European war in which both France and Britain would back Russia. Although there were bilateral agreements between London and the other two capitals, this unlikely tripartite battlefield coalition had never existed before and will never be seen again.*

　Still, contingent and clearly preventable as the Sarajevo outrage was, it happened; the July crisis ensued; world war　broke out in August, with all of the fearful and long-lasting consequences mentioned above.

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All of these world-shaking events were man-made. They are therefore quite properly subject to human judgment.

WHEN WE EXAMINE the key moral question of 1914 – responsibility for the outbreak of European, then world war – it is important to keep degrees of responsibility in mind. Sins of omission are lesser ones than sins of commission; likewise, actions are not equivalent to the reactions they occasion. Above all, intentions are important, but the hardest to divine, because we cannot peer into men’s hearts.To begin at the beginning: Gavrilo Princip and his fellow assassination plotters bear ultimate responsibility for provoking the July crisis by murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand. True, there was no intention on Princip’s part, or that of Black Hand organisers in Belgrade, to cause a world war;† nevertheless some of them clearly sought to provoke a confrontation with Austria. Historians continue to argue　about the different motivations of Serbian leaders.

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Apis may have wanted to provoke a crisis with Vienna so as to furnish an opportunity for a coup d’état, or merely to embarrass Prime Minister Pašić enough for his party to be defeated in July elections. Pašić almost certainly did not approve of the plot when he learned of it, but he made only an ineffectual, halfhearted effort to foil the assassination, whether because he feared a coup or the reaction from Vienna if he revealed what the Black Hand was up to. The only things we know for certain are that high Serbian officials were complicit in the crime and that Pašić neither prevented it nor gave the Austrians any genuine help in investigating it. 4

　The Austrians must stand next in the dock of judgment. It was clearly the intention of Conrad, Berchtold, and every other imperial minister except Tisza to use the Sarajevo outrage as a pretext for a punitive war against Serbia. Emperor Franz Josef I, as ultimate arbiter and signator of all key decisions, also bears a grave responsibility, although he did not design the policies – he merely confirmed them. One　could easily argue, of course, that the crime committed in Sarajevo was sufficient legal casus belli for war with Serbia: the war launched by the United States and her allies against Afghanistan in 2001 (if not also the Iraq war of 2003) was justified in very similar terms (the ‘harbouring of terrorists’). There are significant differences between the two cases, however. The Serbian government, unlike Osama bin Laden, did not confess to (much less publicly boast about) committing the crime, and she did agree to arrest at least some of the conspirators, such as Major Tankositch, whereas the Taliban refused outright to hand over bin Laden (although Serbia did similarly shelter Apis).

　More significantly, the United States received broad (if not quite universal) international support for her action in Afghanistan. No Great Power made clear her stout opposition to a United States punitive strike in 2001, as at least Russia clearly did to an Austrian one in 1914. True, Berchtold and Conrad did not know, at the beginning of July, what Russia’s reaction would be.

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By the end of the month, they did, and　they proceeded against Serbia anyway. The Austrian sin was therefore one of both intention and commission, although with the caveat that the goal in Vienna was a local war with Serbia, not a European war involving Russia, much less France, Britain, and all the other ultimate belligerents. This was made dramatically clear when Austria, despite having catalysed the July crisis in the first place, refused to declare war on Russia until August 6 – two days after even Britain went in. While this anticlimactic declaration of war has sometimes been seen as implicating Germany in ‘war guilt’ – as it was clearly the Germans who pressured the Austrians into it – what it really reveals is just how little desire there was in Vienna to fight Russia. Considering the Austrians’ poor performance against Russian troops in Galicia at the start of the war, one can easily see why.

　Tisza, for his part, bears significant responsibility for the final shape of the July crisis: its back-ended timing. Owing to the harvest leave issue, the two weeks Austria ‘lost’ after the Ministerial Council of 7 July may not have been as important　as historians have claimed. Conrad probably would have had to wait before mobilising, anyway. It was, rather, at the very beginning that Tisza’s opposition mattered. Had Austria-Hungary mobilised on 1 July (as Conrad wanted to), or after only a few more days of diplomatic spadework (as Berchtold and the emperor would have preferred), it is possible that the Austrians would have caught Europe by surprise with a fait accompli – an occupation of Belgrade, at least, conveniently located as the capital was right on the Austrian border.

　True – in light of Austria’s indecisiveness during the Balkan Wars and her notoriously incompetent military performance in 1914 – one should regard this counterfactual with scepticism. And yet part of the reason why Conrad fared so badly in Galicia is that his real goal – shared by everyone in Vienna – was to crush Serbia, not to fight Russia. Had Austria begun her mobilisation against Serbia in the first week, instead of the last week, of July, and implemented Plan B without interruption, there is no telling how the crisis would　have played out.

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It might still have led to European war, or it might have led to some kind of face-saving compromise along the lines of a ‘Halt in Belgrade.’ It was largely Tisza’s doing that Austria did not present her ultimatum until four weeks after Sarajevo. Of course, his motivation in blocking Conrad was honourable: he wanted, at least until 14 July, to prevent war, not to cause it. If there is any sin in Tisza’s behaviour, it is a negative one of omission leading to unintended consequences.

　The German sin, at the time of the Hoyos mission of 5– 6 July, was more serious. By giving Austria-Hungary a blank check against Serbia, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Bethmann Hollweg made a broader escalation of the Balkan crisis possible. Given Tisza’s opposition, there is reason to believe that Conrad would not have got his Serbian war at all without German intervention. It was not German support alone that changed Tisza’s mind – his own revulsion against Serbia grew organically the first two weeks in July, as he learned more about Sarajevo – but without it Berchtold would have had a　very hard time convincing the emperor to move forward, whatever Tisza’s views.　Austria’s diplomatic isolation and military weakness meant that German backing was indispensable. The Germans gave it unambiguously. Still, although it is true that Arthur Zimmermann, the undersecretary of state, and many military chiefs in Berlin, were keen on the idea of ‘preventive war,’ it is equally clear that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Bethmann did not expect Russia to fight. While they recognised the risks and were willing to run them, they did not intend to provoke European war. Their real sin, at this stage of the crisis, lay in failing to mandate any particular Austrian course of action, or to establish firmer guidelines as to how Vienna would coordinate its strategy with Berlin. The blank check was foolish and self-defeating. It encouraged Berchtold to behave as recklessly as possible, under the mistaken impression that this was what the Germans wanted him to do.

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　Berchtold himself must shoulder the greatest blame for bringing the crisis to the danger point on 23 July. Having lost　the chance for a military fait accompli, Austria’s foreign minister settled for a diplomatic one, detonating his ultimatum bombshell without even clearing the text first with his German allies. True, this was partly Bethmann’s fault for leaving Berchtold alone to do his worst and for failing to press Vienna for more information until it was too late. And yet Jagow did request to see the text; he also asked that Berchtold do his ‘homework’ and finalise a dossier of Serbian guilt before dispatching the ultimatum, and make sure of Italy’s support. Berchtold did nothing of the kind. After sending the ultimatum under seal to Belgrade, he even lied to Germany’s ambassador that it was not yet finished. Here was conscious intention to deceive not only a hostile power such as Russia, but even Austria’s closest ally. Of all the what-ifs of the July crisis, this is one of the greatest. If Berchtold had done what the Germans asked and convinced Europe of Serbia’s perfidy, he would have put the diplomatic onus back on Russia to advocate for her guilty client. With what we know today of Serbian complicity in the Sarajevo crime, it is　astonishing that Austrian officials were unable to marshal a convincing case even a month after the crime in Sarajevo.　　

　Still, serious as Berchtold’s errors were, it was not he who began the countdown to European war. His blundering helped isolate Austria-Hungary and embarrass Germany for supporting her, but his actions did not force Russia to mobilise, much less France or Germany. Here the timeline becomes all-important. Because of Schilling’s running diary at the Russian Foreign Ministry, we know that Sazonov decided on a military response before Serbia had replied to the ultimatum on Saturday, 25 July – before, indeed, he had actually read the ultimatum itself on Friday. True, his decision still had to be ratified in the Council of Ministers Friday afternoon and by Tsar Nicholas II the next day. In a sense, it had to be ratified by France, too. But even before running his decision by anyone else, by eleven AM on Thursday, 24 July, Sazonov had already instructed Russia’s finance minister to repatriate funds from Germany and her army chief of staff to prepare for mobilisation.

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Sazonov had　known about the impending Austrian ultimatum (if not its exact form) since the preceding Saturday. After he, the tsar, and France’s president, and premier/ foreign minister held four days of meetings from Sunday to Wednesday, Sazonov had good reason to believe he had their support for his course of action. The most recent research strongly suggests (although it does not prove) that Poincaré and Paléologue gave Sazonov verbal support for a strong line against Vienna during the summit in Petersburg. The written evidence proves that Paléologue gave this support afterwards, with or without explicit authorisation from Poincaré. So, too, did General Laguiche (France’s liaison officer at Russian command) and Joffre and Messimy in Paris.

　Tsar Nicholas II signed into law the Period Preparatory to War at midday on Saturday, 25 July – before learning of Serbia’s reply to the ultimatum and before either Serbia or Austria had mobilised. The Period Preparatory to War began at midnight, 25– 26 July. Because it, unlike Germany’s version (the Kriegsgefahrzustand), was enacted and carried out in　secret, historians have been able to deny warlike intent on Russia’s part, the idea being that, as Sazonov himself told Ambassador Pourtalès, preliminary mobilisation measures ‘did not mean war.’ Some have gone even further, saying that even Russia’s general mobilisation, ordered at four PM on 30 July, did not ‘mean war.’ 5 In both cases, the claim is dubious, although it has slightly more surface plausibility with the Period Preparatory to War.　　

　The measures inaugurated on Sunday, 26 July, viewed on their own terms, clearly fell well short of war. Just as clearly, they constituted preparations for war. This was, indeed, the entire reason why the secret Period Preparatory to War had been developed in 1912– 1913: to allow Russia a head start in mobilising against the Austro-Germans. The statute of 2 March 1913 clearly states that the Period Preparatory to War ‘means the period of diplomatic complications preceding the opening of hostilities.’ Or, as laid down in the tsar’s November 1912 directive, ‘it will be advantageous to complete concentration without beginning hostilities, in　order not to deprive the enemy irrevocably of the hope that war can still be avoided.

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Our measures for this must be masked by clever diplomatic negotiations, in order to lull to sleep as much as possible the enemy’s fears.’ Dobrorolskii, chief of the Russian army’s Mobilisation Section, understood this to mean war. So did War Minister Sukhomlinov and Chief of Army Staff Yanushkevitch. Sazonov made a great show of believing otherwise, but then, that was his job: to handle the ‘diplomatic complications.’ In this sense, and this sense alone, was the Period Preparatory to War not war. However insincere, diplomacy could continue.

　In a curious mirror imaging of Sazonov’s approach, Austria’s foreign minister, tiring of insincere ‘diplomatic complications,’ declared war on Serbia – by telegram – on Tuesday, 28 July. Considering that Conrad did not believe the army would be ready to fight until 12 August, Berchtold’s manoeuvre was counterproductive, as it gave diplomatic ammunition to Russia and France in their goal of winning over Britain and other neutrals. Berchtold’s motivation,　however, is instructive: he wanted to cut off further outside mediation efforts.

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War cancelled diplomacy. Here was another sin of commission. Still, aside from its adverse strategic consequences, especially for Germany, Berchtold’s move proves little more than that Austrian leaders wanted a war with Serbia, a fact we knew already.

　Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia has usually been seen as the point of no return in the outbreak of the First World War, the moment when the July crisis escalated into actual conflict. This, too, has a surface plausibility. And yet again, we need to be careful with chronology. While it is true that Berchtold’s rash action gave Russia a pretext to escalate her war preparations, these had been underway for nearly three days when Austria declared war on Serbia. By keeping quiet about the Period Preparatory to War and then delaying the announcements of both partial and general mobilisation, Sazonov was able to convince Sir Edward Grey, along with generations of historians, that Russia had begun mobilising only after Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia. This is　untrue: Austrian, German, French, and most of all Russian sources confirm that Russia’s mobilisation measures against both Austria and Germany were well advanced by 28 July, and even more so by 29 July. All Berchtold’s telegram did was give Russia a public casus belli for war preparations she was undertaking anyway. The long-running argument about Russia’s partial versus general mobilisation rests, ultimately, on a fiction. As Kokovtsov had pointed out in November 1912, and Dobrorolskii pointed out in July 1914, a partial mobilisation targeting Austria alone, without using the Warsaw railway hub and blanketing Poland, was technically impossible. Nor was it ever fully implemented. ‘Partial mobilisation’ was a diplomatic conjuring act designed to show France – and more so, Britain – that Russia was not giving Germany a pretext for war.

　The decision for European war was made by Russia on the night of 29 July 1914, when Tsar Nicholas II, advised unanimously by his advisers, signed the order for general mobilisation.

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General mobilisation – as he knew, as Sazonov　knew, as Schilling knew; as Krivoshein, Rodzianko, and Duma leaders knew; as Sukhomlinov, Yanushkevitch, and Dobrorolskii knew – meant war. So clearly did the tsar know this that, on being moved by a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm II, he changed his mind. ‘I will not be responsible for a monstrous slaughter’ is the key line of the entire July crisis, for it shows that the tsar, for all his simplicity – or expressly because of his guileless, unaffected simplicity – knew exactly what he was doing when he did it. He knew exactly what he was doing when he did it again, sixteen hours later, after agonising all day about it. Sazonov knew it, which is why he told Yanushkevitch to ‘smash his telephone’ so that the tsar could not change his mind again.　　

　The French knew it, too. Although the final decision and its timing needed to be massaged carefully for British ears, Poincaré, Joffre, and Messimy knew that Russia had resolved on war long before her general mobilisation was confirmed by Paléologue’s 30-hours-late telegram Friday night. In a fascinating illustration of the importance of chronology,　Barbara Tuchman, in her classic The Guns of August, narrates a middle-of-the-night drama that sees President Poincaré awakened in bed by Russian ambassador Izvolsky asking him, ‘What is France going to do?’ Messimy then wakes up Viviani, who exclaims, ‘Good God! These Russians are even worse insomniacs than they are drinkers.’ It is a wonderful set piece, but Tuchman gets the date wrong by two days.

　This scene transpired not on Friday night, 31 July– 1 August, after Germany had inaugurated Kriegsgefahrzustand and sent Russia and France her ultimatums, but on Wednesday night, 29– 30 July. The catalyst for the late-night drama was not, as Tuchman suggests, 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 mobilising, ‘it only remains for us to hasten our armaments and regard war as imminent.’

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Wednesday was the same night　that Sazonov told the German ambassador that Russia’s mobilisation 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 mobilisation 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 mobilisation, 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 mobilising, they knew then. And they knew what it meant. It meant France had to mobilise, too. And mobilisation meant war.

　France, even more than Russia, insisted publicly that mobilisation was not war. The ‘ten-kilometre withdrawal’ to allow the Germans the initiative was a brilliant public relations move then, 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 mobilise all their forces immediately and simultaneously, and shall transport them as near to the frontiers as possible.’

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As General N. N.　Obruchev, Russia’s signatory, explained, ‘this mobilisation 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 mobilisation is the declaration of war.’ Or as Dobrorolskii, architect of Russia’s mobilisation 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 mobilisation took effect – France and Russia were expected to mount offensives against Germany by M 15. Just as Dobrorolskii said, mobilisation 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 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 realised 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.

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　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 non-interventionists 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.

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　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 mobilisation and yet denouncing Austria and Germany for ‘marching towards war,’ Grey encouraged Russian and then French recklessness, as his attitude convinced Sazonov and Poincaré that they had　him in their pocket.

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Still, while he can be faulted for misleading the cabinet and Commons, and even, arguably, for failing to prevent the war by not earlier deciding on a policy, bringing about a Great Power war was the furthest thing from Grey’s intention, and further still from that of some other cabinet ministers (even Churchill, who wanted the navy to be ready and was generally gung-ho, did not really wish for a European war to break out). Britain’s role in unleashing the First World War was one born of blindness and blundering, not malice.

　We can say something similar about Germany’s role, although with allowance for the much greater sin of invading Belgium. For this colossal error in judgment, German leaders richly deserve the opprobrium they have been showered with ever since 1914. Like the blank check, it was a sin of commission, not omission. And yet with Belgium, too, Germany’s sin was not one of intending a world war – British belligerence was the last thing anyone in Berlin wanted – but of botching the diplomacy of the European war’s outbreak.

Russia had mobilised fully two days before Germany; she had begun her secret war preparations against Austria and Germany five days earlier still. France had mobilised before Germany, too (although only by minutes). Austria had not mobilised against Russia at all. And yet somehow the prevailing opinion in London on 3– 4 August was that Austria and Germany had started the war with France and Russia. The assault on Liège was not the cause of this error in British perception, which owed more to Franco-Russian deception, Sir George Buchanan’s inept reporting, and Grey’s misleading summaries. But Liège did help to confirm British prejudice against Germany. It also gave Entente diplomats, and pro-Entente historians, a ready-made argument for German war guilt – the idea that Germany ‘caused’ or ‘intended’ or ‘willed’ the First World War.

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　This argument is not supported by the evidence. As indicated by their earlier mobilisations (especially Russia’s), in 1914 France and Russia were far more eager to fight than was Germany – and far, far more than Austria-Hungary, if in　her case we mean fighting Russia, not Serbia. Germany declared war first on France and Russia because of Bethmann’s misguided sense of legal propriety, but she mobilised last, and even then hesitatingly, with her leaders (except for the timetable-obsessed Moltke and Falkenhayn) clutching desperately for exits, as indicated by how eagerly the kaiser, Bethmann, and Jagow jumped on Grey’s last-minute neutrality offers.　

　The reason for Germany’s reluctance becomes clear when we examine the order of battle of the armies. With German forces outnumbered and outgunned on both fronts, with Britain primed to intervene against them with an expeditionary force and a naval blockade, French and Russian generals expected that they would win, so long as Russia’s mobilisation began early enough. This is abundantly clear from the chatter at the time of the war’s outbreak, which shows a widespread (although not unanimous) mood of optimism in the French and Russian general staffs. As Sukhomlinov wrote in his diary on 9 August 1914, as the　assembly of the armies was nearing completion, ‘it seems that the German wolf will quickly be brought to bay: all are against him.’ 10

　The Germans, by contrast, went into the war expecting that they would lose, which is why they were so keen to wiggle out of it at the last moment. Moltke’s unrealistic and ultimately suicidal war plan, involving a march across Belgium, reflected German weakness, not German strength. It is not hard to see why Sir Edward Grey was able to convince the Commons (or most of it, anyway) that Germany was the aggressor in 1914: she was indeed the Power that first violated neutral territory in Luxembourg and then in Belgium. She did so, however, out of desperation, out of Moltke’s belief that only a knockout blow against France would give her the slightest chance of winning. So far from ‘willing the war,’ the Germans went into it kicking and screaming as the Austrian noose snapped shut around their necks.　

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