By Mr L. M. Potts
After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 1914, Russia and Germany found themselves in a standoff from which neither could back down. Russia on the one hand had failed to intervene during the Bosnian Crisis and the Balkan Wars, and thus had little choice but to come to the aid of Serbia if they intended to maintain their great power status and the role of the ‘protector of the Slavs’. Consequently, Tsar Nicholas II was preparing to partially mobilise enough troops to engage Austria-Hungary but feared that this would not be enough should Germany join the fray. For Germany, the ‘blank cheque’ issued in 1914 offered unconditional support for whatever action Austria-Hungary intended to take with regard to Serbia. This included military assistance which placed Germany in direct opposition to Russia. Furthermore, the Schlieffen Plan of 1905 had arguably placed Germany on a war path with Russia and provided a false sense of confidence of a swift victory. Therefore, with Russia and Germany committed to supporting their respective allies, any conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would inevitably drag both into a larger war.
There were attempts to avoid war from both Germany and Russia; however, due to foreign commitments a standoff scenario was created, where neither could exit without some form of loss: be it militarily, influence or status. Aware of each other’s commitment to Austria-Hungary and Serbia, Nicholas II and Wilhelm II sent a series of telegrams urging the other not to mobilise for war. German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov that ‘Further progress of Russian mobilisation measures would compel us to mobilise and that European war would scarcely be prevented’. Nevertheless, the ultimatum was disregarded as Russian generals asserted that only a full mobilisation would offer any real chance of defeating the Dual Alliance and to act as a deterrent for Germany to back down. Unfortunately, this had an opposite effect as Germany would see this as a declaration of war and as Wilhelm II slowly lost power to his military generals such as Moltke, a wider war became imminent.
According to Fritz Fischer, the German government and military staff planned to create ‘Mitteleuropa’ and ‘Mittelafrika’ which was a German dominated Europe and Africa in the pursuit to become the leading world power. Fischer argued that as a result of such ambitions, Germany purposefully instigated war in Europe; however, these claims are unlikely as Wilhelm and Hollweg actively tried to avoid war through diplomatic means. It was Russia’s mobilisation that forced the German Chief of Staff (Moltke) to instruct Austria-Hungary to mobilise against Russia, despite previous instruction to scale down attacks on Belgrade, and to implement the Schlieffen Plan which relied on maintaining the initiative in order to succeed. It was believed by Moltke that any delay in military action would allow both Russia and France (Russia’s military ally) to fully mobilise which would result in a prolonged war on two fronts which Germany could not win. Therefore, on August 1st 1914, Wilhelm signed the order for general mobilisation and declared war on Russia that same day.
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