Prelude to the Great War: France

It is well known, the bullet that killed crown prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria.  There is a second, equally important bullet that drove – or in this case, kept clear – Europe’s drive toward suicidal war.

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

The bullet was fired by Henriette Caillaux, killing Gaston Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro.  She believed he was about to expose secrets about her marriage.  Apparently her husband was a man about town…and these secrets might have been equally embarrassing to her.

Except for the bark of her Browning, Henriette’s husband Joseph Caillaux would have been France’s premier in July 1914.

Caillaux was known for easing tensions in Europe, and certainly with Germany.  He was known for not favoring France’s military alliance with Russia.  He was not from Alsace-Lorraine, and therefore did not feel the same pull toward restoring these lands, lost to Germany some forty years earlier.

The shot rang out on March 16, 1914, just weeks before the election; the trial ended just days before the beginning of the war.  In the months before the shot, Caillaux was attacked regularly – over 110 articles, cartoon, and the like – on the pages of Le Figaro.  In the elite circles of France, the attacks were a success; with the working class, not so much.  He was considered a thief for abusing his power and finance minister and a traitor for having the audacity to pursue secret negotiations with Germany during an earlier crisis regarding Morocco.

The crisis was no small affair, and no isolated incident.  The Europeans were in the midst of carving up much of Africa and the Middle East.  The treatment of the native populations was brutal; they died by the tens of millions.  Voice to such atrocities was given by a Moroccan chief, prior to attacking a French garrison:

Know that, since your arrival in the Sahara, you have badly treated weak Muslims….You have made our country suffer intense harm.

This message was delivered before 15,000 Muslim men attacked a garrison of 75 French men…oh, armed with two 80 mm cannon.  Wave after wave, the Muslims attacked.  The slaughter was immense.  There was no report of French loss of life.

Germany was late to the party, nevertheless by this time rather engaged; meanwhile, the French violated or ignored previous treaties that were to have recognized German claims to the African coast.  Into this mess stepped Caillaux, who found a way to compromise in a manner satisfactory to all; a manner that allowed all to save face.

He would have been premier in July 1914.

Conclusion

Henriette was found not guilty; a crime of passion, and a bullet fired not meant to kill.

Before the trial, Raymond Poincaré conceded that if the verdict was “not guilty,” he would have no choice but to name Caillaux the premier.  However, by the time the trial ended and the verdict reached, Europe was on the brink of war.  It would not do to have a premier who desired peace with Germany and no military alliance with Russia.

Prelude to the Great War: Austria-Hungary

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

At a Bosnian railway station in 1910 a would-be assassin armed with a revolver was close enough to touch the emperor; but in a tragedy for humanity, he lost his nerve in the royal presence.  Francis Joseph seemed to court death by walking alone through the streets of Bad Ischl, the resort town outside his summer villa – but death would not come.  “All are dying, only I cannot die,” he complained in his early eighties.  While he lived to die, millions died because he lived.

So writes Jack Beatty regarding the emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, “…the man who started World War I…”

All know of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the precipitating event for the Great War.  As an aside, and less known certainly to me: this assassination brought relief to his uncle Francis Joseph, as the Archduke married beneath his station, and Francis Joseph was concerned about the bloodline that would follow.

By European standards, Austria-Hungary was not a militaristic empire.  Austria-Hungary spent three times as much on beer, wine and tobacco as it did on defense.  The Hapsburgs conquered by marriage, not war.  So what changed in 1914?  What was it about this assassination that moved the empire to instigate a European-wide war?

Since losing midcentury wars to France and Prussia, Austria-Hungary had been living on bankrupt repute.  In the days after the assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb student with ties to Belgrade, its leaders feared that, if upstart Serbia got away with conspiring to murder its next ruler, not just big powers like Russia but small ones like Italy and pups like Montenegro would pick the empire apart.  A show of power was imperative to maintain the shield of prestige.

The Serbian government’s failure to investigate any Serbian links to the murder and the glee of the press in Belgrade regarding the assassination contributed to the anger and incentive for war.  In fact, Austria’s demand that it be allowed to conduct an investigation was the one important item from the list of Austrian demands rejected by the Serbians.  This rejection triggered Austria’s declaration of war.

This “shield of prestige” was rather personal for the emperor.  In the war manifesto of July 29, 1914, he used the word “I” twenty-six times, and numerous phrases that began with the word “my.”  After the assassination, Austria-Hungary took comfort in the ability of Germany to stave off and defeat the Russians, adding confidence to the emperor in his declaration.

If war led to the end of the monarchy, at least it would perish “decorously.”  Demonstrating the complexities of this particular empire, the mobilization orders issued in July were printed in fifteen different languages.

It did not help that Francis Joseph was kept somewhat isolated from the details of empire, and especially regarding events leading up to war.  In 1912, Serbia’s prime minister asked for direct talks in Vienna; no one told the emperor, and the Serbian’s overture was rebuffed.  Just before declaring war in July 1914, he was falsely told that Serbia had invaded Bosnia and Hungary.

Beatty considers the counterfactual: if the archduke was not assassinated, would Europe have gone to war?  There are many historians who believe the weight of other circumstances throughout Europe would have led to such a war in any case.

Beatty is not fully convinced.  The archduke regularly was the strongest voice for relatively peaceful resolutions to the multiple conflicts internal to the empire.  He considered that any war with Serbia would mean war with Russia, and in this both empires were likely to fall.

In any case, war came: the suicide of the west.

Epilogue

…with subjects from eleven nationalities and multiple religions, [Francis Joseph] stood for a principle a century ahead of its time – the “Austrian idea.”  Children were taught that Austria-Hungary was a state of “higher order – one that had or could overcome the tribal instincts of nationalism and serve as a model for the transnational European future.”

“Overcome the tribal instincts of nationalism” – nationalism being the most decentralized form of political organization ever devised.  After dozens of centuries of this form of political organization, it was not likely to be peacefully abandoned in Austria-Hungary.  To overcome countless centuries of nationalism requires a complete change of human nature – a new man. 

That utopian “Austrian idea” ended with the war that sounded the death throws for Europe and western civilization. 

There is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.

-        Bertrand De Jouvenel

That utopian “Austrian idea” did not end well for Europe one-hundred years ago, and that utopian “Austrian idea” (aka “the European Union” combined with an open-border refugee policy) will not end well for Europe in this century either.

Prelude to the Great War: The United States and Mexico

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

“Never before has any political assembly heard so fine a sermon on what human beings might be capable of accomplishing if only they weren’t human…He leaps forward far beyond the limits of time and space…way above material things, whose inferiority resides in the mere fact of there existence.”

-        Georges Clemenceau, commenting on Woodrow Wilson’s January 22, 1917 speech, proposing “peace without victory.”

Sadly for humanity, we remain cursed with the results of numerous of Wilson’s utopian-laced dreams.

It has been reasonably argued that the Great War would likely have ended in something closer to “peace without victory” had the United States not entered.  The people of both sides had grown tired of the fighting.  The Russians were soon enough going to withdraw from the battlefield.  A true stalemate might have resulted in something closer to a treaty designed for peace. 

Instead, we continue to reap the harvest of 1919 Paris.

I understand the role the United States played in this story, but Mexico?  I was barely familiar with the ongoing war in Mexico – Pancho Villa, Huerta, etc. – as well as the US interventions, most notoriously, Veracruz.  But what did any of this have to do with the US entry into the Great War?

The Telegram

I will start at the end.  Venustiano Carranza, the “First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army in Charge of Executive Power,” threatened war if Wilson did not evacuate “our territory.”  In January, 1917, a telegram was intercepted – Zimmerman’s telegram – proposing that Mexico join with Germany against the United States.  In exchange and after a successful outcome, Mexico would recover Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Once made public, many in the United States were enraged by this treachery from Germany.

According to Ray Stannard Baker, the journalist Wilson chose to write his biography, “No single more devastating blow was delivered against Wilson’s resistance to entering the war.”

Why would Germany have reason to believe that Mexico would care to join the fight against the United States?  Now we move to the beginning of the story….

Revolución

Revolution had been raging in Mexico since 1910 – an uprising of the landless peasants.  For European and American mining and oil companies, fortunes were at risk.  For Wilson, Mexico was a moral proving ground.  Falling in with the little guy, Wilson fell in with Pancho Villa, who cast himself in whatever graven image Wilson wanted to see.

In 1913, Huerta had claimed to Taft that he had restored the government.  Before negotiations toward recognition of this government could be completed, Taft was out of office and Wilson was in.  Wilson was not satisfied with the situation, for example insisting on an election in order to determine the proper government (an election to bring an end to an ongoing revolution?).  Wilson did not recognize the Huerta government.

In early 1914, Wilson lifted the arms embargo to Mexico, previously imposed by Taft:

No sooner had the president reassured a doubting senator that this step would not trigger a “bloodbath” than Pancho Villa bathed his name in blood.

It seems this idea of arming moderate terrorists did not begin with Hillary Clinton.

A Matter of Honor…or Imperialism?

A Mexican federal officer briefly detains American sailors.  The Mexican Commander of this federal officer sets the sailors free, jails the errant officer, and apologizes to the American Admiral.  This was not enough for the Admiral.  To make a long story short, Wilson exploited this incident as irreverence by Huerta and his “disregard for the dignity and rights of this Government.”

Hence, the US occupation of Veracruz.  In one stroke, Wilson turned a divided Mexico into one focused on the imperialism of the American government.  Of all of the leaders of all of the factions, only Pancho Villa praised this occupation of Veracruz by US Marines.

“Three years of fratricidal war was forgotten in a day,” the London Daily Telegraph reported from Mexico City…

Many of those with Villa and formerly against Huerta now sided with Huerta – factory workers, railroad workers, beggars; all united against the American imperialists (and seeing Villa as a tool of those same Americans).  Anti-American demonstrations were regularly on display.  In Europe, this action by Wilson was seen as nothing but economic imperialism:

“For the first time the veil is torn away from the pretense behind which the designs of American imperialism have been hiding,” the Paris Journal thundered.

There is an interesting backstory to this imperialism: in November, 1913, one William F. Buckley, Sr. wrote to Colonel Edward House regarding the damage inflicted by Mexican rebels on American oil companies.  Buckley demanded intervention.

Whether for honor or imperialism, Wilson set the stage for Mexico to look to a European power for salvation.

Conclusion

Next came the telegram.

And Pancho Villa, the loser as a result of Veracruz, named his mule Woodrow Wilson.

Beatty suggests the possibility that had Wilson not thrown in his lot with Villa and instead just stayed out of the Mexican war as Taft had done, there would have been no cause for the telegram and therefore no pressure on Wilson to enter the Great War.  I am not so sure, as Wilson’s idealism (and other political pressures) would likely have driven him to the same end one way or another.

But what an interesting story!

Prelude to the Great War: England

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

…England, long-peaceful England, was the society nearest cracking in 1914….Up to the last days of July, the “Revolt in Ulster” received more coverage in 1914 than any other story in the world.

To “home rule” or not to “home rule”; that is the question.  Asquith’s liberal government attempted to offer home rule to Ireland, only to have the minority Protestants disagree – fearing the rule of the majority Catholics.

The “Protestant people of Ulster” would sooner be governed from Berlin.  They would not submit to the Catholic majority in the south of Ireland.

Volunteers mustered, German gun-running up and down the Irish coast, the Tories talking rebellion with Churchill daring them to bring it on.  If civil war broke out, would England be drawn away from the coming conflict on the continent?

Wait a minute, you protest – all of this began long before the infamous assassination.  It seems England and France could divine the future:

Starting in early 1906 the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, authorized secret “military conversations” with the French that bound the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to the French army….

Berlin learned of these conversations via its spy in the Russian Embassy in London.  The British Parliament and public remained in the dark – Grey kept even Asquith in the dark for three years.

In any case, the race was on: civil war and rebellion in Ireland or continental war due to Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia.  Per Beatty, had the Great War been delayed by even a couple of weeks it is likely that the Irish civil war would have won this race.  In this case, the British could not afford to send troops to defend France as they would be needed in Ireland.

Churchill ordered eight battleships based in Gibraltar and eight destroyers of the Fourth Flotilla in England to sail to the waters between Scotland and Ulster….

Citing Niall Ferguson: “If the BEF had never been sent [to France], there is no question that the Germans would have won the war.”

Churchill offered an inflammatory speech against the Irish on March 14.  He challenged those who offered “menace and brutality” and “loose, wanton, and reckless chatter”:

“I can only say to you, ‘Let us go forward together and put these graves matters to the proof.’”

In other words, I’m your huckleberry.

Unfortunately for the big-talking Churchill, the army wasn’t with him.  Bonar Law offered that if it was dealing with civil disorder, the army would do its duty; if it came to civil war, “soldiers are citizens like the rest of us.”

Asquith, like Churchill, also believed otherwise: the army would follow orders.  This was not to be the case:

For the first time in over two hundred years, high army officers would dictate to the government in what has come to be known as the Curragh Mutiny.

Some officers were from Ulster; many others had relatives there.  Nearly all were sympathizers to the minority Protestant cause.  Dozens of officers – including Brigadier Herbert Gough – preferred dismissal if ordered north to Ulster.  Many more would offer the same ultimatum.  Ultimately, any idea of home rule for Ireland would be shelved – else England would be left with a shell of an army. 

Of course, this left the Catholic majority troubled.  Ireland was now racing toward guerilla war: Protestant and Catholic; some fighting for home rule, some against; others still for Irish independence.  And the British army stuck in the middle.

On June 29 – the same day that news of the assassination of the Archduke was reported – the Times asserted, regarding Ireland: “Complete disaster is now but a few weeks – it may only be a few days – away.”  As late as the end of July – even when Austria declared war on Serbia – it was the news from Ireland that carried the day.

Berlin read the news of Ireland as good fortune – strife in Ireland would certainly keep Britain out of the war. 

This was not to be.  Once news of the war broke, the Irish immediately became Britons.