The Guilt of William Hohenzollern/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
THE CONSPIRACY OF POTSDAM
On July 4th, the Austrian Councillor of Legation, Count Hoyos, came to Berlin in order to present to William the personal letter from the Emperor Francis Joseph to which we have already referred. Dangerous ideas are not always set down fully on paper. The letter had gone so far as to speak of a “diminution” of Serbia. Count Hoyos verbally explained this expression as meaning that Serbia was to be divided up amongst her neighbours. Hoyos, who was in the confidence of Berchtold, expounded these plans to the Imperial Chancellor and to the Under Secretary Zimmermann. They saw in this no occasion for exerting a restraining influence on the Austrians.
The White Book of June, 1919, which we have mentioned above and which in reality deserves to be called a whitewashing book, remarks indeed:
“The Viennese Ministry for Foreign Affairs later on thought it important to put on record that they did not share the purely personal views of Count Hoyos in regard to the acquisition of Serbian territory or still more the partition of Serbia.”
This piece of information is not quite accurate. The Ministry did indeed declare that Count Hoyos' views were his own personally, but it never declared positively that its own were different; nor could it do so for the simple reason that the views of the Councillor of Legation were exactly the same as those of his chief, the Minister Berchtold. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vienna has never indeed betrayed its own views in relation to Serbia. And even if the mere removal of Hoyos were equivalent to a calming declaration of Austria's purposes, this did not take place until later, until after July 5th, the day on which the Austrian Ambassador handed to the Kaiser the letter of Francis Joseph, and on which the decisive conclusions were come to.
Much has been conjectured about the counsels formed on that day, concerning which the imagination of the world has been all the more enkindled because so little is known about them. There is supposed to have been a Crown-Council in Potsdam in which the Archduke Frederick, Count Berchtold, and Conrad von Hötzendorff took part, and at which war on Serbia, or perhaps even the world-war, was decided on. The White Book of June, 1919, argues that this Council is a myth. As a proof of this, it cites Sir Horace Rumbold, English Ambassador in Berlin at the time of war, who held it improbable that such a Council of the Crown could have taken place. He comes to this opinion not on account of, but in spite of the protestations of the German Government.
“So great is the usual tendency of the German Government to lying, that I am involuntarily tempted to believe whatever assertions they deny.”
It is on this honourable testimony that the White Book of June, 1919, relies for proof of the innocence of the former German Government. The White Book then itself informs us what is supposed to have taken place on July 5th in Potsdam. It repeats substantially what the weekly paper Deutsche Politik had published on the subject in May. This narrative sounds very harmless.
According to it, the Austrian Ambassador Szögyeny breakfasted on July 5th with the Kaiser William in Potsdam, and handed him the letter of his sovereign.
Afterwards Bethmann-Hollweg and Zimmermann (who represented Jagow, then on his honeymoon) came to the Kaiser and discussed the political situation. Next day Kaiser William started on his Northern trip. Plainly the clearest symptom that he was neither planning nor expecting mischief.
The White Book gives a similar account, only without mentioning the Northern trip. Instead of this it adds:
“No particular measures were decided on, since it was already understood that it was not possible to refuse to Austria, in prosecuting her claim to effective guarantees from Serbia, the support demanded by our obligations as an ally.” (Page 50.)
This also sounds harmless enough, yet it can imply nothing else than that, in this consultation, the German Government found it a matter of course that Austria should demand “effective guarantees”—we know what that means—and that Germany would join in, in accordance with her obligations as an ally. To decide on special measures about these points seems to have been quite superfluous on July 5th!
The White Book of June, 1919, appears to reckon on a very child-like public. It introduces its study of the subject by disputing the assertion that a Crown-Council took place on July 5th “which decided on war with Serbia, or, according to another version, on the world-war.” But the study which is supposed to set us right only declares:
(1) That no Crown-Council took place, but merely individual conversations.
(2) That the world-war was not decided on. (There is no mention of the war with Serbia.)
It concludes as follows:
“From the telegram (of the German Government} to Vienna of July 6th, and the personal letter of the Kaiser William of July 14th, it is clear that in Berlin the possibility of Russian intervention and its consequences were taken into account with other factors, but that a general war was not considered in the least probable. And as the attached documents indisputably show, there could have been no intention of letting loose a European war.” (Page 57.)
Lichnowsky reports on this in his memorandum:
“I learned positively that at the critical conference in Potsdam on July 5th, the inquiry addressed to us by Vienna found the most uncompromising affirmation from all the leading men present, and in addition it was thought that it would be no harm even if the result should be a war with Russia. So at least it appears from the Austrian protocol which Count Mensdorff received in London.” (Page 28.)
Count Szögyeny, Austrian Ambassador in Berlin,
reports on his conversation with William on July 5th: “According to his (Kaiser William's) opinion action (against Serbia) must not be delayed too long. Russia will, in any case, take up a hostile attitude, but he had for years been prepared for this; and should it come to a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, we might be assured that Germany would, with her usual fidelity, be found at our side. Moreover, as matters now stand, Russia is by no means prepared for war, and will think long before appealing to arms. She will, however, stir up the other Entente Powers against us and will fan the flames in the Balkans.
“He understood very well that His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, with his well-known love of peace, would find it hard to decide on a march into Serbia; but when we had once recognized the necessity of taking action against Serbia, he (Kaiser William) would regret that we should not seize the present favourable moment.” (Red Book, 1919, I., page 22.)
Dr. Gooss endeavours to question whether Count Szögyeny was capable of giving a correct account of the matter. And all the four authors of a memorial on the guilt of the outbreak of war in the White Book of June, 1919—Professors Hans Delbrück and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Max Weber and Count Montgelas—harp on the same string.
We shall come to speak of this in another connection later on; for the present let us merely remark that the communications of the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin are in absolute agreement with what we know of William's ideas at this period and what his marginal comments on Tschirschky's report have already made clear to us. But chance has given us, out of these very days, a witness to Szögyeny's capacity for rendering an accurate report. On the 6th, the Count had a discussion with Bethmann-Hollweg. The latter reported it to Tschirschky and Szögyeny sent at the same time a report of the same interview to Berchtold. The following day Tschirschky had occasion to compare the two reports. He telegraphed about them to the Foreign Office on July 7th:
“The reports of Count Szögyeny corresponded exactly with the contents of the regular telegram sent me by your Excellency on the 6th of the month.”
It is not so easy, therefore, to put this inconvenient witness morally out of the way.
It is true that in these discussions Bethmann expressed himself far more cautiously than his Imperial master. But that was often the case.
One perhaps not irrelevant circumstance may be mentioned. Szögyeny reports that before breakfast William was very reserved. It was not till after breakfast that he opened the murder-chamber of his heart.
We are not informed as to how the Kaiser discussed affairs with his people after this consultation. But we may believe the White Book of June, however little confidence it deserves, when it says that there was then no intention of letting loose a European war. Only it passes in silence over the fact that Austria was then given a free hand in the war against Serbia, even at the peril of bringing with it a war with Russia.
In substance the German Government had already admitted this in the first White Book published at
the beginning of the war. They then said: “Austria must have owned to herself that it was no longer consistent with her dignity nor with the maintenance of the monarchy to look on inactive at what was going on beyond the frontier. The Imperial and Royal Government informed us of this view and asked for our opinion. We could most heartily assure our ally that we shared her estimate of the situation, and that any action which she held necessary to make an end of the Serbian movement against the monarchy would have our approval. We were fully conscious in saying this that any warlike action of Austria-Hungary against Serbia might bring Russia on the scene and thus, in accordance with the obligations of our alliance, entangle us in war.”
It would have been thoughtless to the last degree if Bethmann and the Kaiser, on the 5th of July, had really not looked ahead and considered the possibility of a European war which they were conjuring up by their procedure.
It is certainly remarkable that the Kaiser should have started on a cruise to the North in the midst of such a threatening situation. One thing, however, is clear: the most frivolous of sovereigns would not have dared to do that without having first assured himself that the defences of the State were prepared for all possible emergencies. The fact that after the Council at Potsdam he started on his summer cruise indicates what had been decided on at this Council.
If William and Bethmann-Hollweg, as the latter himself declared, had there and then given their assent to “warlike measures on the part of Austria-Hungary,” at the peril of being involved in a war with Russia, the decks must have been cleared for action before William set out towards the Midnight Sun.
It is thus by no means surprising that we should find a “Memorandum of the Under-Secretary of State, Freiherr von der Bussche, for the Secretary of State Zimmermann,” dated August 30th, 1917. In this we read:
“In July, 1914, on the same day [July 5], after the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador had handed His Majesty the Emperor the letter of the Emperor Francis Joseph, which had been brought by Count Hoyos, and after the Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Secretary of State Zimmermann had been received at Potsdam, there took place at Potsdam a council of military authorities before His Majesty. The following took part: His Excellency Capelle, on behalf of Tirpitz, Captain Zenker, for the Admirals' Staff, representatives of the War Office and of the General Staff. It was resolved, in preparation for all emergencies, to take preparatory steps for a war. Orders in agreement with this have thereupon been issued.—A thoroughly reliable source.
“Bussche.”
The information given by Herr von Tirpitz in his “Memoirs” (1919, page 209) points in the same direction. He reports that William, with all his optimism, found it necessary to be armed for all eventualities:
“For this reason, on the 5th he commanded the Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, von Falkenhayn the Minister of War, Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and von Lyncker, the Chief of the Military Cabinet, to come to Potsdam. It was there resolved that measures should be avoided which would tend to give rise to political sensation, or would cause special expenditure.”
Then on July 6th the Emperor had a conversation at Potsdam with Capelle, who was acting for Tirpitz, at that time absent.
This, to the smallest details, is what Bussche notes down. By this the darkness which hangs over the “Separate Conversations” at Potsdam is not yet fully removed. They certainly could not be called Crown Councils. On the contrary, according to all appearances William decided independently in this fatal hour. What followed might rather be described as a Council of War. It might also be called a conspiracy against Serbia and Russia at the least, if not against the peace of the world.