Unsung Villains of World War I

“Bit players sometimes steal the show.”—By Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—7/21/2014—Let’s start with someone who was named Villain—Raoul Villain. He shot Jean Jaurès, the French socialist leader, on July 31, 1914, just days before the outbreak of the war. Jaurès was a pacifist, with ties to German pacifists and socialists. Had he lived, would it have made a difference? Unlikely, but I can’t resist mentioning the name of his assassin.

Now, let’s turn to those who clearly made a difference in the march toward war, but are comparatively unknown, relegated to historical footnotes.

First, on the British side, there is Arthur Nicolson, permanent undersecretary at the British Foreign Office. Sir Arthur, father of the famous diarist, Harold, was so Slavophilic that he could see no wrong in the policies of a Russian government determined to exact revenge from Austria-Hungary for the diplomatic defeats suffered at the hands of the Dual Monarchy in the Balkans in 1909, 1912, and 1913.

Nicolson never passed up an opportunity to misunderstand and misrepresent both Austrian and German intentions. He was ably assisted in this task by his deputy, Eyre Crowe, a half-German Germanophobe with a reputation for strategic brilliance.

First Nicolson and then, after Nicolson’s influence began to wane, Crowe exercised disproportionate power because their chief, Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, was quite obviously ill-equipped for his job. Everyone liked Sir Edward because his intellectual armamentarium was so modest that everyone thought they could use him. Nicolson and Crowe succeeded admirably. They helped tie Britain’s fortunes to those of France, which was urging Russia to make war over Serbia.

The top Slavophile was a Russian with a German name, Nicholas von Hartwig. (Many Russian leaders had Germanic forebears.Thus, the Russian ambassador to Britain was von Benckendorff.)

Hartwig was the Russian ambassador to Serbia. A committed pan-Slavist, he was held to be “more Serbian than the Serbians.” He promised Russian support if Serbia stood fast against Austria.

There is, however, an undercurrent of historical ambiguity about Hartwig’s role in the 1914 crisis. Although it is now clear that Russia was consulted about, and approved of, the plan to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it is also apparent that Hartwig was bypassed in the negotiations about the plan, which took place between the Russian military attache (nominally under Hartwig’s control) and the Serbian Black Hand, which hatched the plot.

So perhaps Hartwig, though a firebrand, was more level-headed than is commonly believed.

No such virtue could be ascribed to the advocates of war on the German-Austrian side.

There were a great many, but none whose role was more crucial than that of Heinrich von Tschirschky.

A former German foreign minister, Tschirschky was serving as German ambassador to Austria-Hungary when the archduke was assassinated.

His initial reaction was to urge caution because that’s what diplomats are supposed to do. But when the kaiser learned about this, he rebuked Tschirschky and called for military action.

Smarting from this rebuke, Tschirschky turned super-hawkish, an attitude perhaps more in accord with his natural inclinations.

But of course the kaiser was only temporarily bellicose. His bellicosity always waxed when danger waned only to wane when it waxed. By late July, the danger of war had become acute, and the kaiser told his chancellor to get the Austrians to cool it.

In an age when telephones were still rarely used, that message had to be delivered personally, by Tschirschky.

Having had to shift from an initially dovish to a hawkish posture, he was being asked to shift back.

There is evidence that Tschirschky, one of the most arrogant of diplomatic actors, found this volte-face painful, to say the least.

He took his time delivering the message and diluted its impact by at the same time delivering another message that could be said to contradict it.

The upshot is that Austria was not at all persuaded that German support for military action was weakening. It went ahead with its war mobilization plans and began shelling Belgrade.

Bit players sometimes steal the show.