Gallipoli 8: Trouble With Russia

Once the immediate German threat to Paris had passed, and the Western Front stuck fast in what would become a four year-long stalemate of miserable trench warfare, London was faced with a serious problem. The Russians had been badly beaten on the Eastern Front. They had invaded Germany’s eastern borders but were driven back by the German defensive-offensive at the Battle of Tannenberg and the first Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Despite outnumbering the German Eighth Army under von Hindenberg and Ludendorf by almost two to one, the Russians had lost some 300,000 men by the middle of September 1914. Rather than face the wrath of the Czar, General Alexander Samsonov shot himself.

Russian morale plummeted. Such heavy and unexpected losses only six weeks into the war drained their enthusiasm. With the way to Constantinople blocked by the Goeben, some of the Czar’s advisors began to consider an armistice with Germany. [1] If Russia threw in the towel, Britain and France faced disaster. This was not part of the grand strategy envisaged by the Secret Elite. The possibility of a victorious German army switching from the Eastern to the Western Front sent shivers down the spine of Whitehall. London became preoccupied with the need to support an increasingly reluctant Russia to hold fast to the war. Make no mistake, Russia was in this war and prepared to sacrifice her young men for one reason, the acquisition of Constantinople and the Straits. How were the Secret Elite to deal with this? Russia’s ambitions cut across British and French post-war imperial intentions and could never be genuinely countenanced.

Russian control of Constantinople made no long term strategic sense. Indeed, two centuries of relentless insistence that Russia had to be kept out of Constantinople underpinned the fact that in truth, ‘the Allies would try anything to stop Russia gaining Istanbul and the Bosphorus.’ [2] The French wanted Syria; Britain wanted Persia and just about everywhere else. Dozens of schemes took shape in the corridors of power in London and Paris which were bound to be obstructed if Constantinople was in Russian hands.

French fears were later expressed by President Poincare in a letter to his Ambassador in Petrograd: ‘Possession of Constantinople and its vicinity would not only give Russia a sort of privilege in the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire. It would introduce her, via the Mediterranean, into the concert of western nations and this would give her, via the open sea, the chance to become a great naval power. Everything would thus be changed in the European equilibrium…’ Poincare’s great fear was that once Germany had been defeated, Russia would have little reason to adhere to the Franco-Russian Alliance, and as a result, its naval expansion would not serve French interests. [3]

The annual Guildhall Banquet which the City of London lavished on its political leaders on Monday 9 November reached truly iconic status in terms of British duplicity. Churchill promised that a blockade would bring Germany to her knees in six, nine or twelve months, and promptly failed to take the action required. Kitchener announced that ‘the men are responding splendidly…but I shall want more’, but Prime Minister Asquith told the greatest lie. He claimed that, despite all his government’s efforts to safeguard Turkish neutrality, ‘it is they and not we who have wrung the death-knell of Ottoman dominion, not only in Europe, but also in Asia. The Turkish Empire has committed suicide and dug its grave with its own hand.’ [4] No Russian Imperialist could have said it better. The Ottoman empire was scheduled for demolition. [5] It would be torn apart under the guise of suicide.

In November 1914 Russian Foreign Secretary Sazonov notified Count Benckendorff, his Ambassador in London, that Russian troops operating against Turkey would be compelled to violate Persian neutrality. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey immediately issued a ‘hands off’ dictum stating that a Russian incursion into the neutral Moslem country would provoke anti-Entente ferment among the Mohammedans of the East. Just two days later Britain landed her own troops at the head of the Persian Gulf. They occupied the oilfields near Ahwaz, and advanced on the Turkish town of Basra, capturing it on 22 November. [6] Apparently a Russian invasion of Persia would excite religious tensions among Muslims, but a British attack was perfectly acceptable. The hypocrisy was stunning.

Benckendorff cabled Petrograd that, entirely unprompted, King George V had told him that ‘as concerns Constantinople, it is clear that it must be yours.’  The ruse worked a treat. The Czar was elated. [7] Sazonov abandoned his designs on Persia. He had the King-Emperor’s word, [8] but the British government immediately pursued its interests further. Although the prizes were supposedly predicated on a German defeat, Britain informed Sazonov that they intended to annex Egypt, still nominally inside the Ottoman Empire, and replace the pro-Turkish Khedive with a sympathetic figure-head. The Russians agreed to the British takeover of Egypt in the belief that this was a step towards their inevitable march to Constantinople. Czar Nicholas thought it ‘excellent’. [9] In terms of grand geopolitical scheming and diplomatic double dealing the Czar was utterly naïve. He had been cajoled into continuing in the war, but the burning question was, for how long?

Sazonov was not so readily reassured. He felt that the time had finally come to  resolve the question of the Straits. It was now or never. Like many others in Petrograd he was unwilling to wait until the end of the war for complete Russian control of Constantinople, including both sides of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. [10] The great dream was to take both European and Asian banks of the Dardanelles which would be the springboard to even greater imperial acquisitions. This and this alone justified the terrible sacrifices which were being made on the Eastern Front.

On 21 December Sazonov wrote to his Chief of Staff, General Yanushkevich, that it was imperative that Russia took the Straits, and that it could ‘not be achieved by diplomatic action alone.’ He wanted to know ‘what military operations had been decided upon for the actual penetration and seizure of the Narrows and their environs?’ The answer was not what he wanted. The Black Sea Fleet, short of dreadnoughts, fast mine-layers and modern submarines, was barely on a par with the Turkish Navy, and the loss of one or two vessels would upset the precarious balance. Above all, the Russian generals were bound by long-standing agreement to concentrate efforts on the Eastern Front. Yanushkevich answered Sazonov on 25 December: ‘In the present circumstances … the question of allocating special forces for taking possession of the Straits cannot be raised until we have achieved a decisive success over our Western enemies’. [11]

Sazonov was faced with the stark reality; Russia was currently unable to take Constantinople. His expectations had been totally unrealistic, but the Secret Elite were, as ever, much better informed. The British Military Attache at Petrograd, Colonel Alfred Knox was an astute observer and by December 1914 his reports worried Kitchener. While the Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, and the Minister of War, remained outwardly confident (Churchill described it as blind or guilty optimism) [12] Knox spoke of the criticisms he heard from Russian commanders who believed that the delayed French offensive was caused by the ‘diabolical cunning’ of the other allied governments who wanted Russia to ‘waste her strength so that she may not emerge too strong from the war.’ [13] Lack of guns and ammunition and disorganised communication left the Russian army incapable of a serious offensive. [14] and the 6th Army at Petrograd trained new recruits with only one rifle to three men. [15] There was an almost suicidal culture in Russian military circles of representing situations in a falsely favourable light but increasingly, the need to make peace with the Germans was voiced by high-ranking Generals. [16] Accusations were made that the burden of the war was being borne unequally by Russia; that Britain was not committing sufficient men to the front. [17]

The British government began to have ‘grave forebodings’ that the Russian armies, hamstrung and paralysed by the lack of munitions, might collapse entirely and ‘be forced into a separate peace.’ Churchill believed that such a disaster could be averted if Britain and France encouraged Russia ‘to dwell upon the prizes of victory.’ [18] He knew, as did every member of the Secret Elite, that the ‘prizes of victory’, namely control of Constantinople and the Straits, were prizes Russia could never be allowed to win. What was said was not what was intended.

This was the background to Gallipoli; the appearance of supportive action which could never be allowed to deliver the stated objective, Constantinople. By the end of 1914 Russia had lost over 1,350,000 killed, wounded or missing, and the arms shortage was beginning to paralyse her operations on the Eastern Front. Only the prospect of seizing Constantinople could keep the mouzhik [peasants] in the trenches. As long as Russia believed that her allies were fully engaged in a battle to take the Straits for them, their war effort had purpose.

The Secret Elite had to conjure an initiative which gave the illusion of support and promised glittering success so that Russia would continue the struggle.

[1] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, One Great Deception? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/30630%5D
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ronald P. Bobroff, Roads to Glory, Late Imperial Russia and the Straits, p. 122.
[4] The Times, 10 November 1914, p. 9.
[5] Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of The First World War, p. 123.
[6] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 221.
[7] McMeekin, The Russian Origins, p. 123.
[8] W.W. Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, pp. 68–70.
[9]  Ibid., pp 74-75.
[10] Bobroff, Roads to Glory, pp. 120-121.
[11] Gottlieb, Studies, p. 75.
[12] Winston Churchill,World Crisis, p. 296.
[13] Sir Alfred Knox, With the Russian Army, 1914-1917, 1 December 1914, p. 193.
[14] Ibid., p. 213.
[15] Ibid., p. 217.
[16] Ibid., p. 220.
[17] Ibid., pp. 352-3.
[18] Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911-1918, vol. 1., pp. 296-298

Gallipoli 7: Goading Turkey

Once Souchon and his warships were assimilated into the Turkish navy, Rear-Admiral Sir Arthur Limpus, who had been the naval advisor to the Turkish government for two years, was withdrawn from his mission by Churchill on 9 September 1914. Limpus knew the precise details of all the Dardanelles defences and had a prodigious knowledge of every aspect of Turkish naval planning. [1] Logically, he was the prime candidate in every sense for the post of Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean fleet but he was relegated to the desk-bound job of superintendent of the Malta dockyards while Vice- Admiral Sackville Carden, who had spent the past two years in this relative backwater, assumed command of the fleet. It was a strange decision by any standard. Sackville-Carden was considered slow and ineffective, [2] but the arrangement was apparently based on the need to reassure the Turks that Britain, as their natural friend, would not take advantages of Limpus’s invaluable knowledge. It was not quite cricket. [3] While that argument held some credibility in September 1914, it became a nonsense when Britain declared war on Turkey in late October. Incredibly, Limpus’s unique local knowledge was ignored by the Admiralty in their subsequent foray into the Dardanelles.

On August 15 Churchill sent a personal telegram to Enver Pasha warning him that Turkey must remain neutral. [4] Churchill sent several communications of a private and personal nature directly to Enver Pasha, which raises justifiable questions about their relationship; questions that have never been suitably answered. He reminded Enver that the Allies held overwhelming naval power and could transport troops in almost unlimited numbers to Constantinople. However, if Turkey maintained strict neutrality, he promised that her territorial integrity would be respected at the end of the war. [5] It was part of a calculated tactical manoeuvre to buy time. The Secret Elite had no wish to see the Ottoman Empire remain neutral, nor the slightest intention of genuinely guaranteeing its integrity. In truth, Britain made no really significant concession to the Turks. [6] It was all about buying time.

Russia too was playing for time. Foreign Secretary Sazov instructed his ambassador at Constantinople to be firm but cautious regarding Goeben and Breslau, but not to press too hard or ‘drive affairs to a rupture.’ [7] His goal was to delay Turkish entry into the war against the Entente for as long as possible so that they would not be engaged on two fronts. An unexpected opportunity presented itself on 5 August when Enver Pasha made a surprising proposal. Just 3 days after the secret treaty with Germany had been signed, and before the Goeben arrived, Enver Pasha suggested an alliance with Russia for a period between 5 or 10 years. He insisted that Turkey was not bound to Germany, had no aggressive intentions against Russia, and had mobilised her forces for her own safety. Enver proposed that Turkey would provide Russia with military assistance in the war if Russia supported Turkish interests to regain the Aegean islands lost to Greece and territory in western Thrace lost to Bulgaria in the Balkan wars. [8]

Was this a game of bluff with all sides playing for time to get their armies into position or was Enver prepared to double-cross the Germans and make a genuine attempt to realign his country with Russia and the Entente? Sazonov wanted the Turks to demobilise their armies as a sign of good faith but such action would have left Turkey defenceless and they could not possibly comply. [9] Enver’s proposal was rejected on 9 August. [10] The Young Turks later admitted that they too had remained neutral with the sole object of gaining time to complete their mobilization. [11] It was all smoke and mirrors. Russia was attempting to trick the Turks who were in turn trying to deceive the Russians. Neither realised that Britain was hoodwinking them both.

By September, the stakes in this ever more dangerous charade rose higher and higher. Louis Mallet was given authority by the Foreign Office to decide when the Embassy staff, British officials working in the service of the Ottoman government, British residents in Turkey and shipping agents should be instructed to leave. [12] Though his mission was far from over, he had been able to send invaluable information to the Foreign Office; information that was to be scurrilously ignored in the months ahead. He advised his bosses that the defence systems along the Dardanelles had been ‘rapidly fortified’ and were manned by Germans. [13] His spies reported that over 2,000 cases of shells for both the Goeben and the Dardanelle forts had been delivered from Germany. Fresh shipments of mines had also been delivered down the Danube waterways. ‘Neutral’ Turkey was being armed by Germany, and the Foreign Office had all the facts and figures. [14] That in itself was sufficient reason for Britain to declare war, but Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey refused to take that step in order to make it appear that ‘we had done everything to avoid war and that Turkey had forced it.’ [15]

London continued to goad the Turks. On the morning that Admiral Limpus departed from Constantinople, each and every member of the Ottoman Cabinet was warned that Turkish ships would be treated as enemy vessels if they stepped outside the protective waters of the Dardanelles. [16] Britain effectively blockaded a neutral country. The Grand Vizier asked the Royal Navy to pull their ships back but Churchill refused. Although mines had been laid across the Narrows, Allied merchantmen had been allowed to use a safe channel through the Dardanelles. This consideration was brought to an end on 26 September. A Turkish torpedo boat attempted to exit the Straits but was heaved to, boarded and sent back. There was no justification whatsoever for this high handed action [17] other than to raise the stakes. In response, the Turks extinguished the lighthouses and closed the strategic waterway to all vessels. If they weren’t allowed out, then no-one would be allowed through. In responding this way, the Ottoman authorities violated their obligation to keep the Straits open under international law, but ‘once again they appeared to have been provoked to do so by the actions of Winston Churchill’. [18] Indeed, it was as tactless as the confiscation of the two Turkish battleships. [19] The closure of the Dardanelles on 27 September cut Russia off from almost all of her international trade. Sazonov was apoplectic. The time was fast approaching for the Russia to ‘settle accounts’ with her ancient enemy and resolve the question of the Straits for good. [20]

On 11 October Enver Pasha informed the Germans that he would authorise Goeben and Breslau to attack Russia as soon as Germany deposited two million Turkish pounds in gold in Constantinople to support the Ottoman military forces. Time for neutrality had run its course. On 29 October, eight days after the last shipment of gold arrived by rail, the Turkish fleet under Admiral Souchon fired the first salvo in Turkey’s unannounced declaration of war. At 3.30 am the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Sebastopol were bombarded though the Black Sea fleet remained virtually unscathed. Enver Pasha had authorised the provocative attack without regard to his Cabinet colleagues. They in turn, immediately insisted on offering an apology to the Russians. Isolated but unrepentant, Enver Pasha reaped what had been sown. [21]

Responding before the apology was even drafted, Sir Edward Grey ordered the British Ambassador to deliver an ultimatum which demanded the dismissal of the German military and naval missions, and the removal of all German personnel from Goeben and Breslau within twelve hours. If the Turks failed to comply, the Ambassador and Embassy staff were instructed to ask for their passports and leave. [22] From the outset, it was a patently impossible request, [23] but by late October, Britain was ready for war…. in the Middle East. While the focus of attention lay on the Western Front, the Foreign Office and the War Office had been preparing for war in a completely different theatre. Kitchener ’s experience in Egypt allied to Mallet’s years at the Eastern Division of the Foreign Office had been used to good effect. Plans had been hatched, warships were in place in the Arabian gulf, propaganda about the safety of Holy Places was already in circulation and the Pan-Arab movement was being quietly encouraged. Mallet had been instrumental in buying three valuable months for Grey and Kitchener, [24] and the Turks were shocked when, within a week of war being declared, the British army was encamped in Kuwait, and an expeditionary force from India was headed to Baghdad. [25]

Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Turkey on 30 October and the following day a ‘cock-a-hoop’ Churchill ordered the British warships to bombard the Dardanelles. [26] He gave the order to ‘commence hostilities with Turkey’ without informing the Cabinet or formally declaring war. [27] But we should forget about Churchill for a moment and concentrate on Enver Pasha. Enver had agreed the secret pact with Germany on 2 August. Enver had asked them to send the Goeben and Breslau to Constantinople. Enver instructed Souchon to attack the Russian Black Sea ports. Enver had made the first move. Enver had delivered the condition for war. Enver, Churchill’s personal and confidential friend had given the Secret Elite exactly the excuse they needed. Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, Churchill declared, ‘it was the best thing since the outbreak of war’. [28] You might be forgiven for thinking that Enver was a servant of the Secret Elite.

On 2 November, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and Britain and France followed suit. Russia could now focus attention on her most treasured war aim; to take control of the Straits and Constantinople. After centuries of yearning, her great dream stood on the verge of realisation. [29] Every member of the Council of Ministers in Petrograd was agreed; Turkey must be dismembered. The only point of dispute was over which precise parts of the Ottoman Empire would be incorporated into Russia. [30] In his official declaration of war against the Turks, Czar Nicholas stated, ‘It is with complete serenity… that Russia takes on the appearance of this new enemy….the present conflict will only accelerate her submission to fate and open up Russia’s path towards the realization of the historic task of her ancestors along the shores of the Black Sea.’ [31] Russia’s date with destiny had arrived, but the Secret Elite had a very different agenda.

[1] Michael Hickey, Gallipoli. p. 27.
[2] Tim Travers, Gallipoli, pp 20–21.
[3] Michael Hickey, Gallipoli. p. 27.
[4] Joseph Heller, Sir Louis Mallet and the Ottoman Empire, The Road to War, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), p. 36.
[5] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, vol III, p. 194.
[6] Hew Strachan, The First World War vol. 1; To Arms, p. 675.
[7] Sazonov to Girs, 8 August, 1914, telegram, 1746, MO 6.1 no.33.
[8] Ronald P. Bobroff, Roads to Glory, Late Imperial Russia and the Straits, p 101.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, p.107.
[11] W.W. Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, p. 60.
[12] Joseph Heller, Sir Louis Mallet and the Ottoman Empire, The Road to War, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), p. 12.
[13] Ibid., p. 14.
[14] Daily Telegraph, 3 October 1914.
[15] A.L. Macfie, The Straits Question in the First World War, Middle Eastern Studies, July 1983, p. 49.
[16] Joseph Heller, Sir Louis Mallet and the Ottoman Empire, The Road to War, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.12, No. 1 (Jan., 1976), p. 20.
[17] Robert Rhodes James, Gallipoli, p. 112.
[18] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, p. 67.
[19] L.A. Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 45.
[20] McMeekin, The Russian Origins, pp. 110-11.
[21] David Fromkin, A Peace to End all Peace, p. 72.
[22] Gilbert, Churchill, vol III, p. 215.
[23] Gottlieb, Studies, p. 62.
[24] Heller, Sir Louis Mallet, p.21.
[25] Pat Walsh, The Great Fraud of 1914-1918, p. 31.
[26] Strachan, The First World War,Vol 1, p. 680.
[27] Pat Walsh, Remembering Gallipoli, p. 25.
[28] Edward David, Inside Asquith’s Cabinet, p. 205.
[29] Bobroff, Roads to Glory, pp. 115-116.
[30] McMeekin, The Russian Origins, p. 113.
[31] Ibid., p. 114.

GUEST BLOG: Professor Hans Fenske (2) Early German Peace Proposals

Right away, the war was ideologically charged by the Allies. During a tour of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Asquith – in Edinburgh, in September – called the war a crusade against the arrogance of a single power trying to dominate the development of Europe. In Dublin, he declared the need to prevent small nations being annihilated by an overbearing power, and claimed that the war was about the final abolition of militarism as the ruling factor in the relationships between states. In London, on 9 November, he spoke on the necessary abolition of Prussian militarism, and his fellow party member Lloyd George wanted to see the German people liberated from the hell of the military caste. The speech from the throne of 11 November held that England would continue for as long as it could dictate the peace. All this was accompanied by sharp anti-German propaganda in the media. This even went so far that Germany was frequently called “Barbaria”. The British government was later not to leave their position briefly sketched here.

In France, too, there were demands to break up Prussian militarism. In October 1944, Foreign Minister Delcassé told the Russian ambassador that the aim of France was to annihilate the German Reich and to weaken Prussia’s military and political power as much as possible. In a similar vein, in a memorandum for the French government, Sazonov  in September spoke about the destruction of German power and the German arrogance to be predominant in Europe. On 5 September, the three Entente nations contractually committed themselves not to agree on a separate peace and to talk about their war goals in public only after having consulted their Allies. Several treaties were entered into regarding these goals, even with countries like Italy which only joined the Allies later in the course of the war. The plans were about weakening Germany and destroying the Danube Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war in the autumn of 1914 on the side of the Central Powers.

After the important initial successes of the German army in the West, it could not be excluded that there soon would have to be talks about peace with the opponents. That’s why Bethmann-Hollweg, who stayed in the headquarters at the time, had a catalogue of possible goals compiled – which he expressly declared provisional – which he sent to the state secretaries of the exterior and the interior for revision on 9 September. The proposals required France to commit itself to reparations for the duration of 15 to 20 years to be calculated so that she would not be capable of spending much on armament, but without calling for territorial sacrifices with the exception of the Briey ore basin. Moreover, she should be closely linked to Germany by means of a trade agreement. A different section talked about a Central European economic association under German leadership. Bethmann-Hollweg could most identify with this. But this paper did not represent a firm agenda. With the Marne battle, the German offensive came to a halt, static warfare began, and hopes for the war ending soon had to be given up.

In mid-November, the Prussian War Minister General von Falkenhayn who now led the operations in the West, told the Chancellor that it was impossible to reach a decent peace as long as Russia, France and England stuck together. So they would have to break Russia away from the Entente coalition. Their thinking was that France probably would give in once Russia made peace. Russia should have to pay sufficient war reparations but remain territorially intact, apart from slight corrections along the border. France should also have to pay reparations yet receive an honourable peace, since Germany and France would have to amicably coexist again after the war. Bethmann-Hollweg fully agreed with these considerations. If Russia could not be prised away from the opposing coalition, the war might take a disastrous turn for Germany. If this didn’t happen the prospect of the war ending because of a general mutual weariness without any decisive defeat of one party or the other became likely. Bethmann-Hollweg kept to this opinion thereafter. Now, his aim in war was Germany’s self-assertion. He wanted to get guarantees for its safety, but he explained this only in general terms. Belgium and Poland were not to become the ground for preparing military action against Germany ever again.

Shortly after the conversation of von Falkenhayn and Bethmann-Hollweg, the Danish King Christian X. offered – via the Danish ship owner and state councillor Hans Niels Andersen and the German ship owner Albert Ballin, a friend of Emperor Wilhelm II. – his services in mediating a peace in London and St. Petersburg. Bethmann-Hollweg wanted to delay an answer so as to be able to improve the military position in the East, but von Falkenhayn and the Emperor considered an understanding with Russia to be urgent and gave Andersen a positive answer. During his visit to Petrograd, as the Russian capital was now called, in 1915, Andersen was told by Nicholas II. that he would never leave his Allies in the lurch, and that he was decidedly against a separate peace. The British and French ambassadors, who had come to know about Andersen’s visit, also tried to influence Sazonov in this sense.

When, following Bethmann-Hollweg’s request, Andersen went to Petrograd again in June and in August, he got the same answer. In November of 1914, the Ministry of State also tried to enter into talks with Japan which had declared war on the German Empire in August and had annexed the German leased territory Kiautschou in the Chinese province of Shantung. The state secretary Jagow thought that England could not have any interest in further strengthening Japan. This would offer the German Empire the opportunity to get into closer contact with Japan, provided Germany would accept the loss of Kiautschou.

Then, Japan could mediate with Russia. But this contact effort failed completely. In December 1914, the Japanese ambassador in Stockholm, Uchida, made it known to his German colleague via Swedish intermediaries that Japan was not interested in communicating with Germany. In this, he acted not on orders by his government, but on his own initiative. So these contacts were fruitless. When in early 1916 Uchida first met with the German ambassador in person, he had to declare that according to the London agreement of September 1914, there would be no separate peace and that the German Empire would have to succumb to the peace conditions imposed by the Entente.

Bethmann-Hollweg publicly declared several times that the Reich would be ready to enter into talks provided the offers were appropriate. When talking to Col. Edward Mandel House, a confidant of President Wilson, he declared his sympathy for a step towards peace made by the U.S. As the year went on, there were three more statements in the same vein. In October, he came to an understanding with the Austrian-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Stephan Burián, towards a joint step towards peace. This should happen at a point in time when it could not be construed as a sign of weakness. This was the case after the conquest of Romania. On 12 December, the Central Powers of the Entente submitted the proposal, via neutral countries, to soon enter into peace talks. They would submit proposals to form an appropriate foundation for an enduring peace. They stated this publicly, Bethmann- Hollweg for instance in the German Reichstag. The Allies brusquely refused and declared that Germany and its Allies would have to atone for everything they had committed, as well as providing reparations and security collateral.

They even refused the mediation offer Wilson made on 16 December. They said that currently it was impossible to enter into a peace reflecting their ideas. They wanted the restitution of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro, the handing back of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the cession of all regions with Polish settlements to Russia and the breaking up of the Danube Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire. Also, they did not want to allow the Central Powers to take part in peace negotiations on equal terms.

In late January 1917, Wilson again offered the German ambassador his services for reaching a reconciliation between the warring opponents and asked to be informed about the German conceptions. He was told that Germany wanted to win a frontier protecting Germany and Poland against Russia – the Central Powers recently had proclaimed the Kingdom of Poland –, an agreement about colonial matters, certain corrections concerning the border to France, and an economic and financial compensation between the warring opponents.

Following the death of Emperor Franz Joseph in November 1916, his great-nephew Karl stepped up to the top of the Habsburg Empire. After the failed peace offer of December 1916, Karl I was looking for peace options on private routes. In the spring of 1917, his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, a Belgian officer, conducted several talks in Switzerland, Paris and London, which, however, did not achieve any results.

GUEST BLOG: Professor Hans Fenske (1) The Allied Refusal of Peace Talks 1914–1919

This is the first of four guest blogs from Hans Fenske, Professor of Contemporary History at Freiburg University from 1977-2001 and author of Der Anfang vom Ende des alten Europa. (The Beginning of the End of Old Europe; The Allied Refusal of Peace Talks, 1914-1919.)

A War Germany did not want.

When handing over the peace treaty to the German delegation on 7 May 1919, French Prime Minister Clemenceau stated very brusquely that the most horrible war had been foisted on the Allies, and that now the time of reckoning had come. There would be no spoken negotiations; only remarks concerning the treaty in its entirety would be accepted if submitted in writing within two weeks. In his answer, German Foreign Minister Brockdorff-Rantzau rejected the accusation of exclusive responsibility and demanded that an impartial commission investigate the amount of guilt of all parties concerned.

The victorious Allied powers were not prepared to concede forming an impartial commission to look at the facts, but there were a number of neutral scholars who in their academic work reached a view appropriate to the facts. As early as 1914, the renowned American Professor of Law, John William Burgess declared – after having studied the Blue Books presented by the warring parties – that the Entente held a far greater share of responsibility for the war than Germany and the Danube Monarchy. The Swiss scholar Ernst Sauerbeck confirmed this view in 1919. According to his findings, the Entente had unleashed the war without need and turned it into what it became – the tomb of entire nations. He also accused the victorious powers of having, by means of the Versailles peace treaty, allowed the 1914-1918 war to grow into the direst doom that has possibly ever threatened the world; that is the War that began in 1939.

In addition, experts from Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, who in 1927 presented their expertise in a volume published by a Norwegian committee investigating the issue of war guilt, assessed the share of guilt of the Central Powers as low. According to Hermann Aall, the committee’s secretary, Russia had provoked the war, and Great Britain played a decisive role in its outbreak. Axel Drolsum of the University of Oslo stated that Germany in 1914 had been the only nation to have tried everything it could to keep the peace, but that it failed due to the will of the other powers to make war.

Moreover, please let reference be made to one voice from a victorious country. In 1924, the French journalist and former diplomat Alcide Ebray recommended a thorough revision of the Treaty of Versailles. He claimed that the Czarist Regime held the decisive share of war guilt, while Germany acted in favour of a conciliatory position in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 1914.

In Serbia, the radical party had been the decisive power since the bloody officers’ putsch back in 1903, during which the Royal couple had been murdered. This party pursued a decidedly anti-Austrian foreign policy which demanded that all Serbs be united within one state. The problem here was the fact that there were about as many Serbs living outside the country as within, particularly in the two provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Although they nominally still belonged to the Ottoman Empire, they had been under Austrian-Hungarian administration since the Congress of Vienna in 1878. When the Habsburg Empire annexed them in 1908 following an arrangement with Russia, there was a severe international crisis. When this was settled in March 1909, Serbia had to sign a treaty pledging to again maintain good neighbourly relations with the Danube Monarchy. But this did nothing to change Belgrade’s keen antagonism towards Vienna. First, however, Serbian activities were directed towards the South. The war against the Ottoman Empire started by Italy in 1911 to conquer Libya triggered Serbian talks with Bulgaria about whether to join arms against the Turks. After entering into an alliance, the two states started the campaign in the autumn of 1912. Together with Montenegro and Greece, they took away from the Ottoman Empire nearly its entire possessions on the Balkan during the First Balkan War.

This took place with the full assent of Russia, which wanted to get the Bosporus and the Dardanelles under its control and which therefore had a strong interest in effecting changes on the Balkans. Serbia enlarged its territory considerably towards the south. In November 1912, shortly after the beginning of the war, the French ambassador in Belgrade reported to Paris that Serbia was set on bringing down Austria at the first possible occasion. King Peter asked the Russian ambassador whether to enact the downfall the Habsburg Empire now, or whether to still wait. The Russian ambassador relayed this question to St. Petersburg, from where in February 1913 came the answer that Russia was not yet ready for a war against Austria-Hungary. Serbia should content itself with the present increase in territory for now, so that it could later, once the time was ripe, lance the Austrian-Hungarian abscess. Later, more statements of this kind were issued from St. Petersburg: Serbia would find its promised land in Austria-Hungary and should prepare itself for the inevitable battle.

When, in the summer of 1913, Serbia – together with Greece and Romania – turned against Bulgaria in a struggle over the recently conquered land, Russia backed Serbia; it clearly was a satellite of Russia.

At the beginning of 1914, the leadership in St. Petersburg saw Russia far better prepared for a war than the previous year. During a council of war, a decision was taken to use the upcoming war for occupying Constantinople and the Straits. The Russian military gazette expressly declared the Czarist Regime’s readiness for war, and in late March, the head of the military academy declared in front of officers that a war with the Triple Alliance was inevitable and would probably break out in the summer. The Belgian ambassador in St. Petersburg reported to Brussels at the beginning of June that it was to be expected that Russia would soon put its war tools to use. At the same time, Foreign Minister Sazonov exerted pressure in London to quickly conclude the marine convention about which negotiations had been going on for some time. Soon after, he travelled to Romania together with the Czar. There, he asked the Prime Minister how Romania would react should Russia see itself compelled by the events to start hostile actions.

St. Petersburg was well aware that in the case of a big European conflict, Russia would be firmly backed by France and Great Britain. A Russian-French alliance had been in effect since 1894. The British-French understanding about Egypt and Morocco of 1904 was amended from 1905 by firm military agreements made by the General Staffs, about which the Belgian military was kept informed. During his visit to England in September 1912, Sazonov was assured by the British Foreign Minister Grey that in the case of a German-French war, Great Britain would support France by sea and by land, and try to deliver as destructive a blow as possible to German predominance. For Grey, Germany’s strong economic growth presented a grave threat; its weakening was thus a definite necessity for him.

When the Serbian secret society “Unification or Death” planned the murder of Austrian heir apparent Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the head of the Serbian intelligence service, Dragutin Dimitrijević, leader of the putsch of 1903, asked the Russian military attaché, whether this plan was convenient. St. Petersburg sent its consent, although they should have been aware that the Danube monarchy would have no choice but to react harshly to the murder of their heir to the throne. Apparently, Russian leadership thought the moment had arrived to lance the Austrian-Hungarian abscess.

In mid-June, German Reich Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg asked the German ambassador in London to talk with Grey about securing European peace. If another crisis was to erupt in the Balkans, Russia might react more decisively  than before due to its comprehensive rearmament. Whether this would result in a European clash would depend entirely on Great Britain and Germany. If both states were to act as guarantors of peace, then war might be prevented. If not, any arbitrary marginal difference might light the war torch between Russia and Austria-Hungary. Grey’s response to the ambassador was placatory, but of course he did not tell him the truth.

After the Sarajevo murder on 28 June, Austrian Foreign Minister Berchtold and General Chief of Staff Hötzendorf argued for an immediate strike against Serbia. The Hungarian Prime Minister prevented this. They agreed to demand of Serbia absolute clarification about the crime, but to hand over the respective note only after the end of the impending French state visit to Russia. They were sure about German allegiance to Austria in case of complications; a high-level public servant had been given this assurance when visiting Berlin on 5 and 6 July. The relevant German decision makers agreed that Russia would not intervene, so that the conflict could remain localised. That was a crass misjudgement.

During their stay in St. Petersburg on 20 through 23 July, the French guests, President Poincaré and Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Viviani, repeated the assurance of absolute French solidarity in a war against Germany, often given before. Sazonov and Viviani agreed on 23 July that everything must be done to counter the Austrian demand as well as any request which might be construed as a meddling with Serbian independence. The Austrian note to Serbia called for an unequivocal condemnation of propaganda directed against the Danube Monarchy, and lodged claims as to how this should occur. It also asked for the participation of Austrian delegates in suppressing any subversive efforts directed against the Habsburg Empire, as well as in investigating the murder. An answer was expected within 48 hours, i.e. by the evening of 25 July.

At first, the Serbian council of ministers showed a strong penchant to accommodate this request, and maybe it might have been even more pronounced, had Vienna made reference in its note to the fact that after the murder of Serbian ruler Duke Michael Obrenović in 1868, a Serbian prosecutor had conducted examinations in the Danube Monarchy. A call back to St. Petersburg was answered with the admonition to remain firm, which caused a change in opinion. Thus Serbia mobilised its forces on the afternoon of 25 July and handed over a rather conciliatory answer three hours later. Only the Austrian involvement in suppressing the subversive efforts and in investigating the murder was denied. At once, the Danube monarchy cancelled its diplomatic relations with Serbia. On the same day, Berchthold had it stated in St. Petersburg that should a battle with Serbia be foisted on Austria, this would not be about territorial gain but about defence, and that Serbian sovereignty would not be touched.

Czar Nicholas II had informally started mobilisation directly after the departure of his French guests on 24 July; the respective measures did not go unnoticed by German observers. The British navy was made ready for war on 26 July, and France called back all vacationers to their respective units. Formal Russian mobilisation against Austria-Hungary was ordered on 29 July, complete one day later. The German Empire tried to mediate until the last minute. On 28 July, the day of the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia, Emperor Wilhelm II. advised Vienna to stop in Belgrade, and even on 31 July, he urgently asked the Czar to avert the doom now facing the entire civilised world. Peace in Europe might still be kept if Russia stopped military actions threatening Germany and Austria-Hungary. Since Nicholas II. did not cancel the mobilisation order, the German Empire informed Russia on the evening of 1 August that it regarded the state of war to have occurred. On 3 August, it also declared war on France, after efforts to receive a declaration of neutrality from France had remained unsuccessful.

This was intended as a pre-emptive measure. France could not be left to choose the moment for attack; after all, German plans for a war on two fronts envisaged first turning west. The breach of Belgian neutrality by Germany, which at that point was only nominal, gave Grey the welcome opportunity to lead Great Britain into war on 4 August. Up to that point, public opinion had predominantly been in favour of steering clear of the strife on the Continent. During the crisis, Grey had been very insincere about his intentions towards German diplomats, misleading most of his cabinet colleagues, the House of Commons and the general public.

Churchill – How Not to Make Friends …

Sir Edward Grey (left) Winston Churchill This is the first of thee blogs detailing Winston Churchill’s bizarre behaviour in the first months of the war.

War broke on Churchill like an early Christmas morning, full of excitement and anticipation. He wrote privately to his wife Clementine, ‘I am … geared up and fascinated by war. Is it not horrible to be built like that? The preparations have a hideous fascination for me’.  [1] His hideous fascinations took many forms and were to have serious consequences for the prolongation of war. He had lived for war with Germany.  After his initiation into the Committee of Imperial Defence on 23 August 1911 he worked relentlessly to ensure that the Royal Navy was fully prepared for war. Churchill had given the order to mobilize the fleet without seeking Cabinet approval and on 29 July, 1914, under his strictly secret instructions, eighteen miles of warships, ‘gigantic castles of steel’ as he termed them, rushed through the Straits of Dover in the blackness of the night to the safety of Scapa Flow. [2] He was thirty-nine years of age, had every advantage of privilege bestowed on him by birth, was arguably the third most powerful man in the Cabinet after the prime minister and foreign secretary, in command of the world’s most powerful navy, and still he was not satisfied.

He was his own worst enemy. In the Cabinet meetings immediately preceding war, Asquith found him ‘very bellicose and demanding immediate mobilisation’. [3] He talked incessantly, often persuasively, but was mostly disinterested in the opinion of others. [4] Such behaviour ill becomes a headstrong child far less a Cabinet minister and was considered offensive by colleagues with whom he shared the awesome responsibility for running a war. Part of Churchill’s problem was that he remained insensitive to his Cabinet colleagues and did not hesitate to tell them how he thought they should carry out their business. He had developed a deep friendship with his mentor, Sir Edward Grey, was tolerated with benign acceptance by Prime Minister Asquith and retained the confidence of Lloyd George. But he was not popular. The Conservatives distrusted him and took every opportunity to belittle him. Many in his own party and in the Labour party harboured cold memories of his treatment of trade unionists, but in August 1914, others predicted that he was the coming man, Asquith’s successor. [5] The Secret Elite would probably have allowed him to take charge of a war cabinet had he not contrived to lay himself open to ridicule and blame.

Churchill’s approach was often very self-centred but in matters of international business he was guided by Sir Edward Grey with whom he had formed a close working partnership. With war on the immediate horizon, Churchill requisitioned four ships, two Dreadnoughts destined for Turkey and two destroyers that had been ordered by Chile which were nearing completion in British shipyards. On 29 July Foreign Office officials warned the Admiralty that crews had already arrived to collect the newly launched ships which had been paid for by Turkey. The Sultan Osman I had taken on fuel and was under orders to sail for Istanbul at once, even though unfinished. Churchill immediately ordered security forces to guard the vessels and to prevent the Turkish crews from boarding and raising the Ottoman flag. [6]  He was aware that these ships meant a great deal to the Ottoman Turks who were gravely insulted by the enforced repossession. [7] Indeed many saw this as an act of overt provocation and given that Turkey was at that point neutral, his decision was probably illegal. The two ships had been financed by public subscription and their anticipated arrival caused great excitement. A Navy-Week celebration had been planned to welcome these great battleships to Constantinople for they were intended to form the backbone of a modern Ottoman navy.

In the first days of the war bizarre decisions in the Mediterranean robbed the Allies of an early victory against the enemy. From the 28 July the Admiralty knew that a German battlecruiser, the Goeben, in conjunction with a single light cruiser, the Breslau, was cruising between the North African coast and Sicily with dangerous intent. It was assumed that these ships had orders to intercept and disrupt French transport ships taking colonial troops from Algeria to France in the event of war. [8] The Goeben in particular represented a major prize for a joint French and British Mediterranean fleet of some three battlecruisers, four armoured cruisers, four light cruisers and fourteen destroyers. The Adriatic was closed off by Rear Admiral Troubridge and the western exit from the Mediterranean was blocked at Gibraltar.

Despite the huge numerical advantage of the British and French fleets, the two German ships were allowed to escape through the Dardanelles and steamed safely into Constantinople. Turkey was at that point still nominally neutral and so bound by treaty to block entry to the Goeben and Breslau. However, the Turkish government had signed a secret pact with Germany on 2 August, 1914 [9] though this had not been formally announced. After two days of negotiation, diplomatic problems were circumvented when the German government ‘gifted’ both ships to the Turkish navy. In a brief ceremony on 16 August, they officially became the Yavuz Sultan Selim and the Midilli, though they retained their German crews.

Although Sir Edward Grey was at great pains to insist in his memoirs that ‘what went on inside the Admiralty was not known to me’ [10] two facts fly in the face of that assertion. Firstly, Grey and Churchill were known to be close friends, and had worked in consort to rush through the Anglo-Persian Oil Bill just days before the war. They certainly appreciated the importance of Turkey and the remnants of the Ottoman Empire for the future of the near and middle-east. Safeguarding the oil was part of that strategy. Secondly, it was the Foreign Office that warned the Admiralty about the danger of the battleships leaving for Turkey before they were finally completed. Clearly Grey’s department was keeping a close eye on the situation, so Winston Churchill’s action was entirely in line with the foreign policy they were pursuing. It was a policy that had never been raised in Cabinet.

The First Lord of the Admiralty reaped what he had sown. The Kaiser’s ‘gift’ of two warships had an enormously positive impact on Turkish popular opinion and drew them to Germany’s side [11] And it was a decision that suited the Foreign Office and all of the Secret Elite’s pre-war planning. Their unilateral promise to give Constantinople to Russia as a reward for crushing Germany would have been exceptionally difficult had Turkey remained neutral, and impossible had she joined with the allies. By pushing the Goeben and the Breslau into the Dardanelles, the British navy simultaneously pushed Turkey into the German camp.

In the aftermath of the Goeben’s daring dash to Constantinople, and bristling with anger at the requisitioning of her dreadnoughts, Turkey cancelled her maritime agreement with Britain on 15 August 1914. Asquith proved himself to be completely out of touch when he boldly informed Venetia Stanley that ‘we shall insist that the Goeben should be manned by a Turkish and not a German crew … as the Turkish sailors cannot navigate her, except on the rocks or mines.’ [12] Ah, the myth of the stereotypical hapless foreigner ran deep in the British psyche. Was he really surprised when, on 28 October Turkey formally entered the war against Britain? More importantly, despite Asquith’s bold claims, the German commander, Rear Admiral Souchon retained command of his ships and was placed in overall charge of the Ottoman navy. On the 29^th and 30^th October, Asquith’s over-optimism proved to be embarrassingly ill-judged when the Breslau and a Turkish Squadron under German direction destroyed Russian naval installations in the Black Sea.

Churchill later construed the Goeben’s escape as the ‘Curse’ which ‘descended irrevocably upon Turkey and the East’. [13] With what became a signature stamp of his literary style, Winston Churchill offered his personal analysis of events with eloquent hindsight, concluding that ‘the Goeben, already the fastest capital unit [warship] in the Mediterranean…[was] carrying with her for the peoples of the East and the middle East, more slaughter, more misery and more ruin than has ever been borne within the compass of a ship.’ [14] So there we have it; the blame for all the misery caused by war in the middle-East was due to the Goeben, and presumably, Rear Admiral Souchon. It was convenient to blame the Goeben and the Breslau, to blame the British admirals for failing to stop their escape or to blame the French for failing to communicate effectively with the British Mediterranean Fleet. We are asked to believe that a battle fleet from the greatest navy the world had ever seen, aided by its allies, made such catalogue of errors that the two hunted German ships were able to slip through to safety. Look at a map of the Mediterranean. The Goeben and the Breslau were shepherded into the Bosphorous.

Inside this blame-fuelled culture a darker spectre lurked. Once the Turkish navy was secured behind the powerful German ships, the Admiralty could beat its breast and the Foreign Office lament the consequences, but Constantinople was safe from Russian occupation. Sir Edward Grey and the Foreign Office, had engaged in secret and longstanding diplomatic arrangements with Russia to lure them into war by promising the ultimate prize of Constantinople. It was a false promise; one of many false promises, and it would never have been honoured. Britain and Russia still had unfinished business in Persia and the near east. If Russia had gained access to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea fleet might at some future point sail to the Suez Canal and threaten the life-line to India. That was inconceivable. Utterly inconceivable. The British Empire could have been seriously threatened if Constantinople was in Russian hands. No British government could have survived in power if it surrendered Constantinople as a consequence of a secret deal. But, with a stroke of naval ‘incompetence’, the Ottoman Turks were gifted an exceptionally powerful defence against Russian invasion.

In his own self-indulgent explanation of events, Churchill created a list of ‘ifs’, which focussed on the actions of the naval personnel, the decisions they made and the interpretations of his instructions that they followed. [15] He omitted to ask questions about the consequences of the Goeben’s escape and its consequent impact on the war. If the Goeben and Breslau had been sunk in the Mediterranean, what would the Russian navy have achieved in the Black Sea? If Rear Admiral Souchon had gone down with his ship, what would have happened to the hapless Turkish navy? What would have happened to the supply lines to Germany that could be safely operated across the Black Sea because the Goeben was there to protect them? The Goeben’s escape was more than just fortunate. It served to thwart Russian ambition in the Black Sea and the Bosphorous, and keep them dependent on continued British and French support. Had Russia captured an undefended Constantinople, what reason would they have had to continue the war in Eastern Europe?

[1] Richard Hough, Winston and Clementine, The Triumph of the Churchills, pp 278-9.
[2] Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911-1918, p109.
[3] Michael and Eleanor Brock, HH Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p. 140.
[4] Virginia Cowles, Winston Churchill, p. 173.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Galip Baysan, Stories of the Two Battleships,
http://www.turkishnews.com/en/content /2013/04/29/stories-of-the-two-battleships/
[7] Brock, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p.168.
[8] Churchill, The World Crisis, pp 116-20.
[9] Avalon Project, Yale Law Library.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20thcentury/turkgerm.asp
[10] Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, vol. 2, p.280.
[11] Roy Jenkins, Churchill, p. 244.
[12] Brock, Letters to Venetia Stanley, p.168.
[13] Churchill, The World Crisis, p.138.
[14] Ibid., p.136.
[15] Ibid., p.138.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (4): The Smoking Gun

The mortal remains of Sophie and Ferdinand were interred at Artstetten castle on 4 July. Nine days later Dr Friedrich von Wiesner, the Chief Austrian investigator, forwarded an interim report to Vienna containing three major points. Firstly, the Greater Serbia movement aimed to sever the Southern Slav region from Austria by revolutionary violence. He pointed an accusatory finger at the Serbian nationalist group Narodna Odbrana, stating that the Belgrade government had made no attempt to curb its activities. Secondly, von Wiesner unmasked Major Tankosić and ‘the Serbian official Ciganovic’ as the men responsible for training and supplying the assassins with weapons, and both the frontier authorities and the customs officers for smuggling them into Bosnia. These facts he deemed ‘demonstrable and virtually unassailable’. [1] He concluded by stating cautiously, that there was no conclusive proof at that time, that the Serbian Government had any knowledge of the assassination or had co-operated in preparing it. [2]

Dr von Wiesner’s oral report, delivered some two days later, was more comprehensive and came to a momentous conclusion. The Serbian government had known everything about the assassination. He had unearthed more evidence of Serbian complicity, but his telegrammed report of 13 July was destined to be hijacked and later grossly misrepresented by the American delegation at the War Guilt Commission in 1919. Their two most senior delegates, Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Counsellor James Scott Brown, deliberately chose a 31-word extract from Von Wiesner’s brief report which they claimed ‘proved’ that Austria had no evidence of Serbian involvement [3] Such deliberate falsification suited their cause. It was used as part of the post-war onslaught against Germany and Austria to lay the blame for the world war entirely on their shoulders. Lansing and Brown stand accused of deliberately falsifying history in order to malign the Austrian and German governments.

By October, when the Young Bosnians were brought to trial the Austrian authorities had overwhelming evidence of Serbian complicity. Despite this, the conspirators insisted in deflecting blame from Serbia. Under cross-examination, Princip was defiant: ‘I believe in unification of all South Slavs in whatever form of state and that it be free of Austria.’ Asked how he intended to realize his goal he responded: ‘By means of terror.’ [4] Although they had been trained in Serbia, the Young Bosnians had no knowledge of the influences that dictated policy further up the chain of command. Indeed, few if any within that chain knew who was empowering the next link. Princip and his group genuinely believed that they were striking a blow for freedom and emancipation and could not bring themselves to accept that they had been duped into literally firing someone else’s bullets.

The Austrian court did not accept their attempts to hold Serbia blameless. [5] The verdict was decisive, with the court correctly finding that the military commanders in charge of the Serbian espionage service collaborated in the outrage. Four of the assassination team were executed by hanging in February 1915, but the younger members, like Princip, were given prison sentences. He died in prison in 1918 from tuberculosis exacerbated by a botched amputation. Crucially, the trail of culpability had not been covered over.

Above all else, the Secret Elites had to ensure that no links could be traced from Serbia to Russia. Russian complicity in the Archduke’s death would have altered the balance of credibility for the Entente cause. All links to Sazonov in particular had to be airbrushed. That in turn meant that the web of intrigue between Serbia and Russia be cleansed. The outbreak of war in August slowed down this process, but only delayed the outcome.

Nicholai Hartwig, Russian ambassador to Serbia, died in Belgrade in very strange circumstances. On a visit to the Austrian ambassador, Baron von Giesel, on 10 July1914, Hartwig collapsed, allegedly from a massive ‘heart attack’. The Serbian press immediately published inflammatory articles accusing the Austrians of poisoning Hartwig while he was a guest at their legation. The Austrians, of course, knew from decoded diplomatic telegrams, that Hartwig was at the centre of intrigues against Austria-Hungary. [6] Was this an old-fashioned Roman-style act of retribution or, were the Secret Elite simply very fortunate that a fifty-seven year old diplomat dropped dead in the Austrian legation barely two weeks after the assassination in which he was complicit?

Denials echoed around Europe, no-where more vehemently than in Britain, where the Secret Elite had to vilify any suggestion that Russia was involved with internal Bosnian or Austro-Hungarian politics. The Times led the outcry;

‘The latest suggestion made in one of the Serbian newspapers is that M de Hartwig’s sudden death in the Austro-Hungarian Legation at Belgrade the other day was due to poison. Ravings of that kind move the contempt as well as the disgust of cultivated people, whatever their political sympathies may be.’ [7]

Ravings indeed. The Times, and those it represented, clearly wanted to squash such speculation. It was far too close to the truth. If the idea that Hartwig had been murdered because he was involved in the Archduke’s assassination gained credence, British public opinion would turn even sourer against Russia. At the request of the Serbian Government, Hartwig was buried in Belgrade in what was virtually a State funeral. Every notable Serbian, including the Prime Minister, attended. Officially Hartwig suffered death by natural causes. Unofficially, a very important link in the chain of culpability was buried along with his corpse.

Some three years later, with the tide of war turned violently against Serbia, Colonel Apis and the officers loyal to him were arrested. At a Serbian Court Martial held on the frontier at Salonika on 23 May 1917, Apis and eight of his associates were indicted on various trumped up charges, unrelated to Sarajevo, and sentenced to death, Two others were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Serbian High Court reduced the number of death sentences to seven and King Alexander commuted another four, leaving Apis and two others to face the firing squad. [8]

Colonel Apis effectively signed his own death warrant when he confessed to the Salonika court that he had enlisted men to carry out the assassination. ‘In agreement with Artamanov, the Russian military attaché, I hired Malobabic to organise Ferdinand’s murder upon his arrival in Sarajevo.’ [9] The explosive part of that statement was the opening phrase ‘in agreement with Artamanov’. His revelation of Russian involvement had to be silenced. Much to his own surprise, for Colonel Apis truly believed, right up to the moment of death that his contacts in England, France and Russia would intervene on his behalf, he was executed on 26 June 1917 by firing squad. [10] In reality, Apis was silenced; put to death by order of those who desperately needed to permanently bury the complicity of Russia in the Sarajevo assassination. [11] It was judicial murder.

By one means or another, the lower levels of the web of culpability were blown away. The Young Bosnians had in their naivety been willing sacrifices to a cause they never knew existed. Hartwig was dead. Murdered? Probably, but all that really mattered was that his voice would never be heard again. Our understanding of his role in managing the Russian intrigues has to remain, at best, incomplete. There was plenty to hide, and no doubt at all about Russian complicity. [12] The Soviet collection of diplomatic papers from the year 1914 revealed an astonishing gap.During the first days of the October Revolution in 1917, Hartwig’s dispatches from Belgrade for the crucial period between May and July, 1914 were removed by an unknown person from the archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Three years dead and his was a voice they still had to gag. [13] Finally, Apis and his Black Hand associates were removed from any future enquiry or the temptation of a lucrative memoir. Blown away; all of them, in the expectation that the truth about their direct involvement would disappear in the confusion of war.

And yet the world has been asked to believe that the murder of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was carried out by a bunch of lucky amateurs who inadvertently set the world ablaze. What nonsense. Having failed to entice the Austrians and their German allies into an angry indiscretion over the Balkan wars, the Secret Elite laid a most devious trap, which also might well have come to nothing unless deceit had not been taken to an unprecedented level. Court historians have deliberately misrepresented the complex events of July 1914 and perpetuated the myth that after Sarajevo, world war was inevitable. Their stance is based on claims that the opposing Alliance systems, secret treaties and acceleration of armaments production in Europe were destined to end in war. The Kaiser, in their view, lusted for world domination, misled his people and deliberately used the Archduke’s assassination as an excuse to drag Europe into ‘Armageddon’.

These incredible concoctions gained credence over the twentieth century through deliberately falsified histories and received learning. Whoever challenged them was deemed to be a ‘revisionist’ or a ‘conspiracy-theorist’ and sometimes even a traitor. An official cloak of confusion was woven through the manipulations and misrepresentations presented as ‘evidence’ at Versailles in 1919, to deliberately and unfairly lay blame on the Kaiser and Germany. When that cloak is stripped away it is patently clear that it was not Germany that wanted war, or forced war on Europe in 1914. That particular infamy belongs to the Secret Elite in London.

[1] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.632.
[2] Austrian Red Book No 17 quoted in Sidney B Fay, The Origins of the World War, vol.1., pp.6-7.
[3] von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, p.632.
[4] Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol. 28 (1928), issue 4, p.622.
[5] W.A. Dolph Owings, The Sarajevo Trial, Part 1, pp.527–30.
[6] Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, p.620.
[7] The Times, 16 July 1914.
[8] David MacKenzie, Apis, The Congenial Conspirator, pp.329 and 344–7.
[9] Ibid., pp.129-130.
[10] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.398–400.
[11] Harry Elmer Barnes, Genesis of the World War, p.731.
[12] Victor Serge, ‘La Verité sur l’Attentat de Sarajevo’, in Clarte, no. 74, 1 May 1924.
[13] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.513.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (3): Firing The Bullets

Archduke Ferdinand need not have been killed. Warnings about the perilous nature of his safety abounded. Despite this, the Governor of Bosnia, the Austrian General Potiorek, was determined that the visit would go ahead. Desperate pleas from the Chief of Police, who believed that the Archduke was in grave danger, were ignored. The very date of the visit, 28 June was particularly provocative. It was St Vitus Day, historically and emotionally significant to the Serbs, the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Poyle, (1389) the victory that unified the Serbian nation against the Turkish invader.

That alone should have been a warning. The Police chief’s fears were dismissed by the Governor and he was ridiculed by Sarajevo’s military committee when he requested a cordon of soldiers to line the streets as a precaution. He pleaded with them not to publish the route of the Archduke’s cavalcade through the city, but to no avail. Newspapers carried detailed notices of times and places to view the Archduke’s processional visit. [1] A request that additional police officers be brought in from the country was rejected because it would cost too much. Security measures were left in the hands of providence.

The conspirators, and there were seven in the Young Bosnian team, stood at intervals along the avenue called Appel Quay – or the avenue of Assassins as the Archbishop of Sarajevo would later dub it – and mingled freely with the crowds for an hour and a half before the Archduke’s arrival. Though Bosnia could boast a first-class political intelligence, no-one, no police officer, no undercover police agent, no vigilant citizen questioned them. [2]

The events of what might safely be deemed the world’s most devastating assassination have been well documented. A botched bomb-throwing left the Archduke shaken and stirred, but physically unmarked. Officials in the following car were not so lucky. His cavalcade stopped briefly before continuing to the Town Hall. Strained speeches made pretence that all was well. Despite the shameful outrage, troops were not called in from the barracks, nor additional police summoned for protection. Franz Ferdinand demanded to go to the hospital to see for himself how one of the governor’s assistants, wounded by the bomb-blast, was faring. [3] Incredibly, the cavalcade returned along the same ‘Avenue of Assassins’, from where the first bomb had been thrown, but turned into the wrong street. Potiorek ordered the driver to stop and reverse. In doing so, he placed the Archduke directly in front of young Princip who promptly shot both him and his unfortunate wife, Sophie. The police arrested Princip on the spot before he could use his cyanide.

The assassination succeeded, despite the amateurism of the conspirators, because the victim was more or less served up on a plate.  Governor Potiorek’s behaviour was astonishing. The car was on its way to the hospital (Franz Ferdinand had insisted on going there to see an assistant wounded in the bomb throwing) but Potiorek, with the  Archduke and  his wife now both badly wounded, ordered the driver to proceed to the Governor’s residence instead. Confused? We should be. Had Potiorek acted in shock, or did he know it was already too late? It was suggested at the time that Austria had set up the assassination deliberately in order to provoke a war. In the bitter rage of accusation and counter-claim that followed after 1914, all sides made allegations against each other. In the 1920s, and over the decades since, much evidence has come to light from documents that had been ‘lost’ or removed ‘unofficially’. There is now a huge body of diplomatic evidence that links Russia and Serbia to the assassination, [4] but none that supports the suggestion that the low-security visit of Archduke Ferdinand to Sarajevo was in some way organised with the intention of exposing him to the risk of assassination. Had the great crime gone to plan, all of the Young Bosnians should have committed suicide. They were expendable. Dead Bosnians tell no tales. The links in the chain of responsibility would have been broken. That was supposedly why the assassins had been supplied with the cyanide phials. The headline they sought was of a noble death-pact assassination which would leave the authorities completely bewildered, and the coffee-houses of Europe abuzz with revolutionary admiration. Cabrinovic, who threw the first bomb, immediately took the cyanide pill and leapt fifteen feet into the shallow River Miljacka. Police officers hauled him out of the mud-flat, vomiting uncontrollably. Arrested immediately after the shooting, Princip had no opportunity to swallow the cyanide.

The cyanide failed to be effective for any of the Young Bosnians. There was to be no self-directed mass martyrdom.  But what if the vials had been deliberately formulated with a dose of cyanide that was insufficient to kill?   In his book, Lord Milner’s Second War, John Cafferky poses the pertinent question; did Apis and the Serbian government want them taken alive so that they could be questioned by the authorities and the link with Serbia proved?  The whole point of the exercise, after all, was to provoke Austria into a war with Serbia.  [5]

With suspicious simplicity, the Austro-Hungarian authorities arrested and prosecuted all but one of the Sarajevo assassins, together with the agents and peasants who assisted them on their way. How they managed to track all of the alleged conspirators so quickly begs the question about how much they knew in advance. The major charge against the Young Bosnians was conspiracy to commit high treason which carried a maximum sentence of death. Within a few days of the assassination, the Austrians had set up a judicial investigation. They were convinced that the Young Bosnians had been equipped from Belgrade and that the plot had originated from there. What the Austrians wanted to know was the extent to which the Serbian government was directly involved. [6] The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Ministry sent its top legal counsellor, Dr von Wiesner, to Sarajevo to investigate the crime.

[1] David James Smith, One Morning in Sarajevo: 28 June 1914, p.166.
[2] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.317–19.
[3] Smith, One Morning in Sarajevo, p.193.
[4] Alexander, Count Hoyos, ‘Russia Chief Culprit in Precipitation of World War’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), p.628.
[5] John Cafferky, Lord Milner’s Second War, pp.193-208.
[6] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), pp.630–3.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (2): Making The Bullets

Colonel Apis’s organisation had infiltrated Mlada Bosna, the Young Bosnians, a revolutionary group whom they equipped and trained to carry out the Sarajevo Assassination. These young men were far more intellectual than the narrow chauvinistic Black Hand. They wanted to go beyond independence from Austria-Hungary, to change the primitive nature of Bosnian society. They challenged the authority of existing institutions of state, church, school and family and believed in socialist concepts; egalitarianism and emancipation of women. Young Bosnians stood for modernism, intellectualism and a brave new world. [1] They were spurred by revolution, not narrow nationalism, and under different circumstances would have been swept aside by Black Hand aficionados.

Apis knew just the man to organise and lead the assassination team, Danilo Ilić. He had worked as a school teacher and as a bank worker, but in 1913 and 1914 he lived with his mother, who operated a small boarding house in Sarajevo. Ilić was leader of the Serbian Black Hand terrorist cell in Sarajevo, and as such was known to Colonel Apis personally. He provided the perfect link between the two organisations. [2] Ilić was also a close friend of Gavrilo Princip, the student destined to fire the fatal shot.

Apis used three trusted Serb associates in planning the assassination. His right hand man, Major Tankosić, was in charge of guerrilla training, and brought the would-be assassins to a secret location in Serbia where his specific role was to ensure that the Young Bosnians knew how to handle guns and bombs effectively. He was tasked to teach them the art of the assassin and get them back over the border and into Sarajevo safely. The second, Rade Malobabić was the chief undercover operative for Serbian Military Intelligence. His name appeared in Serbian documents captured by Austria-Hungary during the war which describe the running of arms, munitions, and agents from Serbia into Austria-Hungary under his direction. [3] His assessment was that the Young Bosnians were capable of the task. The third Black Hand conspirator was Milan Ciganovic. He supplied the assassination team with four revolvers and six bombs from the Serbian army’s arsenal. Crucially, each was given a vial of cyanide to take after they had murdered the Archduke. Their suicides would ensure that the trail could not be traced back to Apis and Hartwig.

Ciganovic played an equally important dual role. He was a trusted confidant of the Serbian Prime Minister, Pasic, and was ultimately protected by him from the volcanic fall-out after Sarajevo. Critically, Ciganovic’s involvement meant that members of the Serbian government knew in advance about the proposed assassination. [4] and had time to consider the consequences. Yet in spite of this guilty knowledge, Pasic took no steps to arrest the conspirators or warn Austrian authorities of the impending disaster. [5]

Hartwig was the conduit to Sazonov and Isvolsky for updates on the conspirators. Through them, the Secret Elite were advised of the progress of their plans. Everything appeared to be running smoothly, but Serbian intrigues hit political turbulence at precisely the wrong moment. The unity of Serbia’s political, military and royal leaders, nestling behind the muscle of their Russian minders, had been a feature of Serbian success in the Balkan Wars. Prime Minister Pasic, Colonel Apis and Prince Alexander were all supported by Ambassador Hartwig towards the ambitions of a Greater Serbia. But suddenly, just days before the planned assassination, a power struggle erupted for control of the country. Apis attempted to organise a coup to dismiss Pasic, allegedly over a minor detail of precedence, but found that his power-base in the Serbian military had shrunk.

But the killer blow to Colonel Apis’s aspirations came from two external powers. Russia, more accurately the Sazonov/Isvolsky axis, would not countenance the removal of Prime Minister Pasic and his cabinet. Hartwig slapped down any notion of resignations. At the same time the French president, Poincare let it be known that a Serbian Opposition regime could not count on financial backing from Paris. [6] The King, caught between old loyalties and Russian pressure, withdrew from political life. He transferred his powers to Prince Alexander, a man who resented Apis’s authority in Serbian military circles.

Look again at these events. With the assassination just days away, the last thing that Sazonov, Isvolsky, Poincare and their Secret Elite masters in London would have entertained in June 1914 was a change of government in Serbia that did not owe its very existence to their power and money. Apis, the ultra-nationalist, was not a man to take orders. He had desperately wanted to attack Bulgaria in 1913, but Pasic (no doubt under instructions form Hartwig) had refused to sanction the order. [7] He was neither deferential to Prince Alexander, nor under Hartwig’s thumb. He knew that Pasic was weak and subservient to Russia. It was as if metaphoric scales had suddenly dropped from his eyes, and he understood for the first time that the Russians were exploiting him and his beloved Serbia for their own purposes.

Apis may also have had second thoughts based on his own prospects for survival. He had clearly shaken the ruling cabal in Serbia. Prime Minister Pasic knew about the intended assassination, and in consequence, the Cabinet had closed the borders to known or suspected assassins. Was this self-preservation on their part, an attempt to make it look like the Serbian government had nothing to do with the shooting? Hartwig too knew details of the plans, but never imagined they could be traced back to him. Crucially he did not know that the Austrians were well aware of his intrigues because they had possession of decoded Diplomatic correspondence between Russia and Serbia. [8]

Colonel Apis made a desperate attempt to regain control of events. He ordered a trusted agent to go to Sarajevo and instruct the Young Bosnians to abort the assassination. [Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo, p.309 ] It was all too late. Having slipped out of Belgrade on May 28th and been secretly routed across the border by sympathetic frontier guards they were safely ensconced in Sarajevo ready for the appointed day and ill-disposed to accept any postponement. Ciganovic had ensured they had weapons and cash. The senior officer on the border guard at the time, a member of Black Hand, had been placed there on special assignment to see them safely across.

The bullets were safely in the chamber.

[1] Vladimir Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.175.
[2] Luigi Albertini, Origins of the War of 1914, vol.II, pp.27–28, and 79.
[3] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, pp.388–9.
[4] Albertini,Origins of the War of 1914, vol.II, pp.282–3.
[5] Fay, Origins of the World War, vol.I, p.27.
[6] MacKenzie, Apis, p.120.
[7] Dedijer, Road to Sarajevo, p.385.
[8] Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.620.

The Assassination Of Franz Ferdinand (1): The Web Of Intrigue

Let one historic myth be put immediately to the sword. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 did not start the First World War. Of itself, the fateful slaying of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown was a great crime that did indeed cry out for vengeance, but the hand that pulled the trigger had no knowledge of what lay behind the assistance his band of brothers had been given, or how the act would be misrepresented and manipulated into a universal disaster. Assassinations and politically motivated slayings were not uncommon in that troubled time, with Kings and Queens, aristocracy, political opponents and religious leaders falling victims to usurpers, murderers and zealots with astonishing regularity. It was an age of assassins. What made the death of Archduke Ferdinand different from any other was that the event was assisted by the secret cabal in London, well removed from the heat of the Balkans.

The men who comprised the Secret Elite had previously failed to find their spark for the international conflagration through the Balkan wars of 1912-13 because Germany, in the person of the Kaiser, restrained Austria-Hungary from over-reacting to Serbia’s repeated and deliberate provocation. Indeed, the Dual Monarchy was concerned that the German Ambassador in Belgrade in 1914 was decidedly pro-Serb, and had influenced the Kaiser to take a comparatively benign attitude towards the Serbian cause. [1] Yet it was clear that Austria was the weak link in Germany’s protective armour. She could only absorb so much pressure from antagonistic Serbia before the integrity of the Austria- Hungarian state was destroyed. [2]

The war-makers required an incident so violent, threatening or dangerous that Austria would be pushed over the brink. But the assassination itself failed to do so. The world was shocked, stunned and in many parts saddened by the Archduke’s death, but no one talked of war in June 1914. Immediate blame was pointed at the pan-Serb movement, though the implication of revolutionary elements from Bosnia-Herzegovina was not ruled out. The Serbian minister in Vienna denounced the assassination as ‘a mad act of fanatical and political agitators’ [3] as if to suggest that it had been a dastardly and ill-timed mischance.

It was not. In fact the process of bringing about the assassination had been exceptionally well constructed. Austria-Hungary was aware of the external dangers that lay across the Serbian border. Its military intelligence had intercepted and deciphered a large number of diplomatic telegrams that detailed Russian involvement with several activist groups. [4] They knew that the Russian Ambassador in Belgrade, Nicolai Hartwig, was manipulating the Serbian Government to destabilise the region. They knew that Hartwig was in control of the internal politics of Serbia. They knew of his links back to the Russian foreign minister Sazonov in St Petersburg, and to the Paris-based warmongers, Isvolsky and Poincare, but like everyone else, they were not aware of the real power centred in London. No-one was.

The Secret Elite in London funded and supported both the Russian Ambassador in Paris and the French prime minister himself. They influenced the Russian foreign minister in St Petersburg, but kept a very low profile in such matters. Their work had to be undertaken in great secrecy. The links in the chain of command from London went further, deeper and more sinister when extended from Hartwig into the Serbian military, their intelligence service, and the quasi-independent nationalist society, Black Hand. And deeper yet, into the young Bosnian political activists who were willing to pull the trigger in Sarajevo – students whose ideas on socialism and reform were influenced by revolutionaries like Trotsky. As each level in the web of culpability extended away from the main Secret Elite chain of command, precise control became less immediate. Sazonov in St Petersburg considered that Hartwig in Belgrade was ‘carried away occasionally by his Slavophile sympathies’ [5] but did nothing to curtail him. [6] Hartwig in turn supported and encouraged men whose prime cause he willingly shared and whose actions he could personally approve, but not at every stage, control.

Nicolai Hartwig the Russian Ambassador worked in close contact with his Military Attaché, Artamanov, who had been posted to Belgrade to advise and liaise with the Serbian Army. These men were intrinsically linked to the assassinations in Sarajevo by their chosen agent, the founder and dominating figure in the Serbian Black Hand, and the most influential military officer in Serbia, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrjievic or Apis. [7] The English traveller and Balkan commentator, Edith Durham, described the Black Hand as a mafia-type society, Masonic in secret self-promotion, infiltrating the Serbian military, civil service, police and government. It produced its own newspaper, Pijemont, which preached intolerance to Austria-Hungary and ‘violent chauvinism’. It became the most dangerous of political organisms, a government within the government, responsible to none. Crimes were committed for which no-one took responsibility. The government denied any knowledge of it, yet King Petar was literally placed on the throne by these men. Efforts by responsible politicians to tackle the subversion of good government by the Black Hand, came to nothing. [8] Hartwig’s friendship and respect for Apis may be measured by his description of his group as ‘idealistic and patriotic’ [9] and there is no doubt that it suited Hartwig’s purpose to approve Apis’s promotion to Chief of Intelligence in the summer of 1913.

It is important that we clearly identify every link in the chain of intrigue that surrounded the fateful assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914. Apis was deliberately given responsibility for an intelligence organisation financed from Russia. His life’s purpose was the establishment of a Greater Serbia. He was first, foremost and always a Serb. He worked in collusion with the Russian military attaché, Artamanov, and secured a promise from him that Russia would protect Serbia should Austria attack them in the wake of his actions. [10] In other words, Russia was prepared to give Serbia a blank-cheque guarantee that whatever happened, she would stand by her. For Apis, what was required was a demonstration of Serbian self-determination that would force the issue once and for all and bring about permanent change.

The Austrian government presented the opportunity in March 1914 when they announced that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg dual-monarchy, would visit Sarajevo in June.  Although they had reliable information that Serbian agitators ‘in conjunction with influential Russian circles’, wished to strike a decisive blow against the Austrian Monarchy, [11] they chose to ignore it. The Secret Elite had four crucial months in which to spin their web of intrigue and catch their ultimate prize.

[1] Editorial, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.619.
[2] Harry Elmer Barnes, ‘Germany Not Responsible for Austria’s Actions’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.621.
[3] The Times, Tuesday 30 June 1914, p.8.
[4] Editorial, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.619.
[5] Sidney B. Fay, Origins of the World War, vol.I, p.439.
[6] Ibid., p.27.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Edith Durham, Sarajevo Crime, pp.197–201.
[9] David MacKenzie, Apis, The Congenial Conspirator, p.275.
[10] Harry Elmer Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice, p.43.
[11] Friedrich von Wiesner, ‘Austria’s Life and Death Struggle Against Irredentism’, New York Times Current History of the European War, vol.28 (1928), issue 4, p.63.