Countdown to World War I: July 31, 1914

by Stephen Yellin

This is part of a series of daily articles that covers the run-up to the catastrophe of World War I in July 1914. The diplomatic crisis exactly 100 years ago was sparked by the murder of the main force for peace in the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Archduke Franz Ferdinand, together with his wife Sophie– by a Serbian terrorist. Backed by Germany’s offering of unconditional support in using force to retaliate against Serbia – the infamous “blank check”– the Viennese authorities began preparing a list of demands for the Serbian government to accept or face war. The demands were deliberately made to ensure war would occur.

The ultimatum was finally issued on July 23, 1914, over 3 weeks after the Archduke’s murder. The 12 days that followed are the focus of this series.

Feel free to refer to my list of important figures in keeping track of who's who.

Previous days: Thursday, July 23rd - the fuse is litFriday, July 24th - "c'est la guerre europeene"Saturday, July 25th - "we stand upon the edge of war"Sunday, July 26th - “War is thought imminent. Wildest enthusiasm prevails.”Monday, July 27th – “You’ve cooked this broth and now you’re going to eat it.”Tuesday, July 28 – “To try and avoid such a calamity as a European war”Wednesday, July 29th – “I will not be responsible for a monstrous slaughter!”Thursday, July 30 - "The responsibility of Peace or War"

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Friday, July 31 - "Everything is finished. There is nothing left to do."

The previous day had seen the Russian government begin mobilizing its armies for a European war, after a day's delay thanks to the hesitation of Tsar Nicholas II in wishing to avoid "sending thousands of men to their deaths." It also saw France make its first steps towards entering the struggle and Great Britain pull back from the brink of civil war to confront a far greater war on the European continent. Before July 31st is out the government arguably most responsible for triggering the crisis will make its own fatal commitment, while a brutal murder will rob the world of one of its great moral leaders.

Berlin - "In our circumstances, mobilization...means war"

Morning breaks with the Germany army's Chief of Staff, Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, desperately trying to find hard evidence that Russia is mobilizing her armies. Without evidence - such as the red mobilization notices placed in every Russian town and village to bring their conscripts to their units - Moltke cannot convince Kaiser Wilhelm II or Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to give the order for any gearing-up of the military. Each has their reason: the Kaiser continues to swing wildly between war lust and desperate attempts to find a peaceful solution,while Bethmann knows that issuing the pre-mobilization proclamation - Kriegsgefahrzustand, or "Imminent Danger of War" - will commence a process that ends with a German invasion of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. "In our circumstances, mobilization...means war," notes Bethmann.

This is because Germany's war plan requires mobilization against both France and Russia, and for its armies to strike against the former to quickly knock Paris out of the war. As such there is no feasible way to stop the German war machine at some midpoint between pre-mobilization and invasion. This explains why Bethmann, after realizing with no small amount of panic that Russia would fight to protect Serbia and the British would probably join their Entente allies, has refused to issue the order for pre-mobilization so far. If he does, there is no turning back.

Finally, at 11:40 AM a telegram from Germany's ambassador to St. Petersburg, Count Pourtales is decoded. Pourtales informs his government that "General [Russian] mobilization army and navy ordered. First day of mobilization 31 July."Having gotten his evidence Moltke goes to Bethmann, and this time the Chancellor agrees on condition the Kaiser gives his consent. Bethmann calls the Kaiser at once and, reading out Pourtales' telegram over the phone, gets his master's approval. Kriegsgefahrzustand commences at 3:00 PM. Earlier that day, the Kaiser had sent another telegram to the Tsar. "Willy" tells "Nicky" that "the peace of Europe may still be maintained by you, if Russia will agree to stop the military measures which must threaten Germany and Austro-Hungary [sic.]." Wilhelm is wasting his time; Nicholas has already committed to war, and neither the Tsar nor his government will back down at this point. Wilhelm is almost certainly the last figure in his own government to understand this.

Having waited so long to pull the proverbial trigger, Bethmann and Moltke waste no time in preparing Germany for war. By 3:30 PM, a half-hour after pre-mobilization was announced, Germany's ambassadors have been fully informed and authorized to publicly announce it to their respective governments. The problem for the Germans is that  the Russian mobilization has not been made public at this moment - it has yet to pronounce it and France's ambassador has kept it a secret from his own government at Russia's request. As such it appears that Germany is mobilizing for war before Russia, making them seem to be mobilizing before any "threat" exists. German brutality towards the people of Belgium and Northern France in the months that followed,would only add weight to the claim that Germany had eagerly geared up for war that week, with the Triple Entente only mobilizing in response. The record of the last days of July 1914 show otherwise.

Paris - "They've killed Jaures!"

The French government, especially the army's Chief of Staff General Joffre, are determined not to lag behind Germany in the race to mobilize their armies. France, like Russia and Germany has a strict timetable to mobilize before the Germans can concentrate their forces against them. The French army expects Germany to launch its attack 13 days after ordering mobilization; France's Plan XVII would see France ready to launch its attack on Germany no later than 10 days after mobilization, giving them an offensive edge before the Germans were fully ready. Even as Prime Minister Viviani proposes that everyone sleep on the question of mobilization before agreeing to it, Joffre wires his corps commander to prepare for mobilization.

While generally aware of the Schlieffen Plan, Joffre was unaware that the Germans were including all reserve units in the front lines; as such they had far more men at their disposal for their flanking maneuver than the French anticipated. As a result the French army would now be attacking the German left wing per Plan XVII while running the risk of the Germans cutting off their line of retreat to Paris. That the Germans did not succeed will due - horrifically - to the disastrous failure of Plan XVII and the casualties it caused the French army. 27,000 Frenchmen would lose their lives on one day of battle alone along the French frontier, more than on any other day of World War I including the siege of Verdun.

Earlier that day, one of France's most remarkable statesmen, and a truly principled and courageous one at that, spoke out forcefully against the gathering storm. Jean Jaures has just returned from an anti-war Congress of the Socialist 2nd International, where he locked arms in solidarity with Hugo Haase, leading of the German Social Democratic Party. The 2nd International had in 1912 proclaimed the need for all working-class parties and their members to organize a mass strike to prevent a European-wide war from taking place - a threat taken seriously by every Great Power in 1914. Jaures, a proponent of that policy, still believes war can be stopped if the working class rises up.

Speaking to a large gathering of journalists in Paris, Jaures "explode[s]" over what he sees as Russia's influence in dictating the fate of France. "Are we going to unleash a world war because Izvolsky is still furious over Aehrenthal's deception in the Bosnian affair?" cries Jaures. He is referring to the 1908-9 crises spawned by Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Foreign Minister Aehrenthal had double-crossed his Russian counterpart (Izvolsky, now ambassador to France) and thereby poisoned the realm of Austro-Russian relations. Shortly thereafter one of Jaures' friends in the French government tells him, "Everything is finished. There is nothing left to do."

At 9:00 PM, as the French cabinet deliberates going to war, Jaures takes a taxi to Cafe Croissant in the Montmartre District of Paris. He complains that the driver's going too fast and may kill him and his companion in his recklessness. "No," says his companion with a touch of humor, "like all Parisian drivers he is a good socialist and union man." At the cafe Jaures is joined by 2 members of the French parliament, the administrator of the prominent left-wing journal L'Humanite and a German Socialist deputy in the Reichstag, Georg Weill. Jaures prophesies that the war to come will be a long, bloody and destructive conflict, a theory at odds with virtually every other leading European figure in 1914, but he hopes its very nature will lead to a far greater movement to ensure such a catastrophe never happens again.

As he speaks, a crowd of listeners gathers around him. There are therefore a few dozen witnesses when, at approximately 9:40 PM, a deranged right-wing nationalist appropriately named Raoul Villain opens the curtain lying between Jaures and the street, pulls out a Browning pistol and fires twice at the back of his victim's head. Jaures dies instantly.

"They've killed Jaures!" screams newspaper headlines the next morning. Le Temps mourns the loss of his voice as a powerful figure capable of rallying the nation to come together in the face of war. It is highly doubtful so principled a man as Jaures would have willingly abandoned his anti-war creed to do so, but the paper's statement could never been disproved. Yet the murder of Jean Jaures did not merely remove arguably the man most opposed to war and the most consistent in trying to stop it: it removed one of France's greatest statesmen and one the most admirable people of his era. He had the courage to defend Alfred Dreyfus when many Socialists thought anti-Semitism was not their concern; he built bridges across the nationalist divided that would bear fruit in the post-World War II era; and he spoke eloquently and forcefully against the dangers of militarism and extreme nationalism, with the consequences to both peace and democracy. As he said earlier in 1914:

Today you’re told: Act, always act! But what is action without thought? It is the barbarism born of inertia. You are told: brush aside the party of peace; it saps your courage! But I tell you that to stand for peace today is to wage the most heroic of battles.

London - "Winston, we have beaten you after all."

As Germany and France commenced their respective countdowns to war, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey finally informs his colleagues in the British Cabinet of the commitments he has made with France in the event of war. He has not done so up to this point for fear their anti-interventionist stance will scuttle those commitments. Only Prime Minister Asquith, War Secretary Haldane and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill are aware of just how far Britain has committed itself before the July 31st Cabinet meeting.

There is no record of what transpired in the meeting but we know Grey lost the vote to give assurance to the French ambassador that Britain would stand by her (as yet unofficial) ally. The other 16 of the 20-member cabinet, including the popular Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George are still firmly against intervention, reflecting the Liberal Party's platform and the sentiment of its members. Lord Morley, another anti-interventionist leader in the Cabinet "tapped [Churchill] on the shoulder [and said] 'Winston, we have beaten you after all." Grey is forced to tell a furious Ambassador Cambon that "at present, we cannot take any engagement" towards keeping his military commitments to France.

Brussels

Contrary to Lord Morley's hopes, however, Britain is not quite certain to stay out of the conflict. Grey has sent a telegram to both Paris and Berlin demanding that each make a pledge that they are "prepared to engage to respect [the] neutrality of Belgium so long as no other power violates it."The 1839 Treaty of London, signed by all the Great Powers including Prussia (Germany's legal predecessor) stipulates that if any of them should threaten Belgian independence despite their staying neutral, the others are legally obligated to come to the defense of Brussels if she asks for help. Thanks to Bethmann-Hollweg's admittance to the British ambassador a few days before that Germany cannot guarantee leaving Belgium alone in a war against France, Grey knows that Germany is likely to trigger a violation of the Treaty of London. His hope is that the threat to Belgium - and the nationally recognized importance to Britain of keeping the Channel coast out of hostile hands - may convince his colleagues to change their tune.

Meanwhile, the German government sends a sealed message to its ambassador in Brussels with instructions not to open it until he receives instructions to do so. All Herr von Bulow knows on July 31st is that he is to give his message to the Belgian government. Its contents are as of yet unknown.