On the evening of 28 July, Russian military intelligence reported that three-quarters of the Austrian army was being mobilised, twelve out of sixteen corps – many more troops than Vienna needed to tackle Serbia. Though the Tsar had yet to sign the order, that night Russia’s chief of staff wired the senior officers of all military districts, warning that ‘30 July will be proclaimed the first day of our general mobilisation.’ The Tsar yielded to Sazonov’s urgings, and agreed that general mobilisation should start next day. From 24 July the Russians had made military preparations ahead of any other nations save Austria and Serbia, yet every Russian decision was made against the background of the former’s commitment to crush the Serbs by force. Hopes for peace crumbled in St Petersburg on the 29th, when word came that the Austrians had begun to bombard Belgrade.
Russia’s politicians and diplomats united in a belief that they must fight. That day the head of mission in Sofia, A.A. Savinsky, an accustomed moderate, said that if the country gave way, ‘our prestige in the Slav world and in the Balkans would perish never to return’. Aleksandr Giers in Constantinople said that if Russia bowed, Turkey and the Balkans would unfailingly swing into the Central Powers’ camp. Another diplomat, Nikolai de Basily, replied with dignity to a friend – the Austrian military attaché – who warned of domestic catastrophe if the Tsar went to war: ‘You commit a serious error of calculation in supposing the fear of revolution will prevent Russia from fulfilling its national duty.’
Bethmann Hollweg now warned St Petersburg that unless Russia halted its preparations, Germany would mobilise. This message reinforced Sazonov’s conviction that a clash was unavoidable – but caused the Tsar to waver again. He had received a personal message from the Kaiser; in response, he insisted that Russia should draw back a step – albeit a fruitless step – and revert to partial mobilisation. But Sazonov remained insistent. At 5 o’clock on the following afternoon of 30 July, while still lamenting ‘sending thousands and thousands of men to their deaths’, Nicholas signed a general mobilisation order, to take effect next morning.
That evening, many Russian army units were alerted by telephone to expect a courier carrying secret instructions. The Sumskoi Hussars were ordered to readiness to entrain in thirty-six hours for Poland’s frontier with East Prussia, while the grenadier regiment that shared their barracks outside Moscow headed for the Austrian border. Soldiers were issued with tinned emergency rations. Cornet Sokolov pointed out that these were dated 1904, but this did nothing to stem soldiers’ curiosity. To the embarrassment of the Hussars’ officers, within an hour the barracks was littered with empty tins. ‘They were just like children!’ wrote Vladimir Littauer in exasperation. He contrasted their behaviour with that of German stragglers whom they later captured, some of them starving. So disciplined were the Kaiser’s soldiers that, in the absence of orders, not a man had touched his emergency rations.
After a last civilian passenger train crossed the border from East Prussia into Russia on 30 July, a Russian passenger who had hitherto remained silent burst into voluble expressions of frustration that he had not had a bomb to drop on the German rail bridge at Dirschau; he expressed glee that its guards were still wearing parade rather than field dress, showing that those ‘pigs of Germans’ were not quite ready. Russia’s leaders understood that they were undertaking an adventure beyond their own national strength. It is most unlikely that they would have dared to move against the Central Powers in 1914 had they not been assured of the support of France. Diplomatically and even militarily, they might have done better to have delayed mobilisation until the Austrian army had started its invasion of Serbia. But the policy-makers in St Petersburg, especially Sazonov, were spurred by fears that delay would enable Germany literally to steal a march on them. Russia’s prevarications about the exact pattern of its mobilisation were almost certainly irrelevant to the European outcome. Once St Petersburg made the decision to take military action of any kind against Austria, Germany was sure to respond.
The Russians made little attempt to conceal their extended preparations: the Tsar told the Kaiser without embarrassment on the night of 29 July, in one of their personal ‘Nicky–Willy’ communications: ‘the military measures which have now come into force were decided five days ago for reasons of defence on account of Austria’s preparations’. Those who today attribute to Russia principal responsibility for war are obliged to rely on the same argument as did the Kaiser in July 1914: that the Tsar should have preserved wider European peace by allowing Austria to conduct a limited war to crush Serbia. Such a case can be made; but it seems essential to acknowledge its terms, rather than attempt to construct a spurious indictment that the Russians were guilty of duplicity. The most important dates in the July crisis were the 23rd, when Austria made explicit its commitment to destroy Serbia, and the 24th, when Russia began to take active measures to respond. Unless or until evidence is forthcoming that the Serbian government was complicit in the plot to kill Franz Ferdinand, or that Russia had prior knowledge of the outrage, the Tsar’s commitment to resist the attempt to extinguish Serbia seems justified. The best reason for Nicholas to have held back was not doubt about the legitimacy of Russia’s action, but caution about the menace posed by belligerence to his own polity.
The only untenable view of the July crisis is that war was the consequence of a series of accidents. On the contrary: the leaders of all the great powers believed themselves to be acting rationally, in pursuit of coherent and attainable objectives. A large enigma nonetheless persists about the exercise of authority in Germany: who was in charge? During the previous decade, the dysfunctionality of the nation’s governance had progressively worsened, even as its economic might increased. A new generation of elected politicians, many of them socialists, jostled for access to power outside palaces still dominated by the spurred topboots of a highly militarised autocracy. The Kaiser had become the symbol of his country’s assertive nationalism rather than an executive ruler, but he continued to make erratic interventions. Around him rival personalities, institutions and political groupings vied for mastery. The army and navy were at loggerheads. The General Staff scarcely spoke to the War Ministry. The Empire’s component states intermittently asserted themselves against Berlin.
A German author predicted in 1910 that during the period of political and military tension preceding any conflict, ‘the press and its key instruments, telegraph and telephone, will exercise immense influence, which may be for either good or ill’. Moltke agreed. However great the power of the army, the chief of staff recognised that to induce millions of conscripted civilians to engage in a twentieth-century conflict, the cause must command popular support. ‘Moltke told me,’ recorded a Prussian officer in 1908, ‘… that the time of cabinet wars was over and that a war the German people did not want or did not understand, and would therefore not greet with sympathy, would be a very dangerous affair. If … the people thought that the war had been conjured up in a frivolous fashion and was only intended to help the governing classes out of an embarrassment, then it would have to start with us having to fire on our own subjects.’ This goes far to explain why Germany had refused to go to war alongside Austria in earlier Balkan crises. It shows why, in July 1914, Moltke attached such importance to ensuring that Germany was seen, above all by its own people, as a threatened victim and not as an aggressor. The European crisis was overlaid on domestic turbulence. Labour unrest, manifested in frequent strikes, alarmed the Berlin government as much as similar troubles elsewhere prompted British, French and Russian fears about social stability.
It is difficult to assess the Kaiser’s conduct, because he changed his mind so often. Scribbled annotations on state documents emphasise his irredeemable intemperance: ‘Fool yourself Mr Sazonov!’; ‘Damnation!’; ‘No!’; ‘It’s not for him to decide’; ‘a tremendous piece of British insolence!’. The exclamation mark was his favoured instrument of policy-making. Wilhelm’s reversions to caution always came too late to undo the damage inflicted by his more usual imprudence. He allegedly told Bethmann on 5 July: ‘we should use all means to work against the growth of the Austro-Serbian controversy into an international conflict’. Yet next day he gave Vienna the ‘blank cheque’.
On 27 July his initial reaction,