The Deliberate Origins of World War I

The origins of World War I remain enveloped in myth, more than a century later, despite vast amounts of available information. There is an influential argument sustained by many writers but first popularized in English by Barbara Tuchman, that WWI was an accidental folly. It could have been easily prevented except for some unfortunate diplomatic mistakes. This is far from the truth. The war was the deliberate outcome of pro-war policies of four major powers—Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and France—plus Serbia. Leaders of each of these assumed that war was inevitable eventually and that the summer of 1914 was a favorable time to start it. These five are all responsible for the war, but the greatest responsibility lies with the leaders of Serbia and Russia. This remains an important issue today when there is often talk of the danger of “accidental war,” which is quite unlikely but nonetheless often claimed, in part based on the mistaken analogy to WWI. War is the product of deliberate design.

It is amazing today that we do not credit more the Serbian role. In this age of “wars against terrorism” who would not consider the assassination of a pending head of state casus belli? Archduke Franz Ferdinand would have been the emperor of Austria-Hungary when the octogenarian emperor Franz Josef finally died in 1916, but he was killed by Serbian assassins instead. We know now and investigation at the time would have easily established that the team of assassins who murdered the emperor-in-waiting and his wife was trained and directed by the head of Serbian military intelligence. You can say all you want about Pan-Slav nationalism, the justice of the cause, whatever, but plain and simple, by anybody’s sense of law, this is an act of war. Austria-Hungary might have been placated if Serbia had investigated seriously, exposed the murder plot, and arrested the culprits in its own armed forces, but that did not happen. Serbia had no intention of doing that. It was deliberately courting war. Why?

Serbian leaders knew from frequent meetings with the Russian diplomats stationed in its capital, Belgrade, and particularly from the connection of the Russian army’s military attache with the head of Serbian military intelligence, that Russia had its back. The Serbian leaders understood that even though they had just won two wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and Bulgaria in 1913, doubling the size of their country, they alone they had no chance against Austria-Hungary, a great power. They would have defied it only with the explicit backing and endorsement of their ally, Russia. Only Russia had the power to divert most of Austria-Hungary’s army from crushing Serbia, which Russia did in 1914, overrunning the Austrian border defenses and defeating its main field armies.

Why did Russia back Serbia’s provocation to war? We do not have all the documents to prove this because many were destroyed, but the logic of the situation is obvious from what does survive, including Russian war plans. Writers in English on the war origin often downplay Russia and focus instead on Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Russian high command believed that the summer of 1914 was the last chance it would have to execute its war plan for some years to come.

The Russian war plan was based on the knowledge that war with Germany and Austria-Hungary would be difficult and possibly long, though like all belligerents they wished for a swift decision. Russia’s own industrial production was inadequate for a long war. Russian planners knew their munitions would soon run short, which they chronically did in fact. Thus the Russian war plan rested on two absolutely essential pre-requisites: (1) An attack by its French ally on German forces in the West to prevent Germany from concentrating against Russia. Germany and Austria-Hungary combined would surely swiftly defeat Russia. Russia absolutely needed a vigorous offensive from their French allies to pin down most of the German army. (2) Russia needed massive industrial supplies arriving through the Turkish Straits and the Black Sea. Germany would prevent Western trade through the Baltic. Railroad capacity was limited across the vast distance to the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok, which was anyway blocked by ice in the winter. Russian trade passed through the Turkish Straits in peace time, but the large German military mission to Ottoman Turkey might win this old Russian enemy to the German side, close the straits, and strangle the only remaining outlet for Russian trade. This would be fatal to the Russian war effort in the long run, as indeed it was in fact. Western aid did not reach Russia in sufficient quantities.

Just as the German war plan depended on crushing France by a flanking invasion through neutral Belgium, the Russian war plan required securing the Turkish Straits for Russian trade to the West, even if Ottoman Turkey was neutral. A major Russian invasion force was concentrated at the port of Odessa on the Black Sea and shipping prepared for the capture of the straits. One thing could prevent this: if the aging Russian Black Sea fleet could not secure its passage by sea. It could not go by land through neutral Romania and hostile Bulgaria, ultimately a German ally in the war. The pathetically weak Turkish navy would have no chance against the Russian Black Sea Fleet . . . until the late summer of 1914. Russia had to act fast.

Unfortunately for the Russian plan, Ottoman Turkey had bought two powerful new dreadnought battleships, built in Britain. They far outclassed the handful of old pre-dreadnought battleships in the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They were completed by August 1914. Turkish navy crews had already arrived in Britain by July to sail them to Turkey. Russia was building a few dreadnoughts for the Black Sea, but the first would not be completed until 1917. Russia could either provoke a war in 1914, before the Turkish navy could upgrade its fleet, or remain dangerously vulnerable until at least 1917 or 1918. Knowing this, is it logical that the Russian high command would push Serbia to act quickly to provoke Austria-Hungary while Russia still had a chance to prevail?

What happened in actual fact is very interesting, but typically ignored in most Western accounts of the war origin. On July 29 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the Royal Navy to prevent the Turkish crews from taking possession of these two new battleships. This is was just one day after Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia. No other powers were yet at war. Churchill at that time obviously understood the inevitability of the slide into war better than most subsequent historians. Two days later there are still no further declarations of war, but Churchill ordered Royal Navy sailors to board the ships and seize them for Britain. They were soon incorporated into the Royal Navy. How much did Churchill understand about the Russian war plan and the urgency of preventing neutral Turkey from securing the straits? We don’t know for sure, but Churchill was the one who subsequently pleaded for a Franco-British attack on the straits to open them for Russian trade, although those attacks were repulsed with heavy losses.

You might wonder why Russia did not seize the straits as planned since Churchill did his part by confiscating the Turkish battleships fitting out in Britain. The German high command also understood the vital importance of keeping the Turkish Straits closed to Russian trade. Their one modern capital ship in the Mediterranean, the battle cruiser Goeben, was ordered to evade the British and French fleets, which its high speed allowed, and make for the straits. When it arrived in neutral Turkey, Turkish leaders, already angry at the British seizure of its new battleships, became convinced, a few months later, to enter the war on the side of Germany. Meanwhile, illegally operating from a “neutral” base, its high speed, heavy armor and long-range guns posed an unacceptable danger to the prospects of a Russian amphibious landing near the straits. It was canceled. Instead, the straits were closed to Russian trade and Russia suffered from chronic arms and munitions shortages throughout the war that crippled its war effort.

France was responsible for the war because it wanted revenge for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871. The French president, Raymond Poincare, travelled to Russia in July 1914, after Serbia’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand but before any declarations of war. French leaders told the Russian leadership want it wanted to hear, not “solve this crisis diplomatically,” but that France would honor its alliance. If Germany declared war on Russia, France would declare war on Germany and attack at the first opportunity. Russia had all it needed to proceed to war. It started mobilizing its vast army prior to declaring war near the end of July to give it a head start over fast-mobilizing Germany. German leaders, realizing the danger of this, rushed their own mobilization and declaration of war on August 1. It was no accident, it was perhaps the only reasonable course of action in the face of a determined threat. Despite historians dreams to the contrary, there was no diplomatic solution if Serbia and Russia were bent on war. France, following Germany, had recently expanded its army and had a bold new aggressive war plan, the notorious Plan XVII, which played right into the German strategy.

The German high command itself considered the summer of 1914 an opportune time for the war it thought inevitable sooner or later. Here are some of the many reasons:

1. The German army had launched a major expansion in 1912 after the last big diplomatic crises, adding three new army corps. These would be ready by 1914.

2. The German navy could not fight a two-front war until the Kiel Canal just south of Denmark was widened to accommodate its new dreadnought battleships. This was completed in 1914. It allowed battle fleets to transit between the North and Baltic Seas without the dangerously exposed detour around Denmark.

3. The German High Sea Fleet would reach its highest relative strength in 1914. After that it was all down hill. The expansion of the army had stolen funds from the navy, cutting its capital ship construction from four or five to three per year at the same time Royal Navy construction was accelerating.

4. The German army could only launch its planned offensive to knock out France during the summer when there would be ample grain and hay in the fields to feed the millions of horses needed to pull German artillery and supply wagons beyond the railroad depots. The enemy would be sure to blow bridges and tear up track to slow the German advance. In fact the actual offensive almost succeeded, but failed when it outran its over-taxed supply lines. Historians have seldom noticed that some previous crises that had been settled diplomatically occurred during times of the year when the German army was logistically unable to march far in advance of friendly rail heads for lack of fresh fodder. Thus war at those times was impractical.

5. German army leaders had only one war plan. They had to knock out the French threat quickly before Russia’s huge, but slowly mobilizing army could get into the field. If they had attacked Russia first, they could have gained territory, but probably not defeated its large army, which could retreat instead, drawing them deeper. Germany would be caught between a the two huge allied armies of Russia and France with little chance of striking a decisive blow against either, especially if Russia could be fully supplied by trade. Knowing (correctly) that France would attack in support of its Russian ally, the German general staff crafted what was probably the best plan available to them: flanking the French offensive through Belgium to strike it from the rear. It almost worked. That also brought Britain into the war in Liberal disgust over Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality, formally guaranteed by Britain. Anyway it gave Britain and its ally, Japan, the chance to scoop up all German colonies and sweep its trade from the seas, a major commercial gain for both.

6. German army planners were very worried about the future. Russia was gaining on them. It was industrializing fast with massive help from French and Belgian private capital that also financed new railroads that would help Russia mobilize its army faster and thus bring its vast weight to bear against the German army before Germany would have time to crush France. The increasing peril of this “two-front war problem” haunted the German general staff. Time was not on their side. The prospects of victorious war would likely be worse in the future, so better face war now, they reasoned, when Germany still seemed to have a chance to win.

7. Almost always ignored was a very important political consideration for the entire German ruling elite: in the 1912 election the Marxist-influenced Social Democratic Party (SDP) had become the largest party in Germany. The German labor union movement, much of it socialist-oriented, was also the largest in the world. Many predicted that the steady rise of the SPD would enable it to win a majority in the next election in 1916. The SPD was officially opposed to war and imperialism. If it formed a government, German foreign policy might have been drastically realigned and the Kaiser’s influence weakened. There might even have been arms limitation agreements with Liberal Britain and a Left government in France! The conservatives who ruled Germany in 1914 dreaded that prospect. A war, on the other hand, would force the SPD to choose between patriotic support of the war, giving lie to its peace proclamations, or being violently suppressed. Many workers would be removed from their unions, drafted to fight, and forced to obey military discipline. The SPD came to power anyway in 1918 after Germany was defeated, but meanwhile its leadership’s decision to “bite the bullet” and vote for war credits in 1914 had fatally split it. The more radically anti-war Independent SPD eventually formed the core of the German Communist Party, which, under influence from Moscow, after 1928 branded the SPD as “social fascists,” thus fatally splitting popular resistance to the rise of the Nazi Party to power, which it attained in 1933. This was the ultimate revenge of the German Right and the bitter end to the hopeful promise of a more democratic Germany that appeared possible before the war.

The Central Powers probably could have averted the war if they had just winked at a small power’s assassination of Austria-Hungary’s next head of state, but that would have encouraged further pressure from Serbia and other lesser powers eyeing territorial gains at Austria-Hungary’s expense, such as Italy and Romania, that it was a weak and vulnerable power. War might have happened later anyway, perhaps under even worse circumstances for the Central Powers. One need not sympathize with them to understand their predicament.