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Emperor Franz Joseph
Europe's first great war of the twentieth century had roots in a heritage that belonged to all Europe. That heritage was autocracy. Kings ruled by right of birth. And kings extended their rule where they could and called themselves emperors. Their imperialism conflicted with nationalism - with people wishing to be rid of foreign rule. This conflict extended into the twentieth century and sparked the Great War that began in 1914. And the Great War became the foundation of World War II and marked political and social developments for the entire century - to be called the century of hate.
The Great War was an evil created by kings who were looked upon as father figures and as good and decent. These were men who had the support of most of their fellow countrymen in forcing their rule over other people. The Great War was produced in an age of empire.
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia had an empire that extended to Germany's border and included Turkic peoples. The Habsburg monarch, Franz Joseph I (Francis-Joseph I), ruled over an empire called Austria-Hungary that had included Italians and continued to include Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, some Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs. And Turkey controlled an empire - the Ottoman Empire - which included Arabia, Palestine, what is now Israel, and North Africa.
Taking the lead toward war was Franz Joseph. He was not exceptionally intelligent, owing his power to accident of birth. But he worked diligently, rising to attend to his duties before dawn. He was courteous and kind to those around him, and he loved his wife. He was a fervently devout Roman Catholic. The Habsburgs had ruled since the tenth century, and Franz Joseph believed that rule by the head of his family was ordained by God. As he saw it, he ruled by divine right - rather than by accident and opportune marriages as some critics suggested. Franz Joseph had ruled since 1848 - when he was eighteen. In the 1860s, after a short and bloody war against Italians and the French, Franz Joseph was forced to give up rule in northern Italy. But he never accepted the loss of his Italian lands. He believed that it was his duty to leave to his heir an empire as big as it was when he inherited it, and to compensate for the loss of territory in Italy he decided to extend his rule into Bosnia and Herzegovina (Hercegovina).
Bosnia and Herzegovina had been a part of Turkey's Empire. Militarily weak vis-à-vis Europe, Turkey felt compelled to submit to the decisions that Europe's imperial powers made at an international conference in 1878 - the Congress of Berlin - a conference to settle a war between Russia and Turkey. It was agreed that Russia would take control of the Turkish lands Ardahan, Kars and Batoum; that Serbia would be freed from rule by the Turks; and that temporary control over Bosnia and Herzegovina would be given to Franz Joseph, while it remained nominally a part of Turkey's empire.
Franz Joseph sent an army of 200,000 men into Bosnia and Herzegovina, believing that he was subduing an inferior people. The Catholic minority in Bosnia welcomed Franz Joseph's army, while Muslims and Orthodox Christians fought the invasion. In Sarajevo the fighting was from house to house and hand to hand. After two months of fighting, Franz Joseph's army overwhelmed its opponents, while suffering more than 5,200 killed in action - sacrifices for the glory of God and the Habsburg Empire.
Franz Joseph had succeeded in extending his empire to what he saw as its rightful size. He had pushed into an area where for centuries Roman Catholicism had been in bitter rivalry with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Expanding into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Franz Joseph exacerbated these old antagonisms and inspired the nationalism of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serb majority. Franz Joseph had not only won Bosnia and Herzegovina, he had won unending conflict with the Serbs - including the nation of Serbia, where people believed that the Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be allowed to be a part of a greater Serb nation.
But the conflict between Franz Joseph and the Serbs was only one ingredient in the making of Europe's first great war of the twentieth century. The other ingredients were all that turned the conflict between the Serbs and Franz Joseph into war between Europe's major powers - conditions at the beginning of the 20th century that were different from the end of the 20th century.
The twentieth century began while Great Britain was fighting a war to extend its rule into South Africa - a move that was unpopular across the world, including the United States and Germany. Responding to world hostility, Great Britain decided to make its position in the world more secure by ending what it called its "splendid isolation," and Britain began by looking to an alliance with Germany.
Both Germany and Britain were predominately Protestant, and the Germans and British saw themselves as being of the same superior Teutonic race and as having a moral fiber stronger than that of the Slavic and Latin peoples of eastern and southern Europe. The royal families of Germany and Britain were linked. The German monarch, Wilhelm (William) II, was the grandson of Queen Victoria, and he visited his grandmother and British family frequently. Britain's wealthy sent their young men to German universities and their daughters to Germany for their final polish (what they called being "finished"), and many successful marriages between the British and Germans had arisen from these contacts. And the British went to Germany for vacations.
Germany's diplomats looked forward to Britain signing an alliance with their nation. Germany had a navy that was weaker than Britain's, but Germany's navy was growing. Germany's diplomats believed that Britain's fear of this growing navy would help inspire it to be a partner with Germany rather than a rival. Germany's diplomats believed that Great Britain had no desire to ally itself with Russia because Britain was in conflict with Russia over Russia's advances against Britain's interests in East and South Asia. And they believed that Great Britain had no desire to ally itself with France because Britain and France were old enemies and recent rivals for empire in Africa and elsewhere.
Germany's diplomats believed that they were bargaining from a position of strength, and they asked Britain to join an alliance that included Germany's ally, Austria-Hungary. Britain refused to be tied to an alliance that would commit it to war on the side of Austria-Hungary. Germany's diplomats were over-confident. They were asking too much from Britain. And Britain began looking elsewhere for allies.
Britain settled its differences with the United States, and in 1902 it entered into an alliance with Japan. Then Britain had talks with France to settle their differences. Having finished carving up Africa and other parts of the world, the British and French wanted an agreement that would make their empires more secure. France recognized Britain's position in Egypt. Britain gave secret recognition to France's willingness to divide Morocco between itself and Spain. And Britain and France settled long-standing disagreements concerning territories in the Pacific and disagreements over Thailand.
France also reached an agreement with Italy. Italy extended France a free hand in Morocco in exchange for Italy exercising its will over Libya. And France had a military alliance with Russia - a defense treaty that had been signed in 1894. France and Russia had promised that should Germany attack the other they would attack Germany. This tie between Russia and France was enhanced by a huge loan from French banks to Russia, money that Russia wanted for building railroads, industry and its military capability.
Imperialism brought war in 1904 between Japan and Russia. The Japanese were interested in Korea, and they were offended by Russia's penetration into northern Korea. There was rivalry too over Manchuria. Tsar Nicholas II did not want war with Japan, but he believed in his empire's commercial future in the Far East. Some in his inner circle had commercial interests in the Far East and persuaded the tsar that Japan would never go to war against the great empire of Russia. They underestimated Japan as a military power. They were opposed to any accord with the Japanese, and they claimed that a war, at any rate, would unite the nation in patriotism and quiet discontent.
Japan offered to recognize Russian control over northern Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Japanese control over southern Manchuria. But they saw futility negotiating with the Russians. War, they believed, was coming, and they moved to take advantage of a surprise attack. At night, on February 8, 1904, without having declared war, Japanese torpedo boats struck against Russian ships at Port Arthur (now Lushan, China). The following day the Japanese landed troops at Inchon, Korea, and from Inchon they started north to the Yalu River to do battle in Manchuria against the Russians.
No objections against Japan's "sneak attack" were made by the United States or by Great Britain, President Theodore Roosevelt admiring Japan's military capabilities and Britain favoring the actions of their Japanese ally. Russia was known to have interests in the direction of Tibet, and with Russia distracted by the Japanese, a British expeditionary force moved into Tibet and forced the Dalai Lama there to sign a treaty with Britain - a treaty that granted trading posts in Tibet to the British and guaranteed that Tibet would not concede territory to any other foreign power.
In Manchuria, the ground war between the Japanese and the Russians was a sign of what war would be like in Europe, with heavy artillery, trenches, barbed wire, machine guns and ineffective cavalry. Western military observers looked on, but failed to apply any lessons from the fighting to what they could expect should war break out in Europe.
With their success against Russia, Japan took control of Port Arthur and the Liaodong peninsula. The war had amounted to whether Russia or Japan was to control Manchuria and Korea, and after the war the Japanese forced Korea's emperor to annul his government's recent agreements with Russia and to sign an alliance with Japan. Japan promised to safeguard Korea from encroachment by any other foreign power in exchange for its ability to give "advice" to Korea regarding foreign affairs, military matters and police. And Japan took control of Korea's postal, telegraph and telephone services. Korea had become a Japanese protectorate.
The alliance game was not over, at least in the eyes of the Germans. In October 1904, tensions mounted between Russia and Britain after a Russian fleet, at Dogger Bank (a fishing area sixty miles east of the northeastern coast of England) mistook some British fishing vessels for Japanese warships and killed many British fishermen. It seemed that Britain might join its ally Japan in war against Russia. The German monarch, Wilhelm II, wished to take advantage of the war between Japan and Russia to drive as wide a wedge as possible between Japan's ally Great Britain and his cousin, Russia's tsar, Nicholas II. Wilhelm hoped to convince Nicky, as he called him, to sign a mutual defensive treaty with Germany, to become operative after Russia's war with Japan ended.
Germany's apparent support for Russia while Russia was in crisis with Britain inflamed British opinion against Germany. British newspapers vehemently denounced Germany. With Germany still adding to its navy, suspicion arose in Britain that Germany was aiming toward becoming master of world affairs. Sir John Fischer, Britain's First Sea Lord, proposed sinking Germany's navy. Britain's King Edward VII (Wilhelm's uncle) rejected the idea. Meanwhile, alarm in Britain had created alarm in Germany. In a defensive move, Germany brought its navy into home waters, which, in turn, scared Britain into believing that Germany might be preparing for war. Another incident might have added to the misunderstanding and sparked a war between Great Britain and Germany, making mutual suspicion and fear the cause of Europe's first great war of the century. But nothing happened, and as quickly as the war scare arose, it subsided.
But developments involving empire continued to increase tensions. The French and Spanish signed a treaty in October 1904 that appeared to guarantee Morocco independence - a treaty with secret clauses that anticipated these two powers dividing Morocco between them. European powers had a long-standing agreement to confer with each other in dividing up lands - as they had done at the Berlin Congress in 1878. An agreement signed in Madrid in 1880 had given Germany the right to be consulted on any change in the status of Morocco. Germans were interested in trade with Morocco, and they were interested in Morocco's iron ore. The Germans preferred an "open door" policy for Morocco (similar to that which the Western powers and Japan had in China). And by ignoring Germany while making an agreement with Spain concerning Morocco, France aroused consternation in Germany.
A mistake was in the making by Germany, compounding France's mistake in not consulting with Germany. Wilhelm was indifferent toward France extending its power in Morocco, and he was hoping that France would see its ties with Britain as useless and move toward conciliation with Germany. He was willing to let France have Morocco, claiming that if Germany opposed France it would only revive hate for Germany among the French (a hatred from Germany's military victory over France in 1871). But Germany's chauvinistic press, its middle class and leading militarists disagreed with Wilhelm. They wanted Germany to stand up for its rightful place in the world. Wilhelm's minister for foreign affairs, Friedrich von Holstein, also disagreed with Wilhelm and argued that friendly gestures would convince the French that Germany was afraid. He and others believed that for the sake of peace Germany had to appear strong and be feared. He argued that the road to conciliation between Germany and France lay with Germany forcing France to have greater respect for German power, by forcing France to bend to German demands concerning Morocco.
It was an opportune time for a move by Germany against France because France's ally, Russia, was at war with Japan. But for the remainder of 1904, Wilhelm refused to sanction any action against France concerning Morocco. Wilhelm's chancellor, von Bülow, and Holstein were, however, able to convince Wilhelm to go along with their policy of trying to scare France into splitting with Britain. On March 31, 1905, Wilhelm II arrived in Tangier and proclaimed Germany's support for the independence of Morocco. This provoked a crisis in Europe, accompanied by another missed opportunity for Germany.
A new government had taken power in France, and France's new democratic leaders disliked their nation's alliance with autocratic Russia. Also, they were uninterested in imperial expansion, and the French were blaming their foreign minister, Delcassé, for annoying Germany with his agreement with Spain concerning Morocco. Delcassé resigned. France was backing down rather than rising to Germanys threatening posture. There would be no war for the time being. But the idea that "respect for German power" would help encourage an alliance proved false - just as fear regarding Germany's navy had helped little in creating an alliance with Britain. Germany's saber rattling had created more distrust. France's new leaders had been inclined to favor a rapprochement with Germany, but now that was more difficult. And more distrust for Germany had risen among the British.
Theodore Roosevelt was negotiating an end to the war between Russia and Japan, and German diplomats asked him to negotiate also a settlement between their nation and France over Morocco. The French, feeling assured by U.S. support, agreed to a conference with Germany. That conference took place in Algeciras, Spain, and concluded in April 1906. The stir over Morocco ended peacefully. The agreement signed reaffirmed the independence of Morocco and guaranteed the freedom of nations such as Germany and the United States to trade there. And France had failed to move away from its ties with Britain and closer to Germany as Germany's diplomats had hoped.
And Germany's position in the alliance game would soon grow worse. When the war between Japan and Russia ended, Wilhelm's hoped-for alliance with Russia vanished, and Russia moved close again to its old ally, France. France forwarded a huge loan to Russia to put Russia back on its feet economically and militarily - to the disgust of Russian liberals and leftists who foresaw that this would strengthen Tsar Nicholas and autocracy. Russia still looked upon Germany as a possible adversary because of Germany's alliance with Austria-Hungary. And now, with their distrust of Germany still alive, Great Britain and France sought to strengthen their positions by discussing military and naval issues. Relations between the military staffs of Britain and France grew more intimate. The British refused to make a public promise to support France if France were attacked by Germany, but secretly Britain agreed to a moral obligation to help France should such an attack occur.
Many Germans responded to what they saw of the closer tie between France and Britain not by blaming themselves for bad diplomacy but by finding fault with France and Britain. Germany's chancellor, von Bülow, complained of threats to isolate, disable and encircle Germany. He stated that an understanding between the European powers without maintaining good relations with Germany was creating a danger to peace in Europe.
The Germans soon had more to complain about. In 1907, Britain and Russia settled their differences. With the decline of Russia's military capability that came with its defeat by the Japanese, the British viewed Russia as less a threat to its imperial interests south of Russia. Britain wanted the same kind of agreement with Russia that it had with France, an agreement that would stabilize its imperial gains. Russia agreed that Britain should have controlling influence in Afghanistan and Tibet, and the two powers ended their rivalry in Iran by dividing that land into two zones of influence. The rapprochement between Britain and Russia pleased the French because it increased their security vis-à-vis Germany. And it left the Germans outraged.
Now came trouble between Russia and Germany's ally, Austria-Hungary. Both Russia and Austria-Hungary were church sponsored monarchies based on divine right. Both were empires and opposed to nationalism - the Russians opposed to the nationalism of Poles and Ukrainians among others. Conservative Russia and Austria-Hungary had been cooperating in matters concerning the Balkans, but this changed in 1908. That year, Franz Joseph shocked Europe by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, violating the agreement made in Berlin in 1878. The Serbs had been hoping for eventual freedom for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the annexation angered them. A wave of indignation swept across Russia. The Russians saw themselves as the protectors of their Slavic, Orthodox Christians in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia.
Turkey, still nominally the ruler of Bosnia and Herzegovina, protested Franz Joseph's annexation, and Turkey offered the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina representation in a new Turkish parliament. Serbia called up its reservists, and it refused to recognize the annexation. Austria-Hungary declared that unless Serbia recognized the annexation there would be war. Russia supported Serbia. Germany did its duty regarding its alliance and massed its troops on Russia's border - to demonstrate its support for Austria-Hungary and to discourage a Russia invasion against its ally. Russia felt unprepared for war and did not want to fight. Wilhelm also did not want war, and he convinced Austria-Hungary to hold back from war against Serbia.
There was no Great War in Europe in 1908. But Russia's long-standing agreement with Austria-Hungary concerning the Balkans was at an end. And despite Wilhelm's efforts at peace, the nearness of war led some Russians in high places to begin viewing Germany as an enemy. And Russia began increasing its defense expenditures.
Meanwhile, two days after the annexation a secret society had formed in Serbia. It was called Narodna Oderana (National Defense) - also known as the Black Hand. It was dedicated to the liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Habsburg rule. The annexation had also altered the attitude of young Serbians within Bosnia. Before the annexation, Bosnian students had been influenced by the Czech nationalist intellectual, Thomas Masaryk, whose strategy for liberation from Habsburg rule was gradualist and peaceful. With the annexation, Bosnian students rejected Masaryk's approach as too slow. Secret groups were forming among them dedicated to national independence by violence if necessary. Eastern Orthodox Bosnians had a tradition derived from their struggle against the invasion of Turks. They worshiped those who had martyred themselves trying to assassinate enemy conquerors. In Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia, youths were beginning to consider assassination as one of the tools for liberation.
Recommended Books
The Road to Sarajevo, by Vladimir Dedijer, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1966.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, by Christopher M. Clark, 2000.
The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman, MacMillan, 1966.
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Copyright © 1998 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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