The inside story of Austro-German intrigue; or, How the world war was brought about

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Contents

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Introduction. By Albert Bushnell Hart ... xi

CHAPTER

Introduction

The history of a great war is never written while it goes on or in the decades immediately following. Archives are closed, the memoirs and private papers of participants are not revealed, the parties most interested try to throw a cloud about the causes, origin, and progress of the contest. We are only now beginning to understand the Crimean War of 1854, and are still in grave doubt as to the responsibility for war and peace in the struggle between Japan and China of 1904-05.

The World War has proved an exception, for we already know enough of the intimate reasons for the action of most of the great powers for a judgment on the ultimate responsibility, and even on the details of the period immediately preceding hostilities. Conquest and revolution have laid bare the written records. Generals and statesmen, in bickering with each other and trying to throw off unpleasant responsibilities, have furnished the evidence for their own condemnation. From month to month the tide of materials rises till mankind is at last able to pillory the sovereigns, the leading statesmen, and military chiefs of Germany and Austria-Hungary, as the authors of this terrific world woe and the unscrupulous engineers who, for the salvation of mankind, were at last "hoist with their own petard."

xii INTRODUCTION

To make available for the public some of the accumulating knowledge with regard to the personal and national responsibility for the war is one of the purposes of Doctor Goricar. He has made himself master of many of the self-revealing books, articles, and speeches of the chief actors in the pre-war period. He has also made a personal contribution, drawn from his own experiences, on the official duties of the foreign representatives and agents of Austria-Hungary. He is aided by acquaintance with public men who helped to frame the great decisions, and by intimate knowledge of the situation and aspirations of the members of the mighty Slav race.

This book is therefore much more than a vivid statement of facts already known or surmised; it is a direct contribution of new views based on materials hitherto not accessible even to historical searchers. Every reader will feel that it is a living record of the conclusions of a man who has for years been in the thick of the complications and intrigues which he describes. It is a human document.

A few words should therefore be said as to the personality of the writer. Doctor Goricar is a Slovene; one of the few Slavs who were admitted by the German and Magyar heads of the foreign and commercial offices of Austria-Hungary to positions of responsibility; a man of education, a man of spirit, a man of skill in consular affairs. Yet he could not descend to be the tool of those who employed him. After long service in consulates in many widely scattered places, including Belgrade, he was found so impracticable that he was finally transferred to the United States as a kind

INTRODUCTION xiii

of punishment. In this new capacity he became aware of the system of keeping the official record of Aiistro- Hungarians in the United States who would be needed when the great war came. Just before the struggle began he returned to Europe and soon left the service of Austria-Hungary forever. The most vital part of this book is made possible by his wide experience in many lands and his connection with public men who sometimes told him momentous truths.

Not the least service is the revelation of the by-ways of diplomacy and influence habitually used by the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office. The book abounds in incidents and conversations which show us the web of intrigue — the hired newspapers, the forged documents, the artificial treason trials, the invention of outrages upon Austrian officials in other lands. Without undertaking a systematic account of the methods of Austrian diplomacy, the book in every chapter discloses a secret, deceptive, and prejudiced habit of mind from which would spring nothing but harm to other nations and eventual ruin to the Hapsburg Empire.

Doctor Goricar accepts as a fact the complicated and autocratic system of government in the former Austro- Hungarian Empire and its historical background; the narrative shuttles to and fro from Vienna to Budapest, just as the combinations of the policies of Germans and Magyars have oscillated. As a Slav, caught in the cogs of this machinery, his sympathies are always with that depressed portion of the population of the former empire. To appreciate his book one must keep in mind the fundamentals of the mighty structure which has now crumbled into fragments. The approach to xiv INTRODUCTION

the war tragedy brings out the main elements in the strength and weakness of Austria-Hungary.

In the first place, it has been a frontier land, set upon the easternmost edge of Roman Catholic Europe. In the second place, it has for ages been hemmed in between the Teuton, the Slav and the Turk, against whom it was a bulwark of Christendom. In the third place, it is made up of two central units, Austria with a population of 10,000,000 Germans (also 2,000,000 in Hungary), and Hungary with a population of 10,000,000 Magyars. Each of these units dominated a section of the Dual Empire, in which there was a Slav population of 17,000,000 in Austria and (with the addition of Bosnia and Herzegovina which were not strictly within the ofiicial boundary) 10,000,000 in Hungary; Rumanians, Italians, and some smaller elements added about 3,500,000 more, mostly in the Hungarian section, making the total of the Empire about 51,500,000 in 1910. From these figures it will be seen that the Slavs were in the majority in the Empire, and also in each half of the Empire. Yet such intelligent and capable people as the Bohemians, the Galician Poles, and the Croatians were submerged by minorities, and compelled to accept domestic and foreign policies contrary to their interests and certain to lead to foreign war.

Another element of the problem was the "Drang nach Osten,"^ which was the sequel of the long wars with Turkey, and which made Austria a focus of intrigue and disturbance in the Balkans and eventually the enemy and obstacle of Russia. The Government of the Empire, notwithstanding the existence of elec-

INTRODUCTION x^

tive parliaments, was practically in the hands of the hereditary nobility of Austria and of Hungary, acting through the governmental machine centred in Vienna in the person of the aged emperor, Francis Joseph, a machine usually called "The Monarchy."

No one is more alive to the weakness, covetousness, and profligacy of that government than Doctor Goricar, for he views it from within. His theme, however, is not so much a discussion of the faults of the Empire as an examination of three fundamental questions: (1) The criminal policy which it pursued in foreign affairs, including the partnership with Germany in a far-reaching plan of conquest and spoliation; (2) The enmity alike of Germans and Magyars to the Slavs, whether within or without their empire; and (3) The deliberate bringing on of the Great War to serve the arrogance and ambition of the ruling classes.

I. The first of these three lines of treatment is based upon the belief that for many years Austria-Hungary and Germany have been conspiring to bring about a war to despoil Russia of territory and wealth and at the same time to make impossible a Pan-Slav union. Doctor Goricar goes back to 1854 to show that Germany was at that time engaged in such a policy. In that period, when Prussia and Austria were rivals, drifting into a war for supremacy in Central Europe, it is hard to believe that they were also co-conspirators watching the opportunity for an eastern war. It is, however, undeniable that in 1878 Germany came to the rescue of the Austrian cause, gave to Austria a right of occupation which was expected to lead to annexation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and pried Russia away from Turkey.

xvi. INTRODUCTION

This was followed by the break up of the Drei Kaiser Allianz; and in 1882 came the Triple Alliance with Russia outside and Italy inside. From that time it is undeniable that the two Central Powers had a common policy hostile to Russia; and that this pressure led Russia to direct alliance with France and indirect alliance with Great Britain, thus constituting the Triple Entente.

How far the combination of the two powers aimed at the violent destruction of the Russian Empire it is hard to say. The direct evidence of Doctor Goricar makes clear that prime ministers and foreign ministers and emperors looked that way. We have abundant proofs from other sources furnished by the lurid arguments of the Pan-Germanists who were always talking about the fertile lands and commercial opportunities of western Russia. Doctor Goricar sees only aggression and fraud on the side of Germany and Austria; and good temper, love of peace, and a spirit of concession on the side of Russia. Perhaps the colours are too strong in both of these pictures. What the book indisputably shows is that in 1908-09, and again in 1913, the Austrians were for war and the Germans were right behind them. He makes it clear that the World War was postponed from time to time because of the rush of new conditions brought about by the revolution in Turkey, the Balkan wars, and the interference of western European powers which, however, he seems to consider was a minor element.

II. The argument that the war was in essence anti- Slav is put with the fire and earnestness of a member of that gifted and distressed race. The book adds much

INTRODUCTION xvii

to the volume of evidence showing the unpleasant effect on the Dual Empire of the unexjDected victory of the Slavs against Turkey in the War of 1912. He rightly includes the Bulgars as essentially a Slav people. Emperor William increased the German army because of the new possibility of a capable Slav military force in the Balkans. The Serbs raised their heads proudly, and the neighbouring Slovenes and Croats and Bosnians were aroused to a new sense of their degradation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From the point of view of the Magyar and the German such race and national elation was treasonable. As a matter of fact. Doctor Goricar makes it clear enough that they did not desire to be Serbs, but were simply on the watch for the opportunity to be free. No American who accepts the principles of his own government can fail to sympathize with that desire and to feel that the repression practised by the Austro-Hungarian Government and the sympathy of Germany were contrary to justice and the interests of mankind. Nor can any American be indifferent to the picture of a future Slav federation inspired by our own success.

III. The book was not written primarily to investigate the causes of the World War, but it throws a searchlight on the whole matter by its inside history of the events of the half dozen years preceding the war. The absorbing narrative places before the reader in quick succession the proof that the German Court, the high officials of the Foreign Office, the general staffs of army and navy, had a complete understanding with the Austro-Hungarians confirmed by frequent meetings and joint plans of action. The whole narrative xviii INTRODUCTION

converges upon the decision of Austria to smash Serbia for the unpardonable crime of showing to the world that men of the Serb race could combine, organize, and fight.

That decision was reached long before the assassination of the heir to the Imperial throne. It was backed up by the Germans from point to point. The dispatches printed in the appendices make it clear that the pretences of the German officials, that they were not aware of the text of the Austrian ultimatum as it was actually presented, were clumsy lies. It is further proved beyond question that the cry about Russian mobilization was a camouflage. War was determined on; and it only remained, if possible, to put up some kind of pasteboard excuse which would keep Great Britain out of the struggle.

With all the conclusions of Doctor Goricar the reader may not agree. That the book is a valuable contribution to the history of the rivalries and intrigues which preceded the war is certain. The lively style, the interest of the narrative, the personal touch, make it one of the essential books on the period. It also points out to the world the inevitable results of attempts to suppress minority races in an empire, and of the destruction of truth, honour, and human sympathy which come from a selfish, secret, and lying diplomacy.

Albert Bushnell Hart.

THE INSIDE STORY OF AUSTRO-GERMAN INTRIGUE

THE INSIDE STORY OF AUSTRO- GERMAN INTRIGUE

CHAPTER I The Coming to Power of the Austro-German War Parties, 1906-09

their first plot to create a pretext for war against serbia and russia

1WAS Acting Consul General of Austria-Hungary at Odessa, watching the slowly gathering forces of the Russian Revolution which were to culminate a decade later when in October, 1906, Baron Lexa von Aehrenthal became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Dual Monarchy. This was the crowning triumph of a long, ambitious, and arduous career. It placed Baron Aehrenthal practically at the helm of the Ship of State. In Austria the very existence of the monarchy and dynasty was dependent upon alliances with foreign powers. Hence the Minister of Foreign Affairs came to be in fact, if not in name, the head of the Government. Aehrenthal, both in personal characteristics and in antecedents, was typical of the modern type of Austrian diplomat. Through his Jewish father he was affihated with "Big Business"; through his mother, with the great land junkers of Bohemia. As a Slav I viewed his taking the helm with misgivings and even dread. He had been for ten years Ambassador to Russia. During this time he had become known in the inner circles of diplomacy as the chief alarmist regarding Pan- Slavism. With him it was a fetish, an obsession. Aehrenthal now became at once the foremost exponent of a plan which represented the revival of the youthful ambition of his aged emperor and which always came to the fore whenever Russia showed signs of weakness. This plan aimed at the conquest and partition of Russia with the aid of Germany as explained in a subsequent chapter. Thus was Austria to be strengthened both internally and externally and the Hapsburg throne given a firmer foundation. The plan, originated in 1854 during the Crimean War, had several times been laid before Bismarck, but each time he refused, as we shall see, to back it. It had been brought up again as recently as 1904-05 when Russia was weakened from her war with Japan. This time Kaiser Wilhelm refused the bait because, taking advantage of Russia's temporarily impotent condition, he had extorted from her a commercial treaty the terms of which were so ruinous to Russia and so favourable to Germany as in a sense to make Germany the real victor in the Russo- Japanese War.

During the decade in which Aehrenthal was Ambassador to Russia he had made himself, as has been said, the greatest alarmist regarding the so-called Pan-Slav menace. Through the diplomatic and military spy system, which he developed to a degree undreamt of by the Czar's government, he became intimately acquainted with Russia's resources, potentialities, available equipment, and weaknesses. Finally came the Russo-Japanese War, with the defeat of Russia. Aehrenthal became convinced that Russia was now weak enough to be defeated by the combined armies of Austria and Germany, provided the blow could be struck before she had time fully to recuperate. From this time it became his consuming passion to precipitate a war with Russia.

Upon Aehrenthal's accession to the Foreign OflSce in 1906, his scheme was adopted with avidity by a powerful Court camarilla and at the Ballplatz, and received also the sanction and the patronage of no less a personage than the heir to the throne, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The plan, however, was useless unless the unqualified support of the German Kaiser and his army could be secured, as is evident from what follows. The Kaiser gave it his instant and whole-hearted approval and agreed to back it to the limit with his vast military resources.

It is now easily seen why the Kaiser's backing was so readily secured. The Pan-German and

6 THE INSIDE STORY OP

"Mittel-Europa" ideas required the crushing of Russia for their reahzation. The Balkan Peninsula was the backbone of the proposed Central European Empire. The Balkan States must either become the creatures of Berlin or they must be crushed. A strong and united Russia would never allow her small racial kinsfolk either to be absorbed or crushed by Austria or Germany. Therefore the crushing and partitioning of Russia were as essential to the grandiose Pan-German scheme fathered by the Kaiser as it was to the Austrian plan originated, or more properly revived, by Aehrenthal and fathered by the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The war was to be brought about by picking a quarrel with little Serbia and then proceeding to crush her. This would, of course, bring Russia to her rescue and the real war would begin. This war would be fought with Russia, France, and Serbia on one side, and Germany, Austria, Turkey, and perhaps one of the other Balkan States on the other. Provided such a war was started before Russia recovered from the Russo- Japanese War, the outcome could not be doubted. Not more than six months after the close of the Russo-Japanese War the Croato-Serb coalition came into being. On October 4, 1905, forty deputies of the Diet of Croatia met at Rieka (Fiume) and adopted a resolution, since known as the Fiume Resolution, in which they laid down as a general political axiom the following principle:

"Every nation has the right to decide freely and independently concerning its existence and its fate." This resolution was promptly endorsed by the twenty-six Serb deputies of Croatia, meeting on October 16, 1905, at Zadar (Zara), Dalmatia. The soul of this movement was the Dalmatian patriot, Franjo Supilo.

Thus came to a close the long artificially stimulated hostility between Serb and Croat, and a new era, which menaced the intolerant dominance of the Austro-Magyar overlords, dawned. The Fiume Resolution created almost a panic of wrathful alarm at the Court and among the great nobles and the land junkers. This furnished fuel to Aehrenthal's fire. The war that he planned was to cure all internal ills and to keep the subject peoples where they belonged — under the heels of the ruling Germans of Austria and Magyars of Hungary.

Before he had been in ofiice two months Aehrenthal ordered me transferred from the Odessa Consulate to that of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. As a Jugoslav, speaking Serbian and intimately acquainted with both Russian and Balkan conditions, he apparently thought I could be useful to him in connection with his new Russian and Balkan policies. Accordingly, I was appointed Vice-Consul at Belgrade. It was my eighth post; I had served previously in Vienna, then Paris, Berlin, Bucharest, Jassy, Constanza, and Odessa.

It was a bitterly cold morning of mid-winter when I left my mountain valley home in Styria in the Austrian Alps to go to my new post. It was still dark as my sled found its way through the narrow gorges along the river, but when we came out into the broad valleys the Alps in their white mantle of snow lay before us, serene and majestic. I took the train from the old Roman town of Claudia Celeja, named for the Emperor Claudius and long the home of the redoubtable Counts of Celje, to go through Zagreb by the shortest route to Belgrade. My journey through the realms of Francis Joseph gave me ample time for reflection. Before reaching my destination I had to change trains no less than nine times. It was part of the policy of the Hungarian Government toward the Slavic province of Croatia to allow no through trains and to oblige all lines to converge in Budapest. All travellers from Trieste, Fiume, Dalmatia, or Bosnia, or in fact from any point in the southwestern portions of the monarchy, were hence obliged to go first to Budapest, no matter what their destination. In my case this was very much as it would be had one to go first to Chicago in order to reach New York from Washington, D. C. Half frozen though I was from long hours on ill-heated trains, as I approached my destination I was thrilled as always at the prospect of new problems to face and a new country to learn. Before leaving Russia I had discovered that our new government had already begun to sow there the seeds of sedition and to add fuel to the revolutionary flames. I felt that our policy in Serbia would be at least as unfriendly.

I reflected with whimsical amusement that, were our Foreign Ofiice familiar with the events of my early youth and training and the lasting impressions they had made upon my mind and heart, they might not have been so sure of my suitability for this particular mission at this critical time.

As I reviewed my early youth I realized that there were three events in particular which had made a lasting impression upon my life. The first was a small Sokol tournament in a little village in southern Styria, the birthplace of my mother. The Sokol is a society among the Southern or Jugoslavs which seeks to stimulate national pride and consciousness by means of athletic contests. As a boy I came to see this tournament on foot over mountain passes, and through pine forests. I was never so thrilled as when I saw my eldest brother march with the Sokols dressed as they were in snugly fitting drab uniforms, the coat hanging loosely over the shoulder to show the red shirt beneath. They went through their exercises on the drill ground with a skill and rhythm that would have done credit to the best-drifled soldiers. When I heard the speaker at the end of the meet say that all, old and young, must stand together to defend the sacred rights of our Slav nation, I was moved to tears. From that time I realized that I belonged to an oppressed people, and to do my part in the winning of our national rights has been the task nearest to my heart ever since.

The second event which lastingly impressed me was the reading of a novel given me by my mother and written by her brother, Dr. Joseph Vosnjak. It was called: "Pobratimi," that is, "Brothers" — not brothers by blood but brothers bound together by a secret oath performed by mixing their blood and solemnly swearing to stand together throughout life for the highest ideals of their people and against all oppressors. The book depicted the epic struggle of my race against the German oppressors and made a profound impression upon me.

The third such event occurred when my father brought me to Celje, farther down the river on which was my birthplace, to enter the gymnasium there. Perched like an eagle's nest upon a high cliff overlooking the town were the ruins of the mediaeval castle of the once-mighty Counts of Celje, the battlements of which had for centuries stood as a rampart against Turks and Germans alike. This was a wonderful, an inspiring sight to a mountain boy, but oh! the chagrin and disappointment when we were told that I could not enter the school because I did not know German, and the Government did not allow higher education in the Slovene language! Keenly as we felt our impotence my father and I were never drawn more closely together than when this blow fell upon us. Such is, I believe, the efifect of oppression the world over. These were the three decisive events of my early youth.

After losing a year in learning German I finally entered the gymnasium. When I learned that the Slavs in Austria were numerically superior to the Germans and Magyars and the other races, and that beyond our borders they occupied a territory extending from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, from East Germany to the Pacific, and when I heard of our long record of fine achievement, both in peace and war, my blood boiled at the insulting effrontery of the Germans and Magyars in always referring to us as an inferior race. When the school authorities discovered that we students of the so-called inferior race had formed a secret alliance of opposition and defiance toward all who slighted and belittled our race, and that we were learning Russian in secret, they notified a number of us that our presence was no longer desired. Thus, in the eighth year of my studies, I was obliged to leave. Only through the insistence of my uncle, the author of "Pobratimi," was I finally allowed to take the matura, or final examinations, in a Slovene town of Carniola,

In 1895 I entered the University of Graz to study law. Shortly thereafter, by order of the Vice-Governor, I was dragged from my studies and pressed into the army as a private to serve for n THE INSIDE STORY OF

three years. My education entitled me to military service of one year only and after that to enter the school for reserve officers. Another uncle, Michael Vosnjak, for twenty years a member of Parliament and the organizer of the great cooperative banking system of Slovenia, vigorously intervened in my behalf and finally my military rights were grudgingly conceded by the Minister of War.

I passed my year of military service in Prague at the time of the Czecho-Slav Ethnographical Exposition. This is the city which Alexander Grimm, the great Franco-German traveller, called the third most beautiful city in the world. It was a never-ending delight to wander through the narrow, crooked streets of this picturesque Slav city on the Vltava in the heart of Bohemia and of Europe. Its palaces overlooked the magnificent park and the ancient Royal Palace stood like a citadel on the top of a steep hill looking down over the hundreds of church spires of the old city. The magnificent parades of the Sokols and their tournaments on the heights of Belvedere where 12,000 of them went through their exercises with the unity of one man, the never-ending pageants of the Exposition in the park, the multifold art treasures displayed, and the Slavic plays given in the great National Theatre, w^ere a constant source of inspiration and delight to my thirsty soul. Here 1 seemed to see a whole people rising like a phoenix from its ashes — a people filled with vitality and energy and the radiant enthusiasm of youth but in constant grapple with the omnipresent and sinister forces of a hostile government.

My military year finished I returned to the University of Graz in Styria. But here the Germanized student life with its copious beer drinking, its sabre duels, and its shallowness, combined with the insufferable arrogance of the German students, finally so disgusted me that I left. I resolved to leave the Austrian moral and intellectual prison and go out into the great world. As the best contrast to that which I was seeking to escape I first went to Paris, the ville lumiere, and established myself in the Quartier Latin to study law and political economy at the Sorbonne and to seek in the art museums relaxation from my more sombre studies. It was in Paris that I came to realize that collaterally with the struggle between Slav and Teuton the furrows were ever being ploughed deeper between Teuton and Gaul.

Up to this time educated exclusively in German schools and instigated to despise the very name of my Slav parents I felt that here in Paris I had completely broken the chains which the German drill masters had tried to fasten upon me for life. I had already learned to read the Slavonic Bible and I had learned the old Cyrillic characters. I had also, in violation of the law, mastered Russian. I procured some Russian books directly from St. Petersburg and took them home to read during my vacations. I read the voluminous "History of the Russian Empire" by Karamzin, the fables of Krilov, and the writings of Tolstoi, the great Slav apostle of peace. My Russian studies brought me some of the greatest revelations of my life. I was thrilled to discover how closely related was our Slovene language, spoken by only one and a half million people, to the tongue of the great Slav Empire. Although our ancestors had left Russia sixteen hundred years before our language had remained faithful in essentials to the parent tongue. Thrilling with the inspiration of Tolstoi's teachings of the universal brotherhood of man I finally returned to my mountain-valley home in the wondrous Alpine world. Trout fishing in the deep gorges with their roaring rivers, chamois hunting on the rugged slopes of the Styrian Alps, and all kinds of mountaineering filled my carefree days for some months. I have often wondered why I ever left my mountain paradise to go into the heart-breaking welter and tumult of a diplomatic career. Perhaps a pair of beautiful Oriental eyes was responsible. They belonged to a cousin, of about my own age, who had married an Austrian diplomat and to whom all doors were open in the great world of politics and diplomacy. She aroused my ambition and arranged for my entrance into the foreign service. I decided to finish my law studies and then to take the examinations for the service of the Ministry of Foreign