Kaiser Wile, who had not played a significant role in the Haldane talks, was convinced that London had acted disrespectfully toward Berlin by making demands that no great power could accept. But he was proud that his government had made no concessions when it came to his precious navy. Moreover, he was sure that a hard line would eventually bring Britain around. “I have shown the English that, when they touch our armaments, they bite on granite. Perhaps by this I have increased their hatred but won their respect, which will induce them in due course to resume negotiations, it is to be hoped in a more modest tone and with a more fortunate result.”
Better relations with Britain seemed particularly pressing in 1912-13 because there was serious trouble brewing in the Balkans, where the Germans and their Austrian allies were competing with the Russians to pick up the pieces of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. Berlin became alarmed when, in 1912, a coalition of Serbs, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, and Greeks pushed the Turks out of their remaining holdings in the Balkan region. These peoples would never have acted so boldly, Berlin believed, without encouragement from St. Petersburg. The upheaval not only imperiled German interests in the region but threatened to compromise the viability of the Habsburg Monarchy, with its huge population of restive Slavs. To Wile, the Slavs posed an even greater danger than the Yellow Peril. “I hate the Slavs,” he told Austria’s military attache to Berlin. “I know it’s a sin but I cannot help myself. I hate the Slavs.” Wile let Austria know that if it saw fit to move against the Serbs, it could count on support from Berlin.
As if to show its resolve, the kaiser’s government staged its largest military display to date on Berlin’s Tempelhof Field in September 1912. Some 60,000 troops paraded, while two zeppelins and ten airplanes circled overhead. A visiting British official found the event “the most impressive and menacing event I had ever witnessed. . . . The civilian audience seemed almost intoxicated with excitement and the reality of the German menace, with its ever increasing momentum, made the prospects of European peace look more precarious than ever.”
The frustrations attending German foreign relations did not prevent the imperial government from indulging in some major celebrations in 1913. On June 15 Kaiser Wile II celebrated the silver anniversary of his ascension as king of Prussia and German emperor. The occasion brought to the capital throngs of loyal subjects, who gaped in wonder at the monuments. The cafés and restaurants were filled with people dancing the tango, the latest imported craze, though officers in uniform were banned from joining in because the kaiser considered the dance immoral. A little later that year, Wile laid the cornerstone of a new sports stadium for the Olympic Games of 1916, which had recently been awarded to Berlin. (Of course, there would be no Olympic Games in 1916, and Berlin would not host this festival until 1936.) In October came the celebrations marking the one hundredth anniversary of the “Battle of Nations” near Leipzig, where Prussian troops had helped to overpower Napoleon, setting him up for his final defeat at Waterloo a year and a half later.
Yet all the celebrations, impressive as they were, could not disguise the fact that Berlin was a city on edge, seething with political and social dissension, full of frustration over diplomatic and military isolation. The most widely discussed book in 1912–13 was General Bernhardi’s Germany and the Next War, which argued that war was a biological necessity for a healthy young nation surrounded by senile but tenacious adversaries. There was considerable talk among the kaiser’s generals about the need for a “preventative war”—a quick strike that could liberate the Reich from its encirclement before its enemies became too powerful to defeat.
It was not only Berlin that was restless. All the European capitals had their “war parties,” their eager believers in the notion that if war was inevitable it should come sooner rather than later. Observing all the signs of restless saber rattling during a visit to Europe in summer 1913, Colonel Edward M. House, President Wilson’s confidant and emissary, reported worriedly: “The whole of Europe is charged with electricity. Everyone’s nerves are tense. It needs only a spark to set the whole thing off.”
The Spirit of 1914
Of course, the spark that ignited what came to be known as World War I was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo. The killer was a Serbian terrorist named Gavrilo Princip, who wanted to strike a blow against Austria for annexing Bosnia in 1908. (Princip was later portrayed as a hero by the Yugoslav Communists, who placed a plaque at the spot where he carried out his deed and named a street in his honor. After Bosnia seceded from Serbian-led Yugoslavia in 1992, Muslim officials tore down the plaque and renamed the street.) Franz Ferdinand’s death would not have had such far-reaching consequences had the Austrians not known that they had German backing to punish the Serbs. Wile and his advisers believed that a limited war—one confined to the Balkans—could be highly salutary if it rallied folks around the flag while weakening pan-Slavic influences abroad. “Just tread hard on the heels of that rabble,” was Wile’s advice to Vienna. Thus Bismarck’s well-known prediction that the next major war would start in the Balkans was proven correct, though the real source of the explosion was not the Balkans, but Berlin.
On July 23 Austria presented an ultimatum to Serbia, insisting that if its demands were not met in two days, Vienna would declare war. The demands were so far-reaching that Austria was confident that the Serbs would reject them out of hand, giving Vienna the excuse it was looking for to put Belgrade in its place. As it happened, Serbia accepted nearly all the demands, and thus almost denied Vienna its pretext for war.
On the eve of Serbia’s reply to Vienna’s ultimatum, huge crowds gathered outside the newspaper offices in Berlin, awaiting news of Belgrade’s response. According to one witness, the people were quite tense; they had collected in the streets because they were “too excited to remain at home.” Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was so worried that the Berliners would respond angrily to the Austrian ultimatum that he advised Wile to delay his return to the capital from his annual North Sea cruise. Although the kaiser was always happiest when away from Berlin, he was offended by the chancellor’s advice: “Things get madder every minute!” he fumed. “Now the man writes to me that I must not show myself to my subjects!” But Bethmann need not have worried about the Berliners’ response to the news of the Serbs’ decision. After reading the announcement in the newspaper extras, some citizens cheered “Et jeht los!”—Berlinerisch for “It’s on!”—while others went quietly home. Soon another crowd assembled in the city center, this one much more emphatically enthusiastic about the latest developments. The revelers moved down Unter den Linden to the Royal Palace, where they burst into the song Heil Dir im Siegerkranz (“Hail to You in Victory Wreath”). Yet another group, mostly university students, trooped to the Austrian Embassy, cheering the ambassador when he made a brief appearance. “German and Austrian, student and soldier, merchant and worker, all feel as one in this deadly serious hour,” commented the Vossische Zeitung.
Jingoists were not the only ones taking to the streets of Berlin in this hour of crisis. In response to calls from Vorwärts, the SPD’s newspaper, for antiwar demonstrations, on July 28 thousands of workers marched from the proletarian suburbs toward the center of town chanting “Down with war!” and “Long live Social Democracy!” The police put up roadblocks and rode their horses into the columns, but about 2,000 workers managed to reach the city center. They strolled up Unter den Linden singing internationalist songs, while prowar zealots responded with patriotic refrains.