As shown by the available evidence in Mombaur’s book (2001), Moltke took the lead in advancing two propositions: first, that the alliance with Austria was absolutely central to Germany and had to be given top priority; and second, that war against the Triple Entente-Britain, France, and Russia, three countries that had pledged mutual friendship-was bound to break out not much later than 1916 or 1917, and that Germany would lose the war unless it launched a preventive attack immediately. Certain that war would come, Moltke wanted it sooner rather than later. He wanted it even though, like many of his colleagues, he feared that it would bring European civilization to an end.
From 1879 on, following the alliance agreement with Austria Hungary, planning made provision for a war against France and Russia. And this is the plan the younger Moltke saw an opportunity to set in motion when Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo was killed.
In fact previously published evidence showed that the Austrian Emperor, though horrified by the crime itself, was not unhappy that Franz Ferdinand was out of the way. He had not wanted to have the Archduke succeed him on the throne. "For me, it is a great worry less," he told his daughter in speaking of the Archduke's death. To a close aide he confided: "God will not be mocked. A higher power had put back the order I couldn't maintain." Even Berchtold noted in his diary that during the first cabinet meeting after the assassination there was "yes, consternation and indignation, but also a certain easing of mood." In other words at that time, Austria wasn’t even considering the possibility of ever going to war for this.
A further challenge was then by Terence Zuber "Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914" published Januari 1, 2003. Here Zuber comes to the conclusion that the Schlieffen plan never existed and that Moltke the younger was the true designer of the German war plans in 1914.The movements of the German army in 1914 was improvised by Molke in response to failure on the German left flank. Of course Germany did invade France through Belgium, but that was pursuant to what with more accuracy should be called the "Moltke plan", as Zuber stated.
Already Moltke the Elder and his successor, Count -Alfred von Waldersee, planned to fight Russia in a limited war that would compel the Czar to make peace quickly, while at about the same time battling France with the objective of negotiating peace on favorable terms. It was a moderate strategy, defensive in spirit, aimed at coming out ahead. But it did mean splitting forces in order to fight both enemies at the same time as Moltke the younger decided to do.
The sequence of events as known by the time of the publication of Terence Zuber’s book therefore was as follows:
In 1914 after Austria decided to take no action about Sarajewo, or as Austria’s Foreign Minister Berchtold noted in his diary that during the cabinet meeting after the assassination there was "yes, consternation and indignation, but also a certain easing of mood." And that the Austrian Emperor, though horrified by the crime itself, was not unhappy that Franz Ferdinand was out of the way. He had not wanted to have the Archduke succeed him on the throne. "For me, it is a great worry less," he told.
In the spring of 1914, Moltke held talks with Gottlieb von Jagow, Germany’s foreign minister. Jagow noted that Moltke told him that in two or three years the "military superiority of our enemies would ... be so great that he did not know how he could overcome them. Today we would still be a match for them. In his opinion there was no alternative to making preventive war in order to defeat the enemy while there was still a chance of victory. The Chief of the General Staff therefore proposed that I should conduct a policy with the aim of provoking a war in the near future."
Moltke feared that Germans, especially Prussian Germans, would eventually be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Slavs unless action was taken promptly. He often had urged starting a war against Russia, before the Czar modernized and rearmed his empire. Yet Moltke also foresaw that in the modem age a war among Great Powers would destroy Europe.
And Moltke already had his general staff prepare a current war plan in I913-14, before Sarajevo to deal with a two-front war against France and Russia. Moltke for obvious reasons had kept the details of this plan secret. Meaning also his wife, a regular citizen not bound by armee secrecy laws would have known about this either.(And Moltke for sure never had a reason to tell Steiner about this)
Thus early in the morning of Monday, July 6 adviced by his favorite General that time still, von Moltke, the German Kaiser sent for several officers to deliver messages for him.
Admiral Eduard von Capelle, the deputy of Tirpitz, received a phone call between 7:oo and 8:oo a.m. summoning him. He found Wilhelm in the garden of his palace. Capelle recalled: "The Emperor walked up and down with me for a short while and told me briefly of the occurrences of the day before"-the blank check to Austria (to protect it in case Russia would attack whenever the Austrians decided to take action against Serbia), an account of which Capelle apparently was to give to Tirpitz.
The Kaiser "did not believe in serious warlike developments. According to his view, the Czar would not in this case place himself on the side of regicides. Besides that, Russia and France were not prepared for war. (The Emperor did not mention England.) On the advice of the Imperial Chancellor, he was going to start on the journey to Northland, in order not to create any uneasiness."(Kautzky’s Memoirs ,1924 p. 47.)
A similar message was sent by the hand of a naval officer, Captain Zenker, to his superiors. "His Majesty had promised" to protect Austria if Russia interfered "but did not believe that Russia would enter the lists for Serbia, which had stained itself by an assassination. France, too, would scarcely let it come to war, as it lacked the heavy artillery for the field armies. Yet though a war against Russia-France was not probable, nevertheless the possibility of such a war must be borne in mind from a military point of view."(See Zenker’s Memoirs p.49.)
In fact as clearly shown by David Fromkin in "Europe’s Last Summer:
Who Started
the Great War in 1914?"(2004), Austria-Hungary lied when it claimed to
be striking back for the murder of the Archduke. In fact, the killings
at Sarajevo had relatively little to do with the Hapsburg desire to crush
Serbia. What gave away Austria’s lie in the first instance was that it
did not attack immediately, which is what one does when one strikes out
in anger or in self-defense.
Alternatively,
one would pursue a full judicial inquiry to its conclusion, and then publish
its results to the world, which Vienna lacked the patience to do.
The fact-known now, though not then-that the memo submitted to the Kaiser in support of the plan to go to war was the same memo that had been prepared before the murders in Sarajevo shows hat it did not arise from that event.
The Austrian ambassador in Berlin brought a copy of the ultimatum in final form the way it was going to be send to Serbia to Gotlieb von Jagow Germany’s Foreign Minister in Berlin, later lied and denied having seen it before it went out. (However, in an interview on September 17, 1916, with American joumalist William Bullitt, he admitted that he had seen the ultimatum before it was sent. And Zimmermann, Jagow’s number two, told a coleague (August 11, 19 17) that "it is true that we received the Serbian ultimatum about twelve hours before it was presented." Zimmermann wrote that it was pointless to keep on lying about it, since it "cannot be kept secret forever.")
Jagow rechecked calculations and discovered that the Austrians planned to present the ultimatum an hour too soon while the French leaders were still in Russia. A panicked effort by Hapsburg officialdom, alerted by Jagow, resulted in moving that ultimatum time to an hour later.
The Kaiser and many of his men were certain that none of the other Great Powers of Europe would intervene to halt the hoped for the expected Austrian strike. They committed to ward off France and Russia in the firm belief that they never would be called upon to do so. They were signing a check that they believed would never be cashed.
On July 24, Austria’s Foreign Minister Count Leopold von Berchtold met with the Russian charge d’affaires, Count Kudashev in Vienna, and delivered a soothing message: "nothing was further from our thoughts than the ‘Wish to humiliate Serbia"; and the Dual Monarchy "did not aim at a territorial gain but merely y at the preservation of the status quo."
Literally, Berchtold -,was telling the truth: Vienna did not intend to annex Serbia; it ruled too many Slavs already. But he was deliberately misleading: Austria-Hungary, according to Berchtold’s chief aide at the foreign office, intended to partition Serbia but to take no part of Serbia for itself.
In fact Berchtold was urged by Germany’s foreign Minister Jagow in Berlin to declare war immediately, before the other powers stepped in to impose a peace settlement. In turn, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister attempted to put pressure on his army chief, Conrad, who had been a persistent advocate of going to war in the past. Conrad claimed not to be ready. In Conrad’s account:
BERCHTOLD:We should like to deliver the declaration of war on Serbia as soon as possible so as to put an end to diverse influences. When do you want the declaration of war?
CONRAD: Only when we have progressed far enough for operations to begin immediately-on approximately August 12.
BERCHTOLD: The diplomatic situation will not hold as long as that.
Germany’s military leaders had focused on blaming Russia for the European conflict they foresaw and regarded as inevitable. This had been, and remained, Moltke’s line. It was echoed on July 27 by Admiral von Mueller: Germany should, he told his diary, "remain calm to allow Russia to put herself in the wrong, but then not to shrink from war if it were inevitable." Germany’s prime minister Bethmann agreed with the military on this: "In all events Russia must ruthlessly be put in the wrong," he told Wilhelm II.
The July crisis,
as Moltke saw it, had evolved, happily for Germany, in such a way as to
place it in a "singularly favorable situation."
Harvests were
in, the annual training of recruits had finished, and Russia and France
would not be really ready for two years. Austria had put itself in a position
such that it could not help fighting at Germany’s side, and that was
absolutely vital. As Moltke summed it up: "we shall never hit it again
so well as we do now."
At the same time British prime minister Herbert Asquith wrote in confidence to his friend Venetia Stanley "It is one of the ironies of the case, that we being the only Power who has made so much as a constructive suggestion on the direction of peace, are blamed by both Germany and Russia for causing the outbreak of war. Germany says: ‘if you say you will be neutral, France and Russia wouldn’t dare to fight,’ and Russia says: ‘if you boldly declare that you will side with us, Germany and Austria will at once draw in their homs. Neither of course is true."
Russia might
have taken itself out of the conflict, as Russia could have made common
cause with Austria against the regicides and terrorists, and given Vienna
carte blanche, as Germany had done, to solve the problems as best it could,
in its dealings with Serbia.
Had Russia
done so, it would have deprived Germany’s military leaders of the conditions
and pretexts necessary to initiate their proposed war against Russia and
France. A world war would at least have been postponed and at best prevented.
World War I was apprehended in Germany as an unmissable opportunity to halt the advance of Zivilisation and assert the rights of a Kultur capable of resisting, renewing itself, and proving that the "heroic" spirit could wipe out the (American and English) "mercantile" spirit and the (French) universalist spirit.
On August 4, 1914, the German Army marched into neutral Belgium en Route to what was hoped would be Paris and victory. By violating Belgian neutrality, Germany displayed disregard for international treaties and eased the entry of Britain into World War I. Reports emanating from Belgium (6,500 civilians were killed there by the German Army) and northern France during the months of August-September 1914,described German troops as engaged in wholesale murder of civilians with no discernible provocation. Accounts of mass executions, rapes,mutilations, and widespread arson helped mobilize support for the war in France and Britain, while simultaneously damaging the standing of Germany. For example in The Belgian university town of Louvain,after 248 civilians were killed the university library, with its vast and rare collection, deliberately set on fire. All in all in Belgium alone, the German Army intentionally destroyed 15,000-20,000 buildings, used human-shields in hundreds of cases--particularly during bridge crossings--and generated a refugee wave of over a million people.(See Zuckerman "The Rape of Belgium" 2004)
Yet on the day Wilhelm II gave the oke to General von Moltke to start the war did so under the condition no war with Belgium would be started and that instead all troops should be used to solely attack Russia because Russia was ready to attack Austria.
This is known ever since the publication of General von Moltke's own diary who added that after he returned from his visit with the Kaiser he in fact broke out in tears, suggesting von Moltke might have in fact suffered from clinical depression, already before the war.
In fact this is seems confirmed by a document published in Monika Mombauer 2001 book written by General von Plessen reporting how Moltke on 22 August (soon after the beginning of the war) completely lost his nerve as he walked ceaselessly up and down the room and exhaled with a whistling sound through his teeth, letting the heads of departments do as they pleased.(Document BA-MA,w-10/51063 by Major a.D. Dr. Mewes, p.1)
Now Helmut Roewer starts his book by describing how on the same August 1, 1914 when the German Kaiser decided to start the War General von Moltke had an appointment with Rudolf Steiner to which he couldn’t go because the Kaiser called him on the day Moltke later would brake out in tears. "Prolog im Schloss.
Die deutsche Entscheidung zur Auslösung des Ersten Weltkrieges am 1. August 1914. Sodann hatten Vertrage die Moltkes eine Zusammenkunft mit Rudolf Steiner geplant, einem der damaligen Mode-Gurus; doch dazu kam es infolge des Kriegsausbruchs nicht mehr. Man möchte fragen, ob das der rechte Umgang für einen deutschen Generalstabschef 6o1 gewesen sein mag; zumal manch einer den österreichischen Mysterienapostel, höflich gesprochen, für nicht ganz zurechnungsfähig ansah. Es nimmt kaum wunder, dass der Umstand der engen persönlichen Bindung der Moltkes an Steiner späteren Verschwörungsspezialisten Anlass war, zum großen Schlag auf Moltke auszuholen" (Skrupellos p. 7)
In his 2004 "Germany And The Causes of The First World War" Mark Hewitson points out that it war was the result of Germany's deliberate attempts to provoke a war to destroy France and Russia before they became powerful enough to destroy imperial Germany. The Austro-Hungarian war to crush Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was merely the excuse for Germany to launch its own fight. Thus there were really two wars in 1914, Austria's and Germany's.
The Arrest in Sarajewo
To Erich von Falkenhayn, speaking on 4 August 1914, the outbreak of the First World War, was “beautiful, even if we perish because of it” (H. Afflerbach, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich, p. 170).
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