The Kaiser's Memoirs

by German Emperor William II

SAYS WAR WAS NOT FORESEEN

Upon my arrival at Potsdam I found the Chancellor and the Foreign Office in conflict with the Chief of the General Staff, since General von Moltke was of the opinion that war was sure to break out, whereas the other two stuck firmly to their view that things would not get to such a bad pass, that there would be some way of avoiding war, provided I did not order mobilization. This dispute kept up steadily. Not until General von Moltke announced that the Russians had set fire to their frontier posts, torn up the frontier railway tracks, and posted red mobilization notices did a light break upon the diplomats in the Wilhelmstrasse and bring about both their own collapse and that of their powers of resistance. They had not wished to believe in the war.

This shows plainly how little we had expected—much less prepared for—war in July, 1914. When, in the spring of 1914, Tsar Nicholas II was questioned by his Court Marshal as to his spring and summer plans, he replied: "Je resterai chez moi cette année parceque nous aurons la guerre" ("I shall stay at home this year because we shall have war"). (This fact, it is said, was reported to Imperial Chancellor von Bethmann; I heard nothing about it then and learned about it for the first time in November, 1918.) This was the same Tsar who gave me, on two separate occasions—at Björkö and Baltisch-Port—entirely without being pressed by me and in a way that surprised me, his word of honor as a sovereign, to which he added weight by a clasp of the hand and an embrace, that he would never draw his sword against the German Emperor—least of all as an ally of England—in case a war should break out in Europe, owing to his gratitude to the German Emperor for his attitude in the Russo-Japanese War, in which England alone had involved Russia, adding that he hated England, since she had done him and Russia a great wrong by inciting Japan against them.

At the very time that the Tsar was announcing his summer war program I was busy at Corfu excavating antiquities; then I went to Wiesbaden, and, finally, to Norway. A monarch who wishes war and prepares it in such a way that he can suddenly fall upon his neighbors—a task requiring long secret mobilization preparations and concentration of troops—does not spend months outside his own country and does not allow his Chief of the General Staff to go to Carlsbad on leave of absence. My enemies, in the meantime, planned their preparations for an attack.

Our entire diplomatic machine failed. The menace of war was not seen because the Foreign Office was so hypnotized with its idea of "surtout pas d'histoires" ("above all, no stories"), its belief in peace at any cost, that it had completely eliminated war as a possible instrument of Entente statesmanship from its calculations, and, therefore, did not rightly estimate the importance of the signs of war.

Herein also is proof of Germany's peaceful inclinations. The above-mentioned standpoint of the Foreign Office brought it to a certain extent into conflict with the General Staff and the Admiralty Staff, who uttered warnings, as was their duty, and wished to make preparations for defense. This conflict in views showed its effect for a long time; the army could not forget that, by the fault of the Foreign Office, it had been taken by surprise, and the diplomats were piqued because, in spite of their stratagems, war had ensued, after all.

Innumerable are the pieces of evidence that as early as the spring and summer of 1914, when nobody in Germany believed as yet in the Entente's attack, war had been prepared for in Russia, France, Belgium, and England.

I included the most important proofs of this, in so far as they are known to me, in the Comparative Historical Tables compiled by me. On account of their great number, I shall cite only a few here. If in so doing I do not mention all names, this is done for reasons easily understood. Let me remark furthermore that this whole mass of material became known to me only little by little, partly during the war, mostly after the war.

1. As far back as April, 1914, the accumulation of gold reserves in the English banks began. On the other hand, Germany, as late as July, was still exporting gold and grain; to the Entente countries, among others.

2. In April, 1914, the German Naval Attaché in Tokyo, Captain von Knorr, reported that he was greatly struck by the certainty with which everyone there foresaw a war of the Triple Alliance against Germany in the near future ... that there was a something in the air as if, so to speak, people were expressing their condolences over a death sentence not yet pronounced.

3. At the end of March, 1914, General Sherbatsheff, director of the St. Petersburg War Academy, made an address to his officers, wherein, among other things, he said: That war with the powers forming the Triple Alliance had become unavoidable on account of Austria's anti-Russian Balkan policy; that there existed the strongest sort of probability that it would break out as early as that same summer; that, for Russia, it was a point of honor to assume the offensive immediately.

4. In the report of the Belgian ambassador at Berlin regarding a Japanese military mission which had arrived from St. Petersburg in April, 1914, it was stated, among other things: At the regimental messes the Japanese officers had heard quite open talk of an imminent war against Austria-Hungary and Germany; it was stated, however, that the army was ready to take the field, and that the moment was as auspicious for the Russians as for their allies, the French.

5. According to the memoirs of the then French ambassador at St. Petersburg, M. Paléologue, published in 1921, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Militza told him on July 22, 1914, at Tsarskoe Selo, that their father, the King of Montenegro, had informed them, in a cipher telegram, that "we shall have war before the end of the month [that is, before the 13th of August, Russian style]; ... nothing will be left of Austria.... You will take back Alsace-Lorraine.... Our armies will meet in Berlin.... Germany will be annihilated."

6. The former Serbian Chargé d'Affaires at Berlin, Bogitshevich, tells in his book, Causes of the War, published in 1919, of the following statement which Cambon, the then French ambassador at Berlin, made to him on the 26th or 27th of July, 1914: "If Germany wishes matters to come to a war, she will have England also against her. The English fleet will take Hamburg. We shall thoroughly beat the Germans." Bogitshevich states that this talk made him sure that the war had been decided upon at the time of the meeting of Poincaré with the Russian Tsar at St. Petersburg, if not sooner.