In the World War

by Graf Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria Czernin von und zu Chudenitz

8

Ottokar Czernin on Austria's Policy During the War

Speech delivered December 11, 1918

Gentlemen,—In rising now to speak of our policy during the war it is my hope that I may thereby help to bring the truth to light. We are living in a time of excitement. After four years of war, the bloodiest and most determined war the world has ever seen, and in the midst of the greatest revolution ever known, this excitement is only too easily understood. But the result of this excitement is that all those rumours which go flying about, mingling truth and falsehood together, end by misleading the public. It is unquestionably necessary to arrive at a clear understanding. The public has a right to know what has really happened, it has the right to know why we did not succeed in attaining the peace we had so longed for, it has a right to know whether, and if so where, any neglect can be pointed out, or whether it was the overwhelming power of circumstances which has led our policy to take the course it did. The new arrangement of relations between ourselves and Germany will make an end of all secret proceedings. The day will come then when, fortunately, all that has hitherto been hidden will be made clear. As, however, I do not know when all this will be made public, I am grateful for the opportunity of lifting the veil to-day from certain hitherto unknown events. In treating of this theme I will refrain from touching upon those constitutional factors which once counted for so much, but which do so no longer. I do so because it seems to me unfair to import into the discussion persons who are now paying heavily for what they may have done and who are unable to defend themselves. And I must pay this honourable tribute to the Austro-Hungarian Press, that it has on the whole sought to spare the former Emperor as far as possible. There are, of course, exceptions—exceptiones firmant regulam. There are in Vienna, as everywhere else, men who find it more agreeable to attack, the less if those whom they are attacking are able to defend themselves. But, believe me, gentlemen, those who think thus are not the bravest, not the best, nor the most reliable; and we may be glad that they form so insignificant a minority.

But, to come to the point. Before passing on to a consideration of the various phases of the work for peace, I should like to point out two things: firstly, that since the entry of Italy and Roumania into the war, and especially since the entry of America, a "victorious peace" on our part has been a Utopian idea, a Utopia which, unfortunately, was throughout cherished by the German military party; and, secondly, that we have never received any offer of peace from the Entente. On several occasions peace feelers were put forward between representatives of the Entente and our own; unfortunately, however, these never led to any concrete conditions. We often had the impression that we might conclude a separate peace without Germany, but we were never told the concrete conditions upon which Germany, on its part, could make peace; and, in particular, we were never informed that Germany would be allowed to retain its possessions as before the war, in consequence of which we were left in the position of having to fight a war of defence for Germany. We were compelled by our treaty to a common defence of the pre-war possessions, and since the Entente never declared its willingness to treat with a Germany which wished for no annexations, since the Entente constantly declared its intention of annihilating Germany, we were forced to defend Germany, and our position in Berlin was rendered unspeakably more difficult. We ourselves, also, were never given any assurance that we should be allowed to retain our former possessions; but in our case the desire for peace was so strong that we would have made territorial concessions if we had been able thereby to secure general peace. This, however, was not the case. Take Italy, for instance, which was primarily at war with ourselves and not with Germany. If we had offered Italy concessions however great, if we had offered all that Italy has now taken possession of, even then it could not have made peace, being bound by duty to its Allies and by circumstances not to make peace until England and France made peace with Germany.

When, then, peace by sacrifice was the only peace attainable, obviously, as a matter of principle, there were two ways of reaching that end. One, a general peace, i.e. including Germany, and the other, a separate peace. Of the overwhelming difficulties attending the former course I will speak later; at present a few words on the question of separate peace.

I myself would never have made a separate peace. I have never, not even in the hour of disillusionment—I may say of despair at my inability to lead the policy of Berlin into wiser channels—even in such hours, I say, I have never forgotten that our alliance with the German Empire was no ordinary alliance, no such alliance as may be contracted by two Emperors or two Governments, and can easily be broken, but an alliance of blood, a blood-brotherhood between the ten million Austro-Germans and the seventy million of the Empire, which could not be broken. And I have never forgotten that the military party in power at that time in Germany were not the German people, and that we had allied ourselves with the German people, and not with a few leading men. But I will not deny that in the moments when I saw my policy could not be realised I did ventilate the idea of suggesting to the Emperor the appointment, in my stead, of one of those men who saw salvation in a separation from Germany. But again and again I relinquished this idea, being firmly convinced that separate peace was a sheer impossibility. The Monarchy lay like a great block between Germany and the Balkans. Germany had great masses of troops there from which it could not be cut off, it was procuring oil and grain from the Balkans; if we were to interpose between it and the Balkans we should be striking at its most sensitive vital nerve. Moreover, the Entente would naturally have demanded first of all that we joined in the blockade, and finally our secession would automatically have involved also that of Bulgaria and Turkey. Had we withdrawn, Germany would have been unable to carry on the war. In such a situation there can be no possibility of doubt but that the German Army Command would have flung several divisions against Bohemia and the Tyrol, meting out to us the same fate which had previously befallen Roumania. The Monarchy, Bohemia in particular, would at once have become a scene of war. But even this is not all. Internally, such a step would at once have led to civil war. The Germans of Austria would never have turned against their brothers, and the Hungarians—Tisza's Hungarians—would never have lent their aid to such a policy. We had begun the war in common, and we could not end it save in common. For us there was no way out of the war; we could only choose between fighting with Germany against the Entente, or fighting with the Entente against Germany until Germany herself gave way. A slight foretaste of what would have happened was given us through the separatist steps taken by Andrassy at the last moment. This utterly defeated, already annihilated and prostrate Germany had yet the power to fling troops toward the Tyrol, and had not the revolution overwhelmed all Germany like a conflagration, smothering the war itself, I am not sure but that the Tyrol might at the last moment have been harried by war. And, gentlemen, I have more to say. The experiment of separate peace would not only have involved us in a civil war, not only brought the war into our own country, but even then the final outcome would have been much the same. The dissolution of the Monarchy into its component national parts was postulated throughout by the Entente. I need only refer to the Conference of London. But whether the State be dissolved by way of reward to the people or by way of punishment to the State makes little difference; the effect is the same. In this case also a "German Austria" would have arisen, and in such a development it would have been hard for the German-Austrian people to take up an attitude which rendered them allies of the Entente. In my own case, as Minister of the Imperial and Royal Government, it was my duty also to consider dynastic interests, and I never lost sight of that obligation. But I believe that in this respect also the end would have been the same. In particular the dissolution of the Monarchy into its national elements by legal means, against the opposition of the Germans and Hungarians, would have been a complete impossibility. And the Germans in Austria would never have forgiven the Crown if it had entered upon a war with Germany; the Emperor would have been constantly encountering the powerful Republican tendencies of the Czechs, and he would have been in constant conflict with the King of Serbia over the South-Slav question, an ally being naturally nearer to the Entente than the Habsburgers. And, finally, the Hungarians would never have forgiven the Emperor if he had freely conceded extensive territories to Bohemia and to the South-Slav state; I believe, then, that in this confusion the Crown would have fallen, as it has done in fact. A separate peace was a sheer impossibility. There remained the second way: to make peace jointly with Germany. Before going into the difficulties which rendered this way impossible I must briefly point out wherein lay our great dependence upon Germany. First of all, in military respects. Again and again we were forced to rely on aid from Germany. In Roumania, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Russia we were victorious with the Germans beside us. We were in the position of a poor relation living by the grace of a rich kinsman. But it is impossible to play the mendicant and the political adviser at the same time, particularly when the other party is a Prussian officer. In the second place, we were dependent upon Germany owing to the state of our food supply. Again and again we were here also forced to beg for help from Germany, because the complete disorganisation of our own administration had brought us to the most desperate straits. We were forced to this by the hunger blockade established, on the one hand, by Hungary, and on the other by the official authorities and their central depots. I remember how, when I myself was in the midst of a violent conflict with the German delegates at Brest-Litovsk, I received orders from Vienna to bow the knee to Berlin and beg for food. You can imagine, gentlemen, for yourselves how such a state of things must weaken a Minister's hands. And, thirdly, our dependence was due to the state of our finances. In order to keep up our credit we were drawing a hundred million marks a month from Germany, a sum which during the course of the war has grown to over four milliards; and this money was as urgently needed as were the German divisions and the German bread. And, despite this position of dependence, the only way to arrive at peace was by leading Germany into our own political course; that is to say, persuading Germany to conclude a peace involving sacrifice. The situation all through was simply this: that any momentary military success might enable us to propose terms of peace which, while entailing considerable loss to ourselves, had just a chance of being accepted by the enemy. The German military party, on the other hand, increased their demands with every victory, and it was more hopeless than ever, after their great successes, to persuade them to adopt a policy of renunciation. I think, by the way, that there was a single moment in the history of this war when such an action would have had some prospect of success. I refer to the famous battle of Görlitz. Then, with the Russian army in flight, the Russian forts falling like houses of cards, many among our enemies changed their point of view. I was at that time still our representative in Roumania. Majorescu was then not disinclined to side with us actively, and the Roumanian army moved forward toward Bessarabia, could have been hot on the heels of the flying Russians, and might, according to all human calculations, have brought about a complete débâcle. It is not unlikely that the collapse which later took place in Russia might have come about then, and after a success of that nature, with no "America" as yet on the horizon, we might perhaps have brought the war to an end. Two things, however, were required: in the first place, the Roumanians demanded, as the price of their co-operation, a rectification of the Hungarian frontier, and this first condition was flatly refused by Hungary; the second condition, which naturally then did not come into question at all, would have been that we should even then, after such a success, have proved strong enough to bear a peace with sacrifice. We were not called upon to agree to this, but the second requirement would undoubtedly have been refused by Germany, just as the first had been by Hungary. I do not positively assert that peace would have been possible in this or any other case, but I do positively maintain that during my period of office such a peace by sacrifice was the utmost we and Germany could have attained. The future will show what superhuman efforts we have made to induce Germany to give way. That all proved fruitless was not the fault of the German people, nor was it, in my opinion, the fault of the German Emperor, but that of the leaders of the German military party, which had attained such enormous power in the country. Everyone in Wilhelmstrasse, from Bethmann to Kühlmann, wanted peace; but they could not get it simply because the military party got rid of everyone who ventured to act otherwise than as they wished. This also applies to Bethmann and Kühlmann. The Pan-Germanists, under the leadership of the military party, could not understand that it was possible to die through being victorious, that victories are worthless when they do not lead to peace, that territories held in an iron grasp as "security" are valueless securities as long as the opposing party cannot be forced to redeem them. There were various shades of this Pan-Germanism. One section demanded the annexation of parts of Belgium and France, with an indemnity of milliards; others were less exorbitant, but all were agreed that peace could only be concluded with an extension of German possessions. It was the easiest thing in the world to get on well with the German military party so long as one believed in their fantastic ideas and took a victorious peace for granted, dividing up the world thereafter at will. But if anyone attempted to look at things from the point of view of the real situation, and ventured to reckon with the possibility of a less satisfactory termination of the war, the obstacles then encountered were not easily surmounted. We all of us remember those speeches in which constant reference was always made to a "stern peace," a "German peace," a "victorious peace." For us, then, the possibility of a more favourable peace—I mean a peace based on mutual understanding—I have never believed in the possibility of a victorious peace—would only have been acute in the case of Poland and the Austro-Polish question. But I cannot sufficiently emphasise the fact that the Austro-Polish solution never was an obstacle in the way of peace and could never have been so. There was only the idea that Austrian Poland and the former Russian Poland might be united and attached to the Monarchy. It was never suggested that such a step should be enforced against the will of Poland itself or against the will of the Entente. There was a time when it looked as if not only Poland but also certain sections among the Entente were not disinclined to agree to such a solution.

But to return to the German military party. This had attained a degree of power in the State rarely equalled in history, and the rarity of the phenomenon was only exceeded by the suddenness of its terrible collapse. The most striking personality in this group was General Ludendorff. Ludendorff was a great man, a man of genius, in conception, a man of indomitable energy and great gifts. But this man required a political brake, so to speak, a political element in the Wilhelmstrasse capable of balancing his influence, and this was never found. It must fairly be admitted that the German generals achieved the gigantic, and there was a time when they were looked up to by the people almost as gods. It may be true that all great strategists are much alike; they look to victory always and to nothing else. Moltke himself, perhaps, was nothing more, but he had a Bismarck to maintain equilibrium. We had no such Bismarck, and when all is said and done it was not the fault of Ludendorff, or it is at any rate an excuse for him, that he was the only supremely powerful character in the whole of Germany, and that in consequence the entire policy of the country was directed into military channels. Ludendorff was a great patriot, desiring nothing for himself, but seeking only the happiness of his country; a military genius, a hard man, utterly fearless—and for all that a misfortune in that he looked at the whole world through Potsdam glasses, with an altogether erroneous judgment, wrecking every attempt at peace which was not a peace by victory. Those very people who worshipped Ludendorff when he spoke of a victorious peace stone him now for that very thing; Ludendorff was exactly like the statesmen of England and France, who all rejected compromise and declared for victory alone; in this respect there was no difference between them. The peace of mutual understanding which I wished for was rejected on the Thames and on the Seine just as by Ludendorff himself. I have said this already. According to the treaty it was our undoubted duty to carry on a defensive war to the utmost and reciprocally to defend the integrity of the State. It is therefore perfectly obvious that I could never publicly express any other view, that I was throughout forced to declare that we were fighting for Alsace-Lorraine just as we were for Trentino, that I could not relinquish German territory to the Entente so long as I lacked the power to persuade Germany herself to such a step. But, as I will show, the most strenuous endeavours were made in this latter direction. And I may here in parenthesis remark that our military men throughout refrained from committing the error of the German generals, and interfering in politics themselves. It is undoubtedly to the credit of our Emperor that whenever any tendency to such interference appeared he quashed it at once. But in particular I should point out that the Archduke Frederick confined his activity solely to the task of bringing about peace. He has rendered most valuable service in this, as also in his endeavours to arrive at favourable relations with Germany.

Very shortly after taking up office I had some discussions with the German Government which left those gentlemen perfectly aware of the serious nature of the situation. In April, 1917—eighteen months ago—I sent the following report to the Emperor Charles, which he forwarded to the Emperor William with the remark that he was entirely of my opinion.

[This report is already printed in these pages. [See p. 146.]]