By Eric Vandenbroeck
As will be seen below; a great deal of Tisza's reasoning would indeed be
echoed in the Matscheko Memorandum of 24 June. A
further forerunner of Matscheko was undoubtedly the
position paper prepared in May by Ludwig von Flotow; a Ballhausplatz
expert on the Balkans who had served in Bucharest and Belgrade.95 Flotow was
concerned by a public opinion in Romania increasingly inimical to
Austria-Hungary, pointing out that "in the event of a war with Russia' the
Monarchy would not only be unable to count on Romania's help, but would also
have to take into account its possible hostility. Like Tisza, Flotow saw a
danger of a new, Russian-backed alliance of Balkan states emerging: Romania,
Turkey, Greece, and Serbia a grouping aimed against Austria-Hungary, which
Bulgaria might have no choice but to join. And, like Tisza, he viewed it as a
great menace to the Triple Alliance. What he recommended was a "clarification"
of relations between Vienna and Bucharest, to be achieved through a public
acknowledgment by King Carol or his Government that Romania had a treaty with
the Triple Alliance. Realizing that there would have to be some quid pro quo
for this, Flotow thought some concessions should then follow to Romania - to be
precise, only two. One of them, he suggested, might be a guarantee of its
existing border with Bulgaria. Flotow did not explain how this could be
sufficiently attractive to Bucharest when the main problem between
Austria-Hungary and Romania, in fact, concerned the position of Romanians in
Transylvania. But his other proposed "concession" was genuinely
bizarre. Given the friendly relationship between Romania and Serbia, he pointed
out; it could be left to Romania to work for a rapprochement between Vienna and
Belgrade - in which case Austria-Hungary would demonstrate an accommodating
approach towards Serbia. Flotow did not specify, however, what inducements
Vienna was ready to offer to Belgrade. In other words, Romania, a country up in
arms because of the treatment of its co-nationals in Transylvania, should try
and convince Serbia, a country stifled at every turn by Vienna, that the
Habsburgs were not so bad after all. Moreover, Bucharest was even supposed to
be grateful for being entrusted with such a task.
This absurd game plan for winning over Romania betrayed perhaps the
absence of any belief at the Ballhausplatz that
anything could still be rescued in relations with that country Flotow, certainly,
had alternative proposals ready in the event that Bucharest did not play along:
a diplomatic effort to bring about a Bulgarian-Turkish alliance; then, a
drawing in of Bulgaria by treaty, to Austria-Hungary and the Triple Alliance;
and, significantly, military fortification works to proceed along the frontier
with Romania. There was a note of urgency in Flotow's reflections on the
existing Balkan situation. In "this critical moment", when Russia and
France were so intensively at work, all the indicators were pointing towards
the destruction of the Monarchy's position, and it would be 'ruinous' to allow
such developments to mature through passivity Flotow also deployed what had at
the time already begun to figure as characteristic language with regard to
Austria-Hungary's possible involvement in a war, for he wrote about such a war
"into which we would be forced", or "which would be imposed on
us".96 Austro-Hungarian diplomatic and military reports from the first
half of 1914 are peppered with this kind of virtuous wording.
Interestingly, the Matscheko Memorandum, or
rather the famous draft of it that had materialized by 24 June, is based
largely on the assumption that a war was approaching between Austria-Hungary
and Serbia. The exact opposite interpretation, it should be noted straight
away, has been put on the Memorandum by some recognized specialists. According
to P.R. Bridge, it "contained not the slightest hint of war". What it
represented, in Bridge's view; was "still a long-term policy, an attempt to
solve the problem by patient and persevering diplomacy' Alma Hannig, similarly, sees the Matscheko
Memorandum in the context of a consistent Balkan strategy formulated by the Ballhausplatz - a policy 'without any war plans against
Serbia".97 A closer reading of this rather lengthy document, however,
reveals an entirely different picture.98
What is strange in the Matscheko Memorandum,
with its detailed review of the Balkan situation, is the near-absence of an
obvious theme:
Serbia. The country which had during the Balkan Wars so obsessed the
Habsburg establishment hardly gets a mention. Matscheko
considers Serbia only in passing, in the introductory section which draws a
balance sheet between positive and negative developments in the region over the
previous two years. Serbia, according to Matscheko,
stood entirely under Russian influence; its policy had for years been inspired
by hostility against Austria-Hungary; and, given the "general
strengthening of the Great Serbian idea," its recent additions of territory
and population looked like becoming even greater because of the possibility of
a union with Montenegro. That was the total of analysis of this dangerous
neighbor in the south-east. The implication was that Serbia was an implacable
foe certainly not an object for "patient and persevering diplomacy".
It seems reasonable to suppose that had a diplomatic approach towards Serbia
been on the Habsburg list of options then the Memorandum would have brought
this out. The other negatives in Matscheko's audit of
assets and liabilities were the practical disappearance of Turkey- in-Europe
and, in particular, Romania's shift towards Russia. Echoing Flotow's
memorandum, he wondered whether Romania would not, "in a given
moment", act as an enemy rather than as a friend of the Triple Alliance.
On the plus side, according to Matscheko,
Albania had been established as an independent state and thus served as a
counterweight to Serbia's encroachments. It could even, in time, be included as
a "military factor" in the calculations of the Triple Alliance.
Looking at the map of South-Eastern Europe almost as if he was a General Staff
officer, Matscheko counted Greece among the positives
in his survey, noticing that its gradually improving relations with the Triple
Alliance meant the country should not necessarily be seen as "an
adversary" despite its alliance with Serbia. Bulgaria, finally, had woken
up from its "Russian hypnosis" and its Government was seeking a
closer relationship with the Triple Alliance. On the whole, however, Matscheko saw the situation as "anything but
favorable," and he was anxious to draw attention to Russia and France.
Those two Powers, far from satisfied with what they had already achieved in the
region, were pursuing an "aggressive," indeed "decidedly
offensive" policy. Matscheko was also keen to
make the point that the only reason why European peace had remained intact in
the face of Franco-Russian interferences (Storungen)
was the military superiority of the Triple Alliance and in the first place the
combination of Austria-Hungary and Germany for which the alliance with Romania
was a highly valuable factor.
Probably borrowing from Tisza's memorandum of 15 March, Matscheko painted Russia as planning to build an alliance
of Balkan states by means of which the military superiority of the Triple
Alliance would be eliminated. Such an alliance, he insisted, could only be
directed against Austria-Hungary. Russia's plan, he believed, was to direct its
Balkan coalition westwards. Such a fragile and complicated grouping of states
could only be brought about by the expectation of each member that its
territorial cravings would be satisfied - e.g., Bulgaria's in Macedonia and
Serbia's in Bosnia. Matscheko blithely asserted that
Serbia, under Russian pressure, would give up Macedonia to Bulgaria. It should
"not be doubted," Matscheko wrote, that
Serbia would "pay an appropriate price" in Macedonia - on the basis
that this sacrifice would bring Bulgaria into a Balkan alliance also directed
at the conquest of Bosnia. On this point, it should be noted, Serbia did not
yield even in 1915, when the Allies badly wanted to prevent Bulgaria from
joining the Central Powers and when their pressure on Belgrade to cede
Macedonia was enormous. Matscheko, of course, knew
that his audience was in Berlin and that Kaiser Wilhelm's well-known dislike of
the Bulgarian King Ferdinand had to be borne in mind. Hence he emphasized that
Russia and France were busy working to diplomatically isolate Bulgaria and
thereby make it more receptive to their offers to join their coalition directed
against Austria-Hungary and indeed the Triple Alliance. He urged that 'action'
be taken to strengthen Bulgaria's "spine," thus helping it to avoid
isolation and resist Russian "threats and baits".
The perceived need in Vienna to impress on the Germans the urgency of
the Balkan situation is also apparent in Matscheko's
treatment of the Romanian issue. Here, he expanded on Flotow's arguments about
Romania's essential unreliability; despite King Carol's loyalty to the secret
alliance, wide sections of the Romanian Army, intelligentsia, and people had
been won over to support an anti- Habsburg programme
for "the liberation of brothers beyond the Carpathians", that is to
say in Hungary. In the event of "a Russian attack on the Monarchy",
it was "unthinkable" that Romania would side with Austria-Hungary -
at best it offered only neutrality, one which depended entirely on King Carol
and his ability to control foreign policy; if an armed conflict with Russia
broke out "now", Russia would hardly need to field a single soldier
against Romania, whereas Austria-Hungary could not be sure of Romania's
neutrality and would need to fortify the border areas of Transylvania. Matscheko warned, pointedly, that Romania's change of
direction threatened not only the security of Austria-Hungary but also the
Triple Alliance system itself (in a "very sensitive point"), as well
as "the stability of the existing political relationships in Europe."
All of which sounded more like a study emanating from the Operations
Bureau of the Austro-Hungarian Army than a Ballhausplatz
assessment of diplomatic hurdles to be overcome. P.R. Bridge's insistence that
the Matscheko Memorandum 'contains not the slightest
hint of war' is practically impossible to reconcile with the actual document.
Time and again Matscheko argues from the position of
"what if?" - emphasizing that events in the Balkans could at
"anytime" force Austria-Hungary to come up with a response (Stellungnahme). And he named such eventualities: tensions
between Greece and Turkey, the "danger" of a union between Serbia and
Montenegro, and the critical situation in Albania. The fact that he was
contemplating military rather than political responses is evidenced by the
following sentence in the Memorandum: "Such a response would, however, be
exceedingly aggravated if the crucial decisions would have to be reached by a
political calculation in which Romania represents an unknown quantity."
That is to say; it would be very difficult for the military to allocate troops
to war in which they did not know whether their Romanian neighbor would be an
ally, an enemy, or something in between.
For Matscheko, there was no time to lose.
Thus, "in the case of a European war," the Monarchy had to make,
"immediately," military provisions for the defense of the border with
Romania. Matscheko demanded, along the lines of
Flotow's memorandum, that action be taken, "without delay," to press
Romania to get off the fence and openly declare its allegiance to the Triple
Alliance. However, if Romania did not give such guarantees and opted for Russia
instead, it was "urgently necessary" for the Monarchy to assess the
military consequences. Explaining that the considerable preparatory period
demanded by border fortification works was the reason why the matter was so
pressing, Matscheko even attached to his Memorandum a
separate document dealing with proposed measures for the military protection of
the Transylvanian region - i.e., protection from a Romanian attack.
Indeed, contrary to the claims of P.R. Bridge, there is practically
nothing in the Matscheko Memorandum that would
indicate a "long-term" policy direction or demonstrate a commitment
to "patient and persevering diplomacy." Its recommended diplomatic
approach to Romania, moreover, can only be described as preposterous. Matscheko, like Flotow before him, suggested that Bucharest
should be offered two inducements to make it choose the Triple Alliance: a
guarantee of its territories vis-iI-vis Bulgaria; and
the giving of a green light to Bucharest to mediate between Vienna and
Belgrade. As noted above, these proposed inducements were hardly meant to be
serious. Paul Schroeder pointed out that the offer of a guarantee vis-a-vis
Bulgaria would not have impressed Romania, for it already enjoyed such a
guarantee through the support of France, Russia, Serbia and Greece - and the
sympathy of Germany and Britain. As for Vienna's promise regarding improving
relations with Serbia, "nothing" was likely to come out of it since
everyone, including the Austrians, knew that "what Austria and Romania
meant by good Austro-Serbian relations were two different things, and that what
Serbia said was yet another".99
Even Matscheko drew a line in his potty
pretense at diplomacy. With those two favors, he wrote, the Monarchy's fund of
concessions would be "exhausted." It was, therefore
"self-evident" that the subject, for example, of internal political
relations in Austria or Hungary was no business of the Romanian Government.
This exclusion of the Transylvanian issue represented, probably, a Hungarian
input into Matscheko's Memorandum, but is in any case
proof enough that the Ballhausplatz did not think
Romania could - or should - still be courted. Not just in Budapest, but also in
Vienna powerful voices were against an accommodation with the Romanians in
Hungary. In November 1913 the counselor at Austria-Hungary's Bucharest
Legation, Franz von Haymerle, had suggested that,
unless the Romanian national question in the Monarchy were settled, relations
with Romania would continue to deteriorate and lead to dangerous,
Bucharest-sponsored agitation in Hungary. This had drawn an angry response from
Alek Hoyos, Berchtold's
influential chef de cabinet. Any concessions, he argued, would merely open the
"doors and gates" to the Romanian irredenta in Hungary and would
ultimately lead to the demise of the Monarchy.100
Towards the end of the Romanian analysis in his paper, Matscheko could only offer wishful thinking and distinctly
undiplomatic solutions. He considered that even those Romanians most fervently
opposed to their country's association with Austria-Hungary, and the Triple
Alliance might, in the end, find it "highly dubious" to definitively
destroy the existing bridges, as this would make the country completely
dependent on Russia. "The more categorically" Romania was confronted
with the choice between the Triple Alliance and its opponents, "the
greater are the chances that Romania will sober up ... and decide in favor of
the first alternative". One wonders whether this was just a facetious
suggestion to be read by the naive Germans.
A sense of urgency pervades the whole of Matscheko's
Memorandum. Following Flotow, he proposed that the Monarchy should respond to
Bulgaria's overtures and enter into a treaty with it - as a counterweight to
Romania. At the same time, and again along the lines of Flotow's
recommendations, he urged that an alliance also is established between Bulgaria
and Turkey. But he warned that, in the light of Franco-Russian activity in the
region, it was "uncertain how much longer the road to Sofia and
Constantinople will remain open." Appropriately for a memorandum conceived
for German consumption, a concluding observation was that Russian hostility was
not aimed at Austria-Hungary as such, but rather against the most exposed part
of "the Central European bloc" which barred Russia's from realizing
its "world-political plans." Breaking the military superiority of
Germany and Austria-Hungary by enlisting 'auxiliary Balkan troops' was the Franco-Russian
aim, but it was not the ultimate Russian aim. Russia, in essence, cut off from
the open seas, was pursuing an aggressive policy in Europe and in Asia, and
doing so in the knowledge that it would harm Germany's important interests and
provoke its resistance. Accordingly, the manifested tendency to encircle
Austria-Hungary was designed to make impossible Germany's resistance to a
Russia which was determined to attain "political and economic
supremacy." It was "short-sighted," Matscheko
protested, to describe specific Austro-Hungarian interests as being far removed
from those of Germany's own, or to see Germany's support for them as arising
merely out of loyalty to an ally. Finally, "at this stage of the Balkan
crisis," it was in Germany's interest, no less than that of the Monarchy,
to act energetically and promptly to counter Russia's advancement, for later it
would perhaps be "impossible to reverse it".101
Christopher Clark had seen the Matscheko
Memorandum much as P.R. Bridge before him, since "there was no hint in it
whatsoever that Vienna regarded war - whether of the limited or the more
general variety - as imminent, necessary or desirable." He regards its
focus as, "on the contrary," being "firmly on diplomatic methods
and objectives."102 Again, as with Bridge, this is a baffling
interpretation. Even a superficial reading of the Memorandum reveals that the Ballhausplatz considered some conflict as at least likely
in the short term. Its hypothesis of a war with Russia "now" ("a
Russian attack on the Monarchy"), its emphasis on the "decidedly
offensive" Franco-Russian policies in the Balkans, its questioning of what
Romania might do at a given moment', its warnings about the looming threat to
the military superiority of the Triple Alliance, its reference to the
possibility of "a European war" - all these, and indeed all its
proposed "diplomatic methods and objectives", as mentioned by Clark,
assumed and anticipated war. In fact, Matscheko had
proposed almost no diplomacy. Serbia was to him a hopeless case and Romania was
practically in the same category, except that - and this cannot be emphasized
strongly enough - given the pro-Romanian sentiment of Wilhelm II and his
Government, the Ballhausplatz felt obliged to
rehearse a semblance of an Austro-Hungarian diplomatic effort to keep Romania
tied to the Triple Alliance.
As is known, a somewhat shortened and modified Matscheko Denkschrift was
presented to Wilhelm II on 5 July in the context of the so-called Hoyos mission which sought to obtain German backing for an
Austro-Hungarian strike against Serbia.103 Much of the relevant historiography
considers the discrepancies between the two versions as evidence of a
fundamental transformation of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy in the Balkans:
from intending to pursue firm but non-belligerent methods just before Sarajevo,
to embracing the war option just after Sarajevo. A great deal of such scholarly
confidence rests on the work of H. Bertil Petersson who published, in 1964, an exhaustive,
compare-and-contrast type of study about the two memoranda with parallel texts
and commentary. He admitted that the two documents were surprisingly identical,
but then zoomed in on Romania, arguing that the Matscheko
Memorandum of 24 June envisaged "important concessions" to Romania
and that, in the light of Romania's good relations with Serbia, Austria-Hungary
was hoping it could relax tensions with Serbia by enlisting Romania's help. Petersson's influential study thus concludes that Matscheko's appraisal was "obviously" a step in
the direction of developing a long-term peace policy, whereas the updated
variant taken to the Germans was its "diametrical opposite".104
This, however, is a serious blunder on the part of Petersson
who takes the pre-Sarajevo document at face value. As discussed above, Matscheko's proposed stimulants would probably have been
seen as depressants in Bucharest. Moreover, the emphatic refusal to put the
nationalities (i.e., Romanian) question in Hungary on the agenda testified to
the fact that Vienna was not serious about achieving a diplomatic recovery in
Romania. Petersson does not even attempt to show how Matchenko's "important concessions" would have
been concessions at all, let alone important ones. He is a close analysis of
two texts, but it lacks historical context. Paul Schroeder, by contrast, argues
persuasively that the idea of forcing Romania to make public its adherence to
the Triple Alliance or, should this fail, to prepare militarily for it, was
"an admission of defeat, a declaration of diplomatic bankruptcy."
Even more importantly, according to Schroeder, "the June 24 diplomatic
offensive had no chance of success, as Austrian appraisals of the situation
made clear".105 The truth is that the only meaningful diplomatic offensive
envisaged by the Matscheko paper of 24 June was aimed
at Berlin and not anywhere in the Balkans. On 26 June Hoyos
wrote privately to Pallavicini in Constantinople, informing him that a long
memorandum for Berlin had been prepared and that Berchtold
was in the meantime doing his utmost to "open the eyes" of Tschirschky, the German Ambassador.106 And it is quite
wrong of Peters son to suggest that, in trying to clear up its relationship
with Romania, the Habsburg Monarchy was seeking to establish a "secure
foundation for a long term Balkan policy."107 The Matscheko
Memorandum does not betray at any point a concern for the pursuit of a stable,
long term Balkan policy. It talks, instead, about the "important interests
of imperial defense.108
Moreover, the policy paper of 24 June assumed, to all intents and
purposes, the loss of Romania. Berchtold, it should
perhaps at this point be emphasized, had as far back as August 1913 pointed out
to FranzJoseph that the newly-established solidarity
of interests (Interessengemeinschaft) between Romania
and Serbia was "for the time being" directed against Bulgaria, but
could also be turned against Austria- Hungary 109 Nothing had happened by June
1914 to remove this anxiety. In the Matscheko paper,
the only diplomacy that could really be conducted concerned Bulgaria and
Turkey. Bringing these recent foes together seemed in 1914 to be a perfectly
feasible project. As Matscheko himself noted,
"favorable dispositions" for it existed in both states.110 In the light
of the entire tone of his Memorandum, however, this would have been no Bismarckian endeavor to prevent war but rather to prepare
for it. As for the proposal to make Bulgaria an ally of the Triple Alliance,
the main obstacle would have been in Berlin because the Kaiser took a dim view
of King Ferdinand. On the other hand, Franz Ferdinand, another sharp critic of
the Bulgarian King, had by the summer of 1914 begun to see the usefulness of
Bulgaria. In an important disclosure about what the Archduke had discussed at Konopischt with Wilhelm II, Jozsef
Galantai cites from Burian's
letter to Tisza, dated 16 June: "According to Berchtold
- and this would be an achievement - the Heir to the Throne now recognizes the
necessity that we keep Bulgaria warm and should support it politically as a
counterweight to Romania's possible trespasses in the future".111 No
wonder, then, that Matscheko had felt so free to
question Romania's loyalty.
It will be remembered, however, that Franz Ferdinand had at Konopischt also said that Russia was not to be feared
because its internal difficulties were too great to allow "an aggressive
foreign policy". Yet the Matscheko Memorandum
stands in astonishingly sharp contrast to this assessment, for it is bristling
with denouncements of aggressive Russian action already taking place in the
Balkans - a prelude to no less than a "political and economic
supremacy" that Russia was purportedly trying to achieve. Moreover,
leading Austrian authorities (Hantsch, Rauchensteiner) agree that the Memorandum had been
coordinated between Franz Ferdinand and Berchtold at
their meeting on 14 June. Is it really possible that Matscheko's
major policy review should contain an assessment so much at odds with the view
held by the Archduke? The latter was still alive and well on 24 June. If Russia
was internally too weak to afford an aggressive international posture, who
would start the European war being anticipated by Matscheko?
It has been shown above that the German Kaiser, too, did not think Russia was
yet fully prepared for war. One must therefore emphasize that this seemingly
glaring contradiction between expert and Archduke disappears if one interprets
Franz Ferdinand's words to mean that, in the event of an Austro-Hungarian
action against Serbia, Russia would not move.
The Matscheko Memorandum only makes sense if
it is seen as a discussion of issues that would become hugely important if
Austria-Hungary were to move to knock out Serbia. That, surely, had been the
main subject of discussions at Konopischt. The
telling absence of references to Serbia in the surviving records of the Konopischt meeting is matched only by Machiko's
studied inattention to this pivotal country. The elimination of Serbia - the
elephant in the room - was the unspoken assumption in Austro- Hungarian
planning just days before the Sarajevo assassination. In his important 1975
article Paul Schroeder stated as much. The Matscheko
Memorandum, he wrote, "even though it did not explicitly envision a resort
to violence to regain a lost position of strength, paved the way for it and
logically required it. Had the assassination not intervened, and had the
Austro-German political offensive been tried [i.e., in Romania] its failure
would quickly have compelled the Central Powers to seek the sort of ground for
preventive war that the assassination gave them."112 Habsburg Minister to
Bucharest Ottokar Czernin
had by early June 1914 got a pretty good idea that Austria-Hungary had set
itself on a collision course. He had by now come round to the view that the
Monarchy should try and reach a settlement with Belgrade. "If we cannot
smash Serbia," he told J.M.Baernreither,
"we should abandon all prejudices." But coming to terms with the
Serbs, he said, was a view which could get "no hearing either in Vienna or
Budapest".113
Conclusion Sarajevo 1914
The remarkable fact about Austro-Serbian relations in the months before
the Sarajevo assassination is that they were reasonably good. All tensions had
subsided with the ending of the October 1913 crisis over Albania. The murders in Sarajevo, of course, immediately
revived and dramatized the old antagonism. Yet the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand succeeded only because of the self-obsession and incompetence of
Bosnia-Herzegovina's Landeschef Oskar Potiorek (we can go in to detail about the exactly why and
how but this will take another long article). The story of 28 June 1914 is as
much about the personal aspirations of this Austrian General as it is about an
amateurish conspiracy against Franz Ferdinand. However, a dead Archduke now
became a useful tool in Vienna's pursuit of pocket imperialism in the Balkans,
expressed by Austria-Hungary's resolve to place Serbia in the dock. This
despite the fact that the Ballhausplatz had no proof of
the Serbian Government's complicity in the Sarajevo assassination and that its
own investigator Friedrich von Wiesner had actually ruled out such complicity.
For more than a hundred years, generations of historians have likewise
failed to provide any convincing evidence that official Belgrade was involved
in the conspiracy to kill Franz Ferdinand. What they have invariably pointed
to, ever since the publication of Professor Stanojevic's
unsourced pamphlet in 1923, is the involvement of Lieutenant-Colonel Apis, the head of Serbian military intelligence and also
the leader of the so-called Black Hand organization. Apis's
own confessions that he had organized the Sarajevo assassination - first
revealed in Serbian memoir literature of the early 1930's and confirmed at his
posthumous 1953 retrial - appeared to substantiate the view that official
Serbia, albeit in the shape of a rogue officer heading a secret nationalist
society, had stood behind the Sarajevo outrage.
And so the Black Hand story became the gospel truth even though Apis's various statements on the subject were contradictory
as well as generally absurd. As this book has argued, Apis
was a braggart and a liar. What is clear, however, is that he was sufficiently
alarmed before the assassination to try and stop it once he learned that some
youths loaded with weapons had been assisted to cross into Bosnia. He knew that
Serbia was not ready for another war, let alone one against Austria-Hungary
Equally important was his realization that a major complication in relations
with Austria-Hungary could fatally undermine the plan he was actively pursuing
in May-June 1914 to take power in Serbia through a military putsch and with the
cooperation of Serbia's opposition parties. The famous and to this day misunderstood
Serbian warning to Vienna in June 1914 appears to have been his work. So why,
then, if Apis had tried to prevent the assassination,
did he later brag that he had put it all together? The answer is, of course,
that a world war had intervened. In the middle of that conflict Apis happily took credit for what many Serbs viewed as the
patriotic act of assassinating an Austrian Archduke. Moreover, at his 1917
Salonika trial, he thought he would save his skin by claiming responsibility
for Sarajevo. Interestingly - and very tellingly - in his Salonika confidential
report Apis failed to mention what he privately
admitted in 1915: that he had actually taken steps to halt the assassins. In
1917, obviously, with his life at stake, Apis had to
adjust his story to fit his reduced circumstances, for it was of no advantage
to him to say, as he had been doing, that he had both organized the patriotic
work of assassinating the Archduke and also that he had tried to stop it.
In 2011 Sean McMeekin in his "The Russian Origins of the First
World War" concluded with a dose of pomposity that, since the 1920S, 'few
informed observers have doubted Apis's - and thus
semi-official Serbian - culpability in the crime. No serious historians do
today.'7 It should, however, be incumbent on serious historians to look closely
at the foundations of established versions of history, especially those set in
controversial contexts. Upon re-examination, the established thesis of Apis and the Black Hand organization as culpable for
Sarajevo is shown to be a complete falsehood. For, rather than organizing the
assassination, it is clear that Apis tried to prevent
it.
Many of the tendentious evaluations that have associated official or
semi-official Serbia with the Sarajevo assassination have then moved seamlessly
on to the outbreak of the war, equally tendentiously presenting it as an
inevitable consequence of the murders. Yet those historians who have argued in
this manner have wrongly fused the question of who bore responsibility for the
assassination with a second, separate question of what subsequently impelled
the Habsburg decision-makers to react as they did. Certainly, Vienna was not
weighing up any Black Hand linkage - if for no other reason than that no one
was claiming that this organization was involved; nor indeed was such a claim
made until long after the end of the Empire, becoming a theme only in 1923. For
this reason, the impact of Apis and his Black Hand on
the Austro- Hungarian decision for war was nil, and any opposite contention is,
in fact, a complete red herring. This matter was pointed out a long time ago
with elegant simplicity by AJ.P. Taylor: "Berchtold
determined to force war on Serbia, though he had no proof of Serbian complicity
and never found any ... The later evidence of Serbian complicity, even if
accepted, is therefore irrelevant to the judgment of Berchtold's
policy."
Yet some historians are stubbornly clinging to the thesis about Serbia's
culpability for the assassination which they then use to account for Habsburg
decision-making in July 1914. In a major recent study of the Austro-Hungarian
General Staff, Gunther Kronenbitter explains Vienna's
decision for war on the grounds of Serbia supposedly being a rogue state in the
existing international system: "Serbia", he writes, "challenged
the existential basis of the Habsburg Empire because, with regard to the
Serbian propaganda, it dodged an interstate resolution. The Belgrade Government
was not ready to accept responsibility for the nationalist underground." Kronenbitter has apparently not studied the Serbian reply
to the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum, nor does he seem aware of Berchtold's private admission in July 1914 of the
difficulty of finding any Great Serbian propaganda material aimed against the
Monarchy. Count Hoyos's own post-war confession that
he did not, in July 1914, believe Belgrade guilty of the assassination, taken
together with Serbia being cleared by Vienna's own investigator at the time,
show that the Ballhausplatz knew Serbia's Government
was innocent of assassinating the Archduke, and indeed of spreading propaganda.
Thus Austria- Hungary was not acting on a misplaced assumption of Serbian
guilt, but rather on the basis of its wider strategic self-interest. Its
regional strategic ambition is clearly revealed in, among other documents,
Franz Joseph's handwritten letter to Wilhelm II,
delivered by Hoyos on 5 July 1914.
Equally noteworthy has been the general inability of Vienna-focused
historians to distinguish between 'South Slav' and 'Great Serbian' concepts.
The two are normally lumped together, as indeed they were at the Ballhausplatz. Yet there was not a great deal of interest
in Serbia for the South Slav idea - this was a Croat
nationalist construct which had evolved into a demand for Trialism, a
different name for Great Croatia. To be sure, some Serbian intellectuals, such
as Skerlic and Cvijic, were
proponents of Yugoslav unity - though not under a Habsburg roof Serbian
politicians, on the other hand, were interested in a Great Serbia. But
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the main building block of such a state, looked
unattainable to them. Therefore, Serbian policy had focused on Kosovo and
Macedonia long before the annexation, and it continued on that course after the
annexation. Pasic was forever telling his Austro-Hungarian interlocutors that
Serbia's perspective 'lay in the south' and that there was nothing it was hoping
for in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The South Slav issue, in truth, was entirely a
domestic Habsburg affair.
The Yugoslav ideology that reached Gavrilo Princip and his friends in
Sarajevo did not come from Serbia. It was native to Austria and Hungary or, to
be more precise, to their provinces of Dalmatia and Croatia. Representing a new
variant of Yugoslavism, one that began to be
associated with Croat students from the mid-1890's onward, it had nothing to do
with Trialism or Great Croatia. It was a "nationalist and
revolutionary" movement asserting the existence of a single Serbo-Croat
nation and calling for the overthrow of the Monarchy Maintained by Hungarian
misrule in Croatia and led by such able agitators as Tartaglia and Ujevic, it attracted the support of both Croat and Serb
students in Croatia and, more importantly, it had a very significant effect on
high school students in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "Young Bosnia" was born
in 1912 of a student riot in Sarajevo that had been organized as a manifestation
of solidarity with students in Croatia. Princip, one of the most active
participants in the riot, was of Serbian birth, but to describe him, as is so
often the case, as a "Serbian nationalist" is to impute to him the
antithesis of his actual political orientation. Princip and his fellow
assassins, with one exception, were believers in Serbo-Croat unity and would
actually call themselves "nationalists", meaning by this
"Serbo-Croats" or "Yugoslavs". The exception was the one
Muslim in their number, M. Mehmedbašić, whose
loyalties were pro-Serbian rather than Yugoslavian. Otherwise, they were South
Slav nationalists and Yugoslavs were to them a single nation that needed its
state - but not within the Habsburg Monarchy.
The rationale for war against Serbia as a means of mending and
reinvigorating the Empire internally runs like a red thread through the
reasoning of Habsburg officialdom regarding the South Slav question. Important
as this rationale is in the context of 1914, however, this book has also
pointed out the wider regional considerations that guided Vienna's decision for
war. On three occasions in 1912-1913 Austria-Hungary was on the brink of
military intervention against Serbia over matters (in Albania) which had
nothing to do with any South Slav issues - but had everything to do with
projecting its Great Power status. It was only a question of time before Berchtold, Conrad and, indeed, Franz Ferdinand decided to
strike out. In July 1914, the necessity to act appeared all the more urgent
because of the deterioration in the regional situation. In particular,
Romania's apparent defection from the Triple Alliance set the alarm bells
ringing in both Vienna and Budapest. Seldom had a little war looked more
enticing: Serbia would basically disappear, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania would
all be secured, and Russia would be dislodged from the region. Provided that
Germany could ward Russia off, this war in the Balkans could be a game changer
for the long-suffering Habsburg Empire. The strategy was risky, but quite irresistible.
Of course, it all ended with the break-up of the old Monarchy The
Austrian writer Anton Mayr-Harting opined that this
was the predictable outcome. There is a sense in which, however, the Empire
lived on even after 1918, for at the conclusion of the Great War the Serbs
created a large, multi-national "Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes" - instead of setting up a nationally compact Great Serbia, which
would have been an equitable and befitting end result of their enormous blood
sacrifice since 1912. It was to prove the costliest mistake in their history.
There is a tendency in Western writings to see the new state, ruled from
Belgrade, as having in effect been a Great Serbia. But it was nothing of the
kind. It inherited from Austria-Hungary the same problem that had plagued that
empire: disaffected nationalism, in this case the Croat variety. In 1929, King
Alexander changed the name of the country into 'Yugoslavia'. But no amount of
camouflage could compensate for the absence of unity. In 1941, when Hitler
invaded, Yugoslavia collapsed like a house of cards. Interestingly, in the
horrendously bloody civil war of 1941-1945 that ensued, the opposing royalist Cetnik and the communist Partisan forces both contained
units named "Gavrilo Princip."
In communist Yugoslavia nations and national minorities were sheltered
and even pampered in a laudable federal system, and formerly non-recognized
national groups became recognized nations. Soon after the death of its dictator
Marshal Josip Broz Tito, however, Yugoslavia entered a period of vicious
nationalist strife and then fragmented again in conditions of escalating
violence. This time it would not be resurrected. One wonders how long a
reformed, federated Habsburg state would have lasted had it ever been created
along the national principle and even abstained from pursuing Balkan hegemony.
In 1948, writing about the new Yugoslavia towards the end of his study of the
Habsburg Monarchy, AJ.P. Taylor dwelt on the subject of common loyalty and
reflected on what could appease national conflicts. He could not have foreseen
at the time just how right he would turn out to be when he described Tito as
"the last of the Habsburgs."
More on this when we look at
the famous 1914 "July Days" in part two of this extensive case study.
95. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9627, memorandum Flotow; May 1914 - no exact date is
given.
96. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9627.
97. F. R. Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajevo,1972, p.368; Alma Hannig, Austro- Hungarian foreign policy and the Balkan
Wars, pp.240-241.
98. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9918, memorandum Matscheko.
The editors of ÖUA point out that the memorandum carries no date, but
stipulates "vol 24. Juni", i.e., before 24
June.
99. Paul Schroeder, Romania and the Great Powers before 1914, Revue roumaine d'histoire, 14,1975,
pp.45-46.
100. ÖUA, vol.7, no.8945, private letter Haymerle
to Berchtold, I November 1913; no.8961, private
letter Hoyos to Haymerle, 6
November 1913.
101. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9918, memorandum Matscheko.
A much abridged version of the Matscheko Memorandum is
provided in English translation in Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajevo, pp.443-447.
102. Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers, p.115.
103. ÖUA, vol.8, appendix to no.9984.
104. H. Bertil A.
Petersson, Das osterreichischungarische Memorandum an
Deutschland vom 5. JuIi 1914, Scandia, vol.30, no.1, 1964, pp.145, 157, 159
and 173.
105. Paul W. Schroeder, Romania and the Great Powers before 1914, Revue Roumaine d'Histoire, XIV, 1,1975,
p.45.
106. ÖUA, vol.8,
no.9926.
107. HBA Petersson, Das
österreichisch-ungarische Memorandum, P.154.
108. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9918. memorandum Matscheko.
109. ÖUA, vol.7, no.8498, address Berchtold to
Franz Joseph, 28 August, 1913
110. ÖUA, vol.8, no.9918, memorandum Matscheko.
111. Cited
in Jozsef Galantai, Die Österreichisch Ungarische
Monarchie und der Weltkrieg,1979, p.202.
112. Schroeder, Romania and the Great Powers before 1914, p.46.
113. Josef M. Baernreither, Fragments of a
Political Diary,1930, p.302.
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