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British Entry Into World War I

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Imperial Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188914672


Did the Germans have reason to doubt that the British would declare war in 1914?

Viewpoint: Yes. The British leadership was highly fragmented and reluctantly went to war only after it identified specific threats from Germany.

Viewpoint: No. British entry into World War I was inevitable, especially after Germany invaded Belgium, because Britain could not permit the domination of the continental Channel ports by any other nation.

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As the nations of Europe moved toward war in the summer of 1914, one of the burning questions was whether Britain would enter the fray. Despite its growing closeness to France and Russia in the decade before the war, Britain had avoided firm alliance commitments to both powers. Although its relations with Germany had become strained, a series of diplomatic visits and talks suggested that these tensions might be ameliorated. Observers could only speculate what the British might do.
Britain entered World War I on 4 August 1914 after Germany failed to concede to an ultimatum and withdraw its forces from neutral Belgium, which it had invaded as part of its strategy to fight France. Just as contemporary Europeans speculated about the possibility of British involvement, historians have wondered about its probability. One argument suggests that it was unavoidable. Although London's strategic commitments appeared tenuous, its alienation from Germany was so pronounced and its relationship with its wartime allies so developed that it would go to war in any case. Allowing Germany to defeat France and Russia would be tantamount to conceding the hegemonic domination of Europe to one power, a development against which Britain had been willing to fight for centuries.
Yet, revisionists argue that the British decision to enter the war was not predetermined. Britain's talks with Germany portended a peaceful resolution of the two nations' strategic differences, one that would have mirrored earlier talks with Japan, France, and Russia. Even as London considered entering the war, several high-level officials entertained major doubts, and foreign diplomats were until the last minute guessing about Britain's course. The debate, which continues in this chapter, gives fascinating insight into how nations make the decision to go to war.



Viewpoint: Yes. The British leadership was highly fragmented and reluctantly went to war only after it identified specific threats from Germany.

Great Britain's intervention in World War I (1914-1918) was hardly inevitable. In August 1914 Britain was not bound specifically by an alliance to defend France, nor was there an outcry to defend the 1839 treaty defining Belgium as neutral. Britain's entente with France, reached in 1904, had been organized as a colonial deal rather than as a binding encirclement of Germany, a country with which Britain had a strong cultural affinity and therefore had little reason to fear. Additionally, there were major factions within the governing Liberal Party, and within the cabinet itself, which opposed intervention. Even after its formal declaration of war, the British government still had the option to forgo an expeditionary force and rely on the Royal Navy to enforce a blockade rather than commit troops to the European continent.

The Entente Cordiale with France was not made because of a threat from Germany. Rather, Britain identified France as its primary rival in the colonial theater and as the European power that most threatened the far-flung British Empire. In particular, the French were in a position to recognize British possession of Egypt, a long-standing point of contention, and to work out spheres of influence in North Africa. The British government had vivid memories of the threat that the French could pose as a rival for overseas resources and could point to the recent Fashoda Incident (1898) as a reason to coordinate military and diplomatic action with France.

The Entente offered the additional bonus of leverage with the Russian Empire, with which France had forged diplomatic and financial ties. Britain's defensive alliance with Japan (1902) made it possible to deal with the Russians in the Pacific, as well as in their traditional area of conflict, Central Asia. Far from an encirclement of the Germans, Britain aimed to safeguard the British Empire though regularized relations with France and Russia.

Although Anglo-German diplomatic proposals had failed, it was not because of a deep or lasting enmity. The Germans were not an advantageous ally for a country whose weak points were scattered around the globe--Germany's formidable army would be of little use in India, Canada, or the Caribbean, while Britain's great navy had little to offer a Central European land power. Germany had lost the naval race by 1912, and the rivalry spawned by naval construction had lost its potency as a real military threat. Britain's borders did not figure in German war planning--despite paranoid newspaper serials, the Germans did not plan a cross-Channel invasion and had little interest in cutting ties that had bound the two countries together for three centuries.

Since 1714 the British monarchy had been almost entirely German by blood, and the reigning dynasty had continued to marry its children into the princely houses of Germany. The aristocracy and upper middle classes had followed this pattern, and many families were part of an extended Anglo-German elite. Examples included Robert (von) Ranke Graves, a great-nephew of the German historian, and popular authors such as Australian-born Elizabeth von Arnim Russell (widow of a German count and wife of Earl Russell). In the nineteenth-century world of social Darwinism the Germans and the British felt themselves closely connected by their shared Germanic ancestry. The musical compositions of Richard Wagner, George Frideric Handel, and Johannes Brahms were played during the proms season of 1914; German students flocked to Oxford on Rhodes scholarships until 1916; and many educated Britons studied in Germany.

If the two nations could not benefit from a formal alliance, they certainly could from financial cooperation. Multinational banking families such as the Warburgs and Rothschilds aided Anglo-German business in profitable investment in Chinese railroads and Venezuelan oil. Britain had a great deal to gain from friendly cooperation with Germany in the Near East, using German influence in the crumbling Ottoman Empire and its Berlin-to-Baghdad railway project to deal more easily in areas such as Mosul and the Suez Canal zone.

Britain's experience in the Boer War (1899-1902) had been shocking, expensive, and unpleasant. The British were not a nation anxious to engage in another war--even promilitary projects such as Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts had limited success in recruiting the next generation of soldiers before 1914. The British Army, to keep its place in competition with the Royal Navy, engaged in war planning with the French and, having lost them as a primary enemy, produced elaborate anti-German scenarios, but these were cautious and dwelled on the potential casualties, expense, and unpopularity of a European war. Even Belgium, whose neutrality became a cause célèbre, had little pull on British sympathy, since the army's planning also contained a violation of Belgium's borders to make their hypothetical stand on the French frontier.

Liberal noninterventionists, including Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, pointed out that Britain had bigger priorities in pacifying Ulster, confronting women's suffrage demands, and finding funds for increased social programs than in settling European border disputes. Labour Party leaders, such as James Keir Hardie and Ramsey MacDonald, had strong ties to the German Social Democrats and engaged in internationalist talks focusing on the power of the working classes to stop any European war. Influential socialists, including members of the prominent Fabian Society, spent much of the summer of 1914 touring Germany and making favorable comparisons between the German social welfare system and the one they pushed for in Great Britain.

During the war crisis of July-August 1914, pro-French cabinet members, led by Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey, muddled the position of Great Britain so badly that none of the other powers, nor many Britons, knew where the British government stood on intervention. Grey had to tell the House of Commons that the Entente did not require Britain to aid France, even while he warned the German and Austrian ambassadors that Britain might yet enter the conflict if no diplomatic solution could be found. Had the position been strongly stated for intervention, the Central Powers might have been warned off, but as it stood, the Germans gambled that Britain would stay out of the war. France had fallen to the Germans before, in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), and the world had not come to an end. Nor had there been a one-power Europe created to threaten Britain. If Britain truly felt threatened, it had unquestionably the most powerful navy on earth and could easily use it without committing men to European fighting.

Ultimately, it was this survival of France as an independent power that formed the most convincing argument for men such as Grey, who labored through the first days of August to swing the cabinet to commit Britain to intervention and a declaration of war. If Germany won without Britain as an ally, it would be contemptuous in victory. If France lost without British help, it would be unforgiving in defeat. If France successfully defended itself without British aid, it might renounce the Entente and work against British interests. Either way, Britain's long-term interests and reputation as a great power would suffer. In one of the most tragic decisions of British history the Asquith government went to war against Germany, not because of territorial threats, national enmity, a legal commitment to France, or even a serious rivalry, but because Great Britain's reputation was at stake in the aftermath of whatever came out of the declaration of hostilities.

In retrospect British politicians justified the hideous losses of World War I as an unavoidable commitment to an ally, as a crusade against the unspeakable "Hun," or as a response to Germany's aggression against neutral Belgium. In early August 1914 none of these explanations was true. Britain, with little at stake in a continental war, might have stood aside and let the situation resolve itself, as had the Franco-Prussian War and the wars for German and Italian unification. Instead, for the sake of "interests," namely the reputation of Britain as a European and world power, she hitched herself to the charnel wagon of World War I.

-- Margaret Sankey, Minnesota State University, Moorhead


Viewpoint: No. British entry into World War I was inevitable, especially after Germany invaded Belgium, because Britain could not permit the domination of the continental Channel ports by any other nation.

The nineteenth-century British concept of "splendid isolation" proved to be an effective tool for British economic, military, and political security. As the twentieth century emerged, however, the prospect of maintaining this isolation, even with less splendor, appeared increasingly difficult. British involvement in the Fashoda Incident (1898), Boer War (1899-1902), and other late-nineteenth-century military and diplomatic confrontations evidenced the problems with British isolationism. As the twentieth century commenced, Britain began to explore opportunities for alliances and agreements, first and unsuccessfully with Germany, and then successfully with Japan (1902), France (1904), and finally Russia (1907). Consequently, by the conclusion of the first decade of the twentieth century any contention that Britain had maintained its isolation was invalid. Departure from this isolation emphasized the economic and strategic importance of maintaining friendly relations with their closest neighbors on the Continent. Consequently, British interests in Europe prohibited London from considering nonparticipation in a general European war; any geopolitical reordering of the Continent involved British national security and the security of the British Empire.

Although the British entered World War I (1914-1918) because of strategic concerns, some historians contend that British participation resulted from threats they associated with Germany: specifically, long-term Anglo-German commercial and military competition. This argument is seductive because of the frequent antagonism that defined Anglo-German relations during the early twentieth century. The launching of the HMS Dreadnought in 1906 catalyzed this friction, resulting in a naval arms race and increased bellicosity; of the many conflicts between these two states this rivalry offered the foremost prospect for war. Yet, this rivalry started no later than 1906, fully eight years before World War I, and it never produced a martial conflict. Thus, while assertions that the Anglo-German naval rivalry of the early twentieth century produced discord between these two powers are correct, contentions that it provided sufficient cause for either party to declare war are erroneous.

The second important historical axiom is the belief that the British entered the war because of increasing German economic competition. The historic importance of international trade to the British is well known, and in the twentieth century the Germans threatened components of this economic staple. While concerns over economic discord traditionally dominated discussions of Anglo-German commercial relations during the early twentieth century, increased commercial cooperation between Britain and Germany largely compensated for this friction. In fact, between 1905 and 1914 Britain and Germany enjoyed a reciprocally profitable trade. British bankers and insurers provided financing and protection for many, possibly most, of the German merchant marine, and German exports to Britain exceeded those of both France and Russia. Further, the growing dependence in both these countries on international commercial trade illustrated the economic incentive to avoid war. This incentive became more important with the resolution of established conflicts, such as the completion of the Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad, in the year preceding the war. Thus, the economic relationship between Britain and Germany during the early twentieth century should not be understood as a threat that provided a spur for the British to declare war but instead as a tool that worked against increased hostility between these two powers.

In spite of the series of Anglo-German conflicts, none of these tensions was present when the war started on 1 August 1914. Instead, the assassination of Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo precipitated the war (which the British did not officially join until three days later). Although the British and Germans had different and sometimes conflicting ambitions in the Near East, especially in the Ottoman Empire, this assassination did not have to result in conflict between Britain and Germany. In fact, in 1912-1913 these two countries cooperated in peacefully concluding the brief Balkan wars. The lack of any traditional Anglo-German conflict on 1 August, or even in the interim period before Britain declared war, permits the obvious deduction that the British decision to enter World War I was not the product of long-standing antagonism with Germany but something else.

The increasingly cordial Anglo-German relations produced one of the most noteworthy, and ultimately misguided, elements in German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg's strategic planning. He believed that if Britain could be convinced that German military action was defensive, British neutrality in a broad European war could be assured; such efforts extended at least until February 1912. Although the Germans never received a promise of neutrality, they believed that their relations with Britain were sufficiently good that this policy was viable. If Anglo-German commercial and naval antagonisms were insufficient to bring about a war, if the relative interests of the two powers were sufficiently coordinated that they could work for peace in the Balkans only a year before the start of World War I, and if the Germans believed that the tension between themselves and the British was sufficiently minimal that the British would avoid conflict with Germany, then why did these two powers go to war in 1914?

The single most important explanation for why the British entered World War I is that they could not afford to permit the entire European continent, or even just the western half, specifically the Channel ports, to fall under the dominion of one country. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's Continental System, implemented just over a century before the start of World War I, reminded the British of the necessity and fragility of trade with the Continent. The Channel ports represented to the British the most important strategic locations in Europe. Should these ports fall under German dominion, not only would German dreadnoughts have greater access to the sea but Britain also could be subjected to a blockade and even invasion. The prospect of a victorious attack on France and Belgium by any third power required British intervention.

Diplomatic exchanges among Britain, Germany, Russia, and France in July 1914 indicated that if the Austro-Serbian conflict resulted in war, it would not remain localized. Moreover, it was well known that should a European war materialize, Germany would invade France at once, probably through Belgium, in order to handle one front presented by the Franco-Russian alliance. This possibility compelled British participation to protect the Channel ports. This understanding was enhanced by the assumption that should the Central Powers be victorious, the Germans would appropriate Belgian and French territories, probably including the Channel ports. If for no other reason than British concerns for their own security (especially as related to the Channel ports), the war obliged British participation.

Although British security concerns mandated their participation in the pending war, British diplomats endeavored to avoid a conflict. During July 1914 the British initiated no less than four different offers for mediation as alternatives to war. None of these appeals succeeded in convincing the Germans to pressure the Austrians to seek anything but a military solution to the Serbian problem. Instead of embracing British offers for mediation, the Germans sought British promises for neutrality in the event of a general European war.

The considerable British efforts to secure a mediated peace failed, and on 1 August 1914 World War I started with a German declaration of war against Russia. The three-day delay in Britain's joining the war has permitted many to argue British indecisiveness. Such a conclusion is not valid, and when put into historical context, the British leadership exhibits comparatively little apprehension. Most countries did not declare war on 1 August or even the next day. The Germans presented the Belgian king with an ultimatum on 2 August requiring the latter to permit German troops to cross his country. Even with this German demand to cross Belgium, neither the French nor the British declared war; finally, on 3 August, facing the reality of a German invasion and honoring their secret agreement with Russia, the French entered the war, but only after Germany declared war on them. When the German ultimatum to Belgium expired on 4 August without the Belgians relenting, the Germans invaded Belgium, providing the pretext for a British declaration of war. The British decision to wait to declare war made them the last major European participant to enter the war, but only by hours. Why has this decision produced accusations of British indecisiveness and not French indecisiveness? Any hope that the British would remain neutral in a broad European war was misguided and should have been evident from the diplomatic correspondence from July 1914. The decision to delay a declaration of war until Germany invaded Belgium illustrated an effort to bolster domestic support and was not governmental indecisiveness.

The British decision to wait until Germany invaded Belgium was entirely political. The Germans had already received notification from the British that any invasion of Serbia would result in a continental war that would necessitate British participation, but the decision to delay permitted the British to enter the war with both just cause and unity at home. Although ordinary people greeted the declaration of war with cheers, members of the government were more alarmed and consequently more somber. While most of the cabinet supported Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in the declaration of war, two members resigned in protest. Though the decision was not unanimous, the British, both elite and ordinary citizens, fully supported the government's decision.

Anglo-German antagonisms during the early twentieth century represented little more than the traditional and expected struggle between states with competing interests. None of these antagonisms was sufficient for either side to declare war. Instead, good relations were important to the economic capabilities of the two countries. While antagonisms existed, they were insufficient causes for the British declaration of war. Instead, Britain could not permit the Channel ports to fall under the influence of one power and therefore could not have assumed a passive position in a broad European war.

-- Niles Illich, Texas A&M University


WHO BEGAN IT?

Below is the British government's response in 1914 to the German assertion that Russia was to blame for starting World War I:

First, it is difficult enough to tell "who began it" when the negotiations are spread over months, but it is practically impossible to do so when, as here, it is a question of hours.

The actual mobilization measures are taken in the midst of a cloud of accusations and threats, and it is impossible to separate cause from effect. Secondly, in any attempt to state the facts, the minor accusations and innuendoes must be discarded as of slight importance, except as a guide to the psychology of the moment.

The same may be said of rumours of violations of frontier. They have their value, but to put them forward, as does the German and Austrian correspondence, as the actual ground for the commencement of hostilities is to assume the impossible position that the fate of nations is subject to the reported action of a roving patrol. A marked insistence on such reports, as in the German Book, shows a poor appreciation of the value of the evidence.

Thirdly, mobilization "orders" are not mobilization. The mobilization systems of different countries are radically different; the precise nature of those systems, the lines of the railways and a hundred other points must be taken into consideration in judging mobilization measures, and any statement which ignores these factors is a mere bid for uninformed public opinion.

The hard fact that though Germany only proclaimed "Kriegsgefalzrzustand" on July 31st and mobilization on August 1st, to take effect on August 2nd, the German troops were across the Luxemburg frontier at dawn on August 2nd, will probably be judged to be historical evidence of far more value than any isolated reports received during the crisis.

As to Russian mobilization, it was fully realized in Germany that the Russian system was so complicated as to make it difficult to distinguish the localities really affected by mobilization.

Germany accuses Russia of mobilizing against Germany, not Austria, because she is reported to be mobilizing at Vilna and Warsaw, but both those towns are nearer to the Galician frontier than Prague is to the Serbian frontier, and Austria was reported to be mobilizing at Prague four days before she declared to Russia that she was only mobilizing against Serbia. The bare facts are of very slight value as evidence without a knowledge of the points already mentioned.

If the charges as to the priority of Russian mobilization are examined in the light of these considerations, it will be admitted that the evidence for those charges is remarkably slight, and that, given the admitted extreme slowness of Russian, and the extreme rapidity of German, mobilization, a fact which is frequently alluded to in the correspondence, there is no indication in favour of, and an overwhelming presumption against, the theory that the Russian measures were further advanced than the German when war was declared on August 1st.

The charge that the Czar's telegram of July 31st was misleading, and that the mobilization orders issued about the time of its dispatch destroyed the effect of sincere efforts then being made by Germany to mediate between Russia and Austria, is also unestablished.

In the first place, a glance at the Czar's telegram is sufficient to show that this charge is, to put it frankly, of the flimsiest character. His Majesty gave his "solemn word" that, while it was "technically impossible to discontinue our military preparations," the Russian troops would "undertake no provocative action" "as long as the negotiations between Austria and Serbia continue."

There was no promise not to mobilize; there was nothing but a statement which is almost word for word the same as that contained in the German Emperor's telegram to King George twenty-four hours later--the statement that, under certain circumstances, mobilization would not be converted into hostilities.

As a matter of fact, a somewhat unscrupulous use, in effect though perhaps not in intention, has been made of the Czar's telegrams to substantiate the theory of "betrayal."

Take for instance the German Chancellor's statement on July 31st (British Book, No. 108), that "the news of the active preparations on the Russo-German frontier had reached him just when the Czar had appealed to the Emperor, in the name of their old friendship, to mediate at Vienna, and when the Emperor was actually conforming to that request."

The telegram referred to must be that of July 29th (German Book, No. 21), since this is the only one which mentions "old friendship"; but this telegram, though it asks the Emperor to restrain Austria, also says in so many words that popular opinion in Russia would soon force measures which would lead to war.

Source: "British Reaction to Official Statement of the German Government: 'How Russia Betrayed Germany's Confidence,'" in Source Records of the Great War, volume 2, edited by Charles F. Horne (New York: National Alumni, 1923), FirstWorldWar.com http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/britishreactiontogermanstatement.htm.

FURTHER READINGS


References


J. M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War 1914-1918 (London & New York: Arnold, 1989).

John Charmley, Splendid Isolation?: Britain, the Balance of Power, and the Origins of the First World War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999).

Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Bentley B. Gilbert, Britain, 1914-1945: The Aftermath of Power (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995).

Cameron Hazlehurst, Politicians at War, July 1914 to May 1915: A Prologue to the Triumph of Lloyd George (London: Cape, 1971).

Paul Johnson, The Offshore Islanders (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972).

J. S. McDermott, "The Revolution in British Military Thinking from the Boer War to the Morocco Crisis," in The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914, edited by Paul Kennedy (London & Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1979), pp. 99-117.

Zara S. Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1977).

John Turner, British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915-1918 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

Keith M. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904-1914 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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