Berlin

On August 1, as the kaiser’s government met in the Royal Palace to debate its course of action if Russia refused to rescind its mobilization order, a crowd gathered outside and serenaded the ministers with patriotic songs, accompanied by the band of the Elisabeth Regiment. “The enthusiasm knew no bounds,” cabled the Berlin correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung

at 1:55 P.M., “and when as a finale the united will of the masses elicited the Pariser Einzugsmarsch

[a march celebrating Germany’s entry into Paris in 1871] the enthusiasm reached its high point.” At about 5:30 P.M. a car rushed out with a General Staff officer inside who shouted one word: “mobilization!” The mob responded with more singing and cries of “We want the kaiser!” Shortly thereafter Wile appeared on a balcony and declared:

From the depths of my heart I thank you for the expressions of your love, of your faithfulness. In the battle now lying ahead of us, I recognize in my Volk

no more parties. Among us there are only Germans, and if some of the parties in the course of past differences turned against me, I forgive them all. All that now matters is that we stand together like brothers, and then God will help the German sword to victory.

That evening and the following day nationalist Berliners celebrated the German mobilization with an enormous party. Pubs and beer gardens stayed open all night to accommodate the patriotic revelers, mostly young middle-class men and their girls. Local churches performed some 2,000 emergency marriages for couples soon to be separated by duty at the front. Taking their cue from the kaiser, previously disaffected groups like homosexual rights campaigners and women’s franchise crusaders vowed to support the nationalist cause. So did the Association of German Jews, which proclaimed that every German Jew was “ready to sacrifice all the property and blood demanded by duty.”

As Germany was now at war with Russia, St. Petersburg’s ambassador to Berlin hastened to leave the German capital on August 2. The American ambassador, James W. Gerard, lent his Russian colleague his car for the trip from the Russian embassy to the railway station. As soon as the car pulled out a mob surrounded it and tried to overturn it. People jumped on the running board and struck the ambassador and his family with sticks. Although the ambassadorial party eventually made it to the station, their treatment was an ugly example of the xenophobic frenzy awakened by the prospect of war.

Germany’s initial mobilization was aimed only at Russia, but since that nation was deemed too inefficient and backward to mount a quick assault on the Reich, Berlin’s battle order, the famous Schlieffen Plan, called for a rapid conquest of France before St. Petersburg could get its military “steamroller” moving. The kaiser summed up this strategy succinctly: “Paris for lunch, dinner in St. Petersburg.” To achieve this goal Germany would have to slash toward Paris through Belgium, whose neutrality was guaranteed by Great Britain. On August 1 Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, hinted that London might remain neutral if Germany made no military moves against France or Belgium. The kaiser, ever hopeful of an accommodation with Britain, was prepared to change course and confine opening operations to Russia, but his generals insisted that the Schlieffen Plan could not be altered without producing total chaos. Their insistence upon placing military tactics above questions of statecraft provided a vivid confirmation of Clausewitz’s dictum that war is too important to be left to the generals. Taking France’s mobilization on August 2 as a casus belli, Germany declared war the following day. At the same time, Berlin chose to ignore a last-minute British ultimatum demanding Germany’s respect for Belgian neutrality. As of midnight on August 4, the Reich was also at war with Britain.