Munich and The System of German Alliances

I came to Munich in the spring of 1912.

Apart from my professional work, I was most interested in the study of current political events, particularly those on foreign relations.

Ever since my Austrian days, I had considered the German policy of alliances to be utterly wrong.

In Vienna I assumed, in order to excuse the German mistake, that Berlin authorities knew how weak and unreliable their ally would be when faced with realities.

Berlin thought that they should support the policy of alliances which Bismarck had initiated.

But my contact with the people soon taught me, to my horror, that my assumptions were wrong.

I was amazed to find everywhere, even in circles otherwise well informed, that nobody knew the real character of the Habsburg Monarchy.

The common people had an illusion that the Austrian ally was a Power which would would rally its manpower in the hour of need.

They did not realize that:

• Austria had ceased to be a German State
• the conditions within the Austrian Empire were steadily pushing it to disaster.

At that time I knew the condition of affairs in the Austrian State better than the professional diplomats.

Even while in Vienna I used to be annoyed by the discrepancy between the speeches of the official statesmen and the contents of the Viennese Press.

But one encountered an utterly different state of things on leaving Vienna, or rather German-Austria, and coming into the Slav provinces.

It needed only a glance at the Prague newspapers in order to see how the whole exalted hocus-pocus of the Triple Alliance was judged from there.

In Prague, there was nothing but gibes and sneers for that masterpiece of statesmanship.

Even in the piping times of peace, when the two emperors kissed each other on the brow in token of friendship, those papers did not cloak their belief that the alliance would be liquidated the moment a first attempt was made to bring it down from the shimmering glory of a Nibelungen ideal to the plane of practical affairs.

Great indignation was aroused a few years later, when the alliances were put to the first practical test.

Italy withdrew from the Triple Alliance, leaving the other two members to march by themselves. But she even joined their enemies.

In Austria only the Habsburgs and the German-Austrians supported the alliance. The Habsburgs did so from shrewd calculation of their own interests and from necessity.

The Germans did it out of good faith and political ignorance.

They acted in good faith inasmuch as they believed that by establishing the Triple Alliance they were doing a great service to the German Empire and were thus helping to strengthen it and consolidate its defence.

They showed their political ignorance, however, in holding such ideas, because, instead of helping the German Empire they really chained it to a moribund State which might bring its associate into the grave with itself; and, above all, by championing this alliance they fell more and more a prey to the Habsburg policy of de-Germanization.

For the alliance gave the Habsburgs good grounds for believing that the German Empire would not interfere in their domestic affairs and thus they were in a position to carry into effect, with more ease and less risk, their domestic policy of gradually eliminating the German element.

Not only could the ‘objectiveness’ of the German Government be counted upon, and thus there need be no fear of protest from that quarter, but one could always remind the German-Austrians of the alliance and thus silence them in case they should ever object to the reprehensible means that were being employed to establish a Slav hegemony in the Dual Monarchy.

What could the German-Austrians do, when the people of the German Empire itself had openly proclaimed their trust and confidence in the Habsburg régime?

Should they resist, and thus be branded openly before their kinsfolk in the REICH as traitors to their own national interests? They, who for so many decades had sacrificed so much for the sake of their German tradition!

Once the influence of the Germans in Austria had been wiped out, what then would be the value of the alliance? If the Triple Alliance were to be advantageous to Germany, was it not a necessary condition that the predominance of the German element in Austria should be maintained? Or did anyone really believe that Germany could continue to be the ally of a Habsburg Empire under the hegemony of the Slavs?

Insane was:

• the official attitude of German diplomacy
• the general public’s attitude towards internal problems affecting Austria

On the alliance, as on a solid foundation, they grounded the security and future existence of a nation of 70 millions.

They allowed their partner to continue his policy of undermining the sole foundation of that alliance methodically and resolutely, from year to year. A day must come when nothing but a formal contract with Viennese diplomats would be left. The alliance itself, as an effective support, would be lost to Germany.

As far as concerned Italy, such had been the case from the outset.

If people in Germany had studied history and the psychology of nations a little more carefully not one of them could have believed for a single hour that the Quirinal and the Viennese Hofburg could ever stand shoulder to shoulder on a common battle front.

Italy would have exploded like a volcano if any Italian government had dared to send a single Italian soldier to fight for the Habsburg State. So fanatically hated was this State that the Italians could stand in no other relation to it on a battle front except as enemies.

More than once in Vienna I have witnessed profound hatred which ‘allied’ the Italian to the Austrian State.

The crimes which the House of Habsburg committed against Italian freedom and independence during several centuries were too grave to be forgiven, even with the best of goodwill.

But this goodwill did not exist, either among the rank and file of the population or in the government. Therefore for Italy there were only two ways of co-existing with Austria–alliance or war. By choosing the first it was possible to prepare leisurely for the second.

Especially since relations between Russia and Austria tended more and more towards the arbitrament of war, the German policy of alliances was as senseless as it was dangerous. Here was a classical instance which demonstrated the lack of any broad or logical lines of thought.

But what was the reason for forming the alliance at all? It could not have been other than the wish to secure the future of the REICH better than if it were to depend exclusively on its own resources. But the future of the REICH could not have meant anything else than the problem of securing the means of existence for the German people.

What form shall the life of the nation assume in the near future–that is to say within such a period as we can forecast?

And by what means can the necessary foundation and security be guaranteed for this development within the framework of the general distribution of power among the European nations?

A clear analysis of the principles on which the foreign policy of German statecraft were to be based should have led to the following conclusions in the next part.