Prelude to the Great War

[Russia] is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…

–        Winston Churchill, October 1939

While this quote is taken from a time 25 years after the beginning of the Great War, it is certainly applicable to the Russia of 1914 as well….

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

Buchlau

In September 1908 at the Austrian foreign minister’s castle in Buchlau, Russian foreign minister Alexander Izvolski stepped into it; best to simply describe the aftermath, as who agreed to what is somewhat murky:

Russia would look benignly on the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Dual Monarchy…. In return, Vienna would support Russia’s attempt to seek a new international agreement opening the [Turkish] Straits to its warships.

A Russian defeat would be catastrophic:

“…Russia will be flung into a hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be foreseen.”

Having seen the strikes and revolutionary fervor as a result of Russia’s war with (and defeat by) Japan in 1905, Durnovo was not the only voice making this case – only the last.

In the end, fortune smiled on Durnovo; he avoided the violent fate reserved for several of his peers and successors.  From the previously cited Wikipedia article:

Pyotr Durnovo died in September 1915 at his villa in Petrograd. He was the last Russian Imperial Minister of Interior to die from natural causes. His six successors were all assassinated, or murdered during the Red Terror.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

“Russia is not ready for war”…“war would be a catastrophe”…“war would bring revolution.”

The Kaiser was not concerned about Russia in 1913 – Russia could not make war for four or five years, he believed.  With this in mind, Germany sent General Limon von Sanders to Turkey to command a Turkish army corps.  As nearly all of Russia’s grain for trade passed through the Bosporus, this action raised concerns in St. Petersburg.

The one issue that could drive Russia to war at this time was a closing of the Straits.

Conclusion

This concern over the Straits was Tsar Nicholas’s rejoinder to the Durnovo Memorandum.

The rest of the story is well-known.

Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.

The post Prelude to the Great War appeared first on LewRockwell.