and light, the comparative absence of architectural monstrosities and the Italian influence everywhere apparent, contribute, together with the grace and beauty of the women, the polite friendliness of the inhabitants and the broad, warm accent of their speech, to charm the eye and ear of every travelled visitor.’ But Steed found Viennese vanity ‘insufferable’; he perceived ‘a general atmosphere of unreality’, and complained that the city lacked a soul.
The Austrians cultivated relationships with Germany, Turkey and Greece in efforts to frustrate Serbian ambitions to create a pan-Slav state, a Yugoslavia, embracing several million Hapsburg subjects. In the years before 1914, the Empire also grew accustomed to employing military threats as a routine extension of its diplomacy. Its generals regarded war with reckless insouciance, as a mere tool for the advancement of national interests rather than as a passport to Hades. As Hapsburg minorities became ever more alienated, imperial repression became increasingly heavy-handed. Vienna fostered divisions between its subject Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Most minorities were denied political rights, while being liable to punitive taxation. Vienna might waltz, but there was little grace or mercy about anything else in Franz Joseph’s dominions. The best that might be said was that its neighbours behaved no better.
The leaders of Russia shared with the Kaiser’s court a belief that the two empires were fated to participate in a historic struggle between Germanism and Slavdom. Germans made no secret of their contempt for the Russians, and subjected them to constant snubs. Meanwhile the Tsar’s subjects were resentful of German cultural and industrial superiority. The two nations’ most conspicuous point of friction and threatened collision was Turkey. They circled the ailing Ottoman Empire as predators, each bent upon securing choice portions of its carcass. Control of the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea, through which 37 per cent of Russian exports passed, was an especially critical issue. Weak Ottoman supervision was just acceptable in St Petersburg. German dominance was not, yet this was a key objective of the Kaiser’s foreign policy. The Young Turks who seized power in Constantinople in 1908 welcomed German aid, and especially military advisers, in their drive to modernise the country. As for Berlin’s view,when Gen. Liman von Sanders departed to command the Constantinople garrison in 1913, Wilhelm urged him: ‘create for me a new strong army which obeys my orders’.
Liman’s appointment to Turkey provoked consternation in St Petersburg. The president of the Duma urged Nicholas II to act boldly to wrest the Dardanelles from the Ottomans before the Germans did so: ‘the Straits must become ours. A war will be joyfully welcomed, and will raise the government’s prestige.’ At a December 1913 Russian Council of Ministers meeting, the navy and war ministers were questioned about the readiness of their services to fight, and answered that ‘Russia was perfectly prepared for a duel with Germany, not to speak of one with Austria.’ The following February, Russian military intelligence passed to the government a German secret memorandum which shocked St Petersburg: it emphasised Berlin’s commitment to controlling the Dardanelles, and to securing for the Kaiser’s officers command of the straits’ gun batteries. It seems extravagant to suggest, as do some historians, that the Russians wished to start a war in 1914 to gain the Black Sea approaches. But they were almost certainly willing to fight to stop the Germans getting them.
Russia boomed in the last years before Armageddon, to the dismay of its German and Austrian enemies. After 1917, its new Bolshevik rulers forged a myth of Tsarist industrial failure. In reality, the Russian economy had become the fourth largest in the world, growing at almost 10 per cent annually. The country’s 1913 national income
The Austrians cultivated relationships with Germany, Turkey and Greece in efforts to frustrate Serbian ambitions to create a pan-Slav state, a Yugoslavia, embracing several million Hapsburg subjects. In the years before 1914, the Empire also grew accustomed to employing military threats as a routine extension of its diplomacy. Its generals regarded war with reckless insouciance, as a mere tool for the advancement of national interests rather than as a passport to Hades. As Hapsburg minorities became ever more alienated, imperial repression became increasingly heavy-handed. Vienna fostered divisions between its subject Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Most minorities were denied political rights, while being liable to punitive taxation. Vienna might waltz, but there was little grace or mercy about anything else in Franz Joseph’s dominions. The best that might be said was that its neighbours behaved no better.
The leaders of Russia shared with the Kaiser’s court a belief that the two empires were fated to participate in a historic struggle between Germanism and Slavdom. Germans made no secret of their contempt for the Russians, and subjected them to constant snubs. Meanwhile the Tsar’s subjects were resentful of German cultural and industrial superiority. The two nations’ most conspicuous point of friction and threatened collision was Turkey. They circled the ailing Ottoman Empire as predators, each bent upon securing choice portions of its carcass. Control of the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea, through which 37 per cent of Russian exports passed, was an especially critical issue. Weak Ottoman supervision was just acceptable in St Petersburg. German dominance was not, yet this was a key objective of the Kaiser’s foreign policy. The Young Turks who seized power in Constantinople in 1908 welcomed German aid, and especially military advisers, in their drive to modernise the country. As for Berlin’s view,when Gen. Liman von Sanders departed to command the Constantinople garrison in 1913, Wilhelm urged him: ‘create for me a new strong army which obeys my orders’.
Liman’s appointment to Turkey provoked consternation in St Petersburg. The president of the Duma urged Nicholas II to act boldly to wrest the Dardanelles from the Ottomans before the Germans did so: ‘the Straits must become ours. A war will be joyfully welcomed, and will raise the government’s prestige.’ At a December 1913 Russian Council of Ministers meeting, the navy and war ministers were questioned about the readiness of their services to fight, and answered that ‘Russia was perfectly prepared for a duel with Germany, not to speak of one with Austria.’ The following February, Russian military intelligence passed to the government a German secret memorandum which shocked St Petersburg: it emphasised Berlin’s commitment to controlling the Dardanelles, and to securing for the Kaiser’s officers command of the straits’ gun batteries. It seems extravagant to suggest, as do some historians, that the Russians wished to start a war in 1914 to gain the Black Sea approaches. But they were almost certainly willing to fight to stop the Germans getting them.
Russia boomed in the last years before Armageddon, to the dismay of its German and Austrian enemies. After 1917, its new Bolshevik rulers forged a myth of Tsarist industrial failure. In reality, the Russian economy had become the fourth largest in the world, growing at almost 10 per cent annually. The country’s 1913 national income
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