Of course something had leaked. The official handover of the note from the Emperor and Kingdom of Austria-Hungary to the Kingdom of Serbia was supposed to take place at exactly 5 p.m. on July 23, 1914 – and trigger a political earthquake. At least that is how Leopold Graf Berchtold (1863–1942), the foreign minister (and de facto political head) of the Habsburg monarchy, conceived it.
But because the foreign ministries and embassies of the European powers had been working very tensely in the days before and someone was always talking, well-informed journalists knew the outlines of what was to come. So many newspapers in Europe speculated about the content of the note that the Viennese court was about to hand over. What exactly would it say? Almost four weeks had passed since the fatal assassination attempt on the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and the dual monarchy had still not published any investigation results about the conspirators.
The “Münchner Neusten Nachrichten” expected rather moderate demands that “neither threaten the independence of Serbia nor its national dignity”. Many other German, but also British and American newspapers saw it similarly. The Berlin “Vossische Zeitung”, on the other hand, was less confident. The national-liberal editors warned of the dangers of an ultimatum that was formulated too strictly. It could drag not only Austria and Serbia into a war, but also Russia – and with it Germany and France.
Austrian newspapers came to the same conclusion. However, less because of political foresight and more because they had better information than their Berlin colleagues. The “Neue Zeitung” from Vienna correctly reported both on the deliberately short deadline set for Serbia’s reply to the note and on the actual goal of the Vienna government: It is about the unrest in the Balkans “finally stopping under all circumstances “ must. Apparently, the “Tagespost” from Linz relied on the same anonymous informants.
Your information proved to be accurate. In fact, the demarche was formulated from the outset to be unacceptable. So it provided a reason for war. That was Berchtold’s calculation, and Austria’s chief diplomat had also had his plan communicated to the German Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in advance: “Count Berchtold indicated the hope that Serbia would not accept the demands of Austria-Hungary, since a mere diplomatic success in this country would mean another will trigger a sluggish mood that you absolutely cannot use.”
Thanks to the press reports, everyone in Belgrade knew roughly what was to come when Austria’s envoy, Vladimir Freiherr Giesl von Gieslingen, asked for an official meeting at the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs at short notice this Thursday around 5 p.m. When the request followed a little later to postpone the appointment by an hour, the explosive nature of the matter became completely clear.
The “demarche” was indeed sharply worded. The Serbian government was to unreservedly publish Vienna’s condemnation of the Greater Serbian propaganda and undertake to proceed “with the utmost severity” against those who agitated against the Habsburg monarchy.
But the real imposition was yet to come, in ten points that Belgrade was also supposed to fully accept: the Serbian military had to be purged of supporters of the Greater Serbian ideology, and all smuggling to Bosnia had to be stopped by all means.
Absolutely unacceptable, however, was primarily point five: the Serbian government had to agree “that organs of the imperial and royal government in Serbia participate in the suppression of the subversive movement directed against the territorial integrity of the monarchy”.
In plain language, this meant that Serbia should give up its sovereignty and surrender itself completely to the Viennese authorities. That was surprising, despite the leaked information, because nobody is actually making such unattainable demands who are striving for an agreement. But that’s exactly what Austria-Hungary didn’t want.
Was Leopold von Berchtold a warmonger? Was he consciously striving to escalate the regional conflict into a world war? Born in Vienna in 1863 as the son of a very wealthy nobleman, he had studied law and political science and then entered the diplomatic service of the dual monarchy.
A consistent career followed: from 1894 he worked at the embassy in Paris, in 1897 as first secretary (i.e. third man) at the Austrian representation in London, in 1903 as embassy counselor, i.e. second man in St. Petersburg and at the end of 1906 he rose to ambassador there. In 1908 he prepared the agreement with the Tsar’s court that led to the annexation of Bosnia by the Habsburg monarchy – and to a sharp confrontation of pan-Slavic circles against Austria-Hungary.
In 1912, Berchtold was promoted to Austria-Hungary’s Minister of the Imperial and Royal House and of Foreign Affairs. Due to the special construction of the dual monarchy, each with a prime minister responsible for domestic questions for the Austrian (“Cisleithanian”) and Hungarian (“Transleithanian”) part of the empire, but joint ministers for foreign affairs, war and finance, this was the function of the actually political head. The foreign minister also chaired the Council of Ministers for Common Affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which, in addition to the three joint ministers, included the two prime ministers and the chief of staff.
In his new function, Berchtold focused on confrontation with Serbia, but at the same time strived for “normalization” with Russia. This was an ambivalent attitude, similar to that prevailing among the political leaders in Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg and – to a lesser extent because of global commitments – in London.
In the July crisis of 1914, Berchtold’s ultimatum acted as a fire accelerator, which led within little more than a week to the European and, because the German side felt there was no alternative to the so-called Schlieffen Plan, to world war. Two weeks after July 23, fierce fighting raged in the west as well as in the east of the Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Leopold von Berchtold remained foreign minister in Vienna and de facto head of government until mid-February 1915. He then became an adviser to the heir to the throne, Archduke Karl. He served him until his abdication in 1918 and as far as possible beyond that. A few years in Swiss exile followed before Berchtold moved to his estate there in 1923 under the protection of the Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy and died in the next world war in 1942, unnoticed by the public.
“A rich and not untalented aristocrat had been chosen for a relatively short period of his life for a position that he was not up to,” wrote the historian Johann Albrecht von Reiswitz in 1955 about Berchtold. A sharp judgment, but one that Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers, shared in a slightly milder form in 2013: “The reluctance he made openly when he was offered posts of higher rank and responsibility was unquestionable real.”
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