Page - 66 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

66 Two Million Men for the War however, but also signalised like nothing else the fact that the great colonial powers were turning their attention back to Europe and sought above all to put Germany in its place. The fact that they also aspired to get Russia on board was self-evident and it was precisely the Russian Empire that showed every interest following the Russo-Japanese War in also turning its attention to Europe. The web of relations once again became tighter. Germany admittedly interpreted this as encirclement and cultivated the bond with Austria-Hungary, initially perhaps out of conviction.131 It admittedly remained the case that the alliance partners continued to pursue their own interests and therefore bad blood alternated with periods of close friendship. The trade treaty of 1906 was criticised in Austria-Hungary because it allegedly conceded too much to the German Empire. When the German Empire unconditionally sup- ported Austria-Hungary during the course of the annexation crisis of 1908 and en- dorsed its policies, this understandably triggered relief in Vienna. Terms such as ‘com- munity of fate’ (Schicksalsgemeinschaft) and ‘blind loyalty’ (Nibelungentreue) were then used. And it evidently bothered no-one that in Berlin racial conflict was openly talked of.132 Germanic peoples against Slavs was a slogan in the diction of Kaiser Wilhelm II. One year later, everything looked completely different again. Vienna was alarmed when Germany and Russia became somewhat closer because the Germans were not inter- ested in Persia whilst the Russians were in agreement that the Germans would finance the continuation of the construction of the Baghdad Railway. During the course of the ‘Second Moroccan Crisis’ in July 1911, it was again Berlin who felt deserted by Vienna and only heard from Minister Aehrenthal in response to its complaints that he refused to listen to ‘nagging complaints that are completely unjustified’.133 Then it was Berlin’s turn again. The well-intentioned but often overbearing advice from Berlin could re- sult in the emergence in Vienna of decidedly anti-German sentiments, for example in the winter of 1912/13. In the opinion of the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Mikhail Nikolayevich de Giers, who can be cited in the case of German-Austrian relations as a fairly unsuspicious authority, there emerged in Vienna an increasing feeling of patroni- sation, which one had to accept and, in so doing, make the best of a bad job.134 Relations with the third power in the alliance, Italy, developed in an even less bal- anced way than Austro-German relations. During the Second Moroccan Crisis, the Italians had shown friendly restraint towards Germany, though they got involved at the end of the year in an incomparably bigger adventure when they began the occupation of Libya and attempted to force the Ottoman Empire to abandon its rule of that country. This irritated above all the French but also the British and the Germans, who did not want to accept any weakening of Turkey. Opinions were divided in Austria-Hungary. Minister Aehrenthal did not disagree with the involvement of the Italians, as he re- garded them in this way as distracted by a region that was more or less uninteresting for the Habsburg Empire. For the Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf,