Page - 123 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Calm before the Storm 123 drafted the following day by Count Tisza, in which the Hungarian Prime Minister argued in favour of not simply attacking Serbia but rather issuing ultimatums, on the fulfilment of which the further course of action should depend. The Foreign Minister had two opportunities to inform the Emperor of developments in his summer domicile. But when the Council of Ministers next met on 19 July, the Emperor was missing once again and apparently did not have any part in the decision regarding the actual issuing of the démarche containing the ultimatum. And when it was a question of finalising the declaration of war and thus the formal prerequisites for the war, which was regarded by Franz Joseph as inescapable, this took place without further consultations, without one last, dramatic conference and, naturally, without direct contact with the German Kaiser, as the monarchs never telephoned each other or used a Hughes microphone. The Kaiser simply signed the piece of paper presented to him. Thus, the declaration of war against Serbia was reduced to a simple administrative act. The Calm before the Storm In spite of Serbian mobilisation, the Austro-Hungarian military machinery still did not appear to bestir itself. This apparent inactivity and the sheer endless waiting led repeatedly to stinging comments : ‘A war has never before been provoked with such amateurism, than the war against Serbia in July 1914’, as Fritz Fellner wrote, and ‘this harsh judgement should finally be explained by a military-historical investigation on the part of the Austrian authorities. It had been known since 7 July that war was desired […] on 27 July Foreign Minister Berchtold requests the Emperor to sign the declara- tion of war, […] the Chief of the General Staff, however, declares himself in fact unable to begin the war, which had been planned for three weeks, before 14 days had passed.’262 Now we will examine how tenable this claim really is. Aside from the campaign of occupation of 1878, which was truly an isolated and in military terms narrowly-defined event, the Habsburg Monarchy was preparing to wage a proper war for the first time since 1866. During the intervening period, most other states had waged bigger or smaller wars. All of them had attempted to plan ahead for a war and to prepare themselves for the demands of a major military conflict. Essentially, however, all of them were confronted within a short space of time with a very different reality. From practically the first day on, the World War burst the dimensions of any- thing that had come before and anything that had been planned for. In respect of the approach to Serbia, the timing of the dispatch of the démarche containing the ultimatum and the expansion of the war to become one that included at least Russia, but which could potentially turn into a European and even a world war, military considerations naturally played an important role, yet they are only compre-