Germany mobilises and declares war on Russia

On 1 August 1914 Germany took two steps that turned a war in the Balkans into a war of the great powers. In the afternoon Kaiser Wilhelm II ordered general mobilisation, and in the evening the German ambassador in St Petersburg handed the Russian government a declaration of war. For the first time in this conflict one great power had declared war on another.

Mobilisation

At noon on 1 August the German ultimatum demanding that Russia halt its mobilisation expired. St Petersburg did not reply. At 5 p.m. in Berlin the Kaiser signed the order mobilising the entire army. According to eyewitnesses, he did so at a table made from the timbers of Admiral Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, and those present had tears in their eyes. The first day of mobilisation was 2 August. In the streets of Berlin crowds greeted the news with enthusiasm, singing patriotic songs.

The declaration of war in St Petersburg

At about 7.10 p.m. St Petersburg time the ambassador, Count Friedrich von Pourtalès, called on the Foreign Minister, Sergey Sazonov. Three times he asked whether Russia would halt its mobilisation, and after three refusals he handed him, with trembling hands, the note declaring war. According to Sazonov’s account, the ambassador then went to the window overlooking the Winter Palace and burst into tears. The two diplomats had been on good terms for years and understood well what this moment meant.

Formally it was Germany, not Russia, that began the war, although Russia had been the first to carry out general mobilisation. This mattered politically. Italy, bound to Germany and Austria-Hungary in the defensive Triple Alliance, decided that it was under no obligation to enter the war, and soon declared its neutrality.

A night of misunderstandings

Late in the afternoon an extraordinary episode took place in Berlin. A telegram arrived from London from the ambassador, Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky, suggesting that Great Britain might guarantee the neutrality of France if Germany did not attack it. Wilhelm II concluded that war in the west could be avoided and ordered the whole army to be sent east. The Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, was devastated: the plans for moving millions of soldiers had been prepared over years and could not be changed in a few hours. The Kaiser is said to have replied that his uncle, the famous Field Marshal Moltke, would have given him a different answer.

Meanwhile German soldiers had already entered Troisvierges in Luxembourg to seize the railway junction there. On the Kaiser’s orders the detachment was withdrawn. Late in the evening, however, it turned out that the British proposal had been a misunderstanding: in a new telegram Lichnowsky reported that no positive offer from England was to be expected. Wilhelm II then told Moltke that he could do as he saw fit. The next day German troops occupied Luxembourg.

A war on two fronts

Although Germany had declared war on Russia, its war plan assumed that the main blow would fall first on France, before Russia could fully mobilise its forces. In the east, meanwhile, a relatively small army was to defend East Prussia. That is why only two days later, on 3 August, Germany declared war on France, and on 4 August it entered Belgium, which settled Great Britain’s entry into the war.

1 August 1914 was therefore the day on which a local conflict definitively became a European war. From that moment the mobilisation machinery of the great powers could no longer be stopped.