I. The Pangerman plan of 1911.II. The stages by which it has been effected.III. Why it has been ignored.
I. The Pangerman plan of 1911.II. The stages by which it has been effected.III. Why it has been ignored.
I. The Pangerman plan of 1911.
II. The stages by which it has been effected.
III. Why it has been ignored.
The Pangerman plot in its broad outlines was laid as early as 1895, but since that date events have happened throughout the world, which encouraged Pangermans to enlarge the structure of their scheme.
In 1898 the Fashoda incident almost caused a breach between France and England. In 1905 Japan compelled Russia to sign peace after a long war which exhausted all the Tsar’s military resources and disturbed the balance of power in Europe for a long time to the advantage of Germany. In 1909 the Vienna Government, under cover of the veiled ultimatum which Berlin sent to the Tsar, carried out the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, countries which are almost entirely peopled by Serbians. This seizure of a huge Slav territory was a great triumph for Germanism. On November 3rd, 1910, at the Potsdam meeting, the Kaiser obtained from the Tsar’s Government the abandonment of all opposition to the completion of the Bagdad railway. England and France took up the same attitude. On July 1st, 1911, the Kaiser ventured on the Agadir episode, which was clearly an attempt to force a quarrel on France. It led to the Franco-German treaty of November 4th,1911, which ceded to Germany 275,000 square kilometres of the French Congo, while at the same time the commerce of Morocco was heavily mortgaged in favour of Germany.
These various events deeply injured the interests of France, England and Russia; but these powers preferred to submit to the hardest sacrifices rather than undertake the dreadful responsibility of letting loose a fearful war on Europe. The Pangermans misread this attitude as a sign of weakness, and of a desire to keep the peace at all costs; and accordingly they were encouraged to entertain high hopes of huge success in a near future. That is why the original Pangerman plan of 1895, considerably altered, became the perfected plan of 1911.
THE PANGERMAN PLAN OF 1911.
THE PANGERMAN PLAN OF 1911.
This plan of 1911 (see map) provided in Europe and in Western Asia:
1º. The establishment, under German rule, of a vast Confederation of Central Europe, comprising:
This confederation was thus to group under German supremacy
of whom only 77 millions are Germans and 85 millions non-Germans.
2º. The absolute subordination of the Balkan countries (containing 499,275 square kilometres and 22 millions of non-Germans) to the Great Central European Confederation. The Balkan States to become mere satellites of Berlin.
3º. Germany’s political and military seizure of Turkey, which was afterwards to be enlarged by the annexation of Egypt and Persia. It was provided that Turkey should be dealt with in two successive stages. During the first, the handful of “Young Turks” who have ruled the Ottoman Empire since 1908, and who play the German game, were to remain in power merely as figure-heads. Turkey was to retain a nominal independence during this phase, though in reality she was to have been tied to Germany by a treaty of military alliance. Under pretence of effecting reforms, numerous German officials were to be placed at the head of all the Ottoman administrations, and that would have paved the way for the second stage. The latter had for its aim the putting of Turkey, with her 1,792,000 square kilometres and her 20 millions of non-German inhabitants, under the strict protectorate of Germany, to say nothing of the subject provinces, Egypt and Persia.
The Germanic Confederation of Central Europe was to form a hugeZollvereinor Customs Union. Treaties of Commerce of a special character imposed on the Balkan States and on subjected Turkey would have provided for Great Germany an economic outlet and reserved for her exclusively those vast regions.
Finally, we can sum up the Pangerman plan of 1911 in four formulas:
Berlin—Calais; Berlin—Riga; Hamburg—Salonika; Hamburg—Persian Gulf.
The union of the three groupings—Central Europe, Balkan States and Turkey—would have placed under the predominating influence of Berlin 4,015,146 square kilometres and 204 millions of inhabitants, of whom 127 millions were to be ruled directly or indirectly by merely 77 millions of Germans.
This continental Pangerman plan of 1911 was to have been completed by colonial conquests of great magnitude, of which an account is given at the end of Chapter V.
William II. was well aware that such a project could only become an enduring reality if all other great powers disappeared from the face of the earth. The Kaiser had therefore positively resolved, when hatching his Pangerman plot, to accomplish the destruction of five great powers. It is necessary to grasp fully this fundamental truth, if we wish to understand the nature of the present war. It was foreseen that Austria-Hungary would disappear by her absorption under cover of entrance into the GermanZollverein. France and Russia were to have been totally ruined by means of a furious preventive war which would entirely destroy their military forces. England was to be put out of action by a subsequent operation, which would have been an easy matter when once France and Russia had been dismembered and reduced to utter impotence. As to Italy—destined to become a vassal state—she was not considered as being capable of hindering in the least the Pangerman ambitions. One of the Kaiser’s agents for propagating this scheme wrote in 1900: “Italy cannot be looked upon as a rival for she is too incompetent in warfare” (Deutschland bei Beginn des 20 Jahrhunderts, p. 53. Military publishers, R. Felix, Berlin, 1900).
It must be added that the Pangerman plot of 1911 did not include war with England. When hedeclared hostilities in August, 1914, William II. was convinced that England would take no share in them, at least not immediately. The Kaiser had laid every conceivable kind of trap to add fuel to the flames of all internal English disturbances and to deceive the London Cabinet. At one moment he almost succeeded in his endeavours. England’s decision to participate without delay in the struggle only hung by a thread, but that thread was broken. If England had tarried, if she had tarried only for a few days, German landings in Normandy, Brittany, and as far as Bordeaux would have been effected. France being thus rendered quickly powerless on all sides, the English intervention would have proved futile at a later stage, and the Pangerman plan of 1911 would thus have been fully achieved. But in going to war just at the right moment and in controlling the sea, Great Britain has, while saving herself, furnished to civilized humanity the means of avoiding the Prussian yoke. The initial German plan has truly been upset by English intervention following on the respite gained by the splendid resistance of Belgium in arms.
But the Germans are clever, they are stubborn and crafty. Adapting themselves to new conditions thrust on them, they are still endeavouring to make an enormous profit out of the war. We must, therefore, try to understand what operations they have devised for carrying out, even now, the Pangerman plot almost in its entirety.
As it is necessary to open the eyes of neutrals, many of whom have been misled by the German propaganda, we must try to expose very clearly the inner workings of the Pangerman plot as it is revealed to us in the searchlight of facts.
From 1892 down to the outbreak of the War, that is to say, for twenty-two years, the Pangerman movement has developed with ever growing intensity; a multitude of publications, giving full details of the plan, were scattered among the German people, in order to excite in them the greed of conquest and so prepare them for the struggle through the allurement of plunder. Of these publications two are of special importance: first, the pamphlet published under the auspices of theAlldeutscher Verband: namely,Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950(Thormann und Goetsch, Berlin, 1895), which gives the Pangerman plan of 1895: second, the book of Otto Richard Tannenberg:Grossdeutschland, die Arbeit des 20ᵗᵉⁿ Jahrhunderts(Bruno Volger, Leipzig-Gohlis, 1911), which gives all suitable details of the plan of 1911.
Unfortunately, although this Pangerman literature is very considerable, full of documentary evidence and spread broadcast among the masses by most powerful associations, whose patrons are the highest authorities in the land, few people outside of Germany would believe in its extreme importance. But now the facts speak for themselves. The reality, the extent, and the successive stages of the Pangerman plan of 1911 are shown by:
1º. The course which Germany has taken since August 1st, 1914, in her political and military operations which have for their object not, as many have supposed, the obtaining of securities, but the annexation of territories in the manner set forth in Tannenberg’s book, and more or less in accordance with the plan of 1911.
2º. The memorial delivered on May 20th, 1915, to the German Chancellor by the League of Agriculturists, the League of German Peasants, the Provisional Association of Christian GermanPeasants, now called the Westphalian Peasants’ Association, the Central German Manufacturers’ Union, the League of Manufacturers, and the Middle-Class Union of the Empire (seeLe Temps, 12th August, 1915). The importance of this document cannot be overrated, for it is issued by the most powerful associations of the Empire, including all the influential elements of the German nation, specially the agrarians and the iniquitous Prussian squires. Now the purport of that memorial, as will be shown, is to demand all such annexations mentioned in the Pangerman plan of 1911, as the development of military operations has so far rendered feasible. Any one who knows Germany can hardly doubt that this memorial was not handed in to Bethmann-Hollweg without a previous understanding with him. Doubtless it was intended that this document should seem to exercise an overmastering pressure of public opinion on William II.’s government. But if the ideas expressed in this memorial reflect, as they certainly do, the wishes of influential German circles, it is also unquestionable that they correspond very closely to the scheme of aggrandizement, which William II. has been nursing for over twenty years.
3º. The declarations made at the sitting of the Reichstag of the 11th December, 1915, prove the exactitude of this statement. The Imperial Chancellor said:
“If our enemies will not submit now, they will be obliged to do so later on.... When our enemies shall offer us such peace proposals as are compatible with the dignity and security of Germany we shall be ready to discuss them.... But our enemies must understand that the more unrelentingly they wage war, the higher will be the guarantees exacted.”
Bethmann-Hollweg could hardly have spokenmore explicitly, but his diplomatic game was naturally to unmask Germany’s enormous pretensions only bit by bit, in order that the eyes of neutrals should not be opened to the Pangerman monster in all its horror until the last moment. But hardly had the Chancellor finished his speech than the Deputy Spahn explained the real drift of it with great precision:
“We await,” said Herr Spahn, “the hour which will allow of peace negotiations which will safeguard in a permanent way and by all means, including the needful territorial annexations, all military economic and political interests of Germany in its total extent.”
The thundering applause which greeted these words proves that they echoed the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the German deputies, who at that moment still believed that it was possible for Germany to achieve enormous annexations.
The preparation of the Pangerman plan has required for over twenty years a huge propaganda among the German masses as well as a world-wide organization. How is it that this plan has been ignored in its nature and in its extent by the diplomats of France, England and Russia? Such, however, has been the case, for otherwise the war could not have come upon these three powers as a surprise. We deal here with a matter which at first sight seems improbable and which, therefore, needs explanation.
The diplomatic agents of the Allies are certainly not inferior personally to those of William II., but the Kaiser’s foreign service, as a whole, includes novel instruments of observation and influenceby which, for the last twenty years, the Government of Berlin has seconded its official diplomacy without allowing the connexion between it and them to transpire. None of the Allied countries have employed similar instruments, the result being that the Entente is considerably inferior in this department of foreign policy.
The Pangerman plan is founded on a very exact knowledge of all political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems, not only of Europe, but of the whole world; the Germans have acquired that knowledge by means of an intense labour of over twenty-five years. But this task has not been performed by the official German diplomats; it has been carried out either by the members of theAlldeutscher Verband, the Pangerman Union, or by the agents of the German secret service, which has been enormously extended. These agents might be called connecting links between the regular spies and the official diplomats; Baron von Schenk, who worked at Athens from 1915-1916, is a sample of that category of agents who have studied methodically all the root questions of the Pangerman plan, who have prepared means to delude the minds of neutrals, to paralyze the revolt of the Slavs in Austria-Hungary, to corrupt all such neutral individuals or neutral newspapers as were susceptible of corruption, etc. After these numerous agents had made their reports, and when once these had been examined and summarized, they were sent to the Wilhelmstrasse, to the great German General Staff, whose concerted operations are always so combined as to answer both to political and to military needs. At the same time the reports reached William II.’s private study, and his brain was thus able to store up all technical meansnecessary for the achievement of his plan of domination.
Was the diplomatic corps of the Allies so well served that it could grasp in its universal significance the immense work of preparation accomplished by the secret Pangerman agents? Indeed, they were not properly supplied with the right tools for such a task, and we shall see why it was so.
First of all it is necessary to dispel a false notion which “the man in the street” has of diplomacy. He fondly thinks that diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combinations, fashion History. Now the experience of centuries shows that as a general rule diplomats merely chronicle History but do not make it. My teacher, Albert Sorel, neatly expressed that truth by saying: “Diplomats are History’s attorneys.” In fact, the diplomacy of any country helps to prepare and to fashion history only when there happens to be at its head a great man of large and just ideas, who knows how to apply these ideas by all the means available in his time.
It is a strange fact and worthy of notice, that such a great man is rarely, if ever, a professional diplomat. For example, Richelieu, Napoleon, Palmerston, Disraeli, Cavour, Bismarck, who all prepared and fashioned History, were not trained diplomatists. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Fortune has endowed any of our Allied countries, either before or since the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand lines, the diplomatic affairs of the Entente. The latter therefore has been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials, and who as such await instructions from higher quarters, and these instructions are very often found wanting.
Besides, the diplomacy of the Allies, not being seconded, like that of Germany, by novel means ofobservation, can only obtain the information it needs by methods still so old-fashioned that they are almost identical with those used a century ago. They are totally inadequate to point out the sequence of ideas or the rapid development of events which in Central Europe and the Balkans have been, as will be seen, the immediate causes of the war; nor are the means employed by our diplomats at all sufficient if they wish to recognize what forms the whole chain of the Pangerman organization. Just because this organization is huge, just because it is so complex, its total importance cannot be properly gauged unless the connecting links between the varied elements are clearly perceived.
The typical professional diplomat lives in a world of his own. Either his information comes from the office or it is second-hand; it rarely is reached by direct observation of people or facts. The secretaries at the Embassies divide their time between office work, copying documents in copper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant enough but confined to a particular and narrow set. Few of the secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside, fewer still travel in the interior of the land in order to study it.
The events which have led to the European conflagration spring from two main causes: the stupendous scope of the German ambitions and the progress of the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan nationalities. Now both these factors have been revealed on many occasions, by purely local events which, to a keen observer, would have betrayed most significantly the end in view, but they have occurred for the most part in places far removed from capital cities, and to appreciate fully their importance would have needed direct observation on the spot.
This is quite contrary to the tradition followed by official diplomats. Those of the Entente had not, at their disposal, agents who could go and, for instance, hear the numerous lectures given by the Pangerman propaganda, and who could have procured and translated for them the illuminating pamphlets of theAlldeutscher Verband. Also they had no means of getting into personal touch with the party leaders, either Slav or Latin, of Austria-Hungary; often these leaders were men without a place in parliament, frequently without fortune or social rank; all they had was their national ideal, their strength of conviction, but they were real and novel forces, for they acted on the popular masses with whom they were in complete intellectual sympathy.
As the diplomatic corps of the Entente was not provided with that indispensable aid—an organization of secondary agents of observation—they have been reduced to accept information of a superficial and incomplete nature. Often it was merely provided by press cuttings and even those were frequently from papers written in a tongue which the diplomats could not read; at best these cuttings were without any connecting link and quite insufficient to warn them of the approach of a great peril. We must add that in diplomatic circles of all periods—unless they are led by some eminent man—there are certain formulas current, such as: “No fuss,” “it is necessary to wait and see,” “we must not believe that it has happened,” which have had a baneful influence. The result has been a sceptical attitude which in diplomatical circles passes for essential and in good taste. If we add to this frame of mind the absence of varied, direct and coherent information, we can understand how it was that before the war, when any one tried to persuade a professional diplomatist that WilliamII.’s political aim was nothing short of the establishment of German supremacy over the whole world, he was soon set down as a visionary with a head stuffed full of groundless suspicions.
Finally, we must realize that the system by which a diplomat is sent from pillar to post, often to the antipodes, every four or five years, is not conducive to the acquirement of a general and exact knowledge, founded on documentary evidence, of events still in progress, in a wide zone, so complex and so difficult to study as Central Europe and the Balkans.
These various considerations help us to understand why, during the twenty-five years which preceded the war, no diplomat of the Allies has been able to grasp the total Pangerman plan in its nature and in its extent, though possibly a few of them may have indicated in their reports now and then some local Pangerman act which aroused suspicion. These considerations explain also, at least in part, the failure of the diplomatic corps of the Entente in the Balkans.
To sum up, allied official diplomats are not personally inferior to German official diplomats, but the latter have an enormous advantage over their colleagues of the Entente in knowing the general plan of the Berlin policy, in knowing, each in his own post, in what direction to proceed and what must be done or prevented in order to attain the final end. During the last twenty-five years the Kaiser’s foreign policy has been constructive and framed on a definite plan, while the diplomats of the Allies, reflecting the policy of their Governments without concrete plans, have been hampered, because they believed obstinately in Peace, in a vague and stagnant defensive. On the other hand, the allied diplomacy, regardedas an instrument of observation, confined to old-fashioned methods, is like an ordinary magnifying glass which shows nothing but the largest objects. On the contrary, the German foreign policy, thanks to the new, busy and secret organs, by which the German diplomacy has been seconded, may be compared to a workshop provided with powerful microscopes by which facts can be studied not only in their general aspect, but also in their most minute details, details which often are not without their importance.
Finally, the allied diplomacy, regarded as an instrument of action, still clinging to antiquated traditional methods, may be compared to an army which possesses only field guns, while the foreign diplomacy of Germany, in its totality, is comparable to an army equipped both with heavy and with field artillery.