Racing to Armageddon: The Zabern Affair and end of the Second Balkan War

*Excerpts from the book: “Racing to Armageddon: The Years before the Great War”, by Thomas Wainwright

Published by Yale University Press, © 1979, New Haven, Connecticut.**

In the final two months of 1913, two events occurred which exercised a large influence on the coming war: the end of the Second Balkan War and the “Zabern Affair”. Although not initially seen to be a proxy war, Austria’s public declaration of support for Bulgaria and the material support provided by the Entente powers to Serbia and Greece transformed a local conflict into a global one. It also wreaked devastation across the Balkans: conservative estimates of the death toll exceed 300,000, with many of the causalties being Greek and Albanian civilians. This was a dark portent of things to come.

The surprise Ottoman entry into the War gave the Entente hope that a decisive defeat could be inflicted upon Bulgaria. Yet it quickly became clear that the Ottomans intended once again to use their position as a bargaining chip. After dealing several defeats to the reserve Bulgarian forces stationed in the Southwestern Front and seizing the city of Adrianople, they reached out to the Central Powers, again seeking a guarantee in return for the conclusion of a peace deal with Bulgaria. This time, the Germans begrudgingly gave it, and the Ottomans were pulled into the sphere of the Central Powers. Several days later, Bulgaria and the Ottomans signed a separate peace, requiring Bulgaria to cede both Adrianople and large swathes of land to its West.

Nonetheless, with the freeing up of the forces around the Southwestern Front, the Bulgarians once again had numerical superiority to face the Serbs. The Serbs, not wishing to exhaust their armies, had ceased their offensive, and the Greek chief of staff had informed the King that the Greek Army was no linger fit for offensive operations. Tensions soon erupted between the Serbs and Greeks. The Serbs wished to seek out an armistice before the Bulgarians could mobilize the numbers necessary for another Macedonian offensive, while the Greeks sought a joint Greco-Serbian offensive in the South to retake Salonica. When the Serbian armed forces flatly refused such plans, the Pro-German Greek King contemplated the conclusion of a separate peace with Bulgaria. On December 5th, the Russian Ambassador to Greece became aware of Greek peace overtures to Bulgarians: the proposed deal would see Salonica remain with Greece as an Enclave and would cede land in Greek Macedonia to the Bulgarians. In exchange for the return of Salonica, Bulgaria would be able to pursue its maximalist war aims against an isolated Serbia.

The Entente decided that such an outcome was intolerable. When they reached out to the Germans on the 7th, they found them surprisingly receptive to a negotiated settlement. There was fear in the German government that the imposition of maximalist Bulgarian war aims on Serbia would provoke Russian intervention and perhaps even a general European War. Yet whatever intentions they may have had, the peace which was worked out between the German, French, and Russian foreign ministries over the next few months had the effect of alienating every Balkan nation involved from the two power blocs. This is no better indicated than the term of abuse it would gain - the “Loafers Peace” - used to deride the fact that the actual nations which had fought and bled in the war did little to actually determine the form that the peace would take. Instead, hoping to contain the war and stop it from metastasizing into a general European one, the six powers of Europe unilaterally imposed a peace that saw the Serbian Armies have to evacuate much of Eastern Macedonia and the Greeks cede Salonica but not Southern Macedonia to the Bulgarians.

The Bulgarians might seem to be the obvious victors: they had achieved their goal of taking a sizable share of Macedonia and had won Salonica as well. But they had also lost lands in the East to the Turks, and the peace deal prevented them from achieving hegemony in the Balkans by keeping a Serbia intact that could raise a substantial military force. Unsurprisingly, the Bulgarians grew resentful of the “betrayal” of the Central Powers. This was doubly so for the Serbians and their great power sponsors. Although it was likely that the Serbians would be forced to cede Macedonia in any event, the myth of the “Retreating Victors” took hold in the Serbian imagination as Serbian armies were forced to leave most of Macedonia. After the conclusion of the peace, Prime Minister Nikola Pasic increasingly became something of a figurehead, with a military clique concentrated around the infamous Serbian military intelligence chief Dragutin Dimitrijević, also known as “Apis”, wielding most actual power.

In Greece, where the army had suffered proportionally the most casualties of any nation fighting in the war, the reception of the peace was more mixed. Many Greeks, though angered by the loss of Salonica, were pleased to see an end to the fighting. The Pro-German sentiment of the King found some support among the broader population, with many feeling that the country should have never gotten involved in the war. This sentiment was particularly prevalent in the country’s large peasant population. There was another segment of the population, however, which the war radicalized: many students, professionals, and members of the middle class felt that Constantine I had failed to fully mobilize Greek society to fight the war. For them, there was no question that Greece should have been involved in the war; the pertinent matter to be addressed was whether the measures would be in place for Greece to fight the next one.

It was not only the various nations of the Balkans which were resentful of the “Loafer’s Peace”. America had been promised a role in future negotiations in the Balkans, and they were iced out from the settlement of the second Balkan War. Diplomats in both Britain and Germany had grown irritated with the attempts from President Bryan to intervene in Balkan affairs, with the British in particular feeling like the war could have reached a much quicker and less bloody conclusion if America had not prevented the entry of Romania. It was decided the because America did not have “vital interests” in the region, there was little reason for them to be included in the negotiations. This caused a considerable loss of face for the Bryan administration.

The second event which occurred was localized to Germany, but it had a lasting influence on German war-time politics. On November 2nd, it was reported in several Alsatian newspapers that the 20 year old German Lieutenant Gunter Freiherr von Forstner had insulted Alsatians during a troop induction. He is reported to have said: “Do not be afraid to take up your bayonet and stab a Wackes (derogatory term for native Alsatian) if you are attacked by one; many of them sympathize with the French anyways. For each you stab during such an event, you’ll receive ten marks from me, for our duty here as soldiers and officers of the Kaiser is to keep order in the realm”.

These remarks caused furor in the Alsatian population, and the governor of Alsace-Lorrane, Karl von Wedel, demanded that the commander of Forstner’s regiment transfer him from the province. However, the German military felt that it was not the role of the civilian authorities to determine how they discipline their own officers; von Forstner was instead subjected to five days of house arrest for “intemperate remarks”, and even this relatively light punishment was not reported to the public, leaving the impression that there was no punishment at all. Shortly thereafter, a dozen members of Forstner’s company were arrested and charged with leaking details of the affair to the press.

Further protests soon erupted across several large Alsatian cities. In an unwise provocation, Forstner left the barracks following his house arrest to show himself in public, during which several demonstrators shouted profanities at him. This behavior was technically illegal, but Director Mahl, a native Alsatian in charge of civil administration in the town, refused the request of lieutenant Von Reuter to restore order. Von Reuter contemplated using troops to disperse the crowds by force, but did not believe he had enough at his disposal at the time.

A week later, a huge crowd gathered around the barracks itself. This time, Von Reuter ordered a response. Second Lieutenant Schadt was placed in charge of handling the crowd. After orders for the crowd to disperse were ignored, the soldiers used cavalry to drive the crowd across a courtyard, and arrested a great number of individuals, including legal officials associated with the nearby Court who were not participating in the protest. The Kaiser, currently at a hunting retreat, waited for a report from the military headquarters in Strausbourg before intervening. When he did finally make the journey to Alsace-Lorraine, he met solely with military officials, feeding the perception that he approved of their behavior. The Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg did not even make it in time to the conference, giving the impression to many that he was a powerless figurehead.

On December 2nd, a military exercise was held in Saverne. Karl Blank, a journeyman shoemaker, began jeering and mocking Forstner with a number of his acquintances and friends joining in shortly thereafterafter. In response, Forstner struck him his saber, prompting Blank’s entourage to charge him. They were only stopped from assaulting him outright by the intervention of several members of Forstner’s regiment. Two days later, Blank died from brain trauma.

When the news broke that the same officer who had gone unpunished in the wake of his insulting remarks had now killed a civilian, protests broke out across much of Alsace and in a few cities in the Reich proper. A “Concerned Citizens Assembly” gathered in Mulhausen on the 5th to protest against “military despotism”. On the 6th, the Social Democratic Party called for a day of protests. Two days later, rallies took place in twenty-eight German cities demanding the resignation of Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn. In Mulhausen and Strausbourg, “Citizens Assemblies” met once again, this time with a concrete list of demands which included trying Karl Von Wedel in a civilian rather than military court. In the Reichstag, the Social Democratic Party engineered a vote of no confidence in Bethman Hollweg, who garnered the approval of only fifty-nine out of more than 350 Reichstag Deputies. When the Kaiser chooses to retain him anyways, the Social Democrats nearly created a constitutional crisis by persuading half of the deputies in the Catholic Centre and Progressive People’s Party to vote against Hollweg’s budget on the 9th. Hollweg only managed to push through the budget with the assistance of the right wing of the Catholic Centre and Progressive People’s Party, along with the unanimous votes of the National Liberals and Conservatives.

The budget vote turned out to be the high-point of this particular movement for reform. After the Social Democrats failed to gather the votes necessary to force the Kaiser to appoint a new chancellor, they only arranged a few further protests and refused to call a general strike. They were forced, for the time being, to acknowledge that the Kaiser held most of the cards. Nonetheless, in a sign of things to come, several trade unions affiliated with the Social Democrats engaged in work-to-rule protests, leading to a minor decrease in German steel production in December and January. Also notable is the radicalization which occured among the Catholic Trade Unions. Largely loyal to the German state following the end of most active stage of the Kulturkampf, the death of an Alsatian Catholic resurfaced the sectarian religious repression of the 70s and 80s. Proportionally, more unplanned strike activity occurred in the Catholic unions than the Social Democratic ones.

The victory of the Kaiser and military establishment would prove to be a pyrrhic one. The acquittal of Von Reuter and Schadt and the two-year sentence given to Forstner (eventually reduced to six months by an appellate court) discredited the German military among many of the Liberal intelligentsia and working class. On January 14th, intellectuals associated with the progressive wings of the Catholic Centre Party, Progressive People’s Party, Social Democratic Party, and Polish Party declared the formation of a “Movement For the Protection of National Minorities”, to be chaired by novelist Heinrich Mann. This organization would play a crucial role in organizing early opposition to the war among catholics and progressives.