Second Case Study on Compliance: the Obligations of Belgian Neutrality
One of the few clear-cut legal obligations in 1914 transcending the divided
alliance system was respect for the neutrality and inviolability of Belgium. The Belgian
territory had been the terrible battleground of numerous wars,1 and in 1831, the European
powers were still eyeing it with envy. Consequently, the great powers got together that
year and came up with the solution of making the disputed territory a neutral state.
Among other rationales for neutralizing Belgium were Britain’s interest in ensuring that
France would not annex Belgium and France’s desire to keep Holland from doing the
same, as well as to create a neutral neighbor for itself as a sort of buffer from Germany. 2
The other states were just as happy to make the small state off-limits for everyone. The
concept of neutrality was not a novel one, and the experiment in Switzerland had been
working well for years, though there were still disputes over the precise obligations
neutrality imposed on all sides. Nonetheless, Austria, France, Great Britain, Germany
and Russia established the new state of Belgium and bound its government to respect
neutrality toward other states,3 a status to which the Belgian people strongly objected but
finally were willing to accept in order to obtain recognition as an independent state.4
In 1839, the European powers affirmed the earlier treaty and committed
themselves to guarantee the neutrality and territorial inviolability of Belgium.5 However,
the guaranteeing powers intentionally adopted a vague guarantee, in part because they did
not want to bind themselves to action under all future circumstances.6 Decisions on the
future enforcement of the guarantee would have to be reached when the need arose, and
the great powers certainly did not foresee the great debate over the nature of the
obligations the guarantee imposed.7 In 1870, three of the major powers affirmed the
continuing force of the 1839 treaty in the context of the Franco-Prussian War. Great
Britain requested and obtained statements by France and by Germany that they would
not violate the permanent neutrality of Belgium, and in response, the British bound
themselves to intervene in the war against whichever belligerent would violate that
principle.8
However, beginning in 1905, the German Schlieffen plan (the war strategy
named after the Chief of the Great General Staff who devised it) called for a quick push
through southern Belgium to avoid the heavily fortified French defenses on the eastern
border with Germany. Speed was of primary importance to the Germans in the event of a
major war, because having created enemies for itself to the east and west, they knew they
could not sustain a protracted campaign with divided forces. Thus, the objective was to
advance quickly through France, capture Paris, thereby cutting off the French juggernaut
at its source, and then concentrate all the German forces against Russia in the east before
Russia could fully mobilize its endless supply of troops.9 Schlieffen, sensitive to the
international condemnation that would likely result from a violation of Belgian neutrality,
had intended to induce France to commit that violation first, as the Germans would
deploy on the Belgian border, fully expecting France to move into Belgium at Meuse to
try to halt the impending German attack.10 However, General Moltke (the head of the
German command in 1914) decided that time would not allow for such legal posturings,
and he convinced the rest of the German government of the need to move through
Belgium first to avoid being encircled by Russia and France.
Thus, on August 2nd, at the doorstep of war, Germany delivered a note to the
Belgian government requesting free passage through Belgium. In the note, the Germans
claimed discovery of French plans to invade the neutral territory against Germany, and
that since Belgium would be unable to resist the French advance, Germany had to protect
itself by anticipating the hostile attack. The note then promised no hostilities against
Belgium itself if it would maintain friendly neutrality towards Germany, reassuring the
Belgian government that Germany would evacuate the neutral territory and restore its full
independence at the conclusion of the war. In Belgium’s August 3rd response, though,
the Belgian government denied both the premise and conclusion of the German request,
stating first that no evidence suggested that France was preparing an attack on Belgium,
and that to the contrary, France had formally declared on August 1st its intention to
respect Belgian neutrality.11
Having denied the evidence of French mal-intent, the
Belgian government concluded that the German request constituted a threat in clear
violation of international law, which no strategic interest could justify.
Were the
Belgians to accede to the request, they would sacrifice their honor and betray their
obligations as a neutral, obligations to which they had been dutifully faithful, the note
stated. Thus, Belgium would employ all means necessary to repel the attack on their
rights, regardless of the perpetrator.
Nonetheless, Germany attacked Belgium on August 4th and within a few weeks
overwhelmed the spirited opposition of the small Belgian army. Although the German
government clearly acknowledged that the invasion was in violation of the 1839 treaty,12
the German jurists of the time were almost completely united in justifying their
government’s action on grounds of military necessity in this proclaimed “life or death”
decision.13 In his famous August 4th speech to the Reichstag, Chancellor BethmannHollweg presented the German case:
We are in a state of legitimate defense. Necessity knows no law. Our troops have
occupied Luxembourg and have perhaps already penetrated into Belgium. This is
against the law of nations. France, it is true, has declared to Brussels that it is
determined to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as its adversary respects it,
but we know that France was ready to invade Belgium. France can afford to wait;
we cannot. A French attack on our flank in the region of the lower Rhine might
have been fatal. It is for that reason that we have been compelled to ignore the
just protests of the governments of Luxembourg and Belgium. The injustice
which we thus commit we will repair as soon as our military object has been
attained. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened and is fighting for its
highest possessions can have only one thought—how he is to hack his way
through.14
Or as a German professor put it in 1915, as much for France as for Germany, invading
Belgium in order to attack the enemy was “necessarium ad finem belli”, and trying to
decide who first broke the neutrality is a meaningless exercise.15
Although the proposition remained controversial in 1914, some international legal
scholars agreed on the existence of the right of self-preservation, even where that right
would infringe upon a state’s legal obligations.16 As one prominent scholar put it, “In
certain cases, it is a fact that violations committed in self-preservation are not prohibited
by the law of nations; they are justified in cases of necessity and of this, every State must
be the judge.”17 In this case, Germany’s claim of necessity was based on the notion that
she would have faced an attack at her most vulnerable spot, along the unprotected
German-Belgian border, and if the alleged French invasion had been successful,
Germany would have lost her most valuable coal and iron mines and industrial centers in
the Rhine.18 Thus, it was alleged, for Germany not to anticipate the attack in order to
defend itself would have been nothing short of suicide.
But there were distinct problems with Germany’s claim to necessity in 1914.
First, Germany had merely declared that “reliable information” indicated that France was
about to move into Belgium; it gave no evidence of the source or the nature of that
information to support its allegation, nor was it ever able to produce compelling proof. 19
Second, Germany completely disregarded evidence contrary to that reliable information,
namely France’s unequivocal pledge to respect Belgian neutrality, a pledge which
Germany had refused to reciprocate.20 Third, the German doctrine of kriegsraison was
much broader than the legal defense of military necessity, so much so that German jurists
would have allowed acts of mere military interest or convenience to trump otherwise
sacred legal obligations.21
The consequence of this view is to make the exception
swallow the rule, since any strategic interest would be able to override international
law.22 At a minimum, this doctrine of kriegsraison clearly violates the spirit of the
Hague Conventions, which declared that belligerents were not unconstrained in their
choices.23
Germany’s decision to pass through Belgium to attack France was in reality a
decision of strategic convenience, designed a decade earlier to save time, effort and lives
in moving through the weakly defended Belgium, rather than moving through the heavily
armed French borders.
The false allegation of French intention to march through
Belgium was a pretext to justify the implementation of this long-standing German plan.24
Any argument that the European powers were tightening the noose around Germany’s
neck and that it had no choice but to violate Belgian neutrality to liberate itself is
disingenuous. The Germans had been the instigators of the crisis in giving carte blanche
to the Austro-Hungarian government to crush Serbia, and they were the first to declare
war on the Entente powers. Furthermore, General Moltke first drafted the ultimatum to
Belgium on July 26, two days before Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the
same day that Germany rejected a British proposal for a five-power conference to
negotiate a diplomatic solution to the crisis.25 Though the sealed document was not
delivered until August 2 (to give the impression that Germany had just discovered
France’s intentions and had to respond quickly),26 the early drafting of the ultimatum
provides solid evidence that Germany was creating the urgency and pushing for war.
It did not take long for Germany to realize that the rest of the world condemned
its military necessity defense of the violation of Belgian neutrality, and thus, Germany
proceeded to advance a myriad of other justifications for its action.27 One claim was that
Belgium had become a belligerent by refusing a right of passage to Germany to ward off
the alleged French attack on Belgium, and that therefore, Belgium was implicitly
agreeing to the violation of its neutrality and assisting the French in their effort against
Germany.28 But the law of neutrality in 1914 did not permit a neutral state to provide a
right of passage to belligerent troops.29
Although international law had previously
allowed such a right of passage, the right was almost unanimously rejected from the
middle of the nineteenth century on.30
Furthermore, the 1907 Hague convention
respecting the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons in war on land cleared up
any remaining ambiguities.
Article 2 prohibited belligerents from moving troops,
munitions, or war supplies across the territory of a neutral power, and article 5 prohibited
neutrals from allowing these acts to occur in their territory. 31 Though the German
government argued that these articles were not legally binding since Great Britain and
other belligerents had not ratified them, they were in fact binding on all the belligerents
because these articles merely codified the long-established and universally accepted
principles contained therein.32 Allowing Germany to pass through neutral Belgium in an
offensive attack on France then would have made Belgium a co-belligerent with
Germany in violation of her neutrality. Furthermore, she would have opened herself up
to German occupation, since the Germans, had they won, may have conveniently
forgotten their promise to withdraw at the end of the war.33 Thus, Belgium made the only
legal and moral choice available to them in refusing the German demand.
Next, the Germans claimed that the French had intended to violate Belgian
neutrality, such that they could not criticize Germany for doing so.
This German
allegation was true: the French military staff had proposed to violate Belgian neutrality
to move against Germany, but the government had rejected the plan and Britain opposed
the idea because the world would have condemned the Entente for the violation.34
However, the mere fact that France had considered an illegal action did not justify
Germany’s actual commission of the violation. No legal system equates an actor who
considered unlawful action but decided against it with another actor who committed the
illegality.35
Therefore, Germany alleged that France had actually violated Belgian
neutrality prior to the German invasion. They charged that French planes had flown over
Belgian airspace and into parts of Germany and that some French patrols had been seen
in Belgium in late July or the first few days of August prior to the outbreak of
hostilities.36 But the Germans quickly abandoned these charges of a French violation,
certainly because they knew the charges were false.37 The Germans also alleged that
French inspection of Belgian fortifications constituted a consensual violation of
neutrality, placing Belgium in the camp of the Entente powers and making it a legitimate
target for German attack.38 However, Germany had benefited from similar inspections
when France was the suspected violator, and German jurists certainly did not think those
inspections violated the neutrality status at that point.39
The most serious charges levied against Belgium came in October 1914 after
Germany had captured Brussels and found in the government archives copies of the
Conventions Anglo-Belges.40 For the Germans, this was proof of their prior suspicion
that Belgium had allied itself with Great Britain, thereby becoming a belligerent and
forfeiting any claim to neutrality. Germany had made this allegation around the time of
its ultimatum on Belgium but curiously omitted any mention of it in the text of the
ultimatum, and since Germany had no proof, the allegations were ignored. However, the
archive documents proved that Belgium had consulted Great Britain regarding the entry
of British troops into Belgium against Germany. The German government then turned
these documents into a propaganda machine, claiming that Belgium had predetermined to
join Germany’s allies as a “vassal state of England.”41 Furthermore, since Britain itself
had plotted to send troops into Belgium, the very reason it cited for declaring war on
Germany, the Germans claimed that British rhetoric about Germany’s violation of
Belgium was utterly meaningless.42
And indeed, had there been an actual Belgian
alliance with Britain against Germany, Germany would have been correct in considering
Belgium a belligerent rather than a neutral on August 3, for the letter and the spirit of the
Treaty of 1839 would have been violated as much by Belgium as by Great Britain. 43
However, this German propaganda campaign misrepresented the tone of the
military conversations and omitted the key feature of the discussions. The documents
contained merely informal, non-binding discussions between Belgium and one of her
guarantors, designed to enforce respect for the obligations of the 1839 treaty and insert
British troops into Belgium only if Germany decided to disregard them, which she
eventually did.44 The fact that Germany did not disclose the defensive character of the
conversations proves that Germany was not engaged in legal argument, but merely a
slanted propaganda campaign to deceive public opinion. In fact, the German Secretary of
State and Minister of War had even reaffirmed the neutral status of Belgium, as well as
Germany’s duties to respect that status, in the German Reichstag on April 29, 1913, and
as late as July 31, 1914, Herr von Below-Saleske stated to the Belgian Minister of
Foreign Affairs that the German view had not changed.45 Though the Germans had not
yet discovered the military conversations, the fact that they, who claimed to have been
convinced that Belgian neutrality had been forfeited long ago, did not make the allegation
at the outbreak of war (and indeed made official statements to the contrary) greatly
undermines the persuasiveness of their claim.46
In 1914, it was controversial whether defensive alliances violated neutral status,47
but many scholars thought it was legal for a neutral state to take steps to protect its
neutrality.
There had been frequent perceived threats from one side or the other
throughout much of Belgium’s history of neutrality.48 Despite these tensions, Belgium
had relied on the good will of its neighbors and guarantors to the point that it maintained
very low levels of armed forces, and upon attack from either side, it would struggle to
defend itself.49 In fact, the Belgians took their guarantee so seriously that they also
neglected frontier defenses, fortresses, and anything else that implied lack of confidence
in the treaty.50 And therein lies the reason the Schlieffen Plan called for a move through
Belgium, to overwhelm quickly and easily the tiny Belgian army and encircle the French
fortresses along the Franco-German border.51 However, since the Belgian government
could not gain the support for legislation to increase the size of the military to repel an
attack, the military leaders resolved to seek out an agreement for military cooperation
with friendly neighbors in order to resist the threats coming from both sides.52
More importantly, Germany’s charge that Britain had made plans to violate
Belgian neutrality herself does not somehow make Germany’s actual violation any less
flagrant, because Germany did not invade Belgium to protect its neutrality (witness the
atrocities committed by the Germans en route). Britain, on the other hand, was preparing
to send troops to Belgium for the sole purpose of carrying out her role as a guarantor of
the 1839 Treaty, and comparing the two actions is grossly to distort reality. Even the
German military historian commissioned in 1916 to oversee the archives of the AngloBelgian conversations insisted that Belgium had not departed from the requirements of
neutrality.53 Thus, even the most vigorous German attempts to justify the invasion of
Belgium failed to present a convincing legal argument.
In the end, history has clearly judged the German invasion as a violation of
international law. Indeed, the numerous German justifications all seem disingenuous in
that they were presented only after the military necessity defense had failed to convince
the world that their move into Belgium was not unlawful. Moreover, they seem primarily
to be desperate attempts to convince the German people that their cause was just and that
they were not the aggressors, but rather the victims of their enemies’ aggression. 54
Excellent proof of this proposition comes from the fact the German government never
published the Belgian refusal to accept the German ultimatum, wanting to give the
impression that Belgium had acquiesced and that her armed resistance was therefore
illegal (possibly to justify the atrocities committed on Belgian soil).55
Since Germany was obligated not to violate Belgian neutrality, but did anyway,
the remaining issue was whether Great Britain, as a guarantor of the 1839 Treaty, had a
legal right or duty individually to intervene in order to prevent the violation of the treaty
by a signatory.56 The text of the treaty did not expressly state whether the guarantee was
individual or collective in nature; nor did it state what the guarantors were bound to do in
order to protect Belgian neutrality.
The treaty merely stated that the five powers
guaranteed the perpetual neutrality of Belgium. Given the lack of precision as to the
nature of the guarantee, interpretations of the obligations it imposed varied widely during
the years of Belgian neutrality leading up to 1914. Most interpreters considered the
guarantee to be collective, not individual upon each guaranteeing state, such that there
was no individual obligation to guarantee neutrality against any and all violators.57 Thus,
at the most, the guarantors were bound to consider collectively a response to the
violation, but if no course of action were agreed upon, each guarantor would be
authorized to interpret the guarantee as it saw fit.58 However, it would seem incorrect as
a matter of interpretation to deny the right to intervene individually under the guarantee,
because when Germany (one of the guarantors) violated the guarantee, a consensus
among the five powers on how to respond naturally would have been impossible.59 Thus,
the guarantee would have been illusory if the only right to intervene was a collective
right, and indeed, scholars in 1914 were clear that there was an individual right for a
guarantor to prevent the violation of the treaty.60
Whether Great Britain’s right to intervene was also a duty is much less clear.
Some thought the treaty of 1839 bound the British to protect Belgium, and in 1870, the
British government had acted as though it was obligated to take any necessary measures
to prevent a violation of Belgian neutrality.61 However, the bottom line of much of the
rhetoric from the 1870 parliamentary debates over the nature of the guarantee and its
obligations focused on Britain’s moral obligation in favor of Belgium. For example,
Lord John Russell declared that his country had “only one path of honor,” and even Mr.
Gladstone, who had argued against a strict treaty obligation that would force Britain to
intervene against her wishes, stated that Britain had “an interest in the independence of
Belgium which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the
guarantee.”62 Gladstone’s answer in 1870 became the solution for Foreign Minister Grey
and his cabinet in 1914. On July 29, the cabinet examined its treaty obligations and
concluded: “It is a doubtful point how far a single guaranteeing State is bound under the
Treaty of 1839 to maintain Belgian neutrality if the remained abstain or refuse” and that
“The Cabinet consider that the matter if it arises will be rather one of policy than legal
obligation.”63 Of course, the cabinet’s decision in 1914 to be guided by policy rather
than legal obligation did not mean that Great Britain was under no obligation to protect
the neutrality and independence of Belgium under the 1839 Treaty.64
Rather, it is
insightful to show the assumptions under which the British government was operating
and the degree to which it felt constrained in deciding how to react to the downward
spiral of European relations.
At the beginning of August, the British government was sharply divided on
whether the escalating tensions in Europe should draw the island country into the
continental war. Some cabinet members, led by Grey, thought that Britain’s national
interest required the preservation of France in a war with Germany, because otherwise
Germany would dominate the continent and likely try to overrun Britain itself.65
However, Grey could not get a majority of his cabinet to agree with that argument. In
fact, it was anticipated that if the British government declared war on Germany, possibly
half of the cabinet would resign in protest.66 Even the naval plan by which France had
left the defense of her northern coast to the British was not enough to unite the cabinet in
support for intervention, leading the French ambassador Cambon to state that if the
British did not join the war effort, France would never forgive her.67 Thus, Grey shifted
his push for intervention to the question of a possible German violation of Belgian
neutrality, rightly believing that the defense of Belgium was an issue that could unite his
divided cabinet, as well as public opinion.68 Indeed, upon hearing the news of the
German ultimatum to Belgium, the cabinet members who had fought for non-intervention
saw the potential violation of Belgian neutrality as an infringement of British interests
substantial enough to merit British involvement in the war, and voted (although still not
unanimously) in favor of a British ultimatum to Germany.
Thus, when Grey went to Parliament on August 3 to ask its support for the war, he
successfully appealed to British honor in defending Belgium, without hiding the fact that
Britain’s interest in maintaining France was also at stake. After first describing the
nature of the naval agreement with France, he stated that “if the German fleet came down
the Channel and bombarded and battered the undefended coasts of France, we could not
stand aside and see this going on practically within sight of our eyes, with our arms
folded, looking on dispassionately, doing nothing!”69 And again drawing out the notion
of British honor, he borrowed a line from Gladstone from 1870 in referring to the
question of Belgian neutrality, saying, “Could this country stand by and witness the direst
crime that ever stained the pages of history and thus become participators in the sin?”70
Yet even in Grey’s impassioned speech, he referred to the Belgian Treaty only in terms of
“the obligations of honor and interest,” never claiming that Britain was bound to
intervene.
Few politicians or commentators, if any, insisted that Britain had no choice but to
fight to defend Belgian neutrality, and in fact, many notable British emphasized that their
country’s intervention in the war was to protect its interests on the continent, not because
of Germany’s invasion of Belgium. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the Labor Party,
called it a “pretty little game of hypocrisy” for his government to pretend that England
was going to war to protect the sanctity of treaties and “little” Belgium.71 Germany also
tried to convince its own people and the world that Belgian neutrality was the British
pretext to claim its intervention in the war was just.72 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg
made the now infamous speech in which he bitterly criticized Britain for “striking a man
from behind while he was fighting for his life against two assailants … all for just a
word—‘neutrality’—just for a scrap of paper….”73 He was adamant that Britain was not
going to war just to defend Belgium, but rather because that was a moral excuse to
protect its other interests involved in 1914.
Nonetheless, the debate over intervention was couched in such terms, and though
the British clearly had varied over time in their interpretations of the guarantee of Belgian
neutrality, in 1914 they made a perfectly valid interpretation which allowed them the
right to intervene to preserve Belgian neutrality. British intervention was clearly
motivated by Britain’s interests in restraining German aggrandizement of power as well
as preserving France as a continental power to counteract Germany, but the issue of
Belgian neutrality was the only means to unite British public opinion in support of the
war effort. In the end, it seems most probable that even without the German violation of
Belgian neutrality, Britain likely would have intervened on behalf of France in order to
restore the equilibrium of power the alliance system had tried to create. Thus, the
German Chancellor was probably correct in his belief that Britain was not really fighting
for Belgium, but rather for itself; however, his characterization of the treaty of 1839 as a
“scrap of paper” has gone down in history as compelling evidence of Germany’s utter
disregard for international legal obligations.
Tuchman, The Guns of August … Setear p.32
Alexander Fuehr, The Neutrality of Belgium, 1915.
3
Garner, Vol. II at 186.
4
Fuehr, Ch. 2. http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~libsite/wwi-www/belgneut/BelgC02.htm
5
Id.
6
Thomas at 575.
7
Thomas at 575.
8
Id. at 187,
9
“Belgian neutrality before the Great War,”
wysiwyg://271/http://belgianarmy.freeservers.com/neutrality.htm
10
“World War I, The Schlieffen Plan,” http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/schlieffen.html
11
See also, Thomas at 497, quoting a Belgian minister’s personal reaction to the ultimatum.
12
Garner, Vol. II at 191.
13
For a spirited defense of Germany’s actions, see Alexander Fuehr, The Neutrality of Belgium, 1915.
Fuehr strongly criticizes both the Treaty of 1839, impugning the motives behind the treaty and suggesting
that no one trusted the guarantee, as well as the British claim to have intervened because of the violation of
Belgian neutrality. Fuehr provides basically every argument imaginable as to why Germany was acting in
accord with international law in 1914.
1
2
14
Dr. Th. Niemeyer, “International Law in War,” 13 Michigan Law Review 178, 1915.
Garner.
17
Oppenheim, International Law, p. 178, quoted in, Garner, Vol II at 193.
18
Fuehr, Ch. 5.
19
Garner, at 195.
20
Garner at 195.
21
Jesse S. Reeves, “The Neutralization of Belgium and the Doctrine of Kriegsraison,” 13 Michigan Law
Review 180, 1915.
22
Garner at 197.
23
Id.
24
Garner at 202.
25
Tuchman, beginning Ch. 8.
26
Tuchman, Ch. 8.
27
Garner at 198.
28
See, e.g., Joseph Kohler, Notwehr und Neutralitat, Zeitschrift fur Volkerrecht, Bd. VIII (1914), pp. 576
ff, cited in, Garner at 199.
29
Garner, Vol. II at 191.
30
Garner at 223.
31
Garner at 224.
15
16
32
Garner at 23.
Tuchman, Ch. 8.
34
Thomas at 532.
35
Thomas at 577.
36
Garner at 204.
37
Thomas at 500.
38
Garner at 205.
39
Thomas at 583. In fact, one of the greatest ironies of the war was that Germany in 1887 had access to
detailed Belgian military information in its efforts to aid in the fortification of the Meuse, fortifications
from which Belgium would valiantly resist the German advance in 1914. Thomas at 400.
40
For a sample of the detailed conversations, see Fuehr, Ch. 4.
41
North German Gazette, December 2, 1914, quoted in Fuehr, Appendix G.
42
North German Gazette, Dec. 2, 1914.
43
Reeves at 183.
44
Garner 205-207-ish.
45
Reeves at 182.
46
In Ch. 5 of his book, Fuehr claims the reason Germany did not mention in the ultimatum what it knew to
be true was that she wanted to make the terms of the note acceptable to Belgium, in order to “spare”
Belgium from being drawn into the conflict. However, the notion that Germany was looking out for the
best interests of Belgium is hardly credible, given that Germany instigated the war and proceeded to burn
Belgium to the ground.
47
See statement of French Professor de Lapradelle, cited in Fuehr, Ch. 4, “The perpetually neutral State
renounces the right to make war, and, in consequence, the right to contract alliances, even purely defensive
ones….”
48
See, e.g., Thomas at 397.
49
Thomas at 408.
50
Tuchmann ch. 8.
51
Thomas at 420.
52
Thomas at 422-423.
53
Thomas at 531.
54
Tuchman, end of Ch 9.
55
Tuchman, end of Ch. 9.
56
Garner at 227.
57
Garner at 227.
58
Id.
59
Garner at 228.
60
Garner at 228.
61
Garner at 229.
62
Garner at 229-230.
63
Thomas at 511.
64
Thomas at 511.
65
Tuchman, early Ch. 7.
66
Tuchman, ch. 9.
67
Tuchman, near end of Ch. 7.
68
Thomas at 509.
69
Tuchman, Ch. 9.
70
Id.
71
Fuehr, Ch. 5.
72
See, e.g., Bethmann-Hollweg’s speech in the Reichstag on Dec. 2, 1914, quoted in Fuehr at Appendix I.
73
Tuchman, end of Ch. 9.
33