WWI · CHAPTER 1 ·
Alliance system before WWI
Chapter 1 of The Great War, 1871–1923: “Bismarck’s Europe and the Two Blocs”
After German unification in 1871, Bismarck sought to keep a vengeful France without allies, tying Austria-Hungary and Russia to Berlin and adding the Dual Alliance of 1879 and the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. The web held only while he kept repairing it, and by 1907 Europe had divided into two blocs.
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The map above is the world of Europe, August 1907 — Two blocs.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1910 · Europe in 1910.
Part of IB History: The First World War →
SHORT EXPLANATION
In 1871, victory over France brought some two dozen German states together in a new empire. Germany now had Europe’s fastest-growing industry and the largest population west of Russia. Its neighbors had to reconsider the balance of power: could any one state become strong enough to dominate the others? France had lost Alsace-Lorraine and wanted revenge. For Germany, a secure peace seemed to require keeping France without a powerful ally.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought that security through alliances, agreements in which states promise to fight for one another. The difficulty was that two of his partners, Austria-Hungary and Russia, competed in the Balkans. After Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed him in 1890, Germany let its secret treaty with Russia lapse. Russia needed money and security, and by 1894 had allied with France. Germany’s new battle fleet then alarmed Britain, whose island depended on imported food and naval protection. Britain settled disputes with France in 1904 and Russia in 1907 through ententes, or understandings, which did not promise mutual defense. On the map a blue ring surrounds a charcoal center. By 1914 a Balkan quarrel could draw in these powers, and German planners faced the prospect they feared: France attacking in the west and Russia in the east.
The full story
Bismarck wanted Germany to belong to the larger group in a Europe of five great powers. France had lost Alsace and Lorraine to Germany in 1871; if it found a strong partner, it might try to recover them by force. Germany therefore needed good relations with both Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg empire ruled from Vienna, and Russia. In 1873 the three emperors formed a league to consult and preserve peace. Their interests were hardest to reconcile in the Balkans, where both Austria-Hungary and Russia sought influence as the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, retreated. Russia’s victory over the Ottomans in 1878 seemed likely to give it a large client Bulgaria. The powers reduced Bulgaria at the Congress of Berlin, and Russia blamed Germany. Bismarck then made a choice that complicated his own task: the secret Dual Alliance of 1879 promised Austrian defense against Russia. Italy joined in 1882, creating the Triple Alliance.
Germany still needed a relationship with Russia. The Three Emperors’ Alliance was revived in 1881, but a Bulgarian crisis destroyed it in 1887. Bismarck replaced it with the secret Reinsurance Treaty: Germany and Russia would remain neutral if the other went to war, except if Germany attacked France or Russia attacked Austria-Hungary. Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in March 1890, and his advisers let this treaty lapse, judging it too devious. Russia was already borrowing in Paris and now sought security there too. A French squadron visited Kronstadt in 1891; a military convention, ratified in 1894, bound each partner to attack Germany if Germany attacked the other. France and the Russian Empire turn blue together on the map. The combination Bismarck had spent twenty years preventing had formed within four years of his dismissal.
Britain’s route toward France and Russia began with disputes beyond Europe, and with a German fleet close to home. British politicians called their avoidance of continental alliances ‘splendid isolation.’ After 1897 Wilhelm’s Weltpolitik, or ‘world policy,’ sought colonies, prestige, and sea power. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’s Navy Laws of 1898 and 1900 committed Germany to a battle fleet in the North Sea. Britain depended on sea routes for defense and imported food, so the fleet threatened its security. The Entente Cordiale of 1904 settled colonial disputes: Britain gained recognition in Egypt and France in Morocco, without either promising to fight for the other. Wilhelm tried to break the understanding by landing at Tangier in 1905. At Algeciras in 1906, the powers instead sided with France. Britain and Russia divided Persia, today’s Iran, into spheres in 1907, completing the Triple Entente. Separate settlements and German pressure had brought Germany’s feared rivals closer together.
FULL EXPLANATION
Masterpiece or juggling act?
Was Bismarck’s system a durable achievement, or an impressive performance by one diplomat? A. J. P. Taylor and, later, Henry Kissinger admired its restraint. Germany was Europe’s strongest state, yet its alliances helped hold partners back; Bismarck refused to support Austrian adventures in the Balkans, and the great powers remained at peace for two decades. His Bad Kissingen memorandum of 1877 described the desired position: every power except France would need Germany, while disputes among the others prevented a combination against it. Otto Pflanze and Jonathan Steinberg draw attention to the cost of maintaining that position. The secret Dual Alliance and Reinsurance Treaty contained conflicting commitments, and partners could not see what Germany had promised elsewhere. Bismarck himself damaged the Russian relationship in November 1887, when he barred Russian bonds as security at the German central bank and sent Russia looking to Paris for loans. The peace was an achievement, but it relied on managing interests that could pull the system apart.
Encirclement or self-encirclement?
German leaders after 1904 called their predicament Einkreisung: encirclement deliberately imposed by jealous rivals. Their fear is easy to see on the map. The route to those blocs, however, ran through several separate decisions, including decisions made in Germany. George Kennan’s study of the Franco-Russian alliance emphasizes Russia’s need for French capital and Germany’s decision in 1890 to let its treaty lapse. Paul Kennedy connects Britain’s movement away from Germany with the fleet laws, Wilhelm’s 1896 telegram congratulating the Boers on defeating a British raid, and German pressure on France over Morocco. The ententes began as colonial bargains; neither London nor Paris intended an anti-German alliance in 1904. After Wilhelm’s Tangier landing, British and French officers began secret staff talks in 1906, giving their understanding a military dimension. Christopher Clark calls the result Europe’s bipolarization. In his account it was a necessary condition of war, not its cause: Britain, Italy, and Romania still kept their options open into the summer of 1914.
The logic of the naval race
Tirpitz’s fleet was meant to deter Britain, not defeat the Royal Navy in a straightforward contest. His ‘risk theory’ held that even a British victory would be so costly that Britain would fall behind other naval powers. A Germany able to impose that cost might command British respect. Britain saw a threat to the sea routes on which its security and supplies depended. Its two-power standard, in force since 1889, called for matching the next two navies combined. HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906, made older battleships second-rate and restarted the contest on nearly level terms. Volker Berghahn also argued that Tirpitz intended the fleet to rally the middle classes behind the monarchy, making it politically difficult to bargain away. Lord Haldane, Britain’s war minister, came to Berlin in 1912 seeking a naval agreement; Germany sought a British promise of neutrality in return, and the talks failed. Britain then announced two new battleships for every extra German one. By 1913 Germany had shifted spending back to its army. The fleet illustrates a security dilemma: the measure Germany chose for safety made Britain feel less safe and provoked the response Germany wished to avoid.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
A new giant in the middle of Europe. The new Germany changed the scale of the European problem. Its population grew from about 41 million in 1871 to about 65 million by 1910, while France’s remained near 39 million. By 1913 it produced more than twice as much steel as Britain. The largest population west of Russia and Europe’s fastest-growing industry did not determine a particular alliance; they did require other powers to decide how to live beside a formidable neighbor. Bismarck’s system was one answer.
Alsace-Lorraine and the French grievance. Germany’s victory brought unity at the price of a lasting French grievance. Under the Treaty of Frankfurt, France surrendered Alsace and most of Lorraine, with about 1.5 million inhabitants, and owed five billion francs in indemnity. It paid within three years, but could not recover the provinces. Their loss remained a wound in French politics, and Bismarck devoted twenty years to containing the hostility the victory had helped create.
The Eastern Question. The Ottoman Empire had governed the Balkans for centuries. As it retreated, diplomats asked who would inherit its lands: this was the Eastern Question. Russia saw itself as protector of Orthodox Slavs and wanted free passage for its warships through the Straits. Austria-Hungary feared that strong Slav states on its border would unsettle Slavs within its own empire. Both were German partners, so each Balkan crisis threatened to set Bismarck’s allies against one another.
The Kaiser’s new course. Wilhelm II became emperor in 1888 at twenty-nine and intended to rule in person. He forced Bismarck to resign in March 1890. His new chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, and foreign office adviser Friedrich von Holstein wanted simpler, more transparent commitments; they saw the Reinsurance Treaty as incompatible with the Austrian alliance. Dropping it made Germany’s policy easier to state, while removing a secret link that had discouraged Russia from seeking France. Within two years Bismarck’s system had ended.
THE TURNING POINT
Kronstadt, July 1891. The French squadron at Kronstadt in July 1891 offered a striking public sign of Russia’s change of direction. Only thirteen months after the German treaty lapsed, Tsar Alexander III stood bareheaded as a naval band played the Marseillaise, a revolutionary anthem banned in his own empire. A military agreement followed within a year. An absolute monarchy and a republic had found common strategic ground despite the ideology that divided them.
What it changed
A war plan built on two fronts. The Franco-Russian alliance made a two-front war central to German planning. Alfred von Schlieffen’s answer, set out by 1905 and put into action in August 1914 (Chapter 4), was to defeat France first by sweeping through Belgium, then turn east before Russia’s slower mobilization was complete. The plan contemplated violating Belgian neutrality long before the crisis that brought war.
Britain bound by conversations. Britain had made no promise in the ententes to fight for France. But secret staff talks from 1906 and later naval arrangements gave both countries expectations about cooperation. When Britain went to war over Belgium in August 1914 (Chapter 3), its army already had plans to fight beside the French. The conversations had made intervention easier to imagine, even without a formal obligation.
A naval race that Germany lost. By 1912 the Royal Navy had concentrated its battleships in the North Sea, treating Germany as its most likely enemy. Tirpitz had wanted his fleet to win British respect; the result helped bring about the danger he hoped to deter. In the war (Chapter 8), the German High Seas Fleet was too small to win and too valuable to risk. It spent most of the war in harbor while Britain’s blockade strangled German trade.
Every crisis becomes a test of loyalty. A diplomatic setback could now be seen as a danger to an entire alliance. Germany failed to split the Entente at Tangier, and both sides drew the lesson that partners needed firmer support. Colonial and Balkan disputes became tests of loyalty. Chapter 2 follows three crises in six years and the lessons carried toward war.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Did Bismarck’s alliance system keep the peace, or did it build the trap that closed in 1914?
The peace under Bismarck was real: no great-power war broke out between 1871 and 1890, and Germany used alliances to restrain partners as well as protect itself. Yet the Dual Alliance tied Germany to Austrian fears in the Balkans, while the secret Reinsurance Treaty created commitments difficult to reconcile with it. Christopher Clark stresses the change after Bismarck: his successors let Russia go and alarmed Britain, helping form the later blocs. Historians following Fritz Fischer emphasize continuity in German ambition from the 1890s to 1914. Bismarck postponed the tensions created by unification without resolving them. His personal skill sustained the arrangement; institutions that can operate beyond their inventor offer a more durable basis for security.
An interesting fact
The battleship that gave the dreadnought race its name never fought another battleship. HMS Dreadnought was being refitted when the British and German fleets met at Jutland in 1916. Its only combat success had come in March 1915, when it rammed and sank U-29 in the North Sea—the only confirmed sinking of a submarine by a battleship. U-29’s commander, Otto Weddigen, had already become famous for sinking three British cruisers in one morning in September 1914. Dreadnought became obsolete within a decade and was sold for scrap in 1921.
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