THE ROYAL DIPLOMAT
Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky was born in the Prussian Silesian town of Kreuzenort (now Krzyżanowice, Poland) on March 8, 1860.
He became the sixth Prince and eighth Count Lichnowsky in 1901. His father Carl was a cavalry general; his mother was Marie, Princess of Croy.
Karl Max was the head of an old noble Bohemian family, possessing estates at Kuchelna (then a part of Austrian Silesia), and Grätz in Austrian Moravia (now Hradec nad Moravicí in the Czech Republic). As a hereditary member of the upper house of the Prussian Diet, Lichnowsky played a part in domestic politics, generally adopting a moderate attitude and deprecating partisan legislation. Although he was a Roman Catholic, Lichnowsky avoided identifying himself with the clerical party in Imperial Germany.
Entering the diplomatic circle, Lichnowsky was appointed an attaché at the London Embassy in 1885. He later served as legation secretary in the Rumanian capital of Bucharest. In 1902, Lichnowsky became German Ambassador to Austria-Hungary, replacing Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg. However, Lichnowsky was forced into retirement after only two years in the post. He was accused of too much independence from the Foreign Office after several conflicts with Friedrich von Holstein, head of the office’s political division. That same year, Lichnowsky married Countess Mechtilde von Arco-Zinneberg.
Karl Max spent eight years in retirement, as his memoirs relate:
“…on my farm and in my garden, on horseback and in the fields, but reading industriously and publishing occasional political articles.”
For several years, newspaper rumors in Germany had connected the name Lichnowsky with practically every important diplomatic post that became vacant, including the Imperial Chancellorship! But no official appointment was made beyond the designation of privy councilor (Wirklicher Geheimrat) in 1911.
In 1912, Lichnowsky was appointed German Ambassador to the United Kingdom, a post he served until the outbreak of the Great War two years later. Soon after his appointment, Lichnowsky filed a report on a conversation he had with Lord Haldane, the British secretary of state for war. In it, Haldane had made clear that Great Britain could go to war if Austria-Hungary attacked tiny Serbia and Imperial Germany attacked republican France. This particular report was said to have infuriated Kaiser Wilhelm II…
THE JULY CRISIS
During the July Crisis of 1914, Lichnowsky was the only German diplomat who raised objections to Germany’s efforts to provoke an Austro-Serbian war. He argued that such actions would force Great Britain to intervene in a continental war. On July 25th, Lichnowsky implored the Imperial German government to accept an offer of British mediation in the Austro-Serbian dispute. Two days later, he followed with a cable arguing that Germany could not win a continental war. This particular cable was not shown to Kaiser Wilhelm II…
Another cable on July 28th relayed an offer from King George V to hold a conference of European ambassadors in an effort to avoid a general war. A final cable on July 29th to the German Foreign Office stated simply:
“…if war breaks out, it will be the greatest catastrophe the world has ever seen.”
These warnings went unheeded. By the time the final cable reached Berlin, Austrian forces were already shelling the Serbian capital of Belgrade!
With Great Britain’s declaration of war on August 4, 1914, Lichnowsky returned to Germany. He was held in such high regard… that a British military guard of honor saluted his departure (a rare privilege in such dire circumstances).
THE 1916 PAMPHLET
Lichnowsky privately printed a pamphlet entitled “My Mission to London 1912–1914”. Circulated among the German upper-class circles in 1916, it accused the Imperial German government of failing to support Karl Max’s efforts in avoiding a great war. The pamphlet’s 1917 publication in the United States led to Lichnowsky’s expulsion from the Prussian House of Lords. One year later, the “Lichnowsky Memorandum” was published as “The Disclosures from Germany” (New York: American Association for International Conciliation, 1918). In March of that year, it was published in the Danish journal Politiken… from which a British copy was published by Cassell & Company with a preface by Professor Gilbert Murray.
Lichnowsky deplored the German alliance with Austria-Hungary, even though he owned land in Austria and had served as a diplomat in Vienna. He felt that the alliance inevitably pulled German diplomacy into Balkan crises and tensions with Russia… without any compensating benefits to Imperial Germany with its new industries, trade and colonies. Lichnowsky wrote:
“This is a return to the days of the Holy Roman Empire and the mistakes of the Hohenstaufens and Habsburgs.”
The Kaiser had commented (on July 31, 1914) about an encircling British diplomacy during the crisis:
“For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves, knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria-Hungary, to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us. … Our dilemma over keeping faith with the old and honorable Emperor has been exploited to create a situation which gives England the excuse she has been seeking to annihilate us with a spurious appearance of justice on the pretext that she is helping France and maintaining the well-known Balance of Power in Europe, i.e. playing off all European States for her own benefit against us.”
In contrast, Lichnowsky outlined how British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey had helped (via two treaties) with dividing the Portuguese Empire and establishing the Berlin–Baghdad railway… and had supported Germany’s policy in the resolution of the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913 that excluded Russia. Great Britain had held back from declaring war until August 4th (after neutral Belgium had been invaded). But in a telegram sent from Berlin on the first of August:
“… England was already mentioned as an opponent…”
That same day in London, Grey told Lichnowsky that if Germany held off an attack in the West, he promised to keep the French neutral. But Lichnowsky told Berlin that in case Germany did not attack France, England would stay neutral and guarantee French neutrality… which was NOT what Grey said. The result was the Kaiser taking Lichnowsky’s message as carte blanche for a single-fronted war with Tsarist Russia. But Moltke argued that the Schlieffen Plan could not be improvised… and the Kaiser’s order to halt the advance in the West fell on deaf ears…
Lichnowsky summed up his view on blame for the outbreak of war and the failure of diplomacy into three main points:
1. “We [Germany] encouraged Count Berchtold [Austrian Foreign Minister] to attack Serbia, although German interests were not involved and the danger of a world-war must have been known to us. Whether we were aware of the wording of the [Austrian] Ultimatum is completely immaterial.”
2. “Between 23rd and 30th July, Sergey Sazonov, the Russian foreign minister, having declared that Russia would not tolerate an attack on Serbia, all attempts to mediate the crisis were rebuffed by Germany. In the meantime, Serbia had replied to the Austrian ultimatum and Berchtold was “content … with the Serbian reply”.
3. “On the 30th July, when Berchtold wanted to come to terms [with Serbia], we sent an ultimatum to Petrograd [Russia], merely because of the Russian mobilization, although Austria was not attacked; and on the 31st July we declared war on Russia, although the Czar pledged his word that he would not order a man to march [against Germany], as long as negotiations were proceeding – thus deliberately destroying the possibility of a peaceful settlement.
In view of the above, undeniable, facts, it is no wonder that the whole of the civilized world outside Germany places the entire responsibility for the world war upon our shoulders.”
At the pamphlet’s end, Lichnowsky forecasted that the Central Powers were doomed to lose the First World War, and said:
“The world will belong to the Anglo-Saxons, Russians and Japanese.”
The German role, he wrote:
“…will be that of thought and commerce, not that of the bureaucrat and soldier. (Germany) made its appearance too late, and its last chance of making good the past, that of founding a Colonial Empire, was annihilated by the world war.”
The 1916 pamphlet heavily influenced the minds of the French and British politicians who promulgated the peace at Versailles in 1919.
COMMENTS AND CRITIQUE
In his column in the May 11, 1918 issue of Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton would note:
“And, what is worse, the spirit of this cheerless impudence has sometimes spread and chilled the blood of better men. I have noticed it lately in the last stiff pose of people who still try the stale game of blaming everybody for the war, long after the Lichnowsky revelations and the peace imposed on Russia have quite finally fixed the blame.”
The latter refers to the harsh terms the Germans imposed on Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in early March 1918. Chesterton was reminding his readers that, were Germany to win the war in the West, it would impose equally harsh terms on Belgium and France… in line with the 1914 Septemberprogramm.
Professor Murray summarized his 1918 foreword to the pamphlet with the following:
“The cleaner our national conscience the keener surely will be our will to victory. The slower we were to give up the traditions of generosity and trustfulness that came from our long security, the firmer will be our resolution to hold out…”
Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky was seen as a “good German” who had truthfully warned his government… but had been ignored at the crucial moment. Lichnowsky’s viewpoint was largely followed by the controversial historian Fritz Fischer in his 1961 book “Germany’s Aims in the First World War”.
The last Imperial German Ambassador to the United Kingdom… Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky… died in Berlin on February 27, 1928. He was sixty-seven years old.