“Germany and the Balkan Feud”: The Russian Press Assessment of German Policy During the Two Balkan Wars of 1912–1913

Abstract

By analysing leading Russian newspapers on the eve of the Great War, the author illustrates the perception of German policy by Russian public opinion during the two Balkan wars of 1912–1913. He concludes that during the ten months of the Balkan crisis, the attitude of the Russian press towards Germany underwent a significant transformation. In the first two months of the Balkan War (October and November 1912), when Berlin was not openly declaring its support for Austrian claims, one could find favourable comments on German policy in Russian newspapers. The attitude of the Russian press to Germany shifted in a negative direction under the influence of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg’s speech in the Reichstag on 2 December 1912, when for the first time since the beginning of the Balkan War Berlin publicly declared its readiness to back its Austrian ally’s claims with arms in hand. Russian society experienced even greater disappointment in German politics after the start of the London Meeting of Ambassadors, at which the German representative supported the proposals of the Austrian side, and after a new speech by Bethmann-Hollweg in the German parliament on April 7, 1913, when the Reich Chancellor declared “racial opposites” between the Slavic and German peoples and laid full responsibility for maintaining a tense the situation in Europe affects the pan-Slavic circles of Russia. These two speeches by the head of the German government and Berlin’s support for Austrian claims at the London Conference were negatively perceived by the overwhelming majority of the Russian press. At the same time, the disagreements between Germany and Austria-Hungary that emerged during the Bucharest Peace Conference and immediately after it gave the Russian press reason to declare a serious crisis of the Triple Alliance. The article concludes that there was a significant increase in anti-German sentiment in Russia under the influence of German behavior during the Balkan crisis of 1912–1913. Thus, the two Balkan Wars became an important milestone not only in the history of international relations at the beginning of the 20th century, but also in the propaganda preparations for the First World War.