Immediate War Aims
No sooner was Europe at war than war aims, not previously considered, at least openly, quickly materialised. With barely a week gone, Austro-Hungarian diplomats were discussing the annexation of Russia’s southern Polish provinces, including Warsaw. Whilst it wasn’t long before German nationalists were calling for a permanent buffer zone between Germany and Poland carved out of what had been Russian territory. This would necessitate sixteen million Poles being uprooted and deported into Russia to make way for German settlers.
Austro-Hungary’s had long had an interest in Poland and had taken part in two of its three partitions in the eighteenth century but, of course, its overriding aim was to settle the issue with Serbia once-and-for-all, annexing half of the country once it had been crushed. However, it also soon saw the opportunity for wider gains, notably Montenegro and Albania which it intended to make a protectorate.
By September, 1914 the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, had put together his controversial ‘September Programme’ outlining Germany’s war aims. At its core was the Mitteleuropa that was part of the Kaiser’s Weltpolitik: a central European customs and economic union led by Germany and Austria-Hungary. To the west of Germany, it would involve the annexation of Luxemburg, the control of Belgium and the acquisition of its Channel ports, possibly the annexation of parts of northern France too. To its east, it would involve the end of Russian rule in the Baltic states and Poland which would both come under German influence. Dominance of central Europe would be complemented by another element in the Kaiser’s policy of Weltpolitik: Mittelafrika, i.e. German dominance in central Africa.
Then in May, 1915 a petition was sent to the German Chancellor from the six most powerful economic and industrial groupings with their own demands, including extensive gains once the war had been won. They wanted Belgian to be made economically and militarily subservient to Germany. The French were to lose their coastline as far as the mouth of the River Somme, France was also to lose her coal-producing region (Alsace-Lorraine) and control of her fortresses at Verdun, Longwy and Belfort. To the east they wanted the annexation of at least part of Russia’s Baltic provinces and the Russian territory to their south. In this way, Germany would acquire greater industrial capacity to the west, and more farm land to the east. Germany’s overseas empire was to be expanded too (no doubt at the expense of Britain and France). It is worth noting that a significant figure behind the petition was Alfred Hugenberg, the chief director of Krupps who would later be an important supporter of Hitler in his rise to power.
Turkey declared a holy war, a jihad. It wanted to regain territory lost to Russia in the two Russo-Turkish Wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It also wanted to regain territory lost more recently in the Balkans. It also hoped to take Egypt and Cyprus from the British.
Though this would change, at the outset of the war Britain wasn’t fighting for territorial gains. It was fighting to defend Belgium and it was fighting to defend France too. But more than that, it was fighting to protect its empire, to protect its status as a world power, and to prevent Germany becoming a world power.
France wanted the return of Alsace-Lorraine. You would have thought there could have been no surprise about that, but there was some uncertainty. From the British and from French socialists too. The reason was that it wasn’t absolutely certain whether a majority of the population wanted to be returned to France. Although both regions had been recognised as French for more than 200 years, Germany had some historical claim to Alsace and at least part of Lorraine, and there were (and still are) strong cultural links to Germany – almost 90% of people in Alsace spoke German or a German dialect in 1900.
For the French government, however, it was not up for debate. No plebiscite was held. At the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the statue representing Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, had had black mourning covering it since 1871, and the French government wanted it torn off. But Britain and France differed with regard to Germany in another way. Whereas Britain wanted to prevent Germany from becoming a world power, France wanted to so weaken Germany that its status as a major European power would end. It wanted a buffer Rhineland state between itself and Germany. The one thing Britain and France were in agreement on was that Belgian independence must be restored.
Russia hoped the war would enhance its standing amongst the South Slavs and so increase its influence in the Balkans. It also hoped to achieve its long-standing aim of gaining control of Constantinople and the Straits, giving its Black Sea ports access to the Mediterranean. It also hoped to unite the Poles, divided between itself, Germany and Austria-Hungary in the partitions in the last third of the eighteenth century, giving them self-government but under Russia’s patronage.
As for Japan, at the beginning of 1915, Japan handed China its ‘Twenty-one Demands’. At the outbreak of the war Japan had occupied the German concessions in China, they now required China to accept Japan’s claims to the German concessions, extending its control of the South Manchurian Railway, a strengthening of Japan’s position in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, that China’s largest coal and steel works, situated in the British sphere of influence, should become a joint Sino-Japanese venture, that China should not cede any harbour or bay to any other power, and that China should employ Japanese political, military and financial advisers, should agree to joint Japanese-Chinese policing in some areas, and that she should agree to buy arms from Japan and establish a joint Sino-Japanese arsenal in China. All but the last set of demands were accepted, and the last was only resisted because American and British pressure on Japan had prevailed.