# Bohemia's case for independence/The Pan-German Plan: The Slavs of Ancient Austria-Hungary and Italy

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THE PAN-GERMAN PLAN: THE SLAVS OF ANCIENT AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND ITALY
For more than twenty years all German scientists, writers, journalists, politicians, and economists have been haunted by the dream of making Germany a world-power—Eine Weltmacht. The great development of the navy of the Empire under William II. was the most significant manifestation of this vision. For some time the governing powers in Berlin hesitated as to which direction the German expansion should take. Should they launch out into a colonial policy, and dispute the territories in Asia, Africa, and South America with the other Powers? At first the German imperialists thought of creating a colonial empire, similar to that of England, of Russia, and of France; but every successive attempt to lay hands on Central Africa, China, part of South America or Morocco entirely failed.
​Then German ambitions were fixed on the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and Turkey, in accordance with the ancient conceptions of Paul de Lagarde and Liszt. The realisation of this plan, abandoned for a certain time, has become during the last ten years the essential aim of the Pan-German policy. It was completed by the German designs on the colonial empire of England. The Berlin-Baghdad railway menaced on one side India, on the other side Cairo and Egypt; it had its branches to Aden through Arabia, and to Cairo to reach Egypt.
In fact, the German imperialists based their action on three maxims:—
* Germany must be assured of abundant commercial outlets for her products.
* She must possess territories rich enough to provide her with all the raw materials indispensable to her industries, since her geographical position makes it unwise for her to be dependent on other States for these necessities.
* She must have at her disposal territories large enough to absorb her surplus population, so that Germans obliged to emigrate from their country may thus avoid denationalisation in alien countries.
A State which aspires to become a world power must fulfil these three essential conditions. The attempt to realise these thee conditions brought Germany to throw in her lot with Turkey.
​It was the famous phrase—Central Europe—Mittel-Europa—which made plain the consequences of this project, a project opposed to the death by the Slavs and the Western Powers, and which could be only achieved after their complete subjugation.
The political situation of Central Europe was singularly favourable to the new Pan-German plan. As I have already stated the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was in full process of disintegration. The Germans in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary only maintained their power under the most precarious conditions and by the most tyrannical proceedings. The Germans were alarmed by the progress made by the Czechs, the Yugo-Slavs, and the Poles; the Magyars were beginning to feel their impotency in face of the growing Yugo-Slav and Czecho-Slovak national movement, and feared the increasing power of Russia. In Bulgaria, German intrigues stirred up old grudges against the Serbs. In Turkey, the Young Turks, who only maintained their power with the help of the Germans, counted on them to resist the Russian pretensions to Constantinople and to check all the English and Italian claims and demands, which would cause the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
Lastly, the immensity of Russian territory and the ever-increasing size of the Russian population ​filled the Germans with anxiety and incited them to try and reduce to impotence a neighbour so embarrassing to their ambitions.
The Germans also held a trump card in their game in having a Coburg on the throne of Bulgaria, a Hohenzollern at Bucarest, and another relation of their Emperor at Athens. The Rumanians feared the Russians, and Athens hated them because of Constantinople. As early as 1912 Ferdinand of Coburg was working for Berlin, at a moment when he was preparing to attack Turkey. At this period he asked Vienna and Berlin to intervene against the Serbs, intending to seize Macedonia and part of Serbia and offering to put his enlarged kingdom at the service of the Germans to promote their domination in the Balkans.
This series of advantageous circumstances encouraged Germany immediately to attempt a supreme effort. Instead of appropriating a few Austro-German provinces, according to the old Pan-German plans, with a view to a dismemberment of Austria, it was now a question of including the whole of Austria and the Balkans with the Adriatic and Turkey, in short to make of Germany a real world-power, menacing India and Egypt.
However, Germany found four great obstacles in her way:—
First of all Serbia. Serbia, by her very ​ence, constituted a constant menace to the monarchy of the Habsburgs and the Magyar oligarchy. It was therefore as necessary for Germany as for Austria-Hungary to crush Serbia, and this was the aim of the present war.
The second obstacle were the Czecho-Slovaks, whose increasing national spirit, growing in proportion to the development of their material prosperity, was becoming a more and more perturbing element in the Dual Monarchy. Since the Czecho-Slovaks would never consent to enter into a closer union with Prussia, it was necessary for the Prussians to get rid of them.
The Serbs were therefore to be crushed and divided between Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria; The Czecho-Slovak nation was to be radically suppressed by a coup d'état which was being secretly prepared in Austria; Galicia was to be administratively detached from Austria, so as to destroy the Slav majority. The Czech countries would then be the subject of an administrative reorganisation; the delimitation of districts would have to be modified, universal suffrage abrogated, all the seven millions of Czechs completely drowned in the German flood. Everything would be Germanised: the German language would be official, the Diets in Czech countries would be abolished, and Austria (Cisleithania) would be turned into a State as centralised as Hungary, where the Slovaks ​would soon succumb under a still more systematic pressure.
The Poles, who were the third obstacle, were to be appeased—on one side by obtaining autonomy in Galicia, which would remain Austrian, but with a special constitution; and on the other side by the formation of a kingdom of Russian Poland, under the influence of Germany. In return they were definitely to renounce their claims to Polish territories in Prussia. It was a programme in complete opposition to the principle of the union of the whole Polish people. Since these lines were written for the first time in March 1916, all these plans for Poland have been realised.
The fourth obstacle was Italy.
She was Austria's traditional rival and claimed the irredentist provinces. She had her interests in the Balkans, which were in constant conflict with those of Austria-Hungary and Germany and directly opposed to the realisation of the Pan-German plan. She looked to Valona and claimed Trieste, which was jealously guarded by Austria and Germany, because it was by Trieste that Germany was preparing her outlet to the Adriatic, and it was at Trieste that an important branch of the famous German railway, Hamburg-Persian Gulf (Berlin-Baghdad), terminated.
Italy was therefore necessarily an enemy, perhaps the principal and most dangerous one, because ​she was the most powerful. With the Czecho-Slovaks and the Yugo-Slavs she completely blocked the road of the Germans and Magyars towards the East.
The Pan-German plan was therefore essentially founded on the crushing of Serbia, the humiliation of Italy, and the complete annihilation of the national aspirations and hopes of the oppressed nations of Austria-Hungary, above all of the Czecho-Slovaks. No more odious or cynical enterprise against human liberty was ever conceived.
All these calculations presuppose the existence of Austria-Hungary. Turkey is too unstable to exist alone. The Germans have undertaken to take care of her. The road between Berlin and Constantinople had to be defended by faithful watch-dogs: this duty was to be confided to the Germans and Magyars of Austria-Hungary and to the Bulgarians in the Balkans. The customs union of Central Europe was destined to put the economic exploitation of these vast territories into the hands of Germany, and so render the Germans absolute masters of Central Europe. Germany cannot dispense with Austria-Hungary, which plays an essential part in the realisation of her elaborate plan, not only from the military point of view, with her support of fifty-one millions of inhabitants and nearly six millions of soldiers and the resources of a vast country, but principally ​as regards her help in the Germanisation and the progressive domination of the different elements of the Czecho-Slovak, Polish, Yugo-Slav, Italian, and Rumanian nationalities. The Prussians alone could not undertake such a vast enterprise.