"...African borders existed on maps, and not on the ground; surveys were unreliable and often fudged in favor of whoever was sponsoring them, and African natives themselves had their own ideas about where boundaries began and ended depending on who you asked, often boiling down to tribal loyalties. The dispute essentially boiled down to something in the end unproveable: the Germans were adamant that the Force Publique had provoked Lettow-Vorbeck's askari scouts first and done it having crossed onto German land, while Belgium maintained that Germans had raided into the Free State and carried out a massacre there. Germans both at the time and German scholars today are universally adamant that the instinct of the Reich at this time was to deescalate and that diplomats said as much to Belgian leadership; this is believable mostly if one chooses to believe that it was indeed within German Katanga that the disputed skirmish occurred. No map exists to suggest it did or did not, and there was no way to carry out an investigation, especially once Lettow-Vorbeck decamped back to Benguela.
Could the Second Congo Crisis have been headed off there? Quite possibly. Colonial incidents occurred frequently, and not since the 1892 war scare over Siam had there been an event in either Africa or Asia that was thought to be bringing European Powers close to war; it was also generally thought that Belgium, being the small country it was, would seek the first exit from a highway to conflict it could. That the events of June and July of 1918 would lead to the eruption of war in March 1919 surprised perhaps few in hindsight - indeed, the summer of 1918 was sometimes called the "false start" or "war in sight" crisis because it looked like the trigger was close to being pulled then - but it took extra provocation, extra miscalculation, to take a murky and innocuous event in the deep heart of the Congo's dark jungles to push it to something more existential and epochal..."
- The Central European War
"...Heinrich trusted the assurances of not just Furstenburg but Solf and Lettow-Vorbeck's personal telegram that the attack had, quite clearly, occurred on German soil, and thus his response to Leopold III on June 26th was not one of apology but rather one of equivocation; he "regretted" the death of "officers of the Belgian crown" but noted that "the Congo is a dangerous part of the world, and it is understandable in such wild terrain how boundaries could be easily misconstrued." Leopold took chagrin to a number of things in such an otherwise innocuous missive, taking the "Belgian crown" comment to be a pointed commentary on the Free State being his personal possession to great controversy elsewhere in Europe and also taking Heinrich's benefit of the doubt that the Force Publique column had simply gotten lost as being sarcastic and goading.
Against the backdrop of this, Furstenburg - who normally prided himself on his cold and calculating reputation and took great pains never to say one more word than he had to - uncharacteristically inflamed things even more, two days later on June 28th, when while leaving the Prussian Herrenhaus he was asked directly about angry comments in Belgium about the brewing colonial crisis, including what had been understood as a direct rather than vague threat of retaliatory raids into Katanga by the notoriously volatile Prince Stephane Clement. Furstenburg, who hated the press and had been caught off guard by their presence, grunted nearly under this breath, "Whales do not concern themselves with the idle rantings of trout!" Furstenburg's defenders have spent nearly a century since arguing, vociferously, that this was specifically a comment directed at Stephane Clement, who was throughout Europe widely regarded as a vain, degenerate idiot who spent most of his time embarrassing his father to the point that he had spent most of his adult life in semi-exile overseas so as to not cause more salacious drama. Furstenburg himself noted this in interviews after the war; he was adamant that the comment, which was off the cuff, was meant to express his dismissal of Stephane Clement making threats that he was clearly in no position to make or back up. In such a reading of the infamous "German Insult," perhaps even Leopold III was one of Furstenburg's "whales;" a King who, for most of his life, had clearly given little shrift to what the worst of his sons thought or said.
To but it mildly, however, that was not how most people understood the comment, in Germany or elsewhere, especially Belgium. There, the comment was taken much more darkly - that Germany haughtily could have cared less what little Belgium thought, and that perhaps Brussels should learn its place. In the tense context of Belgium accusing Germany's commander-in-chief in Africa of carrying out raids into the Free State from behind the disputed boundaries of Katanga, it was understood to the Delacroix government in Brussels as well as the Belgian royal family to augur a future in which Germany frequently bullied Brussels in Africa, relying on its considerably larger population, economy and military to bring the "trout" to heel if it did not bow to the "whale," taking advantage of Belgium's treaty-bound neutrality to do so. While other European governments saw what Furstenburg saw as irresponsibly flippant, the Belgians saw something else - a promise of not just disrespect but escalation, all born from a glib remark made offhandedly to a gaggle of journalists..."
- Heinrich: The Life and Legacy of Germany's Goldkaiser
"...Poincaré himself did not charge Paleologue with pursuing rapprochement with Belgium, but neither did he discourage the Quai d'Orsay from accepting such if initiated elsewhere. The simple reality of the Second Congo Crisis of 1918 was that it was becoming increasingly clear to Paleologue and his ardently Germanophobic analysts and career civil servants who drove much of French policy that something was coming to a head in Africa. Belgium's position in the Congo had never been weaker, and its debt more unsustainable; the precedent of Britain and Germany divvying up Portugal's state holdings between themselves under the parameters of Malcolm-Jagow suggested an even easier French path to calling its considerable loans to Leopold III's personal holdings in the Congo. The near-collapse of the Free State in March had proved this; it was seen as increasingly inevitable in many corners in Paris that more was to come. The dispute thus became whether or not France would simply absorb the Congo for itself or support Belgium, and here there were a number of various viewpoints, the least belligerent of which were quickly silenced.
Poincaré's preference was to simply absorb the Belgian Congo before Germany could, but he was persuaded by the "Belgian Camp" and their line of thinking that a confrontation with Germany over central Africa was now inevitable; the raids of June 1918 suggested a future in which Germany would increasingly use Angola and Katanga as a base of operations to provoke and press against the Free State until it was stopped, perhaps with violence. Paleologue argued, quite credibly, that the end of Leopold III's personal control of the Free State was nigh; and due to the massive debt Leopold had accrued to French banks, France would have a choice in how this endgame played out. The instability of Belgian domestic politics over the previous several years, starting with the general strike of 1915 and recently proven with the disastrous spring elections just months earlier, suggested that France could not "rely" upon what Brussels might decide, and that Paris may instead have to "decide on their behalf."
This belligerent, self-important foreign policy to step into the brink on Belgium's behalf was not just a matter of Africa, of course. The Emperor's cousin and heir, Victor, was married to a Belgian princess; the Emperor's sister, Marie-Eugenie, was married to Leopold III's cousin, Baudouin, and had borne him six children, including three sons who had all survived infancy. The ties between royal houses in Paris and Brussels were thus much deeper than merely affinity and finance. It was also the case that the French press was virulently Germanophobic and took pride in its ability to agitate the French street over foreign policy matters, often as much of a mouthpiece for the Tuileries as a leading indicator, and in the summer of 1918 it did this with gusto. The Piquet Affair had already suggested a Germany intervening directly in the affairs of Belgium through Flamenpolitik, and it was easy to talk oneself backwards from this dubious conclusion into seeing the Congo Crisis as an extension of this expansionary and saber-rattling foreign policy; for Poincaré in particular, there was a curious symmetry between the accusations inherent in the Piquet Affair and the spiraling crises in Austria, similarly coming to a head in the crucial month of June 1918, and it all seemed to add up to one conclusion:
Germany had arrived at a point where she was confident in her grandest European and colonial schemes, and was making preparations to provoke a final settling conflict to achieve them. It was not just in France's interest to stand in her way - it was France's holy obligation to the world..."
- La Politique Mondiale: Poincaré, France and the Waltz of the Great Powers
