CHAPTER NINE
Our future military needs would not be satisfied if Belgium should remain a free state in any form. . . . It is absolutely necessary that we force through the military requirement that we be able to use Belgium as a concentration area.
—German Major Georg Wetzell, September 1917
The central issue of the whole world war is our relationship to England and to Anglo-Americanism. . . . Germany and not England must hold sway over Belgium.
—German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, November 1917
BY EARLY 1918, after three and a half years of the worst war in world history, the stage seemed to have been set for Germany to declare victory and go home. Germany had acquired a titanic slab of Russia—including a full third of Russia’s population, some 55 million people—through the one-sided March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.1 Fresh American military forces had not yet arrived in the West to bolster the battered French and British armies.2 And yet Germany’s thirst for war was not yet quenched. It launched a major new offensive on the Western Front in spring 1918, unsatisfied with the millions of square kilometers acquired in the East, and still hungry for gains in the West as well.
Germany’s decision to fight on in early 1918 caused the Central Powers to lose World War I. This had sweeping implications for the entire global order. Consider the consequences if an early 1918 peace deal recognizing German gains in the East and the status quo ante in the West. Germany would have retained possession of wide swaths of Eastern Europe, including Finland, Poland, Belarus, the Baltic States, and Ukraine. The Bolshevik government in Moscow would have been severely hobbled by the loss of such a substantial fraction of its population and industry. An end to the war in early 1918 might have prevented the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires from disintegrating. America’s participation in the war would never have exceeded the token forces dispatched in 1917. Perhaps most importantly, the German monarchy would have survived the end of the war, and Germany would have emerged as the world’s most powerful nation. Absent the humiliation of Versailles, Adolf Hitler would probably never have taken power.
A critical factor driving the German decision to continue fighting was concern about credible commitments. Germany doubted the willingness of France or Britain to accept a peace deal into the future. The Germans believed it critical that they shore up their Western borders to neutralize the long-term Anglo-French threat. Accomplishing this task required a peace settlement permitting German control of Belgium, an outcome that was not in the offing in early 1918, but which the Germans felt could be achieved with a new offensive. That is, Germany perceived there to be a credible commitment problem (from Britain and France), they felt that the good under dispute (the post-war political status of Belgium, among other things) affected the severity of the credible commitment problem, and they felt that continuing the war into 1918 would offer them the opportunity to acquire more of the disputed good, enough to reduce substantially the commitment problem. There were other commitment problems at this stage, as well. The pending arrival of large numbers of American troops threatened to shift the balance of power in favor of the Allies, and as a result Germany put little faith that negotiations alone would produce a satisfactory and stable outcome. Additionally, the possibility that Germany could digest its Russian gains and become much more powerful in the years following a limited war outcome pushed Britain to seek a decisive victory to prevent this eventuality. These three commitment factors blocked a limited war settlement in the winter of 1917–18, and made a more decisive fight to the finish inevitable.
INFORMATION AND THE STATE OF THE WAR IN WINTER 1917–18
The War to End All Wars broke out in summer 1914. It commenced under conditions consistent with an information account, as all sides predicted swift victory for themselves.3 German forces came within artillery range of Paris in the opening weeks of fighting, but no closer. In the West, the war soon stabilized into an abattoir for soldiers of both sides, millions dying in battles fought between trenches running through France and Belgium. The other principal campaign, in Russia, was more dynamic, with the Russian war effort collapsing by the end of 1917, due both to external pressure from the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and to internal pressure from the Bolshevik Revolution.
As noted, the negotiations with Russia in the winter of 1917–18, culminating with the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, yielded tremendous territorial gains for Germany. The remaining question for Germany was what to do in the West. Should Germany fight on in pursuit of territorial gains in the West, or should it propose a peace settlement of some form of territorial status quo ante in the West, allowing it to digest the extraordinary gains in the East?
The predictions of the information proposition as to what Germany should have done at this stage are mixed.4 On one hand, if the war was being driven fundamentally by information asymmetries, then the heavy continual fighting with the highest casualties of any armed conflict in world history should have generated the convergence of expectations about the true balance of power. That is, if war is fundamentally about information, if war begins because of incomplete information and disagreement about the balance of power and/or resolve, and if the function of fighting is to reveal information towards eventually opening bargaining space and permitting war termination, then the huge quantity of information revealed by the battles taking place between 1914 and 1917 should have been sufficient to open bargaining space and permit a deal to be struck between Germany, France, and Britain. But it was not.
On the other hand, factors existed that might have served to encourage the two sides to think that past combat outcomes might not serve as strong predictors of the likely future outcome of war. If this is the case, then the lack of war termination by the end of 1917 is not so terribly surprising, because each side had some reason to hope the future might be better. On the Allied side, the great hope lay in the impending arrival of substantial detachments of American troops. Although the American Congress had formally declared war in April 1917, large amounts of American troops were not due to arrive in Europe until 1918. With these fresh forces, the Allies might have been able to tip the balance of power in their favor in the West.
On the German side, there were two sources of encouragement. Perhaps counteracting the American contribution, the Russian exit from the war would allow the redeployment of German troops from the East to the West. These redeployed forces might have given Germany hope for victory in the West, perhaps because they were combat veterans, and perhaps because they might arrive before the Americans.5 Troop assignments aside, the Germans were developing new infantry tactics that presented the possibility of breaking through enemy entrenchments in the West, even without massive quantitative superiority or new superweapons.6
CREDIBLE COMMITMENTS FEARS: BELGIUM, AMERICA, AND RUSSIA
Germany’s war policy was largely about ensuring German security after the war.7 To that end, a central motivation behind German war aims in the West was acquiring Belgium and perhaps territory in northern France to address a credible commitment problem posed by Britain and France. The German leadership believed that control of Belgium would make an attack on German territory less likely, and more generally would undercut British power. Throughout the war, establishing control over Belgium remained Germany’s principal war aim in the West.8
Public and private arguments for the importance of acquiring Belgium for German security were made from the very beginning to the very end of the war. During the first weeks of the summer 1914 crisis, German foreign policy relied on the assumption that Britain would stand aside in any escalating conflict between Germany and Russia or Germany and France. The German leadership even hoped that Britain might remain neutral in the event of the planned German invasion of Belgium, British treaty commitments to Belgian borders notwithstanding. By the end of July, it became increasingly clear that Britain would not stay out of the war, and indeed Britain entered the war on August 4. British entry caused a wild upsurge of Anglophobia in Germany, as many within both government and society saw Britain as now the great enemy, bent on emasculating if not destroying Germany, for the sake of maximizing British profits and strengthening the British empire. Some saw the central goal of the war to be the creation of a lasting solution to the threat of British perfidy. One nationalist newspaper in Germany declared on September 29, 1914 that peace would not be made until “we can re-sheathe the sword, which we have been forced to unsheathe, in full confidence that the world will be safe from English aggression for decades to come.”9
Germany saw Belgium as a key bulwark against the Anglo-French threat. Indeed, some have argued that in August 1914 the initial operational goal of German forces in the West was not the conquest of France but rather the occupation of Belgium.10 German naval officers such as Deputy Chief of the Admiralty Staff Rear Admiral Paul Behncke stressed the strategic importance of Belgium in September 1914, arguing specifically that German control of Belgium would undermine British and French power.11 In his September 9, 1914 memo, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg laid out German plans for Belgium, which included military control of its coast and the reduction of Belgium to vassal status if not outright annexation. More generally, this memo noted that “the general aim of the war” was “security for the German Reich in west and east for all imaginable time.”12
German focus on the postwar security benefits of controlling Belgium persisted. Following the September memo, in October and December 1914, separate memos addressing the Belgian question were drawn up by high-ranking officials of the German government. Both memos advocated bringing Belgium under permanent German control, to prevent its future use as a base of military operations against Germany.13 German politicians agreed. The leading Conservative in the Reichstag supported these aims, writing the Chancellor, “If a lasting peace is to be won, Belgium must be rendered harmless. We must gain military, political and economic guarantees that England or France will not be able to use Belgium against us in future political controversies. Such guarantees require at least the military and economic dependence of that country upon Germany.”14 In late 1915, Berlin informed the Belgian king that negotiated peace would require eliminating Belgium’s army, granting occupation and transit rights to Germany, and German control of the port of Antwerp and Belgian railways.15
The military strongly supported the control, if not annexation, of Belgium as a critical war aim. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz wrote to Bethmann Hollweg in January 1915 that the maintenance of German power required a secure position on the Channel coast across from England, including the German use of the Belgian port of Antwerp. He was blunt: “If we fail to keep secure the possibilities of development offered in Belgium, I should regard the war, considered in relation to Germany’s world power status, as lost; with Belgium, as won.”16 In April 1916, Tirpitz declared German control of Belgium to be “the cornerstone on which one can build a German world power equal to that of the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians.” Other admirals agreed with Tirpitz.17 The German navy officially recommended German control of the Belgian coast in December 1916, arguing that controlling Belgium would be a critical step towards breaking British national power and maritime supremacy.18 The May 1917 naval war aims program restated the importance of controlling Belgium to Kaiser Wilhelm.19
Even the so-called moderates in German society and government who diverged from the more extreme view of the annexationists argued for the importance of controlling Belgium for German security. They sometimes differed over how much control was needed, sometimes proposing that solutions short of the annexation of the entire country might suffice. However, they generally agreed with the core point that any war-ending settlement must include a settlement of the Belgium issue satisfactory for German security. One industrialist moderate argued in 1915, “I take the standpoint, as you know, that we must gain access to the sea if we do not want to live through a repeat version of this terrible war in the near future.”20
The significance of Belgium in German war aims persisted throughout 1917. Notably, the German government did not express infinite demands in the West, and even occasionally seemed to indicate willingness to make concessions in the West. For example, in June 1917 Bethmann indicated to a Papal peace mediator that although Germany would not concede on German control of Belgium, it might be willing to make concessions on Alsace and Lorraine, two French territories that Germany had acquired in the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War.21 There remained a very strong sentiment among military and other government officials during autumn 1917 that the control of Belgium was critical for Germany’s postwar security. By early September, foreign minister Richard von Kuhlmann had concluded that conceding Belgium might produce a separate peace with Britain, but this suggestion went nowhere within the German government since Chancellor Georg Michaelis, Bethmann Hollweg’s successor, told Kuhlmann quite clearly that such concessions were out of the question.22 In a September 15 letter, Chief of the General Staff Paul von Hindenburg stressed to Michaelis the importance of maintaining control of Belgium for security reasons.23 The importance of Belgium for German war aims was also emphasized in a September 30 memo by Major Georg Wetzell. This memo was well-received by General Erich von Ludendorff, who by this point—along with Hindenburg—ruled Germany essentially as military dictators. Wetzell framed German war aims in terms of preparation for future war, noting that “from a military viewpoint, we cannot come out of this peace strong enough by any means.” For Wetzell, German military control of Belgium was essential: “Our future military needs would not be satisfied if Belgium should remain a free state in any form. . . . It is absolutely necessary that we force through the military requirement that we be able to use Belgium as a concentration area.”24 Hindenburg reemphasized the importance of Belgium for German security around November 1917, writing that “Every one must admit that our Rhenish-Westphalian industry would be greatly endangered through a Belgian state leaning towards England and France.”25 Hindenburg reinforced these points in a December 11 memo to Chancellor Georg von Hertling, recalling an April memo, approved by the Kaiser, which demanded the control of Belgium for reasons of German security.26
The German leadership decided formally on December 18, 1917— again, as Russia was collapsing—that controlling Belgium remained a critical war aim, especially maintaining German-built fortifications on the Belgian coast and resisting British influence in Belgium.27 The dominant strand of thinking was that control of Belgium was necessary to safeguard Germany against future attacks. On January 23, 1918, Hertling wrote to the Emperor that, “It need not be especially stressed that questions of military security will not be overlooked. In what way they will be achieved, depends upon the political and military situation at the time peace is concluded. We shall have to take into consideration how far our future economic and political relations to this neighbor [i.e. Belgium] and especially the development of our Flemish policy will diminish the probability of a future war with her and thus decrease the necessity for military safeguards.”28 In a speech to the Reichstag on February 25, even while trying to make Germany look as pacific as possible to Allied publics, Hertling could not evade the central point that German postwar security required German control of Belgium: “Over and over again it has been said in this place that we do not think of retaining Belgium, of making the Belgian State a component part of the German Empire, but that we, as was pointed out in the Papal Note of 1st August last year, must be preserved from the danger that a country that which we wish after the war once more to live in peace with and friendship should become the object or the base of enemy machinations.”29
Ludendorff emphasized the importance of German postwar control of Belgium during a high-level meeting of government ministers on February 4, and refused to budge on Belgium during peace negotiations with the Allies during March and April.30 As late as May 1918, Hindenburg hoped the capture of the Belgian coast would allow the direct artillery bombardment of the English coast itself and perhaps eventually even of London. He saw this as having implications for postwar security as well as the termination of the present war since such a threat “would be a serious prospect for Great Britain, not only for the moment but for her whole future!” Such an accomplishment might be “regarded as a guarantee of peace.”31
In short, acquiring the control or outright ownership of Belgium to improve German security had become the central German war aim in the West.32 One historian summarized Ludendorff’s thoughts around February 1918 bluntly: “Belgium must remain in German hands at all costs.”33 Ludendorff himself declared, “A peace which only guarantees the territorial status quo would mean that we lost the war. . . . Matters are still uncertain as far as the west is concerned. But if we keep our old frontiers, we shall be in a less favorable position after the war than before. . . . We must improve the protection of our western coal regions through rectification of the frontier.”34
Germany’s recognition of Belgium as important to international security and power was probably reasonable. A sovereign and independent Belgium certainly was central to British strategy and national power, and it was the challenge to Belgian independence that brought Britain into war in 1914. Indeed, keeping the Low Countries region independent of the influence of a continental great power had been a cornerstone of British foreign policy for centuries.35 Further, after Germany’s defeat in 1918, Belgium was included in Anglo-French military planning since Belgium and France signed a defense agreement in 1920. French war plans also called for the early movement of French troops into Belgium in 1940.36
This obsession with the security provided by the control of Belgium provides one answer as to why Germany decided to fight on in early 1918, rather than stop the war to digest its eastern gains. Germany did not trust Britain and France to adhere to a war-ending peace settlement, and wanted to achieve a settlement that would substantially decrease the odds of new British and French attacks in the future. Germany saw the control of Belgium as a supervaluable increment of the disputed good, in that controlling Belgium would make it much more costly for Britain or France to attack Germany in the future. They did not see the absolute defeat of Britain and France as necessary to satisfy German security needs, or at least the incremental improvement in German security provided by absolute victory was not worth the cost. Because Germany placed such high value on controlling Belgium, and because Germany thought that a peace settlement that restored the status quo ante might be unstable and tempt future attacks, Germany continued the war in early 1918, looking to make territorial gains in the West.
German obsession with Belgium as a solution to the credible commitment problem presented a major impediment to war termination in 1918. Beyond Belgium, there were two other credible commitment factors at this stage that also blocked war termination. A short-term credible commitment problem was the impending arrival of greater numbers of American troops. Germany feared that the arrival of more American troops on the Western Front throughout 1918 would shift the balance of power. Unrestricted submarine warfare could at this point not be relied upon to win the war for Germany, as its payoffs were by the end of 1917 seen as disappointing.37 The changing balance of power caused by the arrival of substantial American forces might make any early 1918 Allied commitment to a peace deal incredible. Germany sought to solve this credible commitment problem by launching an offensive in early 1918 to win the war before the Americans arrived in force. Hopefully, with the British forces swept from the continent and the French will to fight completely broken, peace talks would hand Germany the Western gains it so desperately wanted before American forces could make a difference. A defensive posture in the West, conversely, could not guarantee victory before the arrival of the Americans.38 The head of operations for the German general staff, Major Wetzell, wrote a position paper in October 1917 laying out this concern. He added that the Allies would make it through the 1917– 18 winter, and by spring the United States would add ten to fifteen divisions to the Western Front. Wetzell argued that the only hope was “to deliver an annihilating blow to the British before American aid can become effective.”39 Ludendorff agreed with Wetzell’s outlook.40 Both sides knew that the arrival of American troops would shift the balance of forces significantly in the Allies’ favor, and Germany’s fear was that Britain and France would bide their time until the arrival of American troops.
Germany assessed Allied war planning accurately. On the British side, the hope of American assistance encouraged Prime Minister David Lloyd George in September 1917 to continue fighting rather than sue for peace. On the French side, French Premier and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexandre Ribot that same month informed the French ambassador to the United States that, “until the United States has made the decisive effort it is preparing, we shall not be in a favourable position to negotiate.”41 In December 1917, the Commander in Chief of the French Army, Henri Petain, issued a directive on Allied strategy that stated: “The Entente Powers will reach numerical superiority only when sufficient American troops can enter the line. Until that time, it will be necessary for us, unless we wish to use up our forces irretrievably, to assume a waiting attitude, with the express purpose of taking up the offensive as soon as we are able to do so; for only the offensive will bring us final victory.”42
A last credible commitment problem, on the Allied side, concerned Allied fears about the likelihood that Germany would comply with a limited war outcome. A growing British concern in late 1917 was that a settlement at that point would grant Germany large territorial gains in the East, given Russia’s ongoing collapse. These gains would encourage a mediumand long-term shift in the balance of power in Germany’s favor, making a limited war outcome unstable. The only real solution for Britain would be to reject any limited outcome, and fight on to the complete defeat of Germany. These views were expressed in a pair of critical meetings of the British leadership in late September 1917. A member of the British cabinet argued that a limited outcome with Germany at this point would mean Germany “coming out of the war more powerful than she entered it and another war in ten years time.” Sir Douglas Haig, Field Marshal for the British Army, agreed, worrying that a limited war outcome “would mean . . . the almost certain renewal of the War hereafter at a time of Germany’s choosing.” Chief of the Imperial General Staff William Robertson opposed a limited outcome, as it would allow Germany to “organize a fresh attempt for securing that world dominion which she had failed to obtain in the present war.” Later that year, Lloyd George put it this way, “If they [the Germans] make a separate peace with Russia, there’s no compensation you can give them. It is war to the end.” The French shared these concerns.43 Shifts in the balance of power aside, the severe concessions imposed by Germany on defeated Russia raised grave doubts about German ambitions more broadly, diminishing Allied (and American in particular) hopes that a stable limited war outcome was possible.44
Notably, British concerns with the postwar balance of power interacted with impending American intervention. Lloyd George in late 1917 wanted to put off a major Allied offensive until after a substantial American force arrived. If Britain launched an offensive before the American contingent arrived, then an Allied victory would be Pyrrhic, as the British army would be shattered by the effort, and likely overshadowed by the postwar military power of the U.S. and Russia. If it waited until the Americans arrived, then American blood could take the place of British blood, helping ensure postwar British military dominance.45 In short, commitment fears contributed to an unwillingness to negotiate a limited outcome on both the German and Allied sides in winter 1917–18.
DOMESTIC POLITICS AND WAR-TERMINATION BEHAVIOR
Hein Goemans has produced a novel explanation of war-termination behavior based on domestic politics, testing it on war-termination behavior during World War I.46 To recap the summary of the argument from chapter 2 of this book, the central proposition is that leaders of semirepressive, moderately exclusionary political systems worry about facing severe personal punishments (such as exile, imprisonment, or death) in the event of moderate or severe military defeat, because unlike democratic leaders they cannot expect to be left alone in peace after falling from power, and unlike dictators they cannot use the tools of repression to stave off all but the gravest of internal threats to their rule. To avoid such severe punishments, leaders of these systems may raise their war aims when their nations are losing wars, attempting to gather enough gains in a peace settlement to pay off their supporters to remain in power. Relatedly, leaders may engage in risky military strategies, so-called “gambles for resurrection,” which may increase their states’ chances of military victory, at the expense of also increasing the chances of decisive military defeat. Goemans noted that such behavior is in contrast to the information proposition, which predicts that a belligerent would lower its war aims when information indicates that the war is going badly.
Germany during World War I is the leading example of a moderately exclusionary, semirepressive state engaging in this kind of wartermination behavior.47 Perhaps the strongest case supporting Goemans’ argument is the cluster of German decisions to increase war aims in late 1916 and launch unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, the latter being a gamble for resurrection intended to support the former. The specific hope was that unrestricted submarine warfare would tighten the blockade around Britain, and force Britain to exit the war rather than face civilian starvation. Germany made these decisions despite receiving in the latter half of 1916 an array of discouraging information from the war: the failure of the German Verdun offensive; the demonstration of British resolve indicated by the Somme offensive and the adoption of conscription; the Brusilov offensive, which demonstrated Russian military power and Austro-Hungarian weakness; the Romanian declaration of war against the Central Powers, and growing food shortages and unrest in Germany itself.48 Despite these developments, Germany increased its war aims in late 1916, specifically demanding more Polish concessions, the annexation of Courland and Lithuania as well as other Russian territories, and more territorial concessions from France.49 These 1916–17 war-termination decisions, Goemans argues, were motivated by a desire to increase the profits Germany would gather from victory in war, profits that could be distributed to the population to counteract the rising costs of war and quell a possible postwar political threat to the regime. Distributing the spoils of war was seen by the regime as a revolution-avoiding strategy preferable to adopting political reforms.
Three mild caveats to Goemans’ interpretation of the events of 1916– 17 are worth noting, the first two of which point to the information proposition as playing perhaps a larger role for the expansion of German war aims than Goemans allows. First, although the entry of Romania into the war in August 1916 was discouraging, Romania’s defeat and exit from the war in early December 1916 had the opposite effect, in particular because Germany perceived that Romania’s fall would keep Denmark, the Netherlands, and other neutrals out of the war.50 Evaluating the timing of the Romanian decision in relation to the increase in war demands is difficult; specifically, if Romania’s December exit was on balance encouraging, this might have been one force pushing Germany to raise its war aims. There was approval within the German government to increase war aims in early November 1916. However, the Germans delayed the release of their Peace Note that invited negotiations (without specifics) until after the fall of Romania in early December 1916, perhaps because they did not want the Note to appear as a sign of weakness.51
Second, although the decision to launch unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 can be portrayed as a gigantic risk because it would likely bring the United States into the war, there is some evidence that at the time key German decision-makers did not see the move as so risky. In the planning stages, the high military command estimated that unrestricted submarine warfare would force Britain out of the war within months. Tirpitz guessed Britain would fold within two months.52 The German ambassador to the United States, Arthur Zimmerman, sent dispatches that the American public wanted to avoid war. Ludendorff was confident that America did not have the shipping to bring substantial numbers of troops and supplies across the Atlantic, that the British did not have the ships to spare for the conveyance and protection of American forces, and that any U.S. forces that were sent would be sunk by German submarines.53 At the critical January 8, 1917 meeting at which the final decision to launch unrestricted submarine warfare was made, the Kaiser stated that he “fully expected America’s entry into war,” but dismissed such an eventuality as “irrelevant.” Ludendorff declared, “I don’t give a damn about America,” and Hindenburg dismissed any American contribution to be “minimal, in any case not decisive.”54 Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff had also dismissed the factor of American entry, claiming the war would end before American forces or money could make a difference.55 Some, such as the German admiralty staff chief, even made the contrary argument that expanding the U-boat campaign would show German strength and resolve, and might help keep neutrals out of the war.56 Further, even if unrestricted submarine warfare had brought the United States into the war, it more importantly might have forced Britain from the war, likely before American forces could make a decisive contribution in the West. An early January 1917 memo to the Chancellor claimed that unrestricted submarine warfare could starve Britain out of the war in five months.57 As late as May 1917, Ludendorff was arguing internally that unrestricted submarine warfare would force Britain from the war in two or three months.58
German optimism about British vulnerability to unrestricted submarine warfare was not deluded speculation.59 In October 1916, before Germany imposed unrestricted submarine warfare, British Admiral John Jellicoe forecast that merchant losses from the submarine threat might force British acceptance of unfavorable peace terms by early summer 1917. Other members of the British political and military leadership in late 1916 and early 1917 worried that the submarine threat was dire. After the war, former Prime Minister David Lloyd George bluntly stated that “the submarine was the crucial problem upon which the issue of the War would depend. If we failed to counter its ravages, the Allies were irretrievably beaten.”60 In his multivolume history of World War I, Winston Churchill (himself Minister of Munitions during World War I) offered a similar view, as did Henry Newbolt in the official history, the latter commenting that, “Everything, indeed, combined to show that the Allies were really within sight of disaster.”61 These grim assessments were based on equally grim statistics. At the worst of it in April 1917, if a ship left Britain for a destination beyond Gibraltar, its chances of safely returning were only one in four.62 Importantly, British maritime collapse was avoided not because of American entry into the war, but because the British navy switched to a convoy strategy in April 1917, which improved its ability to protect commercial vessels and sink German U-boats.63
Third, Bethmann, the nominal civilian leader, opposed pursuing unrestricted submarine warfare for fear of bringing the U.S. into the war, although the military leaders supported it. Therefore, the decision to pursue unrestricted submarine warfare might be best understood as a function of poor civilian control of the military in Germany rather than the civilian leadership seeking to achieve decisive victory to acquire more war aims for distribution to political supporters. Indeed, an early 1916 push to implement unrestricted submarine warfare failed, perhaps in part because the Duo of Ludendorff and Hindenburg had not yet taken power from the civilian leaders. They both supported unrestricted submarine warfare, and once they installed a de facto military dictatorship in summer 1916, unrestricted submarine warfare became politically possible as a German military strategy.64 Assuming that unrestricted submarine warfare was a poor strategic choice, this view is consistent with broader theorizing that states make bad strategic and doctrinal choices when there is weak civilian control of the military.65
Putting 1916–17 decision-making aside, Goemans also proposes that German war-termination decisions in 1917–18 can be explained by domestic political factors. Not only did Germany elect not to pursue peace in the West that winter, but Germany went further, launching a massive spring 1918 offensive to make further territorial gains. Goemans proposes that the primary motive for the new offensive was that the regime needed to hold together its supportive political coalition. Maintaining the coalition in turn required making territorial gains in the West to provide profits to the industrialists, which were necessary to balance off the gains in the East and their associated profits to the Prussian Junkers.66
However, certain shortcomings of this interpretation undermine support for the domestic politics hypothesis. The decision to continue the war in the West was not an unpopular one driven solely by an insecure autocrat struggling to hold together a wobbly and narrow coalition. German politics during this period are often characterized as being dominated by an iron and rye coalition, an alliance of industrialists and shipbuilders seeking gains in the West and the agriculturally based Prussian Junkers seeking gains in the East. However, expansion in the West and the reduction of British power was a leading war aim of the Conservative Party, the leading political party (along with the associated Agrarian League) of the Prussian Junkers. That is, territorial gains in the West were a widely popular war aim, not a pet project of one narrow segment of German politics. The historian Hans Gatzke wrote:
Despite their divergent interests, however, the aristocracy of blood and the aristocracy of coal and iron (ranged respectively behind the Conservative and National Liberal Parties) had much in common. . . . In the foreign field they shared (although for different reasons) a common hatred of Great Britain. Germany’s industrial and commercial interests saw England as their most dangerous competitor; while Germany’s agricultural interests looked upon England as the birthplace and embodiment of that liberal and democratic tradition which threatened the maintenance of their privileges. . . . The hatred of the Conservatives for Great Britain [was] based not merely on ideological grounds, but on an equally important element of patriotism (Anglo-German naval rivalry, after all, was not merely a matter of commercial competition but equally one of national prestige) . . . 67
Indeed, the Conservatives placed a higher priority on the defeat of England than on annexation in Russia. At some points in the war (especially before the 1917–18 Russian military collapse), the Conservatives expressed willingness to support a separate peace with Russia in order to better prosecute the war in the West.68 The Conservative leader Count Kuno von Westarp discussed political strategy in a November 9, 1915 letter to fellow Conservative leader Ernst von Heydebrand, posing the following: “We could present the problem this way: do you want halfefforts on both fronts or wouldn’t you agree that it would be wiser to drop the eastern aims as much as is necessary and achieve a full victory in the west?”69 As debate stirred in late 1916 about the expansion of German war aims, both Conservative and industrial newspapers stressed western and colonial gains over eastern gains.70 Indeed, in his postwar memoirs, Westarp stated unequivocally, “The demand for the most vigorous war effort against England was, in essence, the basis of Conservative policy in the war.”71 More generally, throughout Germany fear and hatred of Britain spiraled upward into blind fury as the war continued, the Satan of Britain and its materialistic values representing the sworn enemy of Germany and its Teutonic values of honor and virtue.72
The industrial interests and the Conservative Party were not alone in pursuing the continuation of war in the West in 1918. Many within German society had advocated nationalist annexation in the West from the outset of the war. The annexationist Army League argued in March 1915 that “Germany’s permanent possession of Belgium is an absolute necessity for military, vo ̈lkisch, and economic reasons,” and that “Belgium is ours. Our self-preservation demands that she remain in German hands.”73 After the war, Bethmann Hollweg dismissed the possibility of a 1915 peace based on restored Belgian independence and neutrality, commenting that such a concession would have aroused “the most bitter feeling among the German people.”74 In September 1917, Tirpitz and a Prussian bureaucrat founded the German Fatherland Party, which favored expansionist war aims, arguing that the failure to put Belgium in German hands would mean “Germany’s demise and the victory of Anglo-American capitalism.”75 Tirpitz and other members of the Fatherland Party argued that establishing control of Belgium must be a central German war aim. For example, one history professor declared in October 1917 that “the only guarantee which we could have of England’s future good behaviour is military possession of the Flanders coast.” The following month, Tirpitz made a similar point in a public speech, arguing that “the central issue of the whole world war is our relationship to England and to AngloAmericanism,” meaning that “Germany and not England must hold sway over Belgium.”76 This party was not a hollow front used to advance the interests of narrow industrial interests. By early 1918, it had 1.25 million members, making it larger than the Social Democratic Party, and indeed the largest political organization in Germany.77 In consonance with the information proposition, the tremendous successes in the East helped raise the prestige of the German army in the eyes of the public, and the public became less willing to oppose the army’s plans for continued expansion in the West.78
Popularity of the issue aside, the German political system at this point might be more accurately characterized as a dictatorship rather than a moderately exclusionary, semirepressive regime. That is to say, German war-termination decisions were determined more by what the Duo, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, saw as the national interest, and not so much by their domestic political fears. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had ascended to supreme command of the German military (technically, First and Second Chiefs of Staff) in August 1916, succeeding General Erich von Falkenhayn. This was a critical step towards the establishment essentially of a military dictatorship, called by some the silent dictatorship.79 Notably, the ascent was itself not the maneuver of a narrow industrial clique, and many segments of German society—beyond annexationists—supported Hindenburg in particular.80 But, once given formal command of the military, their grip on political power tightened. Ludendorff helped engineer the dismissal of the more moderate Bethmann Hollweg as Chancellor in July 1917, replacing him with the General Staff puppet Michaelis.81 This maneuver established the Duo as de facto dictators.82 True, Michaelis surprised the Duo by advocating concessions in the West, and the Duo responded not only by snuffing out the suggestion but also maneuvering by early November to have Michaelis replaced with the even more compliant Hertling.83
The Kaiser was too weak to control the Duo. He at some points expressed sympathy with the gambit of offering concessions on Belgium in an attempt to split the Allies. However, he knew such a position would be very unpopular with the Navy in particular, and he feared their power. In a September 10, 1917 letter to Michaelis, the Kaiser worried that Belgian concessions, especially regarding the Belgian coast, would cause “strong dissension” in the “officer circles . . . of the fleet.” He further fretted that, “For me personally, in my relations with my navy, the question is so serious, that without compensations for the loss of the Flanders coast I could no longer show myself among the executive officer corps.” The political storm that would emerge from such a move “compared to which the July days and Bethmann’s dismissal were child’s play.” In closing, the Kaiser practically begged Michaelis: “I urgently ask you once again not to underestimate the mood of my executive officer corps, where many hidden supporters of Tirpitz remain, and to pay heed to my very difficult situation vis-a-vis this group.”84 The civilian leadership grew even weaker as time passed. In January 1918, Hindenburg and Ludendorff rebuffed the (civilian) Chancellor’s assertion that peace negotiations were the province of the civilian leadership, Hindenburg declaring that “we feel ourselves justly responsible to the German nation, history and our own conscience for the form which peace takes. No formal declaration can relieve us of that sense of responsibility.”85 Around the same time, in the midst of peace negotiations with Russia, the Kaiser brightly suggested to the Duo that Germany required the annexation of relatively little territory from Poland for German security needs. The Duo collectively turned purple in rage, openly insulting the Kaiser. Ludendorff slammed the door as he stormed out of the room. Needless to say, the Kaiser’s suggestion was quickly forgotten.86 By June 1918, Ludendorff was openly placing the interests of the German nation ahead of those of the Kaiser.87
The previous section argued that German pursuit of Belgium was strongly driven by security needs. Some might propose that (even private) arguments made by German politicians and military leaders about the importance of Belgium to German security masked what were fundamentally economic motivations of the Western industrialists, specifically the protection of the mines and factories in the region.88 It is impossible to disprove completely an ulterior motives claim such as this, as one can always speculate that statements are strategic facades for an actor’s true motives, which go undocumented. Further, an individual’s motives are often a swirl of factors, so the presence of one motive (concerns for postwar German security) does not necessarily exclude the presence of another motive (advancing German industrial interests).
In the case of World War I Germany, the available evidence does increase our confidence that security concerns were the leading motives of the Duo, and that they were, at the minimum, not puppets controlled by industrial and other interests. It does not quite fit to see the Duo as fronts for other interests since the Duo were themselves generals and came to power by the pleasure of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and Kaiser Wilhelm, not by Reichstag vote or some other means. In other words, they did not come to power by decision of political parties, which in turn represented special interests. It is also inaccurate to see the Duo as actors without agency, doing the bidding of others. Indeed, in 1917 it was the army that requested heavy industry increase its pro-annexation/imperial propaganda, rather than the reverse.89 A safer statement would be that the Duo supported politics that were consonant with many preferences of the industrialists, including annexation in the West. Ludendorff had advocated even before the war positions similar to those of the industrialists, such as the importance of coordination between army and industry, the need for a drastic increase in the size of the army, and the importance of total war and total mobilization.90
If Ludendorff was long known to have preferences in line with German industry, this then begs the question of whether the industrialists were behind the Duo’s succession of Falkenhayn in August 1916. Such an interpretation is probably too simple. Falkenhayn fell from power in August 1916 principally because of dissatisfaction with his military leadership. Indeed, some annexationists wanted to promote Falkenhayn to Chancellor, hoping he would be the strong presence needed at the negotiating table, replacing Bethmann, who they saw as weak.91 Resentment about Falkenhayn’s military leadership capabilities had been growing. They accelerated in summer 1916 in the face of several setbacks, including the Brusilov offensive in June, the emerging pointlessness of the Verdun meat grinder, and the British assault on the Somme in July. The key event that caused his ouster was probably Romania’s August 1916 entry into the war on the side of the Allies.92 One historian claimed that Colonel Max Bauer of the German General Staff played a key role in overthrowing Falkenhayn and supporting Ludendorff, speculating that Bauer had close ties to the industrialists.93 Others portray a different process, noting that many supported Falkenhayn’s ouster, and in particular that Bethmann Hollweg engineered Falkenhayn’s exit ironically as a means of opening the door for a negotiated annexationist peace, using the appointment of Hindenburg as political cover, by garnering support for Falkenhayn’s support along the way from important allies such as the Kaiser’s military adjutant, the Crown Prince, and the War Minister.94
Even if one concludes that the industrialists were somehow critical in bringing Hindenburg and Ludendorff to power, the completion of Goemans’ argument requires understanding the domestic political consequences if the Duo abandoned annexation in the West in favor of the status quo ante. The domestic politics theory predicts that the Duo and elements of the German leadership refused to abandon Western aims because of the fear that doing so would lead to their loss of political power, and eventually they would individually suffer the severe punishments of exile, death, or prison. There are two problems with this conjecture. First, it is not clear that the Duo relied on a supporting coalition to stay in power, they were rather appointed generals who had steadily expanded their political power such that by late 1917 they were de facto dictators. Second, even if the Duo had lost power as a result of seeking peace in the West, they likely would not have suffered severe punishment, such as exile, death, or prison. As military officers, in any political transition short of violent revolution they likely would have been reassigned to other military duties, as Falkenhayn was when he was ousted in 1916, or perhaps forced to retire. It is quite difficult to imagine severe personal punishment for the Duo in the early 1918 context of a peace deal ensuring substantial gains in the East and perhaps the status quo ante in the West. Some fears arose in January 1918 of the possibility of a violent revolution echoing the Bolshevik’s, but the fears were of revolutionaries from the left demanding peace and democracy, not of upheaval from the right by annexationists demanding war and empire.95 Notably, when Germany faced the much worse outcome of decisive defeat in November 1918 (in comparison to a late 1917 negotiated peace leaving Germany with its Eastern gains), Hindenburg did not suffer severe punishment, and indeed he did not even leave his post until 1919, after which he resumed a public life in Germany, some years later even running successfully for political office. Ludendorff resigned in October 1918 and did soon flee to Sweden out of fear for his personal safety from revolutionaries, although he returned to Germany and to German politics in 1920.96
One twist on the argument might be that Ludendorff and the ruling class greatly feared political reforms, including broader suffrage, and saw the continuation/expansion of war aims as one means of forestalling this threat. There was growing pressure for domestic political reforms in Germany, and great victories might have relieved the pressure for political reforms, especially if such victories enlarged the spoils of war, which could be distributed to the workers demanding political change. Certainly, Ludendorff himself greatly feared and opposed expanding the franchise. Some argue that he saw continued war as a means of avoiding having to face the disaster of suffrage.97 Ludendorff’s concerns about pressures for democratization were real, as in early 1918 Germany faced a wave of internal unrest and strikes. The protesters demanded suffrage, the end of the war, and other concessions. In late January, 500,000 workers in Berlin alone went on strike.98
However, it is odd to speculate that by not giving in on one of the demands, peace negotiations, it would make the strikers more willing to concede on another demand, internal political reform. Some within the German government recognized that the goals of annexation and blocking domestic reforms were in competition with each other. Bethmann fretted in a June 1917 memo that if it got out that the pursuit of Courland and Lithuania had prevented a peace settlement, Germany would face domestic “collapse.”99 The Prussian minister of the interior Bill Drews also drew the connection, suggesting that the leadership could ameliorate the internal pressure by conceding on some although not all issues, specifically, making political reforms to allow a freer hand in foreign policy.100 Ludendorff and the leadership rejected this approach, instead foregoing concessions and cracking down on striking workers. The leadership eventually arrested some 150 leaders of the strikes, sent 50,000 striking workers to the front, and closed down labor newspapers. These actions strengthened the Duo’s political power.101
Perhaps a more general problem with the domestic politics argument that the captured booty from annexations was intended to stem demands for political reforms is that the political context in Germany had changed from the early years of the war to its later years. In the earlier years of the war, a number of political and industrial leaders argued that the spoils of war could be used to buy off the public and forestall demands for political reform. However, by 1917 the political and economic climate had changed, and this claim was no longer made. The demands of the politically threatening segment of German society were by 1917–18 straightforward: political reforms, food, and peace, and these demands could no longer be satisfied with the promises of gains in war.102 One historian put it this way: “But war aims were no longer the placebo they had been in 1914–1916. Few worker-soldiers in 1917 had the slightest interest in, or willingness, to continue to fight for Courland or Wallachia or Liege. Few women who daily lined up for 150 g of flour or an egg were willing to suffer hardships for a slice of Montenegro, Luxembourg, or Lithuania.”103
Another proposition related to the domestic politics interpretation of this time period is that the demand for gains in the West in 1917–18 pushed Germany to embrace a gamble for resurrection, the spring 1918 Western offensives. This point is partly correct. The offensive was a gamble in comparison with negotiations, in that the offensive increased the chances both of decisive victory (annexation in East and West) and decisive defeat (loss of the war) in comparison with negotiations, which increased the chance of moderate victory (annexations only in the East). However, the offensive is probably not genuinely a gamble in comparison to other military options, such as maintaining the defensive in the West. Ludendorff, Hindenburg and others became convinced in late 1917 that the offensive was the only option. The Central Powers could not play a waiting game because their military fortunes would only decline over time, given the eventual arrival of American troops and the fears that Austria–Hungary might soon no longer make much of a contribution to the war effort.104
Further, the spring offensive was not complete madness from a military perspective. The balance of forces by early March in the West had swung in Germany’s favor. German troops had been steadily flowing from East to West, and by March German troop strength had increased some 30 percent over what it had been in November 1917, whereas British troop strength was down 25 percent over its levels in summer 1917. At this moment, German troops for the first time in the war outnumbered Allied troops in the West.105 The spring offensives did have some successes, in part because of the implementation of new force employment tactics. These tactics, termed at the time “stormtrooper” tactics and later the “modern system” of force employment, emphasized the dispersal of formations, stressed the use of cover and concealment offered by terrain, changed preparatory artillery barrage procedures to maximize surprise, used combined arms techniques, and permitted more independence to smaller units to maximize rates of advance. This new approach was revolutionary. The Germans achieved tactical success in four of the five battles from March to July 1918, and made greater advances on the Western Front during this period than any army had to that point achieved. Germany wrecked the British Fifth Army and defeated the French at Chemin des Dames. The English Channel ports and even Paris itself were threatened. Britain thought France was close to seeking terms, and France thought Britain was close to abandoning the war. Had the Germans developed better operational plans for this campaign they might have been able to split the Allies and push the British Expeditionary Force off the continent, perhaps causing the French government to fall and putting Germany at the least in a better negotiating position with the Allies to extract concessions on matters such as Belgium.106
A DOOMED SEARCH FOR SECURITY
In August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm told German troops, “You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees.”107 This, like so many other forecasts about the First World War, proved tragically wrong, as the casualty lists grew from the hundreds to the thousands to the millions. The brief decisive war expected by all in summer 1914 disappeared, swallowed by the mud of the trench system of the Western front, the latter being so infused with death that one British poet described it as “the long grave already dug.”108
Germany’s decision not to end the war in late 1917 and early 1918 is part of the puzzle of why World War I lasted so long. It is difficult to assess the role of information factors, because the changing military environment gave each side hope notwithstanding all the information provided by three years of intensive combat. Credible commitment concerns played an important role in Germany’s decision to fight on, certainly more than domestic politics.109 The looming arrival of hundreds of thousands of fresh American troops promised to shift the balance of power decisively against Germany, which both precluded the possibility of getting Belgium in a winter 1918 peace deal, and made the strategic option of shifting to a defensive posture in the West unattractive. Britain’s fear of the postwar growth in German power because of gains in the East pushed the British to pursue a decisive victory. But most importantly, the German leadership refused to accept the half a loaf of western Russia, its enduring paranoia of Britain and France pushing it to grab Belgium to provide long-term security. For Germany, only the acquisition of Belgium would prevent future Anglo-French aggression.