World War I
Germany declared war on Russia and began mobilization on 1 August 1914. Bethmann Hollweg, in contrast to representatives of the Prussian Ministry of War, had insisted on formal declarations in order "to have affirmation under international law". His profound desire for guidelines in the war that were always applicable was met with surprise in Berlin. He rejected the Tsar's proposal to bring the Serbian question before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague because Russian general mobilization had already taken place the day before. Waiting to mobilize until after Russia had done so allowed the German government to claim that it was the victim of Russian aggression and won it the support of the Social Democrats for most of the war.
On 3 August Bethmann Hollweg assured British Foreign Minister Grey that the Russian mobilization of 30 July was what had put Germany in such straits that it had demanded that Belgium allow its troops to pass through the country. He had tried everything, he said, to avoid the breach of international law and to prevent "the madness of the self-destruction of Europe's nations of culture [Kulturnationen]".
On 4 August German troops invaded Belgium. While awaiting the British declaration of war, Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the Reichstag to stress that Germany had not wanted the war and that the Russian military had ignited the blaze. The "injustice to Belgium" must be righted by the Empire, he said, but those who were so threatened could think only of how to cut their way through.
He had a conversation with the British ambassador to Germany Sir Edward Goschen on the evening of 4 August. In tears the Chancellor poured out his soul to him. For a "scrap of paper" (meaning the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality), he said, Britain wanted to wage war against a kindred nation that wished to live in peace with it. All efforts had collapsed before his eyes like a house of cards. In the end the Reich Chancellor and ambassador are said to have been weeping in each other's arms. In his Reflections on the World War Bethmann Hollweg conceded that saying "scrap of paper" had been a faux pas (Entgleisung, lit. 'derailment'), but he held to his opinion that Belgian neutrality was as nothing compared to the approaching world war.
Bethmann Hollweg remained largely unaffected by the patriotic enthusiasm in Germany in August 1914 (the so-called "spirit of 1914"). A letter he sent to his friend Wolfgang von Oettingen on 30 August 1914 bears witness: "Work and hope have been sundered in my hands. But I feel innocent of the rivers of blood that now flow. Our people [Volk] is glorious and cannot perish."
In what would later be called the September Program, the Empire formulated concrete war aims for the first time. The program contained demands for territory in Europe directed primarily against Russia, as well as the creation of a European customs union that would smooth the way for German economic interests in neighboring countries and secure German supremacy in central Europe. Whether or not the plans originated with Bethmann Hollweg cannot be proven. His associate Kurt Riezler is generally considered to have been the author. Riezler wrote on 20 September 1914 that the Chancellor would "never do more than listen on the issue of war aims." Nevertheless, Bethmann Hollweg signed the September Program.
Bethmann Hollweg admitted in 1918 that demanding the restoration of Belgium would probably have been the best thing to do. But under the enormous pressure coming from the military, which was clamoring for annexations ("That cursed sentiment at Headquarters"), it was not possible at the time, he said, and politics, as Otto von Bismarck had remarked, was the art of the possible.
Instead the Chancellor spoke of a "pledge" (Faustpfand) to Belgium and France. For him the formulation had the advantage that it did not lead to a premature commitment, since the question of redeeming the pledge would arise only at the end of the war. It was thus a rhetorical weapon against annexationist claims. Bethmann Hollweg probably never retracted his 4 August 1914 statement admitting guilt for the "injustice to Belgium", although some historians think he did. In May 1917 he told his friend Karl von Weizsäcker that he had wanted to bind the Social Democrats to the Empire with both formulations ("pledge" and "injustice to Belgium"). Before the Weimar National Assembly's committee of inquiry on the question of war guilt in 1919, he stressed that he had never revoked the confession of wrongdoing.
At all times Bethmann Hollweg emphasized the defensive character he believed the war had. He always spoke of "securing" the Reich and, in the event of victory, of a "stronger Germany" – but never of a "larger one", as a member of the Pan-German League remarked disapprovingly. Although Bethmann Hollweg spoke at Headquarters in March 1915 of the liberation of Belgium, he could not meet the demands of the left, which was insisting on a statement of total renunciation, and still continue to be sure of the goodwill of Wilhelm II.
Another problem proved to be informing the people of the military situation. As early as September 1914, Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn had called for systematic public education about the unfavorable military situation resulting from the First Battle of the Marne. On the advice of the Foreign Office, which feared unpredictable consequences abroad, and of several business associations, Bethmann Hollweg refused to allow the government to disseminate the military truth. In spite of all self-deception, he said, education could happen "only gradually through events themselves". Confidence in victory was, after all, a "moral factor of tremendous importance".
While the National Liberals, unaware of the true situation on the front, moved more and more to the right and indulged in ideas of annexations, Bethmann Hollweg noted that partisanship for major territorial demands largely coincided with opposition to suffrage reform in Prussia. Foreign policy issues had an internal political side, something that was to prove a decisive, deep-seated problem for the Chancellor and the Empire.
From the beginning of the war, the Reichstag operated under Burgfriedenspolitik, a political truce between the parties and the government. It was based in large part on the work of the Chancellor. He had rejected the plan of leading military officers such as Admiral Tirpitz to arrest the SPD executive committee at the start of the war and to dissolve the party. Bethmann Hollweg had in fact openly approached the Social Democrats in order to win them over to the Emperor and the Empire for the long term.
When he asked the SPD on 29 July 1914 what its position would be in the war, he was assured that he would not have to assume that there would be either sabotage or general strikes. After he had presented the SPD executive committee's letter to the Emperor, Wilhelm spoke in the Reichstag on 4 August, using words that were to become famous: "I no longer know any parties or denominations; today we are all German brothers and only German brothers."
In retrospect, Bethmann Hollweg saw the day the war began as one of the greatest in German history. On 4 August, he thought, the internal barriers that had prevented the country from growing together into a true nation-state had fallen. At the beginning of October 1914 he said, "The barriers must fall, a new era will begin after the war. The differences of class have receded as never before." Only in the following weeks did he begin to realize that the conservatives, "sitting there so icily", did not want to join the new community that spanned all world views.
In February 1915 the government committed itself to a "reorientation" that was to include electoral reform in Prussia. Bethmann Hollweg said that Prussia's three-class franchise had "become impossible" and that it was necessary to move to equal manhood suffrage. Bethmann Hollweg was accused at the time by both the left and the right of weakness in decision-making. The lack of a political center became increasingly apparent. It would have had to rely above all on the National Liberals, who under their annexationist spokesmen Ernst Bassermann and Gustav Stresemann did not consider cooperating with the left-liberal progressives standing behind Bethmann Hollweg.
Probably at the instigation of Alfred von Tirpitz, whom he admired, Frederick Augustus II, Grand Duke of Oldenburg, as a spokesman for the annexationists, suggested to King Ludwig III of Bavaria in March 1915 that he demand from Wilhelm II, on behalf of the German princes, the dismissal of Bethmann Hollweg, who in his opinion was too weak and stood in the way of a "German peace". Ludwig, who wanted to enlarge Bavaria after a victory, did not do so because Georg von Hertling, the chairman of the Bavarian Council of Ministers and future Reich chancellor (1917–1918), was able to prevent it.
The Chancellor showed a clear view of the Reich's military situation in the spring of 1915 in an unusual proposal he made to the Prussian Ministry of State. He suggested that two districts in Silesia (a province of Prussia) be ceded to Austria so that it would be easier for the Danube monarchy to make territorial concessions to Italy. Bethmann Hollweg thought that it was the only way to prevent Italy from entering the war on the side of the Entente Powers, and that if it did, the war would be lost. His ministerial colleagues rejected the proposal as "un-Prussian". Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915.
On 7 May 1915 a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania off Ireland. The resulting deaths of over 120 Americans put a considerable strain on Germany's relations with the United States. The question of unrestricted submarine warfare once again came under discussion. In an interview in November 1914, Admiral Tirpitz had described submarine warfare as the only truly effective means to fight the naval blockade that the United Kingdom had imposed on Germany. Expecting that humanitarian arguments would carry little weight with the Admiralty, Bethmann Hollweg tried to avoid or at least delay unrestricted submarine warfare by asking critical questions. He doubted whether such military action aimed against the British war economy would be enough to decide the outcome of the war. He also feared early on that the United States would enter the war on the side of the Entente.
With the Lusitania sinking still a political issue, Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the Reichstag on 19 August 1915 and said, "We can use power – even externally – only in the interests of freedom." Considerations of power politics could nevertheless be more important than questions of moral principle. In the face of an increasing number of reports by German representatives in the Ottoman Empire of massacres of Armenians, and when even the ambassador in Constantinople called for intervention, the Chancellor noted, "Our only aim is to keep the Ottoman Empire at our side until the end of the war, regardless of whether Armenians perish over it or not."
In early March 1916 Bethmann Hollweg, using the threat of resignation, forced through the delay of unrestricted submarine warfare. Shortly afterwards Tirpitz tendered his own resignation, and it was accepted on 12 March. The Chancellor's greatest adversary and proponent of submarine warfare, which Bethmann Hollweg called a "crime against the German people", had been defeated.
The breakup of the SPD was to all appearances imminent in March 1916. During a Reichstag session, many Social Democrats had expressed their approval of Bethmann Hollweg. The moderate wing under Friedrich Ebert seemed to be breaking from the left wing of the party. SPD chairman Hugo Haase, who had spoken passionately in the Reichstag against the war's great bloodshed and the adoption of the emergency budget, was forced to resign and expelled from the SPD along with his supporters. Bethmann Hollweg hoped for a merger of the Social Democrats supporting his war policy and the Progressive People's Party to form a centrist party (a "party of the sensible"). Instead, the more radical and anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) was formed in April 1917 with Haase at its head.
In July 1916 leading industrialists as well as government figures such as Walther Rathenau argued for transferring the Supreme Army Command (OHL) from Erich von Falkenhayn to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff and giving them dictatorial powers in the civilian sphere as well. Bethmann Hollweg supported the plan by publicly saying that the name Hindenburg was the terror of the enemy and by prevailing on the Emperor to give him command of the entire eastern front. On 28 August he convinced the Emperor to dismiss Falkenhayn, and the following day Wilhelm II appointed Hindenburg Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army and Ludendorff First Quartermaster General.
Early in the war Bethmann Hollweg had supported annexing the Polish Border Strip from Congress Poland in order to strengthen Germany's eastern border against Russia. The plan included removing ethnic Poles from the area and populating it with German settlers. The new Quartermaster General Ludendorff called for the immediate establishment of a pseudo-independent Kingdom of Poland as a "breeding station for people needed for further fighting in the east". In negotiations with Austrian Foreign Minister Stephan Burián von Rajecz in August 1916, the representatives of the Central Powers agreed on an independent constitutional kingdom of Poland, but under pressure from Bethmann Hollweg, it was not to be proclaimed until after the end of the war. On 18 October 1916, following protests from Vienna, the August agreement was declared invalid, and Poland's independence was brought forward to November. On 5 November 1916 the proclamation of the Regency Kingdom of Poland was announced.
Bethmann Hollweg had succumbed to pressure from the army command and the Danube monarchy. He was able to prevent forced levies, but the fact that the military began recruiting the first volunteers for the Polish armed forces immediately after the proclamation of Polish independence revealed Ludendorff's plans. Although the Chancellor was not the driving force in the Polish question, even openly resisting the OHL, he was ultimately politically responsible.
In the fall of 1916, the OHL, which was increasingly wielding more power in the Reich, drafted a law under the Hindenburg Programme called the Auxiliary Services Act. In order to increase Germany's industrial output, especially of weapons, it sought to militarize the economy by mobilizing all resources, both material and human, through the introduction of compulsory labor. The plan, especially its inclusion of women, caused widespread resistance among labor unions and the liberal and socialist parties in the Reichstag. As a result, the OHL was forced to make concessions that included arbitration committees, the expansion of trade unions' powers and a repeal of the act at the end of the war.
At the same time, at the insistence of the OHL, the deportation of Belgian workers to the Reich began. In spite of Bethmann Hollweg's appeal to carefully consider the question of forced laborers, the coercive measures continued until February 1917.
On 7 October 1916 the Centre Party passed a resolution in which it came around to the military's position and for the first time called for unrestricted submarine warfare. Bethmann Hollweg later wrote in his Reflections that parliament had completely surrendered political power to the OHL.
In the Ministry of State on 20 October 1916, the Chancellor proposed a separate peace offer by the Central Powers, citing the absence of a tangible initiative by the United States and the support of Austrian Foreign Minister Burián. He had in mind the restoration, as far as possible, of the pre-war situation. In mid-November 1916 Bethmann Hollweg sent an inquiry to Washington through Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff about the prospect of a peace conference. But when the White House continued to show indecision, Bethmann Hollweg saw perhaps the last chance for a peace of reconciliation (Ausgleichsfrieden) in an offer of his own.
After the victory over Romania, when the military situation had changed in favor of the Empire, the Chancellor, speaking in the Reichstag on 12 December 1916, offered a negotiated peace (Verständigungsfrieden) to the Entente. He had the full support of the Emperor, who wrote in approval of Bethmann Hollweg's efforts that the peace proposal was "a moral deed necessary to relieve the world of the pressures weighing on all". The governments of the Entente states, however, viewed the initiative skeptically.
On 18 December U.S. President Woodrow Wilson revealed his long-awaited peace initiative. He called for the disclosure of clearly formulated war aims – which the Empire was prepared to do – including withdrawal from Belgium. In response to demands by the pan-Germans, Wilhelm Solf made the proposal to create a contiguous German colonial empire in central Africa, annexing the Belgian Congo. By creating a German Central Africa, future peace would not be burdened by annexations in Europe. The implementation of the colonial war goal was never a priority to Bethmann Hollweg. What mattered to him and Solf was the formulation of a German war objective acceptable at home and abroad in the event of a victorious peace, something which neither politician believed in any longer.
When the Entente was unwilling to make such compromises, Bethmann Hollweg on 7 January 1917 called for immediate concessions or Germany would respond with unrestricted submarine warfare. The Chancellor's marginal note to the declaration, sent to Ambassador Bernstorff in Washington, showed his negative view of the situation: "Perhaps you know a way to avoid the break with America."
The following day the Reich Chancellor traveled to Pleß in Silesia where a meeting of the Crown Council was to make the decision on submarine warfare. After the OHL and the Reichstag had expressed their approval, the final decision lay with the Emperor. Bethmann Hollweg later wrote that Wilhelm was already completely in support of Ludendorff, who claimed that America had "no soldiers" and that if it did, submarine warfare would already have defeated France and England by the time U.S. forces arrived. Ludendorff's line of reasoning led the Emperor to ask Bethmann Hollweg why he "still had misgivings".
It is difficult to argue against Bethmann Hollweg's later statement that the U-boat war had ultimately been waged because a majority in the Reichstag, the Supreme Army Command and the German people had wanted it. The outcome led the Chancellor to thoughts of resigning. He later told Walther Rathenau that he had stayed on in order to preserve the chances of a negotiated peace in spite of the submarine warfare. To Riezler he said in 1919 that he had not wanted to give way to the "Pan-Germans' rule by the saber". According to his biographer von Vietsch, he was guided by a deep sense of loyalty to the Emperor, whom he did not want to put in a bad light by resigning. From that point on, Bethmann Hollweg was considered a failed politician in Germany.
After the decision at Pleß, Wilson on 22 January read a message to the U.S. Senate that was a precursor to his 14-point program. In it he argued for peace without victors and the right of peoples to self-determination. In March 1917 the Russian February Revolution shook the European power structure. On 29 March Bethmann Hollweg appeared before the press and, contrary to the wishes of the conservatives, declared that the Reich would not reinstate the government of the Tsar under any circumstances. The internal affairs of Russia, he said, were a matter for the Russian people. The internal political turmoil seemed to him to increase the chance of a special peace with Russia. It was also at this time that Germany expressed its support for Lenin's return from exile.
Prompted by the changed circumstances and the declaration of war by the United States against Germany on 6 April, Wilhelm II initiated the 23 April Kreuznach Conference on War Objectives. Bethmann Hollweg proposed renouncing all annexations, but the idea was rejected in principle by the OHL. Everyone involved saw that Bethmann Hollweg then agreed to the OHL's war aims only because he thought that they would never be carried out. He noted, "I do not allow myself to be bound in any way by the protocol. If opportunities for peace open up anywhere, I pursue them."
At that time the long postponed electoral law reform in Prussia reappeared on the political agenda. On 27 February 1917 Bethmann Hollweg came before the Reichstag and in a speech that he later called his "most significant" said that he saw the typically German expression of a liberal form of government in a monarchy based "on the broad shoulders of the free man". A progressive, social "people's empire" seemed to him acceptable to right and left, and therefore the long term solution to domestic problems.
But this form of government had no appeal to the outside world, especially the USA. Bethmann Hollweg's intellectual limitation to German idealism made him misjudge its international impact. In the last months of his term, the Chancellor pursued the goal of a parliamentary monarchy and reform of Prussia's electoral system. On 9 March the conservatives moved even further away from the center and rejected the "whole liberal and parliamentary idea". To avoid a break with them, the Chancellor – who was also Prussian minister president – again avoided general constitutional theory in his remarks to the Prussian House of Lords. But he clearly rejected an insistence on three-class suffrage and said that his preference was to reform the electoral law as soon as possible. He nevertheless pointed out that rushing the issue could have "fatal" consequences and uttered words that were to echo widely:Woe to the statesman who does not recognize the signs of the times, woe to the statesman who believes that after a catastrophe such as the world has never before seen, we could simply pick up where we left off.Although Bethmann Hollweg had wanted to avoid any rupture by using imprecise formulations, the right took the speech as an expression of anti-state sentiment. The reactionary wing of the conservatives insulted him as a "henchman of the Jews and Social Democrats". The progressive Conrad Haußmann (DVP), on the other hand, spoke of a "historic event" because the Chancellor had openly placed himself on the left.
On 31 March 1917 Bethmann Hollweg appointed a commission to draft an emperor's message that would explicitly mention equal suffrage. The tired and spent chancellor then mustered all his remaining resolve and traveled to Bad Homburg to see Wilhelm II. In deference to conservative circles, the Emperor refused to make direct reference to equal (manhood) suffrage. Bethmann Hollweg agitatedly explained to him that it was impossible for him to advocate a bill under which a "worker adorned with the Iron Cross First Class would have to go to the polls next to a well-off draft dodger from the same village" with unequal voting rights. In the end Wilhelm II agreed to the wording of the Easter message and thus to the democratization of Prussia. Ludendorff described the Easter Message of 7 April, which promised the abolition of three-class suffrage, as "kowtowing to revolution".
The SPD called for a clear commitment from the German government to peace without annexations. There was hope for the peace initiative of Pope Benedict XV, who had offered to mediate between the warring parties. The Chancellor and Wilhelm II agreed with the Pope's efforts and were prepared to release Belgium and cede Alsace–Lorraine. The nuncio in Munich, Eugenio Pacelli, later said confidentially that the prospects for peace would have been good if Bethmann Hollweg had remained chancellor.
It was at that time that Matthias Erzberger of the Centre Party put his Reichstag Peace Resolution before the main parliamentary committee. The efforts, which in their radicalism were also directed against the Chancellor, astonished Bethmann Hollweg, since the position of the broad Reichstag majority had always been with him.
Ludendorff then saw an opportunity to have the Reichstag accomplish his goal of deposing Bethmann Hollweg. At the forefront of his thinking was the National Liberal Gustav Stresemann, who held annexationist positions and declared the Chancellor unsuitable for a negotiated peace. "A Reich chancellor must be able to assert himself; if he cannot, he must draw the consequences." In his reply, Bethmann Hollweg spoke of the "overwhelming achievements of the people in the war". He was convinced that equal manhood suffrage would bring "no impairment, but an extraordinary strengthening and consolidation of the monarchical idea." The words led Emperor Wilhelm II to say to his chief of cabinet von Valentini, "And I am to dismiss the man who towers above all others by a head!"
Two days after the Chancellor's speech, the Emperor published his "July Message" in which he pledged that "the next elections can be held under the new, equal [manhood] suffrage law". Wilhelm Solf later called this a "complete victory for the idea of a social emperor". In response, Colonel Max Bauer, OHL commissioner, spread the word that Ludendorff thought the war was lost if the Chancellor stayed. Crown Prince Wilhelm suggested to his father that representatives of the Reichstag parties be consulted about the Chancellor's staying. The deputies Kuno von Westarp (German Conservative party), Gustav Stresemann (National liberal party), and Erich Mertin (Free Conservative Party) spoke in favor of the Chancellor's dismissal, and only Friedrich von Payer (Progressive People's Party) and Eduard David (SPD) spoke in favor of his remaining in office.
In their efforts to achieve a negotiated peace, the majority parties in the Reichstag saw Bethmann Hollweg as an unacceptable negotiator because he had been in the position too long and, in their view, was too weak in his dealings with the Supreme Army Command. He was too willing to compromise with them even though he had held out the prospect of internal reforms.
In a letter to the Emperor dated 12 July 1917, Ludendorff threatened to resign, and Hindenburg joined in the ultimatum. To spare the Emperor and himself the embarrassment of a dismissal, Bethmann Hollweg submitted his resignation. The Emperor yielded to pressure from the military leadership and agreed to the request. On 13 July 1917 Bethmann Hollweg resigned.
The reactions to Bethmann Hollweg's resignation were as varied as the assessments of his activities during his term in office. He himself wrote that he could resign without bitterness but with pain at the spectacle Germany was offering the "listening enemy". His successor, Georg Michaelis, whose name was put forward by the OHL, prevented the papal peace initiative from advancing when he withdrew concessions, including withdrawal from Belgium. Michaelis was succeeded on 1 November 1917 by Georg von Hertling, a conservative southern German whom Bethmann Hollweg from the beginning had wanted as his successor. Hertling nevertheless admitted that he disliked Bethmann's views, "which leaned very far to the left".
The former chancellor retired to his Hohenfinow estate and devoted himself to agriculture. He called the revolution that broke out in Germany in November 1918 a "désastre". He thought that the result of the world war should have been a genuine league of nations, but now only a "sham league built on imperialist orgies" would be the result. Whether they liked it or not, they were standing "on the threshold of a new era, and a democratic one at that".
In May 1919 the first part of Bethmann Hollweg's Reflections on the World War was published. In retrospect he viewed Germany's part in the start of the war as follows:We were burdened in the heaviest way by 1870/1871 [the Franco-Prussian War] and by our central geographical position. After the Emperor came to power, we often did the opposite of what we could have done to make the burden bearable. Admittedly, world imperialism would have prevailed even without our intervention, and it remains very doubtful whether we could have prevented the natural French, Russian, and British antagonisms from uniting against us, even if we had acted reasonably. Guilt we have brought upon ourselves, but only all-round and common guilt could have given rise to the world catastrophe.
Bethmann Hollweg received prominent attention throughout the world in June 1919 when he formally asked the Allied and Associated Powers to place him on trial instead of the Emperor. The Supreme War Council decided to ignore his request. He was often mentioned as among those who might be tried by Allies for political offences in connection with the origin of the war.
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg died of acute pneumonia on 1 January 1921 without having been able to complete the second part of his reflections. On the gravestone of the former Reich chancellor is a Bible verse of his own choosing: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" (Matthew 5:6).
