German peace offer

On the morning of 12 December 1916 the Reich Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, summoned, one by one, the Spanish ambassador, the Swiss minister and the American chargé d’affaires, Joseph Grew. They represented the states that during the war looked after Germany’s interests in enemy countries. He handed each of them a note proposing the opening of peace negotiations and asked them to pass it on to the Entente governments. The United States was to deliver it to France, Britain, Japan, Romania, Russia and Serbia, Spain to Belgium and Portugal, and Switzerland to Italy. On the same day the governments of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey presented identical notes in Vienna, Sofia and Constantinople. Pope Benedict XV and the other neutral states were notified separately. In the afternoon the Chancellor read the note out in the Reichstag. For the first time in this war the Central Powers had officially and jointly proposed peace talks to their opponents.

An idea from Vienna

The initiative came from Austria-Hungary. On 17 October 1916, at headquarters in Pless, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Baron István Burián, argued to Bethmann Hollweg that the war could not be decided by arms. If it went on for another year, the Allies would strike even harder in 1917 than they had on the Somme that summer. Even a successful defence would not force them to make peace, and the Central Powers would draw close to exhaustion. Burián wanted all the neutral states to transmit to the enemy, publicly and simultaneously, a peace proposal based on concrete, moderate terms. He reckoned that a reasonable offer would win over the neutrals, strengthen the longing for peace in the Entente countries and, if refused, stiffen the will to hold out at home. According to the Chancellor’s note of the following day, Bethmann Hollweg welcomed the idea and let it be understood that he had been thinking of something similar himself. On 11 December the American ambassador in Vienna heard from Burián that the minister had worked on the project for two months and that it was his own work.

The allies differed, however, on two points. Burián wanted to wait for the winter lull in the fighting and to announce peace terms. In Berlin the view was that the best moment would come as soon as Allied hopes placed in Romania had proved vain. At the beginning of November Emperor Wilhelm II wrote to Franz Joseph that before the Central Powers proposed peace it would be worth issuing a proclamation on Poland, to show the world that they felt themselves to be the victors. And so it happened: on 5 November the act announcing the creation of a Kingdom of Poland was proclaimed. The Emperor and the Chancellor also did not want to state terms. If they announced maximum demands, it would be easier for the enemy to reject them; if minimum ones, they would tie their own hands in advance. In confidential correspondence Bethmann Hollweg proposed to Vienna, among other things, the recognition of the Kingdom of Poland, the annexation of part of Courland and Lithuania, “guarantees” in Belgium or, failing those, the annexation of a strip of land with Liège, the return of occupied France except for the iron-ore basin around Briey and Longwy, and the return of the colonies. Burián finally gave way. In mid-November the text of the note was agreed with Vienna, and the Supreme Army Command accepted the amendments. Then Bulgaria and Turkey still had to be won over.

The Germans also knew that the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, re-elected in November, was preparing a peace initiative of his own. The ambassador in Washington, Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, reported that the President would act by the New Year at the latest. Berlin, however, did not want to wait any longer. On 9 December, three days after the capture of Bucharest, the Foreign Office informed Bernstorff that Germany had decided to exploit the favourable situation created by the fall of the Romanian capital. “At this moment we run no risk of losing prestige or of giving an impression of weakness. If the enemy rejects our proposal, the odium of continuing the war will fall on him,” the telegram said.

A note without terms

The note began with the words: “The most terrible war known to history has for two and a half years been ravaging a large part of the world.” The German government went on to say that in this struggle Germany and her allies had proved their “indestructible strength”, winning great successes over more numerous and better-supplied opponents. Their lines were withstanding incessant attacks, and “the recent attack in the Balkans” had been quickly and victoriously repulsed. The four allied powers had taken up arms in defence of their existence and of the freedom of their national development, and did not seek to crush or annihilate their adversaries. Conscious of their strength, ready if necessary to fight to the end, but wishing to put a stop to the bloodshed, they proposed “to enter forthwith into peace negotiations”. The proposals they would bring to the negotiations were meant to secure the “existence, honour and freedom of development” of their peoples and, in their view, were suitable as a basis for a lasting peace. The last paragraph sounded like a threat: if, despite this offer, the struggle continued, the four powers would carry it on to a victorious end, “solemnly disclaiming all responsibility before mankind and history”.

The note said not a word about what the Central Powers wanted, and in particular whether they would give up occupied Belgium, northern France, Serbia and newly conquered Romania. The Turkish foreign minister, Halil Bey, asked that day by the American ambassador about peace terms, replied that he would state them only when the enemy agreed to negotiate.

The speech in the Reichstag

The Reichstag had been summoned suddenly, the day before. “Great excitement over the Reichstag unexpectedly summoned for tomorrow. Nobody knows what it is about,” Count Harry Kessler noted on 11 December. According to the Frankfurter Zeitung, on 12 December the chamber was filled to the last seat, and people crowded in the corridors. The Chancellor began by listing victories. Romania’s entry into the war, the offensive on the Somme and the Italian attacks on the Isonzo had together been meant to break the Central Powers. Instead the Western Front had held, and Hindenburg had broken through the enemy front and taken its capital. Romanian grain and oil had secured Germany economically, and the Auxiliary Service Law just passed had mobilised the whole nation to work for the war. Germany was not a besieged fortress but “a mighty, firmly organised military camp with inexhaustible resources”. The Emperor, in agreement with the allied monarchs, had decided to propose peace negotiations to the enemy. Bethmann Hollweg read out the note and ended with the words that Germany would go on her way, “resolved to fight, ready for peace”. If the enemy refused, a “holy wrath” would blaze up in every German heart.

There was no debate. The Conservatives and National Liberals later complained that the government had not disclosed its peace terms and had not allowed the Reichstag to discuss a matter of such great weight. On the same day Wilhelm II issued an order to the troops: “In the consciousness of the victory that you have won by your bravery, I and the rulers of the faithfully allied states have offered the enemy peace. Whether the aim connected with this will be achieved remains an open question. You are to continue, with God’s help, to stand up to the enemy and to beat him.”

Berlin’s calculations

The Reich government reckoned that the offer would weaken the will to fight in the war-weary Entente countries, improve relations with the neutral states, especially the United States, and raise morale at home, where a hard wartime winter was approaching and food rations were shrinking. If the enemy refused, responsibility for continuing the war would fall on them, and Germany would have a justification for more ruthless methods of warfare. The most important of these was unrestricted submarine warfare. The Admiralty and the Supreme Army Command of Hindenburg and Ludendorff had for months been demanding that all ships sailing to Britain be sunk without warning, and the State Secretary who opposed this, Gottlieb von Jagow, lost his office in November. Ludendorff testified in 1919 before the National Assembly’s committee of inquiry that on 8 December the Supreme Army Command had once again put its position to the Chancellor and named the end of January as the date for starting unrestricted submarine warfare, should the peace proposal fail.

In Berlin many diplomats understood it the same way. The Spanish ambassador told Grew that when he was summoned to the Chancellor he had expected an announcement that unrestricted submarine warfare was being resumed. He believed the Entente would reject the offer, and that a radical turn in German policy would then follow. The next day the Danish minister told the American: “If the Allies reject the German peace offer, we shall have to look out for our ships.” The German press on the whole received the note favourably, but the Pan-Germans feared the government was showing weakness, and the newspapers wrote openly that after a refusal the time would come for the submarines.

First reactions

In the Entente capitals the note was received with distrust even before it had been officially delivered. On 13 December the French prime minister, Aristide Briand, presenting his new government in the Chamber of Deputies, spoke of “supposed proposals”, dressed up in solemn phrases, which were meant to trouble the minds and consciences of the Allies and to influence the neutrals. He warned the country against demoralisation. The American ambassador in London reported that the prevailing conviction in Britain was that an offer without concrete and favourable terms should not even be seriously considered. The language of the note was considered insulting there because of its boasting and its threat. The proposal itself was seen as a sign of Germany’s grave economic troubles and an attempt to break Allied unity, and some saw in it the preparation of a pretext for new atrocities. In Washington Wilson, who had been forestalled by the German move, decided nonetheless to come forward with a note of his own. He sent it on 18 December.

The offer had no chance. According to historians, the only path to negotiations would have been an announcement of withdrawal from the occupied territories and a return to the pre-war status quo, and Bethmann Hollweg could not agree to that in the face of the annexationist expectations aroused in Germany and the pressure of the army. The confidential terms that Germany passed to Wilson at the end of January 1917 provided, among other things, for “strategic and economic” border corrections in France, “guarantees” of Germany’s security in Belgium and a frontier protecting Germany and Poland against Russia. The Entente rejected the offer on 30 December 1916, calling it a war manoeuvre. A month later Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare, and in April 1917 the United States entered the war.