Peace notes to Wilson

During the night of 3–4 October 1918 the new Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, sent a note through Switzerland to the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. In it the German government asked him to restore peace, to inform all the belligerent states and invite them to negotiations, and above all to bring about “the immediate conclusion of a general armistice on land, on sea and in the air”. A few hours later, also during the night of 4 October, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister István Burián sent a similar note to Washington through Sweden. Both states accepted as the basis of peace the programme Wilson had announced in January as the Fourteen Points. After four years of war the Central Powers themselves had asked the enemy for a ceasefire.

A note written at the army’s dictation

The decision to ask for an armistice was taken not by the politicians but by the Supreme Army Command. On 29 September at Spa Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff demanded an immediate approach to Wilson, and the Kaiser agreed. The change of government delayed the sending of the note, originally planned for 1 October. Ludendorff, through his representative in Berlin, Colonel Hans von Haeften, kept pressing the government. On 2 October his envoy, Major von dem Bussche, briefed the party leaders in the Reichstag on the situation at the front. The deputies, who for months had been told of imminent victory, came out of the meeting shaken.

Prince Max, appointed chancellor the day before, considered the haste a mistake. He wanted first to announce the new government’s peace programme and only later, without an explicit request for an armistice, to propose negotiations, because he feared that a request sent at such a moment would reveal Germany’s weakness to the enemy and worsen the peace terms. Hindenburg, however, in a written statement for the new cabinet upheld the army’s demand: after the collapse of the Macedonian front and given the impossibility of making good the heavy losses, the Supreme Army Command no longer saw, “as far as human judgement can tell”, any possibility of winning peace by force of arms. The chancellor gave way. Ludendorff later thought the note “somewhat weak in tone” and proposed “more manly” wording, but no one listened to him any more.

A short text

The German note, dated 3 October and signed by the chancellor, was very short. In it the Imperial government asked the President to take steps to restore peace. As the basis for negotiations it accepted the programme set out by Wilson in his address to Congress of 8 January 1918 and in his later pronouncements, especially his speech of 27 September 1918. On that day Wilson, opening the campaign for another war loan in New York, had spoken of “impartial justice” towards all nations and of a League of Nations as part of the future treaty. Finally, “to avoid further bloodshed”, the German government asked for an immediate general armistice.

The content of the note was a response to the military situation, not the result of a considered policy. As late as 2 October Ludendorff telegraphed that the Fourteen Points were to be only a basis for discussion, not terms imposed by the enemy. The state secretaries in Berlin hoped that questions such as Alsace-Lorraine or the frontiers in the east could still be negotiated. Yet Wilson’s programme spoke plainly of righting the wrong done to France in 1871 and of an independent Poland with access to the sea.

Austria-Hungary: together with Berlin

In Vienna the defeat was seen even more clearly. The monarchy was falling apart from within, and in mid-September Burián had already tried a peace initiative of his own, which Wilson rejected. When on 2 October the German Supreme Army Command announced that an armistice had to be requested at once, Burián proposed a delay of two days, so that both states would act simultaneously and a new government would have time to be formed in Berlin. As he recalled, on 2 October he obtained the consent of both governments of the monarchy at a joint council of ministers, and on 3 October he explained to the leaders of the Austrian and Hungarian parties that the situation was hopeless.

The Austro-Hungarian note, sent during the night of 4 October, was longer and more solemn than the German one. It asserted that the monarchy had waged “always and solely a defensive war”, and proposed to the President and his allies an armistice on all fronts, on land, at sea and in the air, together with immediate peace negotiations. Their basis was to be the Fourteen Points, the Four Principles of Wilson’s speech of 11 February 1918, and also the position set out in the speech of 27 September. The Ottoman Empire, informed of its allies’ step, came forward with a note of its own a few days later.

The road to Washington

The notes went by a roundabout route, because the Central Powers had no missions in the United States. The German text was sent to the Swiss foreign ministry in Bern, and from there to the Swiss legation in Washington. The Swiss chargé d’affaires, Frederick Oederlin, received it only on the afternoon of 6 October and the same day handed the President the German original together with an English translation. The Austro-Hungarian note was delivered on 7 October to Secretary of State Robert Lansing by the minister of Sweden, W. A. F. Ekengren. According to Burián, Lansing then told him in French that the answer “would be hardly encouraging”. The world learned of the content of the German note even before it was delivered. On 5 October the chancellor announced it in his first speech in the Reichstag, at the same time assuring his listeners that if the terms proved unacceptable, the nation would be ready to fight on.

The enemy’s reaction

The notes took America’s allies by surprise. The prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, happened to be conferring in Paris. They referred the question of armistice terms with Germany to the military representatives at Versailles and waited anxiously for Wilson’s answer. They feared that the President would begin negotiating on his own, over their heads, and that the Germans, if given time for an orderly evacuation of France and Belgium, would set up their army for defence on a new line. The British also wanted to know what exactly “freedom of the seas”, the second of the Fourteen Points, meant. Vienna had to wait much longer than Berlin for an answer. Much had changed since January: the United States had recognised the Czechoslovaks as a belligerent, and mere autonomy for the peoples of the monarchy, as the tenth point had put it, was no longer enough for Washington.

The reply to Berlin came on 8 October. The President did not reject the request, but demanded clarifications and the evacuation of the occupied territories. Thus began an exchange of notes that lasted the whole of October, in which Germany step by step lost room for manoeuvre. The note of 4 October was meant to give the army a breathing space, but it became the first step towards the armistice of 11 November.