Resignation of Jagow

On 22 November 1916 Kaiser Wilhelm II accepted the resignation of Gottlieb von Jagow, since January 1913 State Secretary of the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt), in practice the Reich’s foreign minister. His successor was the Under-Secretary of State, Arthur Zimmermann. This date is given by most German studies and lists of officials. The British war chronology records Jagow’s departure as early as 20 November. Officially Jagow was leaving because of poor health. Behind this version, however, lay defeat in a dispute that had divided the German authorities for months: whether to begin unrestricted submarine warfare and risk war with the United States.

A reluctant diplomat

Jagow was born in 1863 in Berlin into an old noble family from Brandenburg. He was a diplomat from 1895, worked for more than ten years at the embassy in Rome, then was minister in Luxembourg, and from 1909 ambassador to Italy. In January 1913, after the sudden death of Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, the Kaiser appointed him State Secretary. According to his German biographer Hellmut Seier, Jagow accepted the office reluctantly and knew his limitations. He was slight, sickly and was considered irresolute. He was a poor speaker and kept away from parliament. The State Secretary was not an independent minister but the executor of the Chancellor’s policy, and Jagow, a close associate of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, understood his role in exactly this way. In the summer of 1914 he helped shape the course that gave Austria-Hungary a free hand against Serbia, and together with the Chancellor rejected the British proposal for a conference. He counted on Russia backing down and the war remaining confined to the Balkans.

During the war Jagow opposed extreme annexationist plans. He preferred the vision of a Central Europe under German leadership and indirect forms of domination. On the Polish question he first leaned towards the Austro-Polish solution, that is uniting the Kingdom of Poland with the Habsburg monarchy, and later towards an autonomous Poland under German control together with the annexation of Lithuania and Courland. He left office a little over two weeks after the proclamation of the Act of 5 November, which announced the creation of a Kingdom of Poland. His chief concern, however, was the United States. He considered unrestricted submarine warfare, which was bound to lead to a break with America, the greatest mistake Germany could make. It was he who in the spring of 1916 received from the American ambassador the note on the Sussex, after which Germany restricted its submarine operations.

Pressure from the army and the Reichstag

In the autumn of 1916 the advocates of submarine warfare were growing ever stronger. From the end of August the army was led by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who month by month gained greater influence over the Reich’s policy. The Admiralty argued that the U-boats would force Britain to capitulate within a few months. On 7 October the Centre Party group, the second largest party in the Reichstag after the Social Democrats, adopted a resolution stating that on the question of submarine warfare the Chancellor should rely above all on the opinion of the Supreme Army Command. If he decided to begin it, he could count on the Reichstag’s support. Criticism of Jagow grew in the press and in parliament. The American ambassador in Berlin, James W. Gerard, recalled that the campaign against him was started by those who accused him of defending government policy too weakly when answering questions in the Reichstag. Jagow did not court the deputies, and his delicate health did not allow him to do anything beyond the daily duties of his office.

Seier judges that when Jagow tried to prevent unrestricted submarine warfare and a break with America, he was dismissed on a pretext. Bethmann Hollweg publicly maintained the illness version. On 28 November, in an interview with the American journalist William Bayard Hale, he said that the loss of the “devoted, talented and distinguished” Jagow filled the government with sincere sorrow, but that because of serious illness the State Secretary had for several months wished to leave in order to restore his health. According to the Chancellor, the promotion of Zimmermann, who had been his closest associate for three and a half years, meant continuity of the same policy. The Chancellor was responding in this way to his interviewer’s remark that the change at the head of German diplomacy would certainly attract attention in the United States. The text of the interview, revised five times in the Chancellor’s office, was sent to Washington by the American chargé d’affaires in Berlin, Joseph Grew. Gerard later considered that Jagow judged foreign nations more accurately and read the American mood better than his successor.

What came next

Jagow never returned to high politics. According to Gerard, he took charge of a hospital in Libau in the occupied Russian territories. He became a member of the Prussian House of Lords, and after the war, in his book “Ursachen und Ausbruch des Weltkrieges” (1919), he defended German policy of the summer of 1914. He died in 1935 in Potsdam. His fears came true. In January 1917 the Kaiser, on the advice of the army and the Admiralty, agreed to unrestricted submarine warfare from 1 February, and in April the United States declared war on Germany.