Wilson's first reply

On 8 October 1918 Secretary of State Robert Lansing handed the Swiss chargé d’affaires in Washington, who represented Germany’s interests, President Woodrow Wilson’s reply to the German request for an armistice. It was neither an acceptance nor a refusal. The president declared that before replying he had to be sure what exactly the note of Chancellor Max von Baden meant, and he put three questions. Did the German government accept the terms laid down in the address to Congress of 8 January, that is the Fourteen Points, and in the president’s subsequent addresses, and did it wish in negotiations only to agree on the practical details of their application? Would the Central Powers agree to withdraw their forces immediately from all occupied territory? As long as their armies stood on their opponents’ soil, Wilson did not intend to propose a cessation of arms to his associates. Finally the president asked whether the chancellor was speaking merely for those authorities of the Empire who had so far conducted the war. He considered the answers to these questions “vital from every point of view”.

The Allies’ unease

Wilson replied on his own, without consulting the states alongside which the United States was fighting. The prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy, who happened to be meeting in Paris, broke off their conference on 8 October without a decision and waited for news from Washington. When they learned of the note, they did not hide their disappointment. According to an American liaison officer, David Lloyd George regretted that the president had not left the armistice terms to the soldiers. The Germans were retreating on many sectors of the front with the Allies on their heels, and if they were given time to evacuate France and Belgium in peace, they could withdraw their army to new defensive positions. Marshal Ferdinand Foch had already on 8 October set out his own vision of an armistice: the evacuation of all territory up to the left bank of the Rhine and bridgeheads on the Rhine in Allied hands.

On 9 October the prime ministers sent Wilson a joint note. They agreed that the evacuation of occupied territory was a precondition of any talks about an armistice, but stressed that it was not enough. The enemy could use a cessation of hostilities to save his equipment, rebuild his units and occupy new, fortified positions. In their view the terms of an armistice could be fixed only after hearing military experts and in accordance with the situation at the front. That same evening the prime ministers also asked the president to send to Europe a representative who enjoyed his full confidence.

Deliberations in Berlin

In Berlin the note was discussed from 9 October. General Erich Ludendorff came to a conference at the Reich Chancellery. His closest collaborator, Colonel Wilhelm Heye, warned that the Supreme Army Command would be tempting fate if it did not hasten peace moves. “We may be able to hold out until the spring, but a turn for the worse may come any day. Yesterday a breakthrough of our lines hung by a thread,” he said, referring to the British attack at Cambrai. Asked whether the front could be held for another three months, Ludendorff said no. For the ministers this meant that the principle of evacuation had to be accepted.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg hesitated for a long time. He wanted to stipulate that peace negotiations would begin immediately, that a cessation of hostilities would accompany the evacuation, and that the lands of the former Russian Empire would not be evacuated for the time being. In the end he dropped these conditions and demanded only one sentence: that Germany assumed that America’s allies, too, accepted the president’s position. This was meant to guard against further-reaching demands from London and Paris. The Secretary of State of the Navy, Ernst von Mann, agreed to the reply “with a heavy heart”. He warned that Germany was putting itself in Wilson’s hands without knowing whether he was an idealist or a leader of big capital, and that an armistice would mean the end of the submarine war, the Empire’s last offensive weapon. On 12 October Hindenburg and Ludendorff telegraphed that they agreed to the text of the note.

The reply of 12 October

The note dated 12 October was signed by the new Foreign Secretary, Wilhelm Solf. In it the German government declared that it had accepted the terms laid down in the address of 8 January and in the president’s subsequent addresses as the foundation of a lasting and just peace, and therefore wished in negotiations only to agree on the practical details of their application. It expressed the belief that the governments allied with the United States also accepted Wilson’s position. In agreement with Austria-Hungary, Germany declared itself ready to comply with the president’s proposals regarding evacuation and proposed that the technical questions be settled by a mixed commission. To the third question Solf replied that the present government had been formed in agreement with the great majority of the Reichstag, and that the chancellor, supported by this majority, spoke in the name of the German government and the German people.

The note again went through Switzerland. According to the American vice-consul in Zurich, the Germans proposed, for the sake of speed, to send it from the radio station at Nauen, but the Swiss feared misunderstandings in America. The Swiss chargé d’affaires received the text on the morning of 14 October and handed it to Lansing the same day. The German press found Wilson’s first note satisfactory. It stressed that for the first time a German peace offer had not been rejected out of hand. Only the conservatives argued that the demand for evacuation was a demand for capitulation. The hopes proved short-lived. Meanwhile, on 10 October, in the Irish Sea a German submarine sank the mail steamer Leinster with hundreds of passengers on board, which caused outrage in America and Britain. The president’s next reply, sent on 14 October, was much harsher than the first.