Wilson's second note

On 14 October 1918, the day on which Germany’s reply to his questions reached Washington, President Woodrow Wilson sent a second note to Berlin. Secretary of State Robert Lansing handed it to the Swiss chargé d’affaires the same day. The President took note that the German government and the large majority of the Reichstag had accepted his peace terms without reservation, but he put the matter far more sharply than a week earlier. The process of evacuation and the conditions of an armistice were to be left to the judgement of the military advisers of the United States and the Allied governments. No arrangement could be accepted that did not provide absolutely satisfactory safeguards for the maintenance of the present military supremacy of the armies of the United States and the Allies in the field.

Ships and burned towns

Wilson also declared that neither the United States nor its allies would consent to an armistice so long as the German armed forces continued their “illegal and inhumane practices”. At the very moment the Reich government was approaching with a peace proposal, its submarines were sinking passenger ships at sea, and even the boats in which the survivors sought safety. Four days earlier, off the coast of Ireland, the mail steamer Leinster had been sunk, with the loss of more than five hundred lives. The President also condemned the destruction left behind by the German armies withdrawing from Flanders and France. Towns and villages, if not destroyed, were being stripped of everything, and often of their inhabitants as well.

The last point of the note, however, reached furthest. Wilson recalled a sentence from his speech of 4 July at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s former estate. Among the conditions of peace he had named there “the destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere” that could separately, secretly and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world, or, if it could not be destroyed, at least its reduction to virtual impotence. Now he wrote plainly that the power which had hitherto controlled the German nation was of exactly this kind, and that changing it lay with the Germans themselves. On the guarantees given on this fundamental question, he said, the whole peace process depended. The President announced that the reply to Austria-Hungary would be sent separately. The same day Wilson decided to send Colonel Edward House to Europe as his special representative.

Dismay in Berlin

In Germany the note caused dejection and indignation, especially in the army. The Supreme Army Command, which two weeks earlier had demanded an immediate request for an armistice, now wanted to back away from it and asked the government whether the nation was ready for a fight to the death. State Secretary Wilhelm Solf saw this as an attempt to shift responsibility for the defeat onto the home front. On 17 October the government questioned Erich Ludendorff. The general now spoke more hopefully than at the beginning of the month. He considered a breakthrough of the front possible but not probable, and reminded them that war was not arithmetic, and that at Tannenberg too nobody had known what would happen. To Chancellor Max von Baden’s remark that after further fighting the enemy might impose even worse terms, he replied that there could be no worse terms. When the Prince pointed out that the enemy might march into Germany and lay the country waste, he was told only that “it has not come to that yet”.

The government was not convinced. The calculations presented at the meeting showed that by spring Germany could raise 600,000–700,000 recruits, while its opponents could field over a million Americans alone. During the night of 19–20 October Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg informed the Chancellor that Turkey had begun separate negotiations and Austria-Hungary would soon follow. At the same time he argued that even in the event of defeat Germany would be in no worse a position than after accepting all the demands. The sharpest dispute with the Supreme Army Command concerned submarine warfare. The army did not want to give up this weapon without compensation, but the German diplomats, summoned to a meeting before the note was sent, unanimously advised giving way.

The reply of 20 October

In the note of 20 October, signed by Solf, the German government agreed that the process of evacuation and the conditions of an armistice should be decided by the military advisers. It stipulated, however, that the basis must be the actual balance of forces at the front, and expressed the hope that the President would not support demands incompatible with the honour of the German people. It rejected the charges of illegal and inhumane conduct. It claimed that destruction while covering a retreat was permitted by international law, and that the navy had never deliberately destroyed lifeboats carrying survivors. It proposed that these matters be investigated by neutral commissions. At the same time the government announced that it had ordered all submarine commanders not to torpedo passenger ships. It stipulated only that for technical reasons it could not guarantee that the order would reach every boat before its return. To the demand for a change of rule, Solf replied with a description of the reforms under way. The new government had been formed in full agreement with the representatives of the people, it included the leaders of the great parties of the Reichstag, and a draft amendment to the constitution was to make decisions on war and peace dependent on the consent of parliament. The offer of peace and an armistice therefore came from a government free of arbitrary influence and supported by the overwhelming majority of the nation.

Ludendorff still tried to add a sentence to the note saying that if an armistice did not come quickly, Germany would again take up the submarine weapon. It was too late; the note had already gone. It reached Washington on 22 October. The Admiralty went further than the government had promised. According to German documents, around 20–21 October Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, ordered all submarines to return at once: “Commerce warfare in any form forbidden on account of the negotiations under way.” On the way to their bases the boats could attack only warships, and only by day. Thus ended the unrestricted submarine warfare waged since February 1917, and Wilson received one of the guarantees he had demanded. His next reply, sent on 23 October, proved even harder for Berlin.